Providentia

Spanish Priest Arrested in Bizarre Exorcism Case

A judge in the northern Spanish town of Burgos has ordered the arrest of exorcist Jesus Hernandez Sahagun and a local priest following complaints relating to a series of exorcisms conducted on an underage girl suffering from anorexia.  Sahagun, who is the official exorcist for the nearby city of Valladolid is facing charges of gender violence and mistreatment involving the girl who cannot be named given her underage status.

Sahagun's involvement began in 2012 when the girl's parents, alarmed by her refusal to eat, asked for an exorcism due to fears that she was possessed.   The family's priest arranged for Sahagun to conduct an exorcism but, when this failed to cure her symptoms, as many as twelve additional exorcisms were then conducted.    Due to the abuse the girl was subjected to, which included being tied up and having crucifixes positioned over her head, she later attempted suicide. 

After the girl's aunts and uncles filed a complaint against Sahagun and the priest, an official investigation was launched.    In a statement by the girl's parents, the court was told that Sahagun was fully aware that she was receiving medical treatment for anorexia at the time and he had access to her medical records.   Sahagun had reportedly assured the parents that the exorcisms would not interfere with her treatment though he disapproved of the different medications she was taking. 

In a December 2014 interview with the Spanish newspaper El Mundo, Sahagun defended the thirteen exorcisms by insisting that the girl was "possessed by the devil."  He also stated that he was a fully qualified exorcist who had conducted two hundred exorcism within the past five years.   Sahagun insisted that exorcisms were "a religious practice maintained as part of the Church’s tradition, as a right available to all the faithful."

At present, there are fifteen priests in Spain who are authorized to conduct exorcisms by the Catholic Church along with a "specialist exorcism squad" based in Madrid to fight what has been described as an "unprecedented rise in cases of demonic possession." 

The demand for exorcisms has led Pope Francis to give his official blessing to the International Association of Exorcists and established the practice of exorcism as part of official canon law.   The Association was first formed in 1990 and currently has over two hundred members conducting exorcisms in thirty countries around the world. 

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Preventing Cancer With Healthy Living (Part One of Two)

Can lifestyle decisions reduce your risk of developing cancer?

According to available statistics, roughly fourteen million people worldwide were newly diagnosed with cancer in 2012 alone. That same year saw about eight million cancer deaths. How many of those deaths might have been prevented using available medical knowledge about cancer risks? And how many more cancer deaths can we expect over the next three decades as the world population grows steadily older?

About forty-eight percent of all deaths in the United States are due to either cancer or heart disease, both of which can be linked to deliberate lifestyle choices that can boost the likelihood of developing these diseases. In 2010 alone, cancer claimed 576,691 lives, and heart disease claimed 596,577. Along with well-known risk factors such as tobacco use and unprotected sun exposure, there are other health risks that tend not to get the same amount of publicity.  These include physical inactivity, poor diet, risk sexual behaviour, and excess energy intake.

Tobacco use remains the number one risk factor for lung and oral cancer.   Considering that the tobacco industry has largely replaced profits lost in industrialized countries by marketing their product in low- and middle-income countries, it's hardly surprising that those same countries have reported a sharp rise in cancer cases.  Along with tobacco use, people living in those countries are also falling prey to many of the high-risk behaviours seen in wealthier countries.  Combined with the poor nutrition, lack of health education, and reduced access to health care, the majority of new cancer cases likely to affect low-income countries are also most likely to lead to early death.

To read more, check out my new Psychology Today blog post.

"For Heavens Sake, Catch Me Before I Kill More" (Part 2 of 2)

Continued from Part One

After standing up to the brutal interrogation tactics of the Chicago police, William Heirens continued to deny committing the murders.  

Two police psychiatrists even conducted a sodium pentothal interrogation, again without a warrant, in the hope of extracting a confession from the 17-year-old suspect.  Though one of the psychiatrists later admitted that Heirens never incriminated himself,  newspaper stories still carried lurid details about Heirens admitting to a a second personality he named "George."   Since the original transcript has long since disappeared, it's anyone's guess what Heirens actually said.  All that he could recall was that the harsh treatment he received had caused him to lose consciousness during questioning.  Police even tried a polygraph test but he was in too much pain for any valid results to be produced.

At some point during the grueling interrogation, Heirens suggested that "George Murman", his second personality may have been responsible for the killings.    Psychologists tried to argue that this alternate personality was a way for him to express his antisocial feelings but police were skeptical about what their star suspect was claiming.   Again, the media dramatized everything that came out as a way to sell newspapers though real evidence proving Heirens' guilt seemed hard to find.   His fingerprints resembled what had been found at one crime scene but police were divided on whether this was enough to convict Heirens. 

Still, the circumstantial evidence seemed lurid enough to ensure Heirens' conviction-by-media.   A copy of Richard Krafft-Ebbing's book, Psychopathia Sexualis, was also found which had apparently been stolen.  That, along with a stolen medical kit, was enough to convince journalists that Heirens was some sort of psychopathic deviant despite there being no evidence that the tools in the medical kit had been used in the murders.  There was also no forensic evidence tying Heirens to the different killings although there was a gun in his possession that had been stolen in a burglary months earlier.

Despite this lack of solid evidence, the newspaper stories cheerily portrayed William Heirens as a modern-day "Dr. Jekyll and Mister Hyde."   On July 18, 1946, the Chicago Tribune published a story titled, "The Heirens Story! How He Killed Suzanne Degnan and Two Women."   The story was written by Tribune staff reporter George Wright who freely manufactured various details, including claims that Heirens had confessed to the killings (he hadn't).  Though the District Attorney William Tuony, not to mention Heirens himself, denied that there had been a confession, newspapers across the country repeated Wright's allegations and insisted that it was a "scoop".   For decades afterward, the story of the "scoop" that wasn't would still be proclaimed as fact whenever the details of Heirens' case were raised.

Based on the media conviction and the testimony of an eyewitness (who was later discredited), William Heirens' attorneys urged him to accept a plea bargain to avoid the electric chair.   The plea bargain involved agreeing to a life sentence for the three murders in return for a confession which the attorneys drafted for him (ironically based on the account of his crimes already published in the newspapers).   Heirens, along with his parents, signed this confession which should have settled the matter.

It didn't.

The carefully arranged press conference that would have announced the confession fell apart when Heirens failed to answer questions and largely stayed mute.  The angry State Attorney changed the deal he offered to Heirens to his serving three life sentences and a possible death penalty if the case went to trial.   This time around, Heirens took the new deal and cooperated fully during a second press conference.   In the new confession, he admitted to all three murders and described various sexual acts that he committed during and after the deaths.  As Heirens said later, "I confessed to save my life" and his apparent familiarity with the apartment of Frances Brown seemed to settle any doubts of his guilt.   Whether that came from guilty knowledge or details learned from the relentless police questioning seems open to question.

On September 4, 1946, William George Heirens admitted to the killings with his parents and the families of the victims present in court.  He later tried to hang himself that same night but guards managed to save his life.   The following day, he was sentenced to three life terms and when asked whether Suzanne Degnan had suffered before she died, again insisted that he was innocent.   Though he was denied an appeal, Judge Luther Swygert, late of the U.S. Court of Appeals, noted in his dissent to the decision, “The case presents a picture of a public prosecutor and defense counsel, if not indeed the trial judge, buckling under the pressure of a hysterical and sensation- seeking press bent upon obtaining retribution for a horrendous act.

In the aftermath of Heirens' conviction, his family members changed their surname and his parents divorced.  As for Heirens himself, he went on to serve one of the longest sentences in the history of Illinois.  While in prison, he learned various trades, including electronics repair, and even had his own repair shop in prison.   He also earned a university degree and became an outspoken "jailhouse lawyer" by helping other inmates with their appeals.   A movie that was supposedly based on Heirens, While the City Sleeps, was released in 1956. 

Heirens also attempted to win clemency and an eventual release from prison but lingering memories of the crimes to which he had confessed ensured that he would remain a prisoner.   After an Appeals Court ruled for his release in 1983, relatives of Suzanne Degnan publicly denounced this decision and lawmakers overturned the Appeals ruling.   Members of the Degnan families also attended his parole hearings to ensure that he would never be released.   Various others pleas for clemency were heard and rejected as well and William Heirens' case generated considerable notoriety, largely due to questions about the actual evidence used to convict him as well as how his confession was obtained.  That he was a sick old man, confined to a wheelchair in his final years, helped add to the general sense of outrage over his being kept in prison for so long.   While some old classmates still visited, virtually everyone who had ever known Heirens on the outside was long dead or disappeared. 

According to one newspaper story published only a few years before his death, Heirens insisted that he had never allowed himself to become institutionalized.  "“My home was outside. If I talk about going home, it would be outside.”  He also said that he wanted to have a chance to travel if he were ever released, including travel on a transcontinental train and a chance to try different foods.  "Lobsters. Never had a lobster. Don’t know what a lobster tastes like.”

Through it all, William Heirens remained a prisoner until his death in 2012 at the age of 1983.   To his dying day, he insisted that he was not guilty of the murders and that he had only confessed because he feared the death penalty.   Even after his death, Heirens has numerous champions who continue to raise questions about the evidence used to convict him.   

Was William Heirens guilty?  In many ways, he is regarded as a textbook case of how questionable interrogation tactics can lead to confessions that are, at best, controversial.  While many of the family members of the dead women later expressed their own satisfaction about Heiren's guilt, there is still a grim possibility that the murders had been committed by someone else who was never caught.  

Whether the plaintive message written in lipstick in Frances Brown's apartment had been written by Heirens or someone else, the words "catch me before I kill more" still resonate today.  

 

Surviving The Essex Disaster (Part 1 of 3)

When the whaleship Essex left Nantucket on August 12, 1819, the twenty-one men on board had no idea that they would soon become part of one of the most harrowing survival tales of the 19th century. Not to mention inspiring a great literary classic.

Though sailing under a new captain, George Pollard, the Essex was a reliable three-master that successfully completed decades of whaling voyages.  Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, Nantucket  was the centre of the world's whaling industry and whaling products were the mainstay of the island's economy.  Many of the Essex's crewmembers belonged to old whaling families that had been hunting whales for generations. 

The whaling scene was slowly changing though.  Even by the beginning of the 19th century, whales were becoming rare around Nantucket's waters and expeditions often required ships to be out for two years or more to catch enough whales to make the voyage profitable.    A recent economic downturn also led the owners of the Essex to cut costs wherever possible.  Not only did this lead to the ship having fewer provisions than usual, but there was also a delay in gathering the required crew members.  Since many non-Nantucket sailors avoided serving on whalers due to the long voyages and low pay, signing on was usually an act of desperation for sailors who were unable to find any other ship.  

Despite the setbacks, Captain Pollard got the Essex underway with the help of his first mate, Owen Chase.    The two men had known each other for years and had served together on previous Essex voyages before they were both promoted to their new positions.   Chase had risen in the ranks and had hopes of becoming a captain himself in time if all went well.  As for Pollard, he was anxious to succeed in his first command but he was also somewhat torn as he was leaving his wife for the first time since their wedding two months before. 

Not that the captain and crew had any real concerns, mind you.  The Essex had a reputation as a "lucky ship" that regularly returned from its voyages.  The previous captain had been promoted  to commanding an even larger vessel, the Aurora, and Captain Pollard fully expected to do the same in time.   Although some crewmembers claimed to have seen a comet in the night sky while the Essex was being outfitted (always an unlucky sign), nobody took them seriously.  Still, the owners of the Essex had serious concerns whether the old ship would have many more voyages considering the long distances that whaling ships needed to cover.  Not surprisingly, one crew member deserted at the first opportunity and it was a wonder that none of the others did the same.

Despite rough weather, the Essex made good time and actually pulled ahead of several other whalers that had left port earlier.  Confident in his ship, Captain Pollard took a foolish chance when they tried outrunning a sudden storm which left the Essex damaged and also cost them one of their spare boats.  While Pollard wanted to return to Nantucket for repairs, Owen Chase and the second mate, Matthew Joy, argued that they should continue on and purchase spare whaleboats in the Azores.   Eventually, Captain Pollard decided to take their advice and continue on course.   This made Chase and Joy extremely unpopular with the rest of the crew who had been left shaken by their disastrous encounter with the storm.  

Despite purchasing fresh provisions in the Azores, the Essex was still dangerously low on whaleboats and no new ones could be found.  Considering the dangers associated with whaling, to be left with only four whaleboats (and one of those in poor condition) seemed like a bad idea.    While they continued on their voyage, the Essex experienced mishap after mishap. Not only did an encounter with a rogue whale cost them one of their remaining lifeboats but the expedition was taking far longer than they had planned.  The crew became increasingly mutinous as food rations grew smaller (it didn't help that the Essex had fewer provisions than usual in the first place thanks to the cheapness of the owners).  Although Pollard was able to maintain order, their luck showed no sign of improving.  A disastrous fire on one of the Galapagos Islands where they had stopped for provisions left the entire island blackened and their plight more desperate than ever. 

Finally they had an unbelievable stroke of luck.  Trying for another catch, they discovered an enormous whale.  More than eighty-five feet long and weighing approximately eighty tons, it must have seemed like a gift from Heaven.  Although the whalers approached their quarry carefully, the captain and crew were struck by the fact that it didn't act like other whales they had hunted.  With no sign of the usual panic, the whale suddenly dove and surfaced less than thirty-five yards from their ship.   Unbelievably, the whale suddenly rammed the ship.  The astonished crew had never seen anything like it before.  Although whaling ships had been sunk through accidental collisions with whales, a deliberate attack was completely unprecedented.

Although the bull whale had been stunned by the collision, it recovered quickly.  After retreating, the whale suddenly turned and attacked the ship again.  In describing the oncoming whale, Owen Chase would later say that it was "a vision of fury and vengeance".   The Essex began taking on water and the whale turned and disappeared.    With no time to lose, Captain Pollard ordered the crew into the remaining whaleboats and the crew of the Essex simply watched as their ship sank for the last time.  Less than twenty minutes had passed between the whale's final attack and their abandoning ship. 

No lives had been lost but all twenty men were faced with a grim reality.  They were trapped in three small boats on open water, thousands of miles from the nearest known source of food and water.  While one quick-thinking crew member had managed to save their navigational instruments, there was little else that they could savage from that part of the ship's hull that was still above water.   The crew members had all of the Galapagos turtles that could be safely carried (turtles were often captured alive and stacked like logs of wood on ships for food) but little else.   Reluctant to part from the wrecked ship, which had been their home for more than a year, they eventually manufactured sails for their boats from the Essex's sails and built up the walls of their boats with planks taken from the wreck.  After two miserable nights on the open sea, they watched their boat finally sink below the water. 

Captain Pollard then announced his plan to sail towards the Society Islands, more than 2000 miles away. There were closer points but rumours of unfriendly natives made them decide on a potentially safer destination.  Owen Chase and Matthew Joy balked at this plan and suggested an alternate course which would take them to South America in a month.   After much indecision, Pollard gave in. 

It would be a fatal mistake.  As cabin boy Tom Nickerson would later write, "how many warm hearts have ceased to beat in consequence of it?".    Had they sailed towards nearer islands, most of them would have likely survived since rumours of cannibalism in native tribes were greatly exaggerated.  Instead, they chose a course on the open sea that dramatically reduced their chances for survival.

And the worst was yet to come...

Continue to Part 2

The Five Ws of Bullying

A recent paper in Computers in Human Behavior explores the utility of machine learning methods for understanding bullying, a significant social-psychological issue in the United States, through social media data. Machine learning methods were applied to all public mentions of bullying on Twitter between September 1, 2011 and August 31, 2013 to extract the posts that referred to discrete bullying episodes (N = 9,764,583) to address five key questions. Most posts were authored by victims and reporters and referred to general forms of bullying. Posts frequently reflected self-disclosure about personal involvement in bullying. The number of posts that originated from a state was positively associated with the state population size; the timing of the posts reveal that more posts were made on weekdays than on Saturdays and more posts were made during the evening compared to daytime hours. Potential benefits of merging social science and computer science methods to enhance the study of bullying are discussed.

For the abstract

Overnight Program Helps "Sundowning" Dementia Patients

It's known as "Sundowner's syndrome," and countless families caring for someone with dementia live in constant fear of it.

For reasons that aren't entirely clear, about twenty percent of all dementia patients, most of whom are diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, become particularly agitated after sunset.   Sundowning dementia patients may "shadow" their caregivers, ask questions over and over again, become angry or agitated, and may even show more serious symptoms such as hallucinations, paranoia, wandering (leaving the house unescorted), and even become violent.   Potential causes include becoming fatigued after being awake all day or hormonal changes caused by lack of sunlight.  Whatever the cause, finding a solution is never easy and caregivers are often strained to the breaking point as a result. 

An innovative program offered at the Hebrew Home geriatric care facility in Riverdale, New York has been offering day and night programs for the elderly across the Greater New York area.  Their evening program, known as Elderserve at Night, is especially designed to help deal with sundowning dementia patients.  First established by Hebrew Home Executive Director David Pomeranz in 1996, the Eldercare at Night program offers a range of activities including arts and crafts, cooking, yoga, games, Zumba, and even live music.  The flexible nature of the Elderserve at Night program means that dementia patients can stay on even when their condition worsens.  For patients with more advanced dementia, there are quiet rooms where they can work on puzzles while supervised by a caretaker.  

“Here, their behaviors are normalized,” Pomeranz explained in an interview with The Atlantic. “Everything is OK. Activities are structured for them to be successful. They eat, they relax—they can be themselves. To us is this is who they are. We’re not the family members who are dealing with that incredible loss of seeing someone who was and isn’t any more.”  

Though Pomeranz reports difficulty in finding staff willing to work the night shift, which helps explaining why overnight programs haven't caught on so far, the costs for placing a patient in the Elderserve at Night program is still less than the cost of housing patients in full-time care facilities.   Public programs such as New York Medicaid pays an average of $320 a day to keep dementia patients in nursing homes while Elderserve at Night only charges $200 a day.   The cost of the program can also be covered by some private health plans. 

On average, there are about forty clients per week in the Eldercare program.   The program runs throughout the evening hours with the patients receiving breakfast in the morning before being returned to their families.   Those family members with relatives in the program have nothing but positive things to say about the evening program.   The Atlantic article describes one woman, an immigrant with dementia who has become increasingly active since starting in the program. 

"She was very weak when she started there. We had to carry her up and down [the stairs]. But now she walks up and down. She walks to Broadway,” her daughter says. “She would not react to any of the conversation. Now she does. She’s a totally new person. I would say she’s 200 percent better.”

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Remembering 9/11

What were you doing when you first heard about what happened on September 11, 2001?

It seems as if everyone can describe that horrific moment on hearing about the first plane to crash into the World Trade Center and being glued to the television as  events unfolded.   They are part of a wide range of exceptionally vivid memories we seem to have concerning traumatic events that stay with us long after other memories fade with time. 

Known as "flashbulb memories", they are a form of autobiographical memory that are especially powerful due to surprise and shock that ensures that the memory stays with us.  It seems to be a central trait of flashback memories that we are as likely to recall where and when we first heard about the traumatic moment as the details of what actually happened.  There is also a critical distinction between flashbulb memories and what psychologists refer to as event memories which focus on the details of the event that forms the flashbulb moment. We may all recall the events of 9/1i, such as how many planes were involved for example, but it's the flashbulb aspects of those memories that stay with us for so long.

To read more, check out my new Psychology Today blog post.

 

"For Heavens Sake, Catch Me Before I Kill More" (Part 1 of 2)

"For heavens sake, catch me before I kill more, I cannot control myself"

This was the message scrawled, in lipstick, on the walls of Frances Brown's Chicago apartment when her body was discovered by a cleaning woman on December 10, 1945.  Brown, a 32-year-old divorcee had been shot in the head and had a knife lodged in her neck,   The knife came from Brown's own kitchen and had been driven in with such force that it had penetrated her neck completely and  partially protruded from the other side.  Her killer had apparently gotten in by climbing an eight-foot fence and jumping onto the fire escape. While police initially believed the murder to have been committed by a burglar who had been interrupted, no valuables had been taken and a bloody fingerprint was discovered at the scene of the crime.   It was the bizarre message that would later earn her murderer the nickname of "the Lipstick Killer."  

Even more disturbingly, the characteristics of this crime closely matched another murder that had occurred in Chicago earlier that year.   The body of 43-year-old Josephine Ross was found by her daughter.   The woman's pit bull terrier was found whimpering and cowering under a couch.  Ross had  been repeatedly stabbed and her throat was cut.  The body had then been bathed and a nylon stocking had been wrapped around her neck.  Though dark hairs had been found in her hand, presumably after a struggle with her killer, there was little the police could do with such evidence in a pre-CSI era.    Despite evidence of a "dark-complexioned man" who had been spotted near the scene of the crime around the time of the murder, police had no real leads.  All that had been stolen from the apartment was about $12 in cash.

There were other incidents occurring at about the same time, including attempted break-ins in which three women were injured.  One was shot in the shoulder while another was struck in the face when she interrupted someone burglarizing her apartment.  A thir woman was grazed by a bullet fired from across the street from her apartment.  They were the lucky ones. 

After Frances Brown's death however, the possibility of the deaths might be linked first began to be raised.  Still, it was the kidnapping of six-year-old Suzanne Degnan on January 7, 1946 that would generate national headlines.  Degnan was the daughter of a senior executive of the Office of Price Administration and his daughter's disappearance was assumed to be linked to the political unrest that was taking place at the time.   As well, police found a crudely scrawled ransom note (Chicago's mayor, Edward Kelly received a note as well).   An anonymous tip later led police to Suzanne Degnan's head in a storm drain near the family home.  Other body parts were found in different locations throughout the area.  

According to the coroner, Suzanne had been killed on the day of her kidnapping and the dismembered body was a "very clean job with absolutely no signs of hacking."  There was also speculation that the killer had been someone with medical training or at least experience in cutting up bodies, perhaps a butcher or a meat packer.  Though police concluded that her body had been dismembered in the laundry room of a nearby apartment building, finding whoever had been responsible for Suzanne Degnan's death seemed impossible.   More than 170 suspects received polygraph testing and police received numerous tips, most of which went nowhere.

Considering the pressure the police faced to solve the crime, it is probably not surprising that they decided to take "shortcuts."   One suspect, 65-year-old Hector Verburgh, was accused of the murder since he was a janitor in the building where the Degnans lived.  Police were so determined to extract a confession fromm Verburgh that he was severely beaten, an experience which left him hospitalized.   He later sued the Chicago Police for a substantial sum (at least in 1946 dollars). 

Police did manage to solve the mystery of who had placed several calls to the Degnans claiming to be the kidnappers and demanding a ransom.  Unfortunately, the two teenagers involved turned out to have no real knowledge of who killed Suzanne. They had learned about the crime from overhearing police officers discussing the case and simply decided to pretend to be the kidnappers so they could collect the ransom.

After months of investigating, and the newspapers demanding an arrest, the police had little to show for their efforts.  They had questioned hundreds of suspects and checked out countless false leads, including several false confessions that were later recanted.  Everything changed on June 26, 1946 when 17-year-old William George Heirens was arrested on burglary charges.

A Chicago resident with a history of property offenses, Heirens had actually managed to turn his life around and enroll in a special program at the University of Chicago at the age of sixteen.  Unfortunately, his parents couldn't afford the cost of his tuition and his dormitory and his part-time job as an usher wasn't enough.  As a result, he began burglarizing local apartments to get the money he needed to stay in school.

Heirens had been caught at the scene of a recent burglary and had actually pulled a gun on police officers hoping that he could intimidate them into letting him go.  Although some accounts suggest that he actually pulled the trigger only to have the gun misfire,  he was arrested without further incident and taken into custody.   Heirens was then subjected to round-the-clock questioning for days, including various physical interrogation tactics such as beatings and being deprived of food or water.   He was also not allowed to speak to a lawyer until six days after he was arrested.

During his interrogation, some disturbing details of Heirens' life began to emerge.  Though he was was a promising student of above-average intelligence, there were some signs that he was experiencing emotional problems that went largely unnoticed by friends and family.  He explained away his burglaries as being a way of having fun and relieving tension.  He also kept a diary which attracted intense scrutiny following his arrest.  Though the diary entries largely reflected his own self-doubt and plans for the future, there included details of his various "plans" for the future (which he referred to as "plots", many of which involved crimes that he planned to commit).

These plans tended to be very methodical as he described, in step-by-step detail, how he would carry out each burglary, including what he planned to do afterward to avoid being caught.  None of these plans involved physical violence however, though they were often rather grandiose in nature.  Police were still obliged to link Heirens to the three murders, something they had difficulty doing.

Heirens had stood up to the brutal interrogation tactics of the Chicago police, now it was time to try something else.

To be continued.

The Turing Problem (Part 3)

Continued from Part 2

The exact circumstances of Alan Turing's death remain a mystery to this day.  A cleaner found him in his home on June 8, 1954 and an autopsy determined that he had died of cyanide poisoning.  The half-eaten apple found next to his body was the presumed source of the poison although, unbelievably, it was never tested by the police.  Since there were no warning signs and no suicide note left behind, the reason for his suicide baffled friends and family.    When an inquest was held on June 10, the coroner stated that "'I am forced to the conclusion that this was a deliberate act. In a man of his type, one never knows what his mental processes are going to do next".  He ruled that Alan Turing had committed suicide "while the balance of his mind was disturbed". 

John Turing, who had attended the inquest, chose not to contest the verdict.    The national press carried respectful obituaries of Turing's life and achievements and left out any mention of the 1952 conviction.   Ethel Turing  refused to accept the suicide verdict and maintained that her son's death had been due to his careless use of chemicals.  There may actually be some truth in that considering that Turing was in the habit of running chemical experiments in his home and she had warned him in the past about accidentally poisoning himself.   

There were certainly no signs of any suicidal planning either at work or at home.  Many of Turing's working papers were left in disorder at the university and he had reserved time on the university's Mark II machine as usual.  While he had made a new will earlier that year, there was no other sign that he was preparing to end his life.  Alan Turing's body was cremated at Woking Crematorium on June 12.   His mother, brother, and longtime friend, Lyn Newman, attended the ceremony.  His ashes were scattered in the gardens, near where  his father's ashes had been scattered years before.  Despite there being no marker on the site, the city of Manchester has since constructed numerous memorials to Alan Turing in and around the city. 

What reason could Alan Turing have had for suicide?   Biographers have speculated that he may have killed himself due to lingering medical problems relating to the medication that he had been forced to take.  Again, though, he gave no sign that any residual side effects had remained by the time of his death.   There was also speculation about the possibility of blackmail or simply his increasing awareness of how his homosexuality was viewed by the government that he had helped to win World War II.  

By 1950, intelligence agencies in the United States and the United Kingdom had singled out homosexuals as representing a security threat.  As the Cold War intensified, a loose cannon like Alan Turing seemed unacceptable and even his informal consulting work with government agencies was ended.  If anything, he was fortunate to die when he did given the massive witchhunts of the later fifties and early sixties which led to the purging of suspected homosexuals from most Western governments.    Considering that much of the cryptoanalysis work that he had done was still classified,  intelligence agencies would hardly have overlooked Turing for fear that he might be recruited by foreign governments (particularly the Soviet Union). 

It seems ironic that the man whose groundbreaking work in mathematics and artificial intelligence should die just as the computer age was beginning.  Early computers were already in existence (including a Mark II machine at the University of Manchester) and Alan Turing would certainly have been in the forefront of new technological advances as they occurred.  Many of the papers that he had been working on at the time of his death were published posthumously.  His name remains legendary in scientific circles and the numerous recognitions and tributes to Turing's achievements are too numerous to mention here.  

As for his other legacy as a victim of the anti-gay hysteria of that era,  there seems little evidence that Turing's death had any immediate impact.  Despite numerous other high-profile cases and the publication of a 1957 government report recommending decriminalization, homosexuality remained a criminal offense in the United Kingdom until 1967 (1980 for Scotland and 1982 for Northern Ireland).  Even with the passage of the 1967 Sexual Offenses Act, government prohibitions on certain forms of homosexual conduct remained in place for years afterward and it wasn't until 1994 that the last laws used to convict Alan Turing and Oscar Wilde were finally removed from the books.  Many other countries followed suit (including most Western nations) although homosexuality remains a criminal offense in far too many countries around the world.

In addition to no longer being considered a criminal offense in most jurisdictions, homosexuality ceased to be classified as a mental disorder with the 1973 revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).   A compromise diagnosis termed ego-dystonic homosexuality persisted despite heavy criticism until finally being removed in a 1987 version of the DSM.   As for the use of hormonal therapy in the treatment of convicted sex offenders, that continues to be used in cases of paraphilias (especially pedophilia).   As an alternative to physical castration, hormonal treatment has shown benefit in curbing sexual recidivism although its use remains controversial. 

While estrogen therapy is no longer the practice for sex offenders, specific anti-androgen agents such as cyproterone actetate (Androcur) and medroxyprogesterone acetote (Provera) remained the standard  for decades.  Due to frequent complaints of adverse side effects (including liver and kidney damage),  leuprolide acetate (Lupron) has become the medication of choice in recent years.   In addition to suppression of libido, common side effects include weight gain, lethargy, dizziness, mood swings, and, in extreme cases, loss of bone density.   Despite being voluntary in many cases, court-ordered hormonal treatment is common practice in many countries across North America and Europe and is likely to continue for the forseeable future. 

On September 11, 2009, U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued a formal posthumous apology to Alan Turing for the "appalling" way in which he had been treated for being gay.  The apology comes in response to a petition which was signed by thousands of supporters.  In welcoming the apology, gay activist Peter Tatchell said that an apology was also due to the estimated 100,000 British men who suffered similar treatment.  "Singling out Turing just because he is famous is wrong".

Alan Turing would certainly have agreed.

Aging, Cognition, and Eye Movement

Older adults appear to have greater difficulty ignoring distractions during day-to-day activities than younger adults. In a recent paper published in Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition,  the ability of adults aged between 50 and 80 years to ignore distracting stimuli was measured using the antisaccade and oculomotor capture tasks. In the antisaccade task, observers are instructed to look away from a visual cue, whereas in the oculomotor capture task, observers are instructed to look toward a colored singleton in the presence of a concurrent onset distractor. Index scores of the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS) were compared with capture errors, and with prosaccade errors on the antisaccade task. A higher percentage of capture errors were made on the oculomotor capture tasks by the older members of the cohort compared to the younger members. There was a weak relationship between the attention index and capture errors, but the visuospatial/constructional index was the strongest predictor of prosaccade error rate in the antisaccade task. The saccade reaction times (SRTs) of correct initial saccades in the oculomotor capture task were poorly correlated with age, and with the neurospsychological tests, but prosaccade SRTs in both tasks moderately correlated with antisaccade error rate. These results were interpreted in terms of a competitive integration (or race) model. Any variable that reduces the strength of the top-down neural signal to produce a voluntary saccade, or that increases saccade speed, will enhance the likelihood that a reflexive saccade to a stimulus with an abrupt onset will occur.

For the abstract