This is my last post on this crime. But how on earth could I pass over this incredible detail in silence?

Then she sat next to him on the couch, Serpas said, in such a way that police believe she tried to stage her suicide to fall into his lap. She shot herself in the temple. Police think she fell into McNair’s lap, then gravity pulled her to the floor.

First, appearance was mattered most to young and poor Kazemi. Even the fear of death could not overpower her desire to be last seen on McNair’s lap. Beneath the blood and gore, there would be the peace of her repose on the dead man’s legs. But it seems that death was set on mirroring the relationship she had with McNair in life. She wanted to be on his lap, but gravity (here playing the role of reality) pulled her down to where the rich man always saw her—at his feet. In death as in life, players only love you when they’re playing.

Charles Mudede—who writes about film, books, music, and his life in Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, the USA, and the UK for The Stranger—was born near a steel plant in Kwe Kwe, Zimbabwe. He has no memory...

20 replies on “Re: Police Confirm McNair Death As Murder-Suicide”

  1. Maybe she wanted to BE on his lap, not be SEEN there. Why do you assume it was about appearance? Why do you always assume things when spinning your shallow, pseudo-intellectual, trite offerings?

  4. Read again – Charles said both be seen, and be. And it’s common for suicides to consider how they’ll be seen in death, it even often dictates the manner of death they choose.

  8. @1: I think that most people intuitively understand that the physical arrangement of a corpse is more about the appearance of the corpse to others, rather than the comfort or habits of the person the corpse belonged to. It’s not a big leap to infer that a person’s attempt to sculpt the scene of their death is about their wish to be seen and remembered in a certain way.

  9. Every man stepping out or thinking of it should read these posts of Charles’. You don’t mess around with the crazy, guys.

  12. re; the Players line.
    From Crazy Towns’ Players (only love you when they’re playing)

    One’s for the money,
    Two’s for the honeys
    Three’s for the pimp’s players
    And the playboy bunnies.
    You best believe I throw down.
    Ain’t no need to slow down
    You name the place and the time.
    Find Mr. Shifty at the showdown.
    Tearing you up.
    That’s why all the fly girls
    Just can’t get enough.
    Said I loved you,
    And you believed it was true.
    That’s hilarious.
    But your mother should have
    Warned you about
    Guys like us.

    there were other lines but “Crazy Town” certainly seems apt.

  13. Again, while this all sounds terribly poetic, I really must take exception to the presumptuousness (is that even a word?) of your last 2 posts on this. I think you need to concede that you know almost nothing about these people, their lives, their relationship, or the full circumstances that led to this awful tragedy. Your posts are nothing more than wild literary speculation, and are demeaning to the memory of these 2 people.

    You’ve been watching too much Law and Order Charles. Real life isn’t quite so easy to wrap up into a few pithy lines.

    Ps. I retract and apologise for the jibe in my comment yesterday calling your other post “maddeningly pretentious”. That was rude, so sorry (but you gotta admit, it was a bit pretentious – Harold Pinter?).

  16. @13: I think part of Charles’ point (if I may presume to speak for him) is that the kinds of narratives he is superimposing on this story are always present at some level when we talk about spectacles like this one.

    It’s not a peak into their hearts and minds so much as it expands on the stories we almost automatically build up around spectacular events.

    Of course we don’t know every thought she had when deciding to commit this crime. That’s not the point.

  20. I think she screwed up the whole ‘make it look like McNair shot us both’ thing when she put four bullets in him, not one. Pretty hard to live through three self-inflicted gunshot wounds to be able to give yourself a 4th.

    But going crazy will do that to your logical thinking ability.

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