By Seamus McGraw
(Continued)
Kristin Bean Had Hoped to Reconcile With Her Estranged Husband.
Kevin Bean's attorney, Emmanuel Dimitriou, insists that Bean did not assault his wife, arguing instead that the evidence — including the fact that blood stains were found only on the back of his shirt — proves that. He also contends that Kristin Bean's wounds were self inflicted, the desperate act of an emotionally unstable woman.
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| Attorney Emmanuel Dimitriou |
But William R. Bernhart, Kristin Bean's lawyer, has said that the woman hoped to reconcile with her husband and had planned to invoke her right not to testify against Bean at the March 21 hearing.
But two days before that hearing, she was found dead.
By all appearances, she had hanged herself. That in itself was intriguing. Suicide by hanging is a method that, according to most studies, tends to be used most often by men, while statistically, women tend to gravitate toward less-dramatic techniques like pills and poisons, though it is not unheard of for a woman to hang herself.
According to sources familiar with the case, the woman had not expressed suicidal intentions, and had not behaved particularly strangely in the hours leading up to her death. Nor was she alone, sources said. Her parents were with her at her home when she left the house. Her mother found her a short time later, hanging from a rafter in a gristmill on the property.
The family called 911 and ambulance drivers raced to the scene. When her family cut her down, they sliced the rope into three pieces, inadvertently providing the fodder for one of the most enduring legends surrounding the case, the erroneous notion that Kristin Bean was found hanged with three ropes. "That's just not true," the coroner said. "It got in pieces ... because of the way she was cut down."
The woman was pronounced dead at Reading Hospital.
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