Tuesday, March 8, 2011

So Long, Mel Levine, It's Been a Blast

ABC News in Raleigh-Durham NC today released Mel Levine’s suicide note.

Mel Levine was a “celebrity doctor;” a pediatrician who practiced at “Boston Children’s Hospital” from 1966 to 1985. william hamilton ayres practiced there from 1959 to 1963. Levine wrote books and lectured about learning disabilities, and went on Oprah. He was also accused by many men of molesting them when they were young boys. There are detailed accounts by his accusers in this New York Times article: Pediatrician in Abuse Case Killed Himself. I would urge you to go read the article if you’re sitting on the fence on this case.

His suicide note is a rather overwrought, dramatic presentation, meant mostly to further wound his victims, but in the end, he fails miserably.


The first page of his note is a “love” note to his wife apologizing to her (and their menagerie) , but noting that at least he’s left her with memories that she can “savor.” A touching handwritten note – well, at least the font that he used to type it was a handwriting font. He does appear to have signed it.

The second page is titled “Chapter 11 – The End”
On this page, he says that he was on his way to being a “comeback kid” but that his hopes were dashed when his lawyer told him that there was going to be another big lawsuit with 30 more cases. He talks about leaving quite a burden for “Bambi” his wife, and then says goodbye to all of the birds donkeys, dogs, cats, etc…

He says he’s going to shoot himself  “Today” --- LOSING!
That was on the 11th of February. He broke that promise.

Then on the 14th, he claims to be “Alive if not well,” then he dramatically recounts for us how he recalled his “72 hour suicide rule” Dangit… *smacks forehead*  “I can’t blow my brains out today… I have a RULE about that!”

The REAL reason for the delay, we find out, is that he wanted to find out the timing of the press conference in which the new cases are to be announced. He “decided it might be especially apt to end [his] life just before that grandstand event.

Page 3:
His lawyer Ted didn’t know what the timing was, and so it appears that Ted bought the world 2 more days with Mel.

Levine talks about getting the feeling that even his lawyer didn’t believe him, and that there is some indication that Levine could end up in jail.

He talks about wanting a more discrete handling of his case, being assassinated by the press, press conferences are bizarre and abusive, and that it could lead to more “low on funds” people coming forward as victims.

He talks about Salem, Massachussetts, and society making little effort to protect the accused. He’s an innocent victim of “copy cat phenonmenon.” Also he had fun with Bambi over the weekend.


He hopes that his suicide will not “be read as an admission of guilt."

Page 4 (Last Page):
On the 17th, he talks about the schedule for the big press conference, and then pencils-in blowing his brains out for around 9:30am or so. He hadn’t slept well, worrying that the “shotgun that [he] bought a couple of years ago (JUST IN CASE) might not work properly”

He says: “dying this way is preferable to perishing in an ICU or shriveling away with metastatic cancer.” Where does the incarceration that he talked about on the 11th enter into his little vision of the future?

OK, Some thoughts:


I don’t have personal knowledge about the Levine case. It is my understanding that Levine had many accusers, and that they told their stories, and that they are people who don’t know each other, and who told very similar stories. My benefit of the doubt goes to the victims in this case, not to Levine.

My background is this: I’ve told the details of my story about william ayres to the police, before the first criminal trial of william ayres. I had told no one else any specific details, and never heard details from anyone else, and details in the press were very general and sometimes incorrect. I spoke about details that they seemed to believe. When the trial happened I heard about testimony from other victims. Their details were sickeningly the same as my details. Some of them, things that I hadn’t mentioned to the police, but that I unfortunately also knew from experience. I KNOW that ayres did what he is accused of, and I KNOW that he did it to many others. THIS parallel is the basis for my assumption that Levine’s victims are telling the truth.

Maybe YOU don’t like that I assume Levine’s guilt rather than his innocence, but:

1) You are wrong that you are required to “assume innocence.”
2) I don’t care that you don’t agree with my opinion.
3) You are stupid if you always assume innocence.
When your stupid assumption bites you in the ass, I’ll promise to be a sympathetic ear, even though YOU weren't. Why aren’t YOU here for US, right now? (this is a moral question -- you're supposed to pause and search your soul now -- note that I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt; assuming that you HAVE a soul.)

In Levine’s note, he talks about the media assassinating him; he mentions Salem. These are the VERY things that william ayres’ supporters bleat about whenever they have the opportunity. It is the ONLY defense they have – that we’re all SUPPOSED to believe that THEY are the innocent party. Even ayres’ attorney bleated about it at trial: He mentioned the McMartin case, the Salem witch trials, etc, etc…

Saaaa-leeeem, Saaaaa-leeeeem, Maaaaa Saaaaa Chuuuuuu Seeeeeets. Miiiiiiick Maaaaaaaarrr Tiiiiiiin. Stupid, stupid sheep.

These are ALWAYS the fall-back arguments -- make people feel guilty about actually believing that the victims are telling the truth.

On Levine’s idea that “it might be especially apt to end [his] life just before that grandstand event”:

These guys are CONTROL freaks, and they have no soul. Bullies, rapists, child molesters: they are psychic vampires – they have no soul of their own, and they crush the souls of innocent people to bring people down to their level so that they can feel human. william hamilton ayres, upon settling for a moderately high six figure settlement to one of his victims tried to further insert himself into his victim’s life: he wanted control of the money! He wanted to be able to force his victim to use the money in the ways that he chose. You can read all about it in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Even in his suicide to escape his fear that he’d be imprisoned, Levine hoped to control his victims by convincing them that he was the injured party: he exclaims that his suicide was not to “be read as an admission of guilt.”


Victims, take heart!

The last words ever typed by Levine are these:

…but then “nothing gold can stay.”


“Nothing Gold Can Stay” by Robert Frost:

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.


This poem is a metaphor about Man, and his fall from paradise, into sin and depravity, lured there by Satan himself. 


These creeps ALWAYS admit to their sick predilections. They think they're being sly about it, and we're all too stupid to get it. 



[Addendum, from Deep Sounding]:
Mel Levine's escapades and suicide have been discussed on this blog before:

Victoria Balfour's post on Levine's suicide: 

Trapellar's post:

Deep Sounding's post:

There are more. Just type "Levine" in the "Search this Blog" google box.

1 comment:

  1. Wow. Great catch on the Robert Frost poem.

    I wanted to add this point: Levine said he was making "a comeback."

    Actually, it was the opposite.

    -His booking agency, Jack Hirose Associates dropped him like a hot potato three years ago after the sex scandals surfaced.

    -His seminars in the US had all but dried out. The only speaking gigs he could get were in far-flung places in Europe, where word of the scandal had not yet arrived. He did manage to sneak in an appearance In the fall of 2009, at an elementary school in Cooperstown, New York. When people complained, the school board said it had no idea of the sex abuse allegations and said they wouldn't have invited Levine had they known.

    - The board of the All Kinds of Minds foundation kicked Levine out in 2008. A member of the board took great pains to tell me two years ago that they no longer had ANYTHING to do with Levine.

    -Levine was forced to surrender his medical license in 2009 after a dozen victims in North Carolina went to the Medical Board. Levine agreed to never practice medicine anywhere in the world.

    -In the summer of 2010, Levine was contacted by the North Carolina Medical Board and asked to remove false statements from his new website, "Bringing Up Minds",concerning seminars he had never given and that he was advertising himself as a practicing doctor.

    Several months ago, Levine removed both his personal website www.drmellevine.com and the "Bringing up Minds" website.

    His world was closing in on him. His lawyer told him that criminal charges were most likely pending.

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