on wrote hale's death has also been ascribed to cirrhosis of the liver and bizarrely 'walking pneumonia the cook county coroner ruled the cause of my bother malcolm's death to be bronchopneumonia another brother brad who is a physician spoke to the coroner on the phone and felt that the coroner had actually not been able to determine the cause of death the coroner's report made no mention of cirrhosis or of walking pneumonia although i too heard several people comment that they had heard that walking pneumonia was the cause i suspect that someone mis heard bronchopneumonia as walking pneumonia there are two pieces of evidence that suggest that the cause was carbon monoxide poisoning i made the identification of malcolm's remains at the morgue in chicago and when i did so i noticed that he had an unusual red skin color at the time i was unaware of how this might have arisen but it was so striking that i did comment on it to a number of acquaintances i learned later that this skin color is characteristic of carbon monoxide poisoning in addition the person in whose apartment malcolm was sleeping that night described to me several days later that leaking gas from the space heater in the apartment had been discovered on the morning after malcolm's death that the gas company had been called and that the gas had been turned off until the problem could be fixed the danger from such gas is due to the possibility of explosion and to the toxic carbon monoxide it contains