I’m sorry if this sounds like morbid curiousity, but since Bill Thornton dedicated Sling Blade to the memory of his younger brother, and since the story touches on the tragic death of Karl’s (infant) brother, I’d like to understand what (if any) experiences in his personal life he was drawing on when he wrote the screenplay.
All that I’ve been able to find out is that he died in San Francisco, much too young, (only thirty,) in 1988.