ON THIS DAY IN WEIRD

On This Day in Weird, January 9...

2007: British author/artist Richard Horne dies at his home Burra, Scotland, in a bizarre assisted suicide pact with wife Mandy, who suffered from multiple sclerosis. Among his several books, written at "Harry Horse," Horne published the illustrated children's book Ogopogo, My Journey with the Loch Ness Monster in 1983. While some newspapers described the deaths as a "Romeo and Juliet scene," on July 13 the Daily Mail claims that Horne stabbed his wife thirty times before killing their dog Roo and other pets, then stabbed himself until he also bled to death. Two years later, after interviewing Horne's relatives, actor Tam Dean Burn called the Daily's Mail's description "a cruel distortion." Horne was 47 years old.

Harry Horne with Roo