The mysterious death of a Florida man was solved by piecing together an elaborate suicide plot that included a weather balloon hoisting a gun into the sky. Palm Beach Gardens police began investigating the death of Alan Jay Abrahamson as a homicide. His body was in a field near his country club home with a bullet wound to his chest. Abrahamson, known to carry a lot of cash, but there was nothing in his wallet and his watch was missing. Police found no weapon and no shell casings. A $3,000 reward drew no leads, and as time went on, police had more questions than answers. Surveillance video obtained a few days after the death showed Abrahamson’s last moments. Wearing a long-sleeve sweatshirt, shorts, sneakers and a blue ball cap, he walked off camera with something in his left hand. About 37 minutes passed, and then a gunshot was heard. What happened during those 37 minutes? An email found on Abrahamson's phone suggested he bought a weather balloon and helium tanks, a purchase none of his friends could explain. Police began to suspect Abrahamson’s death might have been a suicide. The working theory became that he tied a gun to a string, attached it to the weather balloon, and once the shot was fired, the balloon carried the weapon away from the scene. A blood stain on Abrahamson’s sweatshirt appeared to support the claim: a long thin line of blood had traveled up, indicating something was in the blood and dragged across to the top of the shirt. During their investigation, police came across an episode of CSI: Las Vegas from 2003 showing a character who staged a homicide by tying a gun to helium-filled balloons to carry the gun away from the scene. To support investigators’ theory, they found searches on Abrahamson’s computer on ways to commit suicide, guns, and various ways a weather balloon could assist. Investigators determined that the weather balloon likely burst somewhere north of the Bahamas in the Atlantic Ocean, and the case was closed.
