You're in for a real treat today. But let's preface this with the following quote, “The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets through many a dark night.” ― Nietzsche Suicide is a touchy subject. Some people ridicule those who choose to end their lives, others will commend them for their courage. Let's be honest, though....if someone chooses to take their own life and leave this plane of existence, that is their decision and their decision alone to make. Yes, it can be heartbreaking and cause us tremendous pain and suffering when we lose a loved one to suicide, but hold on, that's being a little selfish of us, isn't it? Are we forgetting 'their' pain and suffering and only focusing on ourselves? Maybe, but let's back up a bit..... Today's episode is strictly about those suicides that are, well, really fucked up. These aren't your usual suicides, for the most part. Many of these just leave you wondering, "Why the fuck would you even consider that?" Let's go. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Speaking of that, though, how are you doing right now?
Like, how are you feeling?
Bro, have you ever felt simultaneously fantastic and simultaneously the worst?
Yeah, I mean, that's like when I'm sitting on the toilet taking a deuce.
I have a mixture of that all the time.
Yeah, that's basically what I did today.
No, yeah, so I ran the Eugene Marathon today.
I think I made it.
Told you about that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And it was just brutal, bro.
What exactly was brutal about that?
So the first 13 miles, totally fine.
Then 15 things started getting a little dicey.
Ships started rocking and rolling.
The waves got a little bigger.
Started crashing against the old craft, if you will.
Yeah, against the wear and tear.
By the time...
Passing mile 20. Woo!
My dogs were barking.
My biscuits were burning.
It was just...
Were you dragging feet at that point?
Were you still just trucking, lifting those knees high?
So, the knees were coming up, but nothing was happening.
Yeah, I decided to go with the T-Rex form, where the feet don't totally leave the ground, but you're still like, You're still kind of moving.
You're hopping a little bit.
Yeah, and then literally I had to start walking at about mile 23. But I managed to pull it back together.
But as far as anything weird or strange, dude, it was just a straightforward run, man.
People around me were struggling.
Some people were struggling less.
Some people were struggling more.
So I didn't feel alone.
No one was pissing themselves as they were running?
No! Things happen, man.
You're running like your body is still going through the processes that I was going through.
I'm not saying that it didn't happen because it may have, but it didn't happen around me in my little microclimate around me where I was at.
Definitely nothing strange happened.
It was smooth sailing as far as that goes.
It was definitely the hardest thing I've ever done.
Ever. Now, I know that people who run and do marathons like yourself, they do certain things to help them, I guess, in the running process, right?
Like little small things, like taping the nips, tape over the nipples, no rubbish going on.
I could see how that might be.
That might come into play if you don't run a lot.
But if you run a lot, dude, those things are like diamonds, bro.
Little calluses.
I mean, they're not even nips anymore.
I just have brass buttons there now.
In a lightning storm, I gotta watch out.
Damn. Yeah, I don't really have to do anything.
But, you know, there is Bodyglide.
I don't know if you've heard of Bodyglide.
No, I have not.
That is to assist.
With chaffage.
Oh, yes.
Yeah. Yeah.
That is one of the things that will help you in running.
That's got to be the worst where your thighs are rubbing together.
Ooh, man.
Better to just avoid that whole situation together and glide it up, bro.
Nice. I like it.
Got to glide it up.
I like it.
How are your toenails?
Are they black?
Are you missing any?
The toenails all fared well.
You know, I could see like...
Maybe your toenails would be in jeopardy if you weren't already a runner and then you attempted a marathon.
There's probably a lot of things that would go wrong with you.
But, you know, man, I've put the pedal to the metal, bro.
You've put the practice in.
You've come a long way.
I still have a lot of work to do, that's for sure.
Right on, bro.
Well, you know, thanks for giving us a glimmer into the world of the marathon running and we appreciate it.
Absolutely. Absolutely, man.
No problem.
Well, you know...
Gotta get a little serious here.
Oh, okay.
Let's get serious.
We lost one of our greats.
Oh, Gerald Norman Springer, also known as Harry Springer.
I know, I know.
He was a national hero, bro.
I think his face should be carved into Mount Rushmore.
Don't you think over there in South Dakota?
Yeah, I think they should start like a Mount Rushmore 2 where we start putting these legends up there.
You know, he should go up there.
Prince. Kobe Bryant.
Kobe Bryant!
Yeah. Michael Jackson.
It's gonna have, like, a hundred faces in, like, the next couple decades.
They have to just start carving over them.
Be like, alright, we gotta make room for this next guy.
Just, like, half of a face and half of a face on the other side.
Just, like, a new face right there in the middle.
Yeah, yeah, you just get, like, you just repurpose them after they've been there for a few years.
Like, oh, Prince.
Kind of looks like.
Right. We could just make some adjustments.
Just chip away the eyebrows a little bit and he'll look like Burt Reynolds.
Old Turd Ferguson.
Turd Ferguson.
Well, you want to get into old Jerry Springer a little bit here?
No, no, no, no, no, no.
First, first, I couldn't agree more with your statement about Mount Rushmore, but our boy Springer...
It's in the Trey Portray.
Oh, shit.
So we have to tread lightly there, okay?
Alright, alright.
You know what?
Why don't you just go ahead and toss everyone's fresh salad with that segment that has been nominated as Sexiest Segment Alive.
Oh, yeah.
It was on the cover of People.
Yeah, it was.
So the infamous Trey Portray.
Well, you know, we might as well start with the nation's great that we lost.
One of the most influential...
And at the same time, controversial figures in TV history.
Jerry Springer has died.
Oh, man.
He hosted the, you know, as you know, and as everybody knows, the Jerry Springer Show for 27 years.
I don't know if you knew how long he did it, but 27 years.
Oh, that was a long time.
I didn't realize it was that long.
I remember growing up, everybody would always chant, Jerry!
Jerry, Jerry, Jerry.
Everybody knows what that is and what it refers to.
Just anything kind of heinous or crazy or weird or a couple of cousins kissing or something like that.
That happened live on his show.
All the time.
Talk about reality TV at its finest.
Those are great days.
That sort of television is garbage now, man.
There are a few sources that say it was pancreatic cancer in the end.
That kind of got him.
But did you know before TV, he was actually a politician?
Yeah, I thought he was a lawyer, wasn't he?
He ran a campaign.
It failed, of course, but he ran for Congress in 1970.
And he actually became Cincinnati's mayor in 1977.
It was only for a term, but...
The guy, he just was all over the place, man.
Yeah, his show debuted in 91, I believe.
Yeah, and it was so popular in the 90s that more people watched it than Oprah Winfrey, if you could imagine.
I believe it.
I believe it.
Yeah, well, he will be missed in the world of entertainment and beyond, for sure.
Yeah. I want to take you back to Japan.
I don't know if you remember the first time we went there on this subject, but do you remember a little time I was telling you about whale meat vending machines?
Oh yeah, man, and the vending machines, whale meat, yep, yep.
Individually packaged in little plastic, yeah.
Yes, yes.
Well, the newest delicacy to hit the vending machine streets in Japan is actually bear meat.
Bear meat.
Yes, sir.
That sounds ridiculous.
It is ridiculous.
This is a story from Reuters out of Semboku, Japan.
Apparently, a remote Japanese town took to selling bear meat from vending machines, bro.
That's so weird.
Yeah, so the supply that it uses is actually Asian black bears, which are listed as a vulnerable species, maybe because people are catching them and killing them and sticking them in vending machines.
But apparently it's because bear attacks have been kind of a problem in certain areas, especially in rural Japan.
That's what's a revenge thing.
Yeah, exactly.
Man, are you messing with my family?
You're going to wind up in a vending machine, bro.
50 cent prime cut.
Sounds delicious.
50 cents.
So apparently when the bear is wandering to town, there's like one or two dudes that are just sitting there just ready, just waiting like, oh yeah.
And they set up a trap, or they shoot them, and then, yeah, they process the meat and stick them in a vending machine.
I see here that it says, bear meat tastes better when the blood has been drained immediately from it.
Yeah, everybody knows that.
Wow. That is interesting.
I mean, I've had bear before, and it's really not that great.
It's really stringy, and it's, yeah, not a great meat.
Not a great meat.
Yeah, the only context I've ever had it is bear pepperoni stick, which is mostly seasoning and other stuff.
Yeah, so it would be delicious no matter what.
Yeah, so you don't really taste the bear.
I mean, yeah, obviously it tastes different than a Slim Jim, you know.
Oh, yeah.
But it's still heavily seasoned.
So, yeah.
Well, maybe I'll go to Japan and get a whale bear double down or something.
Double down on some whale and bear.
Yeah, a little bit of whale bear.
Yeah, it's got to be preserved in something, some sort of, like, acid or something, you know, to keep it preserved.
Oh, God, I hope so.
I didn't even think about that.
Yeah, well, you want to just, like, roll up to the vending machine and see a bunch of gray hunks of bear meat in there?
This one's furry.
This one's got mold.
Fresh. It's fresh.
Gross. That's gnarly.
And then the third story of the Très Portrait is from USA Today.
From an article by Ryan W. Miller, apparently, Coop, millions of genetically modified mosquitoes will soon be buzzing around in Florida and California.
Damn. Do you know why or have any ideas why they might be genetically modified?
They're going to put little cameras on them and spy on everybody in Florida and California.
So apparently...
I'm wrong.
Yeah, that's definitely not it.
Sorry, I should have said that's not it.
I just thought, you know, the listener was probably pretty sure without me saying that that was wrong.
They were on my side, man.
Oh, okay, yeah.
Sorry, my bad.
My bad.
Sorry, I shouldn't be so biased.
But apparently the reason that they've been genetically modified is in order to increase the number of mosquitoes that actually do not.
So the males don't bite, but the females do bite.
So they're genetically modifying these mosquitoes to create more mosquitoes that don't bite.
The offspring will either be males or females that never survive to reach maturity, so they're going to, like, die off.
Ah, man, I feel like that will cause some sort of butterfly effect eventually.
Yeah, how could it not?
Like, yeah, of course, nobody likes to get bit by mosquitoes, and they do transfer lots of disease, especially in those areas like yellow fever, chikungunya, Zika, dengue fever.
But stuff eats those mosquitoes, man.
Bats. That's like their number one prey.
Mosquitoes. Bats love mosquitoes.
Yeah. It just seems like a terrible idea.
I get that we want to, like, you know, we don't want to pass, especially with more people, want to limit the spread of disease.
But if you mess in that kind of way, like, play God with a species, make them self-limiting, just, who knows?
We don't know.
We just don't know, like, what the big effect is going to be until it's too late and stuff's already fucked up.
It seems like a really small change right now, you know?
Yeah, kill the mosquitoes, take them out.
But I think there are massive consequences to that.
I agree.
The potential is hazardous, for sure.
Yeah, because, I mean, they don't know, we don't know what's going to happen.
If it's going to work?
Yeah, we can't know.
Or if it works the opposite way they hope it to?
I mean, who knows?
Yeah, what if it has the opposite effect, and then they just, like, bite ten times more?
Right, their stingers are, you know, their things, whatever they are, are, like, bigger and more painful, and the mosquitoes themselves live longer, and they're all females, so it's just like...
Yeah. The worst case scenario.
They just become like, they just become skull penetrating.
Mosquito, they just suck the blood right out of your brain.
Which is kind of part of our story today.
Oh, well, let's go ahead and wrap up.
Très pour très.
And move on with our story then.
All right.
Well, Scott, I'm going to ask you a pretty heavy question here.
And I repeat, it's heavy.
But I just want you...
To be as open as you feel comfortable being with us, alright?
And just give your honest feelings about what the subject matter is here.
Hey, reckless infidelity with questions?
Come on, man.
Well, what is your opinion on suicide?
Woo! That heavy.
Is heavy, bro.
I have to be honest, you know, suicide sucks, especially if it happens to, you know, with someone that you know and love.
But I also understand and...
You know, I respect the reasons that somebody decides they can't take it anymore because who am I to think about what someone's going through in their mind, which could be a literal prison of depression and pain?
Like, who am I to say, no, you know what?
You have to keep existing in that, dude, for my benefit.
Totally. You know, for my benefit, you have to keep living a tortured existence.
So, you know, I just, I don't like it.
It really sucks.
And I know people who've committed suicide, and it's left big holes in my life and the lives of the people around them.
But that being said, dude, it's their life.
It's their decision.
I'm not going to say, no, you can't.
Sorry, but it's just not for me to say.
Yeah, I mean, so you're a proponent.
That's good.
I, for one, am also a proponent of suicide.
I also think that any person has the right to take their own life.
Now, don't get me wrong, because I feel strongly that mental health professionals can help in tremendous ways.
Yeah, I do wish that one person in particular that I know had reached out, had maybe just given one chance, but at the same time, their mind was made up.
That's what they were going to do, and they did it.
And at this point...
What am I going to do?
Just be bitter?
Like, no, I have to accept that that was their decision and try to move on.
Yeah, man.
And what I find interesting, and I fully back the concept here, is the assisted suicide, where a person will go into a controlled setting, usually at their home or like a hospice or something.
But, you know, I've watched a couple short documentaries on this, and from what I've watched, they are, you know, handed this little pill and a little bit of water, and it's sad, but, you know, I don't know.
It's a strange emotion watching all of it unfold because they're just sitting there.
Talking to their friends like it's no big deal.
And it shouldn't be, you know, but it's still weird.
And you can sense the heaviness of it and the reality of it.
But, you know, they're just normal people, friends hugging each other.
Man. Everyone's smiling.
So powerful.
No tears, you know.
Nobody's crying.
It's just strange.
And then the person takes the pill and swallows it and they just say goodbye, you know, and they just go to sleep.
And that's it.
Dead. Boom.
Yeah. I think in situations like that, you know.
It's just, what are you going to do?
At least spend the last moments with the person?
I feel like I probably would have felt better if I had been able to see the person one more time before they decided to take their life.
I'm sure they thought, oh, well, if I do that, they're going to try to stop me, this and that, which we probably would have had a discussion about it.
Yeah. It's just hard to know how I would have handled it in that situation, actually.
I'll give you another food for thought.
There was a situation where an individual had a disease that was progressive and was gradually losing control of their normal body processes, and they weren't very old.
And so the sibling, actually, he asked if they could administer a lethal dose of something in an IV.
And yeah, that was like his final wish.
And the sibling agreed.
This isn't someone I know personally.
This is a story from, you know, multiple degrees of separation.
But, you know, in a situation like that, the person didn't want to, like, suffer the indignity of not having control of their own body anymore.
And so they were like, you know what?
I'm going to end this on my terms before I just go nuts, you know?
Yeah, and I agree with it.
I mean, it's...
It's crazy to think about that.
You know, what would you do in that situation where this disease is taking you over, right?
Yeah. Stripping you of your freedom, you know?
Yeah, and you can't do anything.
Like, you're in heavy pain.
Like, everything is just painful.
And what do you do?
Do you want to live like...
People don't want to live like that, man.
And I don't know.
But it makes you think, you know, why are these, you know, states in the U.S., the United States, who use lethal injection as a means to, quote, unquote, legally murder people?
You know, the gas chamber or whatever, but we know that lethal injection does not always work the way it's, you know, supposed to work.
We've heard about it, read about it so many times where these condemned people are essentially tortured to death for an extended period of time, you know, once these particular series of drugs are entered into the person's bloodstream.
You know, what is it?
Midazolam, I think, is for the sedation of it, and pancoronium bromide.
It's used for...
To cause muscle paralysis and there's potassium chloride, which is used to stop the heart.
But, you know, that's another story for another day.
My point is that why don't these states use these assisted suicide drugs instead, you know?
And apparently the preferred drugs being administered in the assisted suicides are just high doses of barbiturates.
So why aren't the states just giving them high doses of barbiturates instead of using this three-drug system, which costs the taxpayers a shit ton of money?
And then the process of which it's carried out only prolongs their death and is unreasonable agony.
Well, one, like you said, it costs the taxpayer a shit ton of money, which means somebody is making a shit ton of money off of it.
True. You know, so it's a money thing, and who knows who's pulling the strings as far as that goes.
But the simple answer is because the person being killed will have a feeling of euphoria before they die, you know?
They'll have a brief moment of feeling great, feeling high, and, well, you know, we can't have that, you know what I'm saying?
God forbid.
You know, as the warden is over there off to the side just guzzling down pints of whiskey and smoking two fat stogies.
Yeah, like...
The room's just all smoky, all the inmates lined up ready to die, and there's just one light above the person in the gurney.
Sort of like a vignette in there.
Warden's got a couple of strippers and lingerie just sort of hanging off of him as the couple deputies are sitting at a table doing lines of coke and playing cards.
Now, come on, girls.
Y'all know I'm officiating at an official capacity right now.
Hey, Warden.
If I lay down an eight and a seven, what does that mean?
Well, goddamn it, Earl.
Count the fingers on your left hand.
For Christ's sake, Elizabeth, put your shoes back on, girl.
Your feet smell worse than the Mississippi swamp between my ass cheeks.
Disgusting. Oh, man, that's gross.
I think they forgot why they were there.
Yeah, I think the guy in the gurney is like...
Uh... Can I get some coke?
Yeah, right?
He's just doing lines, too.
Let him up!
Come on!
Come on to the table!
Yeah, what are you doing over there, man?
Get out of that thing!
Well, you know, people commit suicide for all sorts of reasons.
It isn't just depression, although depression is pretty much the underlying factor in most suicides.
But sometimes there appears to be no real reason at all.
True, true.
You know, sometimes people have a double life.
Maybe. And they're in danger of having their secrets exposed.
Yeah. And they know that the public is going to think it looks really terrible.
And so they kill themselves because they don't want to face the repercussions of their actions.
They don't want people to judge them.
They know how bad it is and they know how bad it's going to get.
So, I mean, you see this a lot with bankers, especially, I don't know, like maybe around 2014, the whole bank failure thing.
There were a lot of bankers and financial people that were dying by, quote, Yeah,
I just wanted to list some of these so-called suicides.
Absolutely. So about nine years ago, give or take some days or weeks or months or, you know, police in London found 58-year-old William Brokesmith, who was a former senior executive at Deschutes Bank, at Deutsche Bank, dead inside his home from an apparent suicide.
Oh wait, sorry, this is extremely fucking important.
So that happened on January 26th, which was a Sunday.
So the next day, the 27th...
The managing director of Tata Motors, Carl Slim, died after falling from a hotel room in Bangkok in what the police said could possibly have also been a suicide.
Sure, possibly.
Yeah, he was there to attend a board meeting apparently and he was going to stay on the 22nd floor with his wife.
Then on the 28th, J.P. Morgan employee, 39-year-old Gabriel McGee, Yeah, I'm just not biting on the coincidence bait there.
It definitely seems connected.
Why are you on the roof of a European headquarters of J.P. Morgan?
Yeah, what are you doing up there?
I mean, you got all this money, I'd be like, eh, I'm gonna stay back from the edge, bro, you know?
I don't need to be.
And I think, uh, just a word of advice to people who are rich and think they're in danger, don't stay in a hotel room that's above the first floor.
Yeah, seriously, just stay in a motel, bro.
Yeah, stay in the bottom floor.
Get thrown out of that window, what, you got like a two-foot drop, tops, you know what I mean?
All in a bush.
I mean, always a bush right there.
Yeah, totally.
What, are you gonna slam my head into the coke vending machine outside that doesn't work?
You know, like...
Uh, so apparently...
The next day, because, you know, this is all happening in a week, right?
Sunday through Wednesday.
So Wednesday is the 29th.
Mike Duker, the chief economist.
What's that name?
Is it Duker?
It is Duker, isn't it?
It's Duker.
Sorry, you threw me off.
So Wednesday the 29th, Mike Duker.
Who? The chief.
Yes. Mike.
Duker. Oh, okay.
Yeah, the chief economist at Russell Investments was found dead from an apparent suicide.
It seems he jumped from a ramp near the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Tacoma, Washington.
Now, we jump ahead, you know, just a few days later, Monday, February 3rd, Ryan Crane, who is a JPMorgan Chase and co-executive director, was found dead in his home from something listed as unknown causes.
Interesting. And then, if we skip forward a little bit more to the 18th of the same month, an unnamed person who was 33 years old and worked at J.P. Morgan as a Forex trader appears to have taken his own life in Hong Kong.
It's a nice little chunk of suicides under very strange circumstances here.
Yeah, don't work for J.P. Morgan.
And here's a little sprinkle on the top.
According to various reports about these cases, either the person or the company they worked for Bro, look.
Here's where I stand on this.
Banks are corrupt, plain and simple.
Governments are corrupt, plain and simple.
And that goes from the smallest town city hall government to the United States Supreme Court.
And everything in between, all the institutions in between and beyond, they're all corrupt.
You know, the colleges, universities, hospitals.
Dude, corruption is fucking everywhere.
It's in our faces on a daily basis.
It's how this country operates.
It's the elbow rubbing and...
Attaboy ass slaps.
Gotta have the attaboy ass slaps.
And I'm sure, you know, it's how all countries operate.
But no, I agree.
Corruption is definitely rampant in all institutions, all branches of government, adoption agencies, orphanages, you know, even government programs designed to, quote, help underprivileged, like the homeless or food banks, for example, you know.
All these organizations are getting federal dollars and funding.
And who sees that money?
The people at the top of those organizations definitely do.
The CEOs, the project managers, and the dollars just kind of barely trickle down.
Yeah, the pennies.
You start hearing coins fall.
Yeah, right.
Ooh, ooh, I gotta get that nickel.
Well, you know, those are all pretty weird suicides that you just said a moment ago.
Suicides that very well could have been an element of homicide, right?
But what do you say we talk about a different type of suicide?
The unusual suicides?
You want to talk about some unusual suicides?
Some what-in-the-fuck stories?
I love hearing about unusual suicides, Coop.
Like weird backyard contraptions and shit, like a guillotine.
It's pretty fascinating stuff, man.
Well, let's get into it.
His name was Richard Talley, and he was a title insurance company CEO.
He also had a number of other companies, but he closed them down over the years.
What this guy had done was that he misappropriated more than $62,000 from employee retirement accounts.
He had allegedly deducted more than $111,000 from employee paychecks, and this was apparently going on since 2008.
But it would later come out that there were some serious discrepancies with about $2 million in an escrow account, which he shouldn't have been messing around with.
So the U.S. Department of Labor got involved and filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Denver.
The Attorney General would also launch some investigations.
Okay, so, money is involved.
And when did the suicide occur?
Alright, get this.
February 4th, 2014.
Coincidence? Or conspiracy reality?
Yes. Alright, so, let's get on to how Richard Talley killed himself.
Oh, man.
So on the very day he was to go to a hearing or a meeting of some sort to hash out all of those discrepancies in the two million dollars, he instead had a different plan.
He stayed home and went out to his garage.
And while in his garage, he gripped his nail gun in his hand and proceeded to shoot himself six to eight times with finish.
Oh, jeez.
Could you imagine just pulling the trigger another seven or eight times after the first one goes in?
Oh, man.
You don't know how it's going to feel because, in theory, you've never done it before.
Then the first one goes in and you're like...
And you just do it seven more times.
Like, oh, my God.
Right. So, you know, all it took was six to eight finishing nails to finish this guy off.
That's crazy because, you know, and I was thinking this when you were...
Initially laying out the story, finishing nails aren't even very big, bro.
It's not like a framing nail or something like that.
I wonder if he shot himself in the eyeballs so it would just go straight into his brain.
Oh my god.
Or I guess he could have pierced his heart.
It's pretty close to the...
Probably get to the ribs.
I don't know, man.
Why would you choose that way, right?
It's terrible.
It smells kind of fishy there because he was dealing with money.
Yeah. And I don't think you'd kill yourself with a fucking nail gun.
That's why someone's really pissed at you and they want you to feel pain and they want to kill you with a fucking nail gun.
Ooh, that's true.
Yeah. Man.
That's what I think happened.
Because he was supposed to go to that hearing or whatever and next thing you know he's dead.
Someone was like, yeah, this guy's gonna sing like a parakeet.
Exactly. And then he showed up at that ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching.
Yeah. Got him.
But, you know, however that happened, enough significant damage had been done.
This next one.
Now, I was surprised to be able to find as many suicides by chainsaw as I did, strangely.
Because, you know, suicide by power tools or circular and bandsaws are generally considered to be very rare events.
And those by chainsaw are exceptionally rare.
But I had no trouble finding many different cases.
I guess that's good?
Like, for the podcast?
It's, you know, it's dark, but let's be honest, yeah.
It's content for the listeners of this podcast, of course.
A 58 year old man was found dead by his wife in the basement of their home about three hours after he had died.
She found him hanging from the ceiling.
When the paramedics and the pathologist or medical examiner arrived, they removed him from the ceiling and began an investigation.
Very quickly, they determined a rather odd way to commit suicide.
When the authorities arrived and scanned the scene, they also noticed a small pool of coagulated blood below the man's body.
So once they had gotten him down and laid him on his back, they could see where the source of the blood was coming from.
Well, where was it?
It was coming from a large gash.
Well, shall I say gaping gash along his abdomen horizontally from one side to the other.
Damn. Yeah, like right along where his belly button is.
And it wasn't just one cut either.
There were at least five, six, seven, who knows.
The wounds, as the medical examiner would say, were actually, well, superficial.
I mean, what do you think?
Do you see that picture there?
Do you think that's superficial?
I mean, it is.
You wouldn't really die from that, I don't think.
I mean, there's a few that are superficial, but then there's some that...
I don't think that's superficial.
No, you can literally see the guts, bro.
Like, yeah, there's a couple of them.
You're looking inside his stomach.
It makes you wonder if those first couple were, like, the test ones, and he was like, God, I am not getting deep enough, and then...
Finally just, like, really laid into it, you know what I mean?
So gnarly.
Yeah, that's wicked.
Considering that nothing was protruding, and upon their autopsy, only the surface of some of his intestines were, I don't know, scraped by the chainsaw, I guess?
Just the surface of your intestines.
No big deal.
Superficial. So they determined the gaping stomach wound by chainsaw to be superficial, and the guy actually died by asphyxiation by hanging himself.
Ugh, God.
Terrible scene to find your partner, dude.
I feel so bad for these people, like both the decedent and their partner.
Yeah, it's traumatic.
And what do you think?
Do you think it's more traumatic?
I guess answer this for yourself.
Do you think it's more traumatic to find your partner or a loved one or family member or whoever, a friend who's killed themselves by hanging?
Or, you know, that would be pretty traumatizing, right?
Or maybe it was like a drug overdose where they'd be foaming out of the mouth and certainly not looking too good.
I mean, have you seen Chris Farley pictures?
No, and I don't need to.
But yeah, I think it'd be...
It's just terrible either way, dude.
Anyway, even if you walked in and they were just dead in a bed with nothing crazy, it would still be traumatic.
Like a natural cause?
Yeah, so I can't even imagine the shock of hanging.
Right. You know like when people are choking themselves out with a belt and they accidentally kill themselves and you walk in and you're like, whoa, didn't know they were into that.
Yeah, autosphyxia, erotica asphyxiation.
Auto-erotica asphyxiation.
Auto-erotic asphyxiation.
Oh, man.
I messed up the easy part.
Or, you know, maybe you see they shoot themselves in the cranium with a shotgun, you know?
Would that be more traumatizing for you than them hanging?
Yeah, I...
Probably. You see what I mean?
Like, different Moses.
He's like, what would be more traumatic?
Yeah. Yeah.
I see what you're saying.
Yeah, I think walking in just...
A bloody brain.
Yeah. I think anything where there's, like, the person that you have known for so long is mangled in any way.
Just be like, add that extra bit of just, like, trauma to the whole scene.
Be the worst, man.
Well, Scott, considering you're a completely normal interest in all things relating to magic and ritualistic stuff, you're gonna love this next one.
I always love the next one.
Always. There's never been a time when I haven't absolutely loved the next one.
I know.
You know me too well, bro.
And I don't know what you're talking about.
Well, this next one just came out.
Let's say it's warm off the presses at this point.
A man, Hamubai Makwana, he was 38. And a woman, Hansaben Makwana, she was 35. Yes, husband and wife.
They were very, very, very into upholding Hinduism to its purest form.
They embraced Hinduism for everything that are represented.
And if you know anything about Hinduism, then you know that there is a pantheon of gods.
Oh yeah, 330 million to be exact.
Yeah, I mean, that number is actually fictitiously used to suggest infinity.
But I think there are 33 official prime gods with hundreds of other deities in Davis.
But the point here is that this couple were diehard Hindi fans.
And that is a literal statement.
This couple had a dedicated hut, like their personal Hindu temple, and witnesses said that they had gone into the hut every day for an entire year to offer their prayers.
And inside this hut, they had constructed an altar which had the necessary fire burning to appease the gods because, you know, Scott, fire is considered very sacred in Hinduism, and it plays a highly significant role in many of the rituals.
Yeah, fire is seen as being both a symbol and a connection to the gods.
And to many, it's considered to be the literal mouth of the gods themselves.
That's right.
And so this married couple, they built this altar with fire and they had also constructed a makeshift guillotine, apparently made of heavy iron blades that were held up by a rope.
Now, they had this whole thing set up in such a way that when their heads were cleanly chopped off, which they were, they would then roll down into this altar of fire, which would completely burn the heads.
And that completed the ritual.
And that's exactly how it worked out.
Oh, jeez.
Yeah, they were like so into the gods that they were like, let the gods consume my mind and consume me.
Boy, that is messed up, bro.
Well, let's move on to the next one.
Okay. This comes to us from the Journal of Forensic Sciences dated September of 2008.
There was a 32-year-old woman who was an engineer and who had been dealing with some major depression and schizophrenia for about 10 years.
She was found dead in her apartment where she lived by herself.
Her manner of suicide is such that only an engineer would think of.
First of all, this woman showed zero interest in any sort of construction or power tools, which makes this all the more interesting.
She had built a structure made of a few pulleys which are connected to bags filled with water bottles and such.
To act as weights.
And this entails a chainsaw as well.
Oh, our old friend the chainsaw.
And that's important to note as I explain the structure.
The structure itself was just under 5 feet tall.
So the chainsaw itself rested at the top or upper part of the structure on two horizontal boards pressed together between two vertical boards which helped guide the chainsaw downwards when she would turn it on.
I mentioned those two pulleys, or those pulleys filled with, you know, water bottles and whatnot.
Those are used as weights to pull the chainsaw downwards, guided by the two vertical boards.
The pulleys themselves were fastened to the floor using elastics, which were attached to the floor using nails.
Now, this woman was extremely careful in making sure the measurements were perfect, and all the joints and corners were perfectly square.
You know, the beams or boards.
Both vertical and horizontal.
They were just perfectly parallel.
What a crazy setup.
I mean, it would take, like, so much time and energy to do that, even for an experienced person.
Yeah. And it's weird to think about.
That's insane.
Like, the whole time it takes you to build something like this, and the whole purpose is your suicide.
Seriously? It's weird.
Well, and just to get it perfect like that.
Yeah, yeah.
And she was meticulous, man.
But she also utilized an electric component to the structure.
She was found with an electric command switch in her hand.
So basically an on-off switch, which turned the chainsaw on.
The two horizontal boards were positioned to hold the chainsaw in place.
And when she flipped the switch to the chainsaw, it started the chainsaw, which would cut through those horizontal boards.
And once it cut through those boards, the chainsaw would then be guided downward with the weights.
And apparently...
This is just weird.
She designed this so that the chainsaw would actually go down very slowly.
So, it was not fast by any means.
Ugh. All that time to just think and, like, just be aware of what's happening.
Hearing the sound of the chainsaw getting closer.
Slowly. Oh!
Yeah. Man.
So, she positioned herself below the structure, face down.
So, I mean, face down, I guess that's better?
The chainsaw had completely severed her cervical spine and spinal cord.
I guess it would be quicker than just going through your throat first.
Well, just like through the top of your head.
Yeah, no, I guess that makes sense because, like, if that was the first thing that, you know, the chainsaw made it to, then at least you would be, you know...
bereft of all feeling.
Yeah, yeah.
Immediately. So I guess that kind of makes sense.
So obviously there are man is a suicide that are generally understood to be less painful and quicker or more effective and more likely to be successful in the goal of ending a person's life.
Well, yeah, sure, sure.
Definitely. Yeah.
Right. The classic approach, you know, thought to be super fast.
Yeah, that's kind of the old classic, if you will.
And it's typically successful if done right.
Or, you know, with the use of a shotgun.
Again, if done right.
Right, right, right.
And for the record, firearms are used far more in successful and failed suicide attempts.
Handguns being most often used, followed by the shotgun and then the use of a rifle.
But back to your point, you're right.
Smaller caliber weapons, logically thinking, would have a higher likelihood of a failed suicide attempt, while a shotgun generally would cause more damage to a person's skull and its contents.
And according to the CDC, in 2021, there were 48,000.
Wow. Wow.
Wow. But men are more than twice as likely to succeed in suicide than women in all age groups.
For example, in 2020, men died by suicide 3.88 times more than women in the United States.
And in the United States, as of 2023, Wyoming has the highest rate of suicide at 29.3 people per 100,000.
On the opposite end is...
Scott, take a guess.
So you're asking for the state that has the lowest rate?
Yeah. Lowest rate of suicide.
I'm gonna go with Wisconsin.
Wisconsin! No.
It's New Jersey.
They've come to about 8.8 people out of 100,000.
Yeah. New Jersey.
That's pretty crazy.
Jersey. Well, I would never have guessed.
I would have never guessed that.
You'd never have guessed Jersey is the lowest suicide rate.
Is that New Jersey?
Yeah, it's New Jersey enough.
I pass for that one?
Yeah, you pass.
All right.
As of 2023, Los Soto, South Africa, was the country with the largest population of suicides at about 72.4 per 100,000 people.
Oh my gosh.
Fucking crazy to think about, man.
That's so many in Lesotho.
Wow, that's insane.
Yeah, 72.4 per 100,000.
Highest rate in the world.
Wow. And on the opposite side of that spectrum, the country with the lowest rate of suicide is Granada, with 0.7 out of 100,000 to die from suicide.
Oh. Well, I guess that just isn't really part of their...
It just doesn't factor into their ideology, I guess.
0.7.
That's... It's extremely low.
That's super low.
That's less than a person.
Yeah, it's less than one person.
Apparently, careers with the highest rates of suicide are medical doctors, and then it's scientists, and then it's dentists, and then it's police officers, and then it's veterinarians, and then financial planners, pretty much in that order with medical doctors being the highest.
And I looked around at various reports and articles, and they're all in roughly the same order.
But after those, it's basically real estate, then electricians.
Which is like, are you sure it's suicide?
That's a dangerous job, right?
Touching wires.
Totally. And then there's lawyers, and then it's farm workers, and then it's pharmacists.
Those are the top 10 deadliest careers in terms of suicide.
Kind of sucks, because those are all really necessary facets of society, too.
Right. I think it comes down to the stress levels, the...
Yeah, pressure.
The pressure.
Electricians. I don't understand electricians.
Again, I think it's just a dangerous job and they're just racking them up to suicides when they're actually accidents.
Maybe, yeah, maybe they're like, maybe all electricians have a little bit of a touched couple wires together and they're like, ooh!
They like it.
Ooh! Ooh!
And then they just like, you know, they just like build up a tolerance so eventually it's, ooh!
Yeah, it's their erotica asphyxiation but it's just touching electrical cords.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly. Now, I just want to bring up this suicide really quick because it got a lot of attention all over Reddit and other websites, especially with the Gore viewers and shocking true crime aficionados.
The man's name was Ronnie McNutt.
Listeners out there probably know exactly who I'm talking about.
He was 33 years old and shot himself with a single-shot rifle on a Facebook livestream in 2020.
Obviously, the video went viral.
Yes, yes.
So he was a veteran and did serve in Iraq with the Army Reserve in 2007 for one year.
Once discharged, he worked at a Toyota plant, but he was suffering from a variety of mental health problems, including PTSD or post-traumatic stress disorder.
On top of that, he was going through a breakup with his girlfriend or ex at that point, and there is still a dispute as to whether he also lost his job with Toyota during the whole lockdown for COVID.
But on this day...
He started a live stream and was intoxicated and had the rifle next to him.
And friends noticed the live stream and over time, people started watching it and some of his friends became very alarmed due to his intoxication and seeing the rifle next to him and knowing that he was going through a rough breakup and all of the other stuff, right?
Yeah. So they took action.
Someone tried to get, you know, Facebook.
They actually contacted Facebook as this was happening and they were like, you need to stop this live stream.
This is not good.
But Facebook apparently refused that saying that his live stream was not violating their terms.
And it probably wasn't at that time because he wasn't really doing anything wrong.
So cops were called to intervene during that live stream.
And they actually arrived at his apartment but did not enter it until after they heard the gunshot.
Now I'll just briefly explain this.
In the video, you see Ronnie sitting in front of the computer.
You're basically face to face with this guy.
His girlfriend calls him at one point and they talk.
And then he hangs up.
And then he says to the camera, hey guys, I guess that's it.
And instantly grabs the gun and puts it under his chin and without hesitation just fires it just immediately.
Oh my gosh.
It happened just so fast.
And his entire face and brain just instantly destroyed.
Man, nothing left.
Blood and brain matter just splattered everywhere including on the camera.
What is left is essentially the...
Back of his emptied skull attached to the rest of his body as it rests in his chair, which rolls backward after the shot.
It's extremely graphic.
And his dog walks in afterward and just looks at the scene and just doesn't know what to do.
After that point, the cops come in.
Wow. That is...
See, I never saw it.
You don't want to.
That is really, really crazy.
And I mean...
I mean, I never really followed this incident.
I did hear about it.
But did Facebook face any kind of, you know, shakedown after all that happened?
Not really.
Or anything at all?
I mean, there's always a little shake-up, right?
There's always a little backlash.
But Facebook, it's not their problem, essentially.
Yeah, because, I mean, I guess the authorities have to make it look like they...
They tried to waggle a finger at Facebook and be like, hey, now that wasn't cool, guys.
Yeah, and then later on on his Facebook, he made a post which said, someone in your life needs to hear that they matter, that they are loved, that they have a future.
Be the one to tell them.
Man, that's heavy.
Poor guy, man.
So, I mean, that's just an example of a very quick and certain death, a very powerful gunshot to the head, which I'm sure is entirely painless.
At least in Ronnie McNutt's case.
That was so fast.
It's gnarly.
I avoided it for the longest time because I did not want to watch that because it's so fucking gnarly.
It's just a close-up, right?
It's like right there.
And I just would never watch it because I didn't want to see that shit.
I've seen enough of those, right?
But then it came to the point where I had to watch it.
And I was like, goddammit, okay.
And my heart was just like, so hard, dude.
I bet.
I can't even imagine.
Not good.
Yeah, I can't even imagine.
Do you remember, and I'm sure you do, that case with the two guys, James Vance and Raymond Belknap, back in 1985?
I know it's kind of a long one, but they carried out a suicide pact on a church playground?
Yeah, dude.
Raymond, he survived and was horribly disfigured, but would die three years later.
James is said to have died instantly, but the mothers both hated heavy metal, and both they and Raymond blamed the band Judas Priest.
And there was a lawsuit.
Yes, yeah, that's the one.
Exactly. The two men spent, you know, like a whole night drinking booze and listening to Judas Priest, you know, and heading out to the highway, delivering the goods, breaking the law, and...
Those are all heavy hitters right there.
Yeah, oh, absolutely.
Hell yeah, dude.
But yeah.
Oh, also, you've got another thing coming.
Yes, yes.
Classic. For sure.
Yeah, so these guys agree.
To a suicide pact, right?
And they have a 12-gauge shotgun.
So they walk to a church playground where James, who's 18, took the shotgun and blew his head off.
And Raymond, who was 20, he then grabs the shotgun and followed suit.
But he didn't do it right.
He didn't do it right.
No, but he didn't do it right.
So it blew off most of his face.
And he would then later undergo several terrible reconstructive surgeries.
Really didn't work.
And as a result, would start taking a lot of painkillers, which is actually also the name of another Judas Priest song.
And as said, he would die about three years later in 1988.
Yeah, I remember seeing that in the newspaper so long ago.
I was just a kid and my response was like, Whoa!
Who's Judas Priest?
I wanted to listen to them at that point.
Yeah, and you see this thing where people are looking for someone to blame.
When those two guys shot up Columbine, they dressed in all black and in leather, and so people came for Marilyn Manson, and they tried to say, it's because of your music, and it's because of the example that you're setting.
And there's this famous clip of an interview where the reporter was like, well, you know, what would you say to these two kids if you had a chance to talk to them?
And Marilyn Manson was like, I wouldn't say anything.
I would just listen.
And it just blew people's minds because, yeah, clearly they were not being listened to.
But that's another story for another day.
And that's Eric Harris and Dylan Claybold, for everyone listening, that did that at Columbine in, what was it, 99, 97?
I don't honestly have a good date recollection for that.
Definitely in my memory, for sure.
I was around.
Yeah, dude, most of the time it seems that bad publicity is just good publicity.
Oh, shit, we talked about that with Teflon Don.
Yeah, it's a reoccurring theme.
Yes, we did.
Yes, we did.
But I'd like to emphasize what you said there most of the time.
Most of the time, it seems fine.
Things will blow over and be forgotten unless you are the man named Robert Sylvester Kelly.
Oh, Robert Sylvester Kelly.
Yes, otherwise known as R. Kelly.
Yes. Yeah, as you know, he was immensely successful as an American singer, songwriter, producer, multi-instrumentalist, and he could sing with some of the best rhythm and blues, baby.
For sure.
I was not a fan of his material, but I do know that he was insanely famous for a pretty big time there, working with all the top music artists.
He had it all.
He had it going on.
He sure did, up until he developed a passion for urinating on teenage girls, that is.
And everyone is familiar with...
Dave Chappelle's take on that, right?
Some of the greatest Chappelle skits, man.
I love that show.
You know Netflix paid that motherfucker $60 million to do three stand-up specials?
Unreal. It is, but at the same time, I'm like, it's Dave Chappelle, dude.
Like, if anybody was worth that, it would be Dave Chappelle.
No one...
$60 million.
No one doesn't like him.
Dude, $20 million for a stand-up in one show.
Hell yeah, brother!
And that's Netflix.
Crazy. Remember when that Netflix came out?
It was just starting up.
Yeah, it was so weird.
Just having to request a movie and then you wait for it to be sent to you and then you have to send it back and then you can get another one.
Now we're just streaming everything.
Oh man, it's changed so much.
Redbox followed after Netflix and they're still doing that same thing.
They're still out there with those kiosks.
Yeah, every now and then I'd look at a red box.
There's just something about the convenience of it, I think.
Maybe it's because it's spontaneous.
You walk out, you see the red box, you're like, yeah, maybe I am feeling a movie tonight.
Yeah, let's see what's going on.
And I don't really follow what's being released, so it's good to just check out what the hell has been happening in the movie industry.
Well, if you look closely, it's usually like...
Two or three good movies to the other like 30 shitty movies that you've never heard of.
Oh, yeah.
But yeah, back to R. Kelly.
He was sentenced to something I think like 30 years recently for a handful of convictions.
In June of 2022, I believe it was, he was sentenced to 30 years for sex trafficking specifically, as well as racketeering.
And a few months after that, he was sentenced to another 20 years for enticing minors into producing child pornography.
And all those will run concurrently, meaning that the 20 years will run at the same time as the 30 years, so it's not going to be consecutive.
Right, yeah.
Yeah, they're not consecutive, which would mean for the sentences to run one after the other.
But we veered away from our topic of strange suicide, so let's get back to it, huh?
Oh, yes, yes, we digress, we digress.
So we left off on how some suicides are relatively quick and painless, or they can be, but let's go back to ones that leave you wondering, why the fuck would you even consider that?
So this next one involves a suicide by a handsaw.
Oh, man.
Some of these people have grit, bro.
Dude, can you imagine?
A suicide by a handsaw.
This is extremely uncommon and one of the rarest forms of suicide.
There are literally less than 10 known cases of suicide by handsaw.
Well, actually, according to this Forensic Science International report, there are more likely only five or six known cases cited in their literature, in medicine and forensic sciences literature.
I just say 10, just, you know, it's maybe 10 out there.
Wow. Yeah, I believe it.
I mean, if you think about how horrific that would be and how much time and dedication it would take to follow through, I could see it being one of the lowest forms.
You want to kill yourself and you look at a hand saw, you're like, huh, I could use that.
Man, damn.
So this case involves a 76-year-old man with a long history of psychiatric issues in Portugal.
He was found dead in his home by his caregiver next to a suicide note and the handsaw.
In the note, he said, It was me.
Don't blame anyone else.
There was evidence of hesitation, meaning this man was literally sawing at his neck with this small serrated handsaw blade and was making small jagged cuts at first, you know, just sort of testing the water, so to say.
And in the vast majority of suicide victims who use sharp objects to cut their wrist or neck or thighs or whatever, they usually use a relatively sharp blade, you know, to get the job done.
They don't typically use one that is serrated.
Now just think about that.
Think about how fucking horrible that would be.
It's bad enough with a sharp blade.
But we're both familiar with beheadings, right, Scott?
We've seen quite a few.
And you can literally see the difference of the damages between a sharp knife and a dull knife on a human neck.
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
I mean, you can tell the raggediness of the wound versus one that looks like it was just cleaned through, you know?
Right. You see a lot of jagged cuts going on.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
So this man cut into his neck muscles, the thyroid, the trachea, and the left internal jugular vein.
So he was holding the serrated hand saw in his right hand, and he was sawing into the left side of his neck in the front there.
As said, the man was known to have mental health problems for quite some time, and he actually tried to commit suicide 11 years prior using the same suicide method.
Like, what the fuck, man?
He was dedicated, I guess, and it took him 11 years.
That is crazy, yeah.
That is crazy.
And dedication, bro.
His cause of death was determined to most likely be hemorrhagic shock, which is a form of hypovolemic shock where severe blood loss leads to inadequate oxygen delivery at the cellular level.
Sure. So your body just shuts down.
It doesn't have what it needs to do what it needs to do.
So let's move on to this next one, alright?
Absolutely, let's go.
You ready for this?
Absolutely, let's go.
Screwdriver. And handsaw suicide.
Oh, man.
We're just doubling it up, making it worse.
So there was this other case reported in 1997 by Sage Journals, which is a medicine, science, and law website.
There was a 54-year-old man who was suffering from schizophrenia and had been for a number of years.
This man had taken a screwdriver and stabbed himself several times in the neck.
When this was not sufficient, he took a handsaw and began sawing rather viciously at his own neck.
Causing many superficial scratches all about his neck from the teeth of the saw.
But he also tore his neck wide open and he ultimately succeeded in killing.
Gosh, just imagining it happening in real time when you're just like getting caught on the sinew of your neck muscles.
You're still going.
You're still going.
You're like, no, this isn't good enough.
Every nerve that's being touched.
You know what I mean?
Man, shit.
Ugh. Alright.
So now...
That's insane.
Yeah, let's switch it up a little bit.
Now those are painfully slow deaths, right?
Let's touch on a couple that may have been the quickest one could wish for.
Arguably quicker than a gunshot.
Fair enough.
Now, suicide by explosion is particularly rare.
That is, outside of carrying out terrorist activities, and even more rare than using various means of sawing.
So this case is about a man who was an expert explosives technician.
In the fall of 2011, a 65-year-old man was discovered in his backyard, in one of those fold-up lawn chairs, and he was deceased.
This man had left a suicide note inside his home, and in it he indicated that he wanted to take the quick way out of life.
But he was a military veteran and worked with explosives while in the military.
This man would explode bombs on his property all day long and the neighbors all had to endure it.
But one day, all those explosions stopped and nobody had seen the man for a handful of days.
What he did was this.
He took his explosive device that he was going to use to kill himself with.
He went out to his backyard away from anything and sat in his lawn chair.
Then he put the device between his knees.
And then he leaned forward over it, covering it with his head.
The device went off and there was virtually nothing left of his head or neck or much left of his knees.
The neighbors would later recall that they had heard the loudest explosion the man had ever set off on that day, which says a lot.
That is crazy that explosions at all were allowed to happen.
I know it's your own property.
But I'm like, what state is this where you can explode stuff?
I'm not sure.
And you're still able to explode it, you know?
I'm not sure, man.
But, you know, the dude definitely left no room for error.
Yeah, absolutely not.
He made sure that the job was going to get done.
And I was thinking, you know, when you talk about Rare, yeah, you'd have to have no...
Where are you going to...
You can't, like, go to the store and be like, I'd like one bomb, please.
You know, like, you'd have to know, like, how to do it.
Yeah, and he definitely situated it so the explosion went upward, right?
And you've seen the pictures.
Well, of course.
How would you describe these pictures?
I mean, there's like nothing.
I mean, yeah, okay, so there's still like a good amount of flesh left, but all the parts that keep you alive are completely absent.
So yeah, he got the job done.
It's basically, his arms are still attached to his torso.
With the armpits there, but everything above that, where the shoulders are, half the shoulders and up are gone.
Basically, everything from the pectorals up are no longer part of the equation.
And then the knees, the legs are still attached.
Basically, the knees are just blown out.
It's weird looking.
Yeah, it's gnarly.
Alright, let's move on to...
This next one.
This case comes from the 1980s and involves a suicide method that was, well, pretty ingenious.
First, I want to say that I looked everywhere to find who this person was, but I came up with nothing.
Some articles say he was a boy, others say he was a young man, and yet others say he was a man, and I couldn't find a name or a location.
But do not think that this case did not happen.
On the contrary, this case very much happened.
And you can do a little research for suicide helmet or suicide hat.
Oh. Yeah, look it up for yourself.
Suicide helmet.
That's probably going to be the name of my next rock band.
So this boy, young man or man, had taken a helmet like your typical hard hat at a construction site.
Okay, I'm with you so far.
And I'll refer to it as a hard hat from now on.
But he drilled eight holes into this hard hat.
He then attached these sort of...
Short metal tubes over each of the holes so as to make a sort of housing unit, if you will, to place a primer and a projectile inside.
Now the projectile would be aiming toward the inside of the hardhat at the skull.
These tubes were then held into place with glue and a lot of epoxy, which ultimately covered the entire hardhat.
The eight tubes, which protruded from the top of the hard hat going in different directions, would also hold inside of them what would later be described as metal closed hangers, which were cut to length.
These would be placed directly next to the primers, which are then right next to the projectiles.
And then these hanger parts, they would extend from the tops of the tube.
Is this making sense so far?
So far, I think I'm with you.
That's pretty complex, actually.
I mean, it's simple, but it's also complex.
And how these tubes were placed were as follows.
There were three at the front of the hardhat, with two near the rim, spaced about six inches apart, with the third being just above that, in the middle of the two below it, right?
So, there were two others, just like those, on the left side of the hardhat, one more on the right side, a little nearer to the front, one centered on the back, and one directly at the top.
Connected to these pieces of clothes hangers, which were protruding from these housing units, were little wires that were connected to an arc welder, which, when turned on, would provide an electric shock, which would spark the primers.
Now, the pathologist who did the autopsy would say that the tube attached at the top of the hardhat was also designed to be a sort of fail-safe, just in case the electric spark did not set the primers off.
Which would cause the projectiles to be fired into the brain.
So there was a rubber tubing that was attached to the sides of the hardhat with a lot of tension.
This then ran directly over the top tube with the metal hanger extending out of the top.
And the hanger was attached to the rubber tubing.
So in case, in the event that the device failed to fire using the arc welder, this rubber tubing could be pulled up and then let go like a slingshot, which would then shoot the hanger into the primer, which would fire the
projectile into the top of the sling.
Man, well, I know we've been kind of bringing this back, but doing it right, there was no way this was not going to succeed.
That is for sure.
So the projectiles themselves were.33 inch lead balls.
But when this person switched on the arc welder, it produced the electricity needed to fire seven of the primers, which fired seven of the lead balls.
To the pathologist in charge, they figured that this person was knowledgeable of the thickness of the skull, and that this is why they placed three projectiles at the front.
They figured that the person could have placed one on each temple to have succeeded in death, but to them, it appeared that the person wanted to absolutely make sure they died.
Well, I mean, yeah, I guess if that's the method that you're choosing, like, yeah, you better be dead afterwards, because it's not going to be a pretty picture if you survive.
And all of this...
Again, was before the age of the internet.
So, meaning he did some bare-knuckle studying, manually turning pages of books.
Can you imagine the exertion?
Oh, man.
All that just...
I mean, clearly had his mind made up, for sure.
Man, I remember this 800-page biology book back in college I had to get.
That costs about the same.
Oh, yeah.
I definitely had, like...
Music history books that I had to buy multiple years in a row, too.
What a hustle.
Because then you have to buy this anthology of eight discs that go along with examples given in the books.
So it turns out to be just hundreds and hundreds of dollars.
And then you have to do the same thing the following year.
Take the 200-level class.
I just remember thinking, what a fucking hustle, man.
Bunch of bullshit.
It is a hustle, actually.
There is a lot of stuff with colleges and the book-buying thing.
Of course.
Of course.
There's a little bit of a conspiracy in that.
I mean, they definitely have a hustle.
Yeah. And we could probably do an episode on just what that's about, because it's actually really interesting.
Totally. But however daunting going through that biology book was, though, turning one page at a time, I got an A in that class.
I did pretty well.
Oh, man.
Well, what do you remember?
I mean, do you remember, like, anything specific from that?
Mitochondria. Cytoplasm.
Centrules. Ooh, man.
A little cell structure.
I'm impressed.
Lysomes. How about this one?
Golgi apparatus.
Huh? Yeah?
I'm impressed, man.
Smooth endoplasmic reticulum.
Well, now I'm aroused.
Enough of that then, Scott.
I'm just being honest here.
Alright, let's get back to business.
No, you're right.
You're right.
For the listeners.
Alright, this next one is metal as fuck.
Nice. Gerald Mellon was a 54-year-old businessman living near Neath, South Wales, over there across the pond.
He owned a pretty successful gym and tanning center, and at the time, around the year 2000, he'd been married to a woman who we will leave unnamed.
But around the same time, he was also having a bit of an affair with a woman named Marielle.
Muriel was about 20 years his junior when they met, and she had no problem with secretly dating a married man.
Well, you can already kind of get an idea of her character, I suppose.
Muriel wanted him to leave his wife to be with her, but Gerald wasn't about that.
At least, not at the moment.
So, Muriel decided that she was tired of it and quickly went on to marry another man.
Literally, like, just went directly to marry a man.
But then in 2002, Muriel was on her way out of that marriage and started to use Gerald's tanning center.
Not long after their little rekindling in 2002, Gerald would finally divorce his wife and Muriel would finalize her own divorce.
And the two would then marry each other without missing a beat.
It seemed that all was perfect from the outside.
Now, I want to point out here that relationships can be complicated.
Both men and women can be very manipulative, not only with one another in a relationship, but with everyone outside who are looking in on their relationship.
Oh, of course.
Everyone wants to put up a strong, unified front, you know, so they look like they're living their best life to their peers, you know?
Exactly. And when shit goes south, many people want those people on the outside looking in to think that the other person, you know, the person they're in a fight with was the worst person in the world, you know?
Oh, yeah, of course.
Like, they want everyone to, like, say to them, oh, well, he or she was a piece of shit.
Like, you're the good one.
Manipulation. So since Gerald is the decedent in the story, we don't really know what he would have to say about Mariel and all the sensitive interpersonal relationship information that we have from Gerald in terms of their relationship comes straight from Mariel.
And she isn't exactly happy about Gerald's metal-as-fuck suicide.
Yeah, and some of the life decisions that he made before he committed the act.
She didn't like those either.
Yeah, well, it sounds like she was kind of shitty just in general, but yeah, I'm sure we'll get to that.
So let's just back up a little bit.
They were married in 2002, but would be very near finalizing their own divorce about five years later.
After a preliminary court hearing for those divorce proceedings in which the court would order Gerald to pay her an extra £100 on top of whatever else he was paying her, The two would meet at a pub to grab a beer and have a little chit-chat.
It was there that Gerald would show Mariel what was in the boot of his Aston Martin.
Whoa, first of all, a fucking Aston Martin, bro.
Aston Martin.
Yeah. And his model cost around $100,000.
Secondly, a boot is what those in the United States would call a trunk, such as the trunk of a car.
But what was in the boot of his Aston Martin?
What did he show her?
I'd also like to point out here, before we go any further, that a trunk can also refer to a woman's butt.
So stupid.
Yes, well, he showed her a rope.
And he said, there's my rope.
Alright, nice rope, bro.
And then he would go on to say, that's what I'm going to kill myself with.
Oh, that got dark very quickly.
Apparently, she told him to give her the rope, but he just lapped it off, and they went their separate ways.
During the next couple of weeks, Gerald would treat himself to a bunch of Botox procedures.
He got his teeth all did up.
He would go on to buy expensive designer clothes, and he would stay at really expensive hotels while gambling in casinos every night, just spending money, racking up a bill, going into debt.
That's never good.
That's never good, because you know he's not coming out ahead.
No one ever comes out ahead.
He would also go ahead and cancel a life insurance policy that he had, which would have paid Muriel a considerable amount of money.
That amount is not known to the public, though.
Sneaky, sneaky.
So what did Gerald Mellon do?
I don't know, man.
I want you to tell me, bro.
What did he do?
Well, on September 14th, 2007, I believe this happened right after midnight, so it's early morning on the 14th, Gerald Mellon would take that rope that he showed Muriel in the trunk of his car and he would tie it to a tree.
Then he would walk a good distance away back to where his open-top Aston Martin was.
He would then tie the other end around his neck, ensuring that it would not come undone.
From there, he would push the pedal to the metal.
Awesome. So the car would accelerate quickly into a main roadway where there were witnesses to this event.
Obviously, he would be decapitated and his head would land in the back seat, while his headless body would remain in the driver's seat, still fastened tight with the trusty seatbelt.
Damn! Too much metal for one hand, bro.
It's a lot of metal.
And after it was done, Marielle would say that she was left with more than £320,000 in debt and would need to sell the farmhouse that they lived in.
At that time, she was complaining that she had to rent somewhere to live.
Jeez. Nothing like, oh, my husband went through with it.
Oh, just focused on the money.
Yeah, man.
She was super sour that he left her with nothing.
But, I mean, it was her idea to get the divorce in the first place.
And whatever money he made was his money to do with whatever he fucking pleased.
You know?
I'm sure it was a situation where she was attracted to him because of his money.
I mean, he had an...
Pastor Martin, he had a tanning place.
That's all it was.
Probably dressed well, probably had expensive tastes.
So she was like, I'm just going to marry him and get divorced so I can at least get some of that money.
Those women exist.
They're out there everywhere.
Those men exist too, but this woman was one of those.
So she also had children that were not his.
And remember, they were only married for five years.
But she would also complain that...
Me and my children were left with hardly any money.
Right. She obviously didn't care about the guy that she was married to.
She only cared about the money.
Oh yeah, that was obvious from the beginning.
Yeah. So she was so jilted, so scorned, that she would say, I'm now trying to make a success of the business because I'm not going to let Gerald beat me.
You see how personal this is?
This is just personal for her.
Oh yeah, she clearly, yeah, gives a shit.
So, yeah, not to mention, she got to take over his successful gym and tanning center, too.
Of course, of course.
He was also found with a suicide note in his pocket, but I could not track down what the contents of that note were.
Well, a woman scorned, you know.
Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.
Yep, that's actually from William Congreves' The Morning Bride from 1697.
The quote itself is right on point.
I almost thought you were going to try to go with a Michael Caine sort of way.
You know, like, Evan has no rage, like love to hatred tant, nor hell a fury like a woman scold.
Much better than mine.
Yeah. Meaning that...
There is nothing in the world, even beyond the world, such as in the depths of hell, is as furious and capable of the great anger of a woman who has been scorned, or, you know, slighted in any way, or ridiculed.
Right, right.
Her feelings being hurt by his suicide.
Somehow, yeah.
Right. So, like when your girlfriend or wife or whatever asks you if her ass looks fat in the pants she's wearing, and you, being the honest gentleman you are, tell her, yeah.
Absolutely it does.
In fact, it looks much bigger in them than outside of them.
And you know, she gets pissed that you were honest.
Yes, and then you get the silent treatment for two days and she plots her revenge.
And the next thing you know, your penis is cut off.
Laying in a neighbor's yard, a few houses down, being licked by the chihuahua.
And the next thing you know, it's sewed back on.
And now you have a frankendick.
And you're doing porn, probably.
Oh, man.
Yeah, bob it.
Bobbit was not a porn success, though, but I think you nailed it there.
Well, I think he tried to nail it, but yeah, well, that was an interesting episode, all in all, and apparently there's no shortage of unusual suicides to sift through, so I'm assuming we'll do more episodes on the topic because it's very interesting and there's plenty of material?
No shortage at all, dude, which cannot be said for poor Bobbit up there.
Oh! Snizznap!
But that is it for today.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, as always, for tuning in and lending us your ear.
Yes, yes, please, if you would, subscribe to the podcast and then like and share wherever you listen to your podcasts.
Oh, I almost forgot.
We also have a new Reddit page under our name, The Paranautica Podcast, where everyone can go and discuss the episodes or suggest topics or cases for us to cover and present to you, our faithful listeners.
So go, check that out.
Alright everyone, take care of yourselves and each other.
