Brad Delp Suicide: New Details Emerge Regarding Boston Singer’s Final Days

After Brad Delp, singer for the '70s rock band Boston, committed suicide on March 9, 2007, the Boston Herald focused its coverage on the singer's strained relationship with guitarist and musical mastermind Tom Scholz. The implication, Scholz felt, was that he was to blame for the incident, and he filed a defamation lawsuit that has been pending for two years.

Now, the Boston Globe reports, new information has come to light regarding Delp's final days. Based on court testimony, it seems Delp's decision to take his own life might have stemmed more from his embarrassment over planting a hidden camera in the bedroom of his roommate -- and fiancee's sister -- than from his troubles with Scholz and the other members of Boston.

In court papers obtained by the Globe, Todd Winmill -- the boyfriend of Meg Sullivan, the woman whose room Delp placed under surveillance -- recalls Delp's demeanor after his camera had been found.

"He essentially apologized for about a half-hour," said Winmill. "And then I told him he had to tell Pamela. He didn't like the thought of having to do that."

As it turns out, Pamela Sullivan, his bride-to-be, had an affair the previous summer -- an event that deeply affected Delp. In an email to Meg, he compared Pamela's deception to his own, though he continued to apologize for the stunt.

"I want to try and make you understand that I consider myself a decent person who made a dreadful error in judgment," Delp wrote to Meg, the Globe reports. "I acted out of some impulse that is still not completely fathomable to me."

The Boston Herald has stood behind its coverage, calling it "both accurate and excellent." The paper had reported that Delp felt trapped between Scholz and the other members of Boston, and that his role as middleman contributed to his deteriorating mental state. Meg Sullivan's testimony seems to lend credence to this idea.

"I believe that Tom Scholz and Boston caused the depression which caused Brad to put a camera in my bedroom," Meg Sullivan said, according to the Globe.

As is often the case, the truth may be more complicated. Before killing himself by asphyxiating on carbon monoxide from the two charcoal grills he'd lit in his sealed bathroom, Delp left four suicide notes. In the one he penned for Meg and Tom, he copped to a history of mental illness.

"I have had bouts of depression and thoughts of suicide since I was a teenager," he wrote.