Many of those who received the letters were lawyers or his colleagues on the Bench, though most of the recipients were past and present members of his beloved Lancers club. In the letter he cited the fear of growing old with Alzheimer's, a disease that had taken his mother for whom he had personally cared.
On November 11, 2004, the body of Robert Hammerman was found outside his northwest Baltimore apartment, dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest. The case was ruled a suicide because of, among other things, the letter that Hammerman had mailed the day before to more than 2000 people in and around Baltimore City.