("Quid coniuratio est?")
ARKANCIDE
[CN -- Thanks to a CN reader for sending me the following:]
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Tribune Review, 11/4/94- HOSPITAL WORKERS DISPUTE SUICIDE FINDING IN PAULA JONES-RELATED CASE- Several co-workers of a deceased woman with apparent links to the Paula Jones case have serious doubts as to the accuracy of an official coroner's report which concludes that she committed suicide.
Jones is the former Arkansas state employee who is suing President Clinton on charges he sexually harassed her. The deceased woman, Kathy Ferguson, 38, was the ex-wife of an Arkansas state trooper, Danny Ferguson, who is co-defendant in Jones' suit. Jones alleges that it was Trooper Ferguson who asked her to meet Clinton at a hotel room; and that it was he who stood guard at the door as Clinton made sexual advances toward her. Last May, in Sherwood, Ark, Kathy Ferguson was found dead of a gunshot wound in the apartment of her boyfriend who himself, in a bizarre twist of an already strange case, was to die shortly thereafter. Police ruled Ferguson's death a "suicide."
But interviews with six hospital colleagues indicate that Arkansas officals seem to have overlooked critical information relating to her wounds.
Police say that Ferguson, despondent over a breakup with the boyfriend, Bill Shelton, shot herself while sitting on Shelton's couch. They say that Ferguson's clothing was found packed in shopping bags. According to police reports, Ferguson was found in a sitting position on the couch, slumped slightly to the right. A gun, said to be Shelton's, was found on the floor directly below her right hand, which rested at her side on the edge of a cushion. Just over a month after her death, Shelton 31, a Sherwood police officer, was found dead of a gunshot wound behind the right ear, with his body sprawled across Ferguson's grave. The police say that he too, committed suicide. Ferguson's suspicious death, occuring just four days after Jones filed her lawsuit against President Clinton on May 6, has been the source of much speculation in Arkansas, as well as on the national talk radio circuit.
But at Little Rock's Baptist Memorial Medical Center, where Kathy Ferguson worked as a unit secretary, there is much more than idle speculation. On one occasion, three Baptist Memorial nurses and a nurse's aide who worked with Ferguson viewed their colleague's body at Ruson's funeral Home in Sherwood and their observations are in decided conflict with the official ruling: that Ferguson fired a .380 semiautomatic pistol into her right temple, with the bullet exiting her left temple.
One nurse, an RN whose almost 15 years experience includes emergency room duty, noted that, curiously, the woman's right temple "was pretty much blown away. Usually exit wounds blow out and entry wounds are clean," she explained. The three nurses were puzzled by what looked to them to be an exit wound in the right temple, since they knew Ferguson to be right-handed. This prompted them to look for an entrance wound on the left side, which they could not find. "It made me go on and look further, and I started looking at her hair," said one of the nurses. She recounted how her concern had led her to roll the corpse's head to the side for verification.
Eventually, one of the nurses located the apparent wound. Contrary to the subsequently released offical report, it was directly behind her left ear about midway between the top and bottom of the ear, and was the size of a "quarter and stuffed with cotton." All three nurses, one the RN, the other two, LPNs also clearly saw this cotton-stuffed wound behind Ferguson's left ear. SEE NEXT NOTE
CONTD FROM NOTE ONE- At least two other hospital colleagues subsequently visited the funeral home and made the same observation. One such colleague, a trained medical assistant, recalled visiting the funeral home shortly after the family had left. At the time, the mortician, in response to complaints by Ferguson's family, was trying to improve the appearance of the body. "It looked horrible," said the colleague, who told of volunteering to help the mortican in his task. She said she worked on "her hair, dress and everything else" including the right temple area, because of "the large gaping wound filled with pancake make-up that wasn't smoothed out." That's where the bullet came out, she recalled thinking to herself, prompting her to search for the entrance wound. "I saw it behind the (left) ear, plugged with cotton," she said.
Yet another colleague, Sherry Butler, then an LPN with four years experience and perhaps Ferguson's closest friend, saw no wound in the left temple. She, however, could not verify that there was a wound behind the left ear since she did not look for it. Still, there are five other hospital employees, three of whom are trained nurses with many years combined experience who examined Ferguson's wounds. All of them were interviewed on tape for this report (and all have requested anonymity, citing concerns for their safety.) They agree there was a small circular wound typical of an entrance wound behind the left ear, and no exit wound in the left temple area, where the autopsy report had it. Such an exit wound on the left side would have been difficult to miss especially to trained professionals. The autopsy report noted that it was a jagged wound of approximately an inch in width and height and almost three inches above her left ear.
Ferguson's co-workers recalled that when they learned of her death they were stunned that she had supposedly committed suicide and were confused by the unusual wounds which almost certainly would have to have been administered by a gun held by the left hand. "For her to use her left hand, and then in an awkward place..." said one nurse, her voice trailing off into incredulity. "Kathy had these little delicate hands," said another. "We laughed about her being right-handed. Kathy said she couldn't do anything with her left hand, her curling iron or make- up...she just couldn't do it with her left hand."
But what started as confusion has turned to outright fear as Ferguson's colleagues speculate on the why of the apparent inconsistency contained in the autopsy report which has not been circulated until fairly recently.
A number of others who knew Ferguson have their doubts about the suicide verdict. "She was in a pretty good mood, very vivacious, upbeat, " said Dr. Samuel T. Houston, recalling the day before Ferguson's death. Houston is a highly respected urologist at Little Rock's Baptist Memorial Hospital. His patient list once included Hillary Rodham Clinton's late father. Houston found the suicide ruling "unacceptable" based on his acquaintance with Ferguson and the knowledge that women who take their own lives don't ordinarily use guns. Vernon Geberth, author of an authoritative police text titled "Practical Homicide Investigations," held to a similar opinion to that of Houston's. "If I have a woman with a gunshot wound to the head, that raises the hair on the back of my neck," he said. "Women will usually not blow their heads up."
I encourage distribution of "Conspiracy Nation."
"Justice" = "Just us" = "History is written by the assassins."