Keith Warren was a 19-year-old African-American teenager who was found hanging from a tree in Silver Spring, Maryland, in 1986.
On Tuesday, July 29th 1986, Keith received a call from friends and went to hang out with them but never returned home. The next day, July 30th 1986, his mother, Mary Couey, called the Montgomery County Police to report him missing. She was informed by the police that unless he was an invalid or on medication, she would have to wait 48 hours to file a report.
July 31st 1986, at approximately 2:00PM a woman called paramedics at the nearby Fire and Rescue Station to report a suicide. They arrived at the house of Chip Wynn, where they found out his girlfriend, Michelle Lawson had called it in. They were directed to the nearby woods, where they found the body of Keith Warren hanging from a tree. Officer Luther Leverette responded to the scene, where his death was almost immediately ruled a suicide.
Police had the body taken down and delivered to the funeral home to be embalmed. The family was noticed about 6 hours after the discovery of his body.
On April 9th 1992, Mary found an envelope with no return address at her door, containing police photos of her son's crime scene. It is still not known who sent these photos or how they got them. She had noticed that the items of clothing that she received from police were not the same ones in the photos.
His death was still ruled a suicide by police. In the following decades Warren's family and various advocates highlighted what they felt were failures in the police's investigation and called for the case to be reopened. Mary, his mother, started The Keith Warren Justice Foundation and kept doing her own investigations into her son's death until she passed in 2009. Now, Keith's sister, Sherri Warren, keeps the foundation going.
Warren's case was the subject of the 2022 docuseries, Uprooted. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]
Aileen Carol Wuornos was an American serial killer. In 1989–1990, while engaging in street prostitution along highways in Florida, she shot dead and robbed seven of her male clients. Wuornos claimed that her clients had either raped or attempted to rape her, and that the homicides of the men were committed in self-defense. Wuornos was sentenced to death for six of the murders. She was executed on October 9, 2002, by lethal injection after spending more than 10 years on Florida's death row.
The Colonial Parkway murders were the serial murders of at least eight people in the U.S. state of Virginia between 1986 and 1989. The killings were associated with the Colonial Parkway, a 22-mile long thoroughfare that cuts through the Colonial National Historical Park and connects Jamestown, Williamsburg and Yorktown. Long stretches of the road are devoid of any streetlights and are extremely isolated, making it a popular lovers' lane location frequented by young adults.
Roxalana "Roxana" Druse, was the last woman hanged in the state of New York, and the first woman hanged in 40 years in Central New York. Her botched execution didn't kill her instantly, further motivating New York officials to replace the gallows with the electric chair in New York in 1890.
The open verdict is an option open to a coroner's jury at an inquest in the legal system of England and Wales. The verdict means the jury confirms the death is suspicious, but is unable to reach any other verdicts open to them. Mortality studies consider it likely that the majority of open verdicts are recorded in cases of suicide where the intent of the deceased could not be proved, although the verdict is recorded in many other circumstances.
On April 8, 1994, Kurt Cobain, the lead singer and guitarist of the American rock band Nirvana, was found dead at his home on Lake Washington Boulevard in Seattle, Washington. Forensics investigators and a coroner later determined that Cobain had died on April 5, three days prior to the discovery of his body. The Seattle Police Department incident report stated that Cobain was found with a shotgun across his body, had suffered a visible gunshot wound to the head, and that a suicide note had been discovered nearby. Seattle police confirmed Cobain's death as a suicide.
Deborah Jeane Palfrey, dubbed the D. C. Madam by the news media, operated Pamela Martin and Associates, an escort agency in Washington, D.C. Although she maintained that the company's services were legal, she was convicted on April 15, 2008, of racketeering, using the mail for illegal purposes, and money laundering. Slightly over two weeks later, facing a prison sentence of five or six years, she was found hanged. Autopsy results and the final police investigative report concluded that her death was a suicide.
Jang Ja-yeon was a South Korean actress. She was born in Jeongeup, North Jeolla Province, South Korea. She debuted in the entertainment industry when she appeared in a television commercial in 2006. She was known for being part of the KBS television drama series Boys Over Flowers as Sunny, one of the antagonists of the series, at the time of her death. She died by suicide on 7 March 2009 at the age of 29.
Rebecca Mawii Zahau, also known as Rebecca Nalepa, was a Burmese American woman who was found hanging at the beach house home of her boyfriend in Coronado, California, United States, on July 13, 2011, and pronounced dead by first responders called to the residence. Her death occurred two days after 6-year-old Max Shacknai, the son of her boyfriend Jonah Shacknai, had fallen from the staircase of the same property. At the time he was in critical condition in a hospital. Rebecca and her younger sister, Xena, were the only known people present at the time of Max's fall. Subsequently on July 16, 2011, Max Shacknai died of his injuries.
Amanda Michelle Todd was a 15-year-old Canadian student and victim of cyberbullying who hanged herself at her home in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia. A month before her death, Todd posted a video on YouTube in which she used a series of flashcards to tell her experience of being blackmailed into exposing her breasts via webcam, and of being bullied and physically assaulted. The video went viral after her death, resulting in international media attention. The original video has had more than 15 million views as of May 2023, although mirrored copies of the video had received tens of millions of additional views shortly after her death; additionally, a YouTube video by React has a video of teens reacting to Todd's video which has garnered 44.7 million views as of May 2023, and various videos from news agencies around the world regarding the case have registered countless millions more. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police and British Columbia Coroners Service launched investigations into the suicide.
Shane Todd was an American engineer who died under disputed circumstances in Singapore in June 2012. Local authorities said Todd had committed suicide, though his family insists that he was murdered, possibly in connection with the work he had been doing at the Institute for Micro Electronics ("IME"), part of the Singaporean government-run Agency for Science, Technology and Research ("A*STAR") involving a gallium nitride-based semiconductor amplifying device purportedly for the Chinese telecom company Huawei.
Rehtaeh Anne Parsons, was a 17-year-old Cole Harbour District High School student who attempted suicide by hanging at her home in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada, on April 4, 2013, leading to a coma and the decision to switch her life support machine off on April 7, 2013. Her death has been attributed to online distribution of photos of an alleged gang rape that occurred 17 months prior to her suicide, in November 2011. On a Facebook page set up in tribute to her daughter, Parsons' mother blamed the four boys who allegedly raped and released images of her, the subsequent constant "bullying and messaging and harassment", and the failure of the Canadian justice system, for her daughter's decision to die by suicide.
Soaked in Bleach is a 2015 American docudrama directed by Benjamin Statler, who co-wrote and produced it with Richard Middelton and Donnie Eichar. The film details the events leading up to the death of Kurt Cobain, as seen through the perspective of Tom Grant, the private detective who was hired by Courtney Love to find Cobain, shortly before his death in 1994. It also explores the theory that Cobain's death was not a suicide. The film stars Tyler Bryan as Cobain and Daniel Roebuck as Grant, with Sarah Scott portraying Courtney Love and August Emerson as Dylan Carlson.
Angela Mary Cecilia Gallop is a British forensic scientist.
Vellai Roja is a 1983 Indian Tamil-language thriller film, directed by A. Jagannathan and written and A. L. Narayanan. The film stars Sivaji Ganesan, Ambika, Prabhu and Radha. It is a remake of the 1982 Malayalam film Post Mortem. The film was released on 4 November 1983, and ran for 100 days in 13 centres.
Sandra Annette Bland was a 28-year-old African-American woman who was found hanged in a jail cell in Waller County, Texas, on July 13, 2015, three days after being arrested during a traffic stop. Officials found her death to be a suicide. There were protests against her arrest, disputing the cause of death, and alleging racial violence against her.
Maria Cristina Gutierrez was an American criminal defense attorney based in Baltimore, Maryland, who represented several high-profile defendants in the 1990s. She was the first Latina to be counsel of record in a case before the Supreme Court of the United States. In 2001, Gutierrez was disbarred, with her consent, following multiple complaints from clients who paid her for legal work she failed to perform. At the time, Gutierrez was dying from a combination of multiple sclerosis and diabetes, and her health was rapidly deteriorating.
Robert L. Fuller was a 24-year-old African-American man who was found hanging from a tree in front of the City Hall in Palmdale, California. His death was ruled a suicide by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. City officials announced that they supported an independent investigation into his death. On July 9, 2020, the LA County Sheriff's office held a news conference announcing that the death was correctly determined a suicide and provided more supporting details from the investigation, including evidence that Fuller had purchased the rope used to hang himself on May 14, almost a month prior. There is video evidence of Fuller using the same EBT card for other purchases subsequent to the purchase of the rope.
On 14 June 2020, Indian actor Sushant Singh Rajput was found dead at his room in Bandra, Mumbai, aged 34. The cause of death was ruled as suicide, with official postmortem reports confirming Rajput died of asphyxia due to hanging. The Mumbai Police launched an investigation into the death, which had become a subject of widespread speculation and rumours.