Free Republic

RCMP is reporting that murder suspect Ryan Jenkins, suspected in the murder of Playboy model Jasmine Fiore, has been found dead...

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - When Adrian Wilhelm learned that his son committed suicide just four days into his deployment in Iraq, he knew right away that the facts didn't add up. His son, 19-year-old Pvt. Keiffer Wilhelm, had been excited and upbeat just weeks earlier as he prepared to ship overseas. He was planning to buy a new car. He was exercising diligently, shedding at least 20 pounds in time for boot camp. Then, suddenly, he was dead. Now his family is struggling to process the stunning news that four of Wilhelm's fellow soldiers stand accused of abusing him and...

An inmate convicted of the 1970 murders of a Santa Cruz County eye surgeon, his family and his secretary has committed suicide, a prison official said today. John Linley Frazier, 62, killed himself Thursday while serving a life sentence at Mule Creek State Prison in Ione (Amador County), said prison spokeswoman Michelle Hamilton.

PHILADELPHIA — The Army plans to require that all 1.1 million of its soldiers take intensive training in emotional resiliency, military officials say. The training, the first of its kind in the military, is meant to improve performance in combat and head off the mental health problems, including depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and suicide, that plague about one-fifth of troops returning from Afghanistan and Iraq. Active-duty soldiers, reservists and members of the National Guard will receive the training, which will also be available to their family members and to civilian employees. The new program is to be introduced at two...

DELANO, Calif.—Authorities say an inmate convicted of killing four California Highway Patrol officers died over the weekend at Kern Valley State Prison in an apparent suicide. Sixty-seven-year-old Bobby Augusta Davis was pronounced dead early Sunday morning after correctional officers found him unresponsive in his maximum-security single cell. Davis was serving four consecutive life sentences for the April 6, 1970 murders of George Alleyn, Walt Frago, Roger Gore and James Pence. The "Newhall Incident" had been the deadliest for California law enforcement until the fatal shooting of four Oakland police officers in March. Davis originally received the death penalty, but his...

"On June 30th Major Chris Galloway took his own life. He had come back from Afghanistan in April, and things just weren’t the same we’re told." "Why’d we lose him? Who the hell knows. There is no rational reason for doing such a thing, so using reason to figure it out is both impossible and ineffectual. It accomplishes nothing. In the end, he’s still gone. For the sake of his wife, his kids, and for ourselves it’s better to remember him for who he was. Given that he was so much to so many, there’s a lot to think about....

The comment thread about the loss of one of Flopping Aces' own, Maj. Chris Galloway, has all of us doing some head scratching as to what we can do as individuals. This sense of helplessness, *after* the loss, is simply not acceptable. Wordsmith did provide some extra insight in his remembrance of Chris with a YouTube link, but I felt that Major General Mark Graham - Commander, Division West and Fort Carson, Colo - and his suicide prevention program needs to be broadened with a grassroots movement. Below is the ACE card given to military members.. ASK, CARE and ESCORT....

Life and the internet are strange strange things. I've been trading emails and posts etc with Chris for years now. It wasn't at all uncommon for his duties, deployments, and family to make those virtual conversations sporadic from time to time. Well, Chris won't be returning emails anymore. He passed away suddenly on June 30, 2009. Last Fall he and his wife Shannon had a baby girl, Lilly. Chris was so happy. We teased him about how awful it is to step on Barbie Doll high heels in the middle of the night, and he bragged about how his...

A motorcyclist was killed Monday in a collision with a motor home on Highway 101’s Conejo Grade after he slowed rapidly in front of the recreational vehicle in an apparent road-rage incident, authorities said. The motorcyclist, a 57-year-old Ventura man, was killed about 12:22 p.m. on southbound Highway 101 near Camarillo Springs Road when he collided with a roughly 30-foot motor home driven by Michael Antoine, 68, of Thousand Oaks, said Officer Terry Uhrich of the California Highway Patrol’s Moorpark office. The motorcyclist and Antoine were both traveling about 55 mph when the collision occurred in the right lane, authorities...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmmiwHw8bNg Health policy expert and former Lt. Governor of New York State, Betsy McCaughey has read the bill cover to cover, and wants to get the word out Page 425: "Counseling sessions" mandated for elderly to pressure them to DIE. And you CANNOT keep your present health plan, so when the elderly run out of money, they are killed. That's where the "savings" in the Plan comes from

LEBANON, Ohio (Map, News) – A man from Clermont County’s Union Township, who admitted to shooting and killing a teenager with a shotgun who refused to heed his warnings to stay off his lawn, has committed suicide in an Ohio prison. The 15-year-old victim, Larry Mugrage Jr. was shot by 69-year-old Charles Martin in March 2006. He was indicted for Aggravated Murder, but the jury in the Clermont County Common Pleas Court found him guilty on a lesser charge of murder. He had originally pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, but jurors rejected that argument. Martin, who received a...

FORT LEONARD WOOD, Mo. (Aug. 7, 2009) — Suicides, divorces, drunk driving crashes, financial problems and domestic violence aren’t supposed to be a part of military life, but they’ve become a major problem for the military after nearly eight years of the War on Terror since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In response, Fort Leonard Wood is hosting a “Human Dimension Forum” today in which top military officials, including former Gulf War prisoner of war Rhonda Comum, now a one-star general in charge of mental health-related issues for the Army at the Pentagon, are meeting with local installation leaders and civilian...

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — Six officers fired at least 59 shots in less than a minute, killing a man who had roamed his Tennessee neighborhood with a rifle and was looking to commit "suicide by cop," authorities said Tuesday. Chattanooga police Chief Freeman Cooper told radio station WGOW on Tuesday that his officers acted properly in the face of threats by 32-year-old Alonzo Heyward. "They only fired when they were presented with a threat," he said. A police dashboard camera with audio showed that all the shots were fired in three volleys within 30 seconds, Cooper said. The gunfire interrupted as...

Tuesday August 4, 2009 "Safe Sex" with Condoms Bad for Mental Health, Psych Researcher Finds "Emotional immaturity" and depression more prevalent among condom-users By Hilary WhitePAISLEY, Scotland, August 4, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Research from Scotland finding that heterosexual sex without using condoms is more likely to make people happy than "safe sex" with condoms, has stirred controversy among "sexual health" campaigners. The lead researcher wrote of the survey respondents, "The more often they have sex without condoms, the better their mental health."In the study, titled, "Condom Use for Penile-Vaginal Intercourse is Associated with Immature Psychological Defense Mechanisms," Professor Stuart...

In case you haven't heard, President Obama is a member of a secret Kenyan terrorist cell who is scheming to dispatch waves of government bureaucrats to tell grandmas and grandpas how to off themselves. Such is the intellectual weight of a segment of the Republican Party these days. Or as one commentator recently put it, the GOP has decided "to double down on crazy." We're talking about two controversies here, one involving the so-called birther movement, which questions the citizenship of the president; the other involving mandatory "end-of-life" counseling that's supposedly part of the president's health care plan. The controversies...

We knew it would come to this when Oregon insisted on passing its assisted-suicide laws. It doesn’t take much for assisted suicide to go from a humane option to a cost-saving device, especially when the state pays for the medical care. One patient in Oregon got a letter that made this all too clear, when in the same letter rejecting her request for life-extending chemotherapy, Oregon offered her “physician-aid-in-dying”. In other words, Oregon offered their customer a heapin’ helping of death: http://www.katu.com/news/26119539.html The doctor interviewed by the news station seems offended at the suggestion that Oregon would decide to save...

August 2, 2009 Facebook and MySpace drive teens to suicide, says Vincent Nichols Archbishop Nichols said collapse of internet relationships was a key factor in suicides among the young Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspndent The spiritual leader of the four million Roman Catholics in England and Wales has damned social network sites, accusing them of undermining community life and leading teenagers to suicide. Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols said MySpace and Facebook led young people to seek "transient" friendships, with quantity becoming more important than quality. MySpace is owned by News Corp, parent company of The Times. He said a key...

A Fort Richardson soldier from Ohio was found dead in his Anchorage home. Army officials are investigating the death of Anthony S. Schmachtenberger, a 30-year-old staff sergeant. The Anchorage Daily News reports the body was discovered Wednesday afternoon by two soldiers sent to find Schmachtenberger when he did not show up for work.

JERSEY CITY -- Jack Shaw, a Jersey City political consultant who was among 44 people charged in a federal corruption probe, has died. Two officials with knowledge of the investigation said Shaw was found at home with several bottles of pills nearby. One of the officials said Shaw, 61, had an unspecified medical condition, and authorities are not jumping to conclusions about the cause of his death.

Jack Shaw Had Been Accused Of Taking $10,000 In Bribes JERSEY CITY, N.J. (AP) ― Authorities say a political consultant who was one of 44 people arrested in last week's massive New Jersey political corruption scandal has been found dead in his Jersey City apartment. Hudson County Prosecutor Edward DeFazio says a relative found the body of 61-year-old Jack Shaw and called police shortly after 5 p.m. Tuesday. Federal prosecutors had accused Shaw of taking $10,000 in bribes for himself from a government informant and proposing that the cooperating witness make a $10,000 campaign contribution to an unnamed Jersey City...

SHARONVILLE, Ohio — Police say a woman rented a handgun at an Ohio indoor shooting range, got some instructions on how to use it and then fatally shot herself. Police in the Cincinnati suburb of Sharonville say they believe Ann Fukuyama committed suicide Sunday at Target World, a public range that sells and rents guns and has a dozen 25-yard target shooting lanes. They say the 46-year-old Cincinnati resident died at a local hospital.

Millions of students will graduate in China this year, but with up to a third unable to get a job the number of suicides is soaring. July was supposed to have marked the start of Liu Wei's new life. With more than six million other students across China, the 21-year-old was due to graduate from college this month. Miss Liu, the daughter of poor farmers, a degree was to be her passport out of a life of poverty, a way to escape working in the fields, or toiling as a humble migrant worker in a far-off factory in southern China....

If you haven’t, read Erick’s post about an Oregon public health plan (”public option”) administrator responding to a cancer patient’s request for subsidized chemotherapy with a denial of treatment but an offer to fund a physician-assisted suicide. Now, know this: over the course of this decade, the state of Oregon has put in place a formal procedure for rationing care to patients whose health coverage is subsidized by government (i.e., who are enrolled in some form of the state’s “public option”). To date, they are the only government in the world to have formally done this, though many — from...

Suicidal Man Shot And Killed By Police Officer Posted: Jul 23, 2009 8:42 AM PDT An officer-involved shooting in Linda Vista leaves one man dead. It happened in the 1900 block of Westinghouse Street just after 9:00 p.m. Wednesday. Police responded to a call by a man claiming he was suicidal and was armed with a knife and a gun. When police arrived, they found 32-year-old David Vongpramai in the front yard holding a knife. The officers tried to get him to drop the knife, but he took off. "During the pursuit, the officers were telling him to drop the...

<p>First, Judith Elizabeth Williams took her two cats to the shelter. Then she brought the family dog to the veterinarian, had it euthanized, and wrote a suicide note.</p> <p>Then, investigators say, the 51-year-old Walnut Creek woman got in the car with her 16-year-old son, Adam Findley Williams, and drove up Mount Diablo. Near the top of the 3,849-foot peak, at a lookout with panoramic views of the Bay Area, she shot the teenager to death with a .357 handgun and turned the gun on herself, authorities said Wednesday.</p>

This time, the Dems are losing touchPosted: Wednesday, Jul. 22, 2009 It was interesting to watch the Republican Party lose touch with America. You had a party led by conservative Southerners who neither understood nor sympathized with moderates or representatives from swing districts. They brought in pollsters to their party conferences to persuade their members that the country was fervently behind them. They were supported by their interest groups and cheered on by their activists and the partisan press. They spent federal money in an effort to buy support but ended up disgusting the country. Led by insular liberals It's...

14 yers ago today, on July 20, 1993, the body of Vincent Walker Foster, Jr. was found in a Virginia park, next to a civil war cannon, with an unidentified revolver lodged in the right hand. Vincent Foster died of a small-caliber gunshot wound to his head. Vince Foster was not only deputy White House counsel but also the personal attorney to Bill and Hillary Clinton. On the night of Foster’s death, top Clinton aides made a frantic effort to enter and remove documents from his West Wing office. In the days that followed, federal investigators were stymied in their...

The odious term in the Mandatory End of Life Counseling section of the Health Care bill is 'palliative care'. 7 term 'advance care planning consultation' means a con 8 sultation between the individual and a practitioner de 9 scribed in paragraph (2) regarding advance care planning, 10 if, subject to paragraph (3), the individual involved has 11 not had such a consultation within the last 5 years. Such 12 consultation shall include the following: 4 An explanation by the practitioner of the 5 continuum of end-of-life services and supports avail 6 able, including --> palliative care <-- and hospice, and...

Captured on camera: The moment suicide bomber blew himself up in luxury Indonesian hotel killing eight DAVID WILLIAMS 17th July 2009 Terror group Jemmiah Islamiah blamed for first terror attack in Indonesia in four years CCTV images emerge of one of bombers planting explosive device inside hotel These are the last seconds in the life of one of the two suicide bombers today brought death and carnage to two luxury hotels in the Indonesian capital Jakarta. Captured on CCTV in the reception of the five-star Ritz Carlton hotel, the man in a baseball cap pulls a small wheelie-bag behind him...

Last week the Toronto Star ran a disturbing front page headlined story about suicides in the Canadian military, and cited evidence that the stress of overseas missions may result in criminal acts by returned veterans. The renewed concern about suicide and stress disorder among the military has intensified since Maj. Michelle Mendes, a fast-tracked and respected intelligence officer, committed suicide shortly after arriving in Afghanistan in April. Now research is underway among veterans, dating back to the Korean war and peacekeeping, to see if there's a pattern of what they went through that may have affected their later lives. Soldiers...

One of Britain's most respected conductors, Sir Edward Downes, and his wife, Joan, a choreographer and TV producer, have died at an assisted suicide clinic in Switzerland, their family said today.Downes, 85, was almost blind when he and his 74-year-old wife, who had become his full-time carer, travelled to Switzerland to end their lives, a family statement released to the BBC said.Born in Birmingham, Downes had a long and distinguished career, including conducting the first performance at the Sydney Opera House. He worked with the BBC Philharmonic and the Royal Opera House in London.The statement from the couple's son and...

A taxi driver has decapitated himself in his black cab in what appears to have been a gruesome suicide. Police are treating the man's death as "non-suspicious" The man, believed to be in his 30s, died in Southwark, southeast London, on Friday. His body was found by police slumped in the car. Police are treating the driver's death as suicide and are trying to trace his next of kin. Officers were called at 12.40am to the horrific scene in Great Suffolk Street, where the car had crashed into a pillar. A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said: "Officers attended and...

(07-10) 17:00 PDT OAKLAND -- A man who lay down on the tracks in front of an Amtrak train in Oakland had limbs severed but was taken from the scene alive this afternoon, authorities said. Amtrak spokeswoman Vernae Graham said the eastbound Capitol Corridor train No. 536 was leaving Jack London Square when it struck the man at Webster Street at 3:37 p.m. The man lost some limbs and was hospitalized in critical condition, police said. Further details were not available, and the man's name has not been released.

When Michael Jackson died in late June, Patricia Becht's younger children asked her about his ranch, Neverland. It was a place for kids to go, she told them, and it was similar to heaven. Going to such a place, she said, would be part of their suicide plan. Becht, of South St. Paul, was charged Friday with first-degree premeditated murder of her 10-year-old son and attempted first-degree murder of her 11-year-old daughter, who is recovering at a metro hospital. Becht gave them and herself an overdose of anti-psychotic medication, court documents say. She had planned her acts so meticulously that...

From Homeroom to Eternity by: Malcolm A. Kline, July 08, 2009 A new study by a trio of professors from the University of Minnesota found that 15 percent of teens surveyed expected to die young. Given what schools are teaching, that may not be too surprising. Iris Wagman Borowsky, Marjorie Ireland and Michael D. Resnick looked at data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health from 1995, 1996 and 2001-2002. They found that “At time 1, 14.7 % of 20,594 respondents reported at least a 50/50 chance that they would not live to age 35.” “In adjusted models, illicit...

Three people are dead after an apparent double murder-suicide in Preston County. Investigators say 50-year-old Charles Wise Junior, 51-year-old Kathy Wise, and 71-year-old Imogene Shaffer were found dead early Tuesday at a house on Schumaker Road. Gunshot wounds were found on all of the bodies, but police are waiting on autopsy results. Wise, Junior was inside the house, while the women were found outside. He was married to Wise, while Shaffer was her mother. Police think Wise, Junior killed the women before killing himself. A note was found somewhere other than the house, which leading police to investigate it as...

Muslim suicides surpassed by Protestant and Jewish suicides Protestants and Jews offer radical Muslims lessons of authentic suicide By Julio SeveroA suicide-bomber, who kills many people by exploding cars in an effort to draw attention, is also called a terrorist suicide. Radical Islam holds the monopoly of that strange suicide that, instead of murdering and destroying exclusively the author and other similar terrorists, kills the innocent.Muslim terrorists prefer to target Jews and “Christians”. Even when a bomb blows up and kills some Muslims, the goal is eventually to hit the US and Israel. But if they were authentic suicides, they...

The bullying seemed inescapable. His family and friends say it followed Iain Steele from junior high to high school -- from hallways, where one tormentor shoved him into lockers, to cyberspace, where another posted a video on Facebook making fun of his taste for heavy metal music. "At one point, [a bully] had told [Iain] he wished he would kill himself," said Matt Sikora, Iain's close friend. Iain's parents know their son had other problems, but they believe the harassment contributed to a deepening depression that hospitalized the 15-year-old twice this year. On June 3, while his classmates were taking...

Former Titans and Ravens QB Steve "Air" McNair was found dead last night in downtown Nashville. He was shot in the head. A female was also shot and killed.

If Mormons’ “HBO moment” was not bad enough, it seems that Hollywood, Broadway and the publishing world aren't likely to give up on portrayals of Latter-day Saints on screen, on stage and in books any time soon. Such Mormon portrayals, often stereotypical, have been showing up since the 1800s. For example, When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle introduced detective Sherlock Holmes in the story, “A Study in Scarlet.” It was set against the backdrop of anti-Mormon inaccuracies about Latter-day Saints and their beliefs popular in England at the time. On a later visit to Utah he apologized for the inaccuracies. Here...

It is hard to say whether a person is better off stopping smoking and lessening their chances of a heart attack or killing themselves. Some of the anti-smoking drugs from Pfizer (PFE) and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) can have terrible side effects. The drugs are Chantix, made by Pfizer, and Zyban, made by GlaxoSmithKline. Inexplicably, the FDA will allow the treatments to stay on the market. The New York Times reports that “Federal drug regulators warned Wednesday that patients taking two popular drugs to stop smoking should be watched closely for signs of serious mental illness, as reports mount of suicides among...

Woman Commits Suicide to Avoid Eviction Updated: Wednesday, 01 Jul 2009, 5:12 PM EDT Published : Wednesday, 01 Jul 2009, 5:11 PM EDT By LILY FU (MYFOX NATIONAL) - A Florida woman tragically committed suicide on the day she was getting evicted from her home. Heather Newnam, 28, of Tamarac, Fla., shot herself when a real estate agent, a locksmith and movers showed up at her home on Monday after she failed to pay her rent. She told them she had to secure the dogs first, and then a shot was fired, according to the Broward Sheriff's Office . The...

Grieving Jackson Fans 'Commit Suicide' SkyNews © Sky News 2009 The man behind the world's biggest online Michael Jackson fan club has said heartbroken followers of the star have committed suicide because of his death. Skip related content Related photos / videos Grieving Jackson Fans 'Commit Suicide' Enlarge photo Gary Taylor, president and owner of MJJcommunity.com, said he understood the tragedies had mostly taken place outside of the UK but he believed one may have been British.

The man behind the world's biggest online Michael Jackson fan club has said heartbroken followers of the star have committed suicide because of his death. Gary Taylor, president and owner of MJJcommunity.com, said he understood the tragedies had mostly taken place outside of the UK but he believed one may have been British.

Teenager jumps to her death from Eiffel Tower, crashing onto roof of packed restaurant 180ft below IAN SPARKS 27th June 2009 A teenage tourist has leapt to her death from the Eiffel Tower in Paris and crashed onto the roof of a packed restaurant 180ft below. The 18-year-old Brazilian girl jumped from a second-storey tier as her brother frantically tried to stop her. Diners on the tower's 170ft-high first floor then heard her smash into the plastic roof of the restaurant, believed to be Altitude 95, five feet above their heads. Altitude 95, on the first tier of the Eiffel...

DELRAY BEACH, Fla. — Authorities say a man fatally shot himself after renting a gun at a Delray Beach shooting range. Employees found the man, who has not been identified, dead of a single gunshot wound Tuesday afternoon at Delray Shooting Center.

As Denver's newsweekly Westword asked in a May 2009 story, "Where would you take a $100,000 check that is also a suicide note, to the cops or to the bank?" In July 2008, John Francis Beech, a retired executive in Denver, sent a check for $100,000 to a local charity, postdated to Aug. 1, accompanied by a sealed envelope reading "wait until you hear from coroner" and "everything is OK." The charity's director, Annie Green, opened the envelope anyway on July 21, to find Beech's Last Will and Testament, leaving his entire estate to Green's organization for children with developmental...

John "J.D." Wood complained after a teacher, who brought a loaded gun to school, kept her job at Heathrow Elementary. SANFORD - Less than two months before he killed himself and his family, a Heathrow man proudly described himself as a "card carrying concealed weapons holder" in an email to Seminole County's schools chief. John "J.D." Wood, who was found dead along his wife and two children Monday, complained in an April email to Seminole School Superintendent Bill Vogel about a decision to keep a teacher who brought a gun to Heathrow Elementary School in 2007. "I believe we as...

I wish Sarah Palin would just go away. During the 2008 presidential campaign, I wrote about the unfair personal treatment to which the political press corps subjected Palin and her children. Now I just want her to stop milking her role as GOP martyr. Palin should stick to her day job -- by which I mean, governing Alaska, not being fodder for talk-show humor. Both parties have their umbrage industries -- thanks to true believers, who love nothing better than to see themselves as victims of a perceived double standard. Last week, comedian David Letterman's two off-color jokes about a...

Seminole County deputy sheriffs believe three people were murdered and a fourth committed suicide inside a home in the upscale Heathrow community near Lake Mary. A cleaning lady entered the home in the 1200 block of Trentwood Court in the gated development and spotted one body, Sheriff's Capt. Dennis Lemma said. She called authorities and when deputies arrived they found the other three bodies, he said. At least one of the victims is a child, he said.