DR. JACQUELYN KOTARAC'S DEATH INSIDE A CHIMNEY, CRAZY IN LOVE OR CRAZED OUT IN LOVE?

Love may be blind some people say, but to many other more reasonable minds, it sees with a 20-20 vision and sometimes with an additional eye. Love may be unconditional to some people, but to many other more rational human-beings, it is heavily conditional, front and back; the reason why there is pre-nuptial agreements. Love is also said to be always forgiving; but we beg to qualify it as not in all circumstances such as when it leads to the death of the offending spouse/partner in the hands of the unforgiving one.

But of all the things love may be, there is one thing love certainly is not - it is not idiotic or imbecilic. A Bakersfield California USA lady medical doctor who wanted to prove love wrong on this last count, just found out the hard-way as she suffocated in a chimney trying to catch her boyfriend pants-down in the act? Icheoku says if only the dead medical doctor had taken some breath, paused for a moment to convince herself that what you don't know does not hurt; instead of playing an infamous detective who barreled herself through a smoke chimney stark just to spring on a boyfriend who she was not even married to. What a control-freak this daughter of Eve was who would even think about such an invasion through the chimney; and you wonder why so many men have hung on to their bachelorhood for so long or better still became celibate or even turned gay. Unfortunately too, it appears that this medical doctor forgot the lessons she learnt in her Chemistry 101 class about carbon-monoxide and its killer-potentials; or did she not think or was not even thinking that her boyfriends chimney has capability of producing toxic carbon monoxide as well?

If a street-whore had done this, or even a less educated and/or little informed love-crazed woman, pursuing her boyfriend, not even her husband; may be Icheoku would begin to attempt an understanding that sometimes you have to be crazy to be in love? But for an M.D. - a 49 year old medical doctor with a somewhat thriving family practice, who was described by people who knew her as "a superb internist who often provided service and medication free of charge to her patients"; then Icheoku wonders out aloud how she passed her psychiatric evaluation before she obtained her medical licence? How can such an emotionally deprived woman be allowed to treat patients, if she did not possess the soundness of mind to distinguish between rationalism and stupidity as to jump into a working chimney with its attendant health hazards and/or carbon monoxide poisoning? Every attempt at finding some plausible ground to tilt the argument on the deceased medical doctors' side only succeeds in one thing only - condemning her for her irrationality and crazed out stupidity; since no reasonable person, especially one with her background would just jump off the cliff expecting that some magical hands somewhere will just reach out and save her sorry arse from a certain death. Even chimney rats and firemen who foray into chimneys treat is as a hazardous place and wear proper protective coverings to thwart the effect of carbon compounds found in abundance therein especially firewood-burning chimney like the one under advisement here.

According to the story, internist Jacquelyn Kotarac, M.D. fury as hell, rushed to her boyfriend, 58 year old William Moodie's house, following an argument or a tip-off (investigation is still continuing) to personally confront him over whatever their beef was. Sensing danger and tired of her constant bitching and for fear of his life, the boyfriend locked himself inside the house and refused to open the door to let her in. What did the incensed doctor do, she got a shovel and tried in vain to pry the door to the house open with it; but when her shovel measure did not yield the desired result of letting her hands get hold of her boyfriend inside the house, another dumb idea crept into her medical brains. She found a ladder and climbed to the roof of the house to the chimney; she removed the chimney cap and in she went, in a her very last ever bad decision in life. Her plan was to slid into the house through the fireplace, James Bond 007 or even CSI style, and land a surprise mother of all attacks on her boyfriend? It appears that she must have watched too many Hollywood make-belief stories and now Icheoku really understands why her boyfriend was running so far away from her in the first place and avoiding a confrontation by all means possible. However, her luck ran out as she suffocated inside the shoot before she could make a landfall in her boyfriend's fireplace and her now slumped body got wedged inside it. It is instructive to note that the victim-boyfriend who she was probably planning to assault had earlier given her the slip while she was trying to shovel the door open; as he escaped through a discreet exit not covered by her trespassed and 'murderous' home invasion.

Since no one saw her go inside the chimney nor taught that such a senseless act was possible her dead body was not discovered until few days later when nature had already gone to work on the cadaver with manifest early stages of decay. Her body was discovered when a house-sitter, traced the source of a stench in the house to the area of the fireplace where she also noticed some fluids dripping down unto the fireplace mantel. She further investigated the shoot with a flashlight and noticed a body, which later turned out to be Dr. Jacquelyn Kotarac's, wedged about two feet above the top of the interior of the fireplace opening. Arriving Firefighters and rescue/recovery team extracted the body from the chimney which they took apart to access the body. Admitted she was reported missing when she failed to show up for work but no one ever adverted their mind on the possibility that the chimney will be the prime suspect in her disappearance; although her car remained parked within the vicinity of the boyfriend's house.

According to one sympathizer, "Dr. Jacquelyn had her issues — she had her demons"; and Icheoku concurs that only a possessed human-being in dire need of an exorcism could so irrationally tunnel herself into a chimney just to catch-up with a disagreeing boyfriend. One also wonders if it was a case of her trying desperately to force her love on a disinterested and forlorn boyfriend; she was afterall 49 years old and unmarried, and may be pushing the issue of marriage to a breaking point. It reminds Icheoku of a story of one guy who was hitting on a girl and when this girl was becoming so unyielding with her refusal of his love supplications, had this boy bark, "anyway whether or not you like it, if you do not want my love, I will force my love on you". So was this doctor forcing an issue and accidentally misjudged her action to go inside the chimney or was it a deliberate act of suicide for not getting the bargain of her affection? Hopefully the investigation will provide the answers or at least clues to these questions and until then, Icheoku says, what a way of love and its unending tales of drama, woes and sorrows. Although no amount of rationalizing can explain what this medical doctor did as it is beyond pale for a thinking human-being to play a chimney-ninja in this manner, not being a professional. But out of the ashes of a ruin usually comes some moral lesson, which in Doctor Jacquelyn Kotarac's case is that she was not a good study of a person being 'crazy in love' as contemplated by Beyonce Knowles; hers was rather a person crazed-out in love in a strange case of a love gone awry.