ENDED LIFE WITH SHOTGUN.
"Put Me in Hole."
"Put me in a hole tomorrow."
Just those six words to indicate that he died by his own hand was the parting message to the world left by James Flanery, who committed suicide yesterday afternoon at Lee's Summit. After brooding for weeks over his ill health, Flanery, a former deputy sheriff of Jackson County, and member of a prominent Lee's Summit family, went to the home of an uncle, Ed Chrisman, about nine miles from Lee's Summit yesterday afternoon and obtained a shotgun on the pretext that he wished to go out hunting. A few minutes later his body was found in a little thicket, the head almost torn to pieces by a charge of buckshot.
Beside the body was a shotgun, both barrels of which had been recently discharged. A small forked stick near the left hand indicated that Flanery had placed the butt of the gun against the ground, with the muzzle at his head and pressed the triggers with the stick.
Near the body was a hastily scrawled not which read:
"Put me in a hole tomorrow."
Flanery was at one time prominent in local and county politics. His family was an influential one in the eastern part of the county and the man himself had at one time been a deputy sheriff. Of recent years he had been in bad health and he had threatened a number of times to kill himself. His relatives did not take the threats seriously, however.
As his death was a plain case of suicide, no coroner's inquest was ordered.
