Source: South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Advocate, Palm Beach Post, WPTV
By the time police announced Friday that the slain man found in a West Palm Beach home was, indeed, interior designer Scott Graham, his many friends and family already knew.

Lt. Chuck Reed told West Palm Beach Post that there were "obvious signs of foul play," reporting that when he approached Graham's home, he found the garage door half-open and the front door unlocked.

But the gay community is now left to contemplate the death of three community leaders and contributors in just over a month.

"A lot of people were impacted by the deaths of these three men," Tony Plakas, former executive director of Compass Inc., the county's gay community center, told the Sun-Sentinel. "We are talking about people who were the basic building blocks of establishing a tolerant community that people wanted to live in."

Graham, who ran his successful interior design firm with clients around the country, helped launch the Palm Beach Human Rights Council in 1988, bringing his professional success and business expertise to the table for a community trying to gain footing in South Florida, said longtime friend and a founder of the council, Rand Hoch. Graham was a strong supporter of gay causes whom friends described as warm and engaging and who led more by example than activism, Sun-Sentinel reports.

"He wasn't a very political person, but he was extremely generous with a lot of charities and involved with the arts," Hoch told the Post.

His death followed another homicide on March 21, when police found Michael Brown stabbed to death in his West Palm Beach apartment, along with the hanging body of his partner who police think killed Brown and then himself. Brown, whose dynamic personality made his bar H.G. Roosters a natural gathering spot for the gay community, was grand marshal of the Gay Pride parade in West Palm Beach in 1997 and a leading activist.

"Michael Brown was literally the heart of the gay community," Hoch said. "It's a lot to take for those of us that knew them all."

Just over a week earlier, the community lost another strong supporter when restorer and builder Bill Elias died unexpectedly on March 12. Elias was a major benefactor of gay rights groups, among them the Palm Beach Human Rights Council.

When Compass held its annual gay pride festival on March 29, moments of silence were held for Brown and Elias, and a hope that the spate of tragedies had passed. Then came this latest news.

Graham, 54, was the owner of Scott E. Graham Interior Designs in downtown West Palm Beach.

"I'm going to miss the hell out of him," Hoch, Graham's friend of 20 years told the Post.

Graham was a workaholic who created light-filled homes for well-known clients in exclusive Palm Beach, Jupiter, Admiral's Cove and Frenchman's Creek communities, Hoch said.

He was also a designer with a visionary's eye for space, Hoch recalled. He could see the final product where other people saw dark, boxed-in rooms. Hoch told the Sun-Setinel that Graham was in the process of selling his home for another house in the neighborhood.

"It was amazing how he could transform something," said Hoch, whose own home was designed by Graham. "He had an eye like you couldn't imagine. I just couldn't envision his idea. This is what you want in a designer, who could see two or three steps beyond. You trust him fully and then, when it's finished, it just blows you away."

Full article: Slain West Palm Beach man was leader among gay community | Sun-Sentinel
West Palm Beach interior designer found dead | Gay.com
Service for murder victim on Monday | WPTV
Designer's death has clear signs of slaying, police say | West Palm Beach Post