List of people who have died while on the toilet

Numerous individuals have died while using a toilet facility or in the process of defecation or urination. This includes confirmed or suspected historical figures as well as more recent notable cases.

Pre-20th century

Date	Location	Name	Age	Description	Source
Summer of 581 BC	Jin, China	Duke Jing of Jin	Unknown	Died falling into a toilet pit.	[1]
8 April 217 AD	Between Edessa and Carrhae, Roman Empire	Caracalla	29	Murdered by his soldiers while stopping to urinate on his way to Edessa.	[2]
11/12 March 222	Rome	Elagabalus	18	Murdered by the Praetorian Guard "in a latrine in which he had taken refuge".	[3]
336 AD	Constantinople, Eastern Roman Empire	Arius	80	Died from explosive gastrointestinal problems inside of a public toilet	[4]
30 November 1016	Oxford or London, England	Edmund Ironside	26	Stabbed to death while defecating in a privy.	[5]
4 November 1035	Lysá nad Labem, Bohemia	Jaromír, Duke of Bohemia	60–70	Was assassinated by being stabbed with the use of a spear from under the privy seat while defecating.	[6]
26/27 February 1076	Vlaardingen, Lower Lorraine	Godfrey IV, Duke of Lower Lorraine	Unknown	Was assassinated by being stabbed with a spear from under the privy seat while defecating.	[7]
19 April 1578	Echigo Province, Japan	Uesugi Kenshin	48	Allegedly assassinated by a ninja while using a toilet, but very unlikely because his anticipation of his own death is recorded in a death poem. Early sources record his deterioration of health, his complaints of pain in the chest "like an iron ball", and, as Kenshin Gunki recorded, "on the 9th day of the 3rd month, he had a stomach ache in his toilet. This, unfortunately, persisted until the 13th day, when he died". It is much more likely that he suffered from esophageal cancer. [8]	[9]
25 October 1760	Kensington Palace, London, England	George II of Great Britain	76	Collapsed shortly after attending to his close stool, possibly died of an aortic aneurysm.	[10]
1892	Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States	J.W., also known as Balloon Man	29	Suffered from congenital aganglionic megacolon, which brought him considerable fame for his bloated abdomen. He suffered from constipation and was found dead in a bathroom at the age of 29, apparently having died trying to defecate. His eight-foot-long colon is currently on display at the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia.	[11] [12]

20th and 21st centuries

Date	Location	Name	Age	Description	Source
3 August 1966	Los Angeles, California, United States	Lenny Bruce	40	Died from acute morphine poisoning caused by an overdose in the bathroom of his home in Hollywood Hills.	[13] [14]
22 June 1969	Chelsea, London	Judy Garland	47	Overdosed on barbiturates while using a toilet.	[15]
24 October 1971	Paris, France	George Dyer	38	Overdose of alcohol and amphetamine while using a toilet. Portrayed in The Black Triptychs	[16]
16 August 1977	Memphis, Tennessee, United States	Elvis Presley	42	He was found dead on the bathroom floor. The cause of death was cardiac arrest due to alleged drug overdose.	[17]
8 March 1989	Columbia, South Carolina, United States	Michael Godwin	28	Former Suffolk, Virginia, resident accused of fatally beating 24-year-old Molly Royem with an iron in West Columbia, South Carolina; sentenced to death by electrocution, but later reduced to a life sentence. He was accidentally electrocuted when he bit a pair of earphone wires, in an attempt to fix a broken television, while sitting on a metal toilet at the Central Correctional Institute in neighboring Columbia.	[18]
21 May 1991	Chicago, Illinois, United States	Ioan Petru Culianu	41	Assassinated by an unknown party while using the toilet in the University of Chicago Divinity School's Swift Hall.	[19]
19 January 1996	Los Angeles, California, United States	Don Simpson	52	Died of heart failure caused by combined drug intoxication in the bathroom of his home in Bel Air.	[20] [21]
8 March 2004	Hollywood Hills, California, United States	Robert Pastorelli	49	Overdosed on morphine while on a toilet.	[22]
25 June 2011	Pilton, Somerset, England	Christopher Shale	56	Died of a heart attack on a portable toilet while at Glastonbury Festival.	[23]
17 May 2013	Marcos Paz, Buenos Aires, Argentina	Jorge Rafael Videla	87	Died of a heart attack while on a jail toilet after slipping in the shower.	[24]
10 October 2016	Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Bavaria, Germany	Tamme Hanken	56	Died of sudden heart failure on a hotel toilet.	[25]
21 June 2019	Doha, Qatar	Toufiq M Seraj	63	Fell unconscious on an aeroplane toilet en route from Dhaka to Doha; he was pronounced dead of a massive heart attack shortly after landing.	[26]
23 November 2021	Seoul, Republic of Korea	Chun Doo-hwan	90	Had multiple myeloma; found "fallen down" by a probable heart attack in a toilet at home.	[27]
4 March 2022	Auburndale, Florida, United States	Aaron Henderson	43	Crushed to death by a bulldozer while using a portable toilet.	[28]
18 October 2025	Florida, United States [29]	Sam Rivers (bassist)	48	Died in a bathroom in his Florida home.	[30]

Deaths in fiction

• Donald Gennaro (played by Martin Ferrero) is eaten by a Tyrannosaurus rex while sitting on the toilet of a destroyed restroom cabin in the 1993 movie Jurassic Park . ^[31]
• South Park : In the 2012 episode "Reverse Cowgirl", Clyde's mom falls into the toilet and suffers disembowelment. ^[32]
• Tywin Lannister (played by Charles Dance) is shot with a crossbow (wielded by his son, Tyrion Lannister) while on the privy. In the book series, Tywin is shot in A Storm of Swords. In the television adaptation, Tyrion kills Tywin at the end of Game of Thrones season 4. ^[33]

See also

• List of unusual deaths
• Toilet-related injuries and deaths

References

1. Zuo Qiuming (translator James Legge). "Book VIII. Duke Cheng". Zuo Zhuan (in Chinese and English). University of Virginia. Retrieved 23 April 2012. Chapter X.
2. "Historia Augusta • Life of Caracalla". penelope.uchicago.edu. Retrieved 2022-09-05.
3. "Historia Augusta • The Life of Elagabalus". penelope.uchicago.edu. Retrieved 2023-06-07.
4. Muehlberger, Ellen (6 May 2015). "The Legend of Arius' Death: Imagination, Space and Filth in Late Ancient Historiography". Past & Present (227): 3–29. doi: 10.1093/pastj/gtu042 .
5. Henry of Huntingdon (2002). Historia Anglorum[History of the English People]. p. 15.
6. Chronica Baemorum. "Kochan poslal svého kata a když onen slepec seděl na záchodě v hodině noční, vyprazdňoval břich, proklál ho ostrým oštěpem zezadu až do útrob břišních."
7. Hay, David (2008), The military leadership of Matilda of Canossa, 1046-1115, Manchester University Press, pp. 35, 43–44.
8. Turnbull, Stephen (2012b). Ninja AD 1460–1650. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 9781782002567.
9. Turnbull 2012, p. 32
10. Thompson, pp. 289–290; Van der Kiste, p. 213.
11. "Giant Megacolon". The College of Physicians of Philadelphia. Archived from the original on 2023-01-10. Retrieved 2022-09-13.
12. "Medical mystery solved: The case of the 'Balloon Man'". M3 USA Corporation.
13. Collins, Ronald K. L.; Skover, David M.; Bruce, Lenny (2002). The trials of Lenny Bruce : the fall and rise of an American icon. Internet Archive. Naperville, Ill. : Sourcebooks MediaFusion. ISBN   978-1-57071-986-8.
14. "Lenny Bruce, Uninhibited Comic, Found Dead in Hollywood Home". The New York Times . 2001-10-15. Archived from the original on 2001-10-15. Retrieved 2024-01-29.
15. citing United Press International article "Judy Took Too Many Pills" and containing a copy of Garland's death certificate.
16. Jonathan Jones (17 September 2019), "Death on a toilet: the shocking Paris show that almost sank Francis Bacon", The Guardian
17. "Elvis' addiction was the perfect prescription for an early death". PBS NewsHour. 16 August 2018. Retrieved 13 January 2020.
18. "Convicted Criminal Escaped Electric Chair, Then Electrocuted Himself in his Toilet". The Vintage News. 2018-08-27. Retrieved 2022-02-19.
19. Anton, Ted (1996). "The Aftermath". Eros, Magic, and the Murder of Professor Culianu . Northwestern University Press. pp. 14, 22–23. ISBN   0-8101-1396-1 – via the Internet Archive.
20. Pace, Eric (1996-01-21). "Don Simpson Is Dead at 52; Produced Blockbuster Films". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2024-01-29.
21. admin (2015-03-04). "Don Simpson (Producer) - bizarre sex life? ⋆ Historian Alan Royle". Historian Alan Royle. Retrieved 2024-01-29.
22. "Actor Robert Pastorelli found dead in home". TODAY.com. Retrieved 2017-10-08.
23. "PM in Commons tribute to friend". BBC News. Retrieved 2017-10-08.
24. "Videla, el represor que murió en un inodoro y que lideró a los que podrían pedir el 2x1". BigBang! News (in Spanish). 5 May 2017. Archived from the original on 2022-07-28. Retrieved 2020-01-13.
25. "Tamme Hanken: Herztod auf Toilette in Garmisch-Partenkirchen". www.merkur.de (in German). 2016-10-11. Retrieved 2024-01-29.
26. "Sheltech MD dies on plane". The Daily Star. 22 June 2019. Retrieved 6 August 2022.
27. 이호승; 강수련 (23 November 2021). "'끝내 사과 없이' 전두환 사망..'친구' 노태우 떠난 지 28일만(종합2보)". News 1 (in Korean). Retrieved 23 August 2022.
28. "Polk County landfill employee killed in tragic accident". WFLA-TV . 4 March 2022. Retrieved 5 March 2022.
29. "sam-rivers-died-in-a-pool-of-blood-in-bathroom-report". Men's Journal . 1 November 2025. Retrieved 3 November 2025.
30. "Limp Bizkit bassist Sam Rivers, 48, was 'found dead in a pool of blood'". standard.co.uk . 31 October 2025. Retrieved 3 November 2025.
31. Alexander, Bryan (7 April 2013). "'Jurassic Park': Meet 'the guy who died on the toilet'". USA Today. Retrieved 28 March 2020.
32. McGee, Ryan (14 March 2012). "South Park: "Reverse Cowgirl"". The A.V. Club. Retrieved 28 March 2020.
33. Hibberd, James (16 June 2014). "'Game of Thrones': George R.R. Martin explains that murderous finale scene". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved 13 August 2025.