Here is a recent crazy story … very crazy. This one is from March of 1995, so I’m guessing there are a few of you who remember this.

In the spring of that year, Margaret Davis King, 36, had arrived in Washington from Arkansas to get back custody of her children.

She was a homeless and mentally ill mother of three, in town to speak to a government clerk about her children. The Washington Post reported that Margaret had religious delusions that she was related to Jesus and that she claimed to receive messages directly from God.

Her mauled and unrecognizable body was discovered early one Saturday morning by a zoo worker. Margaret had climbed into the lion’s habitat after the zoo closed and that was the end of her.

The mutilated remains of the woman, Margaret Davis King, 36, a transient from Arkansas with a history of mental illness and religious delusions, were discovered by a zoo worker about 7 a.m. Saturday in the lions’ well-protected outdoor habitat, according to authorities. At a news conference yesterday, D.C. Medical Examiner Joye M. Carter and other officials said they have concluded that King intentionally climbed over a 3 1/2-foot barrier, crossed a four-foot-wide dirt buffer, dropped down a nine-foot wall into a water-filled moat, swam 26 feet across the moat and emerged in the lions’ landscaped, terraced habitat.

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Once across the moat, King encountered two healthy African lions, a young adult male and a middle-aged female. The male, Tana, weighs 450 pounds and the female, Asha, weighs about 300 pounds. “We can’t say exactly what happened, as none of us was there at that scene,” Carter said. But King’s injuries left little to the imagination. Police said she was battered and shredded so violently that her fingerprints were gone and her face was almost unrecognizable.

“The cause of death has been ruled as sharp force and blunt force injuries, associated with {massive blood loss} and soft tissue loss,” Carter said, adding that “certainly this was not an instantaneous death. . . . This was certainly a death that occurred over several minutes.”

Although the death was ruled a suicide, Carter and other officials were unable to say for certain that King entered the lions’ enclosure with the intent of ending her life; they only could say that it was a suicidal act.

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Police speculated that King’s decision to enter the lions’ den may have been tied to her religious ideas. In ancient Rome, for example, Christians were thrown to lions as punishment for practicing their faith, and in the Old Testament, the Judean exile Daniel is condemned to a lion pit by the Babylonian king but survives unscathed because of his belief in God. However, police said, they may never learn for sure what motivated King.

This sounds like an awful way to go, even worse than the poor woman that drank acid.