I am going to finishing watching an episode of Route 66 titled "The Newborn," with special guest star Albert Dekker, whose death in 1968 definitely qualifies him for the Darwin Awards hall of fame.
From Wikipedia:
On May 5, 1968, after attempting to reach Dekker for three days, his fiancée Geraldine Saunders went to the actor's home. There were numerous messages and notes attached to his door from other concerned friends. Saunders got the apartment manager to open the door, and discovered Dekker's body in the bathtub. Dekker was kneeling nude in the bathtub, with a noose around his neck and a scarf tied over his eyes. A horse's bit was in his mouth, fashioned from a rubber ball and metal wire, and two leather straps were stretched between the leather belts that girded his neck and chest. A third belt, around his waist, was tied with a rope that stretched to his ankles. The end of the rope was found wrapped around his wrist several times and was held in Dekker's hand. Handcuffs clamped both wrists with a key attached. Dekker also had sexually explicit writings and drawings, written in red lipstick, on various parts of his body. He had been dead for several days.
Reports surfaced that Dekker was the victim of a robbery gone wrong due to a great deal of cash and electronic equipment was found to be missing from his apartment, but there was no evidence to support this. Police also theorized that Dekker was a closet homosexual who practiced his eccentricities discreetly with anonymous male prostitutes. Police attempted to attribute Dekker's death to a mishap with a hustler who left the actor dying or dead after something went wrong. Police made inquiries, but Dekker had no reputation among male hustlers, and Dekker's friends denied the accusations. Other theories of a murder made to look like a suicide arose but were never proven.
Dekker's death was eventually ruled accidental. The coroner determined that Dekker accidentally asphyxiated himself while attempting autoerotic asphyxia. Dekker was cremated in East Los Angeles, and his remains were shipped to the Garden State Crematory in New Jersey.
That's enough of that damned shit. What an idiot he was.
