Regardless of whether or not that argument ever held any weight, he was a prolific filmmaker with over 500 combined actor/director/writer credits to his name and an inspiration to Chaplin and many other dead people you've never heard of. He also could very well have murdered his wife, in case that factors into your opinion of him at all.
Two things are for sure: he absolutely murdered himself, and she died in the exact same manner after being found next to him -- so the possibilities aren't very endless here. While it's been said that the couple had made a suicide pact, it was almost certainly Linder who talked her into it and got her to act on it on more than one occasion. They'd "accidentally" overdosed on sleeping powder the year before their deaths, or so the official explanation went. Then, in 1925, they wound up drugged up in bed with their wrists slit, hers reportedly slit by Linder just prior to taking his own life. We know, we know: it sounds like this clumsy pair were awfully accident-prone; they even accidentally left suicide notes behind this time.
Unfortunately, this is one of those situations that will remain hard to understand. However, it's safe to assume that Linder's documented history of jealousy and depression played a role in things -- well, safer than trying to psychoanalyze a couple of 100-year-old corpses, anyway. There does, however, seem to be more evidence pointing toward murder-suicide than ... suicide-suicide (twoicide?). News reports from the time mention that Linder's wife wrote her mother a letter saying, "He will kill me," and the couple's daughter claimed years later that her dad shared his plan to kill her mother with a friend (who was clearly experienced in keeping that shit to himself). Oh, and if you're not rushing out to join his fan club just yet, there's one final little addendum worth noting: Linder's wife may have also been underage when they got married, so it would appear that he influenced Chaplin in more ways than one.
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