Open verdict on window cleaner's mysterious death
A baffled coroner recorded an open verdict over the death of a window cleaner who bled to death after apparently stabbing himself repeatedly in the groin with a souvenir pencil.
Neighbours of Jeffrey Burton, of De Cham Road, St Leonards, called police after their repeated calls went unanswered in September last year.
Mr Burton was found on his back, dressed in his underpants in a bloodsoaked room with a stereo still playing and a deep three centimetre gash to his upper right thigh. The oversized pencil lay covered in blood by his ankle.
Mr Burton's sister, Patricia Goodsell, paid tribute to a "sensitive and independent man" who loved bodybuilding and collecting antiques.
Speaking in Hastings Magistrates' Court on Wednesday, she added: "He wasn't materialistic, or into the modern trend of buying something for the sake of it."
The inquest heard 57-year-old Mr Burton, who ran his own window cleaning business, had no history of suicide attempts, and was looking forward to going on holiday after he finished painting his house.
His calendar for the next month was filled with routine appointments and arrangements to meet friends.
Coroner Alan Craze said: "It's a mystery to me. If you were choosing to take your own life, that's not the way you would do it.
"It seems to me that it can't have been one single stab wound. He seems to have worked on it. The pencil was blunt."
Ms Goodsell told the inquest the jumbo pencil had belonged to their mother, who died in 2008, and her brother had used it in while dancing and in yoga-like exercises.
She said: "He once told me, 'I do my dancing' and moved his arms. He said, 'I dance about with that pencil of mum's. You know the one.'
"He said I'll show you what I do, and tried to demonstrate. He put a biro between his big toe and his next toe and tried to lift his leg.
"It was like yoga, but standing up."
His only history of mental illness was a psychotic episode in 2006, when Mr Burton heard voices after returning from a holiday in Spain, and was admitted to now-closed mental health unit Woodlands.
But after he was dischared in February 2009, Jeffrey, who lived by himself, was to all appearances a healthy and stable man. With no suicide note, his death on September 27 remains a mystery to family and friends.
Coroner Alan Craze said: "He defintely had at least one psychotic episode but it does seem to have been quite a while ago.
"There's no evidence at all of any suicidal tendencies.
"If you wanted to do it you are not going to use a blunt pencil and work away at an injury in the groin. It doesn't stack up. Something very strange has gone on. The probability must be that this was done as an accident.
"We will never know what has caused him to create this awful wound."
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Weather for Lewes
Saturday 04 February 2012
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