Autopsy reveals Debian founder committed suicide | Hacker News Reader

Autopsy reveals Debian founder committed suicide

theregister.co.uk

154 pointspeterkshultz100 comments

I'm surprised the article didn't mention it, but check out the last page of the autopsy. They found chlordiazepoxide, diazepam, temazepam, and oxazepam in his bloodstream, which could have had some terrible interactions with alcohol. This sounds more to me like a drug overdose that caused a psychological episode than just the alcohol-fueled suicide they make it out to be. Very strange.

Not so strange, sadly. The combination of drugs and alcohol is an especially bad thing for people experiencing depression. HHS (which includes the CDC) has a lot of papers and studies on this sort of thing.

High level of benzodiazepines is enough to kill off your inhibitions and short term memory. Mixed with alcohol, if you feel that way, there is nothing stopping you from taking your life.

At 16, during an episode of depression and psychosis, I was trusted with a whole box of Lorazepam. Being in the state I was, I took the whole box. I have only fleeting images and I woke up the next day on a PICU. The not remembering is especially hard since I have quite a vivid memory - I seem to have lost those memories forever now, though I'm not sure if I want to remember.

I was prescribed some medication time ago, and it felt me the most depressed person, but I was aware that this must be the cause of it, and asked my doctor to stop it. The other medication was not that effective, as this one, but I no longer had the moods.

I was feeling as if nothing really matter, but this time literally, not in some "grand scheme of things" way. I had to push myself somehow to do things.

It could've been something else, but it coincided and stopped days after I started taking that medication.

You are lucky it was only a medicine side effect. Many depressed people feel that way their entire lives.

Benzos are nothing but bad news. I had a very similar experience in my teens. Woke up 24 hours later in the emergency room with a wrecked car and no memory of anything.

"incoherent", "claiming to have been beaten up by police"

http://archive.is/vBS6N

I wouldn't call those incoherent - I'd call them distressed and angry at having been beaten up by the police. They say he hit his head on the cage separator - which is a classic cop write-up for after they've roughed you up.

It is also something that mentally distressed people on lots of drugs do.

I think all of the evidence points to the official story being true.

To be (more) precise: no evidence points to the official story not being true. It could easily have been the cops' fault.

To be (more) nuanced: the truth is often somewhere in the middle, where a drug/alcohol infused psych patient acts like a complete jackass, and frustrated cops get sick of dealing with him and let him have a few knocks (which they should not do) and then lie about it (which they should not do) but it doesn't really change the underlying cause. Sometimes it does change the underlying cause, sometimes they kill somebody who would not otherwise have died, but in this case we are in all likelihood talking about a drug/alcohol infused psych patient who was behaving extremely erratically and there is enough evidence for him to have been the cause of his own demise, and no particular evidence that the cops were.

We can accept the outcome of this while in our minds leaving room for the idea that psych patients can be very difficult to deal with and they frequently and sadly do provoke abuse from the people we leave to look after them.

Think of it like resolving a dispute between two children, who socked who first etc. Sadly, that's what kids do and they lie about it, their statements are unreliable. Watching Judge Judy (!) gives good perspective on this, same sadly is true for adults, frequently both sides are lying, but outcomes that are just(-icey) enough can be determined

Agreed. However he did go to some lengths to make it look like it wasn't suicide... It is difficult to judge given the (lack of) facts, but it's a sad story whichever way one looks at it.

They're pretty incoherent. His retelling has a really jumbled timeline. Part of that might be missing context if he was replying to other tweets but they aren't linked. The ones that are linked don't look much better, though. His tweets to @jackstormwriter don't make much sense unless the archive somehow lost most of the ones from @jackstormwriter.

He also claimed that the police assaulted him at his own home, while reports indicate that he was not at his own home and was basically trying to break down the door, hence why the police were called. It seems likely he had a psychotic episode. This whole thing is tragic but I'm not sure it indicates abusive behavior from the police.

He may well (in fact, probably was) beating at his neighbour's door in the first instance - but the second, you'll have to take their word for it.

If you read the autopsy, specifically about the blunt force trauma, either he put up on hell of a fight, or they did indeed paste him.

> you'll have to take their word for it.

I'm pretty sure if you care to check, you can get the police report for the second incident and go ask the relevant neighbors.

The likelihood that the police were waiting for Murdock to show up at his home so they could randomly attack him seems vanishingly low. Excessive force I could believe. Police with nothing better to do than randomly assault an upper-class white man repeatedly? Not as much.

If you read the tweets, and then the autopsy, you'll wonder which wound was so serious it needed stitches, considering there are only three minor lacerations, and absolutely no mention of stitches anywhere. If he's telling the truth about police brutality, then why did he need to make up needing stitches?

> while reports indicate

Call me cynical, but I've passed the point where I assume that an american police report is anything but the most convenient story.

I'm well aware that most police departments only have a few bad apples. But the problem is instead of throwing the bad apples out, they are protected and left to rot the remaining bunch.

Not just police reports. No one so far as I'm aware, aside from Murdock himself, has put forth evidence of anything that disputes the police's claims. No news reports have uncovered a scandal or evidence of wrongdoing that I've seen.

From the autopsy, he did not die of an overdose, but rather of hanging - appears he looped the vacuum flex around the top bannister, then slid down the stairs until it cut off blood flow - "Cause of Death: Hanging".

That said, you're quite right that the cocktail he had in his system disinhibited him to the point of no return.

No one takes four different benzos at once unless they've got a specific outcome in mind.

Thats simply false. Benzodiazepines are addictive, build a quick tolerance, and they destroy judgement.

You can no more predict a heavy recreational benzo users's night than you can predict what someone will do blacked out on ambien or alcohol.

Can attest to this. I had a very good friend who was taking an insane amount of various pills (hydros, valium and some others) and had a breakdown. She wasn't suicidal, but the doctors told her she was lucky to be alive with as much as she was taking.

It totally impairs judgment, and people who are addicted can quickly escalate without realizing it.

This very well could have been an accidental suicide.

I've been addicted to benzos (since recovered) and know many others who have been too, so I'm intimately aware of their addictive nature and rapid tolerance. Saying they "destroy" judgment is a bit hyperbolic though.

In any event we're all speculating. But I seriously doubt anything about this was accidental, even if the benzos were recreational. The drugs didn't kill him. The hanging did.

I had issues with stress and problems sleeping from university. I was prescribed benzo's, While they helped, before I knew it, I got addicted with a tolerance quickly. Breaking that addiction was one the worst experiences of my life. It would have been impossible without the support of my family.

It seems everyone is a forensic medical professional now. Did anyone actually read the report?

From the medical examiner: "I received and reviewed the Toxicology Report. The findings do not change my opinion regarding the cause and manner of death."

Parent post is not saying that benzos caused the death, but that the benzo + alcohol mix made worse the mental state that caused the death.

The suicide is tragic. However, no one seems to have investigated the police beatings he alleges he received the day before he died: "They beat the shit out of me twice," he says.

Just look at the autopsy report under "BLUNT FORCE INJURIES" for all the bruises:

https://regmedia.co.uk/2016/07/07/ian_murdock.pdf#page=10

The autopsy reports alcohol and sedative drugs, and friends and family report that he was breaking up with his girlfriend, facing eviction, and other distressing things. Does that make it likely that he'd make false accusations against the police? I don't think so.

I don't know enough about it to comment on it myself, but I saw comments elsewhere that apparently bruises appearing post mortem are quite common and those people appeared to think that was the likely cause of the bruises indicated in the autopsy.

Found where I read those comments and it has also been updated: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/4rlar5/official_repo...

You don't get abrasions post-mortem, however, and if it were post-mortem bruising, you'd expect it in parts of his body that were lower than others. Having bruises and abrasions on his front, back, sides and face is not a natural thing that happens after death. It's a thing that happens when you're roughed up - if you read the autopsy report there are a variety of injuries that you'd have to try pretty hard to inflict on yourself, but are absolutely consistent with being beaten and thrown to the ground, and then having someone dead-drop knee-first into your back.

Honestly, I understand him killing himself. In the same scenario, potentially facing 15-25 years in prison for a felony (being white would likely help keep him out of jail, but being a geek with aspergers would not), I would likely do the same, as in the US there is no life after prison.

This is interesting, actually - unsurprisingly, the US is the most punitive place on earth if you assault a cop, although I can't see how you could assault a cop in the US, given that they're armed to the teeth and usually in full armour, and usually sat in an armoured and armed vehicle.

http://www.hopesandfears.com/hopes/city/city_index/215849-ci...

> I can't see how you could assault a cop in the US, given that they're armed to the teeth and usually in full armour, and usually sat in an armoured and armed vehicle.

Fortunately the militarization of the police has not gone that far yet, at least in NYC, the extent of armor the police wear usually stops at a bulletproof vest, and for the most part they only carry handguns. Armored vehicles are rarely used.

The lacerations are solely on the front, upper portion of his head. The police report said that he had been banging his head while in the police car, which can certainly explain those lacerations.

The abrasions are predominantly on the left side of the body. If you imagine that he started the suicide sitting on top of the (left, from the view of the door) railing, facing forward, and then he fell off the railing towards his left as he fell, you can explain most of the abrasions by the railing or the balusters scraping him hard as he fell, ending up (as he was found) in a prone position, head facing upstairs. The upper right back and right front shin abrasions are the hardest to fit in geometry, though.

Without more detailed models of the house geometry and the bruises/cuts/scrapes on the body, it's hard to make a better judgement, but the evidence as it stands doesn't refute the official police report.

> they're armed to the teeth and usually in full armour, and usually sat in an armoured and armed vehicle

This is absurd hyperbole.

Have you ever been to the US? Your use of British spellings suggests you are not from here.

I have lived in the US for decades. I have personally seen hundreds, perhaps thousands, of police officers in socioeconomic contexts ranging from high crime inner city ghettoes to wealthy suburbs. 99%+ were walking around in an ordinary uniform, not sitting in a vehicle (much less an "armoured and armed" tank), were not wearing any kind of armor (much less "full armour"), and were not "armed to the teeth" in any sense, unless you consider carrying a handgun to be "armed to the teeth."

Are you deliberately trying to mislead foreigners who haven't ever been here into thinking that the US is some sort of militarized police state, or merely repeating secondhand reports from far-leftist news sources that are politically motivated into making foreigners think that about the US?

I lived in Chicago for ten years. I know the US, I remember what it was like in the 80's and 90's, and I see it now and shake my head.

The US is becoming a militarised police state.

>This is interesting, actually - unsurprisingly, the US is the most punitive place on earth if you assault a cop, although I can't see how you could assault a cop in the US, given that they're armed to the teeth and usually in full armour, and usually sat in an armoured and armed vehicle.

Ah, I see you've watched the Ferguson riot videos.

Using the same process, I have concluded cops in the UK always carry shields and wear helmets with full faceplates, and that the UK military patrols minority neighborhoods in full battle gear including automatic weapons.

From the article:

"Two days earlier, at 11.30pm on December 26, Murdock was arrested after drunkenly banging on a neighbor's front door with such force it was as if he were trying to break inside. He reportedly fought with cops when they showed up, and was ticketed for resisting arrest and assaulting an officer. He was taken to hospital after banging his head on the inside of the police car he was being held in.

Just a few hours later, at 2.40am on December 27, Murdock left the hospital and went back to the neighbor's home to bang on the door again."

I assumed the police beating was administered as he was drunk and resisting arrest.

or his injuries were self-inflicted from having a psychotic breakdown ?

People in such a binge/breakdown mental illness episode absolutely do misperceive interactions with others, imagining persecution when there is none. Or, blame their own self-harm on others. Or, continue raging against both people and objects in ways that endanger themself and others until nasty amounts of force are applied.

You have to trust the reactions of the friends/family who have witnessed decades of a person's behavior – if they're not concerned about injustice, it is unlikely strangers on distant discussion boards have more insight into what the deceased faced.

Resisting arrest and the other charges against him are pretty serious in the legal system in the US. I imagine the prospect of jail/probation and other consequences weighed down heavily on his mind; since he had already been in a pretty bad state with his breakup etc.

This is rather sad since it could definitely have been prevented. A network of close friends and family is absolutely necessary for people like Ian, who seemed to be of the solitary type (something I and I assume many others in this community can relate to). For such a person, problems with relationships can have deep emotional consequences...and this seems to have been a situation that spiraled out of control.

Yeah i can't help but think he was having a bad time, went a bit deep in the bottle, and the cops, rather than picking him up and getting him home safely, curb stomped him, thus exasperating the situation.

I found the fact he was visible from the front door to be interesting. Most houses in SF do have awkward staircases in front of the door so I guess it's plausible... The door doesn't appear to have the greatest visibility inside http://imgur.com/vaSsAFx

Tragic end to such an influential person.

A few months back I was researching debian and found out that the name comes from a combination of Ian and Deb, his then girlfriend. I obviously never knew him personally but his legacy will live on.

Especially with stuff like Raspbian, so many future programmers will be exposed to his work.

A neighbor told the city's investigators that Murdock had just split up with his girlfriend and was facing eviction

How is someone so well known in the software industry so hard up for money that they are facing eviction? Far lesser engineers than he have never had problems earning enough money to get by. The whole thing is very sad, and clearly money wasn't his only problem, but it's one issue that someone with his resume shouldn't have been facing.

There are other reasons to get evicted besides not paying rent. We don't know why the landlord wanted him out.

Pissing off the neighbors could have something to do with it.

I mean, what are the chances this is the first time he's acted crazy?

If you're worried that someone you know might be suicidal there's a free app (Apple and Google Play) that should be helpful.

It's for the UK, but most of the advice is transferable to other countries.

They're in the process of getting more academic review.

http://www.prevent-suicide.org.uk/stay_alive_suicide_prevent...

Does anyone know if there is a relationship between Aspergers/Autism spectrum and suicide? I know one person who I think is on the spectrum, doesn't know it, and suffers serious depression at least in part due to her lack of social success.

Yes, there's a correlation between ASD and both attempted suicide and completed suicide. That might be because of the increased risk of depression in ASD, or the increased risk of physical health problems, or it might be something about the ASD itself that makes it harder for people to get help. The numbers are surprisingly hard to find, and other diagnoses are probably higher in the list.

Here's good quality information with a focus on those people who were "known to services": http://www.bbmh.manchester.ac.uk/cmhs/research/centreforsuic...

Here's recent data for young people. http://www.bbmh.manchester.ac.uk/cmhs/research/centreforsuic...

Here's some great information about different areas of the UK (this one is for suicide, but there's a bunch of other stuff there) http://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile-group/mental-health/pro...

Here's the Office for National Statistics data sets:

http://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdea...

(Be careful with these. Sometimes people counting "death by suicide" use a different definition for suicide.)

Thanks!

Autopsy?? The article clearly states the police found him with a cable around his neck.

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