Episode 08: Welcome to Pushing Up Lilies, I’m your host Julie Mattson. As a death investigator, I have worked many scenes at hotels, from homicides to suicides. Today I want to share with you a few stories on the many weird and different ways that people have died in a hotel.
Ready? Let’s go…
SHOW NOTES:
• I know that hotels are a magnet for suicides and other types of death. People will go to a hotel to commit suicide to avoid making a mess at home, and so, of course, in that hotel room where someone might shoot themselves, there’s going to be a hole in the wall or blood or whatnot. And so to avoid that mess at home, then they would go to a hotel… I’ve seen this a lot over the years. Obviously, the hotels aren’t going to widely advertise deaths that occur there because they want to keep making money. So, they wouldn’t want everyone to know that all these people have come there to kill themselves or other things that go on in the hotel. They don’t want you to feel unsafe, and they’re obviously not going to be like, Hey, come here, people die here. So the truth is, people are 19 times more likely to commit suicide in a hotel. And they kind of believe, like I said before, they’re being thoughtful, they don’t want to make a mess at home. (01:55)
• So these days, you’ll notice that hotel rooms may not have a balcony or even a window that opens, and that’s because of a large number of people who jump to their death from a hotel room… I had a scene years ago where a group of people rented a hotel room for a drug party, the group was shooting up meth at this cheap hotel and they didn’t want to get caught at their residence. So one of the group members became unconscious and so she stopped breathing and everybody panicked, and the rest of the group members decided that the best thing to do was to put her under the mattress inside the foundation, which is that surface that the mattress rests on, surrounded by wood. I used to think, and maybe it is true, I’m not sure that it was put there so you wouldn’t lose things under the bed, but that’s probably not the purpose of it. But weeks later, someone in the group actually started feeling bad about it, imagine that, and they called the hotel, it’s not the Hilton, by the way. And they told the office staff that they were there three weeks prior, that they had a friend that became unconscious and then in a panic, they placed her under the mattress, so of course, management has to investigate this, they’re not going to be like, Okay, whatever. (07:03)
• It’s kind of strange, when I look back at some of the different deaths that have happened in hotels. A lot of celebrities have been found dead in hotel rooms, which is kind of interesting, and I don’t think in those cases that they’re there to avoid making a mess, I think that they’re probably on tour and just happened to be where they were. For example, Whitney Houston, she was found in February of 2012, she was 48 years old, and she was at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. But she was found in the bath tub in a foot of water and her death was ruled a drug overdose. I believe they said that it was accidental, that she was taking several different medications to help her sleep, but she was at the Beverly Hilton. Anna Nicole Smith, she was found in 07, and she was 39 years old. She was at the Seminal Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Fort Lauderdale. Her death was also ruled a drug overdose. And so going back, John Belushi, he was one of the original cast members of Saturday Night Live. He was found in the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood, CA., he was only 33. (10:25)
• In 1938, there was a story about a female that fell from a ninth story window, the medical examiner was unable to determine if it was an accident or suicide. And in 1939, another male fell from the building. Also the same year, another gentleman was found dead in his room after ingesting poison. In 1940, there was a female who died after ingesting poison. Many people again, who jump out the window, in 44 someone died after jumping out the seventh floor window. So then we had a 10-year span where nothing happened. But in 54, another female died after jumping from the seventh floor window, and she landed on top of the marquee. And then in 62, someone jumped from the eighth floor… In 62 again, someone jumped from the ninth floor. And the interesting part that I read about this is that her and her spouse were arguing, he left the room, went downstairs, and when she jumped out the window, she landed on top of of him. (16:33)
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