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Sunday, June 11, 2018

When I first read that Anthony Bourdain had committed suicide the details were not known until two days later. The bare details were not very illuminating. Why would Anthony Bourdain commit suicide?

Bourdain was CNN’s undisputed star. He traveled the world. He had an actress for a girlfriend. He bragged about his past heroin addiction (which gave him some kind of a “Patrick Melrose” cache.)

The stated events, as of today, are these: Bourdain and the crew of his CNN show, Parts Unknown, had traveled earlier in the week to the medieval village of Kayserberg in northeastern France to film an episode on Alsatian food. Bourdain and good friend Eric Ripert were staying at Le Chambard, a five-star hotel in a converted 18th-century mansion. Ripert, the executive chef at Manhattan’s famed Le Bernadin, would dine with Bourdain every morning for breakfast and “pretty much” every night they would dine together at hotel’s bistro, the Winstub

Whether Bourdain had breakfast with Ripert on Thursday morning is not known yet. What Bourdain did on Thursday is not known but on Thursday evening, Ripert waited for Bourdain to come down for dinner. When he did not arrive or, I assume, did not answer his cell phone or room phone, no one thought much about it.

Perhaps he had taken off for another restaurant and did not bother telling anyone. So this was not unusual behavior.

Friday morning, master butcher Christine Speisser was to show Bourdain around the outdoor market in nearby Strasbourg, starting at 10 a.m. Everyone was excited and honored to host Bourdain. Ripert had breakfast without Bourdain, but by 9:30a.m. Ripert, apparently not able to reach Bourdain, contacted Le Chambard’s receptionist. The receptionist unlocked Bourdain’s hotel room door. They went into his room and found Bourdain’s body. Ripert attempted to resuscitate Bourdain.

Inside, Bourdain had used the belt of his hotel bathrobe to hang himself in his bathroom. How did Bourdain accomplish this? At 6’ 4” and weighing approximately 177lbs, what bathroom fixture supported his weight? A porcelain curtain rod?

A “cut and dry” conclusion of suicide? When exactly did Bourdain commit suicide? The state of his body would easily determine the hour of his death. Would Bourdain, knowing that his friends, colleagues, famous chefs and crew were all waiting for him at 10a.m., suddenly decide to commit suicide?

It would have been evident to Ripert as to the timeframe of Bourdain’s suicide. If the body was stiff and discolored, rigor mortis would have set in. Why did Rigert try to revive Bourdain? As the calls were coming in on his hotel phone and cell phone, did Bourdain suddenly decide at 9:30 a.m. that he had just enough time to commit suicide?

It has not been reported if Bourdain was naked under the hotel’s bathrobe. That the bathrobe was open is a fact – the bathrobe tie was used for hanging. One might conclude that Bourdain was naked under his bathrobe.

Its either walking around a hotel room in only underwear, in a bathrobe or underwear and a bathrobe.

Had Bourdain taken a shower and put on the bathrobe? In that case, it is likely he did not have his underwear on under the bathrobe.

Does it even matter?

If there was a residue of semen on the body or bathrobe, the conclusion of autoerotic asphyxiation would be the conclusion.

If it was indeed suicide, Bourdain knew he would be found not only naked (or near naked), but soiled. Loose bowels is a fact rarely mentioned in deaths. While rigor mortis sets in, as soon as you die, every muscle in your body relaxes. That includes the sphincters that are in charge of keeping your bladder and bowels on lockdown. So if there is anything to expel, it could possibly seep out at death.

Not exactly the way Anthony Bourdain, or any celebrity, would want to be remembered.

If this was the result of an intentional suicide, often people leaves notes – they cared what their loved ones thought. Also, when someone commits suicide outside the home, its probably “not wanting to mess up the home.” In these cases, there certainly is a regard for the living.

[Please note: Neither of the 2 photos posted here, the first found on booking.com and the second, from Le Chambard’s  website, was the bathroom Bourdain used.]

Or, on Thursday evening, as his friend was waiting for him to come down to dinner, Bourdain impulsively decided to kill himself and did not care how, and in what condition, he was found.

Or, was it an unintentional death?

According to the only reference I could find online, “The Naked Suicide” by Robert I. Simon (Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law Online June 2008, 36 (2) 240-245), begins: “Suicide attempts and completions by individuals while naked remain unexplored, both by clinicians and in the professional literature. The author’s review of suicide cases in litigation revealed that an estimated five to eight percent had completed suicide while naked. The percentage of all suicides that are completed while naked is unknown.”

Yes, Simon’s paper is ten years old.

It is generally accepted that women do not commit suicide naked. Of course, the infamous death of Rebecca Zahau in 2011 was ruled a suicide by the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department. Zahau was found naked, with her hands and feet bound, hanging by a makeshift noose in the courtyard of her boyfriend, millionaire Jonah Shacknai’s, mansion. In 2017, Jonah Shacknai’s brother, Adam Shacknai, was found liable for Zahau’s death by a jury.

After the French prosecutor revealed that Bourdain used a belt to hang himself, he also noted that it did not appear much planning had gone into the suicide.

It is interesting that the suspicious deaths of Jim Morrison and Princess Diana also happened in France.

There were no other signs of violence to Bourdain’s body, local prosecutor Christian de Rocquigny said Saturday. “There is no element that makes us suspect that someone came into the room at any moment,” the prosecutor added. De Rocquigny also noted that the suicide appeared to have been an “impulsive act.”

Deaths by autoerotic asphyxiation are often classified as deaths by suicide.

However, in some cases, death by auto erotic asphyxiation cannot be whitewashed. In 2009, actor David Carradine was found dead in a Thai hotel room with a shoelace tied around his neck and genitalsand there was evidence of a recent orgasm.

In 1997, INXS lead singer Michael Hutchence was found “in a kneeling position facing the door. He had used his snakeskin belt to tie a knot on the automatic door closure at the top of the door, and had strained his head forward into the loop so hard that the buckle had broken.” On 6 February 1998, after an autopsy and coronial inquest, New South Wales State Coroner, Derrick Hand, presented his report. The report ruled that Hutchence’s death was a suicide while depressed and under the influence of alcohol and other drugs. An analysis report of Hutchence’s blood [indicated] the presence of alcohol, cocaine, Prozac and prescription drugs. In a 1999 interview on 60 Minutes (and in a documentary film on Channel 4), Hutchence’s partner, Paula Yates claimed that Hutchence’s death may have resulted from autoerotic asphyxiation; this claim contradicted her previous statements to police investigators and the coroner.

According to YourTango.com, “This Kinky Sex Act Kills Hundreds of Men Every Year”, the death of Chris Cornell, lead singer of Soundgarden and Audioslave, have some are wondering if his suicide by hanging may actually have been yet another tragic incidence of auto erotic asphyxiation gone terribly wrong.

As for the suggestion that Bourdain was distraught that there were some highly controversial photos in an Italian magazine of his girlfriend, Italian actress Asia Argento and French reporter Hugo Clément dancing in a Roman restaurant, Rose McGowan, friend of Argento, mentioned Bourdain and Argento were in a “free relationship” as well as how they “loved without the borders of traditional relationships.”

Hugo Clément is young and very handsome.

Also, Bourdain’s former wife and mother of his 11-year-old daughter, Ottavia Busia has said: “Because of professional decisions we both have made, my husband and I have been for years in an unconventional relationship.” Bourdain described his family with Busia as “dysfunctional.”

Could CNN and the empire that Bourdain built, be sullied by a knot that would not come loose? Would there be an outpouring of sadness and grief if the death was caused by an act of autoerotic asphyxiation?