The musician and heroin addict who was arrested for his ostensible connection to Philip Seymour Hoffman's death tells the New York Times that he's merely a scapegoat. “At some level it’s like the Salem witch trials,” 57-year-old Robert Aaron told a reporter. "I’m just unlucky enough to be the guy. You gotta have a human sacrifice, and that’s what I am.”
Aaron played saxophone on David Bowie's "Modern Love," has toured the world as a musician, and has recently recorded sessions for Peter Gabriel and Aretha Franklin. He's also been snorting heroin since moving to the city in the late 1970s, and is unapologetic about his habit. “Honestly, I don’t think anybody I know romanticized it as much as they liked it. It’s got good qualities," Aaron says.
A lot of times you have a deadline and you have to work for 24 hours. This lets you do it with no pain, no tiredness….If I have to write a book, get me high — I’ll have the book written in two weeks. You’re lucid. And emotions don’t affect you as much — your anger — it bottles up your feelings. It makes you more rational, or you think you are, anyway. You sleep wonderfully. I’m a lifelong insomniac.
Aaron was arrested in his Mott Street apartment two nights after Hoffman's death. Police found nearly 300 bags of heroin in his possession. Aaron says those were mainly for his personal use, though he did occasionally sell drugs to his friends to support his own habit: “I was my own best customer. I always say, a monkey can’t sell bananas.” Aaron's friends call him a consummate professional, and someone whose habit has never affected his work.
He declined to say whether he sold heroin to Hoffman, or whether the two ever used it together. But they did talk about their drug use, and urged each other to get clean. Aaron speaks very matter-of-factly about Hoffman's death:
People make choices in life, and they should be allowed to do whatever they want. And if that’s his choice, I’m really sad but I respect his choice. He was an adult. He’d been doing it a while, he knew what he was up against. Nobody killed him. If you’re looking for the person who killed him, you know who it was. Him. Nobody else. It’s really sad, though. And more horrible is the way he’s portrayed in death. Who needs that?
While the NYPD initially said they received a tip that Hoffman purchased drugs from Aaron, the actor wasn't mentioned in his indictment. Late last month, a judge denied Aaron's request that he undergo drug treatment instead of serving jail time. He faces three felony charges, one which carries up to 25 years in prison.
Heroin overdoses in New York City have increased by 84% from 2010 to 2012.
