So I went on a picnic and there was this head hanging from the bridge...

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

… and I’m very happy I didn’t see it. :eek:

Last Sunday I went out the city for a little country side break. Around 9 AM we crossed the Chao Praya river via the Rama VIII bridge. It’s a nice looking cable stayed bridge with a great view of the river and the city but little did I know that as I passed by there was a human head hanging from a rope tied to the railling.

Just today they found the rest of the guy: Body of beheaded foreigner found

Eerie, very creepy. I’ve seen some closer up photos and it’s disturbing, the head was inside a clear plastic bag and there where blood splattering on the side of the bridge. On the rail there was a note saying “I want but I cannot …,” and “I came to Bangkok to be you”. Strange.
I guess there’s a small change that it may actually be a suicide, after all that’s the only thing that would explain the blood splatters, guy jumps off, long drop noose, pop goes the head and gory blood spraying ensues. The knot closes up the bag and you have one for the annals of odd suicides. Of course, why on earth would someone put their head in a bag and then jump off is beyond me.

2

I’ll take a guess. The bag was to knock him out. IE: Bag over head, rope over bag, climb over rail and lean back. When he blacked out he lost his grip and fell, but never knew he was falling.

Hey I didn’t say it was a GOOD guess……

3

There was once a man who wanted to end his life, and wanted to be damn sure he succeeded. He went down to a nearby lake and climbed onto a tree overhanging the lake. He tied a rope around his neck, swallowed a hemlock capsule, doused himself with gasoline, and lit it on fire as he jumped from the tree. He had a pistol, and attempted to shoot himself in the head. He missed, and hit the rope instead. He fell into the water, immediately dousing the fire. He swallowed so much water it diluted the poison, and he had to swim frantically in order to save his life.

4

So he survived? Meaning he was a total screw-up?

Or is this some kind of TASS version of “What Really Happened To Rasputin (He Did It To Himself)”?

5

Snopes link.

6

Yes, that story is apocryphal. But there is a documented phenomenon called “complex suicide” (I read a paper on it once, but it was in a forensic-pathology yearbook series and I don’t have a cite to hand) where people use two or more methods to off themselves. These can be unplanned (second method used because first method didn’t work, or was taking too long) or planned (very determined suicides). The unplanned sort often involve wrist-slashing followed by something else, because wrist-slashing is a fairly lousy way to kill yourself. The planned sort often involve drugs and/or alcohol; it’s an open question sometimes whether the chemicals are part of the death plan or simply make it easier to face drowning or cutting yourself or lying down on the train tracks.

Plastic bag plus hanging is actually fairly tame. I remember a news report of a guy who leaped out a hotel window after setting himself on fire.

7

Goodness gracious!!!

I saw a close up of the hangin’ noggin’ and it actually seems to be held up by the knot tightening up on some tissue on the back of the neck. NSFW, disturbing, gory and just plain disgusting; but if you must here’s the picture link, mangled up to prevent accidental clickings: h-doubleT-p://www.bangkokstories.com/?p=245

8

I didn’t expect anybody to take it seriously, or I would have put a “:p” in there somewhere. I had always heard it as a joke, I’m surprised there’s actually a Snopes link.

:stuck_out_tongue:

9

Reposting my favorite suicide method, from Bash.org

10

Rather than hijack the beheading thread in the Pit and its intense religious debate, I figure this should go in a thread all its own.

Sunday afternoon about 2pm, the severed head of a farang (Westerner) was found in a plastic bag hanging from a rope from the Rama VIII Bridge above the Chao Phraya River, the big river that cuts through Bangkok. The head was sort of sticking out of the bag, so it could be plainly seen. Etched in the hand railing of the bridge were two sentences in bad English: “I want but I can not” and “I came to Bangkok to be you” (sic). (At first, I thought they meant a paper note was left, but no, the sentences were etched right into the railing.)

Now, the local media at first said the police ruled out suicide. That may seem to be a no-brainer to many of you, but believe me, anytime a farang dies, they try hard to rule it a suicide regardless of circumstances. This one’s a bit difficult to shrug off as one.

Or so I thought at first. But then yesterday afternoon (Monday afternoon), the body was discovered in the river below. They’re doing forensics to make sure the head and body match; Good to be sure, I guess, but I’ll bet money they do. After all, there’s not that many headless farangs running around here. Now, as soon as I heard about the body being fished out of the river below, I wondered if maybe he had hanged himself after all, putting a bag around his head and then being decapitated at the end of the drop. It seems the blood in the bag is concentrated around the opening, where it would have been drawn tight around the neck. One farang here who is a firefighter/rescue-crew member has already related a similar case that he was involved with, complete with bag around the head. I don’t know why someone would put a clear plastic bag over his head to hang himself; perhaps to make sure he suffocated if his neck didn’t break? I dunno.

But we may have a suicide after all. If so, no doubt it’s yet another love affair with a bargirl gone horribly wrong. Many guys DO lose their heads over the bargirls, but usually not quite this literally. However, initial forensics have described the man’s as having “distinctive Russian facial features.” Now, the Russian mafia is extremely active in Thailand. They’re centered in Pattaya, but they’re in Bangkok, too. So the police are also looking into the possibility of a Russian mob hit.

One thing this is definitely NOT a case of is a religious beheading. We’ve had a Muslim insurgency in our deep South – the provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat – for five years now, ever since a successful raid on an army arms depot on January 4, 2004. Daily or near-daily beheadings have become the norm. But the strife has been efficiently contained to that area, and Bangkok has never been touched, let alone the Upper South on the Malay Peninsula. This bears none of the hallmarks of a religious beheading anyway. So far, the Muslims down South have not tried to cover up the beheadings by leaving fake messages behind, nor would they be likely to do anything quite this bizarre for their first one in Bangkok. I mean, come on! No, this one is almost certainly not a religious beheading. Myself, I’m leaning toward the suicide theory at the moment.

There’s a story here that has no photos. The Thai-language media have publishe some non-gruesome photos of the body and face, but because of the sensitive nature of the pics in the articles, I’ll break up the links here:

www.matichon.co.th/khaosod/view_news.php?newsid=TUROd01ERXdNVEl6TURJMU1nPT0=&sectionid=TURNd01RPT0=&day=TWpBd09TMHdNaTB5TXc9PQ==

and

www.manager.co.th/Crime/ViewNews.aspx?NewsID=9520000020755

In that first unparsed link above, if you look closely you can read the “I came to Bangkok to be you” meessage etched into the hand railing.

Now, below is a link to a rather gruesome photo, so be warned, it is definitely NOT SAFE FOR WORK:

Now, the English-language news story linked to above says the security cameras on the bridge were not working. If that’s true, that would be suspicious and could point towards a Russian hit. Or it could just be Thailand as usual, with the security cameras having not worked for a while and no one noticing, or noticing and not caring.

But my gut feeling is suicide over a bargirl. This will be in the news for a while, I have no doubt. I’m tellin ya: It never EVER gets boring around here.

11

Well, here we see Andrew Drummond, a locally based British journalist, has already ruled out suicide. No offense to Andrew, but he’s often gotten things wrong in the past, and this seems a bit too soon to be drawing conclusions. But we’ll see

The link above in this post is safe for work, no photos.

12

I’m no CSI expert, but the blood spray patterns on the bridge behind the head indicate that his heart was beating when his head and body parted company. Not saying it wasn’t a mob hit, but if he’d been killed somewhere else before (which is more common, I think), there wouldn’t have been any aortic pressure to spray the blood.

Should be interesting reading over the coming days and weeks, figuring out what happened and why.

13

If the head had been found at 2am instead of 2pm, I’d be more suspicious it was a hit. But who is going to whack someone in the middle of a huge-ass busy bridge in broad daylight? Or even if whacked elsewhere – unlikely from the blood spatters – toss the body over and hang the head?

It could be the guy chose a moment when there was little or no traffic coming along the bridge to don the bag and noose and jump.

14

Was there a Thompson gun found anywhere nearby?

And has anyone seen Van Owen?

15

Oddly enough, you were scooped by another Doper in Thailand…

16

Well if he (or his killer if he was murdered) is Russian why is the message written in English?

17

Have you looked in Johannesburg?

18

Note that it’s poor grammar; it sounds like the intent was “I came to Bangkok to be with you,” rather than the very odd-sounding “…to be you” that was written. It’s possible that the bar girl he killed himself over knew some degree of English, not Russian (and that he didn’t know Thai), and so perhaps they communicated in rough English.

It would also be odd and unlikely for someone to, in broad daylight, push a body/wrestle a person over the rail there, and then sit and carve messages into the railing. If you were staging a suicide, wouldn’t you type/block print a “suicide note” on paper and stick it in the guy’s pocket? Meanwhile a lone guy standing on the bridge rail doing a little bit of carving would probably barely be noticed; people might even think he’s looking over the side rather than doing a little vandalism.

19

D’oh! :smack: Say, could a Mod merge the two threads?

20

Guy puts bag over his head, noose over bag, passes out, falls, rope stops the head, breaks the neck, body pops off like a stem off a grape, falls into the river. Simple enough, as I see it.