REAL DEATHS CAPTURED ON FILM

Bud Dwyer

Robert Budd Dwyer (November 21, 1939 -- January 22, 1987) was an American politician in the state of Pennsylvania. He served from 1971 to 1981 as a member of the Pennsylvania State Senate representing the state's 50th district. He served as the 30th Treasurer of Pennsylvania from 1981 to 1987.

In the early 1980s, Pennsylvania discovered its state workers had overpaid federal taxes due to errors in state withholding. Many accounting firms competed for a multimillion-dollar contract to determine compensation to each employee. In 1986, Dwyer was convicted of receiving a bribe from a California firm trying to gain the contract. Throughout his trial and after his conviction, he maintained that he was innocent of the charge and that he had been framed.

On the morning of January 22, 1987, he committed suicide with a gun during a televised press conference at his office in Harrisburg, the state capital.



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Michael Marin

Michael Marin - a millionaire convicted of burning down his $3.5million mansion for insurance money - seemingly poisoned himself in court.

As the guilty verdict was read out, Michael Marin closed his eyes and held his head in his hands before appearing to slip something into his mouth.  Minutes later, the 53-year-old collapsed to the floor in convulsions and died.  The shocking scenes were caught on camera in Maricopa County Superior Court in Arizona, where Marin had been on trial since May.

The father-of-four torched his mansion in Phoenix on July 5, 2009, because, prosecutors claimed, he could no longer afford the mortgage.  Fire Department investigators concluded that the blaze was started deliberately after finding several points of origin throughout the sprawling 6,600 sq ft home, which boasted four garages.

Marin was found outside the burning property after climbing from a second floor bedroom using a rope ladder and wearing scuba diving gear, according to Fox News.  Marin faced 16 years in prison as the charge of committing arson in an occupied structure holds the same sentence as second-degree murder in Arizona.

Footage from the courtroom yesterday shows a shocked Marin covering his face with his hands before appearing to place something into his mouth.  The grandfather-of-two appears to swallow a number of times before taking a drink from the water bottle on the table in front of him.

Minutes later he appears to be struggling to breathe before collapsing to the ground as others in the court rush over to help.  Marin was taken to a hospital in Arizona where he was pronounced dead.

Toxicology tests will be carried out on the former Wall Street trader's body and the water bottle he drank from.  MCSO spokesman Jeff Sprong told Fox: "Obviously if you watch the video it looks like he does put something in his mouth.  "We cannot verify that at this point and we're not going to be able to until the toxicology report comes back.

"We will obviously contact family to see if this is something he hinted at doing, maybe he left a note you know, it just needs to be thoroughly investigated then hopefully we'll find out why he did it and what he did."


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Inejiro Asanuma

Inejiro Asanuma (浅沼 稲次郎 Asanuma Inejirō, December 27, 1898 – October 12, 1960) was a Japanese politician, and head of the Japanese Socialist Party. Asanuma was noted for speaking publicly about Socialism and economic and cultural opportunities. His support of the Chinese Communist Party was criticized both from the right and by his colleagues.
Asanuma was assassinated by 17-year-old Otoya Yamaguchi, an extreme rightist, at a televised rally for the coming Lower-house election. Yamaguchi rushed and fatally stabbed Asanuma, and was subdued moments later. The entire incident was captured on camera.


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Franz Reichelt

Franz Reichelt wearing his parachute suit
Pic by Yomangani

Franz Reichelt, also known as Frantz Reichelt or François Reichelt (1879 – February 4, 1912), was an Austrian-born French tailor, inventor and parachuting pioneer, now sometimes referred to as the Flying Tailor, who is remembered for his accidental death by jumping from the Eiffel Tower while testing a wearable parachute of his own design. Reichelt had become fixated on developing a suit for aviators that would convert into a parachute and allow them to survive a fall should they be forced to leave their aircraft. Initial experiments conducted with dummies dropped from the fifth floor of his apartment building had been successful, but he was unable to replicate those early successes with any of his subsequent designs.

Believing that the lack of a suitably high test platform was partially to blame for his failures, Reichelt repeatedly petitioned the Parisian Prefecture of Police for permission to conduct a test from the Eiffel Tower. He was finally granted permission in early 1912, but when he arrived at the tower on February 4 he made it clear that he intended to jump himself rather than conduct an experiment with dummies. Despite attempts by his friends and spectators to dissuade him, he jumped from the first platform of the tower wearing his invention. The parachute failed to deploy and he crashed into the icy ground at the foot of the tower. Although it was clear that the fall had killed him, he was taken to a nearby hospital where he was officially pronounced dead. The next day, newspapers were full of the story of the reckless inventor and his fatal jump – many included pictures of the fall taken by press photographers who had gathered to witness Reichelt's experiment – and a film documenting the jump appeared in newsreels.

Eiffel Tower Jump
Reichelt announced to the press in early February 1912 that he had finally received permission and would shortly conduct an experiment from the Eiffel Tower to prove the value of his invention.

On Sunday, February 4, at 7 am, he arrived at the tower by car with two friends. He was already wearing his parachute suit. The news footage of his jump shows him modelling his invention in its folded form, which Le Gaulois described as "... only a little more voluminous than ordinary clothing ..." ("... un peu plus volumineuse qu’un vêtement ordinaire ..."). The suit did not restrict the wearer's movements when the parachute was packed, and Le Petit Parisien described the method of deploying the parachute as being as simple as extending the arms out to form a cross with the body. Once extended, the outfit resembled "a sort of cloak fitted with a vast hood of silk" ("une sorte de manteau, muni d'un très vaste capuchon de soie") according to Le Temps.  L'Action Française reported that Reichelt stated the surface area of the final design to be 30 square metres (320 sq ft) with a canopy height of 5 metres (16 ft), while Le Figaro judged the surface area might have reached 32 square metres (340 sq ft). La Croix claimed that the suit may have weighed as little as 9 kilograms (20 lb).  The weather was cold, with temperatures below 0 °C (32 °F), and there was a stiff breeze blowing across the Champ de Mars.

Several newspapers carried pictures of
Reichelt's fatal fall on their front pages on
February 5. Le Petit Parisien had this montage

From his arrival at the tower, however, Reichelt made it clear that he intended to jump himself. According to a later interview with one of the friends who accompanied him up the tower, this was a surprise to everybody, as Reichelt had concealed his intention until the last moment. His friends tried to persuade him to use dummies in the experiment, assuring him that he would have other opportunities to make the jump himself. When this failed to make an impression on him, they pointed to the strength of the wind and said he should call off the test on safety grounds, or at least delay until the wind dropped. They were unable to shake his resolve; seemingly undeterred by the failure of his previous tests, he told journalists from Le Petit Journal that he was totally convinced that his apparatus would work, and work well. When questioned as to whether he planned to take any additional precautions, such as using a safety rope, he replied that he would not, since he intended to trust his life entirely to his parachute:

I want to try the experiment myself and without trickery, as I intend to prove the worth of my invention. (Je veux tenter l’expérience moi-même et sans chiqué [sic], car je tiens à bien prouver la valeur de mon invention.)

 M. Hervieu, who was present to witness the demonstration, also attempted to dissuade him from making the jump. He was concerned that the parachute needed longer to fully open than the few seconds the drop from the first platform would allow, and he also presented other technical objections to which Reichelt could not provide a satisfactory response. Reichelt finally replied that:

You are going to see how my seventy-two kilos and my parachute will give your arguments the most decisive of denials. (Vous allez voir comment mes soixante-douze kilos et mon parachute vont donner à vos arguments le plus décisif des démentis.)

 After adjusting his apparatus with the assistance of his friends and checking the wind direction by throwing a piece of paper taken from a small book, he placed one foot on the guardrail, hesitated for about forty seconds, then leapt outwards. According to Le Figaro, he was calm and smiling just before he jumped. His parachute, which had seemed to be only half-open, folded around him almost immediately and he plummeted for a few seconds before crashing into the frozen soil at the foot of the tower. His canopy appeared to billow out at the last moment, but by that time it was too late for it to deploy fully or to break his fall.

Le Petit Parisien reported that his right leg and arm were crushed, his skull and spine broken, and that he was bleeding from his mouth, nose and ears. Le Figaro noted that his eyes were wide open, dilated with terror. He was already dead by the time the onlookers rushed to his body, but he was taken to the Necker hospital where he was officially pronounced dead, and then on to a police station in the rue Amelie before being returned to his home in rue Gaillon.


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Francesco Scoglio

Francesco "Franco" Scoglio (2 May 1941 – 3 October 2005) was an Italian football manager who coached at both national and international level.

Scoglio, who was nicknamed the 'Professor' for comments such as "There are 21 ways to take a corner kick",  became a very popular TV commenter on football shows in Italy, and even worked for Al Jazeera as the technical expert reporting on the Italian league.

Franco Scoglio died of a heart attack at 64 years of age while on the air during a program on the Genoan private TV station Primocanale, after a heated discussion over the phone with Genoa chairman Enrico Preziosi. He passed out in his seat while Preziosi continued with his call.

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Versailles Wedding Hall Disaster

The Versailles wedding hall (Hebrew: אולמי ורסאי‎), located in Talpiot, Jerusalem, is the site of the worst civil disaster in Israel's history. At 22:43 on May 24, 2001, during the wedding of Keren and Asaf Dror, a large portion of the third floor of the four-story building collapsed. As a result, 23 people fell to their deaths and 380 were injured. The disaster shocked the Israeli public not only because it was one of the worst building disasters in the country's history, but because the event was documented on a camcorder and broadcast on local and international television

An investigation of the event concluded that the event was not caused by a terrorist attack. This was based on the testimony provided by many of the wedding guests present in the building during the disaster. Witnesses reported seeing a dangerous sag in the wedding floor a short time before the collapse. An initial inquiry blamed the collapse on the Pal-Kal method of constructing light-weight coffered concrete floor systems. Further review pointed to a combination of two alternate causes.

Initially, the side of the building that failed was designed to be a two story structure, while the other side was designed to be three stories. Late in the construction process, it was decided that both sides of the building should be equal heights, and a third story was added to the shorter side. Unfortunately, the live load due to occupancy is typically much greater than the design load for a roof. As a result, the structure supporting the new third story was subjected to much greater loading than was originally anticipated. The effect of this error was somewhat mitigated by the construction of partitions on the floor below, which helped redistribute the excess load well such that no damage was incurred.

A few weeks before the collapse, the wedding hall owners decided to remove the partitions. With the load path eliminated, the floor above began to deflect (or sag) several inches. Generally, engineers design a structure to fail in a controlled, ductile manner so that occupants have ample warning that a collapse is imminent and can evacuate. However, the owners did not recognize this and viewed the sagging floor primarily as a cosmetic problem. Their solution was to level the floor with additional grout and fill. Unfortunately, their approach not only failed to provide additional structural capacity, it also inadvertently introduced a new and significant dead load at the weakened area.
During the wedding event in 2001, this significantly overstressed floor section failed, resulting in the catastrophe. The engineer Eli Ron, inventor of the Pal-Kal method of construction, was arrested and subsequently indicted in August 2002 on the charge of manslaughter. Notably, Ron had not engaged in any part of the design or construction, but had sold proprietary elements necessary for construction that were installed in a deficient manner.

Versailles Law
Following the disaster, the "Versailles Law" was passed by the Parliament of Israel. This law established a special committee responsible for treating the people injured in the disaster. Moreover, an official investigation committee was established under the leadership of the former judge Vardimos Zeiler, who was in charge of the security of public places and buildings.

In October 2004, the three owners of Versailles wedding hall—Avraham Adi, Uri Nisim, and Efraim Adiv—were convicted of causing death by negligence and causing damage by negligence.

The wedding hall was subsequently demolished, and as of 2007 the site remained unoccupied and sealed. Across the street from the site is a memorial garden with names of victims inscribed on a wall.

In May 2007, Eli Ron and three other engineers involved in the building's construction were sentenced to prison by the Jerusalem District Court. Eli Ron received a four year sentence, Shimon Kaufman and Dan Sheffer 22 months, and Uri Pessah six months. In December 2006, the court had convicted all three men of causing death by negligence and sabotage by negligence.


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Alexander I of Yugoslavia

Alexander I  (16 December 1888 [O.S. 4 December] – 9 October 1934) was the first king of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1929–34) as well as the last king of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (1921–29).

As a result of the previous deaths of three family members on a Tuesday, Alexander refused to undertake any public functions on that day of the week. On Tuesday 9 October 1934, however, he had no choice, as he was arriving in Marseilles to start a state visit to the Third French Republic, to strengthen the two countries' alliance in the Little Entente. While Alexander was being driven in a car through the streets along with French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou, a gunman, Vlado Chernozemski, stepped from the street and shot the King and the chauffeur. Barthou was accidentally shot by a French policeman and died later.

It was one of the first assassinations captured on film; the shooting occurred straight in front of the cameraman, who was only feet away at the time. The cameraman captured not merely the assassination but the immediate aftermath; the body of the chauffeur (who had been killed instantly) became jammed against the brakes of the car, allowing the cameraman to continue filming from within inches of the King for a number of minutes afterwards.

The assassin, Vlado Chernozemski, was a Bulgarian, member of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) Macedonian: Внатрешна македонска револуционерна организација (BMRO) and an experienced marksman. Immediately after assassinating King Alexander, he was cut down by the sword of a mounted French policeman, and then beaten by the crowd. By the time he was removed from the scene, he was already dead. The IMRO was a political organization that fought for secession of Vardar Macedonia from Yugoslavia. The leader of the organization in that time was Ivan (Vancho) Mihailov.  According to the UKTV History program Infamous Assassinations-King Alexander, IMRO worked in alliance with the Croatian Ustaše group led by Ante Pavelić, under the secret sponsorship of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.

The film record of Alexander I's assassination remains one of the most notable pieces of newsreel in existence, alongside the film of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia's coronation, the funerals of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom and Emperor Franz Josef of Austria, and the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

King Alexander I was buried in the Memorial Church of St. George, which had been built by his father. The Holy See gave special permission to bishops Aloysius Stepinac, Antun Akšamović, Dionisije Njaradi and Gregorij Rožman to attend the funeral in an Orthodox church.  As his son Peter II was still a minor, Alexander's first cousin Prince Pavle Karadjordjevic took the regency of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.

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Sknyliv Airshow Disaster

The Sknyliv airshow disaster occurred on 
July 27, 2002, when a Ukrainian Air Force Sukhoi Su-27 of the Ukrainian Falcons crashed during an aerobatics presentation at Sknyliv airfield near Lviv, Ukraine. 77 people were killed and 543 injured, 100 of whom were hospitalised. It was the second major accident involving the Ukrainian military in less than a year, following the alleged downing of Siberia Airlines Flight 1812 in October 2001, and is the worst airshow accident in history.

Over 10,000 spectators attended the airshow, staged to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Ukrainian Air Force's 14th Air Corps.  At 12:52pm, the Su-27 aircraft – flown by two experienced pilots – entered a rolling maneuver with a downward trajectory at low altitude; having rolled upright once more the aircraft was still descending rapidly and the left wing dropped shortly before the aircraft hit the ground, at which point the crew initiated ejection. The aircraft flattened out initially, skidding over the ground towards stationary aircraft, striking a glancing blow against the nose of an Il-76 transport aircraft before beginning to explode and cartwheel into the crowd of spectators. Both pilots survived with minor injuries from the ejection and landed just a few feet away from the transport aircraft.

77 onlookers were killed, including 19 children (though initial reports put the number of dead at 85). Another 100 were hospitalized for head injuries, burns, and bone fractures. Other injuries were less severe and did not require hospitalization: a total of 543 people were injured during the event.

Following the disaster, the pilots stated that the flightmap they had received differed from the actual layout. On the flight data recorder, one pilot asks, "And where are our spectators?"  Others have suggested that the pilots were slow to react to automated warnings issued by the flight computer.

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Guido Salvador Carabajo-Jara

Guido Salvador Carabajo-Jara was crossing a busy street near his home in Queens when he was hit by an SUV, then impaled by a steel plate on the undercarriage of a van. The body wasn't discovered until the second driver arrived in Brooklyn - almost 20 miles and about an hour later.

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President Nicolae Ceaușescu and Wife Elena' Execution

Nicolae Ceaușescu
...born in 1918 early became active in the Romanian Communist movement and was arrested as a revolutionary; he spent the late 1930s and early 40s in prison, where he became acquainted with the future first secretary of the Romanian Communist party, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej. Escaping in 1944, Ceausescu held a variety of posts within Communist party and government ranks after the Communist takeover in 1948. He soon became a member of the party's central committee and then, in 1955, a member of the politburo. Upon Gheorghiu-Dej's death in March, 1965, he was chosen first secretary of the central committee of the Communist party and in December, 1967 he assumed the office of president of the state council, or head of state. As supreme leader, he continued his mentor's policy of nationalism and independence from the USSR within the context of Marxism-Leninism. He promoted closer relations with the People's Republic of China and with the West, as well as industrial and agricultural development. His domestic rule, however, was marked by frequently disastrous economic schemes and became increasingly repressive and corrupt. In December, 1989, a popular uprising, joined by the army, led to the arrest and execution of him and his wife, Elena.

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Nodar David Kumaritashvili

Nodar David Kumaritashvili (Georgian: ნოდარ დავით ქუმარიტაშვილი; pronounced [nɔdɑr kʰumɑritʼɑʃvili]; November 25, 1988 – February 12, 2010) was a Georgian luger, who suffered a fatal crash during a training run for the 2010 Winter Olympics competition in Vancouver, Canada, on the day of the opening ceremony. He became the fourth athlete to have died during Winter Olympics preparations, after British luger Kazimierz Kay-Skrzypeski, Australian skier Ross Milne (both Innsbruck 1964), and Swiss speed skier Nicolas Bochatay (Albertville 1992), and the sixth athlete to die in either a Summer or Winter Olympic Games.

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Nordin Montong

Cleaner/Zoo-keeper, Nordin Montong at the Singapore Zoo who jumped into the white tiger enclosure, was killed by the animals as a horrified crowd looked on helplessly.
Malaysian Nordin Montong, 32, was set upon by two of the three big cats in the enclosure at around noon.

According to eyewitnesses, Mr Nordin, who was seen shouting and flinging items about shortly before the incident, vaulted a low wall and landed in a moat in the enclosure, four metres below.It was said that the tigers, which are nine years old and were brought in from Sumatra in 2001, would not be put down as they had acted naturally.



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