PORTERVILLE, MISS. -- They are the hanging trees: a pair of pecans, a gum and an oak, the last hidden in a thicket near a muddy stream. But were the corpses found dangling from their boughs men who had reached an emotional nadir and chosen to end their own lives, or icons of an old and evil Southern tradition: lynching?

1. Raynard Johnson was 17 years old, successful in school and exhibiting a lust for life, when authorities say he walked outside his Kokomo home one June night in 2000 and wrapped one end of a belt around his neck and the other around the branch of a small pecan tree in his front yard.

2. James McDaniels, 60, had an exemplary work record with a Jackson funeral home when he was found hanging from a gum tree on the edge of the Cedar Lawn Cemetery one August morning in 2002.

3. Roy Veal was a familiar figure in the Wilkinson County clerk of courts office, researching a lawsuit to defend his family's land, when turkey hunters in April found the 55-year-old hanging from a massive pecan tree.

4. Nick Naylor was found hanging from an oak in Kemper County in January 2003. His death shocked residents accustomed to seeing the strapping 23-year-old walking his hounds. One of the dog's chains was tied around Naylor's neck. The question is, who knotted it?

"I don't know what happened, but he didn't kill himself," said Naylor's mother, Rita "I think it was white people, I really do," she said. Her conviction is echoed by other black residents of Porterville.

In each case, authorities have ruled the death a suicide.

Investigators and acquaintances said evidence, most of it unearthed posthumously, existed that three of the men -- all but Johnson -- had personal problems, ranging from romantic tensions to money worries. But none of the four talked openly about spiraling depression, the most common predictor of suicide, or were known to have sought treatment for it.

On the other hand, none of the incidents bore the grisly hallmarks of a lynching: no signs of violence, for example, or evidence that anyone else -- let alone a lynching party -- was present at the scene.

http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/index.ssf?/base/news-1/108771817353310.xml

Suicide or Lynching?

@Abbissinia.

Here's how I would approach this.

1. How common is this type of death for people of stated categories across race and region or geographic areas?

2. What extenuating circumstances in the personal biographies or circumstances of these individuals which would suggst a potential suicide? Yep there are some which are totally inexplicable. But there is a deep literature in criminology of the matter and we can work out clearly normal motives and characteristics or critical incidents to informm our judgements.

Nothing stated in that articles seems to me suicide material in most normal cases.

3. Who and where are the nearest white extremist organisations, or activists, within defined range of geographical areas contingent on the proximity of each incident?

4. Identify the movements of all known activists within specified time lines in order to eliminate and narrow down suspect pool and take it from there.

Of course this is fantasy land as things stand. All they have is bodies hanging in trees and nothing to connect it to any other party which would give legal grounds to do what I suggest or even think about it never mind meet the evidential requirements to even start going down that road.

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