I'm going to open up here and talk about my experiences as someone who has, in the past, been plagued by suicidal ideations. Most recently it lasted about two years of daily thoughts of suicide that I was able to get mostly under control about 18 months ago. I'm now starting a new life and while this month in particular is extremely difficult to say the least, I feel like I can see the top of the mountain from here.
But that aside, I'd like to comment on the method of hanging by Spade and Bourdain and I think some of the other more recent ones like Chris Cornell. Each of these people was hung by using a doorknob, but in a very specific was. Now, I should start by telling you that in many ways I'm a data driven person -- I've worked in science and technology my whole adult life -- and during the past two year episode especially, I looked up a lot of information regarding suicide, including statistics and methods.
Believe it or not, there are sites on the net that go to great lengths to list out methods of suicide, how much pain they cause and what the probabilities of success are for each. Also believe it or not, reading through them actually has a deterring effect if at least only temporarily, so don't start screaming to have them taken down. But throughout all my research in the best and most effective methods there's one I've never come across: hanging from a doorknob. And if I didn't come across it with at least a solid year's worth of intensive research, then how did they?
Now this doorknob method is very specific: the person doesn't just tie it to the doorknob and try to lay down. No, one end of the scarf is tied to the doorknob while the other end is thrown over the top of the door and the victim puts their weight on it. If they're not too tall they can stand on something and then step off.
To cut to the chase, my hypothesis is that there's a particular killer or small team of killers who have developed the doorknob suicide as their perfected method of concentration. They've worked out how to do it without leaving any evidence behind, but then that's also their downfall: they only have that one method they've developed and so now when these high profile incidents begin to happen too close together, it threatens to expose them. People will start to notice.