[UPDATED] RIP: Former Gay Porn Star Chip Tanner Dies During Autoerotic Asphyxiation
This story has been updated here, as Chip Tanner’s “death” is now confirmed to be a hoax, and Tanner was recently in prison after being convicted of a home invasion in Nevada.
Original story as published on December 24th, 2020 is below.
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Str8Up is saddened to report that former gay porn star Chip Tanner died tragically this month in Las Vegas, Nevada. The news of Tanner’s passing comes to us by way of a friend, who tells Str8Up that the former Randy Blue performer died accidentally while performing autoerotic asphyxiation on himself. Tanner’s body was found by friends approximately 24 hours after he died in his Las Vegas home.
While Str8Up has not been able to independently confirm the cause of Tanner’s death, the friend (who asked that his name not be used in this article) has stated that Tanner—who also went by “Jamie Stroud”—died on December 11th, and no one else was involved in his death.
“Jamie would engage in a lot of unhealthy masturbatory acts,” the friend told Str8Up. “He had a tough life. He didn’t have his first girlfriend until age 22 or 23, when he first started gogo dancing in L.A. She was extremely psychologically and sexually abusive to him. It severely messed him up. He never fully recovered from her damage.”
According to the friend, Tanner’s death was ruled a suicide by the Las Vegas coroner, but the friend says that that is incorrect.
“I know Jamie too well. He had his demons due to his troubled upbringing and series of malevolent women, but he was also filled with too much hope to ever be able to kill himself. This misdiagnosis occurs in half of autoerotic asphyxiation cases. Physicians are either ignorant, or loved ones don’t want others knowing the true cause of death.”
Research on autoerotic asphyxiation indicates that deaths have been incorrectly reported both as accidents and as suicides, but the practice is considered sexual masochism and a deadly paraphilic disorder, a disease in and of itself. In 1997, the girlfriend of Michael Hutchence (the lead singer of rock band INXS) insisted that he died accidentally by autoerotic asphyxiation, while an inquest ruled he had committed suicide. News reports and studies often stress the importance of distinguishing between suicide and death from autoerotic asphyxiation, and up to 1,000 people per year die from the behavior.
Chip Tanner performed in dozens of gay porn scenes, most notably at the now defunct Randy Blue, where he launched his career in 2010. Prior to Randy Blue (and after), Tanner was known for appearing in wildly outlandish (and often disturbing) fetish and comedy videos. Over the last few years, he worked in Las Vegas as a dancer and model, performing regularly at events and clubs. He was last seen in a 2019 YouTube video with comedy juggling star Jason Garfield.
I last saw Chip Tanner at a 2018 GayVN party in Las Vegas (as seen above), where he was incredibly kind and friendly. Tanner was just 32 years old.
