title: Planned complex suicide: report of three cases.
abstract: Three cases of planned complex suicide in a 3-year period are reported. A 40-year-old man was found dead, in his garage, hanging by his neck, with a gunshot in the head from a pen gun. A 50-year-old man was found dead in the sea with a gunshot to his head. A third man was found in a field hanging by a tree and burned. The investigation of the scenes and the methods used pointed toward a suicidal etiology. The main difference between planned complex suicide and those cases defined in medicolegal literature as combined suicides lies in the complex mechanism used by the victim as a protection against the failure of one of the mechanisms.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Legal Medicine, University of Ancona, Ospedale Regionale, Italy. m.cingolani@popcsi.unian.it
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Cingolani
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Tsakri
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001344:Autopsy; D001930:Brain Injuries / Q000473:pathology*; D002056:Burns / Q000473:pathology*; D002423:Cause of Death; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D019838:Neck Injuries / Q000473:pathology*; D013405:Suicide; D014948:Wounds, Gunshot / Q000473:pathology*; D014949:Wounds, Nonpenetrating / Q000473:pathology*