A Voiceless Martyr

Near a Chicago off-ramp, a mentally-gifted man who suffered from bouts of depression made himself into a living torch as a protest against the war in Iraq. It took one week for officials to identify his body and to piece together the man's motive. Was this man a martyr or a suicide?

According to Malachi Ritscher, the victim, he was a martyr.

"Here is the statement I want to make: if I am required to pay for your barbaric war, I choose not to live in your world. I refuse to finance the mass murder of innocent civilians, who did nothing to threaten our country," wrote Ritscher in his suicide note. "... If one death can atone for anything, in any small way, to say to the world: I apologize for what we have done to you, I am ashamed for the mayhem and turmoil caused by my country."

According to mental health experts, he was a suicide.

Mental health experts say virtually no suicides occur without some kind of a diagnosable mental illness. But Ritscher's family disagrees about whether he had severe mental problems.

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His son, who shares the same name as his father, said his father was trying to cope with mental illness. Suicide seemed to be the next step, and the war was a way to give his death meaning.

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