From: George W. Hunt, January 25, 2012, Longmont Colorado
Who caused the death of Ilya Zhitomirskiy, the founder of the “Diaspora” social site? The silence of the San Francisco Coroner’s Office suggests to me that foul play may have been the cause of his sudden death at 22 years of age. The facts of his alleged “suicide” are being suppressed for some reason. It has been 48 days since his death. The San Francisco Coroner’s Office announced on November 12, 2011, that the autopsy results would be ready in about 21 days (“three weeks”). I called the San Francisco Coroner on January 22, 2012 for the autopsy results and the examiner’s assistant replied that no report has yet been released. Today is the 48th day since his death and I feel that something may be very wrong within the Coroner’s jurisdiction. I feel that someone is retarding the autopsy report as a regular autopsy would never take so long to complete.
I phoned the San Francisco Coroner’s office on January 12, 2012, the 45th day after Ilya’s death. The examiner’s assistant confirmed that the medical report had not yet been announced. My question is: Are Ilya’s autopsy results being delayed while the public forgets this very sad event? Another question: Could Diaspora’s competitors affecting the autopsy results and the delays? Bribes and threats can change autopsy results if the price is high eniough and the threat is frightening enough, so my prayer is that the Coroner and staff involved in Ilya’s autopsy not submit to coercion and threats if such are being applied.
At the time of Ilya’s death he was not depressed according to friends who knew him well—(though their remarks were somehow not mentioned much in the media). The papers and the Internet quickly called Ilya’s death an alleged suicide. Perhaps the journalists should have called his death an alleged murder. Ilya was taking on some big social media sites such as Google, Facebook and others. His invention offered valid personal privacy options that competing social sites recognized as a very large threat to their commercial power and greed..
Ilya had some minor cash flow problems which were aggravated by PayPal’s illegal delaying the funds pouring into Dispora—those “Go for it Ilya!” contributions for his social site project. Diaspora and Ilya were prepared to outclass the major social sites such as Google and Facebook . Somebody in the social site business may have been jealous and fearful that Ilya was on the road to success. May Ilya rest in peace.
Sincerely, George W. Hunt georgehunt@thebigbadbank.com
Ilya did in fact have a very serious but unfortunately very quiet battle with depression. although I admit I was not physically around him in the time before his death, I spoke to him on the phone periodically and he admitted to troubling thoughts about suicide. regardless, I was hoping they would have released the information by now as well, although either outcome would be equally sad.
amr – maybe you care to comment now. It’s May and the results of the autopsy have not been released. My ex-father in law just died while at my place a few weeks ago and the autopsy took 3 days. Something doesn’t sound right here. I don’t know Ilya personally. Efforts like Diaspora threaten all central organizations – corporations, governments, etc. So there easily *could* have been some type of foul play here and because of this mere possibility, it deserves investigation and follow up. Don’t you agree?
Thank you, AMR, for your comments about Ilya’s depresssion. Please note an additional blog entry which I recently published about the same subject. As you reminded me though, either way the case goes it will still be very sad. Sincerely, George Hunt
To re-use a phrase I already heard somewhere else that stated “If you want to know who really rules, just look at who you can’t critisize.”, I would say for him “If you want to guess who had the best interests in his murder, just take a look at who will acquire his website in a couple of months.”