CAN TOU HELP?

May 23, 2010 By Stephen Ellis

This week, I had a very interesting experience: I was e-mailed by a reader (a lovely girl who, for purposes of today’s column, we’ll call “Jill”). She wrote and asked for my help. A couple of years ago, a young, teen-age girl (whom Jill had never met) apparently committed suicide by leaping from a 15th story window. For purposes of this column, I’ll call the girl who died, “Betty”.

Although Jill did not know Betty, Jill has some psychic abilities and had exceptionally strong instinctive feelings that the girl did not jump…she was pushed. These instinctive or psychic feelings were so strong, Jill went out of her way to locate Betty’s mother and offered to help her find the truth. In the course of seeking help, Jill e-mailed me and requested I try to locate a good psychic detective who might be able to recount exactly what really happened.

The feelings I got from Jill were so strong that I agreed to meet Jill and Betty’s mother at a local café where the events were recounted to me as follows:

Betty and her girlfriend, Megan, had just returned from an out-of-the-city outing, and decided to stop by the apartment where Megan and her parents lived before Betty went home. According to Megan, as told to Betty’s mother and the police, for no apparent reason, Betty walked to a tall sliding-glass window, opened it, and jumped to her death. The police report listed it as a suicide.

To me, teen-age girls are not, necessarily, the most stable class of people in this world. Teen agers are typically wracked with emotions and rebellion…all a necessary part of discovering oneself and growing into a mature adult. That having been said, I have heard of very few teen suicides where the teen did not leave a note: either an apology to their friends and parents or a note accusing the friends and parents of being responsible for the teen’s suicide.

In this case, there was no note.

My first question: “Was there a boy involved?” This question received a somewhat ambiguous response: Yes, there was a boy in another room of the apartment when it happened. No, there was no apparent involvement of the boy. No, there seemed to be no boyfriend-girlfriend jealousy motive involved.

But then, why would a teen-age girl, doing well in school, without warning, jump to her death?

A description of the apartment only created more questions: The window on the 15th floor was such that it had no protections? No lock to stop it from opening it too far? No tall sill? The window as described to me was about two feet from the floor rising up to about six feet. To me, this means that when the window was open, any children playing or any adults who accidentally tripped could easily go sailing out the window to their deaths. It doesn’t make sense! And, when something doesn’t make sense, it’s almost always not true. I have not been to the apartment, but I would bet a fortune that the building owners would not let the situation of a dangerously placed window exist.

Then, too, the apartment has a balcony. Why would someone thinking of suicide climb up over a sill for a window, squeeze through a window open only on one side and jump when there’s a perfectly good and available balcony that would give someone no obstructions to a planned suicide?

People rarely walk across a bridge and, suddenly, decide to jump. Even if they’re suicide-bound, they will climb over the guard railing and think about it before jumping. Newspapers are replete with stories about people who sit on the precipice of a building and think about jumping, or contemplate shooting themselves or overdosing on pills, etc. Suicide is rarely an instantaneous decision.

I’m going to be contacting an excellent detective to review the police files, but I’d like a favor from my readers: If any of you have strong psychic abilities, I’d like you to contact me and see if you might not be able to relive the scene of the alleged “suicide” and bring a probable crime to justice.

Stebrel@aol.com