California police discover skull of man thought to have killed himself by guillotine

A California man killed himself with a makeshift guillotine in an unusual and macabre case that resulted in the arrest of an alleged squatter who police say tampered with human remains.

Officials eventually determined the skull, which had scrape marks on it and a wire handle, was that of Enger. The 62-year-old was last seen alive in July 2019 when he was treated at a local hospital for a head injury that police now suspect resulted from a failed attempt to use the homemade guillotine device. Police think he died by suicide using the contraption, but that his remains, at least initially, went undiscovered and his home was empty until a man named Robert Melvin Ross III started squatting there in 2020.