The hacker who turned Chelsea Manning into the FBI, Adrian Lamo, was found dead in his Kansas apartment on Wednesday at the age of 37, according to law enforcement officials.
Wichita Police Department Officer Charlie Davidson told the Wichita Eagle that there was nothing “suspicious” about his death and no indication that foul play was involved, but would not elaborate on the details of cause of his death.
The infamous hacker moved to Wichita, Kansas, after turning Manning in but friends that spoke to reporters had no idea why he chose to move there.
“Adrian was always homeless or on the verge of it,” Lorraine Murphy, a self-proclaimed friend of Lamo, said. “He bounced around a great deal, for no particular reason.”
“He was a believer in the Geographic Cure. Whatever goes wrong in your life, moving will make it better. And he knew people all over the country,” she added.
Murphy said she received a text from Lamo in December 2016 saying he was “homeless in Wichita” after she reached out to him to check up on him. She claimed he regularly received death threats and hate messages for his hacking history.
Lamo is well-known as being the hacker who turned in Manning, then Bradley Manning, to the FBI for leaking a massive amount of classified documents to Wikileaks in 2013. Manning, who now identifies as a woman, was sentenced to 35 years in military prison, but that sentence was commuted by former President Barack Obama before he left office.
Lamo testified in court that Manning contacted him before leaking the documents because he was well-known in the hacking community after his 2004 arrest for hacking into Microsoft and the New York Times.
The Regional Forensic Science Center has not released a cause of death yet.
