Friday, 25 October 2019

Art Imitates Life

Those news stories, about real bodies being left untouched by passer-bys, because they look like Halloween displays, and which appear every year or so, have taken on something of an urban myth character .....

Halloween Hangings In The USA
Halloween Hangings In The USA .... Increasingly Macabre

But in fact they are often all too true.

For instance on the 26th of  October 2005, the corpse of a woman was left suspended in public view for several hours in Frederica, Delaware, USA, because her lifeless body was assumed to be yet another Halloween display. The unnamed woman had hung herself from a tree in a suicide, and could easily be seen from passing vehicles.

State police spokesman Cpl. Jeff Oldham said people noticed the body around 7:30am, but dismissed it as a Halloween prank. The police finally arrived at the sad scene at 11:00am, to begin the process of examining the scene and removing the body, which they were treating as a suicide event.

TV Reports Horrific Halloween In Marina del Rey
Horrific Halloween In Marina del Rey

Then in October 2009, the decomposing body of a 75-year-old suicide victim, sat undisturbed on the balcony of the dead man's home in Marina del Rey, California, for several days, because neighbours assumed it was merely part of a Halloween display. He was slumped over a chair on the third-floor balcony of his apartment on Bora Bora Way, having shot himself through the eye.

Neighbours said that they had noticed the body three days before it was investigated, "but didn’t bother calling authorities, because it looked like a Halloween dummy.” An investigator with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said the case was an “apparent suicide,” and declined to comment further.

Rebecca Cade - Had A Sad End To Her Life
Rebecca Cade - Had A Sad End To Her Life.

Finally in October 2015 in Chillicothe Ohio, a murdered woman, who had suffered trauma to her head and neck, was initially thought to be a Halloween decoration by contractors working in the area, who believed her body was a dummy, and and only discovered it was a real body when they finally went to remove it. A neighbour said it was "like a scene from a horror movie". The victim was later identified as Rebecca Cade, and her sleeve had caught on the fence as she tried to escape her attacker, and she was killed with blows from a rock.

Donnie Cochenour Jr - Surprisingly Freed In Many Peoples Opinions.
Donnie Cochenour Jr - Surprisingly
Freed In Many Peoples Opinions.

Donnie Cochenour Jr was later arrested in connection with the murder, but after four court evaluations on his mental competency (he was a regular drug user, with an anti-social personality disorder ... i.e a drug taking twat), he was tried, but eventually freed on a split jury decision.

He was arrested and sentenced in September 2017 to 30 days in jail, for an unrelated assault, after a man interrupted him while he argued violently with a female neighbour. He served another brief spell in January 2018 for a first-degree misdemeanour count of theft, relating to that earlier assault .... Lets hope he gets what he deserves sometime real soon, without a hill-billy jury.

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