Tom Cruise Totally Killed a Guy*

David Hans Schmidt, the controversial publicist who agreed to plead guilty to attempting to extort over $1 million from Tom Cruise for stolen photographs taken at Cruise's wedding to Katie Holmes that were allegedly compromising, was found dead in his Phoenix home on Friday of an apparent suicide.

A loss of any life (except for maybe Hitler's or anyone's in that vein) is tragic, especially in the case of an apparent suicide. One could argue that Schmidt's death would have been made even more unseemly, however, had the circumstances surrounding it in any way raised the slightest bit of suspicion that Tom Cruise could have somehow been involved...which he apparently clearly was not, because the cause of Schmidt's death was apparently suicide.

And the fact that Schmidt never ended up dead after he tried to auction off Paris Hilton's diaries, sell both a Dustin Diamond and a Tonya Harding sex tape or claimed to possess topless photos of rescued U.S. Army POW Pfc. Jessica Lynch should in no way cast any bit of doubt whatsoever on that apparent finding.


*In a movie I saw once where both Tom Cruise and the guy he appeared to kill were actually portraying characters other than themselves and nobody really died.