Committed Suicide

An FBI review of the 2005 death of Robert Lee Clay, a prominent Baltimore businessman and advocate for minority entrepreneurs, supports a conclusion by city police and the state medical examiner's office that he committed suicide, according to an FBI letter made public yesterday. The agency said investigators reviewed police reports "covering Mr. Clay's background, business relationships, and financial affairs leading up to his death," which revealed "a somewhat stressful time in his life.

A 29-year-old man and a woman who appeared to be in her 20s were found dead in a car on the parking lot of the Heartlands in Ellicott City yesterday after they apparently committed suicide by running a hose from the car's exhaust pipe into the car, Howard County police said.Police did not release the victims' names. They were trying to notify the man's family last night and had not been able to identify the woman.About 7 a.m. yesterday, an employee of the Heartlands senior apartment complex noticed the car in the 3000 block of N. Ridge Road with its windows fogged, police said.

A Glen Burnie woman who was found fatally shot Sunday in the woods off Point Pleasant Road Sunday committed suicide, county police said yesterday.Detectives investigating the death of Mary Agnes Pennington, 38, had labeled it suspicious. A man walking with his children found her body near her home in the 900 block of Point Pleasant Road. A handgun believed to have been used in the shooting was found nearby, police said.Evidence and interviews with family led police to conclude there was no foul play, investigators said.

150 years ago in The Sun Nov. 15: Stealing a Coat -- Some knave yesterday walked into the establishment of Mr. Edwin S. Tarr and soon afterwards walked out again with a coat more upon his back than he had when he went in, having walked off with the overcoat of the proprietor.100 years ago in The Sun Nov. 15: Lieut. Herman G. Dresel, of the United States Navy, committed suicide in the lavatory of the Carrollton Hotel about 10: 15 o'clock yesterday morning by shooting himself through the brain.

The soldier believed to have committed suicide at Aberdeen Proving Ground -- days before facing a court-martial on rape charges -- gave no indication he was a suicide risk, Army officials and his lawyer said yesterday.Pvt. Alan M. May, 22, of Round Rock, Texas, was found dead Saturday morning by his roommate in a barracks reserved for trainees at the Army Ordnance Center and School. May had been scheduled for a court-martial today on allegations he raped a fellow trainee."I am devastated by this news," May's lawyer, Capt.

WASHINGTON -- Deputy White House Counsel Vincent W. lTC Foster Jr., depressed in the days shortly before his suicide in 1993, cried at dinner with his wife, sought legal advice from attorneys and told his mother he was unhappy because work was "a grind."The poignant portrait of Foster is sketched in a newly issued report by independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr, who concluded that the longtime friend of President Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton took his own life.The report cites a suicide expert's opinion that "to a 100 percent degree of medical certainty," Foster killed himself.

Officials at the Howard County Detention Center said yesterday that an inmate attempted suicide Sunday only 15 minutes after being placed in an isolation cell.James N. "Buck" Rollins, director of the jail, said a corrections officer found a 32-year-old Laurel man hanging in his cell about 5 p.m.Rollins said the man was taken to Howard County General Hospital and Maryland's Shock Trauma Center, although he never lost consciousness.The inmate was returned to the jail later that day. He has been jailed since Dec. 18 when he was charged with stalking and resisting arrest, Rollins said.

A Maryland state trooper committed suicide at his Odenton home yesterday while being questioned by Anne Arundel County police about a domestic dispute.Ronald M. Hawkins, 32, of the 500 block of Realm Court East was pronounced dead at North Arundel Hospital shortly before 2: 30 a.m.County police said they went to the Hawkins residence shortly before 1: 30 a.m. after Terrie A. Hawkins, Ronald's wife, called police. While Officer Paul White was talking to the couple to find out the reason for the argument, Mr. Hawkins ran upstairs to a second-floor bedroom.

When James Stewart tried to glue her flower back together in Frank Capra's classic "It's a Wonderful Life," adorable little Zuzu wasn't thinking about how enchanting the movie was. "It was just a job," says Karolyn Grimes, who was 6 at the time.Now, 50 years later, the magic of the film that has touched so many lives has enveloped Grimes, too. Everywhere she goes, fans want to tell her their stories, to forge some connection with the little girl who said, "Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings!"

The fatal shooting of Morgan State University senior Lyndon Reese "Skipp" Turner remained a mystery for more than a year after his body turned up in a Hillendale trash bin in July 1993.Yesterday, a Baltimore County jury convicted 38-year-old Ronald Monroe Stewart -- implicated by the hearsay confession of an accomplice who had committed suicide -- of first-degree murder and robbery.Mr. Turner, 24, of Bargaintown, N.J., was living in an apartment at Northern Parkway and Loch Raven Boulevard when he headed out for a first date with a Towson State University student -- borrowing a roommate's BMW.Early on July 14, 1993, his body was found, bound at the wrists with duct tape, in a trash bin at an apartment complex on Polaris Court at Cloister Road.

A national agency will review screening procedures at Anne Arundel County jails after an inmate attempted suicide last week, jail officials said yesterday. Four inmates have died at the Jennifer Road Detention Center this year, including two who took their own lives. A consultant with the National Institute of Corrections will visit the jail this month to see if mental health screening tests can be improved to prevent future suicides, said jail administrator Terry Kokolis. "It's tragic," Kokolis said.

SAN DIEGO - The basic rule for Marine boot camp is simple: Keep your mouth shut and mind your own business. But it's different when the subject is suicide. Drill instructors encourage recruits to share their feelings in so-called "guided discussions," and tell them to watch out for, and promptly report, warning signs in their friends. The suicide rate in the active-duty Marine Corps was 16.5 per 100,000 in 2007 - below the active-duty Army and a similar demographic in the civilian population.

A year and a half after Baltimore-based A&B Check Cashing collapsed, $17 million is still missing, one owner is dead and the other one isn't talking. The check-cashing company shuttered its 20 stores shortly after allegations of a massive check-kiting scheme surfaced in June 2006. Alec C. Satisky, one of two brothers who ran A&B Check Cashing, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at the company's headquarters in a strip mall on West Patapsco Avenue - six days before the business filed for bankruptcy protection.

An FBI review of the 2005 death of Robert Lee Clay, a prominent Baltimore businessman and advocate for minority entrepreneurs, supports a conclusion by city police and the state medical examiner's office that he committed suicide, according to an FBI letter made public yesterday. The agency said investigators reviewed police reports "covering Mr. Clay's background, business relationships, and financial affairs leading up to his death," which revealed "a somewhat stressful time in his life.

FREDERICK -- A 28-year-old man - who apparently committed suicide - and his four young children were found dead yesterday inside their townhouse, and police said they are looking for the youngsters' mother, who has not been seen by relatives for several days. Frederick police officers, who had to crawl through a window to enter the locked house, found the bodies shortly after 3 p.m. The father, whom they identified as Pedro Rodriguez, was hanging in the foyer, a yellow nylon rope wrapped around his neck and tied to a second-floor banister, said Lt. Thomas Chase, commander of the criminal investigations division.

Prisoners found way to stop suffering Three prisoners at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have finally managed to leave their misery behind by successfully committing suicide ("Investigations begin into suicides," June 12). Is anyone surprised? Even without physical torture, the hopelessness of being deprived of human contact with friends and family for four years and with no end in sight would bring many human beings to the brink of suicide. We are assured that the bodies of the prisoners are going to be treated with the utmost respect.

LONDON -- With rumors rife about the circumstances of Slobodan Milosevic's death, Dutch authorities conducted an eight-hour autopsy yesterday and invited the government of Serbia to send a pathologist to observe. Preliminary results, announced last night, indicated that Milosevic died of a heart attack, but earlier in the day, Carla Del Ponte, the war crimes tribunal's chief prosecutor, said she could not rule out the possibility that Milosevic had committed suicide. "It's possible," she said at a news conference in The Hague, adding that "until we have precise facts and results, it's absolutely rumors."

Najai Turpin, a 23-year-old middleweight boxer from Philadelphia and a contestant on NBC's reality series The Contender, has committed suicide, Philadelphia police said yesterday. Turpin died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head at 4 a.m. Monday while sitting in his car, parked around the corner from his house in West Philadelphia, said police Sgt. Ron McClane. He allegedly had had a fight with his girlfriend, who, an NBC spokeswoman said, was with him when he shot himself. Scheduled to premiere March 7, The Contender features 16 boxers vying for $1 million.

The death of a man Sunday at the Baltimore County Detention Center has been ruled a suicide, the state medical examiner's office said yesterday. Michael Charles Luzier, 46, of the first block of Fennington Circle in Owings Mills was found hanging from a grate in his cell about 4 p.m., according to a police report. It was the second suicide this year at the jail, and Jim O'Neill, director of the county Bureau of Corrections, said jail officials would be reviewing policies "to see if there's anything we can change."

Lisa Hurka Covington fought for emergency phones to be installed on the Bay Bridge, hoping someone intending to jump might instead call for help. She traveled to the Capitol in Washington, carrying quilts with pictures of men, women and children who took their own lives and calling for more money for suicide-prevention programs. She persuaded six Maryland school systems to print crisis hot line numbers on the back of student ID cards. Propelled by personal tragedy - her 28-year-old sister shot herself dead in 1991 - Covington has become an insistent voice in public policy debates surrounding guns, mental health and, more than anything else, suicide education.