When death comes to face, or the Story of the most beautiful suicide of the 20th century

Death is very rarely attractive, and especially if a person falls from a great height. Evelyn McHale managed to accomplish the impossible – she threw herself from the 86th floor and went down in history as the most beautiful suicide of the century. The motives of her action are still unclear, but the details of her death have been thoroughly studied.

There were no obvious reasons for the 23-year-old American Evelyn McHale to pass away. The girl was dating a nice guy named Barney Rhodes and it was getting to the wedding. The day before her death, McHale came to her fiance in Easton, Pennsylvania, to celebrate his birthday and chat with future parents-in-law.

The next morning Evelyn was cheerful and at breakfast she was animatedly discussing with Barney the details of the upcoming wedding. She was in a bit of a hurry, as she was planning to get on the train that comes to New York at 7 am. The groom escorted McHale to the train station and the couple kissed for the last time near the car doors.

Later, while investigating this suicide, the police found out several interesting details, which, however, in 1947, no one was particularly interested in. Perhaps the girl had some kind of mental disorder, an important point of which was marriage. A year before his death, Evelyn and Barney attended his older brother's wedding. Late in the evening, after returning from the restaurant, the girl began to tear off her elegant dress in a rage and push it into the burning fireplace.

So McHale screamed in a frenzy, but then Barney took her hysteria for an ordinary drunken prank. He did not know that his girlfriend had once done away with her military uniform in the same way, destroying it in the oven. Yes, Evelyn served in the women's Army Corps, which she joined voluntarily, right after school. Maybe there was some kind of psychological trauma in her life? We won't know that anymore.

In New York, the girl briefly retired to a hotel room – she wrote a suicide note. It did not say directly about the reason for the terrible act, but there was a direct hint of its connection with the wedding.

Ironically, the remains of Evelyn were seen not only by her loved ones, but also by millions of people around the world. At 10 a.m. on May 1, 1947, McHale bought a ticket to the observation deck of the 86th floor of the Empire State Building, a favorite place for New York suicides. At an altitude of 344 meters, the girl stood for a minute at the railing, admiring the huge city, then took off her purse, in which her last letter would later be found, and a fashionable coat.

After that, without hesitation, Evelyn stepped into the void. Her body was discovered immediately-police officer John Morrissey heard a crash and screams of horror and hurried to the scene. He saw a black Cadillac limousine with UN agency plates, on the sunken roof of which McHale's body lay.

After flying a third of a kilometer, the girl was supposed to turn into a terrible shapeless mess, scattered for several meters in different directions. But this did not happen – she looked as if she had carefully laid down among the twisted metal and glass fragments and just fell asleep.

There was no blood, no face distorted by suffering and horror. Evelyn's white-gloved hand seemed to be holding a necklace around her neck, and her legs were elegantly folded.

A student and avid photographer Robert Wiles, who happened to be nearby, pushed through the crowd and took several shots of Evelyn's body, one of which went down in history. The picture captured the girl four minutes after her death. It was called "The Most beautiful Suicide" and made McHale and Wiles famous.

Just two weeks later, the photo appeared on the cover of Life magazine, and after that, the image of a beautiful suicide in a serene pose became one of the most popular images in art.

It was used in his film "Suicide" by Andy Warhol, several musical artists put it on the covers of their albums, and the creators of advertising are shamelessly exploiting it to this day.

As for Evelyn McHale, her request was fulfilled and the body was cremated, and the ashes were scattered, leaving no burial place. They say that the morgue workers with great difficulty managed to take the girl's body and load it into a van. There was not a single whole bone and organ in it, and it felt like a gel.

By the way, Evelyn still had a chance to survive, although very small. In 1979, a certain Elvita Adams, disappointed in life, rushed from the same ill-fated 86th floor landing. A strong gust of wind threw her onto the ledge of the 85th floor and the woman escaped with only a broken arm. Adams didn't think about suicide anymore.