Former Gay Porn Star Chip Tanner Is ALIVE, With “Death” Last Year An Apparent Hoax Connected To Home Invasion Arrest And Conviction
Str8UpGayPorn can report today that former gay porn star Chip Tanner is alive. As you’ll recall, a so-called friend of Chip Tanner—who had identified himself as Tanner’s benefactor—wrote to Str8Up last year to announce that Chip Tanner (a.k.a. Jamie Stroud) had died accidentally while performing autoerotic asphyxiation on himself last December. Tanner’s body, the benefactor wrote, was found approximately 24 hours after he “died” in his Las Vegas, Nevada home. While Str8Up wrote that it was unable to independently confirm Tanner’s death when posting the news last Christmas Eve, I took the benefactor at his word and reported the story based on our lengthy and detailed conversation. But, over the last two weeks, I’ve been able to confirm that Tanner was alive in Las Vegas as recently as April 16th, 2021.
The story, at this point, still doesn’t make much sense, but here are the confirmed facts as of today. News of Tanner’s death was published on December 24th, 2020. Then, on March 5th of this year, I received an email from someone purporting to be Chip Tanner but calling themselves “Jet Virgin,” and that email had a subject line that read “jamie is alive.” Here’s a screenshot of the email:
The videos included in that email are lengthy clips of Chip Tanner giving conspiratorial monologues about his medical issues, technology, COVID, ecological drift, pathogens, and Tanner’s claim that he was being chased by the FBI and “50 police cars, a few private helicopters, and a few private planes” in Nevada, but he was able to evade capture before recording the videos. Here is the first video, which does not address anything about his death, nor does he explain why he was being chased:
A second video is here, but it is too confounding and nonsensical to try and explain, let alone watch. Good luck trying to get through it if you decide to click.
There are no public records of a police chase involving helicopters and private planes in Nevada last February, and so upon watching these videos, it was even more unclear to me what the hoax actually was: Tanner’s death, the FBI chase, or all of it? I replied to the email (not knowing if I was even writing to Chip Tanner, as the email was being sent to “Jet Virgin”) asking for an explanation of what allegedly happened last December, but never received a response. I then emailed the benefactor who first announced the death to ask him for clarification, but received no reply from him, either.
Despite the videos, it was still not clear to me in March if Chip Tanner was dead or alive, and I was reluctant to publish anything about him or the videos (not knowing who sent them or when they were filmed) without concrete proof or actual audio/visual live contact with Chip Tanner. Then, earlier this month, while searching for news of Chip Tanner/Jamie Stroud in Nevada (something I had been doing regularly over the last two months), I discovered a police and incarceration record, confirming that he was in fact alive, and he was in a lot of trouble.
On January 15th of this year (three weeks after the “death” announcement), Tanner/Stroud was arrested in Las Vegas on a felony home invasion charge, as well as charges of unlawful reentry and giving a false statement to a police officer. Tanner/Stroud was apparently released on bail sometime in February (likely when he made the videos?), and when he failed to appear at a hearing in March, a warrant was issued for his arrest:
Details of the case—including whose house was broken into and what Tanner/Stroud lied about to a police officer—have not been made pubic. Sometime between mid-March to mid-April, Tanner/Stroud was apprehended or turned himself back in, because he was back in court on April 16th to plead guilty to a reduced misdemeanor charge (the home invasion charge appears to have been dropped), and he was sentenced to 10 days in jail:
The fact that Chip Tanner was alive on April 16th—and that he is clearly suffering from emotional and mental health issues, based on the content of those videos—is all we know for certain right now. But, given that it’s now confirmed that he didn’t die in December, it was important to at least pass along this news. If any other verifiable information comes from Tanner or his alleged benefactor, this story will be updated.
The details of Tanner’s death that were originally provided to me, the multiple conversations with the benefactor, and the fact that Tanner had been retired from gay porn for several years (what would he or anyone have to gain by lying to a gay porn news site about his death?) all led me to believe the story was true. Performers’ deaths are regularly difficult to confirm due to use of stage names, lack of sources or family members, and privacy concerns, and often times, all there is to go on are social media postings or contact with people like the alleged benefactor. There have been several gay porn star deaths over the years (including two just this month) that I couldn’t report on because I wasn’t comfortable with the source and I couldn’t confirm the death, and for over 11 years, I’ve been careful enough to have not fallen for a hoax. There is, unfortunately, a first time for everything. I apologize to readers and deeply regret the error.
For full disclosure, here below is the entire email chain between the benefactor (his last name and email have been redacted) and me back on December 23rd and December 24th of last year. I won’t speculate about who sent these emails and why they sent them, but for all I know now, this person could’ve been lied to himself and was only doing what he thought was right at the time by passing along the news.
