Steve Perry:
Friday Mourning
Now it can be said: yes, Steve Perry is dead. We’ll wait for the Zephyrhills police and investigators to reveal more in the coming days, but yesterday’s press release (see last post, below) was both a horror and a relief.
Now that everyone knows what the family and inner circle of Steve Perry’s friends have been carrying with them for over week, all I can do is provide links to the relevant news stories today. I’m drained, sad, angry, and as low as you might imagine — this, at least, is now known:
I broke the tragic news here and on Facebook, just before
This is the only substantive article available anywhere as yet. More will come to light only after the police release more information, or the Tampa area reporters dig up more.
Howard writes, “More than two weeks after comic book artist [sic] Stephen J. Perry was last heard from by his friends – and 11 days after his van was found near human remains at a Tampa hotel – Zephyrhills police now say he is the victim of an apparent homicide.
“The Zephyrhills Police Department is now investigating the disappearance of Stephen J. Perry as an apparent homicide,” Capt. Rob McKinney said in a news release. “Laboratory results on evidence are still pending at this time.”…”
and so on.
Just a few things I need to say this morning, in light of this truth coming to light:
Jim McLauchlin and the Hero Initiative are doing great, important, absolutely vital work, and their ongoing efforts on Steve and his son Leo’s behalf since November 2009 is a testimonial to their good work.
Please don’t let the bad end Steve came to cloud your perception of all Hero Initiative did and was going to do for Steve. They were and are a lifeline, for Steve and for many, many other good people in dire straits.
Steve also completed his final short story for Nat and Salimba only weeks before his death.
Finally, a word of caution to us all:
We’re going to read a lot of spins about Steve’s final months, weeks and days in the press this coming week and thereafter.
We’re going to read it coming from those responsible for this hideous crime.
We’re going to read it coming from their defense lawyers.
We’re going to read it coming from those who find Steve’s fantasy and comicbook writing somehow alarming, ripe with horrific portents or a clue to his final days.
We’re going to read it coming from many, many others who want their version of the past year or more of Steve’s life to be the only version of Steve’s life accepted as ‘the true story.’
I’m already reading people (who should know better) claim that Steve “wasn’t lucid” in his final months.
I’m sorry, but the man was lucid to the end in his emails to me. He was lucid in his many, many email exchanges with the many who reached out to him to help he and Leo since August of last year.
Yes, of course, those emails were ‘one-sided’ — they were Steve’s account of his days. Steve’s account. In the case of those emails he sent to me, they were an old friend reaching out to one of the few old friends he had in the world.
As I have articulated on this blog over the past week, I always took anything Steve told me with a grain of salt — hard experience taught me to — but that doesn’t discount the validity of all he said, wrote, experienced.
Like all of us, he saw and experienced and filtered the world as he saw/experienced/filtered it, but I am incapable of accepting Steve wasn’t “lucid” in the final months of his life. Angry, depressed, put-upon, in pain, frightened, at times terrified, always desperate? — yes, he was all those things, in almost every email. But he was still Steve, coming through loud and clear and lucid.
He was absolutely desperate, clearly, but only a lucid man could write a complete short story, a full comics script, a coherent proposal for a comics series (that editor Karen Berger took seriously enough to personally email Steve about) and do all that Steve managed to do while being the sole caregiver for a five-year-old son for over a year and facing the daily agonies of terminal bladder cancer, pain, poverty and whatever hell his roommates generated for him, amid the relentless spirit-crushing grind of dealing with the various health care and welfare agencies he was regularly engaged with.
Only someone who has never written fiction in their life could claim that a man who could accomplish what Steve was still accomplishing almost to the bitter end, in the face of all that I’ve just mentioned (while juggling a hoped-for re-entry into freelancing) — only someone who had no grasp of what writing involves could expect the rest of us to believe Steve “wasn’t lucid.”
Desperate?
Clearly.
Struggling?
Every waking second.
On painkillers and heavily self-medicated?
God, I hope so — he’d been pissing blood for over a year and was in constant, mounting pain.
He barely survived traumatic surgery in April.
Per his own accounts, by the end of April, he knew he had four months of life left if he did not have his bladder removed.
I hope and pray he was on painkillers. Whatever painkillers he had access to.
Drug addict?
Do you think for a nanosecond the doctors and hospitals would have continued working with Steve — performing surgery on him in April, proposing and planning the surgery necessary to removing his cancerous bladder — if the blood work essential to every single stage of his treatment indicated drug abuse?
They’d have bounced his sorry ass out of the clinics, the hospitals, the emergency rooms.
Come on. Hooked on prescription meds — sure, no problem. I hope to Christ they were megadosing him on pain meds.
But the meager medical care Steve was getting from November on would have been denied — Hero Initiative wouldn’t have extended the ongoing care they did — if Steve’s bloodwork had indicated drug abuse.
Frightened?
What sane person wouldn’t be? Steve had plenty to fear, and that fear was quite and completely rational: he was dying of cancer, aside from every other shitstorm he was weathering.
Given what we now know, he was right to be frightened. Look how this all ended.
Lucid?
Here’s Hero Initiative’s interview with Steve on the mid-March 2010 weekend of the Orlando, FL MegaCon — approximately eight weeks before his death.
This is tough for me to watch. Steve is very sick, a shadow of his former self, but he is as articulate as ever.
In the context of what is already being claimed about Steve, you tell me if he comes across as a drug-addict, a wastral, or a lucid man…
Excellent post and I’m glad that video was shot. It illustrates the points you made.
This is an excellent blog, Stephen. Clear, honest, and to the point. I hope many people who knew and cared about Steve, or even those who have just a passing interest in the circumstances of Steve’s final year(s), will read this and learn something from it.
My condolences to you, SB, and his family and friends and fans.
The video of Steve talking about his life and how it was improving, is the saddest part of this story that I’ve seen so far. Straight from the mans heart.
People make a lot of assumptions, often based on denial.
One of these days I’ll dredge up enough fortitude so I can write about the last few months of my friend Jim Mooney’s life. There are eerie and disturbing parallels. That’s one reason–as well as a familiarity with the under-the-rock kind of life people in Florida often find themselves forced to endure–I find Steve Perry’s tragedy so haunting.
Thank you for writing this. I can’t bear to read those newspaper articles after having read Mr. Perry’s numerous emails about his work, his life, his son. His emails were full of the pain, the horror, the terror of what he was going through, but throughout it all, those emails shone bright with his love for Leo, his soul-deep gratitude towards his friends, his amazement at how many strangers had come together to help him out, one dollar at a time, one prayer (even from an agnostic like me) at a time.
I hope justice is serverd. I hope Leo will be alright. My deepest condolences to Mr. Perry’s friends and family.
I am so sorry for your loss – you’re a true friend. Please keep us posted should there be any kind of fund raising to help Leo and/or to raise money for The Hero Initiative.
What everybody above has been saying, times two. Thanks for keeping us updated, Steve.
Best wishes to you and yours.
Very sad…I’m glad Steve had friends like you, though, Steve B. Thanks for keeping us informed…
Hero Initiative would not have given Stephen and Leo anything if Jim McLauchlin’s shit-detector had been ringing bells. I am happy that Hero gave to Stephen and Leo; I only wish it had been more. I will never believe the Davis’ accounting of Mr. Perry. We know he was human with human foibles. That does not discount, for me, that this man had a spirit, despite all of his hardships, he had his heart with him, and that was always his son, that is the feeling I always got from him. That is how I will remember this man, Mr. Stephen J. Perry: in spite of the obstacles strewn upon his path, through the filter of a dedicated father’s eyes.
See ‘IB’ comment on the thread of three days ago — http://srbissette.com/?p=9093#comments — unfortunately, Steve’s dedication and love for Leo was not characteristic of how he handled himself in earlier relations. In fact, his considerable regrets about what he himself called his failure as a father with his older sons prompted the change in himself that made Leo the absolute center of his life over the past few years.
This was a good thing — but only intensifies the tragedy.
For the record, when I met Steve back in March, I found him lucid, easy to talk to, and nothing about him indicated that he was into alcohol or drugs. Smoked like a chimney, nothing else. He came across as everything Steve B. has written in his blog, a desperate person struggling to get by with all life had thrown at him (as well as the consequences of his own choices). I only wish I could have done more to help him.
I’ve got that final piece of Perry prose, as SRB mentions. It’s not something that was dashed off or unlucid – in fact, it’s significantly longer than either of us expected it to be, but it’s clean and tight and imaginative, a good solid bit of writing. Over the course of about 10,000 words, I think I noticed about 3 typos in there. Anyone who tells you that this was not the work of a lucid man has not read the story (unsurprising; only a few people have).
I wanted to express my condolences to you and all friends and family of Steven. I and millions of other children had our fantasy landscape forever changed by his work on Thundercats. As someone who recently donated to the Hero Initiative, I am proud that my offering helped to give some measure of ease and dignity to Steve’s final days. Please donate to the hero initiative.
I’ve also read the Salimba story that Nat Gertler refers to above as well as the script for Steve Perry’s last comic story and both are sharp, solid writing efforts. You can’t write that way and not be lucid. There were indeed times when Steve’s emails were full of misspellings but those were times when he was either in great pain or, due to his circumstances, was only able to email you on library computers which had a 15 minute time limit per patron. If you’re trying to write something lengthy and have only a limited time to do it in you going to write 1st draft because there’s simply no time for corrections or text proofing. And even in those moments his information was lucid, just not copy perfect.
Mr. Bissette is also quite correct in terms of his operations. If he’d been on illegal drugs or his blood work showed too high a concentration of prescribed medicine, he would NEVER have been undergone an operation by any credible doctor or hospital.
I received the Salimba story (Excellent, BTW) from Steve a few months ago. He was a truly a gifted storyteller –and definitely lucid as evident in the story and e-mails he sent to me. He was very talented, had a kind heart and, clearly, loved his son, Leo, more than anything in this world. My thoughts and prayers go out to Leo and Steve’s friends and family. He will be missed.
I first met Steve at Megacon and although he was in obvious pain from the cancer, we had a wonderful conversation and exchanged phone numbers and email addresses. I have kept all his letters to me and most of them would break your heart. I believe from the many things he said that there is much more to his untimely death then his two house guests whom he has mentioned. His son Leo, I believe is the main reason for what has happened. Such a shame. Leo is such a beautiful child and was happy to be with his father as can be easily seen in the picture Steve gave me of the two of them. Justice must rule out.
‘Ahdam,’ the police have DEFINITELY ruled out anyone involved in the custody of Leo as suspects, so perish those thoughts and concerns. You weren’t alone in those fears, but at this point in time, such fears are worse than counterproductive — they can only do further harm.
For those concerned, we’ll have to find a way to help Leo via a trust fund or something similar, and that can hopefully happen once much of this initial shockwave passes.