STRANGE DEATHS
UNUSUAL WAYS OF SHUFFLING OFF THIS MORTAL COIL
On 11 February 1979 Peter Hanchett, Benjamin Kalama, Ralph Malaiakini, Scott Moorman and Patrick Woesner boarded a 17ft (5m) Boston Whaler named the Sarah Joe for a fishing trip off the coast of Hawaii, but went missing after a sudden storm broke. A massive but fruitless search over five days covered 70,000 square miles of ocean. Family and friends continued the search for another three weeks, but all in vain. A decade later, several of the original search party were on a routine wildlife mission for the National Marine Fisheries Service. On the remote Taongi atoll (aka Bokak atoll) in the Ratak chain of the Marshall Islands, about 2,200 miles (3,540km) southwest of Hawaii, biologist John Naughton found the wreck of the Sarah
Joe on 10 September 1988. A hundred yards away, Naughton and his colleagues found a driftwood cross marking a shallow grave. A lower jaw protruded from the coral cairn, and on top of the grave under some stones were partially burned sheets of paper, 3in (8cm) square, interleaved with tinfoil, suggesting a Chinese funerary ritual, representing money and fortune in the next life. Dental records showed the jaw belonged to Scott Moorman, one of the crew of the Sarah Joe, who was 27 when he disappeared. No other graves were found on the atoll; in fact, no trace of the other crewmen has ever been found.
How did the Sarah Joe, a frail fibreglass vessel designed for coastal use, manage to survive the raging storm, and then drift all the way to the Marshall Islands and navigate a narrow channel to end on an interior sandbar? Experts have agreed that it could have feasibly drifted here within three months – but four years before Naughton got to the atoll, another research team landed there and allegedly found nothing out of the ordinary. This suggests the Sarah Joe had drifted for at least six years before making landfall. (However, one report asserts that relatives of the missing crew were told about the wreck and grave back in 1984.) Who buried the body of Scott Moorman, when, and why didn’t they tell anyone? reddit. com ,13 Feb 2015; mysterious universe. org, thesanghakommune.org, 13 Jan 2016. A man in India died on 27 January after being sucked into an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scanner at Nair Charitable Hospital in Mumbai while visiting a sick relative. Rajesh Maru, 32, was dragged towards the machine by its magnetic force after he entered the room carrying an oxygen cylinder. Preliminary reports suggested that Maru had died from inhaling liquid oxygen that leaked from the cylinder, which burst after hitting the machine. A post-mortem indicated he had died from pneumothorax, or a collapsed lung. A doctor and a junior staff member were arrested for causing death due to negligence. The victim’s uncle said Maru had been asked to carry the cylinder by the junior staff member who assured him the machine was switched off. In 2014 two hospital workers sustained injuries when they were pinned between an MRI machine and a metal oxygen tank for four hours at a hospital in New Delhi. In 2001, Michael Colombini, six, undergoing an MRI scan in Valhalla, New York State, was killed when a metal oxygen tank flew towards the machine and crushed his skull [ FT155:29]. D.Mail (online), 29 Jan; <i> 30 Jan 2018. David Baloyi, 50, and two other men trekked from a village in Mozambique to the Umbabat game reserve in the South African province of Limpopo, for a spot of poaching, carrying powerful hunting rifles. As they hunted in the darkness, they appear to have surprised or been stalked by lions. Baloyi was mauled and his screams for help panicked the other two, who fled, leaving behind two loaded .456 Winchester rifles and ammunition. The lions ate Baloyi, leaving his head and a few body parts, which were discovered on 11 February. In January 2017, three male lions were found poisoned in Limpopo with their paws and heads cut off. Lion bones and other body parts are increasingly sought-after in South East Asia, where they are sometimes used as a substitute for tiger bones. BBC News, Metro, 12 Feb; (London) Eve. Standard, 14 Feb 2018. A plumber “driven mad” by tinnitus (ringing in the ears) strangled his wife and tried to kill his stepson. Vincent Nagle, 44, then killed himself by jumping off a bridge over the M1 motorway. He had been diagnosed with depression weeks earlier, and had told his doctor the tinnitus was stopping him from sleeping. He had been dumped by his wife Claire, 38, after 16 years. He strangled the mother of five at her home in Borrowash, Derbyshire, before driving to stepson Nathan Paton’s house, where he hit the 22-year-old with a shovel and fired a bolt into his skull with a nail gun. The young man survived. Sun, 15 Dec 2017.