Family of late Clinton advisor Mark Middleton block release of files relating to his suicide
Several of Bill Clinton’s former associates have died over the years under mysterious circumstances, sparking a conspiracy theory known as the Clinton Body Count.
There is even a Wikipedia page that outlines the conspiracy. It points the finger at Newsmax publisher Christopher Ruddy, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green and others for advancing the theory.
The manner of death is diverse. Many died in small plane crashes, others committed suicide, some were shot. One dropped a barbell on his neck while exercising.
The theory came to a head when Hillary Clinton was running for president in 2016 when five people died in a six-week span stretching from June 22 to August 2.
Former Clinton associate Larry Nichols, told DailyMail.com then: ‘I’m not saying the Clintons kill people. I’m saying a lot of people around the Clintons turn up dead.’
Several different lists have been drawn up. These are among those most frequently cited as possible victims. Now the name of Mark Middleton will be added to the body count lists.
Judi Gibbs
Judi Gibbs, 32, January 3, 1986: The one-time Penthouse Pet died alongside her lover Bill Puterburgh, 57, in an unexplained house fire in Fordyce, Arkansas. She was a high-class prostitute who used hotels and racetracks to pick up rich and powerful men and was known to have had an affair with then-Arkansas governor Bill Clinton who would fly her from her home town to Little Rock. Rumors of a compromising picture of the two of them were rife, but if it ever existed, it was probably destroyed in the fire. The families of both Gibbs and Puterburgh told DailyMail.com in 2016 they believe the fire was set deliberately.
Kevin Ives and Don Henry
Kevin Ives, 17, and Don Henry, 16, August 23, 1987: The two teens were crushed by a train, in Alexander, Arkansas. Their deaths were ruled accidental, with the medical examiner saying they had fallen asleep on a railroad line after smoking marijuana, but a grand jury found they had been murdered before being placed on the tracks. They had allegedly stumbled on a plot to smuggle drugs and guns from an airport in Mena, Arkansas, that Gov. Bill Clinton was said to be involved in.
Victor Raiser
Victor Raiser, 53, July 30, 1992: The second finance co-chair of Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign was killed along with his son in a plane crash during a fishing vacation in Alaska. Conspiracy theorists believe the crash was deliberately caused. Campaign press secretary Dee Dee Myers called Raiser a major player in the organization.
Paul Tully
Paul Tully, 48, September 25, 1992: The Democratic strategist died of an apparent heart attack. A chain-smoking, heavy-drinking political consultant who weighed in at more than 320 lb. Tully died seven weeks before Clinton’s first presidential election win. He had been political director of the DNC during Clinton’s rise. Tully was on the left of the Democratic Party and usually worked for those who shared his views, however he agreed to work for Clinton because he was impressed with his oratory and thought he was the only Democrat who could beat President George Bush.
Paula Gober
Paula Gober, 36, December 7, 1992: Clinton’s interpreter for the deaf for several years died in a single car accident. Gober had traveled with him while he was governor of Arkansas. Her vehicle overturned on a bend, throwing her 30 feet. There were no witnesses.
Vince Foster with Hillary Clinton in 1985
Vince Foster, 48, July 20, 1993: The Arkansas lawyer committed suicide. President Clinton appointed Foster to deputy White House counsel when he became president in 1993. It didn’t take long for Foster, 48, to realize he had made a terrible mistake by accepting the post. He hated the work and fell into a deep depression. Just six months into the job, his body was found in his car in Fort Marcy Park, Virginia, a gun in his hand and a suicide note torn into 27 pieces in the trunk. Conspiracy theorists believe he was murdered by the Clintons for knowing too much.
Stanley Heard, 47, September 10, 1993: The Arkansas chiropractor died in a small plane crash. According to 1998 book ‘A Profession of One’s Own,’ the doctor treated the Clinton family. Heard was asked by Bill Clinton to represent the practice as plans for ‘Hillarycare’ were being finalized. His attorney Steve Dickson, was flying him home from a healthcare meeting in Washington DC just eight months into the Clinton presidency. On the way to the capital from his home in Kansas, Dickson’s small plane developed problems so he landed in St. Louis and rented another plane. That rented plane was the one that crashed in rural Virginia, killing both men.
Jerry Parks
Jerry Parks, 47, September 23, 1993: The head of security for Bill Clinton’s headquarters in Arkansas, was shot to death. As he drove home in West Little Rock, two men in a white Chevrolet pulled alongside his car and sprayed it with semi-automatic gunfire. As Parks’s car stopped a man stepped out of the Chevy and shot him twice with a 9mm pistol and sped off. Despite there being several witnesses, no-one was ever arrested. The killing came two months after Parks had watched news of Vince Foster’s death and allegedly told his son Gary ‘I’m a dead man.’ His wife Lois remarried and her second husband, Dr. David Millstein was stabbed to death in 2006.
Edward Willey Jr, 60, November 29, 1993: The Clinton fundraiser was found dead in the Virginia woods. He was having serious money problems and his wife, a volunteer aide in the White House, agreed to ask Bill Clinton for a paid job. Their meeting ended when Clinton allegedly forced himself on her in the Oval Office, kissing her, fondling her breast and pushing her hand on to his genitals. Four years later Kathleen Willey wrote a book in which she put forward a theory that the Clintons may have had her husband murdered. She said after his death, a friend had told her that Ed had confided that he took briefcases full of cash to the Clintons’ base in Little Rock, Arkansas during Bill’s first presidential campaign.
Herschel Friday
Herschel Friday, 70, March 1, 1994: The Arkansas lawyer died in a small plane crash when he lost control as he came in to land at his Arkansas ranch. President Richard Nixon had once considered Friday for the Supreme Court. He was known as a benefactor of Bill Clinton, serving on his campaign finance committee after his law firm had persuaded the then-governor to support a tax package that helped the state’s horse racing industry.
Kathy Ferguson, 37, May 11, 1994: The ex-wife of Arkansas State Trooper Danny Ferguson, who was named in a sexual harassment suit brought by Paula Jones against Bill Clinton. Ferguson died by gun suicide. She left a note blaming problems with her fiancé, Bill Shelton. A month later Shelton, upset about the suicide verdict, killed himself.
Ron Brown and Bill Clinton
Ron Brown, 54, April 3, 1996: The chair of the Democratic National Committee died in a plane crash in Croatia. He became head of the DNC during Bill Clinton’s rise to the presidential nomination and was rewarded with the cabinet position. He was under a corruption investigation when his plane slammed into a mountainside. Doctors who examined his body found a circular wound on the top of his head which led to suspicions that he had died before the plane crashed, but that theory was later discounted. The crash was attributed to pilot error.
Charles Meissner
Charles Meissner, 56, April 3, 1996: The assistant secretary for international trade died in the same plane crash as Brown. Meissner had been criticized for allegedly giving special security clearance to John Huang, who later pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy charges for violating campaign finance laws, in a case that enmeshed the Clinton administration.
Barbara Wise, 48, November 29, 1996: Wise, who worked alongside Brown, Meissner and Huang in the Commerce Department was found dead at her desk on the day after Thanksgiving. Her death was originally classified as a homicide but police later said Wise, 48, who had a history of severe ill health, had died from natural causes. A local TV station initially quoted an unidentified police source as saying her body was partially nude and her office was locked, but those reports were also later denied.
Mary Mohaney
Mary Mohaney, 25, July 7, 1997: The White House intern was gunned down along with two assistants at the Washington D.C. Starbucks, where she was night manager. The gay rights activist reportedly acted as a ‘mother-figure’ to various women who had allegedly been sexually harassed by Bill Clinton.
Jim McDougal
Jim McDougal, 57, March 8, 1998: McDougal and his wife Susan were involved in the Whitewater real estate scandal that rocked the Clinton administration. They and the Clintons had invested $203,000 to buy land in the Ozarks but the venture failed and McDougal was convicted of corruption for borrowing money from his Savings and Loan to cover the cost. He died of a heart attack while in federal prison in Fort Worth, Texas.
Linda Thompson
Linda Thompson, 56, May 10, 2009: The founder of the American Justice Foundation and right-wing radio personality was the person who drew up the first list of deaths associated with people who had worked with Clinton in 1994. She died in St. Petersburg, Florida, when she took an overdose of medication prescribed for a gastric bypass surgery that she had had more than a decade earlier.
John Ashe
John Ashe, 61, June 22, 2016: The Antiguan politician was pumping iron at his home in Dobbs Ferry, New York, when he dropped the weight on his neck. He died from ‘traumatic asphyxiation. Ashe was about to stand trial in a corruption case for allegedly receiving $500,000 from billionaire real estate developer Ng Lap Seng. Ng was involved in a fundraising scandal and named in a 1998 Senate report for illegally funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars to the DNC during Bill Clinton’s presidency. ‘During the trial, the prosecutors would have linked Ashe to the Clinton bagman Ng. It would have been very embarrassing. His death was conveniently timed,’ The New York Post reported.
Seth Rich
Seth Rich, 27, July 10, 2016: The Operations Director for Voter Expansion for the DNC, was found murdered on in Washington, DC. He was shot in the back a block from his apartment at 4:20am. His killers have not been identified. Conspiracy theorists believe Rich may have been involved in the DNC email leak in 2016. His death initially appeared like a robbery gone wrong but his mother Mary Rich claims that nothing was taken from her son, who was found with two shots in his back. The mystery surrounding his death sparked a flurry of theories, including claims that he was on his way to speak to the FBI when he was shot.
Joe Montano
Joe Montano, 47, July 25, 2016: The former Democratic National Conference Chairman with in-depth knowledge of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, died from what authorities say was a heart attack – the day that year’s DNC opened.
Victor Thorn
Victor Thorn, 54, August 1, 2016: The journalist and strong critic of the couple died on his birthday. Thorn is said to have climbed a mountain near his State College, Pennsylvania, home before shooting himself to death. He wrote a trilogy of books on the Clintons, devoting one of the books to the number of their contacts who had mysteriously died.
Shawn Lucas
Shawn Lucas, 38, August 2, 2016: The lawyer who supported Bernie Sanders, was found dead on the bathroom floor of his Washington DC apartment. Just a month earlier he had attempted to serve papers on Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz in a fraud case that alleged the party had unfairly favored Hillary Clinton in the primaries over Sanders. A video of Lucas taking the papers to the DNC’s Washington headquarters showed Lucas, who was said to have been a Sanders supporter, calling serving the papers ‘the most gratifying thing I have ever done.’
Jeffrey Epstein
Jeffrey Epstein, 66, August 10, 2019: The convicted pedophile died in federal prison in Manhattan, apparently by hanging himself in his cell. He had attempted suicide three weeks earlier and was placed on suicide watch. A guard was supposed to look in on him every 30 minutes but fell asleep on the night of Epstein’s death. Clinton had close ties to Epstein and had flown on his private plane to his private Caribbean island, but has always denied any involvement in his illicit activities.