The Facts and Fictions of a ‘Happy’ Suicide Pact

The deaths of an obscure Anaheim couple were fascinating enough to make the national news.

Within hours after the bodies of Doug and Dana Ridenour were discovered, radio and television stations around the Southland were reporting that a well-off real estate team cheated old age by taking their lives while still at the top of their game.

Despite a loving relationship and a happy, prosperous life, Doug Ridenour shot his wife in the head with a shotgun, did the same to their beloved poodles and then turned the weapon on himself.

They had planned the double suicide for many months, maybe even years, tying up loose ends, making a suicide videotape and paying for their own cremations before undertaking their final act of love together.

At least that was what the police told reporters, who went about their business that day privately shaking their heads in disbelief.

It seems that the concept of two happy people committing suicide because their life together was at an all-time high seemed so bizarre that the story bothered the reporters who covered it more than the usual homicide case. It also nagged at the consciences of many of those who heard or read about the Ridenours.

The reason the story was so incomprehensible, as it turned out, was because it was wrong.

“If anybody asks, tell them we were happy,” were Doug Ridenour’s final words in the videotape.

Dutiful perhaps to the request, police and family members described the Ridenours as a couple content up to the moment of their death. They did that despite knowing that the couple were behind in their taxes and that Dana did not appear to be a willing accomplice in parts of the suicide videotape.

Reporters share some responsibility in putting out bogus information that day. For instance, one international wire service erred by reporting that the Ridenours were wealthy Anaheim Hills real estate investors who lived in a million-dollar home.

The Ridenours were not rich and the house was a drab-looking single-story home in a middle-income neighborhood.

But for the most part, broadcast and print reporters painstakingly and accurately reported the persistent claim that the Ridenours, in their 40s, were content with their life, but wanted to die before they got too old.

The story generated letters to the editor from pastors, arm-chair psychologists and others who tried to make sense of that information.

And for days after the story broke, I received a flood of calls from readers, radio talk show hosts and representatives from the entertainment industry who mulled whether a happy suicide was worthy of a movie of the week.

I later wondered what could have been done to make the story more accurate and to not be a party to misleading the readers, as we did.

But the fact remains that I and other reporters who deal with institutions such as city halls and police stations every day are subject to the source. And despite the high-sounding principles we learned in journalism school, we all too often report news stories that, after closer inspection, are not what they seemed.

The concept that a story is deeper and more complicated than it appears at first glance is common. A news event breaking in the morning may go in a totally different direction in the afternoon.

That is an occupational hazard. And we in the news business learn to deal with the changing scope of events as the day goes by.

But I become particularly bothered when I think about the Ridenour case because of the wide attention it received at the time and the consternation it caused.

I must have recapped the story dozens of times to family, friends and anyone else who wanted to put meaning to a suicide pact that seemed to fly in the face of conventional psychology theory.

In the end, the Ridenours were as confused and unhappy about their lot as others who have turned to suicide. The theories remain intact.

Since then, I sometimes wonder if I am getting the true story, especially when I am busily typing up notes about a murder case. But I guess that gets as brain-racking as wondering how a happy couple could end their lives.