Man makes guillotine to kill himself

A man built his own guillotine and used it to kill himself.

Groundskeeper from the Fairlane Green shopping center at Outer and Fairlane drive discovered the body shortly before 11 a.m. Monday.
Allen Park Deputy Police Chief Dale Covert said the roughly six-foot tall guillotine was bolted to a tree and included a swing arm. Covert said police also found several store receipts detailing the materials used to assemble the device.
"I can't even tell you how long it must have taken him to construct," he said. "This man obviously was very determined to end his life."
According to investigators, the man had to make several trips to carry the wooden and metal parts to the area in the woods.

Link

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

More at Boing Boing

Ants and Stars: Bruce Sterling and Jasmina Tesanovic visit the Sardinia Radio Telescope in Italy

The Snowden Principle

Anonymous

i live in allen park, and i can tell you that it is THE most exciting thing to ever hit the city. and the wooded area is new. they just built it over both a VA hospital and a clay mine. that area be hainted now! none the less, i’m going right over there as soon as possible with friends to check it out.
Stacyj

Wow, that gave me goosebumps, Maus, how queerly lovely (erm, in a good way)…

The weird/sad thing is that this wasn’t the first guy to do this in recent years, googling ‘guillotine suicide’ turns up this fellow over in Northumberland, and I could have sworn I’d heard about another American who’d done something similar a few years back … yeesh.
Elisa

wow, that’s a few miles from where i live. i shop at that fairlane green plaza all the time. i guess metro-detroit is keeping handcrafts “alive” . . .
Anonymous

Word on the street was that this was some goth guy. My friend used to walk by the wooded area every day on her way home from work.
phasor3000

To be featured in the upcoming Goth-themed issue of MAKE…
dingo

I demand pics of this thing
Anonymous

The guillotine was originally created to be a humane method of capital punishment.

Assuming it’s built correctly, it’s much swifter and far less agonizing than lethal injection or hanging, and less error-prone than the electric chair.

If I was gonna off myself, this is probably the best way I could think of short of a shotgun blast to the head.
maus

All I can think of is a man spending years putting off his suicide by making the guillotine ever more perfect. In his final moments, he scours the device for one flaw, one error which would allow him to continue plodding along in life. The years of craftsmanship is well-reflected in the wood, the metal, the construction.

It is a flawless guillotine, the first of its caliber produced since the heyday of decapitation. He settles into the ergonomic headrest and is satisfied with the feel. Pride swells within him as the automatic neck-catch is triggered and the clean, silent slice allows him milliseconds of immense satisfaction before his departure.
A New Challenger

‘Tis a far, far better thing he did than he had ever done before.
A New Challenger

Apologies for being unable to help myself, and for misquoting.
Teresa Nielsen Hayden/Moderator

It’s rare to see that kind of craftsmanship nowadays.
eagleapex

Ultimate DIY-er?
dculberson

Apologies if this seems insensitive, but.. THAT is what I would call hard core.

Punks should write songs dedicated to this guy’s memory.
Anonymous

There must be an easier way to die.