How many times have you heard someone
say, "Gee, I want to find something
creative to do with my life." Well,
some people don't find this sort of
self-fulfillment until the very END of
their lives. Incredibly, some people
put more into planning their own
suicide than they ever demonstrated
for any other project in their entire
lives!
After the slash movies of the
Seventies put all sorts of ideas into
peoples heads, someone was bound to
take action. In a report from a physician from
Helsinki published in the Journal of
forensic Sciences in 1984, the bizarre
tale is told of a fifty-four-year old
man who (for reasons not reported)
kept trying to commit suicide until he
finally succeeded - albeit with a
chainsaw. Apparently the man had been alone with
his mother-in-law in his home and was
quite despondent. Just three weeks
prior he had taken an overdose of
tranquillizers but was saved at the
hospital. His mother-in-law was
horrified when she saw blood all over
the front of the mans shirt, and he
told her that he had tried to cut his
chest open with a kitchen knife.
Then, he told her that "he knew a more
effective way," and he disappeared
into the shed in the garden where most
of his tools were stored. Within
seconds she could hear the sound of an
electric chainsaw starting up,
followed by a muffled cutting sound
and then a scream of agony from the
man. The mother-in-law panicked and ran to
a neighbours house next door for help.
The man emerged from the shed,
bleeding from the chest, and staggered
back to the kitchen where he collapsed
on the floor. Responding to the
neighbours telephone call, the police
and an ambulance arrived about 25
minutes later, only to find that the
man had died from his wounds. In the shed, they found the chainsaw
and noted in their report that "the
electric chainsaw and its immediate
vicinity were covered with blood, hair
and bone fragments." The medical
investigators estimated that he could
have only "worked the saw on himself
for a few seconds, definitely less
than a minute." Apparently he had been
thinking about committing this act for
some time, because the investigators
also found out that "a week before his
death he had told his wife that he
would kill himself with a chainsaw." Despite what might seem to be the
obvious, it apparently wasn't the deep
slashes made in the man's chest that
killed him (he missed all the vital
organs somehow), but instead it was
the intense vibrations that it made!
The vibrations rippled through the
man's body and caused some delicate
tissues to burst in his lungs, and
that was the apparent cause of death.
The author of this article also
reports how the various areas of the
body respond differently to different
vibratory levels and concludes that
the case of the chainsaw suicide is
just one example of "the types of
damage to viceria and tissues that
have been noted when violent
vibrations of low frequency have been
directed to the body for a very short
time with fatal results after a few
minutes survival time." ie "it was the
bad vibes that killed him!"
Now, here's a woman who must have seen
the movie Monty Python and the Holy
Grail. In a case from Anchorage, Alaska,
reported in the American Journal of
Forensic Medicine and Pathology in
1988, the body of a twenty-four-year
old woman was found mutilated in a
particularly unusual way: She was
completely missing her left arm, and
the frayed, bloody stump indicated a
rather crude cutting job had taken
place. Oddly enough, the missing arm
was not found near her body, which was
in a neighbours front yard. Upon further investigation, the
authorities found a kitchen knife and
a 6-inch blade on the railing of the
neighbours porch. Blood spatters
suggested that she had attempted to
ring the doorbell but had failed, and
then had crawled into the front yard. What had happened to her? The
investigators traced a trail of blood
that led them from the neighbours
property to the bathroom of the dead
womans house. A large amount of blood
was found there - along with her left
arm. Near the sink a Bible was opened
to the pages containing the 22nd, 23rd
and 24th psalms, and a Bic disposable
razor was also found there with "two
masses of scalp and hair" belonging to
the woman. Was this a bizarre
homicide? Not at all ... The right handed woman had actually
cut off her left arm (after mutilating
her scalp with the razor) immediately
below the shoulder joint with a small,
wooden-handled kitchen knife. The
author of the case history report
reveals that this is probably the
first time an "autoamputation-suicide"
has ever been reported in the medical
literature. Perhaps she should have invested in a
chainsaw - it would have made things
MUCH easier, wouldn't it?
Joaquin had always wanted to be a
Marine. In his room at home he had
always stuck up Marine Corps posters
on the wall, and he dreamed of the day
when he would be old enough to join.
The day his family and his best friend
took him to join the other new
recruits at the airport, Joaquin must
have gone to the airport at least a
dozen times in the course of his final
hour. He suddenly realised how afraid
he was about going to boot camp. Joaquin didn't like anyone telling him
what to do. And although he had
always dreamed of becoming a Marine,
he didn't realise how much autonomy he
would have to give up - especially in
boot camp. And it was only at the
airport that reality hit him in the
gut. Somehow Joaquin got through the 11
weeks of basic training and was
assigned to an infantry unit on a
large base that was away from any
major city, making it difficult to
have frequent contact with the outside
world. After a few weeks of this
semi-isolation, Joaquin started to
become somewhat depressed and began to
tell his buddies that he regretted
enrolling in the service. To make
matters worse, he began to resent even
more acutely having to take orders
from superiors, and he also began
expressing "extreme disdain for
military regulations." He made it, somehow, for almost a full
year. Then, on the anniversary day of
his enlistment, Joaquin "was found
hanging by a clothes-line rope
attached to a basketball net near an
outdoor swimming pool." He was quite
dead.
Investigators did not find a suicide
note, but Joaquin left a definite
"fuck you" message of sorts to the
military: He had deliberately hanged
himself from a basketball net that had
the sign "Do not hang on net" posted
on it. Furthermore, Joaquin violated military
regulations by being "outdoors in
uniform without a cover (hat)" and he
had his right hand in a pocket while
in uniform. Joaquin would never have to follow
another order again...