SUMMARYCokely: the YouTube comment checked (Nov 7, 2026; follows P771; screenshot receipts/2026-11-07_cokely-comment.png). The comment (@monterreywilliams8567, about 2021, 111 likes) says Cokely was assistant to Mayor Harold Washington; that Washington was "mysteriously murdered"; that Cokely had to flee Chicago and live in exile 20+ years; and that "the powers that BE finally silenced him." Checked: (1) WORKED FOR WASHINGTON, partly Record: under Washington he was an assistant to the City Council's special committee on rules; his best-known post was special assistant to Mayor Eugene Sawyer, Washington's successor, until Sawyer dismissed him in May 1988 over his AIDS remarks (P771). (2) WASHINGTON'S DEATH, Record: November 25, 1987, collapsed at his City Hall desk, pronounced dead at 1:36 p.m. at Northwestern Memorial. The Cook County Medical Examiner, Dr. Robert J. Stein, found a heart attack: 284 pounds, hypertension, high cholesterol, an enlarged heart. Rumors of foul play began right away; his physician denied them (January 6, 1988); the drug tests came back negative and the only drug present was lidocaine, given in emergency care (Stein; June 20, 1988). The named test, the autopsy and toxicology, found no poison. "Murdered" stays a rumor without new evidence. (3) EXILE, Partly Record: he lived in California later and lectured nationally; "fled" and "exile" are the commenter's words, with no source found. (4) DEATH, Record: April 11, 2012, at 59, of complications from an illness after an eight-day coma. "Silenced" is Open: no evidence found either way. A friend's account is witness testimony and belongs in the book as that; the facts above are what the records show. UPDATE (Tito: "he had a mysterious operation happen to him before that"): the operation is NOT in the records reached so far (Wikipedia and HandWiki, both citing the Chicago Defender obituary of May 9, 2012, which says only "complications from an illness" after an eight-day coma; no illness, hospital or surgery named). Timeline lead: a YouTube upload titled "Steve Cokely January 17 2012 sends me voicemail the day he woke up from the coma" puts the coma's end around January 17, 2012, nearly three months before his death on April 11. Needs deep research: the Defender obituary itself, family statements, his own last lectures and radio appearances (late 2011–2012), and the source of the "operation" account.