From the Radio Free Michigan archives ftp://141.209.3.26/pub/patriot If you have any other files you'd like to contribute, e-mail them to bj496@Cleveland.Freenet.Edu. ------------------------------------------------ Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 2 Num. 75 ====================================== ("Quid coniuratio est?") ----------------------------------------------------------------- ARKANCIDE II ============ More info on recent "Arkancides", courtesy of CN readers + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 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." 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 ----- + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + [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." ----------------------------------------------------------------- If you would like "Conspiracy Nation" sent to your e-mail address, send a message in the form "subscribe conspire My Name" to listproc@prairienet.org -- To cancel, send a message in the form "unsubscribe conspire" to listproc@prairienet.org ----------------------------------------------------------------- Aperi os tuum muto, et causis omnium filiorum qui pertranseunt. Aperi os tuum, decerne quod justum est, et judica inopem et pauperem. -- Liber Proverbiorum XXXI: 8-9 Brian Francis Redman bigxc@prairienet.org "The Big C" -------------------------------------------------------------- "Justice" = "Just us" = "History is written by the assassins." -------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------ (This file was found elsewhere on the Internet and uploaded to the Radio Free Michigan archives by the archive maintainer. All files are ZIP archives for fast download. E-mail bj496@Cleveland.Freenet.Edu)