32 DEATH by Whirlpool - Jacob Cockle, USA

Jacob Cockle seen wearing a horse mask as he moves around the whirlpool. (Video snapshot)

Daredevil photographer, Jacob Cockle, 28, often tempted fate in the waters and uploaded extreme footages to his video-sharing sites, where his efforts racked up millions of views, but his luck ran out on May 28, 2013.

As a friend looked on, he was dragged under by a whirlpool in Carnsew Pool in the estuary of the River Hayle in Cornwall – while wearing a plastic horse head mask. He used the mask as a comedy prop to include in his footage.

28 DEATH By Hockey Puck - Brittanie Cecil, USA

You see the fights all the time on the ice but who would have thought a great sport such as hockey could result in tragedy - not in the rink, but out - to a beautiful, innocent, young fan. It's been almost 12 years already but I still remember the day I read about this unfortunate incident.

Brittanie Nichole Cecil

Brittanie Nichole Cecil (March 20, 1988 – March 18, 2002) was a hockey fan who died from injuries suffered when a puck was deflected into the stands and struck her in the left temple at Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio, on March 16, 2002.


Death
A few days before her birthday and as an early gift by her dad for her 14th birthday, Brittanie was given tickets to see the Columbus Blue Jackets play the Calgary Flames on March 16, 2002.  Brittanie, along with her stepmother, was seated in row S, section 121, when she saw something flying through the air. She had no clue a hockey puck was heading for her until it hit her in the head, right above her nose which then deflected off another fan. The unfortunate flying puck was the result of a shot made by the Blue Jackets' Espen Knutsen which was deflected by the Flames' Derek Morris which went over the glass behind the net.

87 DEATH By Horse Sex - Kenneth Pinyan, USA

It's not the most pleasant way to die.  It's not even the most pleasant thing to think of.  But Kenneth Pinyan, the man who died after having sex with his horse, would change the bestiality law in Washington state making bestiality a Class C felony, punishable by a maximum of five years in a state prison or a $10,000 fine, or both.

In 2005, Kenneth Pinyan (June 22, 1960 – July 2, 2005), an American Boeing engineer residing in Gig Harbor, died from injuries received during anal sex with a stallion at a farm in an unincorporated area in King County, Washington, near the city of Enumclaw. With a population of 10,669 people, Enumclaw is a horse town near the base of Mt. Rainier.

During a July 2005 sex act, videotaped by a friend, he suffered a perforated colon from receptive anal intercourse from a stallion and later died of his injuries. The story was reported in The Seattle Times and was one of that paper's most read stories of 2005.  It was informally referred to as the "Enumclaw horse sex case".  The video footage was later disseminated through the Internet.

16 DEATHs by Hypoxia and Eventual Plane Crash - Payne Stewart et al, USA

This true story is of the deaths of six people who perished aboard a plane  - two crew members and four passengers, including two-time U.S. Open golf champ Payne Stewart.  Plane crashes are nothing new but the way these people died - lack of oxygen which eventually led to the  crash of an 'unmanned' plane running out of fuel, and with Stewart being at probably the most satisfying time of his career, made this story all the more intriguing and touching...

Learjet 35 N47BA Prior to crash

It was on that last Monday of October when Stewart boarded the private plane — Registration No. N47BA — at Orlando International Airport along with his agents Robert Fraley, 46, and Van Ardan, 45, golf course designer Bruce Borland, 40, pilot Michael Kling, 42, and co-pilot Stephanie Bellegarrigue, 27, for a two-hour flight to Love Field in Dallas.

But 14 minutes after takeoff, approximately 37,000 feet above northwestern Florida, Jacksonville Air Traffic Control lost contact with N47BA, setting off a chain of events that included three separate military responses by F-16 fighter jets. The National Transportation Safety Board released a 31-page report on the crash Nov. 28, 2000 and investigators concluded that the probable cause was “incapacitation of the flight crewmembers as a result of their failure to receive supplemental oxygen following a loss of cabin pressurization, for undetermined reasons.”

38 DEATH of a Director By Chopper Blades - Boris Sagal, USA

Boris Sagal

Boris Sagal (October 18, 1923 - May 22, 1981), was a Ukrainian-born American television and film director. His recent movie credits at the time of death, included the ABC television miniseries ''Masada".

Born in Yekaterinoslav, Ukrainian SSR (now known as Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine), Sagal emigrated to the United States where he attended the Yale School of Drama. Sagal's many TV credits include directing episodes of The Twilight Zone, T.H.E. Cat, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Columbo, Peter Gunn, and The Man from U.N.C.L.E.. He also directed the 1972 television adaptation of Percy MacKaye's play The Scarecrow, for PBS. He was nominated for four Primetime Emmy Awards for his direction of the miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man and, posthumously, the above mentioned Masada.

Sagal directed the 1971 cult classic science fiction film, The Omega Man, starring Charlton Heston in the lead role and The Dream Makers. There is a directing fellowship in his name at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts.

1 DEATH by Betrayal of a Rising Star - Selena, USA

Photo credit: Gruenemann

Selena Quintanilla-Pérez (April 16, 1971 – March 31, 1995), known simply as Selena, was an American singer-songwriter. She was named the "top Latin artist of the '90s" and "Best selling Latin artist of the decade" by Billboard for her fourteen top-ten singles in the Top Latin Songs chart, including seven number-one hits. Selena had the most successful singles of 1994 and 1995, "Amor Prohibido" and "No Me Queda Más". She was called "The Queen of Tejano music" and the Mexican equivalent of Madonna. Selena released her first album, Selena y Los Dinos, at the age of twelve. She won Female Vocalist of the Year at the 1987 Tejano Music Awards and landed a recording contract with EMI a few years later. Her fame grew throughout the early 1990s, especially in Spanish-speaking countries, and she had begun recording in English as well.

Selena was murdered at the age of 23 by Yolanda Saldívar, the president of her fan club. On April 12, 1995, two weeks after her death, George W. Bush, governor of Texas at the time, declared her birthday "Selena Day" in Texas. Warner Bros. produced Selena, a film based on her life starring Jennifer Lopez, in 1997. Selena's life was also the basis of the musical Selena Forever starring Veronica Vazquez as Selena. In June 2006 Selena was commemorated with a life-sized bronze statue (Mirador de la Flor in Corpus Christi, Texas) and a Selena museum opened there. She has sold over 60 million albums worldwide.



Death
In early 1995, the Quintanillas discovered that Saldívar was embezzling money from the fan club and decided to fire her. Three weeks later, Selena agreed to meet Saldívar in a Days Inn hotel in Corpus Christi to retrieve financial records Saldívar had been refusing to turn over. Saldívar once again delayed the handover by claiming she had been raped in Mexico.  The singer drove Saldívar to a local hospital, where doctors found no evidence of rape. They returned to the motel, where Selena again demanded the missing financial papers. Saldívar drew a pistol from her purse and pointed it at Selena. Selena tried to flee, but Saldívar shot her once in her right shoulder, severing an artery. Critically wounded, Selena ran towards the lobby for help. She collapsed on the floor as the clerk called 911, with Saldívar still chasing her and calling her a "bitch". Selena died in a hospital from loss of blood at 1:05 p.m. on March 31, 1995, 16 days before her 24th birthday.
Selena was buried at Seaside Memorial Park, in Corpus Christi, Texas.


Impact


Picture credit: wikipedia

Selena's murder had widespread impact. Major networks interrupted their regular programming to break the news; Tom Brokaw referred to Selena as "The Mexican Madonna". It was front page news on The New York Times for two days after her death. Numerous vigils and memorials were held in her honor, and radio stations in Texas played her music non-stop. Her funeral drew 60,000 mourners, many of whom traveled from outside the United States. Among the celebrities who were reported to have phoned the Quintanilla family to express their condolences were Gloria Estefan, Celia Cruz, Julio Iglesias, and Madonna. People magazine published a commemorative issue in honor of Selena's memory and musical career, titled Selena 1971–1995, Her Life in Pictures. The issue sold nearly 450,000 copies; two weeks later the company released a special issue for Selena, which sold more than 600,000 copies. A few days later, Howard Stern mocked Selena's murder and burial, poked fun at her mourners, and criticized her music. Stern said, "This music does absolutely nothing for me. Alvin and the Chipmunks have more soul ... Spanish people have the worst taste in music. They have no depth." Stern's comments outraged and infuriated the Hispanic community across Texas. After a disorderly conduct arrest warrant was issued in his name, Stern made an on-air apology, in Spanish, for his comments.  Two weeks after her death, on April 12, George W. Bush, then Governor of Texas, declared Selena's birthday April 16 as "Selena Day" in Texas. Selena was inducted into the "Latin Music Hall of Fame" in 1995.

That summer, Selena's album Dreaming of You, a combination of Spanish-language songs and new English-language tracks, debuted at number one on the U.S. Billboard 200, making her the first Hispanic singer to accomplish this feat. and the second highest debut after Michael Jackson's HIStory. On its release date, the album sold over 175,000 copies, a record for a female pop singer, and it sold two million copies in its first year. Dreaming of You sold more than 330,000 copies in its first week.






Remembering Selena.....

 

Source



19 DEATH By Cactus - David Grundman, USA

Saguaro towering over
 a 5 ft 11 in (180 cm) man

Cactus plugging is a favorite pastime of some people. In 1982, David Grundman was killed while shooting at cacti for fun with his shotgun.

Cactus plugging is the practice of vandalizing or destroying a cactus, usually a saguaro, for fun. Typically the cactus is cut open, drained, then packed with explosives and ignited. In another variation, the vandal simply shoots bullets into the cactus body until portions fall off or the entire cactus falls over.

This is probably the one and only recorded revenge death by a plant in history. In 1982, 27-year-old David Grundman and a roommate decided to do a little “cactus plugging,” by shooting the desert plant with a shotgun.

The first one, a small cactus, went off without a hitch and Grundman was encouraged to try a larger prey: a 26-foot-tall (8m), Saguaro cactus, probably a 100-year-old plant. Unfortunately, before the ringing in his ears had stopped after firing several shots at a very close range, Grundman was killed when a 4 ft limb of the spiny Cactus that was weakened by the gunfire detached and fell directly on him, crushing and killing him. The incident took place near Lake Pleasant in Arizona, USA.

A song by the Austin Lounge Lizards (co-written by Ann Clardy) poked fun at Grundman's stupidity.

The act of cactus plugging, if performed on a saguaro, is illegal. In any case, it is a particularly destructive form of vandalism, as saguaros require over a hundred years to reach a substantial height.







Source | Source

0 DEATH By Taco Bell Sign, USA

Diane Durre
Pic Source

Diana Durre, of Chambers, Nebraska, died after a 75-foot (23 m) Taco Bell sign fell on top of the truck cab she was in. The pole broke at a welded joint about 15 feet (4.5 m) above the ground owing to strong winds. The sign fell right on top of the quad-cab pickup.

The Taco Bell sign was installed and built in 1999 by the Tri City Sign Company of Grand Island. It cost $17,000, according to the sign permit.

Diana was meeting a Wyoming couple to sell them some dogs. They had agreed to meet in North Platte, Nebraska, at about 1 p.m., “right underneath the big Taco Bell sign.”

The dogs were in the back seat and were uninjured. They were taken to the North Platte Animal Shelter. They consisted of a female Yorkie and a male Norich Terrier.

The Wyoming couple showed up after the accident.

The National Weather Center Office in North Platte recorded wind speeds of 30-35 miles an hour at the time at the North Platte Regional Airport, with an occasional gust of 40 miles an hour.

Signs of that size are generally engineered to withstand straight line winds of up to 110 mph, according to Sharon Neglay of Custom Craft Sign Company. She said that flexible faced signs are engineered to bend and flex with increased winds.

The Taco Bell sign is not even the first high rise sign to fall in North Platte.

On March 11, 1988, a $170,000 tour bus bound for Honolulu Hawaii, was crushed by a 100-foot Motel 6 high-rise sign. The bus was being transported to Oakland Calif., where it was to be shipped by boat to its final destination.

The sign broke about 15 to 17-feet above the ground and fell in the middle of the bus. No one was inside and there were no injuries. The sign fell after a winter snow storm moved through the area.

Source | Source

2 DEATH of a Pizza Man by Exploding Neck-Bomb - Brian Douglas Wells, USA

"This crime gets more and more bizzare, as time goes on." -

Brian Douglas Wells (November 15, 1956 – August 28, 2003) was an American pizza delivery man who was killed by a time bomb - a bulky contraption, fastened to his neck, purportedly under coercion from the maker of the bomb. After he was apprehended by the police for robbing a bank, the bomb exploded.

Wells had dropped out of high school in 1973. For nearly 30 years, he had worked as a pizza delivery man and was considered a valued and trusted employee of the Mama Mia Pizzeria in Erie, Pennsylvania. On the afternoon of August 28, 2003, Wells received a call to deliver two pizzas to an address a few miles from the pizzeria. It was later found that the address was that of WSEE-TV's transmission tower at the end of a dirt road.
According to law enforcement reports, Wells was meeting people he thought were his accomplices, including Barnes. Wells participated in the planning for the robbery; he had been told the bomb was going to be fake and he was to claim that three black men forced the bomb on him and he was to tell police he was a hostage.

Brian Douglas Wells
Source

At the television tower, Wells, for the first time, learned that the device was real. He wrestled with the men (presumably Barnes and William A. Rothstein) and tried to flee, but one of them fired a gun, causing Wells to stop. It was at this time that the collar bomb must have been attached. They gave him a sophisticated homemade shotgun, which looked like an oddly shaped cane, and told him to use it if he found trouble at the bank. Wells then entered a bank with the shotgun and demanded $250,000. When police intervened, Wells claimed that three unnamed people had placed a bomb around his neck, provided him with the shotgun, and told him that he had to commit the robbery and several other tasks, otherwise he would be killed.

At first, the police made no attempt to disarm the device. The bomb squad was finally called at 3:04 PM, at least 30 minutes after the first 9-1-1 call. At 3:18 PM, the bomb detonated, blasting a fist-sized hole in Wells' chest just three minutes before the bomb squad arrived. It is now believed that Wells was killed by Diehl-Armstrong and her conspirators to reduce witnesses against herself and others. The event was also broadcast on television and subsequently the footage found its way to video sharing sites. (Check out the video below.)

A note found on Wells had instructions for him to carry out four tasks—the first of which was the bank robbery—in a set period of time before the bomb went off. Wells would gain extra time with the completion of each task. However, it was later determined that regardless of what had unfolded, Wells would never have had enough time to complete the tasks to get the bomb defused.

Wells was drawn into the plot through Barnes, whom he knew through a prostitute who often used Barnes' home as a place to have sex with customers. The plot was hatched to get funds to pay Barnes enough money to kill Diehl-Armstrong's father, so Diehl-Armstrong could get an inheritance, authorities said. However, Wells had stolen only $8,702, far from the $125,000 needed for the killing. Furthermore, the inheritance Diehl-Armstrong coveted was largely spent.

On November 1, 2010, Diehl-Armstrong was convicted of armed bank robbery, conspiracy to commit armed bank robbery, and of using a destructive device in a crime. She was sentenced to life plus 30 years on February 28, 2011.



Video








Source

0 Eventual DEATH of the "Handcuff King" Due To Amateur's Punch - Harry Houdini, USA

Harry Houdini (born Erik Weisz, later Ehrich Weiss; March 24, 1874 – October 31, 1926) was a Hungarian-born American magician and escapologist, stunt performer, actor and film producer noted for his sensational escape acts. He was also a skeptic who set out to expose frauds purporting to be supernatural phenomena.

Houdini began his magic career in 1891. At the outset, he had little success. He performed in dime museums and sideshows, and even doubled as "The Wild Man" at a circus. Houdini focused initially on traditional card tricks. At one point, he billed himself as the "King of Cards". But he soon began experimenting with escape acts.

In 1893, while performing with his brother "Dash" at Coney Island as "The Houdini Brothers", Harry met fellow performer Wilhelmina Beatrice (Bess) Rahner, whom he married. Bess replaced Dash in the act, which became known as "The Houdinis." For the rest of Houdini's performing career, Bess would work as his stage assistant.

Houdini's "big break" came in 1899 when he met manager Martin Beck in rural Woodstock, Illinois. Impressed by Houdini's handcuffs act, Beck advised him to concentrate on escape acts and booked him on the Orpheum vaudeville circuit. Within months, he was performing at the top vaudeville houses in the country. In 1900, Beck arranged for Houdini to tour Europe. After some days of unsuccessful interviews in London, Houdini managed to interest Dundas Slater, then manager of the Alhambra Theatre. He gave a demonstration of escape from handcuffs at Scotland Yard, and succeeded in baffling the police so effectively that he was booked at the Alhambra for six months.

Houdini became widely known as "The Handcuff King." He toured England, Scotland, the Netherlands, Germany, France, and Russia. In each city, Houdini would challenge local police to restrain him with shackles and lock him in their jails. In many of these challenge escapes, Houdini would first be stripped nude and searched. In Moscow, Houdini escaped from a Siberian prison transport van. Houdini claimed that, had he been unable to free himself, he would have had to travel to Siberia, where the only key was kept.

Houdini and his wife Bess

In 1912, Houdini introduced perhaps his most famous act, the Chinese Water Torture Cell, in which he was suspended upside-down in a locked glass-and-steel cabinet full to overflowing with water. The act required that Houdini hold his breath for more than three minutes. Houdini performed the escape for the rest of his career. Despite two Hollywood movies depicting Houdini dying in the Torture Cell, the act had nothing to do with his death.

Death
Harry Houdini died of peritonitis, secondary to a ruptured appendix. Eyewitnesses to an incident at the Princess Theater in Montreal gave rise to speculation that Houdini's death was caused by a McGill University student, J. Gordon Whitehead, who delivered multiple blows to Houdini's abdomen to test Houdini's claim that he was able to take any blow to the body above the waist without injury.

The eyewitnesses, students named Jacques Price and Sam Smilovitz (sometimes called Jack Price and Sam Smiley), proffered accounts of the incident that generally corroborated one another. The following is Price's description of events:
 

Houdini was reclining on his couch after his performance, having an art student sketch him. When Whitehead came in and asked if it was true that Houdini could take any blow to the stomach, Houdini replied groggily in the affirmative. In this instance, he was hit three times before Houdini could tighten up his stomach muscles to avoid serious injury. Whitehead reportedly continued hitting Houdini several more times and Houdini acted as though he were in some pain.

Houdini reportedly stated that if he had time to prepare himself properly he would have been in a better position to take the blows. He had apparently been suffering from appendicitis for several days prior and yet refused medical treatment. His appendix would likely have burst on its own without the trauma.  Although in serious pain, Houdini continued to travel without seeking medical attention.

When Houdini arrived at the Garrick Theater in Detroit, Michigan on October 24, 1926, for what would be his last performance, he had a fever of 104 °F (40 °C). Despite a diagnosis of acute appendicitis, Houdini took the stage. He was reported to have passed out during the show, but was revived and continued. Afterwards, he was hospitalized at Detroit's Grace Hospital.

Houdini died of peritonitis from a ruptured appendix at 1:26 p.m. in Room 401 on October 31, aged 52.

After taking statements from Price and Smilovitz, Houdini's insurance company concluded that the death was due to the dressing-room incident and paid double indemnity.

Houdini's funeral was held on November 4, 1926, in New York, with more than 2,000 mourners in attendance. He was interred in the Machpelah Cemetery in Queens, New York, with the crest of the Society of American Magicians inscribed on his gravesite. To this day the Society holds a broken wand ceremony at the grave site in November. Houdini's widow, Bess, died on February 11, 1943, aged 67, in Needles, California. She had expressed a wish to be buried next to him but instead was interred at the Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Westchester, New York, as her Catholic family refused to allow her to be buried in a Jewish cemetery.

Video

Remembering Harry Houdini

Source

0 DEATH Fight in the Skies: "Len" Koenecke, USA

Leonard George "Len" Koenecke (January 18, 1904 in Baraboo, Wisconsin, USA – September 17, 1935 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada) was an American baseball player who played Major League Baseball for the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants. He is most widely known for his unusual death.

Koenecke was the son of a locomotive engineer and had worked as a fireman

Koenecke made his professional debut for the Moline Plowboys in the Mississippi Valley League in 1927.

In 1928 he joined Indianapolis in the American Association.



Death
After being sent home from the road trip he caught a commercial flight for New York. During the flight he drank a quart of whiskey and became very drunk. After harassing other passengers and striking a stewardess, the pilot had to sit on him to restrain him as he was shackled to his seat. He was removed unconscious from the flight in Detroit. After sleeping on a chair in the airport he chartered a flight to Buffalo.

While flying over Canada Koenecke sat up front with the pilot. At first he was quiet, but soon began to get restless and started nudging the pilot. The pilot sent him to sit in the back with his companion but, after a short time, he started poking the pilot from behind. When the companion tried to stop him, they got into a fight.

In the scuffle, the companion tried to hit Koenecke with a small fire extinguisher, which got dropped. Then Koenecke "made for" the pilot, who picked up the fire extinguisher in one hand while holding the controls with the other, hit Koenecke two or three times. "He kept on fighting so I hit him again." The struggle went on for 10 or 15 minutes, during which the plane was veering wildly. "Then I had to come to a decision. It was either a case of the three of us crashing or doing something to Koenecke. I watched my chance, grabbed the fire extinguisher and walloped him over the head."

By the time Koenecke had been "quieted" the pilot had no idea where they were. He steered toward the nearest open field, which happened to be a race track in Toronto, and made an emergency landing. Koenecke died of a brain hemorrhage.
The two pilots were charged with manslaughter but were found not guilty in a trial soon after.





Source

1 The Fraudulent DEATH of "Mike the Durable", USA

Michael Malloy (1873 – February 22, 1933), alias "Mike the Durable", was a homeless Irishman from County Donegal, Ireland, who lived in New York City during the 1920s and 30s.  Although he was a former firefighter in his better days, he is most famous for surviving a number of attempts on his life by five acquaintances, who were attempting to commit life insurance fraud.

Failed Murder Attempts
The events that led to Malloy's death began in January 1933. He was, at the time, alcoholic and homeless. Five men who were acquainted with Malloy, Tony Marino, Joseph Murphy, Francis Pasqua, Hershey Green, and Daniel Kriesberg (later dubbed "the Murder Trust" by the headlines), plotted to take out three life insurance policies on Malloy and then get him to drink himself to death. The first part of the plot was successful (probably achieved with the aid of a corrupt insurance agent), and they stood to gain over $3,500 (almost $57,000 by 2008's standards by the CPI-Consumer Price Index), if Malloy died an accidental death.

Marino owned a speakeasy (an establishment that illegally sells alcoholic beverages), and gave Malloy unlimited credit, thinking Malloy would abuse it and drink himself to death.  Although Malloy drank for a majority of his waking day, it did not kill him. To remedy this, antifreeze was substituted for liquor, but still, Malloy would drink until he passed out, wake up, and come back for more.  Antifreeze was substituted with turpentine, followed by horse liniment, and finally mixed in rat poison. Still, Malloy lived.

The group then tried raw oysters soaked in methanol. This idea apparently came from Pasqua, who saw a man die after eating oysters with whiskey. Then came a sandwich of spoiled sardines mixed with poison and carpet tacks.

When that failed, they decided that it was unlikely that anything Malloy ingested was going to kill him, so the Murder Trust decided to freeze him to death. On a night when the temperature reached -14 °F (-26 °C), Malloy drank until he passed out, was carried to a park, dumped in the snow, and had five gallons (19 L) of water poured on his bare chest. Nevertheless, Malloy reappeared the following day for his drink. The next attempt on his life came when they hit him with Green's taxi, moving at 45 miles per hour (72 km/h). This put Malloy in the hospital for three weeks with broken bones. The gang presumed he was dead but was unable to collect the policy on him.  When he again appeared at the bar, they decided on one last approach.


Malloy's Murder
On February 22, after he passed out for the night, they took him to Murphy's room, put a hose in his mouth that was connected to the gas jet, and turned it on. This finally killed Malloy, death occurring within minutes.

He was pronounced dead of lobar pneumonia and quickly buried. However, the members of the Murder Trust proved to be their own worst enemies—they talked too much and squabbled among themselves over the division of the loot. Eventually police heard rumors of "Mike the Durable" in speakeasys all over town, and upon learning that a Michael Malloy had died that night, they had the body exhumed and forensically examined.

The five men were put on trial. Green went to prison, and the other four members were executed in the electric chair at Sing Sing (maximum security prison in New York).



Source

0 DEATH by Playing Cards, USA

San Quentin State Prison - "the most populous execution antechamber in the United States",  is California’s oldest prison.  It is also the largest death row prison for male inmates in the United States.  It was opened in 1852 after being built by the same prisoners who were going to populate it. Hundreds of inmates have had their necks broken by hanging or, worse, painfully killed in a Hyrdogen Cyanide gas chamber.  Inmates on death row would try to commit suicide but all of them failed, thwarted by the all-knowing surveillance systems in place, except one, William Kogut.

William Kogut was brought to San Quentin State prison for the murder of Mayme Guthrie, a lady who ran a rooming house/gaming house/brothel. The motivation for the murder is not known but it was speculated that he killed her because of her alleged immoral ways. He mostly kept to himself and guards would notice him occasionally playing solitaire with a deck of cards that was provided to him by the prison. Nothing seemed amiss or strange about an inmate playing cards. After all, what was he going to do? Get a paper cut?

The guards remained confident that nothing was amiss until October 9th, 1930, when a large explosion was heard in Kogut’s cell. The guards ran over to his cell and found only Kogut’s dead body sprawled on the floor and a note:

“Do not blame my death on anyone, because I fixed everything myself. I never give up as long as I am living and have a chance, but this is the end.”

After further investigation, It turned out that Kogut was never playing solitaire with his pack of cards. He was secretly cutting out the red hearts and diamond shapes and hiding them. He would then take those shapes to his room. Back in the 1930s, the red dye used on the pack of cards was made from nitrocellulose, an explosive chemical made from nitrate and cellulose. Kogut took off a hollow leg from his bed and stuffed all the hearts and diamonds cut outs into the bottom. Next he filled the hollow leg up with water from cell’s sink or toilet. Nitrocellulose reacts with water to create explosive energy. He then clogged up both ends of the make shift pipebomb and left it sitting there by the heating vents to speed up the reaction. After a little while, the bomb, the cell and Kogut all exploded, thus, ending his prison and death sentence.

Source

3 Killed and Eaten by Grizzly Bear - Timothy Treadwell and Companion, USA

Timothy Treadwell

Timothy Treadwell (April 29, 1957 – October 5, 2003) was an American bear enthusiast, environmentalist, amateur naturalist, eco-warrior and documentary film maker. He lived among the coastal grizzly bears of Katmai National Park in Alaska, USA, for approximately 13 summers. At the end of his 13th summer in the park in 2003, he and his girlfriend Amie Huguenard were killed and eaten by a grizzly bear.   Treadwell's life, work and death were the subject of the 2005 documentary film by Werner Herzog titled Grizzly Man.

Timothy Treadwell lived among grizzly bears during summer seasons for 13 years. According to Treadwell's book, Among Grizzlies: Living with Wild Bears in Alaska, his mission to protect bears began after he survived a near-fatal heroin overdose in the late 1980s. He confesses in his book that his drug addiction grew from his alcoholism and after that experience, he knew he needed to do something with his life that was meaningful. A lover of all animals since he was a child, he traveled to Alaska to watch bears at the urging of a close friend. Treadwell writes that after his first encounter with a wild bear, he knew he had found his calling in life. Treadwell attributed his recovery from drug and alcohol addictions entirely to his relationship with bears.

Tim and Amie--Last Expedition
© Willy Fulton 2003

Timothy spent the early part of each season camping on the "Big Green," an open area of bear grass in Hallo Bay on the Katmai Coast. He called the area "The Grizzly Sanctuary". Treadwell was known for getting extremely close to the bears he observed, sometimes even touching them and playing with bear cubs. However in his book, he claimed that he was always careful with the bears and actually developed a sense of mutual trust and respect with the animals. He habitually named the bears he encountered and consistently saw many of the same bears with each returning summer, thus claiming to build a standing relationship with them. National Park Service Rangers said he was harassing wildlife.

During the later part of the season he would move to Kaflia Bay and camp in an area of especially thick brush he called the "Grizzly Maze". Here the chances of crossing paths with grizzlies were much higher, since the location intersected bear trails. Treadwell recorded over 100 hours of video footage (some of which was later used to create the documentary Grizzly Man) and a large collection of still photographs.

Treadwell claimed to be alone with the wildlife on several occasions in his videos. However his girlfriend Amie was with him at the time of his death and the documentary on him indicated she was there for his final two summers.

By 2001, Treadwell became notable enough to receive extensive media attention both on television and in environmental circles. He made frequent public appearances as an environmental activist. He traveled throughout the United States to educate school children about bears and appeared on the Discovery Channel, the Late Show with David Letterman, and Dateline NBC to discuss his experiences. He was also a co-author, with Jewel Palovak, of the book Among Grizzlies: Living with Wild Bears in Alaska, in which he described his adventures on the Alaska Peninsula.

Treadwell and Palovak founded Grizzly People, a grassroots organization devoted to protecting bears and preserving their wilderness habitat.


Conflicts
Treadwell's years with the grizzlies were not without disruption. Almost from the start, the National Park Service expressed their worries about his behavior. According to the file kept on Treadwell by the Park Service, rangers reported he had at least six violations from 1994 to 2003. Included among these violations are: guiding tourists without a license, camping in the same area longer than the Parks Service's seven-day limit, improper food storage, wildlife harassment, and conflicts with visitors and their guides. He also frustrated authorities by refusing to install an electric fence around his camp and refusing to carry bear spray to use as a deterrent. In fact, Treadwell had carried pepper spray with him and had resorted to using it at least one time, but wrote that he had felt terrible grief over the pain he perceived he had caused the bear and refused to use it on subsequent occasions.
In 1998, park rangers issued Treadwell a citation for storing an ice chest filled with food in his tent. A separate incident involved rangers ordering him to remove a prohibited portable generator. When the Park Service imposed a new rule—often referred to as the "Treadwell Rule"—requiring all campers to move their camps at least one mile (1.6 km) every seven days, Treadwell initially obeyed the order by using a small motor boat to move his camp up and down the coast. Finding this method impractical, he later hid his camp from the Park Service in stands of trees with heavy brush. He was cited at least once for this violation.

Death
In October 2003, Treadwell and his girlfriend, physician assistant Amie Huguenard, visited Katmai National Park. In the film Grizzly Man, Werner Herzog states that Amie feared bears and felt deeply uncomfortable in their presence. Her final journal entries indicated that she wanted to be away from Katmai. Treadwell chose to set his campsite near a salmon stream where grizzlies commonly feed in the fall. Treadwell was in the park later in the year than usual, at a time when bears struggle to gain as much fat as possible before winter, and limited food supplies cause them to be more aggressive than in other months. Food was scarce that fall, so the grizzly bears were even more aggressive than usual.

Treadwell was to leave the park at his usual time of year, but extended his stay 1 week in an effort to locate a favorite female brown bear not seen earlier. He said he hated modern civilization and felt better in nature with the bears than he did in big cities around humans. He repeatedly said he hated humans too. The bears he had been used to during the summer had already gone into hibernation, and bears that Treadwell did not know from other parts of the park were moving into the area. The very last footage that shows Treadwell alive also shows a bear behind him; the bear had been diving into the river repeatedly for a piece of dead salmon. Treadwell mentioned in the footage that he did not feel entirely comfortable around that bear.

Around noon on Sunday, October 5, 2003, Treadwell spoke with an associate in Malibu, California by satellite phone. Treadwell mentioned no problems with any bears. The next day, October 6, Willy Fulton, the Kodiak air taxi pilot, arrived at their campsite to pick them up but found the area abandoned except for a bear and contacted the local park rangers. The mangled remains of Treadwell and Huguenard were discovered quickly upon investigation. Treadwell's disfigured head, partial spine, and right forearm and hand, with his wrist watch still on, were recovered a short distance from the camp. Huguenard's partial remains were found next to the torn and collapsed tents, partially buried in a mound of twigs and dirt. A large male grizzly (tagged Bear 141) protecting the campsite was killed by park rangers during their attempt to retrieve the bodies. A second adolescent bear was also killed a short time later when it charged the park rangers. An on-site necropsy of Bear 141 revealed human body parts such as fingers and limbs. The younger bear was consumed by other animals before it could be necropsied.

In the 85-year history of Katmai National Park, this was the first known incident of a person being killed by a bear.

A video camera was recovered at the site which proved to have been operating during the attack. However, according to Alaska State Trooper spokesman Greg Wilkinson, no images were found on the tape. This fact led troopers to believe the attack might have happened while the camera was stuffed in a duffel bag or during the dark of night. The camera had been turned on just before the attack, presumably by Huguenard, but the camera recorded only six minutes of audio before running out of tape. This, however, was enough time to record the bear's initial attack on Treadwell, its retreat when Huguenard attacked it, its return to carry Treadwell off into the forest, and Huguenard's screams of horror as she is left alone.  The tape is now the property of Jewel Palovak (Treadwell's ex-girlfriend).

In Grizzly Man, filmmaker Werner Herzog listens to the recording on headphones (leaving it unheard on the film's soundtrack) and then urges Palovak to destroy it. In the followup mini-series, The Grizzly Man Diaries, Palovak admits she still owns the tape but has not listened to its contents and says she hopes she never does.




Video

Remembering Timothy Treadwell

Source

1 DEATH By Lava Lamp, USA

A man who placed a lava lamp on a hot stovetop was killed when it exploded and sent a shard of glass into his heart.

Philip Quinn, 24, of Kent, Washington, was found dead in his trailer home on a Sunday night by his parents.

A lava lamp features blobs of wax in liquid that rise and fall in a container when heated by a bulb at the base of the lamp.

The hippy-era psychedelic light exploded while Quinn was experimenting with it on his stove, closely observing it from only a few feet away when a flying shard of glass struck him in the heart and killed him.

“Why on earth he was heating a lava lamp on the stove, we don’t know,” Kent Police spokesman Paul Petersen said.

The heat from the stove built up pressure in the lamp until it exploded, spraying shards of glass with enough force to pierce his chest, with one shard piercing his heart and causing fatal injuries.  After the lamp exploded, Quinn apparently stumbled into his bedroom, where he died that afternoon, authorities said.

Police found no evidence of drug or alcohol use.

The circumstances of his death were later repeated and confirmed in a 2006 episode of the popular science television series MythBusters. The show also proved that even if shards of glass are not thrown with lethal velocity during such an attempt, the resulting spray of hot liquid from the lamp could easily cause severe burns to anyone nearby. The show also noted that the safety instructions clearly state that lava lamps should not be heated by any source other than the specifically rated bulbs and purpose-designed bases that are provided.  Homebrew lava lamp recipes can be found over internet, however some of them rely on combinations of highly flammable components like alcohol. Such lamps could represent a serious fire hazard in the case of rupture when heated over a light bulb.




Source | Source

0 Struck Twice Then Dragged For Miles, USA

According to the New York Police Department, a pedestrian crossing a street wound up being struck by two vehicles and then dragged 17 miles before being discovered.

It was early in the morning when 26-year old Guido Salvador Carabajo-Jara, was struck by an SUV while attempting to cross a street. Just seconds later, a dark colored van drove over him, his body getting lodged in the vehicle's undercarriage.

According to investigators, the driver of the second vehicle was apparently oblivious to what he struck and carried on driving for 17 miles until a passerby was finally able to call his attention to the man's body.

A surveillance video attached to a store - Main PC - captured a man seen exiting a vehicle that dropped him off on 108th Street, just before 6:09 a.m. The man is seen properly observing pedestrian safety rules as he crosses 50th Avenue. Soon after, a second man appears in the video and he is struck by the SUV. The first pedestrian, a witness to the accident, can be seen grabbing his head with his hands in disbelief. Police were called immediately afterwards.

When authorities arrived at the scene in Corona, no evidence of a pedestrian hit was found. Nearly an hour later, in Brighton Beach, a passerby saw the body of a man trapped underneath a 1998 Chevy mini-van at the intersection of Neptune Avenue and Brighton 10th Terrace. The pedestrian flagged down the driver and immediately called police.

Reports identify the driver of the mini-van as 52-year-old Manuel Gaspar Lituma Sanchez. Police say it appears Sanchez did not realize he had struck the man and dragged him for nearly 20 miles. Investigators believe a suspension bar underneath the van caught on to the victim's rib cage, dragging him for miles. The driver reportedly smelled something burning and pulled over once along the way, but did not see the body.

A cadre of uniformed police officers retraced the van’s route, to search for pieces of the victim’s remains.

It's unclear whether he was dead or alive when initially struck by the first driver. No charges were laid.

(See video under Real Deaths Captured On Film)

Source | Source | Source


Video

Remembering Guido Salvador Carabajo-Jara:

1 DEATH By Garbage Compactor, USA

Robert Amaral, 60, became trapped in the back compartment of a garbage truck.  Residents in the area called police after hearing cries for help coming from an alley.

Neighbor Maria Arciniega lives in a house right behind where the accident happened.
She said her husband heard someone screaming, "Help, Help." The entire family then went outside, and started to knock on the truck to see if someone was inside.

But the screams then stopped, Arciniega said.

When crews arrived at the scene, they found Amaral inside the trash compactor of the Allied Waste garbage truck.

Amaral, a worker for the private waste disposal company since 2004, was pronounced deceased at the scene.

He had been caught in the compactor from the waste down, police said.
"This is just unfortunate, horrible," Phoenix Sgt. Mark Rivera said. "It's an unfortunate way to have to die."

Officials said they believe there was a malfunction with the compactor portion of the truck and the man was working on that portion when he became trapped.




Source | Source

0 DEATH By Smoker's Match - Martha Mansfield, USA

Photo credit

Martha Mansfield (July 14, 1899 – November 30, 1923) was an American actress in silent films and vaudeville stage plays.

Born Martha Ehrlich in New York City to Maurice and Harriett Gibson Ehrlich. Although many biographies state that Mansfield was born in Mansfield, Ohio, her birth record and death certificate both have New York City as her place of birth. In 1912, she was left in her mother's care after her father deserted the family. At the age of 18, she showed an aptitude for acting and began a stage career. Her advancement as a performer came quickly.

Her first Hollywood movie was Civilian Clothes (1920) directed by Hugh Ford. She gained prominence as Millicent Carew in the film adaptation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which starred John Barrymore. She appeared with Eugene O'Brien in The Perfect Lover (1919). The final completed features in her short film career were Potash and Permutter and The Leavenworth Case, both from 1923.

Scene from Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde film

On November 30, 1923, while working on location in San Antonio, Texas on the film The Warrens of Virginia, Mansfield was severely burned when a match, tossed by a cast member, ignited her Civil War costume of hoopskirts and flimsy ruffles. Mansfield was playing the role of Agatha Warren and had just finished her scenes and retired to a car when her clothing burst into flames. Her neck and face were saved when leading man Wilfred Lytell threw his heavy overcoat over her. The chauffeur of Mansfield's car was burned badly on his hands while trying to remove the burning clothing from the actress. The fire was put out, but she sustained substantial burns to her body.

She was rushed to a Physicians and Surgeons Hospital in San Antonio, where she died in less than twenty-four hours. Mansfield was 24 years old. Accompanied by actor Phillip Shorey, Mansfield's body was flown to her home in New York City. Her mother resided there at 142 West Fifty-seventh Street. She was interred at the Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, New York, United States.

Source

0 Butt Enhancement - the Wrong Way, UK/USA

A 20-year-old British woman, Claudia Aderotimi, died following a hotel room cosmetic buttocks injection - perhaps yet another casualty of dangerous, corner-cutting enhancement procedures.

Police believe Aderotimi, who was visiting from the U.K. with three friends, received the injection at the Hampton Inn in Southwest Philadelphia, local ABC affiliate WPVI-TV reported.

Medics were called to the hotel in response to Aderotimi's reports of difficulty breathing and chest pains. She was rushed to Mercy Fitzgerald Hospital where she was pronounced dead.

Plastic surgeons renewed public warnings concerning non-approved facilities and non-certified cosmetic practitioners: Cutting corners in hopes of a cheaper nip-tuck is dangerous, and potentially life-threatening.

Aderotimi and one of the other women with her came to the U.S. specifically for injectable enhancement procedures, one for hip and buttocks and Aderotimi just for buttocks, police said. Aderotimi paid $1,800 for the procedure, which is only a fraction of what she would have paid for a similar procedure in the U.K.

Numerous other operations and/or botched surgery victims around the country have been reported in the past few years as the drive to surgically emulate curvaceous celebrities leads many women to sacrifice safety for affordability.

"We've heard of people having caulk or industrial grade silicone, neither of which is approved for use anywhere in the body, injected into their buttocks," said Dr. Felmont Eaves, a North Carolina-based plastic surgeon and president of the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery.



Source

0 DEATH by Hoarding - The Collyer Brothers, USA

Homer and Langley Collyer were compulsive hoarders. The two brothers had a fear of throwing anything away and obsessively collected newspapers and other junk in their house. They even set up booby-traps in corridors and doorways to protect against intruders.

Langley Collyer, c. 1942

Homer Lusk Collyer (November 6, 1881 – March 21, 1947) and Langley Collyer (October 3, 1885 – March 1947) were two American brothers who became famous because of their bizarre nature and compulsive hoarding. For decades, neighborhood rumors swirled around the rarely seen men and their home at 2078 Fifth Avenue (at the corner of 128th Street), in Manhattan, where they obsessively collected books, furniture, musical instruments, and many other items, with booby traps set up in corridors and doorways to protect against intruders. Both were eventually found dead in the Harlem brownstone where they had lived, surrounded by over 130 tons of collected items that they had amassed over several decades.

The Collyer brothers were sons of Herman Livingston Collyer (1857–1923), a Manhattan gynecologist who worked at Bellevue Hospital, and Susie Gage Frost (1856–1929), a former opera singer. The parents were first cousins.

Dr. Herman Collyer, with his wife and two sons, moved into their residence in Harlem in 1909. Dr. Collyer was known to be eccentric himself, and was said to frequently paddle down the East River in a canoe to the City Hospital on Blackwell's Island, where he occasionally worked; and then carry the canoe back to his home in Harlem after he came ashore on Manhattan Island. He abandoned his family around 1919, a few years before he died. No one knows why Dr. Collyer abandoned his family, or whether his wife moved with him into his new home at 153 West 77th Street when he left behind his house in Harlem. Nevertheless, Homer and Langley Collyer stayed in the family house after their father left. Dr. Collyer died in 1923, and Mrs. Collyer died in 1929. After their parents died, the Collyer brothers inherited all of their possessions and moved those possessions into their house in Harlem.

This is the Brownstone House they Lived in, ladders were required by the authorities to enter.

During World War I, Harlem saw a major influx of black residents from the Southern United States, leading to the Harlem Renaissance which would emerge in the decade following the end of World War I. Even though the neighborhood's character changed to become a black American cultural center, the two white brothers, who by now were in their forties, remained in their family home, becoming an anachronistic curiosity which began to draw more attention from the residents of their neighborhood.

Deaths

On March 21, 1947, an anonymous tipster phoned the 122nd Police Precinct and insisted there was a dead body in the house.[5] A patrol officer was dispatched, but had a difficult time getting into the house at first, noting however that an awful odor was emanating from somewhere within the building. There was no doorbell or telephone and the doors were locked; and while the basement windows were broken, they were protected by iron grillwork. An emergency squad of seven men eventually had no choice but to begin pulling out all the junk that was blocking their way and throw it out onto the street below. The brownstone's foyer was packed solid by a wall of old newspapers, folding beds and chairs, half a sewing machine, boxes, parts of a wine press, and numerous other pieces of junk. A patrolman, William Barker, finally broke in through a window into a second-story bedroom. Behind this window lay, among other things, more packages and newspaper bundles, empty cardboard boxes lashed together with rope, the frame of a baby carriage, a rake, and old umbrellas tied together. After a two-hour crawl he found Homer Collyer dead, wearing just a tattered blue and white bathrobe. Homer's matted, grey hair reached down to his shoulders, and his head was resting on his knees.

Assistant Medical Examiner Dr. Arthur C. Allen confirmed Homer's identity and said that the elder brother had been dead for no more than ten hours; consequently, Homer could not have been the source of the stench wafting from the house. Foul play was ruled out: Homer had died from the combined effects of malnutrition, dehydration, and cardiac arrest. By this time, the mystery had attracted a crowd of about 600 onlookers, curious about the junk and the smell. But Langley was nowhere to be found.

In their quest to find Langley, the police began searching the house, an arduous task that required them to remove the large quantity of amassed junk. Most of it was deemed worthless and set out curbside for the sanitation department to haul away; a few items were put into storage. The ongoing search turned up a further assortment of guns and ammunition. There was no sign of Langley.

Crawling through a door, notice the lamp hanging down, that's how high the junk was, 12 - 15 foot ceilings in the house.

On March 30, false rumors circulated that Langley had been seen aboard a bus heading for Atlantic City. A manhunt along the New Jersey shore turned up nothing. Reports of Langley sightings led police to a total of nine states.[6] The police continued searching the house two days later, removing 3,000 books, several outdated phone books, a horse's jawbone, a Steinway piano, an early X-ray machine, and more bundles of newspapers. More than 19 tons of junk were removed from the ground floor of the three-story brownstone. The police continued to clear away the brothers' stockpile for another week, removing another 84 tons of rubbish from the house. Although a good deal of the junk came from their father's medical practice, a considerable portion was discarded items collected by Langley over the years.

Look how narrow the front staircase had become....

On April 8, 1947, workman Artie Matthews found the body of Langley Collyer just 10 feet from where Homer died. His partially decomposed body was being eaten by rats. A suitcase and three huge bundles of newspapers covered his body. Langley had been crawling through their newspaper tunnel to bring food to his paralyzed brother when one of his own booby traps fell down and crushed him. Homer, blind and paralyzed, starved to death several days later. The stench detected on the street had been emanating from Langley, the younger brother.

The body of a badly crushed and rat nibbled Langley, the younger brother can be seen in this picture...

Both brothers were buried with their parents at Cypress Hills Cemetery, Brooklyn.

Source | Source