Scott Cantrell

Scott Cantrell was a small-town kid with small-town dreams-a tall, handsome 17-year-old who liked to fish and play baseball and who worked with his father repairing oil furnaces. Anita Pallenberg must have seemed from a different planet-the wealthy, eccentric 37-year-old common-law wife of guitarist Keith Richards and sometime mistress to other Rolling Stones. But, as Scott confided not long ago, he and Anita had fallen in love-and then on a muggy night last month his dreams turned deadly nightmare. Responding to a call at Richards’ exclusive suburban New York estate, police found Scott dying on Anita’s bed, a bullet through his temple. The death was officially ruled a suicide, but Scott’s family is plagued by doubts. “Scott could be depressed and mad at someone, but 10 minutes later he’d be fine,” says his brother, Jim, 24. “I don’t believe Scott deliberately pulled the trigger.”

Scott was the youngest of four children born to Violet and Robert Cantrell. A hyperactive child with a near-genius-level 140 IQ, he was educated in a $10,000-a-year boarding school for children with learning problems (the state and city split the cost). After his parents divorced in 1975, Scott divided his time between his father’s modest home in Norwalk, Conn. and his mother’s cottage in South Salem, often hitchhiking the 20 miles between.