The news this evening revealed that police are saying both their deaths were suicide by gunshot.
They’re also going to be comparing the guns to those that killed the other three, I suspect that’s will just confirm what most people already suspect, that they were murdered by the pair.
I wish they’d been captured alive. At least then we could ask … why?
I did some reading and saw suggestions that they were obsessed with the Azov Battalion. That’s a neo-Nazi Russian militia based in occupied Ukraine. (And while they deny these political leanings, they frequently wear Nazi armbands.) This battalion doesn’t make sense. The Nazis literally hated Russians. (Bryer Schmegelsky is of Ukrainian descent.)
I’m thinking - under the circumstances, how are the police going to tell the difference between a double-suicide and a murder-suicide?
The only good thing about Nazis is that they killed a lot of Russians.
The only good thing about Russians is that they killed a lot of Nazis.
Why would you believe them? They were criminally crazy; there’s no sense to what they did.
Yes, they were insane.
To hell with them.
Both of them had gunpowder traces on one hand, perhaps?
“Hey, could you shoot that stump over there?”
“Why?”
“Just as a favor.”
Blam. “Happy?”
“Sure, now let me try it with your gun.”
Blam.
“You, you … shot me …”
Different blam.
Angle of entry is a major one. While possible to match what someone would do for a suicide, it is very difficult. Police and forensic analysts can be ridiculously good at deconstructing the events.
That is, if they really care. All they really want to do is eliminate any possibility of a third person on the scene. Once they are confident that it was just the two of them, what meaningful difference would there be between murder/suicide vs double-suicide?
Notifying next of kin. Police and the courts like to know exactly what happened in legal situations.