This reminds me of the quandary we are faced with as soon as an adult goes missing. They often aren't searched for because police don't want to infringe on the privacy rights of a person who chooses to disappear. They have a "right" to disappear. Sure! They do. But maybe they shouldn't.
I think that this leads to a dangerous slippery slope, though. There are many situations, such as in cases of abuse, where someone needs to "disappear." Probably many more cases of people in danger from those they know and therefore need to get away from, then there are cases of people falling prey to strangers. We all know the statistics about domestic violence/date rape vs. stranger crime. We hear more about the "being preyed on by strangers" here on WebSleuths, because those are the cases with some element of "mystery" to them. But don't let that skew the big picture about the realities of violence and who you're in most danger from.
In this case, nobody knows for sure that Annandale Jane did this to herself. There's so much we don't know or understand, and it's so filled with logical contradictions that it makes for an intriguing mystery. But if she DID do this on her own, given all the forethought she had in how she was going to carry it out, what she wanted to have with with her at the time, and what she was going to leave behind, surely she would have realized that she was creating much more of a spectacle and a mystery than she was a simple, lackluster, easily-forgotten death.
If her goal was to "go quietly into that good night" and to slip away from this earth unnoticed, I'd say she epically failed. By leaving her body out in public in such a specific and unusual place, and by leaving behind a typewritten suicide note withholding her identity, as well as by purposely having such a bizarre array of items with her — to me, that's a very loud scream for attention. Or may just the final act of someone who wanted to be remembered.
Or maybe this was something altogether more sinister. I know some solvers believe this is a simple suicide (minus the simple), but I just see so many elements that make much more sense if there was another participant involved in some way.
Honestly, I think it's pretty clear that she did this to herself. I don't see a loud scream for attention at all--she tried to slip away as quiet and unidentified as possible. I mean, it's not like you can kill yourself and then dismember and burn your own body--you commit suicide, you're going to leave your remains behind to be found one day. Leaving your body in a cemetery, a repository for the dead, is about as practical and quiet as you can get on that matter. If she wanted to make a last-bid scream for attention, she would have killed herself in front of a kindergarten or at the door of the courthouse to be found the next morning.
Most people aren't interested in true crime like we are. Most people don't read WebSleuths. It probably didn't occur to her that anyone would be interested, or discussing this, so many years later. And remember, this was back in 1996, when things like popular use of the internet were in their infancy. And she was an older woman, so probably not as likely to be on the cutting edge of where internet technology was going. I was in grad school in 1996, and used the computer and e-mail all the time, and still, I never once thought, "I better not do X, because 20 years from now someone could be talking about it on an internet forum somewhere, because everyone's everything being plastered online is where we're headed." Most likely she thought that there might be a small "body found in cemetery" blurb in the local paper, and then everyone would go on to the next piece of news, and that would be it. (And given her sense of humor with the Mel Brooks tape, maybe "Body found in cemetery, ha ha," was her little joke. That's the only bit of any "attention" bid I see here.)
I don't see anything particularly bizarre about her array of items, either. If you looked in anyone's car, or purse, or pockets, at any given time, the array of articles might seem odd to an outsider. All of us have items that have personal meaning for us but look odd or worthless to someone else.
She used a method that would ensure she was dead. She left DNR instructions, and instructions on what to do with her body after death. She left payment for the disposal of her body. She left her body where someone not easily spooked by death and dead bodies would find her. Short of tattooing "Yes, I committed suicide" on her forehead, I don't see what else she could have done to let the finders know that she was choosing to end her own life.
If she was important enough, or a threat enough, for someone to go want to kill her...why on earth go through all the elaborate charade and staging? Why take the chance of leaving fingerprints on something? If you don't want her identified, why not remove her hands and head and dispose of them elsewhere? Why leave $50 bills on her body? Why not use that $50 to buy some concrete blocks to tie to the body and throw her in the ocean or a river so she wouldn't be found? If there's some advantage to having someone declared dead by suicide, like inheritance or insurance or something, the body would need to be officially identified. I mean, if some outside party went to this extent to stage an elaborate scene on purpose, that would mean that Annandale Jane was as historically and politically important as the last Tsar's family, or as criminally connected and prominent as Al Capone. And in either of those cases, she wouldn't be a UID to LE.
Sometimes people kill themselves in weird ways. And while we all love a tangled and intriguing mystery, I just don't think it helps to see a conspiracy in every lonely depressed person who commit suicide. Horses, not zebras--
