("Quid coniuratio est?")
ARKANCIDE II
More info on recent "Arkancides", courtesy of CN readers
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[...Portion deleted, see CN Vol. 2 Num. 69 for background...]
ALLEGED HARASSMENT
"They've seen gunshots, they've gone to nursing school. There is no way they would have missed the wound described on the autopsy as having been on her left temple."
[Ruddy/Ruling doubted...PART 4] 11/4/94
While it's unknown why Ferguson died, just before her death she was the center of conversation among her colleagues because of her former husband's work for then-Gov. Clinton and the controversy over Clinton's alleged sexual hijinks, especially the one involving Paula Jones.
Houston recalled his last conversation with Ferguson, on the day before she died. "There are times I wish I didn't know as much as I know," he remembers her saying during a discussion of her former husband's work for Clinton.
Houston said he had once asked her if she had ever been harassed by Clinton when her former husband served on the governor's security detail. She responded with an account--which is consistent with what other personnel at the hospital say Ferguson told them on separate occasions--of having been "blocked in the kitchen" of the governor's mansion as the then-Gov. Clinton made unwelcome advances on her.
Sherry Butler said that Ferguson, in speaking of that same incident to her, had said that Clinton "shoved her against a counter" and wouldn't let her leave the kitchen.
Butler added that Ferguson had been firm in her belief in Paula Jones' testimony. "That girl is telling the truth," Butler remembers her friend saying about Jones in the presence of several hospital workers sitting at the cafeteria table. "Don't put anything past" Clinton, Ferguson said.
The White House did not return a call for comment on this matter.
The Arkansas chief medical examiner's office referred press inquiries to the Sherwood Police Department and the Pulaski County Coroner's Officer. The coroner's office did not return repeated calls for comment.
Sgt. John Dodd, a spokesman for the Sherwood Police Department, said the case was initially treated as a homicide--as police procedure calls for in apparent suicides. He said that the investigation revealed there "is no reason to believe it is anything but a suicide." Dodd also said he knew of no "controversy" concerning the wounds and that the police stand by the report.
Dodd was irate about suggestions that Ferguson's death had any connection to the Paula Jones case. "Pure and utter b--- s---," he said. "It's just a rumor someone started. So what if she did (know about Paula Jones), she shot herself, in the head."
FAMILY REACTS
And Ferguson's father, Lorris Carter, acknowledged being skeptical at first because of the nature of the wounds, but that he has subsequently accepted the autopsy report based on an explanation by his son-in-law, who happens to be a pathologist. (Called about this matter, the son-in-law declined to comment.)
But despite his acceptance of the autopsy report, Carter said he'll "never be 100 percent satisfied she did kill herself."
Carter is bothered by what the police claim was a suicide note.
"It's not" a suicide note, he said, "It's just a note." Indeed, the note seems to be simply a few lines written to Shelton telling of her intent to leave the apartment.
[PART 5 continued next note=====> Bev] [Ruddy/Ruling doubted...PART 5] 11/4/94
But, notwithstanding the father's ambivalence and the others' denial, almost every person interviewed for this report had the same nagging question: Why would this very beautiful and vain woman kill herself--especially with a gun, when drugs, for instance, were so available to her at the hospital?
One colleague who worked with Ferguson throughout the latter's career at the hospital described her as "the most dynamic young woman I ever met in my life...Miss Personality Plus. She had a figure out of this world, her hair was long, never an eyelash out of place; she worshipped her body, exercised daily."
Dr. Houston charges that the handling of the case was unbelievable," and that the police reached the conclusion of suicide "at supersonic speed."
He faults the police for never having come by the hospital to talk with Ferguson's co-workers, and he finds the police report on the death puzzling.
The report notes that the fatal bullet was found in front of Ferguson and the bullet's casing in an ashtray next to her.
Houston has difficulty reconciling a bullet that supposedly went from temple to temple winding up in the ceiling, and similar problems with a casing (which flies off to the side of the gun) landing next to the body in an ashtray, given the position the gun would have to have been in when fired.
The police report claims that gunpowder was found on Ferguson's right hand and that the fired bullet was found to her left, an indication that she might have fired the gun from her right side.
'KIND OF A MESSAGE'
Houston said that in mid-October he made a complaint about the Ferguson case to FBI agents in the office of Kenneth Starr, who is the independent counsel investigating alleged illegal dealings of the Clintons.
Along with his complaint, he turned over his notes and other pertinent documents. Several days later longtime Clinton critic Larry Nichols showed up at Houston's office with the very documents Houston had turned over to Starr's office.
Nichols said that he had found these documents stuffed into his mailbox.
Houston doesn't for a moment think Starr had anything to do with this. "It was kind of a message" from someone in Starr's office, he said. "'We're stuffing it back, screw you.'"
Debbie Gershman, a spokesperson for the independent counsel Starr, confirmed that Houston had met with the FBI, but was baffled as to how any of his papers would have been relinquished by her office.
She refused to confirm that the Ferguson matter is under investigation. ---- END OF STORY #1 -----
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[Another Chris Ruddy story coming up as soon as I get some circulation back into my fingers. #2 is about the deaths of those two Arkansas boys found on the train tracks...Bev]
P.S. Call Starr's office and put some heat on them about this. He's got a Clinton mole loose in the woodwork...
STORY #2 by Christopher Ruddy 11/4/94 in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, p. A1
Suicide disputes common in Arkansas
The challenged rulings of suicide, first in the case of Deputy White House Counsel Vincent Foster and now Kathy Ferguson, are not unique in President Clinton's home state.
Any informed Arkansan can expound on "the boys on the track"--the unsolved murder of two Salina County boys, Kevin Ives and Don Henry, who had gone out spotting deer with flashlights one August night in 1987 and whose bodies were subsequently found run over by a train. Bill Clinton was then governor of the state.
Police told both sets of parents that the boys had committed suicide by deliberately lying on the tracks before an oncoming train.
One parent, Linda Ives, found that explanation totally unacceptable.
As a result of her protests, the state medical examiner, Dr. Fahmy Malak, looked into the case and ruled the death of her son "accidental." He suggested that high levels of marijuana found in the boy's blood indicated he may have been in a stupor before lying down on the tracks.
But Linda Ives still wasn't satisfied, and so a grand jury was convened and ordered the boys' bodies exhumed.
An autopsy, the second performed, revealed that one boy had been stabbed and that the other's head had been crushed before the train ran over them. Further, the marijuana levels were found to have been exaggerated as a result of an erroneous test.
The foreman of that Salina County grand jury said, in an unofficial statement, that he thought the boys' deaths were related to drug trafficking--that perhaps they'd stumbled on something they shouldn't have.
As a result of the Henry-Ives ruling and similar ones, Malak came in for widespread criticism.
Even the distant Los Angeles Times picked up on his blundering, and in 1992 reported on the Henry-Ives case and one involving an Arkansas man whose body was found with five bullet wounds--but who Malak nevertheless ruled a suicide.
Just weeks before Clinton announced for the presidency, Malak was moved into another state job. But the controversy surrounding his rulings continues to swirl.
John Brown, a former Salina County detective who investigated the Henry-Ives case--he says he was forced to resign recently "because of official obstruction"--has a sobering view of the case. He suggested that the boys' deaths, along with six other murders that followed, were linked to what is known as the Dixie Mafia.
Gangs USA, a reference book on organized crime, describes the Dixie Mafia as an "informal association of white gangsters" that constitutes "one of the largest, most deadly and least-known gang systems in the United States," blanketing 16 southern states.
The organization originally specialized in "robbing banks, interstate theft, the corruption of public officials and contract murder," according to the book, but more recently has turned to drugs, money laundering and firearms."
[PART 2 SUICIDE DISPUTES next post] Bev [Ruddy/Suicide disputes...PART 2] 11/4/94
A former Little Rock-based FBI official said that the Dixie Mafia, while not as organized and tightly knit as the conventional Mafia, "can be more brutal" than the latter and less restrained and predictable.
Meaning that it would be not nearly so inhibited as its more famous northern counterpart about murdering, say, two innocent boys.
Gene Wirges, former editor of a rural Arkansas newspaper, is another of those who tend to raise an eyebrow at official declarations of suicides in high-profile cases there.
Wirges is author of the 1992 book Conflict of Interests, which chronicled his experiences in trying to expose the prevasive political corruption in Arkansas.
"In 1985," wrote Wirges in his book, "a North Arkansas man was fatally shot, and (Dr. Fahmy) Malak ruled suicide; there was four gunshot wounds to the chest.
"In a 1986 case, Malak ruled accidental drowning; the family of the victim called attention to a bullet in the victim's skull that was overlooked.
"There were (numerous other) 'suicide' rulings (in at least six different counties from 1982 to 1990) and vehement complaints in each instance.
"In 1989, Malak ruled accidental death, saying a child had fallen from a porch--13 inches to the ground. Parents insist the child had been beaten to death."
Dubious suicide rulings are not, of course, limited to Arkansas; David Zucchino, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Philadelphia Inquirer reporter, for example, recently uncovered 40 such cases in the military.
But, however, deserved or undeserved, Arkansas is rapidly acquiring a reputation for eliciting cynical quips and cynical looks whenever such finding is announced.
Prominent homicide expert Vernon Geberth says that staged deaths such as murders made to look like suicides are happening more frequently.
"In some parts of the country it's a license to kill," because, Geberth says, inexperienced local authorities can't tell the difference between a real suicide and a murder made to look like one.
END OF STORY #2
I encourage distribution of "Conspiracy Nation."
"Justice" = "Just us" = "History is written by the assassins."