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In 2002, divers found M.K.’s body at the bottom of an underwater cave in Croatia, 54 meters (177 ft) below the surface. He was alone, but his diving mask had been removed—and there was a 30-centimeter (12 in) knife lodged into his chest.
At first, the police investigated it as a murder. M.K. had gone cave diving with friends, and the police began to suspect that one of them had stabbed him and thrown him overboard to hide the body. Forensics, though, revealed a truth that was more chilling than any murder.
M.K. had gotten lost in the maze of the cave, and his oxygen ran out. With no air left, he started drowning. He swam up to an air bubble between two rocks and tried to breathe it in, but it wasn’t enough to save him. He would die here, he realized, and it would be a horrible and painful death.
The pain of drowning was too much to bear. M.K. stabbed himself in the chest with his own knife to escape the agony.
