Wheel of Fortune announcer Jim Thornton has officially been fired.
“Following a thorough investigation, Jim Thornton’s employment with ‘Wheel of Fortune’ has been terminated, effective immediately,” Sony confirmed in a statement to Page Six.
Thornton was suspended from the show indefinitely this week after Sony learned he was reported by a passenger on an American Airlines flight in May and questioned by police.
According to a letter from Thornton’s lawyer obtained by Page Six, the former Wheel of Fortune star was photographed by a fellow passenger while perusing a chatroom for pedophiles for at least 57 minutes, according to timestamps reported by TMZ. Thornton was wearing a Wheel of Fortune jacket at the time.
His lawyer argued that Thornton happened upon the website as part of his work to help people with suicidal ideation and was sent the wrong link.
“Through an acquaintance in the suicide prevention space, my client was misdirected to a forum with a similar URL,” to “988lifeline.org, and its chat forum chat.988lifeline.org,” they wrote.
The website for child harm that he was photographed looking at for an hour was “understood to be a forum offering suicide prevention,” Thompson’s attorney also claimed, adding, “When my client understood what the website was about, he left the page and has not visited since.”
The photos tell a different story. Another passenger on the plane alerted flight crew before a pilot called authorities to meet Thompson at his gate when the Charlotte to L.A. flight landed. He was briefly questioned and released, which his attorney argued was evidence that no wrongdoing had taken place.
“When questioned about the complaint made by a fellow passenger on the flight, law enforcement spoke to him for five minutes or less, immediately determined that no wrongdoing had occurred, and told my client he was free to go,” the lawyer wrote in Thompson’s defense.
Sony, which didn’t divulge the details of Thompson’s suspension in its statement on Monday, initially told TMZ in a statement that Thompson “has been suspended from Wheel of Fortune, and we are recasting while we conduct a thorough investigation.” The show is also undergoing the “major undertaking” of editing out the announcer’s voice in the current season episodes he already taped, according to TMZ.
Thompson joined the show as its permanent announcer in 2011, following Charlie O’Donnell’s longtime tenure. O’Donnell held the job from 1975 to 1980 and again from 1989 until he died in 2010 from congestive heart failure.
Thompson took O’Donnell’s place as guest host following stints on The Price Is Right and other voice acting roles in Monsters, Inc. and The Cleveland Show.
If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988.
