For the last few months, people here in Kaotic have asked me to write another story. I finally agreed, but couldn't come up with a topic I haven't written about. Today, our resident Death Goddess posted a great compilation on suicide. We've all seen the gun shots, the hangings, the jumpers. I thought I would bring back a few of the more unusual suicides for your reading enjoyment. Many of these are from stories that were removed years ago, but worth another read.

Two hangings come to mind. In the first one, Billy Bob was pissed at his wife and decided to teach her a lesson. He wrote a suicide note on a flattened six pack beer carton, cut the phone lines to his house and rigged the door to the spare bedroom to tip the chair over that he was standing on in the middle of the room. When Mrs. Bob opened the door to the room, Billy Bob started swinging. She tried to hold him up but couldn't keep that up forever. She ran for the phone, but the line was dead and the neighbors didn't hear her screaming for help. I am sure she remembered the experience for quite a while.

The second one was when I worked as an "inner city" police officer. One of the few white boys living in the town was in deep trouble with the judicial system. He had warrants for a variety of crimes, his wife and kids had left him and he was addicted to Heroin. Buck went out in his back yard and climbed the big tree. He fastened some heavy plastic cord to a stout limb and put a noose around his neck and jumped. Buck had no knowledge as to the physics of "the drop" nor did he pick the right sort of ligature to hang himself with. When Buck hit the bottom of his drop, he was still 8 feet off of the ground. The noose made of plastic cord, cut through his neck like a hot knife through butter. The locals perched on the fence and started a rumor that the cops had developed a shotgun that took his head clean off AND was silent. Buck had completely drained 99% of the blood out of his body by the time I got there. And due to acute ignorance, we took rocks and bottles from the indigenous population for a few weeks.

During my tenure as a coroner's investigator, I handled numerous shotgun suicides. An 18 year old was upset about something, laid on his bed and took most of his head off above the lower jaw with a 12 Ga. My partner and I picked up most of the chunks of skull and brain and were putting his body into our transport vehicle, when mom arrived from work. Cops explained to her what happened and she ran into the house. Moments later, before we could drive off, she ran out of the house and screamed: "Get back here, who's gonna clean up all that SHIT on the floor?" I suggested a suicide cleanup service. She went into full Karen mode and said WE were going to clean up the mess. The loss of her son was never mentioned. Our cleaning activities didn't get started again either.

I have investigated several suicides by crotch rocket. The recently departed, for a variety of reasons, often girlfriend related, get on their donorcycle and run it into a solid object at a high rate of speed. The results are often spectacular.. We would often have families show up at the scene and if they were Hispanic demanding to see their loved one. No amount of gore, spread all over the area could dissuade the family for getting a mega gore fix.

A Veterinary student from Japan got a B on a school exam. He stripped and got into the tiny coffin sized shower in the trailer he rented. He turned on the water and fired up a trusty electric carving knife, nearly sawing his head off and bleeding out at the same time.

A retired butcher, who's wife had recently died, wrote his daughter a letter. "When you get this, drive to the neighbor's and have him call the cops. Dad had taken a huge tarp and placed it in the living room. He rolled out his collection of razor sharp butcher knifes and took out arteries in his left wrist, left elbow, right elbow and left (innominate) carotid Artery. All of the cuts were to the bone and there was several massive arcs of blood on the tarp. What a way to go.

I will close with a suicide by train. Budweiser Brewery, located on Roscoe Blvd. in Van Nuys, CA has a siding behind the brewery where massive carloads of grain and other materials are delivered. The soon to be departed parked his car next to the tracks, late at night and put his neck on one of the rails, with his feet outside of the tracks. An approaching train, traveling at the posted limit of 6 mph. took his head off like a Guillotine. I could see a train approaching on the main track about a mile away. I put a finger on the siding track and could feel the vibration from the train. Imaging laying on that track and feeling the vibration of the train approaching to kill you. The train engineer happened to notice legs were franticly kicking, otherwise he would have been undiscovered until daylight.

If you want some good vibrations or want to hear about other topics, put it in my in box. CT