McQueen Hanged Himself Just Days After Mom's Death

Alexander McQueen hanged himself in his closet the day before his mother's funeral, the coroner reported today, leaving a suicide note the coroner declined to disclose. Days before he died, McQueen had posted several messages on Twitter revealing his grief at his mother's death, the AP reports. But the photographer David LaChapelle offers another theory in Jacob Bernstein's piece in the Daily Beast on the brilliant designer's demons. “I think he was waiting for his mother to die so he could do this.”

"I think suicide was a visitor who'd come many times and he was waiting to let them in," LaChapelle notes, "because he didn't want to punish his mom while she was alive."
Two recent relationships—one is rumored to have been with British escort and porn star Aiden Shaw—had crashed and burned, Bernstein also reports, and sources say McQueen had fallen back into drugs. (More Alexander McQueen stories.)