Found Dead At Home, Kate Spade’s Suicide Note to Daughter Is Heartbreaking
On Tuesday, Kate Spade, the designer who built a billion-dollar brand of luxury handbags and accessories, was found dead in her Park Avenue apartment in Manhattan. She was 55.
New York Police Department officials said that police received a call around 10:30 a.m. and that officers found Spade unconscious and unresponsive in the bedroom of her Park Avenue apartment. She was pronounced dead at the scene.
The celebrity designer had reportedly fallen into a deep depression over the breakdown of her 24-year marriage before taking her own life.
Her death is being investigated as an apparent suicide after she was reportedly found hanged by her scarf at her Park Avenue home. Police sources claim a note, addressed to her daughter Frances Beatrix, 13, was found beside her body.
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The note allegedly said: ”Bea – I have always loved you. This is not your fault. Ask daddy!”
US media reports claim Spade and husband, Andy had split in the months. Kate Spade fell into a deep depression days before she committed suicide because her husband wanted a divorce.
However, police say Andy was at the flat when the designer took her own life, while their daughter was reportedly at school. NYPD Chief of Detectives Dermot Shea told reporters that the note supports the theory that the cause of death was suicide.
”At this point, there was a note left. The contents of that note, as well as the physical state of the apartment and the comments of the witness, lend to the credibility that it is an apparent suicide,” he said.
TMZ reports that the couple were living separate lives, and that Andy had moved into a separate apartment after 24 years of marriage.
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Andy was seen with the couple’s daughter on Tuesday at the girl’s school, with a source telling DailyMail that he arrived with a police officer to get his daughter and broke the sad news.
Kate’s suicide was ‘not unexpected’ according to her family who say she struggled for years with bipolar disorder – but was too scared to seek help in case it hurt her brand.
Her older sister, Reta Saffo said Kate struggled to cope with her celebrity status, which only made her suspected bipolar disorder worse.
”My little sister Katy was a precious, precious little person,” Saffo told DailyMail.com.
”Genuine in almost every way. Just dear – but she was surrounded by YES people, for far too long, therefore she did not receive the proper care for what I believed to be (and tried numerous times to get her help for) bipolar disorder… stemming from her immense celebrity.”
Saffo said her sister never anticipated how successful her brand would become – and how she, with it, would become a household name: ”She never expected it – nor was she properly prepared for it.”
Saffo told The Kansas City Star she’d noticed worrying signs of mental illness even when Kate was young – but the pressure of running her own brand meant her sister began to crack.
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”She was always a very excitable little girl,” she said adding that ”this was not unexpected by me”.
”I felt all the stress/pressure of her brand (KS) may have flipped the switch where she eventually became full-on manic depressive…”
The heartbroken sister said Kate would self-medicate her suspected bipolar disorder with alcohol, because she was too scared to seek professional help in case it damaged the brand.
”Unfortunately, untreated, it finally took its toll on her. A very tragic and sad ending to the life of a very colorful and delightful being.”
Saffo said she was aware of her sister’s battle with mental illness, but it wasn’t until comedian Robin Williams killed himself in August 2014, that Saffo began to realize Kate’s obsession with suicide and her unraveling mental health.
She described how they were together at a hotel in Santa Fe when news broke of his death. And while she says they were both shocked and saddened, Kate seemed unable to tear herself away from the footage.
”She kept watching it and watching it over and over. I think the plan was already in motion even as far back as then.”
Increasingly concerned about her mental state, Saffo says that she and Andy repeatedly urged her to go for treatment, including to the same treatment program where Catherine Zeta-Jones went for her successful bipolar treatment.
But she’d always ‘chickened out’ at the last moment.
”We’d get sooo close to packing her bags, but — in the end, the ‘image’ of her brand (happy-go-lucky Kate Spade) was more important for her to keep up. She was definitely worried about what people would say if they found out.”
In the end, she said, Kate’s death was heartbreaking but ‘not unexpected’.
”Sometimes you simply cannot SAVE people from themselves!” said Saffo. ”One of the last things she said to me was, ‘Reta, I know you hate funerals and don’t attend them, but for me would you PLEASE come to MINE, at least. Please!’ I know she perhaps had a plan, but she insisted she did not.”
Kate shot to fame in the mid-90s thanks to her eponymous line of handbags. Andy and Kate Spade bought the nine-room apartment in which she died in 1999 for $2.675 million, and also owned a vineyard in Napa Valley.
The couple launched their design line back in 1993, starting at first with just handbags before expanding to clothes and other accessories.
Three years in the couple was able to open their first store, and for the next decade continue to grow the company.
Photo credit: Dailymail/Getty Images
Hmmmmmm. Suicide is never a way out of our troubles.