''Hunter prized his privacy and we ask that his friends and admirers respect that privacy as well as that of his family,'' Juan Thompson said in a statement released to the Aspen Daily News.
Juan Thompson found his father's body.
Thompson's wife, Anita, was not home at the time.
Besides the 1972 drug-hazed classic about Thompson's time in Las Vegas, he is credited with pioneering New Journalism - or ''gonzo journalism'' - in which the writer made himself an essential component of the story.
An acute observer of the decadence and depravity in American life, Thompson wrote such books as Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail in 1973 and the collections Generation of Swine and Songs of the Doomed.
His first novel, The Rum Diary, written in 1959, was first published in 1998. His most recent effort was Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and The Downward Spiral of Dumbness.
