Ari Behn, an artist, author, and former member of Norway’s royal family who came forward in 2017 to accuse actor Kevin Spacey of groping his testicles at a Nobel Peace Prize concert, has died at 47. Behn reportedly took his own life.
Said Behn’s manager, Geir Hakonsund, in an email to AFP: “It is with great sadness in our hearts that I on behalf of the very closest relatives of Ari Behn must announce that he took his own life today.”
Behn is the third Spacey accuser to die suddenly in 2019. In September, an anonymous massage therapist whose sexual assault trial terms against Spacey had just been agreed upon, abruptly died.
And in February, Linda Culkin, 59, was hit by a car and killed.
Popculture.com reported: “Felix Browne, a spokesperson for the medical examiner’s office, told Radar Online that Culkin’s cause of death is still under investigation. Culkin was a nursing assistant who was reportedly obsessed with Spacey and had threatened to kill the actor, according to prosecutors. She sent bomb threats to two of Spacey’s workplaces and also sent threats to his coworkers and associates. Radar claims that her threats to Spacey and his team began after one of Culkin’s patients told her about allegedly being attacked by Spacey.”
On Christmas Eve, Spacey published a bizarre video in the guise of his House of Cards character Frank Underwood, which said, “The next time someone does something you don’t like, you can go on the attack — but you can also hold your fire and do the unexpected. You can kill them with kindness.”
This year, Spacey got off of sexual assault charges involving the son of Heather Unruh, a former Boston TV anchor, who claimed that Spacey groped him at a bar on Nantucket in 2016. The case was dismissed after the accuser refused to waive his Fifth Amendment rights.
Those two cases were just a couple of many sexual assault charges made against the actor in recent years.
In November 2018, an allegation against Spacey by actor Anthony Rapp snowballed into an avalanche of similar accusations including filmmaker Tony Montana, who said that Spacey groped him in public in 2003, and the actor Roberto Cavazos.
That was followed by an as yet unnamed man who claimed Spacey raped him at 15, the aforementioned sexual assault claim from 2017 on the island of Nantucket, and 8 crew members on House of Cards who said they were harassed by Spacey as well as a London bartender who said Spacey flashed him and then tried to shut him up with an expensive watch. Fellow actor Guy Pearce also said Spacey had once been “handsy” with him.
Spacey was subsequently dumped by his agency, CAA, his publicist Polaris, and also by Netflix.
In July 2018, it emerged that London’s Metropolitan Police were investigating three new claims of sexual assault by Spacey. Those investigations appear to be ongoing.
