Has anyone ever been smothered with a pillow in real life?
It happens all the time in fiction, but I’ve tried holding a pillow tight over my own face (as an experiment, not as a suicide attempt), and I’ve always been able to get sufficient air in.
But maybe that’s because I have a larger than average nose.
I went to crimelibrary.com to research your question. Have you ever read articles there? Some evil, evil stories. I saw that Marybeth Tinning killed her children through pillow suffocation. Deanna Laney did too in 2003. She was a friend of Andrea Yates who drowned her kids in 2001.
One article on mothers who kill their children argues: “The other reason women choose their own children as targets is that children are easier for females to physically handle, and it is easier for a woman to get away with this kind of a crime. Male serial killers usually pick easy targets: small women, children, the elderly, or inebriated people. Female killers have a smaller choice of people they can control. One very good group is babies. They don’t fight back, they are readily available, and they only require a pillow to do the job.”
Another article on Black Widows suggests pillows and drugs are good for leaving little evidence behind, especially for nurses who have plenty of drugs on hand. My impression is that murderers don’t choose pillows as their first weapons, but maybe their second ones.
Senator E. Kennedy is introducing legislation calling for registration of all pillows.
OK. I don’t understand it, but then I don’t understand many things in heaven and earth.