Chester Bennington, 41, was found dead in a private residence in Palos Verdes Estates in L.A. County. His family was out of town, and his body was discovered by an employee on Thursday, shortly before 9 AM. He was the lead singer of the band Linkin Park and is survived by his wife Talinda Ann Bentley and his six children.
Los Angeles law enforcement tells TMZ that Bennington committed suicide by hanging. In a tweet by Ryan Parker of The Hollywood Reporter, however, Parker writes that “There are a few reports out there that Bennington died of hanging, but the coroner and fire department told me that is not confirmed.” An official statement on his death has yet to be released.
The singer had a history of struggling with drugs and alcohol, and admitted that he had considered taking his own life in the past. “I drank myself to the point where I couldn’t leave the house and I couldn’t function,” he told Celebrity Mania in 2009, “I wanted to kill myself. I could very easily not be the person who’s sitting here right now. I could be dead. It was a horrible, horrible existence.”
In an interview with Kerrang, Bennington also revealed that he was molested at seven-years-old: ”If I think back to when I was really young, to when I was being molested, to when all these horrible things were going on around me, I shudder.”
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Bennington was close friends with Chris Cornell of Soundgarden, who also committed suicide by hanging in May. Today, July 20th, would have been Cornell’s 53rd birthday. Bennington was the godfather of one of Cornell’s kids, and he performed at his funeral, singing an emotional rendition of “Hallelujah.”
Bennington began his career with the grunge band Grey Daze, but it wasn’t until he joined Linkin Park in 1996 that he became a household name in rock. The band went on to become one of the most successful acts of the 2000s, with the diamond-certified album Hybrid Theory (2000) and Meteora (2003), which remains the most successful release in the history of the alternative rock charts.[heavy]
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