Hey y’all, it’s Julie Mattson, your host on Pushing Up Lilies. In this episode, I’m diving into a heartbreaking case of a man who took his own life while on vacation with his family—a devastating reminder that even joyful moments can be overshadowed by personal struggles. As a death investigator, I’ve seen an alarming rise in suicides during the holiday seasons, a time that’s supposed to be filled with happiness and connection. Today, I’ll share insights from my work in the field, explore the complexities of mental health, and talk about how these tragic losses impact families. Join me as we uncover the difficult realities that often go unnoticed during the holidays, and the importance of recognizing the signs that someone may need help. * Listener discretion is advised.
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0:06 Welcome to Pushing Up Lilies.
0:08 I'm your host, Julie Mattson.
0:10 Pushing Up Lilies is a weekly True Crime podcast with spine tingling, unusual and terrifyingly true stories from my perspective as a forensic death investigator and a sexual assault nurse examiner.
0:24 Do I have some stories for you?
0:26 Are you ready?
0:31 Hey guys, here we are almost the end of October.
0:35 I can't believe how fast time is flying.
0:38 I am not ready for the holidays.
0:41 I am enjoying the cooler weather in Texas, but I can tell you, I think that the stores started putting Christmas stuff out on the shelves like way back in July.
0:52 Before Christmas is here, I'm suspecting that Valentine's Day will already be marketed in all the stores.
1:01 It drives me crazy because we don't even have time to finish celebrating one holiday before another one gets kind of pushed off on us because it's still fairly warm in Texas.
1:12 I have a hard time realizing that Christmas is around the corner and starting to make my list and starting to do shopping.
1:23 I feel like it's just too early.
1:25 I used to start earlier in the year, but everyone always changes their mind as far as like what they want.
1:31 And so I don't even start shopping early, like I used to anyway, it is upon us and, you know, I always think about suicides this time of year because it always picks up, I mean, close to the holidays, Thanksgiving, Christmas.
1:48 Many people don't have family and don't have anybody to spend their time with.
1:54 Our business picks up a lot in regard to suicides this time of year.
2:00 And we really see an incline in like November, December, which is really sad to me.
2:07 I have a friend who opens her home up to people who don't have family at Christmas.
2:11 And I always thought that was amazing because there are a lot of people who really don't have a place to go, and you never want anybody to really feel alone.
2:20 I think that's a great idea.
2:23 This case that I wanted to talk about today was a little bit different and I have to say that it ended a lot differently than I expected it to.
2:33 It was a man who vanished during a family vacation, and he was found deceased.
2:41 This happened in Hilton Head Island in South Carolina, Stanley Kotowski.
2:47 He was 60 years old, and he was from Boston, Massachusetts.
2:52 He went missing on August 16th while on vacation in Hilton Head Island with his family.
2:59 It was this year 2024 and the search went underway.
3:04 You know, enjoying a vacation with his family and he just disappears.
3:09 They were vacationing over 1000 miles away from their home in Boston when he left the rental that they were staying in, barefooted.
3:20 He didn't have any shoes on, and he was caught on the ring camera walking outside and then his wife never saw him again, I guess in the days leading up to this, he had really bad insomnia for about a month.
3:38 And I mean, some of us struggle with that.
3:39 I don't know how many of y'all struggle with insomnia.
3:42 I have a lot more trouble sleeping now than I did when I was younger and I can be exhausted, but I just cannot get to sleep.
3:49 And then if I get to sleep, I can't stay asleep.
3:52 I wake up at like 3:30 in the morning wide awake and I start thinking about the podcast and my job as a death investigator and my med spa and school and just my mind starts racing and I cannot cut it off and it's a miserable feeling, but a lot of people suffer from that.
4:12 He had struggled with that for about a month, and he walked out the door from this vacation home.
4:19 His anxiety had been getting worse.
4:23 He was getting a little paranoid.
4:25 According to his wife, he thought someone was chasing him at one time, but he was found dead 10 days later at 11:30 on August 26th.
4:40 The Beaufort County Sheriff's office was alerted to a home in sea ponds in connection with suspicious activity.
4:49 And during the investigation, the body of a deceased male was found underneath a residence and the body was recovered at about 3:30 in the afternoon.
5:01 This was indeed Stanley Kotowski again, not very old.
5:06 He was only 60 years old, but before he went missing, he had told his wife Jackie that he was worried that the sea ponds, which is the vacation area where they were was a setup and that someone was out to get him, and he thought that people were watching him.
5:25 And before he left the residence, he made a statement to her saying promise me, you will go on without me.
5:33 Well, that is alarming when someone says that to you, you pretty much know that their thoughts are not normal.
5:42 Now, when he disappeared on Friday, August 16th at about 10:30 in the morning.
5:47 Mr. Kotowski did not have his phone or his wallet.
5:52 And so, you know, they had to have thought that was unusual.
5:54 Maybe he was just going for a walk, even though he didn't have shoes on, he didn't really take anything that he could have used to contact his wife.
6:03 And maybe later let her know where he was, crew searched for Kotowski for multiple days.
6:11 They used canines, they used helicopters, boats, drones and even foot patrol to search the area for him.
6:20 Jackie would update the Facebook page that she had made just in hopes to get information.
6:28 Maybe someone had seen him, and she wanted to give updates to all of his friends and family on Monday, August 26 was when Kotowski was found dead in a crawlspace underneath two town homes at the resort.
6:45 A security officer who was searching the villas is the one who noticed a foul odor and flies near one of the buildings.
6:55 The body was soon found about 100 and 50 to 200 yards from where he was last seen on video.
7:05 It is believed that he died the same day he disappeared, and the county coroner determined that Kotowski died by suicide and his cause of death was asphyxiation by hanging.
7:18 The area where he was found was very secluded.
7:21 And so he could have really easily been overlooked.
7:24 I mean, he was underneath two town homes in this crawl space, the smell and the flies are what gave the first indication that something was going on in that area he had been missing for 10 days before his body was found.
7:41 This story is really sad.
7:43 I mean, he was only 60.
7:45 I just did not expect it to end that way.
7:48 I don't believe there was a previous history of suicide attempts.
7:52 He had just, I guess, been increasingly anxious and increasingly depressed and then suffered from insomnia and then just began having all these paranoid thoughts.
8:07 It sounds like an on a whim type decision and for somebody to do that while they're on vacation with their family, I mean, for someone to do it at all is heartbreaking, but especially while on vacation.
8:19 I mean, could you just imagine hanging?
8:22 And this is kind of why I wanted to get off on the subject of hanging because we again do have a lot of suicides this time of year.
8:30 It is one of the most commonly used methods worldwide for suicide.
8:36 Over the last 30 years, I feel like the incidence of hangings has greatly increased.
8:43 Only a small portion of hanging suicides occur in controlled environments.
8:49 You have to remember that if someone really wants to do it, they're going to do it.
8:54 It can happen in a controlled environment, it can happen in a hospital, it can happen in a prison.
8:59 It can happen when someone's in police custody.
9:03 Again, if someone really wants to do this, they will absolutely find a way.
9:09 I have a friend years ago whose wife had slit her wrists, and he found her and took her for a psych evaluation.
9:20 She was seen in the emergency room bandaged up, had a psych evaluation.
9:25 They admitted her to a psych facility and of course, being suicidal, she was pretty closely monitored.
9:33 But even while she was there, she continued to have suicidal ideations and talking about suicide.
9:42 She actually did while she was there in the facility being supervised, hang herself with a bed sheet.
9:50 It does happen, it happens in police custody.
9:53 It does happen in hospitals.
9:54 It happens in facilities, whether it be rehab or just inpatient psychiatric facilities.
10:01 It's not uncommon, although there is just a small portion that happens in controlled environments like that.
10:09 The most commonly used ligatures that we see are ropes and belts.
10:15 But I will tell you that years ago and I don't think I've told this story before.
10:19 But years ago, I had a case, beautiful young girl.
10:23 I'm going to say she was probably between 18 and 20.
10:26 I really can't remember, but she was devastated because she had gotten fired from her waitressing job and she hung herself with a Dooney and burke purse.
10:39 She had it kind of draped over her closet door and literally had it around her neck and just leaned forward.
10:48 And I always thought, you know, wow, she was beautiful, so young, had so much to give and she was so upset about this waitressing job and there may have been other things going on in her life.
10:59 But of course, the only thing that her parents knew about when we interviewed them was the recent job loss.
11:07 It was hard to know exactly what pushed her over the edge.
11:11 But I can say that whenever I looked over her body, there were scars on her back.
11:18 And I did ask the parents about the scars, and they had told me that she had attempted suicide several years earlier by jumping off of a bridge and she broke her back and required surgery and had recovered from that.
11:33 They were hoping, had gotten past that because she was in school and had a bright future ahead of her.
11:39 But she was just riddled with depression and anxiety.
11:45 It didn't take much to literally push her over the edge.
11:49 I don't think there were alcohol and drugs involved.
11:52 She just put her makeup on and fixed her hair and put on a cute outfit and hung herself.
12:01 I just remember it was one of my first cases where a young person had hung themselves.
12:07 I was looking at her and I just thought she had so much to give, you know, and it was just a terrible situation.
12:14 You know, most people don't use purses, most people use ropes and belts, some people use wire, some people use cords.
12:24 I mean, I want to say telephone cords, but not many people have landlines anymore that really need a telephone cord.
12:30 We all have cell phones.
12:32 But back in the day, telephone cords were used frequently.
12:36 And I can remember when I first started working as a death investigator, I went to a local store, and I was trying to get all the things I needed in my work bag so that I would be prepared for any kind of case.
12:50 When I got called out.
12:52 I thought I need a really good sharp knife just for whatever.
12:56 I feel like everybody just really needs a good sharp knife for anything.
13:01 I went into the local sports store, and I went to the knife counter and I told the guy, I said I just need a really sharp knife that just cuts a lot of different things.
13:11 And he's like, well, what particularly are you cutting?
13:14 And I said, phone cord wrote wire belts.
13:20 It just needs to be able to cut things.
13:23 And he's like, oh my God, why?
13:25 And I said, I'm a death investigator and I cut people down when they hang themselves and he was beside himself as most people probably would be.
13:36 He wasn't very old here.
13:38 I am in my forties.
13:40 I don't think he expected that to come out of my mouth when he asked me that question.
13:45 I know that he was very surprised.
13:48 But that is true though.
13:50 I mean, we have to have things in our bag that prepare us for any situation when we go out on scene.
13:55 I mean, we carry tape, paper bags, plastic bags, our thermometer.
14:01 I mean, we have all kinds of different things to prepare us for what we may come up on because the police don't always have what they need either.
14:10 We help one another.
14:11 And so, I've just always kept a really good knife in my scene kit and there are a few things like that that you just absolutely have to have because you never know when the situation is going to come up.
14:23 Now, I will say that people hang themselves from all kinds of different things.
14:29 Beams in the house, maybe staircase banisters.
14:34 Some people already have hooks that are in the ceiling or in the wall.
14:39 Some people will melt them specifically for hanging.
14:42 People use doorknobs, people use trees, and we see that commonly where someone will be hanging from a tree out in their backyard.
14:52 And so comes in their front yard.
14:54 We've had cases.
14:55 Honestly, here it is close to Halloween where someone hanged himself from a tree in their front yard.
15:03 And many neighbors drove past him thinking that it was just a Halloween decoration.
15:10 They didn't even know that it was a real person, but it was a real person.
15:14 He was hanging there.
15:15 It wasn't obvious, you know, and I'm sure most people just would look at it and be like, oh God, you know, that's a sick Halloween decoration, but at the same time, kind of cool, you know, but not really look at it a second time wondering if it's a real person because there's all kinds of crazy Halloween decorations.
15:34 I don't know about y'all's neighborhood, but ours is full of them right now.
15:37 And most of them are those giant skeletons which I want one of and I cannot find anywhere.
15:43 If y'all have one, I'm completely jealous.
15:46 And if you know who still them, I want one. Let me know Julie at pushinguplilies.com.
15:52 I need giant 12 ft skeleton from my front yard.
15:56 And my husband would tell you differently because there's zero room in our garage to store that kind of thing.
16:03 But I want one anyway, 50% of hanging suicides are not even fully suspended.
16:12 That's kind of a misnomer.
16:13 A lot of people think when someone is found hanged that they are suspended from the ceiling, whether it be in the garage or in the living room of the residence or wherever, only 50% of people are fully suspended.
16:29 Many people put the ligature around their neck and just simply lean forward.
16:34 That's just what we've seen.
16:36 Typically, I can say that very few are found in a position where they are completely suspended.
16:44 Most of the ones that I've been on, not all, but most of the ones that I've been on can literally stand up if they were to change their mind or were able to change their mind.
16:55 They're in a position where their feet are touching the ground.
16:59 Sometimes their knees are touching the ground.
17:02 We always measure things like that.
17:04 The ligature, the distance from the ligature to the top of the ceiling or the top of the door or whatever they're hanging from.
17:11 But also the distance from the ground and many times they're just leaning forward, fatality following attempted suicide by hanging is at around 70%.
17:26 Now 80 to 90% of those people who attempt to hang themselves and are found quickly and get to the hospital alive actually survive.
17:39 That's only 80 to 90% of those who reach the hospital still though fatality is around 70% of the people who attempt.
17:51 But, you know, it's scary to think but more than 700,000 people worldwide die by suicide each year.
18:00 I mean, we have seen a ton already this year here during COVID, we saw a lot of people were working remotely and they weren't around their work family.
18:14 They were sick and not able to be around their own family and kids weren't going to school and they were depressed because they couldn't be with their friends.
18:25 And so we saw a lot of suicides in the autopsies of hanging deaths, lesions may be seen in the soft tissues and muscles, veins and bones of the neck.
18:41 So it's worth mentioning also that recent heavy drinking talk or threats of suicide, very little social support, mood or depressive disorders, being unemployed, living alone, being an elderly person, maybe even widowed, being male, having difficulty with your partner, being not very educated or a low education.
19:11 And people who smoke greater than 20 cigarettes a day are actually all risk factors.
19:20 I'm not so much surprised.
19:22 I mean, the smoking, I don't even know how they came to the number of 20 cigarettes, but I can understand the heavy drinking someone who's had a history of being depressed, someone who has threatened in the past or made attempts in the past, being alone, living alone partner, difficulties.
19:40 These are all kinds of common daily struggles that a lot of people live with.
19:45 I feel like a lot of it is just the coping mechanisms, socialization.
19:51 Just a lot of people will completely block themselves off from others and they feel lost, and they don't have any friends.
19:58 And when something bad happens, they don't have anyone to talk to or they feel like they don't.
20:03 And I found this research and I thought it was really interesting because those who actually choose hanging or favor hanging as a way to die.
20:14 They choose that option because these are studies taken from people who attempted and survived.
20:22 They chose that option because they anticipated a certain rapid and painless death with little awareness of dying.
20:32 And that believed that it would not damage the body or leave a harrowing image for others.
20:38 They believed, ok, it's going to be fast.
20:41 I'm not going to feel it.
20:42 I'm not going to know what happened and whoever finds me is not going to find a bunch of blood.
20:48 It's not going to be a messy crime scene.
20:51 I mean, they're going to see maybe if they are suspended a stool or a chair that had been tipped over that they kicked over after they tied the knot, that kind of thing.
21:02 It's not typically a really bloody scene.
21:06 There can be some purge if somebody's been there for several days before they're found.
21:11 But those that they polled said that that's one reason why they chose that option is because they didn't want to leave a scene for people that found them that was bloody, and they didn't want to damage their body.
21:26 And I'm sure they've done research to know that, you know, this is the case in a lot of suicide deaths.
21:35 When you hang yourself, you normally will die within 3 to 5 minutes.
21:40 And again, many people who have attempted this, when they pulled them, these people that survived said that another reason that they chose this option was because the materials, the rope or whatever they choose to use are easily accessible.
21:56 It's fairly easy to do.
21:58 And there's not a lot of technical knowledge ID, like you don't have to read a book and study on how to do this.
22:05 You can maybe look up how to tie a specific kind of knot.
22:09 But I thought that it was really interesting that they did these studies on people who had attempted suicide by hanging and said, why did you choose hanging?
22:18 Like what made you think that that was the best option over gunshot wound to the head or overdosing?
22:26 And these were the answers that they received.
22:29 That would be interesting.
22:31 I would love to be in on a study like that where you can just like hear all the answers that all the people give you on the flip side, people who chose not to hang themselves felt that it could be a slow death, that it could be very painful.
22:48 It could be very messy, and they felt like they maybe needed a little bit of technical knowledge to be able to pull it off successfully when I was in nursing school and went to the forensic mental hospital in Vernon to do my psych rotation.
23:05 There were a lot of people there who had attempted suicide and were unsuccessful.
23:10 People who had shot off sides of their faces.
23:15 Yeah, I'm sure that hurt at the time.
23:17 I think that for the same reason people chose the option of hanging.
23:22 People also chose not to use that option.
23:26 That would just be an interesting study to me again to just ask those questions of people who had attempted suicide.
23:34 Like, why did you choose that route?
23:36 Did you think that it wouldn't hurt that it wouldn't be more painful that it would be less messy that the tools you needed were more accessible and those types of things.
23:47 The sad part, I guess the saddest part about suicide is that psychodynamic factor that actually compelled the person to end their life is unfolded unless there are documents, or a suicide note or messages or emails.
24:08 Some people are very, I know that we've had elderly people who may have a disease and they don't want to be a burden on their family and they will go to the trouble to write a note to everybody in their family and it'll be neatly in an envelope with the name on it and they'll lay out their driver's license and their social security card and their will in their life insurance policy and their paperwork for pension.
24:34 They think it through in an organized fashion and they leave a note.
24:41 They don't want anyone to feel like it's their fault.
24:43 They don't want anyone to feel to blame.
24:46 They want to make sure that everyone realizes, hey, I did this because I'm sick.
24:50 I don't want to burden you.
24:52 I don't want you to have to take me to the doctor.
24:53 I don't want to go through the pain of chemo or whatever it may be.
24:58 But it is really sad as much as sometimes we wouldn't want to see what the note said.
25:04 It is really sad that a lot of people don't leave a note and don't give you any kind of a message and there's no indication as to why.
25:14 And that leaves the family wondering and I know that's probably the hardest part for a lot of parents and significant others is not really understanding the reason behind it, what was going on, especially if say the person had never attempted and never even talked about it and all of a sudden they just do it and those are the things as death investigators that we deal with when we talk to the family many times the family asks us, you know, why would he do this?
25:46 Why would he remove himself from our lives when he knew that he meant so much to us.
25:52 It's really, really hard for the family in situations like this and death is always hard.
26:00 Again, that's one of the hardest parts of our job is notifying family, whether it be natural or an accident or a suicide.
26:10 I don't even know what's the most difficult. I think natural, most people kind of are like, ok, you know, they've been sick, it's not expected, but it's not a complete surprise like it would be, you know, if it were an accident or a suicide from somebody who had never attempted and never spoke of it anyway.
26:31 I just thought I would talk a little bit about hangings because it just surprised me that this man hung himself.
26:37 I mean, I know he had had these little psychotic episodes where he was paranoid and all these different things.
26:43 But I don't know, I didn't expect it to end that way.
26:46 I guess I kind of thought, oh, he's going to have a cardiac event, you know, because he walked too far or, I don't know, something.
26:52 Could he get hit by a car or?
26:54 I just did not expect to hear that he had hung himself, especially in a crawl space like that.
27:00 I'm sure that was his plan was to not be found immediately because he didn't want to be saved.
27:05 He didn't want anybody to come up to him right afterwards because again, that 3-to-5-minute window knew there would have been a chance maybe of him surviving.
27:13 And he obviously didn't want that if he went somewhere secluded like he did anyway.
27:20 Just food for thought.
27:22 This week.
27:23 So far, y'all has been just super, super busy, not just suicides but everything.
27:29 We've had a couple of homicides.
27:31 We've just had a lot of stuff going on in the office when it rains, it pours.
27:36 You know, we'll sit there one minute and it's like twiddling our thumbs, feeling guilty for collecting a paycheck because we're not really doing that much.
27:43 And then, all of a sudden, the bottom falls out.
27:46 You got to love days like that.
27:48 I personally wish that for me to be busy, people didn't have to die but busy days make the day go by a lot faster.
27:56 I don't mind the busy work of phone conversations and talking to doctors and following up with families and requesting records like we do in the office all day, but the day just goes by so fast sometimes.
28:09 And I think today we had four scenes and of course we don't have to go on all of them.
28:16 But there's a lot of background investigation involved regarding talking to the family and what not.
28:23 There's a lot of behind the scenes, stuff going on.
28:26 Anyway, I am super excited that my class is almost over.
28:34 I have, I think, three weeks left of advanced pharmacology.
28:39 This class is not anywhere near as hard as advanced pathophysiology.
28:44 Was that kicked my butt?
28:45 I'm just going to say it, it was so hard, and I felt like it was so far over my head.
28:52 Pharmacology.
28:53 I understand a little bit better, and I probably wouldn't, had I not been a nurse for so long.
28:59 There are still a lot of medications out now that weren't around back when I practiced in the hospital.
29:04 But it's just easier for me to grasp the concept.
29:09 And so this class is not as difficult.
29:12 My next class is evidence-based practice which I feel like might be easy for me, but I don't want to speak too soon.
29:20 It starts November 4th and it's only a five-week class.
29:23 I think all of my classes now except for my clinicals are only five-week classes and it's hard to believe that this is a two-year program and I'm already six months in.
29:33 It's been absolutely crazy.
29:36 I wouldn't change it for the world, but balance is hard.
29:40 It's very hard.
29:41 But you know what?
29:42 If you want to do it just make it happen.
29:44 That's all I can say.
29:46 I don't want to ever wish I had done something that I didn't at least attempt. Then, that's one thing that I found in this job doing Death investigation is life is short and I want to spend my time here on earth doing things that I think are fun and things to help me grow and things that help my family.
30:08 And I love it!
30:11 Again, if you are interested in forensic nursing or if you would like me to come speak to your class about the option of forensic nursing.
30:23 I would love to even death investigation, police departments, colleges.
30:28 There is a place on my website where you can log in and ask for me to come and speak to your organization and it really opened some eyes.
30:38 I can tell you that there are more people interested in this than, you know, there are a lot of people who once they're exposed kind of are like, I don't think I want to do this anymore, which is fine.
30:51 We notice that sometimes of our mortuary who comes and picks up our bodies, they'll get a new person, and they might last like a shift or two.
30:59 You know, they'll have like a decomposed body, and they'll be like, yeah, this is not really what I wanted to do.
31:07 They'll get a little bit of blood or purge on their pants, and they just completely check out.
31:12 So anyway, you have to love it.
31:15 Sometimes you don't know if you're going to love it until you just do it again.
31:20 Shoot me an email with any questions.
31:22 I'd love to hear from you Julie at pushinguplilies.com.
31:25 Go on to the website murder Merch under pushinguplilies.com.
31:32 And this Saturday October 26th pushing up lilies is entered for the very first time in Denton's day of the dead coffin races.
31:44 We will have a coffin would be decorated Pushing Up Lilies and we'll be competing against 60 other teams for the championship during the coffin races.
31:54 I'm super excited.
31:55 We took the coffin out on Sunday, practiced it, or my husband practiced pushing.
32:00 I just had to sit there, but still, I need to get a helmet.
32:04 I know I was a little bit worried when we were going, practicing without my helmet on.
32:08 I was like, oh, I probably should have a helmet on practicing.
32:11 It does go downhill.
32:12 You can't have any propellant.
32:13 You do have to have a break and there are some hay bells at the bottom of the hill.
32:18 But yeah, it's going to be fun.
32:20 It's going to be exciting.
32:21 Pushing up Lilies is also going to have a murder merch booth at the Day of the Dead Festival.
32:27 We'll be selling crime scene merchandise and Pushing Up Lilies T shirts.
32:32 If you live in the Denton area again, it's downtown Denton Day of the Dead Festival.
32:38 It's going to be a lot of fun.
32:40 I believe the races start at noon on Saturday, October 26th, come out and cheer us on.
32:47 We would love to see you and dress up.
32:50 There's going to be a costume contest.
32:52 Anyway, I look forward to talking to y'all next week.
32:55 I hope you have an amazing week and stay safe.
32:58 Bye y'all.
33:00 Thank you so much for joining me today on Pushing Up Lilies.
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33:14 Thanks again for spending your time with me and be sure to visit me at PushingUpLilies.com for merchandise and past episodes.