Hsu Sent Suicide Note [Update: Blaming Obama]

From WSJ's Washington Wire:

Before Democratic fund-raiser Norman Hsu skipped a court hearing and temporarily vanished last week, he typed out a suicide note and sent copies to several acquaintances and charitable organizations, according to people who received it.

The one-page note, signed by Hsu, “very explicitly said he intended to commit suicide,” said one of the recipients in an account corroborated by others, including law-enforcement officials. Hsu also apologized for putting anybody “through inconvenience or trouble,” the recipient said.

The letter, which began, “To whom it may concern,” arrived by FedEx at the addresses of several recipients last Thursday, the day after Hsu disappeared.

As the letters arrived, Hsu was on a Chicago-bound train from California. He fell ill and was taken to St. Mary’s Hospital in Grand Junction, Colo., where he was arrested.

After spending nearly a week in the hospital following the apparent suicide attempt, Hsu has been released and booked into the local jail.

Yesterday afternoon, his doctors released him without making a statement on his case, citing privacy laws. About 6:30 p.m. local time he was booked at the Mesa County Jail, the sheriff's office said. He will go before a Mesa County judge this afternoon to hear the charges against him. A separate extradition hearing will follow.

Here's what I don't get - if Hsu was indeed suicidal over the "wave of press in recent weeks that raised questions about his political fund-raising and business activities," and he FedExed the suicide note before getting on the train with a fistful of pills, why the coordinated attempts at suicide and unlawful flight?  Was one backup, in case the other didn't work?

Happily, neither did.  Ironically, each seems to have thwarted the other.  Were he in a hotel room or otherwise secluded, he might not have received medical attention and could well have died.  And were he not hopped up pills, he likely wouldn't have stripped half naked and "freaked out" on the train, calling attention to himself and bringing about his arrest.

And maybe it's foolish to assume he was thinking rationally at the time, but I just don't understand the simultaneous fleeing and attempting suicide, especially given that the letters sent prior to his departure suggest it wasn't a spontaneous on-the-lam desperate act, but something he had planned before he lit out.

I'll go ahead and make the lay-up of a prediction that we haven't heard the full story yet.

---

Update:  Sounds like one of the recipients on Hsu's suicide distribution list went Googling while the fugitive's whereabouts were still unknown.

Update:  According to one of the recipients, Hsu lamented the fact that his recent troubles began when articles (presumably meaning the original Wall Street Journal article that first broke the story two weeks ago) were planted "by a politician who pledged 'hope and change'."  Acknowledging the tacit identification, but denying involvement, an Obama spokesman called Hsu's charge "a sad and baseless allegation."