John Denver Suicide Shocker — Boozing Singer’s Last Flight

Depressed, divorced and struggling with a serious drinking problem, the late John Denver may have deliberately crashed his own plane!

Although deemed an accident by the National Transportation Safety Board, which recovered and analyzed wreckage of Denver's aircraft, an investigation by The National ENQUIRER probing the singer’s fatal plunge into the Pacific Ocean on Oct. 12, 1997, finds that John might have done himself in.

What’s more, the shocking discovery of a gun in his car suggests he may have considered shooting himself — but instead orchestrated a more dramatic demise! The ENQUIRER can now reveal that a revolver was found stashed beneath the seat of John’s silver Porsche 911.

“Could there have been more to this crash?” asks retired police officer Carl Miller. “Was he suicidal? Was this intentional?” The artist, born Henry John Deutschendorf, Jr., had plenty of troubles. While the “Rocky Mountain High” man had total record sales of more than 33 million, his popularity had been nose-diving since the early 1980s.

And despite his simple, sunny public image, his private life was a mess. During his expensive 1982 split from first wife Ann Martell (right), John became so enraged, he tried to strangle his ex and then wildly went at their bed with a chainsaw!

His marriage to Cassandra Delaney (right, with John and his mother) — whom John claimed “managed to make a fool of me from one end of the valley to the other” — went south in 1993, around the time he pled guilty to a drunken driving charge. The following year, John was hit with a DUI after wrapping his car around a tree!

The troubled warbler was also beset by threats from people who loathed his music. Recently revealed FBI files show that he received multiple menacing messages from one hater alone! “Was somebody after him?” wonders Miller. “Was he being followed?”

Perhaps John had simply reached his limit when he parked his pistol-packing Porsche at California’s Monterey Peninsula Airport for his fatal solo flight. He knew his plane’s gas tanks were low on fuel. He was equally aware of the experimental aircraft’s design flaw that made it challenging to see the cockpit fuel selector valve and reach its handle.

Yet John — the son of an Army Air Force pilot, with 2,700 hours of his own flight experience — took off from California’s Monterey Peninsula Airport and shortly thereafter plummeted to his death. He had sunshine on his shoulders, and left mystery in his wake!