Suicide

Latest Articles

Review: The Hedgehog

Mona Achache's adaptation of Muriel Barbery's best-seller
Eleven-year-old Paloma (Garance Le Guillemic) agrees, and plans to kill herself on her 12th birthday because she doesn't want to end up like the other members of her family — goldfish in a bowl.
By PETER KEOUGH | August 30, 2011

Review: Nora's Will

Dying well is the best revenge
Dying well is the best revenge.
By PETER KEOUGH | December 01, 2010

Peter Hook rediscovers his Unknown Pleasures

Age of consent
Peter Hook has heard the criticism, and he does not care.
By MICHAEL MAROTTA | December 01, 2010

Trinity's rollicking Absurd Person Singular

All about Eves
Very strange. It's as though British playwright Alan Ayckbourn had come to Trinity Rep, studied its veteran acting company, laughed heartily at the amusing talent on display, then went home and wrote Absurd Person Singular for six of the actors.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | October 27, 2010

Story-telling saves lives

Letters to the Portland Editor, October 15, 2010
The past three weeks have been incredibly upsetting. Six young men have taken their lives due to the anti-gay bullying they were the focus of at their schools. None of these young men were connected — they did not go to the same schools, have the same socio-economic backgrounds, come from the same hometown.
By PORTLAND PHOENIX LETTERS | October 13, 2010

Troubled Over Bridgewater

Old Colony Correctional Center has been plagued by suicide, overcrowding, and brutality — and things are only getting worse
On a winter evening around 11 pm, the former superintendent of Old Colony Correctional Center walked into a Rhode Island restaurant with a gun in his pocket.
By CHRIS FARAONE | September 13, 2010

The Big Hurt: Red scare

M.I.A.’s ultraviolent new video misses the target
If you’re a dedicated follower of pop, you’ve no doubt heard about M.I.A.’s shocking new video for “Born Free,” the lead single from her upcoming album.
By DAVID THORPE | May 04, 2010

Screams from solitary

‘By dehumanizing prisoners, we dehumanize ourselves.’
The 132-man supermax unit within the 925-man Maine State Prison is an expensive, taxpayer-funded torture chamber that for 18 years has sucked in mostly nonviolent, mostly mentally ill prisoners and ground them up by means of mind-destroying solitary confinement, officially sanctioned beatings, “restraint” devices resembling those in medieval dungeons, sexual humiliation, and psychiatric, medical, and legal neglect.
By LANCE TAPLEY | February 17, 2010

The torment within

The Gamm’s intense 4:48 Psychosis
In dramatic terms, it doesn't really matter whether the female protagonist of 4:48 Psychosis commits suicide at the end of the play.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | January 20, 2010

Prison ‘troublemaker’ confronts racism, medical abuse

Exiled
Vacillating between grit and despair — between aggressive lawsuits and suicide attempts — Deane Brown, the prisoner who in 2005 blew the whistle on the torture of mentally ill inmates at the Maine State Prison’s solitary-confinement “Supermax” unit, is struggling against prison conditions in Maryland, where he was exiled by the Baldacci administration.
By LANCE TAPLEY | September 09, 2009

Lawmakers to probe prison

Several investigations begin simultaneously
For years controversy has churned over the Maine State Prison's treatment of both inmates and correctional officers. For the first time, legislators have taken action.
By LANCE TAPLEY | April 08, 2009

Gulf War vet 'saved' by Phoenix article

Portland Marine Corps vet shares his heart-wrenching story
Yesterday, we published "Soldiers Committing Suicide," by Jason Notte, and just hours later, Mike Fitzgerald left our Portland editor a voicemail saying he's experiencing the same things a man described in the story had.
By JEFF INGLIS | March 17, 2009

Soldiers committing suicide

US troops are killing themselves in record numbers
On July 22, 2004, unable to handle the intensity anymore — the daily vomiting, the feeling that he was a murderer — Lucey wrapped a garden hose around his neck and hanged himself.
By JASON NOTTE | March 17, 2009

In a Dream

Personal collapse in impressive structure
If you find yourself groaning through the first five minutes of Jeremiah Zagar's Academy Award-shortlisted feature documentary about his artist father Isaiah, you might just be its target audience.
By CHRISTOPHER GRAY | July 01, 2009

Olympian anti-heroes

Sports blotter: Olympic edition
Greetings, Olympic sports fans!
By MATT TAIBBI | August 08, 2008

Believe it or not

Interview: Guy Maddin tells the truth
Even the titles of his films are a little weird.
By PETER KEOUGH | July 08, 2008

What about McCain’s mental health?

Campaign 2008
While some worry about the impact of John McCain’s age on his physical health and his potential longevity in office, others are more concerned about his mental health.
By MARY ANN SORRENTINO | July 02, 2008

The Double standards

Women get screwed in sex scandals — and men get a free pass
Women get screwed in sex scandals — and men get a free pass.
By MARY ANN SORRENTINO | May 21, 2008

State sued over inmate’s death

Silencing alarms
As severely mentally ill Maine State Prison inmate Ryan Rideout prepared to hang himself from a sprinkler in his cell on the night of October 5, 2006, other inmates frantically pressed panic buttons in their cells.
By LANCE TAPLEY | March 05, 2008

Chronicle of a death foretold

Joy Division were rooted in grim finality. Now, through a series of new books, CDs, and films, the band has found new life.
What a difference a death makes.
By JAMES PARKER | October 24, 2007

Pleasures still unknown

Conventions take Control of Ian Curtis
Ian Curtis (Sam Riley) of the Manchester band Joy Division wrote songs that evoke, with incantatory inevitability, terror, delight, and ecstasy.
By PETER KEOUGH | October 24, 2007

Dangerous waits for psychiatric evaluations?

Jail watch
State officials admit delays for jail-inmate psychiatric evaluations have increased considerably.
By LANCE TAPLEY | August 15, 2007

Blow by blow

Massachusetts women are being stabbed, run over, burned, strangled, and shot to death
Last year, at least 34 women were murdered in Massachusetts, the highest total in several years. Sadly, 2007 is on pace to exceed last year’s bloodshed.
By DAVID S. BERNSTEIN | March 21, 2007

Sluggish response to suicide

Supermax watch
An eyewitness to the suicide of Ryan Rideout, a 25-year-old, severely mentally ill Augusta man who hanged himself with his bedding in his Maine State Prison Supermax cell on October 5, calls into question the official version of events.
By LANCE TAPLEY | January 03, 2007

Lockdown

What do prison officials have to hide?
If you were a reporter and you received a letter like the one excerpted below, what would you make of it? Lance Tapley discusses reporting the prisons
By LANCE TAPLEY | December 14, 2006

Stonewalling is normal

Reporting the prison system
I could cite many examples of the difficulty in reporting to the Maine public what goes on behind the cement and bureaucratic walls of the public’s prison system — especially, in reporting brutal practices. I will give just a few.
By LANCE TAPLEY | December 13, 2006

Quiet warfare

Few have been paying attention to that other ongoing terrorist threat
On September 11, 2006, the fifth anniversary of the terror attacks that devastated our nation, a man crashed his car into a building in Davenport, Iowa, hoping to blow it up and kill himself in the fire.
By JENNIFER L. POZNER | November 28, 2006

Baldacci’s ‘political prisoner’

A life at risk
John Baldacci’s administration on November 13 sent the Maine State Prison’s chief human-rights advocate, inmate Deane Brown, to a dangerous prison more than 500 miles away, in Baltimore. Brown’s lawyer and his best friend believe this decision was in retaliation for his activism, and puts his life in danger.
By LANCE TAPLEY | November 21, 2006

Kurt Cobain

1967-1994
This article originally appeared in the April 15, 1994 issue of the Boston Phoenix.
By JON GARELICK | November 14, 2006

Hunger strike at Maine's Supermax Prison

Suicide attempts reported
Inmates at the Maine State Prison’s solitary-confinement Supermax unit in Warren have been on a hunger strike since Saturday night. Death in the Supermax. By Lance Tapley
By LANCE TAPLEY | October 18, 2006