In today's episode, we delve into the haunting cases of individuals who met their untimely demise in the privacy of their own home or hotel bathrooms. We will explore the mysterious deaths that occurred within these seemingly ordinary spaces, where hidden truths and unanswered questions lurk behind closed doors. Among the stories we'll unravel is the passing of the legendary musician, Jim Morrison, renowned frontman of The Doors, Elvis Presley, Judy Garland, and the tragic death of popular television personality and dancer, tWitch. A beloved figure in the entertainment industry, tWitch's passing sent shockwaves through his extensive fanbase. Join me on this haunting journey into the depths of human psyche, as we untangle the webs of mystery that surround these somber bathroom tragedies.
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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 this week?
0:30 I wanted to retouch a subject that I actually talked to a while back and that is deaths in hotel rooms.
0:38 This past week, I was called out to a local city by the police and there had apparently been a gentleman who checked into a hotel the day before and he did not check out.
0:52 So hotel management went to check on him and when they entered his room, they found the bed completely perfect, just like it had been made by the maid the day before his backpack was on the bed.
1:06 There was a suicide note taped to the door and the maid found him in the bathtub with a single gunshot wound to the head.
1:16 And I know that we'd had previous talks about people dying in hotel rooms.
1:22 I think it kind of freaked a lot of people out and several of y'all sent me really cool pictures of your husband's looking under the bed at a hotel room, which I thought was kind of cool.
1:31 I was watching out for his woman but people do also die or kill themselves in bathrooms.
1:39 Not always in hotels, but it just made me think that I've never taken a bath in a hotel room and I'm glad I don't think it had ever really come to my mind the amount of blood I've seen in hotel bathrooms and even in private residences from people shooting themselves, they do try to do it in places like this where they don't make a lot of mess, they will go somewhere away from their own home so that the family doesn't have to clean it up.
2:14 Maybe the family doesn't have to find them and many times they'll go to a public place like this where for instance, they don't check out on time, they'll actually be found in a timely manner by the hotel staff.
2:27 A lot of people surprisingly who do this actually prepare rather well, they sometimes will have their ID in their pocket so that there's no issue with identifying them.
2:38 Many of them you can tell have done their research and try to make it as easy as possible for the process that takes place after their death.
2:50 So as we all know, when we've all heard before, many times people actually die on the toilet as well.
2:58 Again, not only in hotel rooms, but also in their private residences, even at friends' homes or wherever.
3:05 But a lot of times this is due to stroke or cardiac arrest.
3:10 This is caused by a sudden drop in blood pressure.
3:13 This drop is related many, many times to the strain of trying to have a bowel movement.
3:23 So the parasympathetic nervous system which actually regulates digestion and relaxation can also play a role in lowering the blood pressure when someone is on the toilet.
3:35 Now, a high number of people, usually older men who are at risk of heart disease die on the toilet.
3:43 We see this a lot at work.
3:46 They tend to push harder because they're constipated and many movie stars, I know we've all heard stories, for example, Elvis Presley dying on the toilet.
3:58 That is because if they are on a large amount of pain medications and addicted to drugs like that, they are actually constipating and that's gonna cause them to strain when they go to the bathroom and that's going to cause their blood pressure to lower while they're straining to have a bowel movement.
4:20 We probably all know the story of Elvis Presley.
4:23 I actually have been to Memphis to Graceland.
4:27 The home is wildly decorated much like I would expect during that time when he was alive, there were rumors and I don't know how true this is.
4:37 Many of you may know that since he did die in a bathroom upstairs, the only person allowed upstairs was Lisa Marie.
4:45 Of course, we all know that she's passed away.
4:48 So I don't know how they're handling that situation.
4:51 I don't know if Priscilla or Lisa Marie's daughter or who is actually allowed to go upstairs now.
4:57 But I did hear on the tour that she does sometimes or did sometimes stay there.
5:03 Elvis was actually addicted to drugs.
5:06 This leading to him dying while he was on the commode and this happened later in his career, of course, the stress of being a star and all the things and the money, I'm sure played a big role in that.
5:20 But he was at his Graceland mansion on August 16th of 1977.
5:26 And I do remember this day, however, I was only nine years old at the time.
5:30 So it's kind of crazy how certain things stick in your head.
5:34 But the drug use caught up with him that day.
5:38 So he fell off of the toilet next to a pool of his own vomit.
5:43 And it was later revealed that an extreme cocktail of drugs caused his passing at the time, he was found by his fiancé and he was reading a book and his pajamas were pulled down to his ankles.
5:58 So he was actually, I'm sure suffering from constipation due to the large amount of drugs he was on and the strain lowered his blood pressure when he passed away and actually fell off the toilet.
6:13 Now, Judy Garland also suffered from a drug addiction.
6:17 And she had a lot of personal problems that ranged from nervous breakdowns to suicide attempts and bizarre behaviors when she was on the set of some of the shows that she was filming and all of that kind of led to the downfall of her career.
6:34 So she regularly took countless pills.
6:38 And her fifth husband actually found her dead in the bathroom.
6:43 She was slumped over the toilet, the bathroom door was locked, he entered and actually found her deceased.
6:50 This was from an apparent barbiturate overdose.
6:54 But at the same time, we do know that those drugs cause constipation and that many people when they strain actually do suffer heart attacks.
7:04 The ones that are most at risk are people with heart disease or blood pressure disorders who may take medications for hypertension.
7:14 The problem is that a lot of people who have heart disease don't know it.
7:18 A lot of people who have high blood pressure don't go to the doctor and haven't been diagnosed and those who have don't always take their medication.
7:26 So, of course, as nurses, we experience this a lot.
7:30 I can tell you when I did home health, I'd go into people's homes and check their blood pressure.
7:35 They were near stroke.
7:37 And I would ask them how often they were taking their blood pressure medications and they couldn't afford them.
7:43 And I can't tell you how many times I would go to the pharmacy and actually purchase someone's medications for them because I knew I couldn't just sit back and watch them die when there was something that I could do to prevent it.
7:55 Now, to reduce your risk for constipation, we all know to increase fiber in our diets.
8:02 And if you have a family history of heart disease or a family history of high blood pressure, then those are reasons to actually continuously be followed by a cardio biologist or even just a family practice doctor who can monitor those and stay on top of it.
8:21 Because those things do put you at very high risk, not only for having a heart attack on the toilet, but for having a heart attack anywhere or even underlying health issues that could cause your death sooner than later.
8:36 Now, Orville Redenbacher was actually found dead in the Jacuzzi bathtub of his condo in California.
8:45 We do see this sometimes too where people actually have a heart attack and then their head goes underwater and because they are still breathing, they do take in enough water that they drown.
8:59 In many cases where we see someone who can swim, drowned or someone in a hot tub, drowned where they could just stand up.
9:09 It's because they've had a cardiac event or some kind of health issue that keeps them from being able to do.
9:15 So, Jim Morrison, my daughter's a very big fan of Jim Morrison and the doors.
9:21 He actually died at the age of 27.
9:24 On July 3rd of 1971.
9:27 And the cause is unknown, but he was found in an apartment in Paris in the bathtub next to his long term companion, Pamela Corson.
9:37 And strangely enough, no autopsy was done and that did lead to some problems with his fans because they were never really given answers as far as what his cause of death was.
9:50 And we have many deaths where people die in the bathroom.
9:54 Many times, they may still be actually in a sitting position on the toilet.
9:59 We have actually had somebody that was still standing because they were leaning against the cabinet and it was really strange to think that they were deceased, but they were actually in a standing position, but they were leaning just right so that they actually didn't fall.
10:15 Now, our office gets calls a lot from the police after they go to a residence because a family member called 911 because their loved one was actually in the restroom and they hear a thud or what sounds like a person falling and they run in there to check on them and they're not breathing.
10:39 This happens a lot.
10:41 Sometimes the deceased person again, like I said, is still actually sitting on the toilet.
10:47 Sometimes they're between the toilet and a wall or between the toilet and the bathtub.
10:53 And occasionally they topple over and land head first in the bathtub.
10:59 Sometimes there's water in the tub and that would result in their head being submerged.
11:04 And when you go, think about it, if the person's actually home alone and the bathtub's running, say they went to the bathroom while they were running the bath.
11:13 If they topple overhead first into the bathtub and the water is running, their head is probably underwater by the time they're discovered.
11:22 So they do an autopsy to determine if the person was still alive and inhaled water or they actually, for some reason, put their head in the bathtub, which it's hard to say again, it likely would not be done on purpose in instances like that.
11:39 But chances are they had some sort of cardiac event that caused them to topple over and land head first in the bathtub.
11:48 Now, if the person is living alone, a lot of times they're discovered because neighbors or somebody sees water coming from under the front door.
11:58 It doesn't always mean the person's in the bathroom with their head submerged.
12:01 The person could just be deceased in the residence and be running a bath and it happens and the water just keeps going until it runs over.
12:11 But we have seen incidences where people are found because the water's coming from under their front door.
12:18 Also in apartments.
12:20 I remember the last apartment we lived in, we had a leak or the apartment above us had a leak.
12:25 It actually came through our ceiling and caused a huge hole and that was my first thought.
12:31 When I saw it is, oh, my gosh.
12:33 I wonder if somebody's dead up there and left their bathtub running.
12:36 It's really sad when you do this every day and you think automatically when you see something like that, that someone's dead, but that was not the case at all.
12:46 When they do the autopsy, the lungs are going to float in water if they're a rated or if someone has breathed in air.
12:53 But those that actually do not have air in them and may be filled with water as you can assume are actually gonna sink because they're heavier.
13:03 So that is one test that the doctors do to determine if anyone was actually still breathing when their head went underwater.
13:11 Now, as you can imagine or picture in your head, if somebody's like standing in front of a mirror, shaving or brushing their teeth and then they collapse, they may land in such a position that they block the door and in cases like that the family member goes to try to help them can't get the door open, they don't respond, call 911 and EMS actually is unable to enter the room.
13:39 Now, I've had this happen before where EMS actually had to cut the door in half, they cut like the top half off of the bathroom door with a saw to actually move the decedent so that we could actually fully open the door.
13:57 Now, I've also believe it or not.
13:59 And this goes to show why we do have to wear comfortable stretchy, flexible clothing to work.
14:07 And we can't always look.
14:08 Our best is that I've had to climb through a window.
14:12 As you know, the bathroom windows are usually fairly small.
14:15 I've had to crawl.
14:16 Well, first climb on an air conditioning unit, crawl through a very small bedroom window and move the body so that the door could actually be opened.
14:26 So the EMS could actually get in to pronounce the person deceased and we could do what we needed to do as far as taking pictures and looking over the body again, going back to the hotel thing.
14:41 A lot of people check into hotels or even go into the bathroom at their own home to shoot themselves in the bathtub.
14:49 And we do see this quite frequently too.
14:53 I think they're trying to avoid making a mess in their own home by checking into a hotel or they may feel that being in the bathtub in their own home would make it easier for the family to clean up.
15:05 I know that a lot of people just don't want their family to find them because of the trauma that it would cause them.
15:13 But also they go to a public place where the likelihood of them being found soon is high.
15:21 So that would prevent them from decomposing or things like that.
15:26 I have been to many suicides where the decedent is found in the tub.
15:30 After shooting themselves.
15:31 Now, we do have to remember however thoughtful they may be by doing it in the bathtub and preventing a mess that there is blood spatter pretty much all over the place.
15:42 But bathtubs are also not bulletproof.
15:44 So occasionally the bathtub is unscathed and you can imagine the hotel staff is going to clean the bathtub and guess what?
15:55 It's time for the next tenant to move in.
15:57 I'm never ever, ever taking a bath in a hotel again.
16:02 It depends on the tub and the weapon used.
16:05 For example, if the tub is cast iron, which there are very few cast iron tubs in hotels and the weapon is low powered 22 it's probably going to be fine.
16:16 The weapon is not gonna cause any damage at all to the bathtub.
16:20 Now, a high powered bullet fired from close range at a thin plastic tub is not gonna fare so well, I know that y'all remember Stephen Bos tWitch.
16:32 He's the DJ on Ellen that shot himself and this was just back in December of 22.
16:38 Everybody was really, really surprised.
16:40 He seemed like a very, very happy person, had a ton of friends, but he was actually at the Oak Tree Inn in Encino room 249 and he shot himself in the head in the bathroom of a hotel.
16:55 Now, the hotel or motel, I guess I should say was less than half a mile from his home and he called ahead to make sure that they had rooms available before he took an Uber over to the hotel.
17:09 The hotel staff found him when he failed to check out and it was a pretty bloody scene from what I've read.
17:17 This was very similar again to the one that I worked the other day.
17:22 This gentleman had lost his spouse to suicide a year prior sold his house no longer had a home.
17:33 All of his clothes were in one suitcase and he brought that suitcase in a backpack with him to the hotel.
17:40 Left us a note saying how to get a hold of his sister-in-law, who was his wife's sister who lived out of the country and then also how to reach an attorney who also lived out of the country.
17:53 Again, Id in his pocket and he had it all planned out, he had a well made, he had funeral arrangements made, he had signed all the paperwork.
18:06 This was very, very well planned and it's the same almost exact thing with Twitch.
18:13 So, saw him on camera and he seemed very calm, walking into the hotel room completely alone with a backpack and just never came out.
18:23 We know that this does happen frequently again, however thoughtful these people may be.
18:30 I don't think they really think ahead to see if they do have family, what they may be doing to them.
18:36 I don't think that thought even really crosses their mind at that point.
18:41 When things are so bad.
18:43 You feel like there's just no way out.
18:45 We do see this a lot in hotels.
18:48 We also see a lot of drug overdoses.
18:50 Many people may be homeless because of drug use and they overdose in hotel rooms where they're found again by staff.
19:00 You got to think if they weren't in a hotel, they probably be at their residence and it would probably be weeks before they're found if they don't have any family that lives there with them or if they don't have any friends that come by on a regular basis.
19:13 So I do think that a lot of people going to hotels is purposeful in that they want to be found quickly.
19:21 But I can tell you again, I do still check under the bed when I go to a hotel, I do check the closet and I also never take a bath.
19:32 Thank you so much for joining me today on Pushing Up Lilies.
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19:46 Thanks again for spending your time with me and be sure to visit me at PushingUpLilies.com for merchandise and past episodes.