UPS Executive Mark Samoline Commits Suicide After Rape Charge

It’s been reported that 50-Year-Old Colonel Mark Warren Samoline of Duluth, Georgia has committed suicide after having been charged with the rape of a student at Indiana University in Bloomington.

According to the AJC in Atlanta, Samoline was a Vice President of UPS as well as a Colonel in the Marine Corp Reserves. By most accounts I’ve been able to find Samoline was a fine upstanding member of society. How then did the rape charges come about?

From what I have been able to gather Samoline, who was separated from his wife at the time of his untimely death, was visiting his daughter at college. Her roommate was allegedly drunk and Samoline reportedly took advantage of the fact as well as the alleged fact that his daughter wasn’t home at the time. According to attorneys for Samoline he was innocent of the rape charge and said that the sex was consensual. The victim did have a rape kit done and after his arrest Samoline gave a DNA sample in order for the victim to make sure he didn’t have any STDs.

After the charges UPS suspended him pending an investigation. According to his attorneys Samoline had gotten very depressed about the alleged crime as well as attention from “online crime blogs” and the media. Once I started checking out Google I find that one crime blog covered it and although the site appears to be down now the cached version of the page doesn’t show much more than a single paragraph in the initial entry. The same thing goes for the rest of the media sources. It seems that most of the stories and updates on the rape were written after he committed suicide. So did he kill himself out of guilt over the crime or was he really depressed about the attention, or lack thereof?

Regardless of what really happened, this is a huge tragedy for Mark Samoline’s family as well as that of the alleged victim and her family. Here’s to hoping the old saying about time healing old wounds comes true for all of the victims in this case.