Cypher, Charles – Died 1911

CYPHER

Posted By: Joy Moore (email)
Date: 4/28/2024 at 22:43:31

Source: Twice-A-Week Plain Dealer Oct. 31, 1911, FP, C3, 4

Suicide at Riceville.
This community was doubly agitated last week, first at the attempted self destruction of Charles Cypher by hanging and later in the day by his actually having accomplished his purpose by drowning.
Thursday morning at about eight o’clock, Mr. W. E. Peavey, at whose home he was staying, went out to the barn and was startled by seeing him hanging from a beam at the end of a rope noosed around his neck. An alarm was raised and Mrs. Heller and Dr. V. G. Palmer, neighbors, hurried to the scene in response to Mayor Peavey’s outcry. Dr. Palmer immediately cut the rope and dropped Mr. Cypher to the floor. He was already unconscious, having been undergoing slow strangulation for possibly four or five minutes Dr. Lee was called in and after laboring over him for fifteen minutes he was revived.
He had placed a chair with a block upon it to stand on under the beam to which he tied the rope and then kicked away both block and chair, remaining dangling in the air. Had he used a slip noose instead of a hard knot he would have died then and there.
No amount of questioning could elicit any cause for his act, but he remained morose and uncommunicative during the day, seeming ill pleased for interference in his designs. He was kept under more or less close surveillance during the day but in the afternoon he remarked that he wanted to go to the postoffice to mail a letter. Not returning at once, Mr. Peavey made inquiry for him and was told that he had been seen by several going down over the hill toward the county line bridge. This immediately aroused suspicion and Mr. Peavey in company with others went down to investigate and found his body in two and one-half feet of water where he had deliberately lain down with suicidal propose,--Riceville Recorder.