In case you missed it, the Boston Globe uncorked a high, hard one at the Boston Herald on Sunday.
The Globe’s Geoff Edgers reported on court documents that strongly suggest the 2007 suicide of Brad Delp, lead singer of the band Boston, was tied to Delp’s having been caught placing a hidden camera in his fiancée’s sister’s bedroom. The documents portray Delp, who had long suffered from depression, as being distraught over the incident. He killed himself a little more than a week later.
The Herald is fighting a libel suit brought by Boston founder and leader Tom Scholz over a story in the paper’s Inside Track gossip column, which reported that Delp’s ex-wife, Micki Delp, had blamed the singer’s suicide on his poisonous relationship with Scholz.
Superior Court Judge John Cratsley dismissed Scholz’s suit against Micki Delp last August, ruling that though Micki Delp had spoken about her late husband’s “dysfunctional professional life,” it was the Herald that “create[d] the connection to Scholz” and thus his suicide.
Last Wednesday the Herald’s Joe Dwinell wrote about court documents in which friends of Delp portrayed Scholz as an abusive tyrant who belittled the other band members — behavior that reportedly sent the sensitive Delp into a deep depression. As Edgers noted in his Globe story, the Herald account makes no recognizable mention of the hidden camera.
Edgers quoted from a statement released by Herald spokeswoman Gwen Gage in which she hailed her paper’s “accurate and excellent” coverage of the libel suit and criticized the Globe for letting “journalistic rivalry getting the better of editorial judgment.”
Libel suits contain many twists and turns, and the court papers Edgers cited do not necessarily contradict the theory that Scholz’s allegedly abusive behavior led Delp to kill himself.
For instance, Edgers noted that the fiancée’s sister, Meg Sullivan, at one point said, “I believe that Tom Scholz and Boston caused the depression which caused Brad to put a camera in my bedroom.”
Photo (cc) by Carl Lender and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.
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http://www.boston.com/ae/music/articles/2012/05/27/boston_singer_brad_delps_final_days_marked_by_crisis_over_hidden_camera/
The Boston Globe story published today discloses the truth behind the last days of Brad Delp’s life. This demonstrates that Brad was suffering from depression and suicidal thoughts since he was a teenager, long before he ever met Tom Scholz or became involved with BOSTON. It also shows that disturbing events unrelated to Tom Scholz and BOSTON combined with Brad’s own personal issues finally overwhelmed him. For more than a year the Boston Herald has had this information in Brad’s own words, from his e-mails and notes about the upsetting events in the last days preceding his suicide. The fact that the Herald has never reported this information to its readers is outrageous, especially when the Herald continues to write stories denigrating Tom in this matter. This information shows that the Herald got the story completely wrong. The Herald owes Tom Scholz an apology. And then some.”
Steve Simon, business affairs representative and close friend of Tom Scholz.