Christopher Logue, Christopher
Logue’s True Stories from Private Eye (London: A. P. Rushton, 1973), p. 23.
The town of Debreczen in north-west Hungary was the
home of a man called Janos Dey.
Dey was married to a nagging wife. As he did not want
to get rid of her he spent a good deal of his time considering how she could be
brought to her senses. Finally he evolved a plan in which fear and guilt would
play important roles.
He would fake a suicide.
Dey constructed a safety harness and climbed into it
while his wife was doing her shopping. Shortly before she was due back he got
into the harness and suspended himself, a convincing corpse, from the ceiling
of their bedroom.
His wife returned, and seeing what she believed to be
her dead husband, she screamed and fainted.
The women living next door heard the scream. She
hurried over to see what had happened.
She found what she thought were two corpses.
Not one to miss an opportunity the woman decided to
loot the flat before she fetched the police.
As she was slipping out of the bedroom with various
items under her arm, the hanging corpse lifted its foot and gave her a good
kick.
So great was the shock she died of a heart attack.
Dey was acquitted on a charge of manslaughter. He told
the court that his wife’s nagging had stopped.