Considering the stuff I've been reading lately, it must be the season for misinformation.

Unless the police and the medical examiner are lying, yet another media report I relied on and discussed has turned out to be substantially untrue:

DETROIT -- Andrew Anthos, the elderly gay man whose death was attributed to a vicious hate crime, did not die from a beating but from natural causes, Detroit police said Wednesday.

Police spokesman James Tate, citing an autopsy report from the Wayne County Medical Examiners Office that made the conclusion, said there was no evidence of a crime.

This was supposed to be a particularly vicious and brutal hate crime, committed by a pipe-wielding assailant. Here's one of the original accounts:

Andrew Anthos was on a city bus on his way home to the Windsor Tower apartments on Antietam in Detroit around 7 p.m. Feb. 13 when a man approached him and asked him if he was gay, Anthos' family said he told police before he slipped into a coma. The man, who continued to harass Anthos and called him derogatory names, followed Anthos off the bus at the stop in front of his building and attacked him with a metal pipe, striking him from behind, police said. The attacker left him on the snowy sidewalk.

Anthos was taken to Detroit Receiving Hospital, where doctors performed emergency spinal surgery but were unable to reverse the paralysis. He is now in a coma and not expected to live past the weekend, his family said.

As to witnesses, it appears there weren't any. But the relatives and activists disagree:

The autopsy's conclusion has angered Anthos' relatives.

"They determined that he died of natural causes," Tate said. "There's no evidence that an assault occurred. Effectively, this case is closed."

But Anthos' cousin Tony Hloros said he is outraged by the autopsy findings and says they are false.

"I am absolutely disgusted (and) horrified," said Hloros. "My adrenaline is flowing."

Anthos died on Feb. 23, 10 days after he was found in a snow bank outside the Windsor Tower apartments on Antietam where he lived alone. Hloros said Anthos, 72, told him before he fell into a coma that he had been beaten by a man who followed him off a city bus.

"I swear to you my cousin was crying and he told me 'Tony, I can't believe it. He hit me in the side of the head and said are you gay?'"

And what about the police sketch? Apparently, someone saw a man who looked like that "leaving the area":

During the investigation into Anthos' death, police released sketches of a man they wanted to question. Tate said the department released the sketch because it was a witness description of a man seen leaving the area where Anthos was found.

"As a law enforcement agency we have a responsibility to follow up (on tips and information)," Tate said.

Understandably, the activists don't want to back down:

Anthos was a well-known figure among state lawmakers and local journalists because of his campaign to have the state Capitol dome lit up in red, white and blue to honor military veterans and police officers. His death made local and national headlines as a hate crime. .

Gay rights groups, civil rights organizations and others rallied behind calls for stiffer anti-hate crime legislation and for police to find the person responsible for Anthos' death immediately after reports about the attack.

Melissa Pope, director of victim services for the Triangle Foundation, a gay rights organization, said the group also believed that Anthos died as a result of a hate crime.

"Andrew's own words and witnesses ... confirmed what happened, so in that respect this is still a hate crime," Pope said.

Amazing. I'm left wondering about the quality of investigation of the stories which manage to find their way into print.

It seems to me that reports like this are driven by a strong emotional investment in the facts being a certain way. Once activists step in and manipulate these emotions, the situation is compounded, and the "facts" become indelible, regardless of what happened. Questioning them is then seen as taking on a political dimension.

I think having an emotional and political investment in facts is not a good thing. It harms, rather than helps, any political cause involved, and it makes truth a casualty of politics.

I was horrified by the accounts of the crime, and here's what I said:

Whoever the attacker is, I hope they catch him, and I hope he gets the death penalty, which does not and should not require any special hate crimes statute.

And now the official story is that there's no evidence an attack at all. And the main witness is another cousin who appears to be reciting not what she saw, but what she heard:

...the Wayne County Medical Examiner's Office concluded that Anthos fell because he had an arthritic neck, and detectives were unable to find witnesses to a beating, police said.

"They determined that he died of natural causes," Tate told The Detroit News.

"So the case will be closed," homicide unit supervisor Lt. Linda Vertin told the Detroit Free Press.

A cousin of Anthos said she was shocked at the closing of the case and angry that police didn't tell her before making it public.

"I'm just livid about this," said Athena Fedenis of St. Clair Shores. "Andrew didn't have any reason to make this up."

The Associated Press left a message Wednesday night seeking comment from police.

According to Fedenis and other family members, Anthos said he was riding a city bus home from the library on Feb. 13 when a young man asked him if he was gay and called him a "faggot."

Anthos said the man followed him off the bus, confronting him again. Anthos said he told the man he was gay as he went to help a friend whose wheelchair was stuck in a snow bank, according to Fedenis.

Fedenis also appears to be backing away from the pipe story:

"If you want to say he wasn't murdered, OK. But you can't say he wasn't attacked, that it wasn't a hate crime," Fedenis said.

Fedenis, who said she took notes while talking to Anthos in the hospital, also disputes Schmidt's findings that Anthos' only injury was a 2-inch bruise on the back of his head.

"Could (Anthos) have been wrong about the pipe? Probably. It could have been the guy's fist," Fedenis said. "But what was the size of a softball behind his left ear? It was a cut, a gash. ... If he was never struck, this wouldn't have happened."

Detroit police spokesman Leon Rahmaan said investigators interviewed Anthos and his wheelchair-bound friend, who told police he thought Anthos may have been attacked but did not see it.

Nor is the statement that "Andrew didn't have any reason to make this up."

What actually happened will never be known.

(But try telling that to people with an emotional investment in the unknown!)