Census worker hangs himself in Kentucky
September 12, 2009
William Edwin “Bill” Sparkman, Jr., was a never-married, 51-year-old, social misfit who worked part-time as a federal census worker trying—and failing—to get a teaching career started and make ends meet. He was facing foreclosure on his house and $50,000 of credit card debt when he told a friend he was thinking about committing suicide. He even asked the friend to help but the friend declined.
Shortly after buying two life insurance policies for $300,000 each—one naming his adopted son the beneficiary, the other the above mentioned friend (who insists they were not homosexual lovers)—Bill Sparkman drove to a small, rural, Kentucky cemetery and killed himself.
If that was the whole story, it would simply be a normal everyday tragedy and our sympathy would go out to Bill Sparkman. But that is not the whole story, and instead of sympathy Bill Sparkman gets our loathing because he staged his suicide to make it look like a hate crime against a government worker, sending the nation into a lather of fear and accusation from the usual unscrupulous sources.
Although they had no facts to back up their hysterical assertions, the leftwing print media bluntly called it a lynching and blamed local antipathy for the federal government; and they blamed the conservative Tea Party movement, which was at the time voicing objections to the Obama administration’s unprecedented expansion of the federal government. Then MSNBC’s Rachel “Mad Cow” Maddow, on her television show September 28, practically foamed at the mouth trying to imply conservatives were to blame for Sparkman’s death.
Because, you know, opposing Obama’s radical socialist agenda politically, must mean you are a killer, right? At least in the Mad Cow world.
Sparkman had written the word “fed” on his chest to suggest his employment by the census department was the reason for his murder... but, oops, forensic specialists determined he wrote the word himself.
Sparkman was on the ground, tied to the tree, but not hanged... so, oops, can’t call it a lynching.
Sparkman’s feet were duct taped together but investigators determined there was nothing stopping him from simply standing up to take the pressure off his neck... if he wanted.
On November 23, Kentucky State Police announced that the conclusion of their investigation was that Bill Sparkman had committed suicide, staging it as a hate crime against a federal worker so his beneficiaries could collect on the two life insurance policies, which would only pay out for accidental death, not suicide. And they specifically mentioned that all the incorrect conjecture, wild hysteria, and misreporting of facts by the media had made their investigation more difficult.
So thank you for that, Ms. Maddow, et al.
And as for the insurance policies, don’t worry: the bogus hate crime didn’t pay.
Sources:
9/25/09 - Huffington Post - Sparkman: Casualty of Methland, USA? Or Victim of Anti-Government Bile?
9/25/09 - Los Angeles Times - Government ties explored as motive in death of Kentucky Census worker
9/25/09 - Time Magazine - Government Distrust and a Dead Census Taker
9/25/09 - The Rachel Maddow Show/MSNBC - Transcript of show for Friday, September 25, 2009
9/26/09 - The Atlantic - No Suicide
11/24/09 - New York Times - Census Worker’s Hanging Death Called Suicide
11/25/09 - Christian Science Monitor - Police: Census worker Bill Sparkman staged his suicide
12/3/09 - Huffington Post - The Hanged Census Worker: Why Appalachia Hates Feds
March 2013 - The Atlantic - The Hanging
Wikipedia - Death of Bill Sparkman
Posted from Rockford, Michigan, USA
