Put your tin hats on ....

[Xamonas Chegwé]

The glaring hole in the story for me is the fact that the reported details of his "suicide" didn't match the facts at all! All that bollocks about drilling holes through the walls, etc.!!1!

Had any tenth-grade assassin wanted to fake a suicide, they would have made it look like a suicide - a nice SIMPLE suicide! And their inside man in the Singapore police would have given out details that matched the crime scene - or did they not think his relatives might want to recover his belongings?

The whiole thing stinks of that stuff that comes out of a cow - and I am not talking milk...

[cronus]

The glaring hole in the story for me is the fact that the reported details of his "suicide" didn't match the facts at all! All that bollocks about drilling holes through the walls, etc.!!1!

Had any tenth-grade assassin wanted to fake a suicide, they would have made it look like a suicide - a nice SIMPLE suicide! And their inside man in the Singapore police would have given out details that matched the crime scene - or did they not think his relatives might want to recover his belongings?

The whiole thing stinks of that stuff that comes out of a cow - and I am not talking milk...

Then it could be simple paperwork error, and this bizarre suicide happened to someone elsewhere, and that got misreported as something less eyebrow raising like a overdose?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I blame the Yang di-Pertuan Negara.

[Thinking Aloud]

Didn't the girlfriend discover him though? I'm not going back to read it again...

[klr]

Didn't the girlfriend discover him though? I'm not going back to read it again...

Neither am I. The article could have been reduced to a fraction of its length and retained the same informational content.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

One of the comments mentions she had found him, but that she didn't mention any straps or pulleys.

Anybody betting on autoerotic asphyxiation?

[Seth]

One of the comments mentions she had found him, but that she didn't mention any straps or pulleys.

Anybody betting on autoerotic asphyxiation?

I thought that at first, and had the evidence of the pulleys and straps been substantiated by the parents I would have strongly considered that, but when the parents didn't find the claimed holes or other evidence, I rejected it as a viable theory.

Now, it could be that it's an extremely complex black-ops setup by someone to make the Chinese look bad, what with the "missed" drive containing vital defense information that the Chinese are alleged to have stolen.

The Ockham's Razor theory is that it's a botched murder where the killers simply overlooked something in their haste to get out.

I suppose one could construct a complex novel about the case with all sorts of byzantine twists and turns...hm...

Then again it occurred to me that perhaps the landlord came in after the investigation was over and patched and repainted the damage in preparation for re-renting the unit. That's certainly plausible and would explain why there was no police barrier tape on the apartment...if it had been released as a crimescene. Which doesn't explain why his stuff was not packed up and stored so the apartment could be rented...but still a plausible explanation for the missing holes etc.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

You don't need the fancy gear to do that. I think the gears and pulleys bit is a construct.

[Seth]

You don't need the fancy gear to do that. I think the gears and pulleys bit is a construct.

Me too, but if it was a setup for an autoerotic death, then why wasn't the evidence still there when the parents arrived? This looks like either a particularly inept assassination, a black-ops counter spy assassination, a suicide, or an autoerotic death. Hard to know without seeing more evidence...like from the Singapore police photos and suchlike.

[cronus]

You don't need the fancy gear to do that. I think the gears and pulleys bit is a construct.

Me too, but if it was a setup for an autoerotic death, then why wasn't the evidence still there when the parents arrived? This looks like either a particularly inept assassination, a black-ops counter spy assassination, a suicide, or an autoerotic death. Hard to know without seeing more evidence...like from the Singapore police photos and suchlike.

Never get the truth from that quadrant captain kirk.

[Warren Dew]

The only problem I have with this is the fact that the conspirators missed the external hard drive. All great conspiracy theories always seem to rely on some inconceivable mistake. I wouldn't doubt that the general thesis here could and does happen. But in this case, what is the explanation for the missed hard drive?

According to the conspiracy theory, they didn't miss the hard drive. They came back two days later and accessed it, deleting some files, and adding others. Then they inexplicably left the hard drive there, instead of taking it.

That's the part I find most implausible.

You don't need the fancy gear to do that. I think the gears and pulleys bit is a construct.

Me too, but if it was a setup for an autoerotic death, then why wasn't the evidence still there when the parents arrived?

The police might have taken all the equipment as evidence.

[Seth]

The only problem I have with this is the fact that the conspirators missed the external hard drive. All great conspiracy theories always seem to rely on some inconceivable mistake. I wouldn't doubt that the general thesis here could and does happen. But in this case, what is the explanation for the missed hard drive?

According to the conspiracy theory, they didn't miss the hard drive. They came back two days later and accessed it, deleting some files, and adding others. Then they inexplicably left the hard drive there, instead of taking it.

That's the part I find most implausible.

You don't need the fancy gear to do that. I think the gears and pulleys bit is a construct.

Me too, but if it was a setup for an autoerotic death, then why wasn't the evidence still there when the parents arrived?

The police might have taken all the equipment as evidence.

Well, if they were trying to make it look like a suicide, then it would be suspicious if his computer equipment were missing, wouldn't it? It's plausible that they murdered him but didn't have the tools to tamper with the drive at the time, so they came back later with an expert and did the follow up work.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

You don't need the fancy gear to do that. I think the gears and pulleys bit is a construct.

Me too, but if it was a setup for an autoerotic death, then why wasn't the evidence still there when the parents arrived?

The police might have taken all the equipment as evidence.

They wouldn't have taken the tiles with the holes drilled in them. I think.

[Jason]

Kid was stupid beyond belief. You don't pack up your things and have a yard sale, you quietly get out of dodge. No exit strategy, no contingency plans ... what a noob.

[Seth]

Kid was stupid beyond belief. You don't pack up your things and have a yard sale, you quietly get out of dodge. No exit strategy, no contingency plans ... what a noob.

Yup. There are times when you have to abandon everything you have (except the drive, your passport and some cash) and run for your life. The trick is knowing when that happens. If you don't train for a crisis, in a crisis you will revert to your training and do nothing.

That's why I train for crisis responses of many kinds all the time, so I know what to do and when to do it. I've got my bug-out bag all packed...several of them in fact...conveniently stored in every vehicle and place I spend a lot of time so that I can just grab one and go in an emergency. All I need to have is my passport and some cash and I'm good.