Fatal Knifecrime Island Stabbing A Novelty Mystery

“It seems to me that it can’t have been a single stab wound. He seems to have worked on it. The pencil was blunt.”
-East Sussex (UK) coroner Alan Craze discusses the strange death of Jeffrey Burton. Burton, a 57-year-old window cleaner, “died after stabbing himself in the groin repeatedly with a jumbo souvenir pencil.” The case was recorded as an “open verdict,” a ruling indicating that while the death was suspicious, no final deliberation could be made as to whether or not it was suicide.