Gehring used bedsheet to kill himself

Manuel Gehring, the New Hampshire man accused of murdering his two children and burying their bodies in the Midwest, strangled himself in his jail cell bed early Thursday by wrapping part of his bedsheet around his neck, state authorities said yesterday.

In detailing for the first time the circumstances surrounding Gehring's death, Simon Brown, a senior assistant attorney general, said Gehring apparently tied one end of the bedsheet to his feet, which he pushed down to tighten the noose.

"That's how he increased the pressure on his neck," Brown said.

Gehring was alone in his cell at the time.

Brown also said that hours before he killed himself Gehring was transferred from the general population at the Merrimack County House of Corrections to the segregated custody unit, where instead of having a roommate he bunked alone.

The move came after Gehring allegedly violated jail rules, Brown said. While he declined to describe the violation, Brown said it did not involve an altercation with a guard or another inmate.

When the corrections staff checked on Gehring at 11:30 that night, Gehring complied with a standing head count, Brown said. Visual checks of his cell at 1 a.m. and 2:45 a.m. revealed nothing suspicious, he said.

But at 4:25 a.m., when Gehring was asked to stand for another head count, he did not respond. Corrections staff investigated and discovered Gehring "laying on his bunk covered by his blanket with portions of his bedsheet wrapped around his neck," according to a news release.

An exact time of death is not known. Brown said law enforcement officials are still investigating the circumstances around Gehring's death.

Despite Gehring's attorneys saying that he had long suffered from severe undiagnosed depression, Brown said, he was not on suicide watch at the time of his death. Brown did not know whether Gehring had ever been on suicide watch since he was incarcerated last summer after his arrest in Gilroy, Calif., where he had driven after allegedly shooting his two children following a July 4 fireworks show in Concord, N.H.

Investigators believe Gehring killed his children in the van while still in New Hampshire and buried them somewhere along Interstate 80 in Ohio. Gehring traveled with authorities during extensive searches, providing details about what he remembered of the burial site, but the bodies of Sarah, 14, and Philip, 11, have not been found.

Some investigators and the children's mother, according to her lawyer, fear that Gehring's death means that authorities have lost the best chance to find the children's grave.

Sheriff Greg Dhaene, who held Gehring in his LaGrange County, Ind., jail in July when the area was being searched, said earlier this week, "It is certainly going to be a hindrance, because he would be the person with the best knowledge of where those children are."

Gehring, who pleaded not guilty to charges that he killed his children, had been scheduled to go on trial on Sept. 7.