Economic Fallout Has Spurred an Epidemic of Murder and Suicide That Has Gone Largely Unnoticed

By Nick Turse, Tomdispatch.com. Posted June 5, 2009.

According to Indianapolis, Indiana, Metropolitan Police Department spokesman Sgt. Paul Thompson, 27-year-old Candance Macy lured her landlord to her residence "with the intent to kill him" in order to avoid eviction. Reportedly, Macy claimed that "she had lost a ring behind a stove in the kitchen and… she had asked him to retrieve it. When he stooped down to look for the ring, Macy allegedly stabbed him in the back at least four times and several more times on other parts of his body." He was reported to be in serious condition.

In Rhode Island, during an eviction proceeding, a Pawtucket Housing Authority employee found a "man lying in a bed with a knife sticking out of his neck, and quickly phoned police, reporting either a stabbing victim or possible deceased person." When police arrived and approached the man, he "suddenly sat up, with the knife hanging from his throat." The knife fell from his neck and the man began threatening the officers with it. "You will have to shoot me. I have nothing to live for," he told them. Eventually, they persuaded him to drop the knife.

After Allen Park, Michigan's Mark David Fussner, 44, refused to obey an eviction order and threatened to shoot court officers, the police were called in. As one of the officers approached, Fussner reportedly fired birdshot from a shotgun, wounding him. Other police on the scene returned fire and for the next two hours, the sound of gun shots reverberated through the neighborhood. Fussner was later found dead in his basement. It was unclear whether he died of a self-inflicted wound or was killed by the police.

A Silent (and Violent) Epidemic

While news reports indicate that extreme acts precipitated by economic disaster have occurred in at least 30 states, similar incidents have undoubtedly occurred in most, if not all, of the remaining 20 states. Suicides are normally under-reported in the press, while murders linked to the economic crisis may never be reported as such. Many extreme acts, in any case, go unnoticed by those not intimately affected.

There is, of course, no way to know which of these and similar acts might have occurred even if there had been no global economic meltdown. One thing is certain however: there will never be a full accounting of the lives ruined or lost under the pressure of economic disaster, nor will anyone ever raise a monument to the victims of foreclosure, job loss, and business failure, of busted pensions and dynamited 401(k)s.

There will be no memorial wall in Washington with names etched into black granite -- not for these people, neither the desperate who killed themselves, nor those who lashed out and murdered others. Who will remember the Knudsons in their shallow grave, or Christopher Wood's dead children? No statue will be raised on Wall Street to solemnly remind the former masters of the universe of the Main Street consequences of their financial manipulations. No equivalent of the Arlington National Cemetery will ever be laid out for the dead of this crisis or filled with headstones reading: "Beloved Mother, Killed by Capitalism" or "Devoted Husband and Father, Sacrificed in the Name of Greed."

Instead, the bodies will just continue to pile up. A daughter here. A father there. A family in a nearby neighborhood.

No one will ever know how many. And no one will record their names for posterity.

See more stories tagged with: economy, suicide, murder, foreclosure

Nick Turse is the associate editor and research director of Tomdispatch.com. His first book, The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives, an exploration of the new military-corporate complex in America, was recently published by Metropolitan Books. His website is Nick Turse.com.

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