Oh No: Real Housewives of Beverly Hills’ Russell Armstrong Committed Suicide

Last night, Russell Armstrong (one of the husbands on Bravo’s The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills) was found dead in his house in Los Angeles; it’s believed that he hanged himself. He was 47.

TMZ reports that Russell’s roommate, upon finding the body, called 911. The timing is curious, since his wife Taylor Armstrong filed for divorce last month, claiming that Russell hit her. Also, the second season of RHOBH premieres in just a few weeks, on September 5.

It was clear in the first season that Russell and Taylor had an imbalanced marriage, as footage showed her trying to enjoy parties with the other ladies, but every time Russell would drag her away when he decided he was ready to go. He was portrayed as reserved and rather anti-social, often leaving events like Kyle’s White Party without any explanation.

A question we can’t help but ask is, will Bravo re-edit season 2? For what it’s worth, Russell doesn’t appear in the official trailer at all, though we do see Taylor bursting into tears at a dinner party and confessing, “I feel like I’m breaking.” It’s likely that she’s referring to her need to divorce Russell, although Taylor didn’t formally claim domestic abuse until late July.

Russell’s denial at the time didn’t quite convince us of his guilt: ”Did I push her? Yes, maybe things happened in the heat of the moment, but it was during a time in our lives that was not characteristic of who we were. This show has literally pushed us to the limit.”

Taylor emphasized that she would try to keep the divorce from affecting the couple’s five-year-old daughter Kennedy. ”He’s an amazing dad,” she told People last month, “and I want her to still think her dad is the greatest guy on the planet.”

That’s who we’re most sorry for, little Kennedy. The authorities informed Taylor (and probably her daughter) of Russell’s death last night.

UPDATE: TMZ spoke with Russell’s lawyer Ronald Richards, who said that Russell was inundated with debt after filing for bankruptcy in 2005. (He had made his money in the ’90s as part of the dot-com boom.) Ronald said that though he never realized Russell was depressed, he was privy to his client’s money troubles: ”I feel bad because his credit cards weren’t working… He had tremendous financial problems.”