"accidental" death

[vindemiatrix]

What are good ways for people to be killed so it looks like an accident (or possibly suicide)? It's set in our world, and the murderess is good at her job (ie killing) but won't have access to anything overly scientific or to any help from a third party. Any ideas would be much welcomed!

[melydia]

pushed off the top of a building
drugged (or suffocated 'til they passed out), laid in a bathtub, and their wrists slit
drowned (could have fallen off a boat)
shot and attributed to small child playing with gun
car drives off cliff (or is pushed)
carbon monoxide poisoning - like tossing activated charcoal in a fireplace and burning it
arson started by a lit cigarette on a couch
forced drug overdose

...I watch way too much CSI.

[Aimless]

Does he have any allergies or anything? :o :o

[vindemiatrix]

Aimless: that might work. I need her to die horribly, anyway. An allergic reaction might be suitably horrible. Anyone know anything about severe allergic reaction?

Melydia: I think I shall use one or two of yours for some of the other "accidental" deaths, since they're better than mine. ^_^ Thanks.

Any more? *hopeful smile*

[Kail]

In as much as I'm aware, cyanide poisoning is difficult to detect without an autopsy, and cyanide can be delivered in a number of ways (you can, for example, absorb hydrogen cyanide just through contact with the skin). Victim appears to die of a heart attack, I believe.

[Aimless]

Aimless: that might work. I need her to die horribly, anyway. An allergic reaction might be suitably horrible. Anyone know anything about severe allergic reaction?

Very fine particles of nuts :) Just the dust will do. Blow it in and blam.

[Orion283]

Bees are pretty nasty if you have an allergy. Though people with said allergy tend to carry a syringe with them in case they get stung, I think. Course the victim could always be caught unprepared. Stuff happens.

[vindemiatrix]

Sure, but how hard would it be to sting someone with a bee? Nuts may work. However, I plan to have my characters visiting the dead woman before she gets dead, so if I choose death-by-allergy I need them to see somehow that she's really careful about not coming into contact with the thing she's allergic to, so bees may work in that sense that she would be really careful about letting them in and opening the door and such.

The dead lady doesn't work, but she can leave the house if necessary. Just some info.

Anyone know what someone who died of a severe allergic reaction would look like?

[Aimless]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaphylactic_shock

For the rest, ask a doctor :) or a nurse. They will be happy to help I'm sure :)

People with peanut allergy tend to avoid chocolate as it may contain traces of nuts. Have her offer the target chocolate :) You know, like a little present.

[vindemiatrix]

She doesn't know the target. The woman's not likely to accept chocolate from someone she doesn't know.

But yeah, I have a nurse aunt so I can ask her about allergy reactions when I see her Friday. Thanks for reminding me. *grin*

[Aimless]

No no like she offers chocolate, the target goes no thank you, I'm allergic to nuts blah blah :)

[vindemiatrix]

The characters visiting the woman are guys. And they have no reason to offer her chocolate. They're... not the chocolate-offering type. Good idea anyhow.

[Aimless]

Maybe one of them can look really nutty and the target can recoil in horror upon seeing him 8)

[vindemiatrix]

It says a lot for my sense of humour that I found that INCREDIBLY amusing.

Anyone else for death ideas, allergy related or otherwise?

[Aimless]

Gas stove? :)

[snooze]

I highly reccommend Sidney Sheldon's The Doomsday Conspiracy. He has at least 12 different ways of killing people so no one will suspect that the people are being murdered as part of a massive global-government cover-up!
I recall that someone dressed as a nun went into a hospital and used a cut-glass rosary to make a tiny incision on a sleeping patient's hand, and then she dropped a tiny amount of poison into the cut. But the patient was near death anyhow, so there was nothing suspicious there. And it's a NUN commiting MURDER.
Then there was a mechanic. Some mysterious guys came to talk to him, and one guy *accidentally* drops his wallet into the pit under the hydralic car lift. The mechanic hops down to get it, and then one of the guys hits the button to lower the car and the hydralic platform crushes the guy to death.
Then there's a guy who owns a circus and is killed by an *accidentally* escaped snake.
A woman in Russia is arrested by two "cops" and raped and murdered in a seemingly "random" attack.
A cattle farmed accidentally falls into the stall containing a wild stallion, who tramples him.
A bank CEO or something is forced at gunpoint to drink several glasses of alcohol and write a note (with his non-dominant hand,) that reads "I'm sorry, forgive me." The men holding the gun hand him the gun under the guise of showing him how to protect himself from those who want him dead, and as he holds it, they force him to raise the gun ot his head and pull the trigger. The next day, several thousand dollars are found to be missing--seemingly embezzled--from the bank he works at.
A photographer (who took crucial pictures of the incident they are trying to hush up,) is locked inside his house, which then catches fire, along with all his photos.
A German man is lured into picking up a beautiful young hitch-hiking woman who seduces him only to inject a lethal dose of prescription drugs into his leg. (It was earlier discovered that he was violently allergic to all kinds of drugs.)

I can't remember any of the others.

[vindemiatrix]

^^ God I WISH I could use some of those.

I also wish my story had nuns. I'm going to put some nuns in somewhere. Just BECAUSE.

[Tundra]

hanging can be made to look like a suicide... as long as you don't bruise the person. Perhaps getting them drunk first, so drunk they become unconcious... put a noose around their neck, stand them on a chair, take the chair away, leave, come back, scream hysterically at finding the suicide which the person did while drunk...

[Aquamonet]

A gas leak that looks like an accident. Either she would be choked by the gas in her sleep or she could light something and *bang*

Otherwise Carbon Monoxide poisoning often caused by heating not being checked properly. It's undetectable until you choke to death since it's odourless.

Otherwise how about knocking something electric into a back tub or swimming pool, say a radio that looks like she knocked it in or something.

Hope this helps.

[Aimless]

Will the assassin have access to medical records?

[AXJ]

How 'bout a forced auto accident- something like, the conspirators find a stretch of road which their target drives almost every day which has a significant dropoff and a blind corner. They put something big in the road (boulder, fallen tree, abandoned car, escaped cow, etc) just around the blind turn, just before the victim gets there, so when the person rounds the corner they will see the object just a few feet away (blind curve, remember) and will instinctively swerve... over the huge dropoff. Or they can plow into the large immovable object. If they fail to die in the accident, your conspirators can always hit them in the head with something heavy; it'll probably look like trauma from the accident.

[vindemiatrix]

Ahahah. Yes, probably. Her... society, if you like... are everywhere, and they're keeping a close eye on Sandra (the deaded woman) because of her former proximity to Susannah (another character in my novel). They've already given her a warning to stop helping Susannah's brother (of the physical kind). So yeah, they'd have her medical records and everything, because they might end up needing them.

Laura - nice ideas but the thing is it has to seem suspicious to Linus. It's supicious anyway, because a lot of people around him have died (Pentony "falls" off a balcony *grin*)... the electric/bath thing is a possibility, though. It's just unlikely enough.

Anything else?

[vindemiatrix]

How 'bout a forced auto accident- something like, the conspirators find a stretch of road which their target drives almost every day which has a significant dropoff and a blind corner. They put something big in the road (boulder, fallen tree, abandoned car, escaped cow, etc) just around the blind turn, just before the victim gets there, so when the person rounds the corner they will see the object just a few feet away (blind curve, remember) and will instinctively swerve... over the huge dropoff. Or they can plow into the large immovable object. If they fail to die in the accident, your conspirators can always hit them in the head with something heavy; it'll probably look like trauma from the accident.

You got your post in as I was writing mine. *grin*

I already have two car "accidents", unfortunately. One chick gets caught in a car accident much like the one you described, and my MC narrowly escapes a rather desperate hit-and-run. Neither of these include an escaped cow, unfortunately, but there may possibly be nuns. *grin*

[AXJ]

A little bugs bunny action for you: A piano is getting hoisted into an upstairs apartment (flat) and the rope mysteriously breaks as the victim walks underneath.

[vindemiatrix]

*can't stop laughing* I may actually use that. Librarian Dies In Freak Piano Accident. Poor Sandra.

Anything else? Anyone? I'm enjoying this thread. Especially if someone has an idea for making Sandra have an allergic reaction while still making it look an accident, because I'm liking this route.

[AXJ]

Especially if someone has an idea for making Sandra have an allergic reaction while still making it look an accident, because I'm liking this route.

Have her be allergic to nuts, and have your assassin sneak into the kitchen of a restaurant and spike her food with peanut dust. Suppose she goes out for lunch every friday to a specific restaurant and orders her favorite spicy pasta dish. Your bad guy can pose as a new busboy or whatever, sneak in long enough to stir in a good quantity of peanut dust into the big vat of pasta sauce, then sneak right back out. An hour later, she dies, and it looks like a simple mixup in the kitchen.

Did you guys get this news story?

http://www.cnn.com/2005/HEALTH/conditions/11/28/kiss.death.ap/index.html

....so it could be a seductive hunk that does her in.

[vindemiatrix]

^^ Good idea! A possible certainly.

And the news story? O_O Still, it's not TOO strange; I knew a girl in primary school who had a reaction just because her best friend ate a peanut butter sandwich for lunch, then held hands with the allergic girl, and the allergic girl then put her hand to her eye. Her eye swelled right up. I think she had to go to hospital. I mean... how careful does somone have to BE?

[Aimless]

Nut allergy is probably the easiest way to do it if you want allergies. You can have the dust pretty much anywhere :) and it makes it very easy to pin the blame on someone else, too. It could look like a very tragic accident caused by an unwitting innocent person :o

[AXJ]

Another- have a trained dog attack her and pass it off as a random wild dog attack. Or blame it on a neighbor's friendly (but big) dog.

[snooze]

A little bugs bunny action for you: A piano is getting hoisted into an upstairs apartment (flat) and the rope mysteriously breaks as the victim walks underneath.

Another- have a trained dog attack her and pass it off as a random wild dog attack. Or blame it on a neighbor's friendly (but big) dog.

Sounds like somebody's been watching A Fish Called Wanda. Well, just the parts where Michael Palin's character keeps trying to kill the old lady and just succeeds in murdering her three dogs. First he had the attack dog, then her tried to stage a road accident, and then the block of cement falling on the final dog and giving granny a heartattack. Those dogs crack me up.

[AXJ]

Never seen that movie at all. http://w0rdie.com/upload/files/2/Smileys/happysad.gif Weird.

[Sulis]

And peanut oil is pretty common in cooking. It wouldn't be too difficult at all to slip some of that into just about any dish that's cooked for her.

Other allergy problems: Chocolate allergies frequently cause migraines, whic can also cause vision problems. Not sure how you'd get her to at it, but...

Carbon monoxide is a good death... As long as you don't wake up in the middle of it. It's odorless, and simply causes the victim to go to sleep. Eventually you die. If you wake up mid-poisoning, the side effects are dizziness, vomiting, and headache, among other things. had carbon monoxide due to a furnace malfunction once, and it was Not Fun, when I woke up due to my alarm going off. The side effects don't wear off quickly at all, either. I got sent to the hosopital 4 hours later for treatment, and I was still stumbling around with a blinding headache and dizziness.

[vindemiatrix]

I may actually use carbon monoxide poisoning. I want my MC to think, when Sandra dies, that it wasn't an accident, so I thought something like an allergy where he'd know that she wouldn't be as careless, but it comes to me that by now so many people have died after talking to my MC that he'd be stupid not to realise it wasn't an accident. *grin*

Besides, if she does wake up partway through and end up choking on her own vomit it'd just go to show that the murderess is frankly a bit inept/careless.

[AXJ]

And peanut oil is pretty common in cooking. It wouldn't be too difficult at all to slip some of that into just about any dish that's cooked for her.

99.5% sure that peanut oil is safe for people with peanut allergies. I know for sure that SouthernTiger can have it.