Pair left Facebook messages before hangings, but mystery still surrounds apparent joint suicide attempt

By Rachel Hatzipanagos and Tonya Alanez
Sun-Sentinel Staff Writers

Updated: 8:53 a.m. Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Posted: 8:34 a.m. Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Hours before they hanged themselves, the young couple posted foreboding messages on their Facebook pages.

"Momma, its not your fault," Joseph M. Brown, 22, wrote at 4:39 a.m. Monday.

About an hour earlier, Nikole Baldomero, known as Nikayla, 24, posted that she was "at peace."

Just before 7 a.m. Monday, a jogger discovered them dangling from the truss of a picnic pavilion in Parkland's Terramar Park.

Brown, a Parkland resident and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School graduate, did not survive. He was pronounced dead at Northwest Medical Center.

Baldomero, an aspiring actress and singer from Coconut Creek whose Facebook page says she attends Florida Atlantic University, remained in critical condition Tuesday in the intensive care unit at West Boca Medical Center, a hospital spokesman said.

What drove two young people to try to end their lives in a pleasant, public setting in a normally placid upscale residential community of Broward County is still veiled in mystery.

Were the two in love? Were drugs or other mind-altering substances involved? The investigation is ongoing.

"This is not a Romeo and Juliet thing," said Dani Moschella, a Broward Sheriff's Office spokeswoman. But one acquaintance told the Sun Sentinel that Brown and Baldomero had been romantically involved for about a month.

"No one was expecting anything like this," said Brittany Potter, 19, another friend who had known Brown for about two years and dated him before she went away to college. "He was smart and charming. He had some rough patches, but we all thought he would pull through."

Potter declined to elaborate on Brown's struggles, other than to say he had been recently looking for work as a diesel mechanic. "It's not my place to say," she said.

Moschella, the sheriff's office spokeswoman, described Brown and Baldomero as just friends. She declined to comment on the motive, or confirm or deny that there was a suicide note, because the detective work is still at an early stage.

But in officials' minds, there was absolutely no doubt about what the two young people set out to do in the early morning hours of Monday. The Broward Medical Examiner's Office ruled Brown's death a suicide; the Broward Sheriff's Office said Baldomero had attempted to kill herself.

Though unassociated with the case, one nationally known specialist on suicide said it was very improbable there was not a romantic relationship between the two.

"It's highly unlikely that they were just friends," said Dr. Douglas G. Jacobs, a Harvard Medical School associate clinical professor of psychiatry. "This would be classified as a suicide pact. It usually involves intense bonding in a relationship, usually intimate."

Suicide pacts are a rarity among the nation's 30,000 annual suicides, accounting for less than 0.5 percent, Jacobs said. They are often triggered by the ending of a relationship and the couple usually shares underlying pathologies, such as depression, a history of drug abuse, or suicide attempts or threats.

"It's an irreversible method; that's the point," Jacobs said. "The fact that they did it in a public setting, it's a way of them sort of going out having their names in lights. They want to be noticed, maybe they wanted society to feel that they were perhaps victims."

Hanging, after shooting, is the most common method of suicide in the 10 to 24 age group, accounting for 39 percent of the deaths, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

More young people survive suicide attempts than actually die, but at 83 percent compared to 17 percent, young males die more often than females, according to the center.

On Tuesday afternoon, a woman wearing a West Boca Medical Center visitor's badge at Baldomero's home declined to comment.

The 24-year-old's Twitter page reflects a highly sociable woman's rounds of beach "BeerBQs," pool parties, midnight movies and South Beach clubs.

"Still no beddybye," she posted at 7:07 a.m. on May 6.

On June 13, she announced that she was "single as a dollar baby."

In pursuit of her acting ambitions, Baldomero won a lead role as Blue Comet in a superhero movie spoof, "Lucky Streak and the Crime Fighters," which premiered in Miami last month at Florida SuperCon, the annual festival of comic book, anime and sci-fi enthusiasts.

On her Facebook page, friends and family posted their wishes for her survival.

"I am sending my prayers, positivity, and well wishes your way," one friend wrote on her wall. "There are so many people rooting for you."

On Tuesday evening, a vigil was held at the Parkland park where Brown ended his life and Baldomero tried to do the same. More than a dozen people attended, but told a reporter they were too distraught to talk about their friends.

Though Brown had mentioned personal problems, Potter said, her "loveable, friendly, smart" pal with "the most beautiful eyes and smile" had assured friends that, of late, things were on the upswing.

"He was telling people things were getting better," Potter said. "That's why no one had a clue."

But 6 1/2 half hours before his final Facebook posting, he again alluded to his dark frame of mind: "You'll be sorry when imgone."

From: http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/crime/pair-left-facebook-messages-before-hangings-but-mystery-814620.html?cxntlid=cmg_cntnt_rss