That's the best explanation that I can think of for the "spy accidentally killed himself by locking himself inside a garment bag" theory of Scotland Yard.
In Joseph Wambaugh's novels in the `70s, he mentioned that the detectives would sometimes contrive elaborate explanations of how somebody could have committed suicide, especially when the dead guy was a drug dealer. The alternative was to have a killing on their books that could never be solved.
That's kind of what this smells like.
They’ll Be Real Cheesed Off When They Find Out
56 minutes ago
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Yup. Right on.
As a (very) young newspaper reporter,\ — we're talking 1960 here — I once stumbled across a real life example of this. A guy was found garroted in the stairwell of a building in Central Park, in an area close to The Ramble, in those days (and maybe today) a place of anonymous gay assignations. In those very closeted days, the area was also a great spot for muggers to ply their trade without much fear that their victims would call the cops. "And what were you doing in the Ramble at 1 a.m., Mr. Smith?"
The tool of this garroting was a piano wire, twisted with a pencil. The guy's jacket was half on and half off. Who takes one arm out of his jacket, leaves the other in, and then offs himself — and doesn't panic while gasping for breath and undo the garrote?
The cops were already on the scene when I got there. The medical examiner arrived, pulled down the corpse's pants, and discovered no semen. Therefore, he concluded, it wasn't a gay murder. The man's clothing was not torn nor his shoes scuffed. Therefore it couldn't possibly have been a mugging. (That's what he concluded and how he concluded it.) The death was ruled a suicide.)
I went out to Queens to interview the widow. "Our priest told me to stay away from him," she said, referring to her husband. "He said that man's not right."
I called the story in to my city desk and said I was troubled by the suicide ruling. "If the Medical Examiner says it's a suicide then it's a suicide. C'mon back to the office," my night city editor growled me.
This demonstrated to me that night city editors can be as lazy as cops and medical examiners.
Very crankily yours,
The New York Crank
Yep, suicide of 'convenience'...
In the case of this guy, he had a long history of having to be bailed out of attempts to replicate Houdini escapes. For example, once a neighbor had to call the police when she discovered him locked to his bed with handcuffs. He apparently had thought he'd figured a way to escape them, except not.
So I'm willing in this case to buy the accidental death thing. Barely.
I remember a discussion of a death many years ago as discussed by police friends: .44Magnum wound to center chest, most determined case of suicide they had ever seen,wink wink.
They used to call this sort of thing "death by misadventure".
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