Celebrity Mound

Gary Coleman’s death is no longer viewed as suspicious.

Detectives investigating the death of the ‘Diff’rent Strokes’ star closed the case yesterday, siding with a county coroner’s recent verdict that the actor’s death, from a brain haemorrhage following a fall in May this year, was not deliberate.

This exonerates his ex-wife Shannon Price, who was criticized for her reaction when she found her ex-husband’s body, and made a call to emergency services where she said she hadn’t attempted to administer any first aid as she “can’t stand blood”.

Gary’s parents voiced their concerns about the circumstances surrounding their son’s death following a fall at his home.

The couple’s spokesperson Victor Perillo said: “If I had the dollars, I’d hire someone to take another look at the body to see if there was any blunt force trauma to the head.

“How did he hit his head? Why was there so much blood?”

Gary’s former manager Dion Mial also admitted he had suspicions about his ex-client’s passing.

He said at the time: “I wholeheartedly believe there was foul play here. There are criminal intentions relative to Gary’s death.”

Shannon – who decided to turn off her former spouse’s life support machine, despite him previously expressing wishes to be kept alive in such a situation – was never officially named as a suspect in the investigation into Gary’s death, but she did release a statement stating she had no involvement in his passing.

The 25-year-old blonde – who had claimed to be on the verge of remarrying her former spouse at the time of his death – was written out of the actor’s will and was forced to deny rumours she was trying to sell photos of the him on his deathbed were true.

The independent attorney appointed to oversee the property and cremation of late actor Gary Coleman said Wednesday there will be no funeral services for the former child TV star.

A Utah judge on Monday named Robert Jeffs the special administrator of Coleman’s estate after a dispute between the “Diff’rent Strokes” star’s ex-wife and ex-girlfriend.

Jeffs told The Associated Press on Wednesday that Coleman’s 2005 will specifies that there should be no funeral services.

Coleman died May 28 after suffering a brain hemorrhage at his home in Santaquin, 55 miles south of Salt Lake City.

The judge ordered that Coleman’s remains be cremated no sooner than Wednesday afternoon.

“The judge hasn’t entered the order granting me authority as special administrator,” Jeffs said. “That’s just a technicality; (I) need a formalized order.”

Jeffs said even if the order were entered Wednesday, it was unlikely Coleman would be cremated the same day.

Jeffs has said Coleman’s ashes and property will be securely stored until a final determination is made on an estate executor. It’s a decision Jeffs said could take months.

Coleman said in a 1999 will that he wanted to be remembered in a wake conducted by people who had no financial ties to him and “can look each other in the eyes and say they really cared personally for Gary Coleman.” He also wanted none of the media that followed Coleman’s legal, financial, health and marriage troubles through his adult life to be allowed to attend.

“I direct my personal representative to permit no members of the press to be present at my wake or funeral,” Coleman stated.

That will named Dion Mial, one of Coleman’s friends and former managers, who on Monday withdrew his petition to be named as the special administrator of Coleman’s estate. Mial’s attorney said the 2005 will that names ex-girlfriend Anna Gray as administrator takes precedence because it is more recent.

Gray and Coleman’s ex-wife, Shannon Price, both contend they are the lawful administrators of Coleman’s estate. Price is named in a 2007 handwritten note by Coleman that names her as the sole heir.

Coleman starred for eight seasons on the sitcom “Diff’rent Strokes,” starting in 1978. The tiny 10-year-old’s “Whachu talkin’ ’bout?” became a catch phrase in the show about two African-American brothers adopted by a wealthy white man. Coleman played Arnold Jackson, the younger of the two brothers.

Gary Coleman’s ex-wife has taken TV cameras inside the Utah home where the former child star fell and cracked his head last month.

The actor drove himself to hospital after the accident because his ex, Shannon Price – who lived with Coleman, was too ill to take him. He was diagnosed with a brain hemorrhage, fell into a coma and died on May 28, 2010.

And now Price has returned to the scene of the fatal fall for the first time – and she took Entertainment Tonight TV cameras with her.

The footage, which aired on Wednesday, showed where Price found Coleman, lying in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor and the stairwell landing space from which the tragic actor had fallen.

Price told TV reporter Kevin Frazier it was “very difficult” for her to return to the home she shared with the late Diff’rent Strokes star, adding, “It’s hard for me to even look, or even want to go in.”

Coleman’s clothes are still hanging up in the closets and a train set the model railway he was working on remains half-finished in the living room.

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Gary Coleman’s estranged parents abandoned their effort to bury him in his native Illinois Friday after a Utah attorney revealed the actor named an executor in a 1999 will.

“Of course it’s disappointing. We’d be inhuman if it wasn’t, but we’re not up for a fight,” Coleman’s mother, Sue Coleman, said in an interview with The Associated Press. “We just want him finally put away to rest.”

Gary Coleman died May 28 in Utah from a brain hemorrhage at age 42.

Salt Lake City Attorney Kent Alderman said he has a will Coleman wrote that he will take to a Utah County court sometime next week. The will was written before Coleman moved to Utah and met his future wife during filming for the 2006 comedy “Church Ball.” Alderman wouldn’t reveal details of the will, including the name of the executor, but said Coleman will not be buried this weekend.

“We will submit that for probate next week and find out if this is the last will. We believe it is. Nobody’s come up with a more recent one,” Alderman said.

Frederick Jackman, an attorney for Gary Coleman’s parents, said the person named in the will is Dion Mial, a friend and former manager of the former child TV star. A message left at a listing for Mial in Las Vegas was not immediately returned Friday.

Sue Coleman and husband Willie Coleman had been seeking to take custody of their son’s body and return it to his boyhood home in Illinois once it was discovered this week that he had divorced wife Shannon Price in 2008. It was Price – who was named in an advanced health care directive – who ordered that Gary Coleman be taken off of life support.

His parents have said they learned about his hospitalization and death from media reports and they had wanted to reconcile with their son before his death.

“We know that we loved him. We know deep in his heart he loves us,” Sue Coleman said Friday. “That’s the way it is.”

She said she wasn’t aware of any funeral details outlined in the will and that she had not spoken with Mial in probably 20 years.

Randy Kester, a Utah defense attorney who has represented Gary Coleman in the past, has said the two discussed the need to meet and work on a will as recently as four or five weeks ago.

Gary Coleman’s parents had been preparing to go to court, but Jackman said that’s no longer the case because they had seen a copy of the will naming Mial as its beneficiary.

“The Colemans from the start simply wanted to do what he wanted to have done,” Jackman said.

In 1989, when Gary Coleman was 21, his mother filed a court request trying to gain control of her son’s $6 million fortune, saying he was incapable of handling his affairs. The move “obviously stems from her frustration at not being able to control my life,” he said.

Gary Coleman’s career took a considerable nose dive in the late 1980s and it never recovered. It’s unclear how much his estate is worth now, but his Santaquin home in a middle class neighborhood about 65 miles south of Salt Lake City is valued at about $315,000, according to Utah County property tax records.

Shielia Erickson, a representative for Price, said she is grateful the Colemans have backed off.

“That’s all we wanted to do is fill Gary’s wishes,” she said.

He is originally from Zion, Ill., a small town about 50 miles north of Chicago near the Wisconsin border.

Gary Coleman starred for eight seasons on the sitcom “Diff’rent Strokes,” starting in 1978. The tiny 10-year-old’s “Whachu talkin’ ’bout?” was a staple in the show about two African-American brothers adopted by a wealthy white man. He played Arnold Jackson, the younger of the two brothers.

Gary Coleman once said he wanted people to think of him as something more than the chubby-cheeked child star from television show “Diff’rent Strokes,” that he wanted to escape the legacy of character Arnold Jackson, whose “Whatchu talkin’ ’bout?” became a catch phrase of the 1970s and ’80s.

He spent his later years still keeping a hand in show business, but also moving away from it, marrying and settling in Utah, far away from Hollywood’s sometimes all-too-bright lights. Still, he was dogged by ongoing health problems and struggled with legal woes.

After suffering a brain hemorrhage, Coleman was taken off life support Friday and died, his family and friends at his side, said Utah Valley Regional Medical Center spokeswoman Janet Frank. He was 42.

“He has left a lasting legacy,” tweeted singer Janet Jackson, who appeared on several episodes of “Diff’rent Strokes. “I know he is finally at peace.”

Coleman chafed at his permanent association with “Diff’rent Strokes” but also tried to capitalize on it through reality shows and other TV appearances.

His former manager, Vic Perillo, called the diminutive star “everybody’s kid” and expressed regret for all the trouble that marked the end of Coleman’s life.

“It’s unfortunate that this young man should go down in history as someone that will be seen as bitter,” said Perillo, who helped launch Coleman’s career from Chicago in about 1977 and worked with him for 15 years. “If everybody knew what a joy he was and the joy he brought me … that’s kind of lost in all of this.”

Coleman suffered the brain hemorrhage Wednesday at his Santaquin home, 55 miles south of Salt Lake City. Frank said he was hospitalized because of an accident at the home, but she had no details.

In a statement read by brother-in-law Shawn Price, Coleman’s family said information would be released shortly about his death. It said he was conscious and lucid until midday Thursday, when his condition worsened and he slipped into unconsciousness. Coleman was then placed on life support.

“Thousands of e-mails have poured into the hospital. This is so comforting to the family to know how beloved he still is,” Price said.

“Diff’rent Strokes” debuted on NBC in 1978 and drew most of its laughs from Coleman, then a tiny 10-year-old with sparkling eyes and perfect comic timing.

He played the younger of two African-American brothers adopted by a wealthy white man. Race and class relations became topics on the show as much as the typical trials of growing up.

“Diff’rent Strokes” lasted six seasons on NBC and two on ABC; it lives on thanks to DVDs and YouTube. But its equally enduring legacy became the troubles in adulthood of its former child stars.

In 1989, Todd Bridges, who played Coleman’s older brother, Willis, was acquitted of attempted murder in the shooting of a drug dealer. The then 24-year-old Bridges testified he became depressed and turned to drugs after “Diff’rent Strokes” was canceled.

Dana Plato, who played the boys’ white, teenage sister, pleaded guilty in 1991 to a robbery charge. She died in 1999 of an overdose of painkiller and muscle relaxer. The medical examiner’s office ruled the death a suicide.

“It’s sad that I’m the last kid alive from the show,” Bridges said.

Coleman was born Feb. 8, 1968, in Zion, Ill., near Chicago.

His short stature – he reached only 4-foot-8 even in adulthood – added to his child-star charm but stemmed from a serious health problem, kidney failure. He got the first of at least two transplants at age 5 and required dialysis.

In a 1979 Los Angeles Times profile, his mother, Sue Coleman, said he always had been a ham. He acted in some commercials before he was signed by T.A.T., the production company that created “Diff’rent Strokes.”

After the show was canceled, Coleman continued to get credits for TV guest shots and other small roles over the years but never regained more than a shadow of his old popularity. At one point he worked as a security guard.

Coleman played upon his child-star image as he tried to resurrect his entertainment career in recent years, appearing on late-night shows and “The Surreal Life,” a VH1 show devoted to fading celebrities.

His role as a car-washing plantation slave in the 2008 conservative political satire “An American Carol” was cut from the final print. The actor also appeared in last year’s “Midgets vs. Mascots,” a film that pits little people against mascots in a series of silly contests for a chance to win $1 million. Coleman met with producers of the film earlier this year to ask them to remove a brief scene of frontal nudity that he says he didn’t authorize.

Coleman was among 135 candidates who ran in California’s bizarre 2003 recall election to replace then-Gov. Gray Davis, whom voters ousted in favor of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Coleman came in eighth with 12,488 votes, or 0.2 percent, just behind Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt.

Running for office gave him a chance to show another side of himself, he told The Associated Press at the time.

“This is really interesting and cool, and I’ve been enjoying the heck out of it because I get to be intelligent, which is something I don’t get to do very often,” he said.

Last fall, he had heart surgery complicated by pneumonia, said his Utah attorney, Randy Kester. In February, he suffered a seizure on the set of “The Insider.”

Legal disputes also dogged him. In 1989, when Coleman was 21, his mother filed a court request trying to gain control of her son’s $6 million fortune, saying he was incapable of handling his affairs. He said the move “obviously stems from her frustration at not being able to control my life.”

In a 1993 television interview, he said he tried to kill himself twice by overdosing on pills.

He moved to Utah in fall 2005, and according to a tally in early 2010, officers were called to assist or intervene with Coleman more than 20 times in the following years. They included a call where Coleman said he had taken dozens of Oxycontin pills and “wanted to die.”

Some of the disputes involved his wife, Shannon Price, whom he met on the set of the 2006 comedy “Church Ball” and married in 2007.

In September 2008, a dustup with a fan at a Utah bowling alley led Coleman to plead no contest to disorderly conduct. The fan filed a lawsuit claiming that the actor punched him and ran into him with his truck; the suit was settled out of court.

In February – on his 42nd birthday – he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor criminal mischief charge related to an April 2009 domestic violence incident at his home.