Census Worker Found Hanged in KY

[Demosthenes]

Hey, I am not trying to come off as crazy. I just don;t think that the guy would have died from being hung if it was one of the groups you are talking about.

Why? Hanging federal employees is a popular wet dream for militia nuts and white supremacists. Read The Turner Diaries for some vivid and memorable examples.

In fact, hanging feds from light posts is kind of clichéd among the anti-gov crowd. Here's a typical example I found on Alex Jones' site in less than 10 seconds on google.

Hangman1 Reply:
July 21st, 2009 at 10:51 pm

It will not be long now. They will soon be hanging from trees and light posts all over the USA. If your Congress thing and Senate thing feel safe in returning to your area (if they aren’t carpetbaggers who don’t live in your state anyway), make sure they know that it is not safe for them to come home. Let them know that REAL Americans everywhere are sick of their criminal activities and aren’t going to take it anymore.

There is every real possibility that one of those groups did it (Not the Federal Government) but until someone is charged, I will continue to believe that this is a personal thing. I just don't think one of those groups could have gotten close enough to hang him with out signifcant injuries to the census worker.

Gotten close to him? By all accounts, the census worker was a pudgy, harmless, substitute grade school teacher. His hands and feet had been bound with duct tape.

[fortinbras]

Right. Hanging federal employees - and in a public place - is the favorite wet dream of the sov'runs. It was mentioned in several books, including The Turner Diaries, and in the handbook of the Christian Posse Comitatus, and then used in the announcements of the Montana Freemen and others.

It's not a tremendous surprise that Clay County is a bit behind the curve on what's fashionable among the reichtwingers, and since this murder was probably the work of a very small cluster of nitwits it is possible that their cumulative brain power did not foresee that this would get serious law enforcement attention.

[bmielke]

Hey, I am not trying to come off as crazy. I just don;t think that the guy would have died from being hung if it was one of the groups you are talking about.

Why? Hanging federal employees is a popular wet dream for militia nuts and white supremacists. Read The Turner Diaries for some vivid and memorable examples.

In fact, hanging feds from light posts is kind of clichéd among the anti-gov crowd. Here's a typical example I found on Alex Jones' site in less than 10 seconds on google.

Hangman1 Reply:
July 21st, 2009 at 10:51 pm

It will not be long now. They will soon be hanging from trees and light posts all over the USA. If your Congress thing and Senate thing feel safe in returning to your area (if they aren’t carpetbaggers who don’t live in your state anyway), make sure they know that it is not safe for them to come home. Let them know that REAL Americans everywhere are sick of their criminal activities and aren’t going to take it anymore.

There is every real possibility that one of those groups did it (Not the Federal Government) but until someone is charged, I will continue to believe that this is a personal thing. I just don't think one of those groups could have gotten close enough to hang him with out signifcant injuries to the census worker.

Gotten close to him? By all accounts, the census worker was a pudgy, harmless, substitute grade school teacher. His hands and feet had been bound with duct tape.

I am sorry I jumped in to a debate without all the facts. I really only discovered the whole sovergin citizen movement about 2 months ago and it is interesting not that I want to join rather I cna;t believe people actually believe this crap. I knew of militia's but thought that they were isolated groups of people. I never realized how wide spread it was. I am still witholding judement until someone is charged, but now understand the whole situaion much better.

[Paladin]

Official: Census Takers Request Team Vists After Worker's Mysterious Death
Sunday , October 11, 2009

The manager of a part-time census taker who died under mysterious circumstances in southeastern Kentucky says other workers are requesting to visit houses in teams rather than alone.

Wayne Hatcher, regional director of the U.S. Census Bureau's office in Charlotte, N.C., made the comments Sunday at a memorial in the Daniel Boone National Forest near the spot Bill Sparkman's body was found one month ago with the word "Fed" scrawled on his chest, likely in pen.

Sparkman was tied to a tree with a rope around his neck.

An autopsy concluded Sparkman died of asphyxiation. However, authorities are saying little else about his death, even whether it was a murder, suicide or accident.

Hatcher says door-to-door visits in Clay County are suspended until more information is known.

Sparkman, 51, was a substitute teacher and part-time census worker.

Josh Sparkman, 19, said he learned of his father's death Sept. 13, a day after his body was found. Sparkman adopted him when he was a baby.

He believes his father was murdered.

Josh Sparkman told The Associated Press in a phone interview that he was frustrated investigators have not ruled out suicide or accidental death.

"I look at it as disrespectful to be still throwing suicide and accident around," he said. "He didn't do this to himself. That's dishonorable. My dad was a good man. No person on this planet is going to fight cancer like he did, then turn around and kill himself a year or so later."

[bmielke]

From the AP Google News said it was yesterday.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/art ... gD9BPJNLO0

AP sources: Suicide eyed in Ky. census worker case
By DEVLIN BARRETT and JEFFREY McMURRAY (AP) – 1 day ago

WASHINGTON — Investigators probing the death of a Kentucky census worker found hanging from a tree with the word "fed" scrawled on his chest increasingly doubt he was killed because of his government job and are pursuing the possibility he committed suicide, law enforcement officials told The Associated Press.

Two officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case, said no final conclusions have been made in the case. In recent weeks, however, investigators have grown more skeptical that 51-year-old Bill Sparkman died at the hands of someone angry at the federal government.

The officials said investigators continue to look closely at suicide as a possible cause of Sparkman's death for a number of reasons. There were no defensive wounds on Sparkman's body, and while his hands were bound with duct-tape, they were still somewhat mobile, suggesting he could have manipulated the rope, the officials said.

Sparkman's naked body was found Sept. 12 hanging from a tree yet in contact with the ground in a remote patch of the Daniel Boone National Forest near Manchester, Ky.

Further down in the story it seems to go back and forth, no law enforcement official will comment, at least no one named will. His son is still saying Murder, as is the man who found him.

Jerry Weaver, one of the people who found the body during a gathering at a family cemetery, remained certain the death was a homicide. Weaver told The Associated Press this week that he recalled Sparkman's hands being close together.

Weaver also said the rope, which he described as thin like a clothes line, was wrapped around the high branches of two different trees as if for leverage. Sparkman's truck was found nearby, and Weaver said he saw Sparkman's clothes in the bed of the truck and a census worker placard sitting on the dashboard.

Weaver had previously told the AP that the body was naked, bound at the feet and hands, and gagged. He didn't see the word "fed" on the chest but did notice there was an identification tag taped to the side of his neck.

"He was put on display," Weaver said

I hadn't heard anything in a while and wanted to see what was going on with the case.

[Blup]

So he got undressed, scrawled 'fed' on himself, duct taped his hands together, then hung himself from a tree?

hmmmm.... I don't think I'd put my money on that theory.

[Judge Roy Bean]

So he got undressed, scrawled 'fed' on himself, duct taped his hands together, then hung himself from a tree?

hmmmm.... I don't think I'd put my money on that theory.

We're all too far away from the details and especially the evidence to discern the facts, but stranger things have happened.

Consider at least one fact - the mind of a person willing to actually end their own life is in significant distress. From personal experience in three cases I can tell you the people who do these kinds of things aren't functioning in the same realm as the rest of us.

The first one was many years ago. An adopted brother in my wife's family lived in an apartment we had arranged in the upstairs part of the house we owned.

One weekend while we were out of town, he broke into our part of the house and stole a S&W .44 magnum by bashing open a really nice gun case. He then borrowed our daughter's VW from the garage and drove to a store to buy a box of ammo because he couldn't open the gun safe where I kept the ammunition. After buying the ammo, he proceeded to drive to a neighborhood and standing out in the street (according to eye witnesses) put a bunch of rounds into a house. He returned to our home, parked the vehicle in the driveway and as the sirens rose in the neighborhood, he went upstairs into the apartment and used the .44 on himself. Short version - it was a drug situation.

But the most inexplicable scenario I personally know of was (and I think this extant case is going to eventually turn toward), is that without any conceivable reason, a childhood friend and father of three with a seemingly happy marriage, solid career and the kind of routine you might expect from any successful businessman decided to check into a motel, consume an entire bottle of his high blood pressure medication along with a half a bottle of vodka - which he, to my knowledge, had never even taken a drink of. To this day, we're all clueless so there is no 'short version' of the story.

You just can't over or underestimate what a desperately challenged mind will come up with.

[Demosthenes]

The census guy just spent a year beating the crap out of cancer and winning. I think the son's and mom's insight is better than the cops.

[Doktor Avalanche]

They're actually entertaining this was a suicide?

Geez....they'd probably say the same thing if he was shot in the back five times with a bolt action rifle.

[Prof]

They're actually entertaining this was a suicide?

Geez....they'd probably say the same thing if he was shot in the back five times with a bolt action rifle.

I once tried a "responsible party" case where the defendant (almost illiterate) had lost his CPA and Atty partners as follows: one had been murdered; the second had committed suicide (according to the Laredo corner) by shooting himself 3-4 times with a .38 revolver.

TRUE STORY.

[bmielke]

I find suicide unlikely, but one of the things that caught my attention was that they said he had been upbeat in the days before his death. When I was an RA in college they warned us that if someone was depressed and then all of a sudden became upbeat it was a warning sign that they have planned suicide. I'm not saying that's what happened here, but I don't think that just because he was upbeat it can be ruled out.

[Doktor Avalanche]

They're actually entertaining this was a suicide?

Geez....they'd probably say the same thing if he was shot in the back five times with a bolt action rifle.

Ever known anyone who has committed suicide? Sometimes it comes out of the blue to people that seemingly have it reasonably together. In some instances there are other forces at work of which not even the person's closest friends and relatives are unaware.

I had an uncle once who one May morning got up, got dressed, made his bed, went out to the kitchen, made himself breakfast, went back into his room, got a box, went out to the garage, made himself comfortable in a chair....

...and shot himself through the head with a Smith and Wesson 45.

Nobody knows why he did it. There were no outward signs or warnings that he suicidal or depressed.

There was no note.

But what I was reacting to was the fact that this census worker somehow bound himself with duct tape, scrawled FED across his chest and hanged himself. It's about as ridiculous as someone having been shot five times in the back with a bolt action rifle and having it ruled a suicide.

[Demosthenes]

[Blup]

LOL.

Well, it's one thing to kill yourself, it's another thing entirely to make it look like someone else killed you. None of the stories y'all have shared have been that type of situation.

If, in fact, he did kill himself, he sure went out of his way to make it look like a murder. The question would be: why?

[Judge Roy Bean]

LOL.

Well, it's one thing to kill yourself, it's another thing entirely to make it look like someone else killed you. None of the stories y'all have shared have been that type of situation.

If, in fact, he did kill himself, he sure went out of his way to make it look like a murder. The question would be: why?

To deflect the shame and other emotional burdens that suicide typically dumps on someone left behind. Suicide is an often-secret call for help, but a mind twisted enough to actually go through ending everything doesn't necessarily work rationally. Some suicides involve doing things to leave as little inconvenience as possible. Others are clearly aimed at making someone feel responsible. It's a spectrum of mental issues, along which can be points where the victim wants to leave a mystery behind.

[Blup]

Well you could be right, though I think we're heading a little far down the speculative path. I can't remember offhand ever hearing of someone killing himself and making it look like a murder. That alone would be far more interesting and rare than some backwoods hick killing a federal employee.

Either way, I'll be scouring the news for more info on this weird occurrence.

[Pottapaug1938]

In today's news:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34130128/ns/us_news-life/

[bmielke]

In today's news:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34130128/ns/us_news-life/

Sparkman had recently taken out two accidental life insurance policies totaling $600,000 that would not pay out for suicide, authorities said. If Sparkman had been killed on the job, his family also would have been be eligible for up to $10,000 in death gratuity payments from the government.

I am so sorry to hear about this, but I think that it is even worse that his motive in all this was for life insurance.

[Pottapaug1938]

In today's news:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34130128/ns/us_news-life/

Sparkman had recently taken out two accidental life insurance policies totaling $600,000 that would not pay out for suicide, authorities said. If Sparkman had been killed on the job, his family also would have been be eligible for up to $10,000 in death gratuity payments from the government.

I am so sorry to hear about this, but I think that it is even worse that his motive in all this was for life insurance.

He wouldn't be the first person to decide that he is worth more to his family dead than alive -- not that this justifies anything, but it explains it.

[Blup]

all right well I woulda lost that bet

Usually people trying to kill themselves for life insurance just drive into a tree or something. Staging an accident is a whole lot easier than staging one's own murder.

Wonder if the family will try to sue the insurance companies. They have little shot of winning but $600,000 is a lot of dough.