NightBlogger

Jason Leopold
Online Journal Contributing Writer
In a stunning admission, top officials at the Veterans Health Administration confirmed that the agency’s own statistics show that an average of 126 veterans per week — 6,552 veterans per year — commit suicide, according to an internal email distributed to several VA officials. Brig. Gen. Michael J. Kussman, the undersecretary for health at the VA, sent the email, dated Dec. 15, 2007. Kussman had inquired about the accuracy of a news report published that month claiming the suicide rate among veterans was 18 per day. More

Source: Norwich Bulletin
TAUNTON, Mass. — A 53-year-old wife and mother fatally shot herself soon after faxing a letter to her mortgage company saying that by the time they foreclosed on her house that day, she would be dead. Police in Taunon say Carlene Balderrama used her husband’s high-powered rifle to kill herself Tuesday afternoon, 90 minutes before her foreclosed home was to be sold at auction. The mortgage company notified authorities, who found her body an hour later. Police say she left a note to her family telling them to take the life insurance money to pay for the house.

Photo PhotoFusion

MARI YAMAGUCHI
TOKYO (AP) — A Japanese farmer who committed suicide by drinking pesticide vomited the poison at a hospital before he died, releasing toxic fumes that sickened more than 50 people, the hospital said Thursday. Doctors were trying to pump the 34-year-old man’s stomach when he threw up, spraying his rescuers with chloropicrin, causing 54 doctors, nurses and patients to develop breathing problems and eye sores.

The incident came amid a string of suicides in Japan by people mixing household chemicals to create lethal fumes. Many bystanders in recent months have been sickened by fumes that escaped into adjoining rooms, apartments or homes. Read more

Arthur H. Rotstein, AP
Examiner.com
A decorated Marine Corps staff sergeant who apparently fatally shot his brother before killing himself at the end of a long police chase had served multiple tours in Iraq and written about coping with post-traumatic stress syndrome. Pinal County Sheriff’s spokesman Mike Minter said no motive has been established for why Travis N. “T-Bo” Twiggs, 36, killed his 38-year-old brother Willard J. “Will” Twiggs and then himself on Wednesday.

Nor is it known why both brothers earlier in the week may have tried to commit suicide by attempting to drive their car into the Grand Canyon. Travis Twiggs’ wife, Kellee, told KNXV-TV in Phoenix that her husband was on various medications and couldn’t sleep at times. He [Twiggs] wrote that he “began to notice ‘changes’ in myself” after returning from his second duty tour. Those changes included being “more irritable, paranoid for no reason, unable to sleep” and having trouble focusing when he was around other people, he said. Read more

Photo is a prop
and courtesy of OiMax

AP/MITCH STACY
freep.com
Working suicide patrol on the towering Sunshine Skyway Bridge, Florida Highway Patrol Sgt. Leif Cardwell rolled up to find the 58-year-old woman with one leg already draped over the short concrete barrier wall. The license plate on the Ford minivan she drove there said: “HPPY NOW.” Cardwell kept his distance, imploring her to talk to him about her problems and not go through with it. He had thwarted a bridge suicide attempt two months before.

“It’s too late,” she kept saying. She threw down her driver’s license and cell phone and swung her other leg over. Then she was gone, just like that. Despondent souls keep stopping at the peak of the majestic Florida Gulf Coast landmark to kill themselves every year, adding to its reputation as one of the country’s most notorious bridges for jumpers. Read more

telegraph.co.uk
A girl as young as eight was sent on a suicide bombing mission in Iraq today, it has been claimed. The Iraqi army said that an officer had been killed when the girl, strapped with explosives, approached soldiers near Youssifiyah, south of the capital Baghdad.

An army spokesman said that the bomb she was carrying was detonated by remote control, killing a captain and injuring another four soldiers. Authorities imposed a curfew in the area and US troops launched a search for those responsible. Read more

Photo mikelens

Early child abuse may forever change the way genes are expressed in the brain, suggests a postmortem study of people who died by suicide.

It is now well established that it isn’t just what genes we inherit, but how they are turned on and off that influences our development. Most of these control switches are thrown before we are born, but some are set in early life, and to a lesser degree, throughout our lives.

Genes are switched off when methyl groups are added to our DNA. Studies have shown that diet, stress and even maternal care can influence these “epigenetic” changes. More

Palfrey had another two months before sentencing in July. Despite the plethora of unanswered questions, the improbable suicide—not only the manner but timing—of both Palfrey and her associate, Brandy Britton; and their deaths so near to lengthly trials threatening the exposure of high-powered officials, are events that will soon fade forever from the public’s ephemeral memory hole.
Click here for more Deborah Palfrey stories

Click here for more on Deborah Palfrey

Fox News’ Geraldo has Alex Jones on to examine the evidence that shows that DC Madam Deborah Jean Palfrey was murdered– despite the official claim that she committed suicide.

Jones points out the numerous statements Palfrey made in refutation of suicide, as well as the criminology that women rarely hang themselves, generally preferring pills.

Geraldo and two co-hosts admit they agree with Alex Jones– that claims of Palfrey’s suicide are “stinky” and suspicious and that the case should be further investigated.

One woman even says that the John’s on Palfreys list– including many high-level politicians– should be revealed and prosecuted.

Palfrey’s hi-rise apartment manager in Florida says he saw Palfrey only days before her death when she told him a contract may be out on her life. Additionally, she made arrangements to secure her apartment for the next six years– the approximate time she expected to be in prison–seemingly pointing to the idea that she expected to stay alive.

Photo Francesco di Fazio

WESH.com reports the building manager of a Central Florida condo said he spent time talking to Deborah Jean Palfrey on Monday as she packed to go to her mother’s house and she did not seem suicidal…She often told him she believed she was being followed and he thinks there may have been some former clients of her escort service who wanted her dead.

“She insinuated that there is a contract out for her and I fully believe they succeeded,” her building manager said. Palfrey’s Lexus is still parked in the Park Lake garage and the staff said on Monday, she asked about making sure her condo fees would continue to be paid during what Palfrey anticipated would be six years in prison. See Video

Before her death, Palfrey is quoted in The New York Times as telling ABC: ”I’m sure as heck not going to be going to federal prison for one day, let alone four to eight years, because I’m shy about bringing in the deputy secretary of whatever. Not for a second. I’ll bring every last one of them in if necessary.”

And one can’t help but be suspicious when comparing the similarities in the events of Brandy Britton’s (a previous Palfrey employee arrested on prostitution charges in 2006) last days before her alleged suicide by hanging. In an Examiner article dating back to October 23, 2006, titled “Sex, lies & Ph.D.”, she speaks of being harassed by local police, claiming her sex clients are doctors, judges and politicians. “I don’t want to talk in the living room,” she says to a reporter, her voice hushed. “I think it’s bugged.”

ConnieTalk.com points out:

But while the media has reported over and over again a quote from Dan Moldea - who told Time that Palfrey said she’d commit suicide before going to jail - little to nothing has been republished of her interview with The Alex Jones Show, in which she repeated multiple times for the record that she had no intention of suicide and planned to fight her case. She also implied that she found it suspicious that one of her former employees, Brandy Britton, committed suicide before her own trial in January.

“She was a very upbeat person, a very positive person,” Palfrey had said. “She was going into court, she was ready to fight ‘em…she was absolutely not going to give in…and all of a sudden…she committed suicide. And her family members, her friends say that this was extremely abnormal, she was not in a frame of mind to commit suicide, that perhaps she knew something.”

Women simply don’t hang themselves. At least in Marylin’s alleged suicide, her death was fashioned in the manner habitually employed by women: an overdose. Click here for more on Deborah Palfrey

Nancy Grace explores Deborah Palfrey’s alleged suicide. Several experts interviewed.
See also: DC Madam, “They will make it look like suicide”
Click here for ALL Deborah Palfrey posts

This from opednews.com a year ago:
Headlined on 5/24/07:
DC Madam scandal widens: Cheney, Giuliani, Abramoff
The media black-out on the scandal involving DC Madam Deborah Jeane Palfrey is surprising in light of the lack of lawsuits being leveled at the Wayne Madsen Report website. Instead of Dick Cheney and the recently resigned Randall Tobias filing libel and slander lawsuits against the site, we see only their silence. Moreover, the Wayne Madsen site has been continually expanding on this story - making this either the scoop of the century, or the biggest fairy tale in DC history.

Consider this: WMR is now reporting specifically who at ABC News’ 20/20 became fully aware of not only Cheney’s use of the escort service, but dozens more “high profile” names - culled from the phone records only since 2002 (the escort services full records go back to 1994). ABC’s crack team was reportedly gagged by their bosses after concerned calls from the White House. This would be amazing if true, yet no White House denial has been forthcoming as of this writing…
Read more

Also see: DC Madam, “They will make it look like suicide”
and Murder speculation grows in DC Madam case
Click here for all Deborah Palfrey posts

Another suicide was involved in this case as well. “Former University of Maryland, Baltimore County, professor Brandy Britton was arrested on prostitution charges in 2006. Before going to trial, Britton committed suicide in January by hanging herself in her home in an upscale neighborhood between Baltimore and Washington”. Only 1 US Senator and two other low profile Washington officials were implicated while her case was on appeal. Very strange. One thing’s for sure: Women rarely hang themselves.

FoxNews: Police in Tarpon Springs, Fla., said there was “no question” that Deborah Jeane Palfrey committed suicide by hanging Thursday, but that was not enough to stop immediate speculation that the infamous “D.C. Madam” was the victim of murder. Hustler magazine publisher and free-speech advocate Larry Flynt — one of Palfrey’s staunchest advocates — was the strongest voice forwarding the notion that Palfrey’s death was not by her own hands.
Read more

This from Wikipedia

Palfrey appeared on ABC’s 20/20 as part of an investigative report on 4 May 2007.[4] In combination with Palfrey’s statement that she has 10,000 to 15,000 phone numbers of clients, this has caused several clients’ lawyers to contact Palfrey to see whether accommodations could be made to keep their identities private.[5] Ultimately, ABC News, after going through what was described as “46 lbs” [21 kg] of phone records, decided that none of the potential clients was sufficiently “newsworthy” to bother mentioning.[6]

The scandal has led to the resignation of Ambassador Randall L. Tobias from his State Department position and as the Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Also named was Washington Times columnist Harlan Ullman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

On July 9th, 2007 Palfrey released the supposed entirety of her phone records for public viewing and download on the Internet in TIFF format, though days prior to this, her civil attorney Montgomery Blair Sibley had dispatched 54 CD-ROM copies to researchers, activists, and journalists. Senator David Vitter (R-LA) acknowledged on the night of July 9th that he had been a customer of Palfrey’s escort service.

Photo Oimax

Since April, the number of websites has just jumped with writing examples that include “you can die easily and beautifully,” said Seiji Yoshikawa, deputy head of the Internet Hot Line, which reports suspect Internet sites to the police. Japan’s National Police Agency urged Internet providers to delete materials from websites showing readers how to mix household chemicals known to produce the deadly gas hydrogen sulfide. Some sites reportedly provide “poison gas” warnings that viewers can print out and hang outside their doors when they kill themselves.

Japan, with one of the highest suicide rates in the world, has battled a series of suicide fads over the years. Until this year, many cases involved victims who found each other on the Internet and committed suicide together, often by sealing themselves in a car and lighting a charcoal-burning brazier.
Read more
See Video Suicide in Japan

Photo courtesy of Shadowplay
VA Tried to Conceal Extent of Attempted Veteran Suicides

Top officials at the Veterans Administration tried to conceal information from the public about the sudden increase of attempted suicides among veterans that were treated or sought help at VA hospitals around the country, a previously undisclosed internal VA email indicates. The email was disclosed…in a federal trial at a courthouse in Northern California where two veterans advocacy groups filed a class-action lawsuit against the VA alleging that a systematic breakdown at the VA has led to an epidemic of suicides among war veterans. These groups claim the VA has turned away veterans who have sought help for post traumatic stress disorder and were suicidal. Some of the veterans, the lawsuit claims, later took their own lives.
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