Something about the way the noose landed across Barksdale's neck iirc showed that he couldn't possibly have done it himself, and I forget why. Maybe there were bruises on other parts of his body. But DOC didn't care cause he was in on drug charges so even the ME was kind of like "Eh." McNulty, who stirs up the pot by getting up every morning, found the "mistake". You'll either love The Wire or find it deadly slow. There seems to be no middle ground on it.

If you have a suicide and somebody destroys the note before the police see it, that always helps.

Ooh! That's a great idea, Betsy! In fact, if I play it right, it could just add to the pain, which is of the good in this case.

Pain? Of the good. Can only mean Bayliss!fic. Or you know, Xander Harris.(Which is kind of the same thing, minus about twenty years and one always-open murder case, but I've already talked about that a couple other places.)

If you're going with hanging, there's also the point that if the drop wasn't far enough to break the neck, then the person got to go out the slow way. So if he's died of strangulation without much sign of a struggle, then odds are he didn't do it by hanging. There would also be different wear signs on the rope if a body's weight dropped to the end of it, as in jumping off a chair, or if the body was hoisted up.

(researched it for another story)

Also don't forget the manual preference question; a right-handed person tying a noose only a left-handed person could tie also works in reverse if the suicide is trying to frame someone for their murder.

Hmmmm. So ... just for argument's sake ... what if there were signs of a struggle? Hmmmm ...

Ah, then we have to figure out the nature of the struggle. If we posit someone doing the long dance from the main beam in the center of the room, but the potted aspidistra over in the far corner has been knocked over, then our victim was either murdered or is a very bad housekeeper. Or has a cat.

Honestly, any policeman walking into my house would say, "My god, World War III happened in here!" Especially when he saw all the swords.

Well, you know, you don't get to pick the vic. The inverse is also true. Like my mother would never voluntarily be without dental floss. But I'd sound like a freak saying "You don't understand, Detective Pembleton. There was no...lovely dental floss." Timmy would believe me. Munchkin might dig the quote.

I am such a big schmoop. I was reading one of my own stories, one which I wondered, in a cynical mood, if it was too manipulative, and I ended up getting teary-eyed. Does that happen to anyone else, with their own stuff?