I hope I never wake up ... letter reveals torment of Gary Speed at just 17
‘It answers an awful lot’
FOOTBALLER Gary Speed, who killed himself aged 42, wrote a letter at 17 saying he was so depressed he hoped he would ‘never wake up’, his widow revealed yesterday.
louise Speed, 48, received the handwritten note from her childhood sweetheart when he was a trainee at leeds United.
Seven years ago, he was found hanged at the couple’s £1.5million cheshire home.
a coroner ruled it was not clear the Wales manager had intended to take his own life, saying it could have been an accident when he put a loop around his neck as a ‘dramatic gesture’ after a row with his wife, only for him to fall asleep.
Mrs Speed discovered the longforgotten letter at her mother’s home as she helped a friend of the former leeds United star write a book about him.
In the letter, published in the daily Mirror, the 17-year-old Speed said he was considering quitting the team and had been ‘thinking of other things which I won’t say’. It went on: ‘I’m so depressed. I’m just going to go to sleep now and hope I never wake up.’
He wrote that ‘you might see me sooner than you think, or otherwise’ and that ‘nothing else seems to matter anymore’ except her.
describing finding the letter as ‘a lightbulb moment’, Mrs Speed said: ‘It answers an awful lot about why he did what he did.
‘It’s not something a normal 17year-old would write, is it? Or not a well one. It seems to say it all, when you consider how he ended his life.
‘If he had a mental illness then he probably had it from an early age. Maybe Gary’s problems were a time bomb waiting to explode.’
The couple met at school in north Wales and started dating in their early teens before marrying in 1996 and having two children, Thomas and edward.
after a successful playing career with leeds, everton, newcastle, bolton and Sheffield United, Speed moved into management in 2010. He was also a respected football TV pundit.
The day before he died he had appeared on the bbc’s Football Focus before the couple went to a party at the home of friends, seeming ‘his normal self’, according to his widow. but the next morning she discovered his body hanging in the garage of their home.
Mrs Speed said: ‘There’s never a day goes by that the memory of it doesn’t take my breath away. That scene was like a horror film.
‘I wish there was an operation which could take your memory out and obliterate it.’
The inquest in 2012 was told that the night before his death Mrs Speed had slept in the car after a row ‘about something or nothing’. Four days earlier he had sent her a text mentioning taking his own life but she said he later dismissed it because of their children.
Mrs Speed said yesterday that reading his letter made her realise he’d had ‘very dark thoughts’ from an early age.
‘Maybe something had happened early on which he had kept to himself,’ she added. In a statement at his inquest, his mother carol said that as a child he had been ‘a glass-halfempty person, certainly no optimist’ but had been more ‘positive’ as an adult.
‘everyone asks why he did it but I have no answers,’ said his widow yesterday. ‘That’s why I’ll never have any closure.’ For confidential support call the Samaritans on 116123 or visit a local Samaritans branch.