A Delaware woman proved once again that you don’t need a gun to whack somebody. All she needed was her husband’s own drug habit — injecting anabolic steroids — and common antifreeze.

(Some assembly required).

Jamie L. Baker was sentenced Thursday morning in front of nearly 50 of her husband’s family members and friends in Kent County Superior Court, according to Deputy Attorney General Jason Cohee.

What’d she do?

A 47-year-old Smyrna woman will spend 40 years behind bars for killing her husband by spiking his steroid bottles with antifreeze.

Our doctor always said steroids were bad for you, but I don’t think that this was what he had in mind.

Baker’s 42-year-old husband, James D. Baker II, was found dead Sept. 16, 2013, on the bedroom floor of their home by his wife, police said.

An autopsy found that his kidneys contained ethylene glycol, a chemical found in antifreeze that can crystallize in the kidneys and eventually kill a person if taken in small dosages.

Not only that, but once it crystallizes, it completely loses all its anti-freeze properties!

The medical examiner ruled his death a homicide by poisoning after bottles of steroids found at the scene were tested at a laboratory and found to also contain ethylene glycol.

Police later learned that James Baker, who was a competitive weightlifter, had ordered steroids in June with a friend over the internet and had them shipped to the friend’s house.

The friend told detectives that the steroid bottles were not tampered with when they arrived and that James Baker kept the steroids in a locked toolbox in a closet of his home, police said.

Famous physical security shibboleth: “locks keep honest people out.”

“There was ample time in those three months to get him help,” Cohee said. “Even the day before he died, when he was very sick, the defendant would not call 911 when prompted by their daughter. She chose to let him die.”

Why would a murderer try to get the victim help?

Almost a year after his death, Jamie Baker admitted to police in an interview that she had used a hypodermic syringe to extract antifreeze from a container stored in the garage and injected several bottles of steroids with the antifreeze, police said.

The lengthy investigation ended in March of 2014 with Baker being charged with first-degree murder and possession of a deadly weapon during a felony.

See, it’s official — antifreeze is a deadly weapon. Now the ATF has reason to shoot everybody’s dog. (Well, maybe not Angelenos. Do any of them have antifreeze in the garage? Doubt it.

In February, she pleaded guilty to the lesser offense of second-degree murder.

OK, so it isn’t officially official, because she didn’t plead to the weapons charge. Lazy prosecutor — you could have had a precedent!

According to James Baker’s obituary, he worked as an environmental specialist for 22 years at the DuPont Experimental Station. He had been married to his wife for 21 years and had two daughters.

via Wife gets 40-year prison term for antifreeze killing.

Figures, an environmental type shooting himself up (and scoring a zero in spouse selection, which is a lot more common).

In New Jersey, guns are outlawed sufficiently that cops run out of state license plates and make pretextual stops on any traveler who comes up with an LTC from his home state. But those same cops can’t be bothered to get control of the gangs in Newark and Camden. Yet, despite the focus on gun-owning transients, New Jerseyites keep getting dead anyway. Funny how that happens.

The man who found his wife and 6-year-old son stabbed to death in their Maple Shade apartment said that the bodies were in a bed and that he had “no idea” what had happened to them, according to a recording of the call released Monday by the Burlington County Prosecutor’s Office.

“They both have blood everywhere,” Hanumantha Rao Narra told a dispatcher, saying he had just come home from work.

A dispatcher, recounting what Narra had described, then transferred the call to another dispatcher and explained, “There’s no weapons, there’s nothing. But he’s saying that they’re not breathing and there’s blood everywhere, and he doesn’t know what happened to them.”

This is a very, very strange case, for reasons we’ll elaborate on in a minute.

The second dispatcher asked Narra about his wife’s and son’s conditions.

“I feel like they both are dead,” Narra told the dispatcher, who then asked whether Narra could do CPR.

“No, you can’t! Their throat is slit,” a woman in the background yelled. Narra had told dispatchers a neighbor was with him.

Another strange detail. Who comes home with a neighbor?

Sasikala Narra, 38, and son Anish, 6, had been stabbed multiple times in the unit in the Fox Meadow Apartments just off Route 73, where police responded around 9 p.m. March 23. Family friends said they had stab wounds to their faces and hands.

No arrests have been made.

Normally in a case like this, the husband would be the first person of interest. First, sad to say, that’s who’s usually to blame in the murder of a woman and child. Second, a stabbing — a killing with a personal, up-close weapon — is much more often a personal crime by someone who knew and loved/hated the victim, than it is a stranger crime.

Hanumantha Narra had just returned home from a work happy-hour party and was in “shell shock” when he discovered the bodies, according to an interview he gave on a YouTube channel. It was posted a day after the murders.

via ‘Blood everywhere:’ Maple Shade man finds wife, 6-year-old son stabbed to death.

That Mr Narra is not in custody, and that he had no problem getting permission to take the victims back to their native India, suggests that police have completely ruled him out as a suspect in the homicide. There may be strong evidence he didn’t do it (his alibi is solid, he wasn’t bloody, etc.), but it’s possible he’s still a suspect, just suspected of having the crime done indirectly. Still, a killer not personally connected to the crime and not personally motivated seems an unlikely candidate for a brutal slashing like this.

Then again, trying to form an understanding of criminals in a non-criminal mind is a quest that’s probably doomed to failure. But it’s quite possible that Hanumantha Narra, too, is a victim in this barbarous crime. We forget, sometimes, that along with “the” victim — “the complainant,” as some agencies term a murder victim, as if he or she showed up at Homicide grousing and demanding justice — a whole family, great or small, are victims in every homicide. May God (or gods, assuming they’re Hindu) grant them mercy and peace.

Philip (l) and Simmons (r). Or maybe it’s the other way around.

It’s hard to imagine a place where guns are more outlawed than they are here — a prison warehousing, inter alia, the worst of the worst in South Carolina’s prisons.

Yet somehow, these two guys, already doing an overly-generous life sentence for one adult and one child murder, each, managed to team up and knock off four of their fellow yardbirds — one of the victims a lifer for murder himself.

Denver Simmons and Jacob Philip lured each of the four inmates into a cell at Kirkland Correctional Institution in Columbia on Friday morning, then worked together to attack and choke them, according to arrest warrants released early Saturday.

Two of the inmates were also beaten or stabbed with a broken broomstick, according to the warrants released by State Law Enforcement Division agents.

The warrants gave no reason for the attacks and did not indicate how long it took the prisoners to kill their fellow inmates. They did say there is video of the killings and the men confessed to investigators.

One wonders why both of these mother-and-child killers never got the sentence they had coming — God’s own Recall Notice. Maybe they’ll get it this time. Because, with the proper penalty off the table because judges and lawyers tend to love criminals and hate victims, there’s really nothing that can be done to these guys. Frankly, a healthy society would tissue type them and keep them around until some ill person needs their organs. The Chinese have that right.

These guys have no further utility as human beings; part ’em out for the greater good of mankind. If you want to repent and save your soul, fine and good, but your liver and kidneys belong to the next non-felon in need.

The Corrections Department will conduct an internal investigation into the killings after the criminal investigation is finished, Corrections Department Director Bryan Stirling told The Associated Press on Saturday.

Because of the ongoing investigation, Stirling would not talk about whether prison policies were broken or how the inmates came to be together.

We can practically write the report that they’re presently stalling on. It will be written entirely in the passive voice, and no individual will be held accountable.

That did not require Nostradamus levels of prophecy, really.

Prison records show the four inmates killed were considered minimum security risks. The Kirkland prison serves several roles in South Carolina’s system. It operates a specialized housing unit for the state’s most dangerous inmates, an assessment and evaluation center for new inmates sentenced to more than three months, and a 24-bed infirmary, according to the Corrections website.

Every soldier learns to do the 5 S’s with prisoners: Secure, Search, Segregate, Safeguard, and Speed to the rear. (Those might be out of order. DILLIGAF? No). Looks like this was a major dropped ball in the Segregate and Safeguard columns. SHU inmates should never come into contact with campers.

The interesting thing would be knowing why these guys did it; the corrections bureaucracy probably can’t figure that out, so we’ll pencil in, “because they like killing people?”

Simmons, 35, has been behind bars since his 2007 arrest on charges he killed a woman he knew in Colleton County, took her debit card and ate pizza for lunch, then got her 13-year-old son from school and killed him too.

We like pizza too much, but if we ever said we’d kill for it, it was hyperbole, honest.

Philip, 25, has been in prison since 2013. Authorities said he strangled his girlfriend and her 8-year-old daughter in Berkeley County.

Hey, after the first murder, as these two who now share a body count of eight have learned, the rest are all free.

Maybe we need to relook our justice system with a view to incentives.

Prison records show Simmons has three disciplinary infractions in four years for being out of place, disrespect and refusing to obey an order. Philip has no disciplinary actions against him in nearly two years in state prison.

Records did not show if the inmates had lawyers.

Maybe the dead inmates’ lawyers can get all caught up in torts with the killer inmates’ lawyers, keeping both sets of lawyers from freeing more monsters like these to kill normal human beings? Well, we know the odds, but don’t steal our dreams, please.

On the plus side, none of the deceased leaves a church choir short one tenor:

The four inmates killed were John King, 52; Jason Kelley, 35; Jimmy Ham, 56; and William Scruggs, 44, prison officials said.

King was serving time for a variety of crimes and had a projected release date of October 2020. Kelley was serving 15 years for assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature. He was scheduled for release in August 2020.

Ham was scheduled for release this November after serving a sentence for a variety of offenses. Scruggs was sentenced to life in prison for murder and first-degree burglary.

via Convicted murderers serving life terms strangle four inmates | New York Post.

Well, now they’ll really throw the book at these two jitbags. Why maybe they’ll get another life sentence, in case they somehow survive the first one!

Dogs are wonderful, but their skill at risk management leaves much to be desired. If you don’t handle that responsibility for the animal, it can go pear-shaped for both of you.

Patricia Connors, 66, was pronounced dead at the scene after being struck on the M4 near Cardiff by a Ford Transit at around 6.15pm on Friday, officers said.

The great-grandmother, from Cardiff, was trying to rescue her dog on the busy road when both were hit and killed by a Ford Transit Van.

Her family released a statement saying they were “heartbroken” over her death.

We’re major league critter lovers around here — this is being typed with a lapful of warm Small Dog MkII — but ’tis a far, far, better thing to grieve for your dog than be grieved by the beast. (Even if the dog usually has the superior character, and even though in this case Mrs. Connors’s sacrifice did not succeed in saving the life of her presumed Best Friend).

The statement said: “The family of Patricia Joyce Connors are heartbroken trying to come to terms with a tragic accident that has taken a loving Mum, Grandmother and great-grandmother.”

South Wales Police believe she followed her dog after it ran into the road. The force appealed for witnesses to come forward.

via Dog walker killed after chasing her pet on to motorway.

In Wales, of course, where guns (handguns, at least) are outlawed.

You could say she went out with a splash. But this is one more incident of a painful and tragic accidental death in a jurisdiction that has promised its voting votaries Life Everlasting if only they cast out the demon within, to wit, the firearm. In other words, in Oregon, where heavy expenditure of Bloomberg Bucks has taught the public to restrict firearms, to banish crime and eliminate accidents.

There are still a few crimes and accidents getting through, despite all that.

Aurora Genai Sheffel, 14, was taking photos with friends on a log at a beach in Bandon, Oregon, when the tide receded and pulled the heavy timber out from underneath them. The log rolled on top of the teen, pinning her underwater, according to Oregon Live.

Given the typical mediot joy with which they report fatal accidents and homicides, they should probably turn in the name Oregon Live and go with something that suits their content better.

Paramedics responded to the scene around 4 p.m. and rushed Sheffel to the hospital, where she died from her injuries.

Her two friends jumped from the log and were able to escape unharmed.

Sheffel’s stepfather, David Wederquist, said that girls had been enjoying their spring break before the fatal accident.

via Teen cheerleader dies taking selfies in freak beach accident | New York Post.

No force of Man is equal to the forces of nature, and oblivious phone-gazing is not a wise way to engage with the Great Outdoors. Mother Nature has a wicked way of amusing Herself.

A man who was “willing to try anything” tried a donut-eating contest last weekend. In Denver, where Colorado’s governor John Hickenlooper has saved his subjects’ lives by outlawing various guns.

BLUF: The donut won.

It was a matter of size, not number: a contestant has 1 min 20 sec to eat a donut, which seems plenty, until you see the donut: a half-pound monster that looks like a deep fried and glazed truck tire.

A 42-year-old Colorado man attempting to complete a doughnut-eating challenge died Sunday after choking on a giant pastry. Witnesses said Travis Malouff, of Denver, was participating in Voodoo Doughnut’s 80-second half-pound doughnut challenge before his death, KUSA-TV reported.

Not surprisingly, the donut chain has, er, killed, the promotional event, which they called the Tex-ass Donut Challenge. (The Oregon-based chain, which has expanded to several other hipster-rich states,  seems to be expressing contempt for the Lone Star State and its reputation for gigantism in all things).

Back to the original article:

“It’s tragic,” Curtis Malouff, Travis’ father, told KUSA-TV. “It’s a loss of life that shouldn’t be.”

Forrest Gump’s mama was not available for comment.

But we do note that even if Travis Malouff had won his stupid game, the stupid prize was a free meal at the donut shop, and a button that says you won the Tex-ass Donut Challenge.

Stupid prize? Well, unlike Animal Mother’s famous Word Worth Dying For, it’s not worth dying for, is it?

Witnesses told the news outlet that at people in the shop at the time tried to help Malouff when they realized he was choking, but nobody knew how to properly perform the Heimlich maneuver.

“They tried so hard to do everything,” an unidentified witness told KUSA-TV. “It was clear that nobody was trained and they were just reacting. You [have to] do something, I think.”

Paramedics arrived but were unable to revive Malouff, who died from asphyxia due to obstruction of the airway, the Denver Office of the Medical Examiner announced on Monday.

In the past, when donuts have killed, it’s generally been a matter of mass quantities over long periods, leaving the victim’s cardiologist on the stage to give the “Alas, poor Yorick” speech. But in this case, it was just one donut.

It seems like a one-off freak accident, but the ever-vigilant press sees A Pattern Emerging:

Malouff’s death occurred on the same day that a 20-year-old student in Connecticut died after participating in a pancake-eating contest. Caitlin Nelson, of Clark, New Jersey, had been eating four or five pancakes during a March 30 challenge before collapsing to the floor. She was rushed to a nearby hospital before being transferred to New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center, where she later died.

“It’s a tragic event that started out as something fun,” Fairfield police Lt. Bob Kalamaras said of Nelson’s death. “It was just a tragic accident.

Returning to the original decedent, Travis Malouff, some heartless folks are Blaming the Victim.

“It’s too much food for one person, even as the size that he was,” Julia Edelstein, a witness, told the news outlet. “That’s too much for someone to eat. He was trying to force it down.”

Curtis Malouff said his son will be remembered for his smile and laugh, and his willingness to try anything.

“If a challenge is there — he’d probably take it,” he said, according to KUSA-TV.

via Denver man dies while attempting doughnut-eating challenge | Fox News.

A young woman collapsed and perished at the end of a road race that she’d run last year with no difficulties. Frantic, expert attempts to resuscitate her were unavailing, and only on autopsy was it clear why: she’d had a massive abdominal hemmorrhage. She’d have been just as dead if she’d already been in the ER when it happened.

The Scranton mother of three who died after completing a half-marathon suffered an internal hemorrhage, the Lackawanna County coroner has reported.

Lindsay Doherty took up running a couple of years ago and trained for Sunday’s Scranton Half Marathon.

At the end of the 13.1-mile race, the 36-year-old married mother of three young children crossed the finish line and collapsed.

Medics rushed to Doherty’s side and tried to resuscitate her. She was taken by ambulance to Geisinger Community Medical Center’s emergency room, where she died a short time later.

Lackawanna County Coroner Tim Rowland told The Times-Tribune  that an autopsy Monday showed Doherty suffered an intra-abdominal hemorrhage. He ruled the manner of her death as natural.

via Married mom of 3 dies at end of Pennsylvania half marathon.

Death comes to us all, and no one is guaranteed his or her Biblical three score and ten. She was a religious believer who put her labor where her faith was, raising money for her church, and perhaps that will be some small comfort to her family in this time of shock and sorrow.

And may all of us live our lives in the knowledge that they’re not guaranteed.

In New York City, where guns are functionally outlawed, a child who loved one of her possessions well but not wisely is dead, her family mourning.

This is one of the most senseless and heartbreaking of all the senseless and heartbreaking deaths we have recorded in this space.

A New York teen who dropped her cellphone onto subway tracks was struck and killed by a train when she tried to retrieve it, police say.

Dina Kadribasic, 13, jumped onto the tracks shortly before 4 p.m. Sunday at the 63rd Drive-Rego Park station in Queens, about two blocks away from her home, The New York Daily News reports, citing police.

Queens is heavily Hispanic now, mostly Puerto Ricans who have been in New York for generations, but this used to be a Jewish neighborhood, where you’d see old-timers with numbers on their forearms. Kadribasic is a Balkan name, but that just as easily could be a family that’s been there since before the fall of the Habsburgs, or one that came after the 1990s implosion of Yugoslavia.

Police said Kadribasic was attempting to climb back onto the platform when an R train rolled into the station and was unable to stop in time. Emergency responders rushed her to Elmhurst Hospital Center, where she died, police said.

via Subway hits, kills girl, 13, trying to get her cellphone off tracks.

There was no word on the condition of the phone. As it turns out, there is a way to get your stuff back if you drop it onto the tracks, it’s just not widely known. The New York Daily News notes, in their article on this accident:

MTA officials cautioned riders Sunday night to flag down subway staff if they drop something onto the tracks instead of trying to retrieve it themselves.

They have the equipment and knowledge to retrieve your phone, handbag, or other New York fashion accessory (Glock .40?) safely.

There’s also a better way to survive this situation (on the rails, train entering station) than just struggling futilely to pull yourself up onto a platform, if your upper body strength isn’t adequate to the job. Two, actually.

1. Cross to the oncoming side, where a train usually isn’t coming at the same time. (This doesn’t solve the problem, exactly; but it buys you time).
2. When you hear the train coming, run down the tracks away from it. The train will probably stop in the station, so you just have to get clear of the station. There is usually some space after the end of the platform for workers to shelter, as well.

These are counterintuitive solutions for most people and only work if you’ve thought about them in advance. Most people who have come down into trouble can only think about going back up out of trouble.

Bear these in mind, lest you ever repeat the unfortunate Ms Kadribasic’s sad accident.

Welcome to New York, where guns are outlawed, but outlaws still can cut a swath (white arrows) through peaceable citizens with relative impunity.

The nephew of model Tyson Beckford was found guilty of manslaughter and other charges Friday in the death of an MTA bus driver in which he was drunkenly driving a stolen truck.

If you haven’t heard of Tyson Beckford (who has?), he’s famous for being handsome in a black thug way, which apparently gets hybristophiliac women to unlimber their charge cards and buy overpriced clothing. It’s a talent the market values highly.

Domonic Whilby, 24, was found not guilty by the Manhattan jury of the top charge of murder in the death of driver William Pena, who was killed on February 12, 2014.

Remember, Whilby is not a celebrity, but he’s a celebrity’s relative, which is celeb-by-proxy. In NYC, that means the laws that don’t apply to celebrities don’t apply to you, either. You get the Celeb Discount on all your crimes.

His lawyer used the interesting theory that he was so drunk he’d drunk the knowledge of right and wrong clean out of his sloping skull, and the star-struck (by proxy!) jury bought it.

Whilby drunkenly plowed a stolen truck into Pena’s bus on 14th Street after getting tossed from celeb haunt 1OAK after a night of partying with Beckford.

This article understates just how drunk Whilby was. Another article describes his condition:

Beckford, with Whilby in tow, walks right into the Chelsea hotspot past a line of people waiting to get in.

In a clip from inside the trendy establishment, Whilby is seen hugging up on a woman who seems annoyed and uninterested.

She resists his kisses and turns her head away from him as he stubbornly persists. When she eventually pushes him away, a visibly drunk Whilby backpedals into a table and knocks glasses over.

A scuffle ensues and Whilby is hauled out of the popular celebrity hangout on W. 17th St.

Whilby spent the next couple of hours loitering in the area, wandering into hotels and an apartment building, trial evidence has shown.

At one point, he tried to get into a cab that was waiting for someone else. In another instance, he passed out on a floor in the Dream Downtown hotel.

Whilby’s defense is that he was too drunk to know what he was doing.

An even earlier story has him arguing belligerently with cops after the accident: “Get out of my face.”

“He woke up, looked around and said, ‘Kill me. Shoot me. Get out of my face,’ repeatedly,” [Officer Suzanne] Kelly testified.

And the earliest one described the accident:

Pena was driving eastbound before the collision, which left another four people injured.

The two vehicles finally crunched to a stop at the intersection’s southeast corner after smashing into several parked cars, a yellow cab, a person on a scooter, sidewalk scaffolding and a subway entrance, witnesses and police said.

The scooter driver was dragged for about 50 feet but survived.

“He didn’t even brake,” said Eddie Abdelmoty, 51, of Long Island City. “My tires blew up … He went right through the red light at the end of the block.”

All of the other victims suffered non-fatal injuries as the double-length bus and box truck cut a path of devastation onto the sidewalk.

“I thought it was an earthquake,” said Michael Edwards, 34, who works security near the wreck site. “By the time I got outside police were already here..”

Whilby, the driver of the stolen 18 Rabbits Granola truck, suffered minor neck injuries in the crash, police said. He was taken into custody at the scene and later slapped with a whopping ten charges including manslaughter, two counts of grand larceny, three counts of criminal assault, criminal mischief, and criminal trespass, police said.

Back to the most recent article.

Prosecutors say he left the club wasted and hopped into a commercial truck at about 5:20 a.m.

Just to make it clear, after all the above he “hopped into” a truck that was idling at a loading dock, and took it for a joyride. He was certainly too drunk to drive, but not too drunk to steal — indicating it’s a skill closer to the core of his character.

Peña was killed instantly, and the plastered, loose and rubbery Whilby wasn’t seriously injured. His lawyers managed to stall the case for over three years, and rejected plea bargains, trusting star power to get their killer off. He was convicted of lesser charges that have the potential to jail him for 25 years, but no one expects a star-struck judge to give him more than a slap on the wrist.

Why did the club keep serving a guy so drunk he was falling down? Celebrity, natch. It’s a place celebs go to to be free of the constraints of law and society, and the management obliges. That’s why they have insurance.

Whilby sped through traffic lights and struck several parked cars before smashing into William Pena’s crosstown bus on W. 14th St.

via Model’s nephew convicted of manslaughter in MTA bus driver death – NY Daily News.

William Peña lived in New Jersey with his wife and teenage daughter, but nobody in NYFC cares about them. They’re not celebrities, nor even by proxy.

When you’re completely lacking in a deadly weapon, there are some things you can always count on — like gravity, the mystery force that accelerates everything corewards at 31 fps/s (9.81 m/sec/sec for those of you experiencing gravity in the rest of the world).

Charles Murphy, 56, whose hedge fund reportedly invested billions of dollars in clients money with Bernie Madoff, leaped from the 24th floor of the 45 W. 44th St. building around 4:42 p.m. and landed on a fourth-floor terrace, according to police sources.

Why are we blaming the terrace this time, and not the leap? Well, it has been brought to our attention that gravity’s acceleration does no harm to you at all… it’s the deceleration that hurts. To put it in the traditional couplet: the fall doesn’t hurt at all… it’s the sudden stop at the end.

As always in these cases, you can’t ask the guy why he did it. The NY Post takes a wild guess:

The New York Times reported in 2009 that Murphy’s hedge fund, Fairfield Greenwich Group, invested more than $7 billion with Bernard Madoff, and lost much of their clients’ money in his infamous Ponzi scheme.

Somehow we doubt a massive 2009 loss of other people’s money induced a hedge fund guy to kamikaze himself in 2017, but we suppose it’s possible.

More likely, untreated depression.

Emergency crews had a hard time getting to his body on the terrace but eventually did, authorities said.

The incident was reported at 4:42 p.m. at 45 W. 44th St., when witnesses said the man leaped from the tower of the hotel, then landed on a roof that is in-set from the street, about four stories up

via Investor burned by Madoff leaps to death off Sofitel hotel | New York Post.

It’s nice to see, in a world in which the old folkways are gradually dying out, Wall Street is keeping one of its greatest traditions, the loser’s leap, alive. Er, maybe alive is not the right word.

The impact of the landing shattered concrete tiles, and he could be seen lying in a business suit.

Well, if he was a hedge fund guy, didn’t he spend most of his working life lying in a business suit?

The tragedy was the third high-profile suicide connected to the Madoff ponzi scheme.

For some loose definitions of the word “connected.” Also, they just said “the third” — then they list three more! Well, reporters are usually English or Journalism majors, this is just one more proof that the breed (and its layers and layers of editors) is innumerate, all the way to grade school level.

Madoff’s eldest son, Mark, was found hanged in his Soho apartment in December 2010 — the second anniversary of his father’s arrest.

One.

Two investors also killed themselves. William Foxton, a 65-year-old former Army major, committed suicide in 2009 due to the shame of going bankrupt.

Two.

Rene Thierry Magon De La Villehuchet, a French aristocrat, whose AIA Group had lost $1.5 billion, was found dead shortly after the scandal broke in 2008.

Three. And the late Mr Murphy makes four.

It’s funny how, even in NYFC where guns are outlawed (except for the connected and payers of bribes), would-be suicides still manage to accomplish their baleful mission.

Our condolences to Mr Murphy’s friends and family. He shouldn’t have done this to them, but he did.