A couple, well-known New York artists, decamp to L.A., where she intends to direct a movie about a rock star trying to leave a cult. Beck, a friend, signs on, then (possibly under pressure) drops out. Their behavior grows strange, and they rant of constant harassment by Scientologists. They return to New York—to die.

Scientist George Price discovered an equation for altruism. First he let go of his possessions. Then he took his own life.

Why did a man travel 200 miles to die in a national park?

The view from a low point.

On September 14, 2001, Lyle Stevik checked into the Lake Quinault Inn. Three days later, the motel’s housekeeper found him dead. But “Lyle Stevik,” it turns out, was an alias.

A woman recalls an endless lifetime of near-death experiences.

The story behind an online gamer’s suicide.

The final days of the last Navy SEAL to die in Afghanistan.

Why are so many teenagers killing themselves in Palo Alto?

While on a string of tour dates opening for Radiohead, interaction between Mark Linkous’ antidepressants and the Rohypnol he took to sleep caused him to pass out. A hotel maid found him the next morning bent into a position where his legs had been cut off from circulation. When they untangled, built-up potassium shot from his lower body upward, triggering a harmful chain reaction that caused a heart attack and kidney failure.

Struggling with depression and thoughts of suicide, Army officer Lawrence Franks went AWOL. Five years later, he reappeared as Christopher Flaherty, a member of the French Foreign Legion who served three tours in Africa. Then he was court-martialed.

One Marine battalion has had four members kill themselves in just the last year. The soldiers have jury-rigged a system of Facebook notifications and Google spreadsheets to try to stop it.

The search for an Iraq veteran on the brink of suicide.

Only after buying a new home did the Milliken family learn something terrible had happened in it.

The poet died when he was hit by a car in 1965. Everything else about his demise is a mystery.

In Guyana after the Jonestown massacre, with the survivors and the dead.

After a lab linked to him was raided, James Jeffrey Bradstreet’s body was found with a bullet wound to the chest. His death was ruled a suicide, but other theories abound.

In 1952, Abe Feller, the U.N.’s first General Counsel, jumped to his death. More than 50 years later, his great nephew tries to figure out why.

How one community is struggling to understand and respond to a cluster of suicides.

Doc was a medical student in his 40s, but he spent his nights with the teenagers who hung around his San Antonion apartment complex, buying them drugs and booze. The first time he asked one of them to ritualistically kill him, they laughed it off. He would ask again.

Family problems and a myriad of solutions.

"I don’t know if my husband and I are on the way to church or a hangover. It is too early in the drive to tell. The first Thursday of every month, my husband’s sister comes over to watch the kids. They are too old for a sitter, but the older one keeps trying to kill herself and we don’t want to risk it. Always keep an eye on them, I tell my sister-in-law. Don’t leave them alone for a second, not even to ice a cake, organize a closet, dry the dishes, say a prayer."

An American writer living in Japan, unread and underpublished, sends an email to a group of writers he doesn’t know informing them that he is committing suicide.

How solitary confinement can lead to suicide.

Last summer, Gia Allemand took her own life in a New Orleans apartment complex. The first person on the scene was her boyfriend, NBA star Ryan Anderson. This is the story of how he survived.

L’Wren Scott went from bullied Mormon teen to international model to Hollywood stylist to fashion designer, becoming Mick Jagger’s girlfriend in the process. In March, she took her own life.