FRYEBURG, Maine - Bryan Smith, the man who had hit and injured bestselling author Stephen King in June of last year, was found dead in his cabin Friday. According the medical examiner's preliminary findings, the cause of the 43 year-old Smith's death was listed as rabies from a dog bite, the plague known as Captain Tripps, a baseball bat to the head, an axe in the chest, severe hypothermia, traumatic weight loss, and severe loss of blood due to a vampire bite.
Maine authorities were perplexed by the plethora of the causes of death but the Fryeburg medical examiner had said, "While Mr. Smith's demise was strange, I have no choice but to rule it as death by highly suspicious natural causes. We'll know more after the autopsy but there's not much left to examine, since he was partially ingested by what looks like a huge carnivorous houseplant. Of course, having to extricate him from under the wheels of his van didn't help matters any." The van, the same one used to strike King June of last year, was running without the ignition key.
Although foul play has been ruled out, Fryeburg police were perplexed by a clown's nose left at the scene of death.
King had expressed profound personal sorrow over Smith's death through a statement issued by his press secretary, Julie Eugley. "I mean, I'm fucking sorry that the guy's dead but, Jesus, 500,000 people in Maine to hit and he gets me? Sounds like he had a death wish."
To friends and fans of King, this turn of events is like a recurring nightmare. In July of 1988, three boys who had mercilessly teased King throughout his school days were found to have been "hobbled", a procedure used by slave owners to keep their slaves from running away. The ankles of all three men, then 41, were shattered by what appeared to have been a sledgehammer.
Maine state police, investigating the trio of assaults, had issued a composite sketch of a woman seen near the victims' homes the evening before, but the woman in question was neither identified nor found.
