Hi all, I made the mistake of getting a "real job" and I can no longer surf the net all day. I'm just checking in on Steven's case and I wanted to bring back this article I posted about a hundred threads back.
In reference to Shefner's questions about how Steven would have planned his suicide...my contention, as this article points out, is that their are two types of suicides, the planned and the impulsive. I believe Steven acted on impulse after not landing the job, not getting the girl or "enter the latest disappointment in his life here."
"As it turns out, one of the most remarkable discoveries about suicide and how to reduce it occurred utterly by chance. It came about not through some breakthrough in pharmacology or the treatment of mental illness but rather through an energy-conversion scheme carried out in Britain in the 1960s and ’70s. Among those familiar with the account, it is often referred to simply as “the British coal-gas story.”
For generations, the people of Britain heated their homes and fueled their stoves with coal gas. While plentiful and cheap, coal-derived gas could also be deadly; in its unburned form, it released very high levels of carbon monoxide, and an open valve or a leak in a closed space could induce asphyxiation in a matter of minutes. This extreme toxicity also made it a preferred method of suicide. “Sticking one’s head in the oven” became so common in Britain that by the late 1950s it accounted for some 2,500 suicides a year, almost half the nation’s total.
Those numbers began dropping over the next decade as the British government embarked on a program to phase out coal gas in favor of the much cleaner natural gas. By the early 1970s, the amount of carbon monoxide running through domestic gas lines had been reduced to nearly zero. During those same years, Britain’s national suicide rate dropped by nearly a third, and it has remained close to that reduced level ever since.
How can this be? After all, if the impulse to suicide is primarily rooted in mental illness and that illness goes untreated, how does merely closing off one means of self-destruction have any lasting effect? At least a partial answer is that many of those Britons who asphyxiated themselves did so impulsively. In a moment of deep despair or rage or sadness, they turned to what was easy and quick and deadly — “the execution chamber in everyone’s kitchen,” as one psychologist described it — and that instrument allowed little time for second thoughts. Remove it, and the process slowed down; it allowed time for the dark passion to pass."
See more in the story:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/magazine/06suicide-t.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1
Basically, Steven didn't have to plan his suicide. He just had to have the means to kill himself at the exact moment he felt like doing it.
Sorry, this is a bit off topic at this point, but still interesting. I'm eager to find out about the bones found in Red Rock canyon. While I don't believe they belong to Steven, it would be nice to bring closure to another family none the less.
I'll be checking in when I can; best to all who care enough about Steven to still be looking for him today.