Death of TV Game Show Host Ray Combs Ruled a Suicide

The death of TV game show host Ray Combs, who hanged himself with a bedsheet last month in the psychiatric ward of Glendale Adventist Hospital, has been ruled a suicide.

A coroner’s official said Monday that toxicology reports showed only therapeutic drugs in Combs’ system. Neuropathology reports showed that hanging, not injuries to the head he had received before his admittance to the hospital, had killed him.

The 40-year-old Combs hosted the game show “Family Feud” in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Police had committed him to the hospital’s psychiatric unit after he threatened to harm his wife. He had attempted suicide twice in the previous week and was under a suicide watch, but apparently slipped into a closed and hanged himself.