Salon.com > Suicide http://www.salon.com Sun, 27 May 2012 13:20:45 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Pick of the week: Haunting, gorgeous “Oslo, August 31st” http://www.salon.com/2012/05/25/pick_of_the_week_haunting_gorgeous_oslo_august_31st/ http://www.salon.com/2012/05/25/pick_of_the_week_haunting_gorgeous_oslo_august_31st/#comments Fri, 25 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12926333 "Oslo, August 31st" is, as the title suggests, an evocation of one day in the Norwegian capital, as experienced by a troubled young man who's facing the end of summer and the end of his youth. It's a marvelously constructed personal journey, both wrenching and bittersweet, whose emotional ripple effects stay with you for days and weeks afterward. While much of international art cinema can seem overly talky or conceptually alien to American viewers, this second feature film from Norwegian director Joachim Trier is a dynamic, even breathtaking visual experience without much dialogue or any philosophical heavy lifting, following the bony, handsome, exceedingly vulnerable Anders (Anders Danielsen Lie) through coffee shops, nightclubs and bodies of water, en route to an ambiguous final destination.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/05/25/pick_of_the_week_haunting_gorgeous_oslo_august_31st/feed/ 5 Learning from suicidal salmon http://www.salon.com/2012/03/31/learning_from_suicidal_salmon/ http://www.salon.com/2012/03/31/learning_from_suicidal_salmon/#comments Sat, 31 Mar 2012 21:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12763571 Salmon go to great lengths to kill themselves. After a short few years frolicking in the open ocean, they may travel thousands of kilometers to get back to the precise stretch of the same river in which they were born. On this journey they will have to slip past the birds, bears, sea lions, and humans that gather at river mouths to feast on them. They must swim exhaustively upstream for many miles, using most of their energy reserves to leap up waterfalls or swim ladders (artificial waterfalls constructed on the sides of artificial dams) until they reach their spawning grounds, where their last gasps are spent producing eggs or fertilizing them with sperm before collapsing in death, never to see the ocean again.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/03/31/learning_from_suicidal_salmon/feed/ 42 The depressing toll of the Great Recession http://www.salon.com/2012/01/12/the_depressing_toll_of_the_great_recession/ http://www.salon.com/2012/01/12/the_depressing_toll_of_the_great_recession/#comments Thu, 12 Jan 2012 01:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12088371 In late 2009, as the unemployment rate in San Joaquin County, California, reached 18 percent and one in twelve homes were being foreclosed, two high school students in the town of Ripon, population 15,000, committed suicide within two months of each other. Over the next eighteen months, sixteen more teenagers around the county took their own lives, a not-uncommon occurrence that public health researchers refer to as “suicide contagion.”

Years of declining budgets had cut the number of counselors, nurses and psychologists in county schools, impairing the ability of individual districts to handle the needs of grieving students, parents and communities on their own. So school officials in cities like Ripon, Stockton, Lodi and Linden turned to each other for help.

The districts made use of a mutual aid pact they’d set up, like those employed by firefighters and police from the same region. On the morning after each death, school nurses and counselors trained in suicide response, along with a team of therapists from Valley Community Counseling, a local mental health agency, descended on the school the student had attended. They spent days, sometimes weeks, meeting with pupils and parents, focusing on kids who knew the victims or seemed at particular risk.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/01/12/the_depressing_toll_of_the_great_recession/feed/ 19 Can Facebook save your life? http://www.salon.com/2011/12/14/can_facebook_save_your_life/ http://www.salon.com/2011/12/14/can_facebook_save_your_life/#comments Wed, 14 Dec 2011 19:15:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=10353381 In September 2010, Rutgers freshman Tyler Clementi posted on his Facebook page that he was "Jumping off the gw bridge sorry" – and then did. Last Christmas, Simone Back wrote that she "Took all my pills be dead soon so bye bye every one." Several Facebook "friends" added disparaging comments, but no one stepped forward to check on her. Black's body was found the next day. And last December, Clay Duke posted a Facebook "testament," writing that "Some people (the government sponsored media) will say I was evil, a monster … no…" He then went on a shooting rampage and killed himself.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/12/14/can_facebook_save_your_life/feed/ 10 “A Thousand Lives”: What really happened in Jonestown? http://www.salon.com/2011/10/10/a_thousand_lives_what_really_happened_in_jonestown/ http://www.salon.com/2011/10/10/a_thousand_lives_what_really_happened_in_jonestown/#comments Mon, 10 Oct 2011 01:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=10104888 Were the deaths, in 1978, of more than 900 Americans in Jonestown, Guyana, a mass suicide or a massacre? And were the members of the Peoples Temple, who founded the settlement, the hypnotized victims of a cult dominated by a purely evil man? In the decades since the tragedy, as it recedes from popular awareness, scholars (and not a few cranks) have argued over the answers to these questions, obvious as they may seem to anyone who knows of the event primarily through the mass media. The latest entry in the discussion is "A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Hope, Deception and Survival at Jonestown" by Julia Scheeres, which looks at Jonestown from the perspective of the church's rank-and-file members.

Strictly speaking, this story is not "untold"; of the 100 or so survivors of Jonestown, a few have written their stories, and a compilation of oral and written firsthand accounts has been published. However, Scheeres used a large cache of recently released FBI files to write what she describes as the first "comprehensive history of the doomed community" to incorporate that material. She also conducted her own interviews with survivors. Above all, her account is notably levelheaded in a field where sensationalism, conspiracy theories and bizarre reasoning run free.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/10/10/a_thousand_lives_what_really_happened_in_jonestown/feed/ 49 How I learned the secret rule of grief http://www.salon.com/2011/08/07/how_long_do_i_grieve_open2011/ http://www.salon.com/2011/08/07/how_long_do_i_grieve_open2011/#comments Sun, 07 Aug 2011 19:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/life//feature/2011/08/07/how_long_do_i_grieve_open2011 Four years. I nod my head in agreement as the nurse keeps talking. I am in the medical center for a routine blood draw, to track the thyroid condition I've lived with for most of my life. But the nurse is not talking about the levels of thyroid stimulating hormone in my blood. She is telling me about her husband, who has started to answer the phone again four years after his father died "suddenly."

The word "suddenly," like "unexpectedly" is code for suicide. I instantly know what she is trying to say. I live in a small town; she surely has heard about the recent sudden and unexpected deaths in my family. My brother in September, my father in March, with my mother's cancer death right in between. Everyone in town knows the story by now. It is April.

Good Yankee girl, though, she understands stoicism and asks no questions except, "How are you doing?"

She does, however, launch into this story. She tells me how long it has taken her husband to recover from his father's death. How many years it takes to climb back up from getting the call that takes you to the floor. She tells me how happy she is he can go out again, see family again, and answer the phone. After four years.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/08/07/how_long_do_i_grieve_open2011/feed/ 27 The poignant irony of Dr. Kevorkian’s death http://www.salon.com/2011/06/04/kevorkian_death_reaction/ http://www.salon.com/2011/06/04/kevorkian_death_reaction/#comments Sat, 04 Jun 2011 15:05:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/life//feature/2011/06/04/kevorkian_death_reaction After championing the rights of the sick and suffering to get help ending their lives -- and providing that "help" to scores of terminally ill patients -- Dr. Jack Kevorkian died of natural causes on Friday at the age of 83.

According to Geoffrey Fieger, the lawyer who represented Kevorkian in several of his trials in the 1990s, Kevorkian was too weak to take advantage of the option he had offered others and had long wished for himself. "If he had enough strength to do something about it," Fieger told a news conference in Southfield, Michigan, "he would have."

If that is true, there is something almost epically tragic about the fact that a man who fought so long and hard for patients’ right to die on their own terms, wasn’t able to take advantage of this option in the end. But then who is to say "Dr. Death" didn’t simply change his mind? He’d apparently been suffering from kidney failure and pneumonia for over a month, long enough to plan his own death if he’d wanted to. He was a doctor and entirely familiar with how to end a life quickly and painlessly. And given his well-known penchant for drama and attention, you’d think he’d want to make himself exhibit A for what he believed in. (At the start of his third trial, he showed up in court wearing Colonial-era clothing to show how antiquated he thought the charges were and, after videotaping himself helping to kill a patient, he voluntarily handed the tape over to "60 Minutes.")

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/06/04/kevorkian_death_reaction/feed/ 37 Assisted suicide advocate Jack Kevorkian dies http://www.salon.com/2011/06/03/us_obit_kevorkian/ http://www.salon.com/2011/06/03/us_obit_kevorkian/#comments Fri, 03 Jun 2011 12:56:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2011/06/03/us_obit_kevorkian A lawyer and friend of Jack Kevorkian says the assisted suicide advocate has died at a Detroit-area hospital at the age of 83.

Mayer (MAY'-uhr) Morganroth tells The Associated Press that Kevorkian died Friday morning at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, where he had been hospitalized. He says nurses played classical music by Kevorkian's favorite Johan Sebastian Bach before he died.

Kevorkian had been hospitalized since last month with pneumonia and kidney problems.

Morganroth says Kevorkian was conscious Thursday night and the two spoke about leaving the hospital and getting ready for rehabilitation.

Kevorkian was released from a Michigan prison in 2007 after serving eight years for second-degree murder. He claims to have assisted in at least 130 suicides.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/06/03/us_obit_kevorkian/feed/ 27 What assisted suicide really looks like http://www.salon.com/2011/05/25/how_to_die_in_oregon/ http://www.salon.com/2011/05/25/how_to_die_in_oregon/#comments Wed, 25 May 2011 15:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/feature/2011/05/25/how_to_die_in_oregon The new documentary "How to Die in Oregon" opens with footage of Roger Sagner, an elderly man with advanced cancer, demanding that he be given a lethal dose of drugs. His impatience -- and absolute lack of ambiguity -- is startling. After swallowing a milky concoction of Seconal in one long gulp, Sagner thanks his family and the voters of Oregon "for allowing me the honor of doing myself in," lies down on a bed under a large picture window, and begins to sing.

"I’s coming, I’s coming. Oh my head is hanging low. I hear the gentle voices calling ... Old Black Joe."

His final words? "It was easy, folks. It was easy."

Watching this documentary (which airs on HBO this Thursday), however, was not. In fact, it took me three separate viewings to get through my advance copy. Given that my mother ended her life after struggling with Parkinson’s for many years, an experience I wrote about in my memoir, "Imperfect Endings," I was perhaps especially predisposed to find it difficult viewing. But apparently even hardened HBO staffers couldn’t sit through the entire film, and the film’s publicity team at this year’s Sundance was astonished at the reluctance of the media to attend the screening.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/05/25/how_to_die_in_oregon/feed/ 52 Judge: Free speech no defense for urging suicide http://www.salon.com/2011/03/16/free_speech_suicide_defense/ http://www.salon.com/2011/03/16/free_speech_suicide_defense/#comments Wed, 16 Mar 2011 12:28:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2011/03/16/free_speech_suicide_defense Freedom of speech is no defense for a former nurse who engaged in "lethal advocacy" when he encouraged an English man and Canadian woman to kill themselves after searching for depressed people over the Internet, a Minnesota judge said in delivering a guilty verdict against the man.

The judge found William Melchert-Dinkel, 48, guilty Tuesday of two counts of aiding the suicides of Mark Drybrough, 32, of Coventry, England, who hanged himself in 2005, and Nadia Kajouji, 18, of Brampton, Ontario, who jumped into a frozen river in 2008. Melchert-Dinkel declined a jury trial and left his fate to Rice County District Judge Thomas Neuville.

Melchert-Dinkel's attorney, Terry Watkins, said the defense was disappointed with the verdict and planned to appeal. Watkins said appellate courts will have to answer whether Melchert-Dinkel's actions rose to the level of a crime or were protected speech in the context in which they occurred, given the defense view that the victims were already predisposed to suicide and his online statements didn't sway them.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/03/16/free_speech_suicide_defense/feed/ 8 My father’s suicide ruined me http://www.salon.com/2011/03/02/suicide_19/ http://www.salon.com/2011/03/02/suicide_19/#comments Wed, 02 Mar 2011 01:30:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/life/since_you_asked//2011/03/01/suicide Dear Cary,

I think I have a major problem I am not willing to admit. I drink myself into oblivion every night and my tolerance seems to be increasing. I am obsessed with my own aging and death. My father, a brilliant, well-loved professor who struggled with depression, took his own life when I was 17. Although I've coped with his illness too, I've promised my friends and family I will never do what he did to them.

Unfortunately, I see suicide as my only recourse. I have been a fighter and a survivor for many years. I've run multiple marathons. I've successfully graduated competitive college and graduate schools with honors (and two suicide attempts along the way). I have a great job and I seem to get more offers. The problem for me is that I can't maintain a relationship, and I can't escape this overwhelming feeling of loss. Most of all, I can't stand to be alone.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/03/02/suicide_19/feed/ 51 The troops are not all right: how leaders are overlooking our soliders http://www.salon.com/2011/01/25/welfare_of_troops_state_of_the_union/ http://www.salon.com/2011/01/25/welfare_of_troops_state_of_the_union/#comments Tue, 25 Jan 2011 19:26:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2011/01/25/welfare_of_troops_state_of_the_union Obama will touch on Tucson and the economy in his SOTU tonight, and he'll reassure us that we are beating terrorism. He will talk about Iraq and Afghanistan, particularly the latter, affirming our success in driving back the Taliban and that we are on track to begin troop withdrawal in July, as planned.

He'll likely have a line or two about the welfare of the troops, how we must support them when they come home and rebuild the morale shattered by broken withdrawal deadline after broken withdrawal deadline (he probably won't use those words, exactly).

However, he won't tell the whole story about how the troops are faring.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/01/25/welfare_of_troops_state_of_the_union/feed/ 3 Family: Body of Madoff’s son cremated http://www.salon.com/2010/12/15/us_madoff_son_2/ http://www.salon.com/2010/12/15/us_madoff_son_2/#comments Wed, 15 Dec 2010 17:08:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2010/12/15/us_madoff_son_2 Mark Madoff's widow broke her silence on Wednesday, saying she was "devastated" by his recent suicide and wanted privacy.

Madoff, the son of disgraced financier Bernard Madoff, left behind four children, ages 18, 16, 4 and 2.

"Regardless of what you feel about my father-in-law and his monstrous crimes, Mark's children are innocent victims and this is tragic for them," Stephanie Madoff said in a statement, her first remarks since the death on Saturday.

"I am devastated and now raising two small children alone," she said. "I ask that you please show decency and understanding toward all of Mark's children and allow us to mourn in private."

Stephanie Madoff said her husband's body had been cremated and that there would be a private gathering honoring him later this week at an undisclosed location.

"I deeply appreciate the expressions of heartfelt sympathy and support I have received over the past several days from so many people who knew and loved Mark," she said. "I will miss him and love him forever."

Madoff, 46, hanged himself with a black dog leash in his Manhattan apartment on the second anniversary of his father's arrest on charges he cheated thousands of investors out of tens of billions of dollars.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/12/15/us_madoff_son_2/feed/ 11 Bernie Madoff’s son found dead in NYC in apparent suicide http://www.salon.com/2010/12/11/madoff_son_suicide/ http://www.salon.com/2010/12/11/madoff_son_suicide/#comments Sat, 11 Dec 2010 17:20:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2010/12/11/madoff_son_suicide The eldest son of disgraced financier Bernard Madoff hanged himself by a dog leash in his apartment Saturday after two years of "unrelenting pressure" following his father's arrest in a multibillion-dollar fraud that enveloped the entire family, law enforcement officials and a family attorney said.

Mark Madoff was found hanging from a ceiling pipe in the living room of his SoHo loft apartment on Saturday, the second anniversary of Madoff's arrest in a multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme that swindled thousands of investors of their life savings, two law enforcement officials told The Associated Press. His 2-year-old son was sleeping in the next bedroom, the officials said.

Mark Madoff, who reported his father to authorities the day after he confessed his fraud to them, has never been criminally charged in the investigation that has snared a half-dozen Madoff employees. He and his brother Andrew have said they were unaware of their father's crimes. But they have been remained under investigation and been named in multiple investor lawsuits.

Mark Madoff's lawyer, Martin Flumenbaum, said the 46-year-old had taken his own life Saturday.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/12/11/madoff_son_suicide/feed/ 44 Cindy McCain takes shots at John in pro-LGBT video http://www.salon.com/2010/11/12/cindy_mccain_gay_bullying/ http://www.salon.com/2010/11/12/cindy_mccain_gay_bullying/#comments Fri, 12 Nov 2010 16:25:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2010/11/12/cindy_mccain_gay_bullying Cindy McCain joined her godless Hollyweird friends to film a PSA in support of LGBT youth on behalf of the pro-gay marriage NOH8 Campaign. It's not news that McCain, the wife of cantankerous Sen. John McCain, supports gay marriage. But the lines she delivers in the ad seem to be an indirect shot at a certain Republican lawmaker.

After uncontroversial calls to end bullying (no one likes bullying!), McCain makes a much more politically sensitive argument:

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/11/12/cindy_mccain_gay_bullying/feed/ 72 Clementi’s suicide: Many are to blame http://www.salon.com/2010/10/01/clementi_suicide_roommate_open2010/ http://www.salon.com/2010/10/01/clementi_suicide_roommate_open2010/#comments Fri, 01 Oct 2010 16:09:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/life/broadsheet//2010/10/01/clementi_suicide_roommate_open2010 Rutgers student Tyler Clementi's anguished jump off the George Washington Bridge capped off a week of widely reported youth suicides attributed to anti-gay harassment and bullying. Clementi's roommate and an acquaintance filmed him having sex with another man, without his knowledge or permission, and live-streamed it to hundreds of other people. When he found out, he jumped off the bridge to his death. Three other teenage boys escaped their pain through hanging, another hanging, and a bullet to the head. None of these acts are equivocal: These young men, at least at the depth of the moment, intended to make a final exit from the world. 

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/10/01/clementi_suicide_roommate_open2010/feed/ 115 Prosecutor in Ted Stevens case commits suicide http://www.salon.com/2010/09/27/stevens_prosecutor_suicide/ http://www.salon.com/2010/09/27/stevens_prosecutor_suicide/#comments Mon, 27 Sep 2010 22:39:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2010/09/27/stevens_prosecutor_suicide A Justice Department prosecutor killed himself while under investigation over whether he and other attorneys in the prosecution of Sen. Ted Stevens acted improperly in the case, officials said.

Nicholas A. Marsh, 37, committed suicide on Sunday, two years after being part of the Justice Department team that convicted Stevens on corruption charges that were eventually thrown out. Marsh's suicide was confirmed by his lawyer, Robert Luskin.

"I think Nick loved being a prosecutor and I think he was incredibly fearful that this would prevent him from continuing to work for the Justice Department," Luskin said Monday. "It's incredibly tragic after all this time when we were on the verge of a successful resolution."

The prosecutors in the Stevens case failed to disclose evidence favorable to the defendant as Supreme Court precedent requires. The omission was so serious that Attorney General Eric Holder stepped in and asked a federal judge to throw out Stevens' convictions, which the judge did.

Stevens, a longtime Republican senator from Alaska, lost his Senate seat in an election shortly after his October 2008 conviction. He died in a plane crash last August.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/09/27/stevens_prosecutor_suicide/feed/ 6 Texas man slits throat in court after sentencing http://www.salon.com/2010/08/31/courtroom_throat_slashing/ http://www.salon.com/2010/08/31/courtroom_throat_slashing/#comments Tue, 31 Aug 2010 18:14:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2010/08/31/courtroom_throat_slashing A suburban Dallas man used a razor blade to slit his throat moments after a judge sentenced him to 40 years in prison.

Marcial Anguiano of Duncanville left court Tuesday morning on a stretcher with his neck bandaged. The Dallas Morning News reported that Anguiano was talking as he was carried out.

Defense attorney Juan Sanchez says he saw his client "do something with his right arm" when state District Judge Larry Mitchell sentenced Anguiano for aggravated assault. Anguiano bled on the railing that separates the courtroom audience from the front of the court and on the first row of benches.

No one else was injured.

Sanchez said an object was confiscated from his client before the hearing, but that he wasn't sure what it was.

------

Information from: The Dallas Morning News, http://www.dallasnews.com

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/08/31/courtroom_throat_slashing/feed/ 13 Man jumps to death onto stage at concert http://www.salon.com/2010/08/20/concert_suicide/ http://www.salon.com/2010/08/20/concert_suicide/#comments Fri, 20 Aug 2010 23:31:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2010/08/20/concert_suicide A man jumped at least 20 feet to his death onto the stage of a Northern California concert in front of hundreds of horrified music fans, the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office said Friday.

The Swell Season was playing an outdoor show at the Mountain Winery in Saratoga in front of a crowd of about 1,900 when the jump happened Thursday night.

Sheriff's spokesman Sgt. Rick Sung says authorities are treating the death as a suicide. Sung said the man's identity will not be released.

Sung says the man left a friend in the audience around 10 p.m. and soon appeared on a roof that covers the stage. Witnesses say he jumped off the roof and landed on stage near the band's lead singer, Glen Hansard.

Witnesses said Hansard removed his guitar and walked over to the man's body.

The jumper was pronounced dead by a doctor in attendance who spent an hour trying to revive him.

The band extended its sympathies in a MySpace post Friday.

"Our hearts go out to the victim who decided to take his own life at last night's gig ... and to his friends and family," the statement said.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/08/20/concert_suicide/feed/ 7 ‘Craigslist killer’ commits suicide http://www.salon.com/2010/08/15/us_craigslist_killing/ http://www.salon.com/2010/08/15/us_craigslist_killing/#comments Sun, 15 Aug 2010 17:31:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2010/08/15/us_craigslist_killing Authorities say the former Boston University medical student accused of killing a masseuse he met through Craigslist is dead from an apparent jailhouse suicide in Boston.

Ed Geary, a spokesman for the Suffolk County sheriff's office, says Philip Markoff was declared dead by emergency medical workers at about 10:15 Sunday morning. The body was found in the Nashua Street Jail.

Geary says no additional information is immediately available, and an investigation has begun.

Markoff's trial was expected to take place in March.

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