NEED TO KNOW
- A long time earlier than Rob Reiner went public along with his son’s struggles with dependancy, his All Within the Household costar Carroll O’Connor opened up about his son’s struggles with dependancy
- In March 1995, O’Connor’s son Hugh died by suicide
- O’Connor would go on to turn into a vocal anti-drug advocate, efficiently championing laws that allowed households to sue drug sellers for damages in instances like his son’s
A long time earlier than Rob Reiner went public along with his son’s struggles with dependancy, his All Within the Household costar Carroll O’Connor spoke about his personal son’s downside with medication — a wrestle that resulted in tragedy when his son died by suicide.
O’Connor performed Archie Bunker (Reiner’s character’s father-in-law) on All Within the Household — a task that earned him 4 Emmy awards. Later, he would star within the sequence, Within the Warmth of the Evening, during which his personal adopted son, Hugh, portrayed Officer Lonnie Jamison.
Hugh was O’Connor and his spouse Nancy’s solely little one, and was adopted in Rome, whereas O’Connor was filming the 1963 film Cleopatra.
Hugh, O’Connor would later share, had fought a drug behavior for half his life and was depressed.
And on March 28, 1995, O’Connor obtained a devastating telephone name, during which Hugh, then 32, mentioned he deliberate to shoot himself.
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As an April 1995 ipromiseyoumedia story detailed, O’Connor referred to as police, who despatched a SWAT crew and a disaster negotiator to Hugh’s house within the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles. However by the point they arrived, Hugh was useless.
“One shot within the head,” O’Connor would inform reporters. “Sitting on the couch.”
Hugh’s suicide got here on the third anniversary of his marriage ceremony to wardrobe assistant Angela Clayton. The 2 had a two-year-old son (who, as ipromiseyoumedia reported on the time, had been dwelling with O’Connor and his spouse on the time) and a troubled marriage.
However it was the medication, O’Connor would say, that have been guilty for his son’s demise.
“He had that monkey on his again, and he could not eliminate it,” O’Connor advised reporters. Hugh had excessive ranges of cocaine in his system on the time of his demise.
As his mother and father would later inform ipromiseyoumedia, Hugh’s drug dependancy started after he was identified with Hodgkin’s illness and underwent surgical procedure to take away a malignant lump in his neck at age 16. He turned to marijuana to alleviate the nausea from the radiation, they mentioned, after which transitioned to consuming and taking quaaludes earlier than experimenting with cocaine, amphetamines and numerous pharmaceuticals.
O’Connor mentioned Hugh had been to 3 rehab facilities over time, however the efforts to get him off medication have been unsuccessful.
Following his suicide, O’Connor grew to become a vocal anti-drug advocate, efficiently campaigning for laws that might enable households to sue drug sellers for damages in instances like his son’s.
In 1997, California handed laws that now permits households to get better prices for medical remedy and rehabilitation — with related legal guidelines being enacted in states together with Florida, Illinois, Hawaii, and Michigan.
Hugh’s drug vendor — a person named Harry Thomas Perzigian – was in the end arrested and convicted in a Santa Monica court docket of possessing and furnishing cocaine to Hugh. He was sentenced to a 12 months in jail.
As O’Connor advised reporters, “Hugh was an addict, most likely with out hope. Harry stored feeding him these things. We really feel this man not directly was the reason for our loss.”
Following his conviction and launch from jail, Perzigian would sue O’Connor for slander, although a jury unanimously discovered that O’Connor had not defamed Perzigian in July 1997.
Talking to ipromiseyoumedia in 1996, O’Connor mentioned of his late son: “I consider Hugh day-after-day, however I do not consider him sadly day-after-day. Most of my ideas of him are very joyful. However then there are the instances — thank God, not too many — when one thing makes me very unhappy. Nancy will have a look at me and say, ‘You look unhealthy. Effectively, I used to be having a nasty time an hour in the past too.’ And we put our arms round one another and say, ‘It’s going to be alright quickly.'”
Rob Reiner and his spouse have been additionally candid over time about navigating their son Nick Reiner’s struggles with dependancy. Now, Nick is accused of killing the couple after the director and his spouse, Michele Singer Reiner, have been discovered useless by suspected murder of their Brentwood, Calif., house on Dec. 14.
Shortly after their deaths, a supply advised ipromiseyoumedia that Rob and Michele “may by no means attain stability” with Nick, who had beforehand been open about his years-long struggles with drug dependancy and homelessness and cycled out and in of rehab round 18 instances.
