The Mysterious Death of Eugene “Guy” Izzi

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‘Baffling Last Chapter to Mystery Writer’s Life,’ said the LA Times. ‘Novelist’s public death creates Chicago Mystery,’ wrote the New York Times in December 1996, and Patrick Rogers for People Magazine said, ‘Eugene Izzi has created another riddle in his own death. No matter who was responsible, it was an exit scripted with a grim tabloid flourish. On Saturday morning December 7th, a man in downtown Chicago looked up to see the body of crime novelist Eugene “Guy” Izzi dangling from a noose hung out his office window 14 floors above Michigan Avenue. Within minutes, police arrived at the office to find a scene littered with tantalizing clues.’ The 6-foot-tall burly writer of hard-boiled cops and gangster stories, a native of the tough city streets of Chicago, was now dead, hanging by the neck outside his office window. A noose had been tied four times around his neck and the other end of the rope tied to a desk leg inside the office. He was wearing a bullet-proof vest, brass knuckles, and had a can of mace-like spray on his person. His pockets were stuffed with $481 in cash. On the floor of his office lay a loaded but unfired .38 caliber pistol. In his office there were a series of handwritten notes, and some computer discs. It looked like suicide, or murder dressed up as suicide…