[morbidology]

William Kogut was convicted of the 1930 murder of Mayme Guthrie, a woman who ran a boarding house in Oroville, California. He was transferred to death row at San Quentin State Prison as prisoner number 48689, where he mostly kept to himself and was occasionally seen playing solitaire with a deck of cards provided to him by the prison.

He had no intention of letting California decide the time of his death. Using materials available to him in his cell, he fashioned a crude pipe bomb from a hollow steel leg from his cot, packed it with torn playing card pieces, and set it on his heater. He then lay down with his head against the open end and waited.

On 19 October 1930, the device exploded, badly mangling him and rocking the prison buildings. Eight fellow inmates on death row were hurled from their bunks by the blast. He was found near death and died shortly afterwards.

His suicide note, addressed to the warden, read: "Do not blame my death on any one because I fixed everything myself. I never give up as long as I am living and have a chance, but this is the end."

[morbidology]

In 2010, 19-year-old Sam Ballard was a promising rugby player from Sydney, Australia, spending an evening drinking red wine with friends at a house party. A garden slug crawled across the floor. As a joke, his friends dared him to eat it. He did.

Within days, Sam began suffering severe pain in his legs, followed by vomiting and dizziness. His mother rushed him to hospital. Doctors diagnosed him with rat lungworm, a parasite typically carried by rodents that can pass into snails and slugs that consume infected rat droppings. In Sam’s case, it caused a severe form of meningitis known as eosinophilic meningoencephalitis.

He fell into a coma that lasted 420 days. When he woke, he was left with catastrophic brain and spinal injuries, paralysed and entirely dependent on round-the-clock care. He lived another eight years in that condition, cared for by his family and supported by friends who never abandoned him.

His mother never blamed the friends who issued the dare, saying they had simply been being mates, the way teenagers are.

Sam Ballard died on 2 November 2018, surrounded by twenty of the people who loved him most. His final words to his mother were: "I love you."

[morbidology]

John Wrana was a 95-year-old World War II veteran living at the Victory Centre of Park Forest, an assisted living facility in Park Forest, Illinois. He had served in the Army Air Forces and flown missions in the Burma theatre. He relied on a walker or a cane to get around.

On 26 July 2013, staff called paramedics after John refused medical treatment for a urinary tract infection. When he resisted being placed in the ambulance, paramedics called police. Staff at the facility pleaded with officers to let them help him cooperate, and were told to leave the room.

Police said John threatened them with a cane, a metal shoehorn and a 12-inch kitchen knife. Officers used a Taser on him. When it proved ineffective, Officer Craig Taylor fired five beanbag rounds from a 12-gauge shotgun into the 95-year-old man's chest at close range.

John was taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center, where he died hours later from internal bleeding caused by the impacts. His family's attorney disputed the knife account and said there was no evidence to account for it. Facility staff said they had never seen a knife in his room.

Taylor was charged with reckless conduct. Cook County Associate Judge Luciano Panici acquitted him in February 2015, accepting that Wrana had posed a genuine threat. No officer was ever convicted.

[morbidology]

The "St. Dennistoun Mortuary" is a coin-operated automaton created around 1900, attributed to John Dennison, a maker of mechanical amusements based in Leeds who also operated a concession at Blackpool Tower. It’s housed in a mahogany cabinet with a glazed viewing area and shows a Greek Revival mortuary building with double doors and grieving mourners outside.

When a coin is inserted, the doors open to reveal morticians working on bodies laid out on embalming tables, watched over by a nodding policeman, while the mourners outside bob their heads as if sobbing.

[morbidology]

On the evening of 4 August 2013, brothers four-year-old Noah and six-year-old Connor Barthe joined their friend for a sleepover at his father's apartment in Campbellton, New Brunswick. The apartment sat above Reptile Ocean, an exotic pet shop owned by Jean-Claude Savoie. Their friend slept in a separate room. The boys settled in the living room.

Savoie kept an African rock python in a purpose-built enclosure in the apartment. The snake had escaped through the same ventilation pipe before, getting stuck partway. The vent cap had been found on the floor of the enclosure on multiple occasions. No repair was ever made.

That night, the python squeezed through the ventilation duct and the pipe collapsed under its weight, dropping the snake through the ceiling into the living room where Noah and Connor were sleeping. It measured nearly four metres and weighed approximately 24 kilograms.

Savoie discovered the boys the following morning and called 911. He was found outside with blood on his hands when officers arrived. The snake was euthanised.

The pathologist who conducted the autopsies told the court the cause of Connor's death was asphyxiation by neck strangulation. Noah's cause of death was traumatic asphyxia by constriction. Both boys had bite wounds and marks consistent with coiling around the chest and neck.

Savoie was charged with two counts of criminal negligence causing death. In November 2016, a jury found him not guilty.

[morbidology]

This 11-year-old girl was taken to hospital after a large mass protruded from her back. When she was examined, it was discovered that the growth contained recognisable structures including a mammary gland, scapula, humerus, and two fingers, as well as a sac secreting mucosal fluid.

She was diagnosed with fetus in fetu, a rare condition in which a malformed twin develops within its sibling.

[morbidology]

On May 6, 1848, fifteen-year-old Sarah Wrench died at her home in Peldon, near Colchester, Essex, England. Her death certificate listed the cause as tuberculosis, and her father Robert Wrench was present at her death. Sarah was the second daughter of Robert and Elizabeth Wrench.

Sarah was buried on the north side of St. Edmund's Church in East Mersea, in unconsecrated ground typically reserved for suicides, criminals, or those considered social outcasts. Local legend suggested she may have had a child out of wedlock, which would have been a severe social stigma in Victorian England. Other theories claimed she was considered a witch.

Her grave is unusual because it is covered by an iron cage known as a mortsafe. While such cages were commonly used in Scotland to protect graves from body snatchers who sold corpses to medical schools, they were rare in England. The 1832 Anatomy Act had already eliminated the need for grave-robbing by allowing medical schools to obtain cadavers legally.

Local folklore claimed the cage was placed to prevent Sarah, allegedly a witch, from escaping the grave and troubling the living.

[morbidology]

do you think timmothy pitzen is alive?

Sadly no.

[morbidology]

This is good news: https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/police-update-murderer-ian-huntley-33508075

Do you think he’s gonna die?

[morbidology]

On 23 August 1937, Dorothy Lucas was shopping in Chicago with her three-month-old daughter, Diane. She briefly left Diane in her pram outside a grocery store while she went inside to pay for an item. When Dorothy returned moments later, the pram was empty and the baby was gone.

Diane was found 23 hours later, unharmed, after police received an anonymous phone call revealing her location. Several days after her return, the Lucas family received an unsigned letter from a person who claimed to be a 28-year-old woman. The writer said her husband and daughter had recently died and that she had taken Diane after seeing her alone outside the store.

The woman wrote that she had intended to raise the baby herself but changed her mind after witnessing Dorothy’s distress. The letter ended with the line: “My only crime, if you can call it such, was too much motherly love.”

[morbidology]

In the 1930s, if you strolled through Coney Island in New York, you’d encounter all kinds of sideshow performances, but one in particular was unlike any other: Martin Couney’s “incubator babies” exhibit. For 25c, visitors could observe rows of premature infants in glass incubators, each fighting for survival in a pioneering display of neonatal care.

Martin Couney’s background remains shrouded in mystery, as he often altered his story to fit his work. Born in Poland in 1869 as Michael Cohn, he claimed he had trained under Dr. Pierre-Constant Budin, a leader in neonatal medicine, although no evidence of formal medical training has been found.

Despite this, Couney’s dedication to saving premature babies was undeniable. Couney married a nurse named Annabelle, and in 1907, his own premature daughter was saved through incubator care. Inspired, he launched exhibits at Coney Island’s Dreamland and Luna Park, funding his “child hatcheries” through admissions. When Dreamland tragically burned in 1911, all the infants were safely evacuated and transferred to Luna Park, where the exhibit continued for four decades.

Through his work, Couney saved over 6,500 lives, pioneering care for premature infants when the medical community hesitated to invest in incubators. By the 1940s, hospitals began adopting his techniques, and Couney closed his sideshow in 1943.

Today, incubators and Couney’s early “Kangaroo care” practices are crucial in modern neonatal care, saving countless lives worldwide.

[morbidology]

On 10 February, 1996, 14-year-old Tanya Nicole Kach disappeared from McKeesport, Pennsylvania. She was unhappy at home after her parents' divorce and felt unwanted. She had befriended Thomas Hose, a 38-year-old security guard at her middle school who groomed her by giving her gifts, cigarettes, and showing favouritism. When Tanya told him she planned to run away, he offered to take her in.

Hose kept Tanya locked in his second-floor bedroom for the first four years. She lived with Hose, his parents, and his son, though his family didn't know she was there. She had to use a bucket as a toilet. Hose sexually abused her, threatened to kill her daily, and made her keep a journal recording how many times he sexually abused her. Tanya was so convinced he would kill her that she wrote a will.

In 2000, Hose gave her a fake identity, "Nikki Allen," and introduced her to his parents as his girlfriend. He began allowing her limited freedom with strict curfews. In her final months of captivity, she worked part-time at a local deli where she befriended owner Joe Sparico.

On 21 March, 2006, after realising her relationship wasn't normal, Tanya revealed her identity to Sparico. His son was a retired detective who had worked her missing person case. Police arrived that evening and rescued her. She was 24 years old and had been held captive for 10 years.

Hose pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 5 to 15 years in prison. He served the full 15 years and was released in February 2022 as a registered sex offender. Tanya wrote a bestselling memoir and married in 2018. She advocates for missing and exploited children, telling survivors: "There is light at the end of the tunnel."

[morbidology]

On 15 May, 2021, four-year-old Cash Gernon was abducted from his bedroom in southwest Dallas while sleeping alongside his twin brother. Surveillance footage captured an intruder lifting the boy from his bed around 5AM.

Hours later, a jogger discovered Cash's body on a residential street approximately half a mile from the home where he'd been staying with his father's girlfriend. He had been stabbed to death.

Dallas police arrested 18-year-old Darriynn Brown later that day after the home's security cameras provided clear images of the suspect. Brown lived nearby and nvestigators also linked him to an earlier incident where he allegedly entered the same home.

Brown was charged with kidnapping and capital murder. He pleaded guilty in October 2025, and was sentenced to life in prison.

[morbidology]

In February 2016, Filipino fishermen discovered a white yacht named "Sayo" drifting 62 miles off the coast of Barobo in the Philippines. When they boarded the battered vessel with a broken mast, they found the mummified body of 59-year-old German sailor Manfred Fritz Bajorat slumped at his desk near the radio telephone, his head resting on his arm.

An autopsy revealed Bajorat had died of a heart attack around 7 years earlier. The dry, salty ocean air preserved his body. He had been sailing around the world for 20 years on his 40-foot yacht. His wife Claudia had sailed with him until 2008, when they separated. She died of cancer in 2010 at age 53.

A haunting note was found among his belongings: "Thirty years we've been together on the same path. Then the power of the demons was stronger than the will to live. You're gone. May your soul find its peace. Your Manfred."

[morbidology]

In October 1867, an unknown man was found wandering in the yard of J. S. Donaldson's residence in Ladonia, Texas. He was very sick and incoherent, unable to tell anyone his name or where he had come from. Despite the care given to him, the stranger died on October 4, 1867, without ever regaining enough clarity to reveal his identity.

The community buried him in Ladonia Cemetery and erected a headstone that reads: "THE STRANGER'S TOMB DIED AT THE RESIDENCE OF J. S. DONALDSON ON THE 4TH DAY OF OCTOBER 1867."

For over 150 years, the grave has stood as a reminder of a life that ended with no one knowing who he was. No family ever came looking for him and no missing person report matched his description.

[morbidology]

A photograph showing the survivors of the Andes flight disaster. A human spine can be seen in the snow to the right of the survivors.

Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 was carrying 45 passengers, including members of a Uruguayan rugby team, their friends and family, when it crashed into the Andes mountains on the 13th of October, 1972. Upon impact, the fuselage of the plane broke apart, and many passengers were killed instantly.

However, a group of survivors, consisting of 27 individuals, managed to endure in the harsh, freezing conditions of the Andes for an astonishing 72 days before being rescued. They faced numerous challenges, including injuries, avalanches, and extreme hunger.

In order to survive, they consumed the bodies of their fellow passengers.

[morbidology]

The only publicly released photograph of Marilyn Monroe after her death shows her lying in bed at her Brentwood home on August 5, 1962. Monroe was 36-years-old when she died, with her death caused by a barbiturate overdose.