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The Sportswriter who Blogged his Suicide

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Photo Credit: CNN

Photo Credit: CNN

Martin Manley hated waking up early, but on his 60th birthday he did — or more likely, never went to sleep the night before.

At 5 a.m. he entered a police station parking lot in a suburb of Kansas City, Kansas, walked to a spot beneath a tree on its far south end and pulled out his phone.

He dialed 911.

He said this:

“I want to report a suicide at the south end of the parking lot of the Overland Park Police Station at 123rd and Metcalf.”

Then, the blogger and former sports reporter for the Kansas City Star pulled out his Saturday Night Special, a .380 pistol, and shot himself in the head.

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Documents Show Secret Service Kept Tab of Swartz

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Photo Credit: APU.S. Secret Service documents show that the agency played a key role in the investigation of free-information activist Aaron Swartz and watched his case closely until he committed suicide.

Swartz died in New York City in January as he faced trial on charges he hacked into a Massachusetts Institute of Technology archive of scholarly articles with the aim of making the information freely available.

The documents, released under the Freedom of Information Act, show the Secret Service field office in Boston secured documents and electronic devices seized during a search of Swartz’s home and research office at Harvard University.

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Almost One-Third of Recent Vets Consider Suicide; Felons, Illegals “Treated Better than Our Military Heroes”

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Photo Credit: Masterfile/Radius ImagesAn astonishing survey from a veterans group found that 30 per cent of recent military vets have considered committing suicide since returning from active duty.

The Iraq Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) surveyed more than 4,000 of its members, 37 per cent of whom said they personally knew a recent vet who took his or her own life. Overall, 45 per cent reported knowing a fellow soldier, sailor, airman or Marine who has tried to commit suicide…

Fully 63 per cent – nearly two-thirds – said they have veteran friends whom they believe need medical help dealing with a mental health issue brought on by combat. And more than half polled in the survey admitted that someone close to them has suggested that they need mental health care.

[Veteran’s Activist] Ken Wahl, a former Hollywood actor and star of the 1980s hit TV show ‘Wiseguy,’ [said], “Convicted felons and illegal immigrants are treated better and with greater regard than our military heroes.”

In the IAVA survey, 80 per cent of the group’s members said the VA and the Pentagon don’t provide sufficient care for veterans who need mental health treatment.

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Coffee Drinking Tied to Substantially Lower Risk of Suicide

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Photo Credit: Harvard Gazette Drinking several cups of coffee daily appears to reduce the risk of suicide in men and women by about 50 percent, according to a new study by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). The study was published online July 2 in The World Journal of Biological Psychiatry.

“Unlike previous investigations, we were able to assess association of consumption of caffeinated and non-caffeinated beverages, and we identify caffeine as the most likely candidate of any putative protective effect of coffee,” said lead researcher Michel Lucas, research fellow in the Department of Nutrition at HSPH.

The authors reviewed data from three large U.S. studies and found that the risk of suicide for adults who drank two to four cups of caffeinated coffee per day was about half that of those who drank decaffeinated coffee or very little or no coffee.

Caffeine not only stimulates the central nervous system but may act as a mild antidepressant by boosting production of certain neurotransmitters in the brain, including serotonin, dopamine, and noradrenaline. This could explain the lower risk of depression among coffee drinkers that had been found in past epidemiological studies, the researchers reported.

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Grieving Parents Sue Air Force for Answers in Daughter’s Death

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Photo Credit: APThe grieving parents of a 19-year-old Idaho woman who died serving her country thousands of miles from home say the U.S. Air Force won’t give them information about the circumstances of her death.

Airman 1st Class Kelsey Sue Anderson of Orofino died June 9, 2011, at Andersen Air Force Base on the island of Guam, a U.S. territory in the Pacific Ocean 3,300 miles west of Hawaii. The military has reported she committed suicide.

But Chris and Adelia Sue Anderson, her parents, filed a lawsuit last month in U.S. District Court to force the Air Force to respond to their Freedom of Information Act request seeking more information about how their daughter died.

The Andersons say their daughter, an avid soccer player and horseback rider who worked in her hometown’s flower shop before joining the military, was unhappy with her job as a security guard on Guam but neither distraught nor depressed in their final contacts days before her death. The arrival of an Air Force colonel at their home, accompanied by local sheriff’s officers from Clearwater County, to relay the terrible news was a bolt from the blue, they say.

“We just want to know what happened,” said Chris Anderson, who with his wife runs a hunting outfitting business in northcentral Idaho’s forests, in an interview Wednesday. “We don’t care if it’s good or bad, we just want closure so we can get on with our lives. It’s been two years with no answers.”

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Facebook Usage May be Able to Predict Risk of Suicide

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Photo Credit: Shutterstock If you’ve been thinking about killing yourself, your social media might give you away. An initiative called the Durkheim Project will use artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to identify common words and phrases among those who might be contemplating suicide.

The program, which launched on July 2, currently targets only veterans, who have disproportionately high suicide rates. Veterans opt into the Durkheim Project, which installs an app on computers, iOS and Android devices. These apps keep track of what users post and upload it to a medical database. A medical AI monitors the data in real-time, picking out patterns that might lead to self-harm.

The Durkheim Project app monitors content from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, in addition to storing information from a user’s mobile device. A database at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth University will keep track of users’ locations and text messages, and will not share any information with third parties. Additionally, the system will be guarded by a firewall to ward off would-be hackers.

“The study we’ve begun with our research partners will build a rich knowledge base that eventually could enable timely interventions by mental health professionals,” said Chris Poulin, principal investigator on the project, in a statement. “Facebook’s capability for outreach is unparalleled.”

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Three Years After Texas Woman’s Suicide, a Question Lingers: Who Was She?

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

To her husband, she was Lori Kennedy. But to a dogged federal investigator, she is “Jane Doe,” a Texas mother who killed herself three years ago in her family’s driveway after spending decades using stolen identities to erase a past that remains mired in mystery.

For two years, Social Security investigator Joseph Velling has been working to uncover the real identity of Lori Erica Ruff, who was Lori Erica Kennedy before marrying into an East Texas family in 2004. Prior to that, she was known as Becky Sue Turner, an identity forged with the birth certificate of a long-dead child. Velling, a seasoned government sleuth, has been stumped in figuring out the true name and background of this Jane Doe, who took on aliases with spy-like sophistication.

“She created a false identity for the sole purpose of getting lost in America,” Velling told FoxNews.com. “It must have been for some horrific reason…either she was running away from a crime or an abusive family or relationship.”

“She wanted a complete break from her past,” said Velling. “By changing her name, she created a clean identity – a person with no past.”

The mystery surrounding Jane Doe’s identity begins in May 1988, when the unknown woman requested the Bakersfield, Calif., birth certificate of a 2-year-old girl, Becky Sue Turner, who died in a 1971 house fire in Fife, Wash., Velling said.

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Veteran Suicides Outpace Combat Deaths, Child Gun Deaths

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Photo Credit: The U.S. ArmyMemorial Day commemorates the U.S. soliders who lost their lives in service. It’s also a time to recognize a growing but less visible group of fallen soliders who chose to end their own lives while serving or after returning from war.

There are about 22 veteran suicides each day, a rate higher than previous estimates, based on a report released by the Department of Veterans Affairs earlier this year. Many veterans who take their own lives are over 50, but the hundreds of thousands of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan also struggle to adjust to civilian life while dealing with the mental and physical effects of war on top of a weak job market.

Photo Credit: Jan Diehm

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Historian Kills Himself in Paris’ Notre Dame to Make Statement Against Homosexual Marriage and Islam

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Photo Credit: CNNA right-wing historian and author killed himself inside the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris Tuesday in front of horrified tourists, police said.

About 1,500 people at the cathedral were evacuated, CNN affiliate BFM reported. The site is one of the world’s most prominent churches and a huge tourist attraction in the French capital.

BFM identified the man as Dominique Venner, 78.

Le Monde newspaper quoted a rector at the cathedral, who said the man placed a letter on the altar and then shot himself.

On his blog, Venner has lashed out against same-sex marriage and what he called a future Islamist takeover of France.

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Vermont Passes Law Allowing Doctor-Assisted Suicide

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Photo Credit: ReutersVermont on Monday became the fourth U.S. state to end legal penalties for doctors who prescribe medication to terminally ill patients seeking to end their own lives.

The law, which includes a number of safeguards over the next three years as the state adapts, marked the first time a U.S. state has used the legislative process to make assisted suicide legal. Oregon and Washington have similar laws passed through ballot measures and a Montana court authorized the practice in 2009.

“Vermonters who face terminal illness and are in excruciating pain at the end of their lives now have control over their destinies. This is the right thing to do,” said Governor Peter Shumlin, a Democrat, who signed the law on Monday.

Supporters of the practice are hoping Vermont’s law will lend momentum in other states, such as Connecticut and New Jersey, that have considered similar legislation. A bill legalizing the practice failed in Massachusetts last year.

The law allows physicians to prescribe death-inducing medications, which terminally ill patients wishing to commit suicide could then administer to themselves. It limits the prescriptions to residents of the state.

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