Gabrielle Schoeneweis: Cause of Death Determined, But Is This The End?

I still have her cell phone number programmed into my cell.  Lots of Gabrielle Schoeneweis's friends probably do.  I've stared at this number ever since she died in May.  There's a reason.  A few, actually.

About a month after she died, I received an email from one of Gabrielle's relations.  The person who sent it to me was asking me to chat through a 3D game that you sign up for on the web.  I responded to the email, asking in return if this person was okay and wanted to talk.  By this time I had written a number of articles about Gabrielle, my audio interviews (Part I, Part II, Part III) with her had been downloaded hundreds of times and Jimmy Scott's High & Tight even went down for a few hours because traffic was so high.  If you Google "Gabrielle Schoeneweis," links to this site are in the top 3 or 4 listings.  I did not get a response to my reply email, nor did I really expect one.  Still, it was odd.

It did not take long for readers to start speculating on the cause of death.  In fact, the very first person to comment alleged that the late-Mrs. Schoeneweis had been a stripper and a crystal meth addict, "hardly a model mom and wife."  I allowed the comment to be posted and got a number of negative emails asking that I take it down.  Instead, I wrote THIS, which mainly focused on her parenting skills.  I wrote that somebody's past - whether true or alleged - did not preclude them from being a good parent today.  But I didn't really take on the drug abuse accusation, mainly because I started getting a few other comments (that I did not allow to be posted) corroborating the initial accusation.  

By August, I had gotten the mysterious email and I privately began to speculate that the cause of death was something drug related, even though many of Gabrielle's friends urged readers (and, indirectly, me) to focus on what a great person she had been during her short stay with us in life.  I agreed with her friends.  Whatever the cause of death, she was still a mother of four children, including a baby (who is going on 14 months old at the time of this writing).  She was still a bubbly, fun, intelligent woman who had charmed me for our full 75-minute interview.  That was the woman her friends, family, and I wanted to remember.

Why was I privately speculating the cause of death wasn't a simple accident?  The first reason was Gabrielle's husband, Scott, was fighting so hard in Arizona courts to not make public the cause of death.  The law states that cause of death outweighs privacy rights, and Scott lost that battle, as the cause was publicly disclosed on December 1.  But his battle, and subsequent messages and phone conversations I had, led me to believe there was more to this and privacy for Gabrielle's children.

Then I had the discussion.  It was with a person in Arizona, near the Scottsdale home of the Schoeneweis family.  This person had a number of area connections and had spoken with someone very close to the investigation into Gabrielle's death.  Cause of death was determined to be a drug overdose, I was told.  Specific drugs weren't mentioned. 

I sat on this information.  Honestly, what could anyone gain by my releasing it?  This isn't 60 Minutes and hurting people on purpose, which this would have accomplished, isn't in my DNA.  I made the choice and looked at my cell phone.  Her number stared back at me.  The physical cause of death was clear now.  But there was a bigger question: Why?  Why would she do this? 

You can get into how once somebody is addicted to drugs, they are always an addict.  That makes sense.  But there had to be a reason why Gabrielle turned back to drugs, even if it was this one unfortunate time.  I came to two conclusions, either she was murdered  - and there's been zero indication of foul play, or she was very unhappy. 

How could she be unhappy?  Through her husband's MLB salary, she was a multi-millionaire.  She had four children, including the baby.  Postpartum depression?  Maybe.  I believe she was depressed, and it's very possible postpartum depression was part of the reason.  But something had to trigger the depression beyond the chemicals in her brain. 

Or maybe it was someone.

More to come on this tomorrow.