Suicide investigation may be part of an official law enforcement case or may be handled by a private investigator who specializes in mysterious deaths. Suicide is a devastating occurrence for any family to endure and sometimes relatives and friends simply can not accept that a person would actually kill themselves, no matter what evidence is presented.
In these circumstances, police or private detectives may help to confirm if any foul play was involved or whether the death was truly an act of the victim’s own hand. Suicide cases typically require a specialist in crime scene investigation in order to be performed properly.
This dialog details the roles played by professional detectives in investigating suicide and suspected suicide occurrences.
Investigating Suspicious Suicide
Police may delve into cases that they believe may be homicides in which the killer is trying to make it look as if the death was a suicide. In many cases, the death is deemed a suicide, while in other cases, the death may be ruled accidental or murder.
Private investigators are often hired to look into deaths which were ruled suicide or accidental by police, but family or friends suspect a more sinister reality. In some cases, professional investigators are able to uncover new evidence, which may lead to a revision of the classification of death. Occasionally, private detectives have been instrumental in actually solving a murder that was expertly disguised as suicide.
Suicide Investigation Factsheet
All suicides are treated as suspicious deaths, until a formal pronouncement is made that the actual cause of death occurred by the victim’s own hand.
Assisted suicide is a very complicated matter and these cases might be deemed a voluntary death, yet still incorporate criminal charges against the assistants who helped facilitate the death. There is much debate about litigation concerning assisted suicide and the penalties which may fit the crime . Unfortunately, since the issue is very personal and individualized, it is unlikely that lawmakers will come to any form of compromise which pleases all parties involved in this controversial topic.
Suicide Investigation By Private Eyes
If you have been left to deal with a loved one’s apparent suicide, make sure to cooperate with all official investigative processes by police and other law enforcement offices. If you find fault with the way these investigations are being handled, you may consider hiring a private investigator to perform an independent assessment of the matter.
While this may lead to nothing but a confirmation of the official findings, some private investigations do change things drastically and can reopen cases in which death turns out to be homicide or purely accidental.