Credit: Dangerous Minds

Look, if you ever have to go to a doctor for an embarrassing reason, even one to do with the weird, experimental sex you’ve been trying out, just know that you’re probably not the worst thing they’ve encountered that day. Just stand up straight, look ’em straight in the eye and admit what happened. It’s in everyone’s best interest, especially if the person hurt is at risk of death.

After all, if the worst-case scenario happens and all your worst fears come true, you’re not going to worry that the doctors will break the Hippocratic Oath to talk about you the next time they’re at the pub. Not just because that might be sometime in the next three years if their schedule really chills out. No, it’s because that wine bottle you stuck somewhere a wine bottle really shouldn’t be, or those electric volts you ran through your partner’s nipples could lead to the death of someone you love.

This was the case with Toby Robert Taylor, a citizen of York County, Pennsylvania, in 2008 – he rushed his wife to the hospital, claiming that she had electrocuted herself while drying her hair after a shower. However, as 911 operators were taking the call, some things didn’t add up.

In describing the scene, Taylor said that he had dressed his wife, Kirsten, himself. He had also mentioned that he’d put the hairdryer away. All after discovering her unconscious body in the bathroom. Suspicious much?

Thus, when Kirsten arrived at the hospital, there was a detective waiting to investigate his story. That’s when Taylor broke and told the whole story. He and his wife engaged in, as he put it, “weird sexual behaviours”. Their most common practise being an extremely dangerous form of BDSM where he would attach clamps to her nipples, plug the cord into an electric strip and shock her. On that night, he maintained that she had initiated their scene himself and began shocking herself first.

Then he joined in, taping her mouth shut and shocking her three or four more times before she passed out… At first, Taylor thought it was part of the scene, but then she remained unresponsive, even though she was still breathing.

So he picked her up and tried to take her to the hospital himself, but she stopped breathing on the way… He called 911 and began CPR, her time of death was listed as 11:25pm that night, and within 90 minutes of the two of them leaving their work that evening, a young woman was dead.

A year afterwards, Taylor was acquitted of first-degree murder, but found guilty of third-degree murder along with reckless endangerment and involuntary manslaughter – he attempted to get paroled many years later, but his appeal was turned down… This wasn’t a practise they were experimenting with either- according to Taylor, they had been engaging in this act for the past two years, and it had never gone wrong before.

All the more proof that when you’re engaging in high-stakes play like this, there is no such thing as too careful. The risks are profound, and the harder you go, death is a very real possibility, no matter how long you’ve been taking them for. You might think you’re in control, but as any Dom worth their salt should know, you’re really not.