Man tries to fake own murder with gun tied to weather baloon

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Victim: Alan J. Abrahamson. A well-liked man, by the accounts of friends and family. Ostensibly happy, according to the same.

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It was a windy morning, still climbing toward the 70s. He wore a sweatshirt, ball cap and shorts, passing the gate and walking out of the camera frame at 5:53 a.m.

He seemed to be carrying something in his left hand, police noticed. What? Too dark to make out.

Exactly 37 minutes later, the surveillance camera recorded the sound of a gunshot, then silence.

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Abrahamson still had his phone and his wallet — though a binder clip he commonly used to carry several hundred dollars in cash was empty. A watch that his wife said he usually wore also was missing. The index finger of his left hand was extended, detectives noted before the body was carried away.

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A preliminary search of Alan Abrahamson’s emails turned up a curious email regarding an order he had placed on Christmas Day 2017 from an online science supply company. “Weather Balloon, $55.00, 600 g, x1.”

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In Abrahamson’s Google Maps history, investigators discovered that between his typical morning walks to Starbucks and various errands, he had visited an industrial supply store in West Palm Beach two days before his death.

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“Det. [Bryan] Broehm theorized that it possibly was not a homicide, but possibly a suicide,” an investigator wrote in the report. “That he tied a gun to a string, and attached it to the weather balloon, and once the shot was fired the weather balloon ascended carrying the weapon from the scene.”

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Police researchers could find only two cases of such a thing being attempted, both somewhat ridiculous. A man had tried to fake his murder in the New Mexico desert in 2008 — but his bundle of helium balloons had merely carried the gun into a cactus not far from his body.

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The only other example detectives could find of someone managing to balloon a weapon out of a crime scene was from 2003 — on an episode of the fictional TV show “CSI: Las Vegas.”

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