Liberace — the coroner, the cover-up, and the truth.

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The short version: Wladziu Valentino Liberace — "Mr. Showmanship" — was one of the highest-paid entertainers in the world for four decades. He denied he was gay his entire public life, winning libel judgments against British newspapers that suggested otherwise. He was privately diagnosed HIV-positive in August 1985 and told almost no one.1 He performed his last concert at Radio City Music Hall on November 2, 1986. He died at his Palm Springs home, The Cloisters, on the morning of February 4, 1987, at age 67.2

His physician wrote "cardiac failure due to subacute encephalopathy." His press agent said anemia from a watermelon diet. His publicist said pernicious anemia, emphysema, and heart disease. His body was already embalmed at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Los Angeles when the Riverside County coroner, Raymond Carrillo, refused to certify the death certificate over the phone and ordered the body returned. He was the coroner who took on Hollywood — and won.3 On February 10, 1987, Carrillo held a press conference on the county administrative building's front steps and told the world that Liberace had died of cytomegalovirus pneumonia caused by AIDS.4

Liberace's death came sixteen months after Rock Hudson's. See our Rock Hudson page. Together, the two deaths ended any pretense that AIDS was only happening to strangers.

Wladziu Valentino Liberace — a Wisconsin son, "Mr. Showmanship"

Born in West Allis, Wisconsin, to a Polish mother and an Italian immigrant father, Liberace played piano by ear at age 4 and made his Las Vegas debut at 25. Over the next four decades he became the highest-paid entertainer in the world at his 1980s peak — earning $300,000 a week — through a combination of virtuoso keyboard technique, an unmatched costume budget, and the kind of parasocial devotion from his overwhelmingly female middle-American fanbase that we do not know how to describe anymore.5

He never publicly acknowledged that he was gay. In 1959, when the London Daily Mirror published a column by "Cassandra" (William Connor) that all but stated Liberace was homosexual, he sued the paper in the U.K. High Court and won damages. He would build the rest of his life around that closet.2

The cover-up — watermelon diets and false death certificates

In the last weeks of Liberace's life, his people rehearsed and refined a set of false medical explanations for his obvious decline. The Las Vegas Sun reported in late January 1987 that he had AIDS. Liberace's attorney demanded a retraction. His long-time business manager, Seymour Heller, told reporters that Liberace was suffering from anemia brought on by a watermelon diet. His New York publicist said pernicious anemia, emphysema, and heart disease. When Liberace died on February 4, his Palm Springs physician, Dr. Ronald Daniels of Whittier, wrote the cause of death as "cardiac failure brought on by subacute encephalopathy" — a general term for degenerative brain disease.6

Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Los Angeles received Liberace's body from Palm Springs on the morning of his death, embalmed it, and prepared his cathedral-scaled tomb. But California law requires a coroner to review any death certificate in which the physician was not in attendance, or in which the death may involve a communicable disease. Riverside County procedure required Forest Lawn to phone Carrillo's office for certification. Someone did. Someone answered. And on the other end of the phone was a coroner who had followed the Las Vegas Sun reporting, knew that "cardiac failure from encephalopathy" was medically incoherent (heart failure is not caused by degenerative brain disease), and refused to sign the certificate.3

Ray Carrillo — the coroner who took on Hollywood

Raymond Carrillo was a lifelong Riverside County resident, elected coroner and a former Marine. On the morning of February 6, 1987, he ordered Liberace's already-embalmed body returned from Forest Lawn to Riverside County for autopsy. Forest Lawn complied. The autopsy began the night of February 6 and ran through the weekend. Blood tests at Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage, subpoenaed by Carrillo's office, showed Liberace had tested HIV-positive before his death. Tissue analysis confirmed cytomegalovirus pneumonia as the immediate cause of death.7

Carrillo asked California state authorities to investigate whether Dr. Daniels or Forest Lawn had violated state or federal laws on the reporting of communicable diseases.4 The state took no action against Daniels' medical license. Forest Lawn was not sanctioned. But Carrillo had done what he set out to do — he had told the country the truth about how Liberace died. As Carrillo's own grandnephew later wrote, "the world found out that Liberace's death was indeed caused by complications resulting from the AIDS virus."8

Scott Thorson — the 1982 palimony suit and reconciliation

Scott Thorson moved into Liberace's Beverly Hills penthouse in 1977 as a 17-year-old (Liberace was 58) — officially as chauffeur, animal trainer, and "assistant." They lived together for five years. In April 1982, Liberace ordered Thorson evicted; Liberace's personal aides sprayed Mace at him during the eviction. Thorson filed a $113 million lawsuit — the first same-sex palimony suit in American legal history. Liberace continued to publicly deny the relationship. The case was settled out of court in December 1986 for $95,000, three cars, and three dogs. Thorson visited Liberace in Palm Springs a few weeks before his death, at Liberace's own request. They reconciled.9

The Thorson relationship is the subject of Steven Soderbergh's 2013 HBO film Behind the Candelabra, with Michael Douglas as Liberace and Matt Damon as Thorson. It won eleven Primetime Emmy Awards.10

Why the cover-up mattered

Liberace's story also became one of the first widely-discussed examples of how homophobia and celebrity culture combined to prevent an out life — and to force a manufactured death. He was, by every reliable biographical account, a proud and joyful gay man in private. He was also, at every moment his public life could reach him, a man in a cage of his own construction.

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