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During the last hours of his life, Hutchence made another phone call--to Irish musician Bob Geldof, ex-husband of Paula Yates, Hutchence's girlfriend. Geldof and Yates, a flamboyant television talk-show host, went through a disconcertingly modern separation two years ago. As part of the settlement, Yates, already linked to Hutchence, moved back into Geldof's home with her new lover, and Geldof took up residence in Hutchence's Chelsea home, a mile away. The detente didn't last. Since last year, Yates and Geldof have been in a custody dispute over their three children. Hutchence wanted Yates, the three Geldof girls and the couple's own daughter, 16-month-old Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily, to join him in Australia for a four-month stay after Christmas. Geldof said he didn't want his children to be away for so long. Angered, Hutchence phoned him and, according to a neighbor at the Ritz, shouted, "She's not your wife anymore!" Geldof denies there was a row and said Hutchence made no sense on the phone. Hutchence, he said, had barraged him with calls for months and "was always off his head."
At the news of Hutchence's death, Yates telephoned Geldof, according to reports in the British press, yelling, "You've murdered Michael just as sure as if you had strangled him yourself!" Reporters onboard the flight to Sydney for the funeral say Yates drank heavily and blurted out, "Bob killed my baby," adding that she took the alcohol because "I want to forget what has happened."
For the funeral on Thursday, Yates chose a low-cut black dress for mourning, even as friends and relatives remained bewildered at the singer's passing. Hutchence's brother Rhett said he visited the room where his brother died. "It seemed a sad room," he said, "definitely not Michael." Perhaps, though, it was the Michael no one got to know.
--Reported by Tim Blair/Sydney and Kate Noble/London