Hanged Census Worker Staged Suicide in Apparent Insurance Scam

The part-time census worker found naked, bound and hanging from a tree had staged his suicide to make it appear like murder, authorities said today.

When the body of Bill Sparkman, 51, was found near a rural Kentucky cemetery in September, he was gagged, had duct tape over his eyes and neck, his hands and feet were bound with tape, and he had “fed” scrawled on his chest.

Authorities initially investigated whether Sparkman had been a victim of anti-government sentiment, but today they said in a statement that he died during an “intentional, self-inflicted act that was staged to appear as a homicide.”

Two life insurance plans had also been taken out by Sparkman, a single father, right before the time of his death, but payment for suicide was precluded, said police…

I got it wrong. I called it ‘murder’, though I didn’t guess that I knew by whom. I couldn’t imagine how he could have died in the manner he did, with his feet found on the ground and his hands in front of him, without a second person being there. The guy who found the body thought the same thing: “The scene left Weaver without a doubt how Sparkman died. ‘He was murdered,’ he said. ‘There’s no doubt.’”

I’ve never heard of a person managing to kill themselves in a manner like that, very strange. Almost an act of sheer will. The only thing I’ve heard that’d be remotely like it is auto-erotic asphyxiation, and, with that, the victim’s bodies and brains are pre-occupied with another goal. Hopefully I’ll do some better analysis next time, I continue to live and learn.

Sparkman was apparently a troubled man who was battling cancer, and he may have just gotten too depressed. Though I doubt he could have known just how big a story his ‘killing’ would become, it still was a lurid and shocking public suicide that intended to implicate others. As a result, quite a few people ended up looking sideways at Kentucky for a couple weeks, and that wasn’t fair. Sparkman made a huge mistake ending his life that way, accusing the people of Kentucky of murder, and now that’s what we’ll remember him for. And our obliging his scam.

Btw, I can live with my Sparkman ‘murder’ gaffe over, say, Roger Hedgecock’s, who guessed he was killed by ‘open borders‘ and Mexican druggies, or Dan Riehl’s, who guessed he was killed because he was a child molester. Knowing Dan, he’ll say that he got it right.

How much longer will it be before ACORN will have killed Bill? Days? Hours?

Dead Census worker: Victim of open borders?
Roger Hedgecock
Posted: September 28, 2009

Two weeks ago, Census taker Bill Sparkman died choking, hands and feet bound, hanging naked from a tree in a remote site in Daniel Boone National Forest in Clay County, Ky. Someone had scrawled “fed” on his chest with a felt-tipped pen.

Last week, Sparkman’s death became fodder for more attacks on “right-wing violence.” Bloggers wanted to “send the body to Glenn Beck,” and a Time magazine piece speculated that Sparkman was a victim of the culture of another McCain-voting Southern state

Now it looks more like Sparkman was yet another victim of illegal drug operations on national forest land, and possibly also a victim of our still open border with Mexico.

Taking the Census in our national forests is dangerous business. Law enforcement sources say meth labs and marijuana plantations are “prevalent” in the area of Sparkman’s death. Did he stumble across a drug operation in the Daniel Boone National Forest? No one is saying for sure, but the locals believe it…

Our open border with Mexico has been changing American society in a number of unpleasant ways. These fires, these destroyed national forest lands, and maybe even Bill Sparkman’s death, may just be the latest way.

So now it’s wild-eyed drug pushers. But not the white American ones, the brown Mexican ones. This latest story I don’t find very compelling given that illegal immigrants, even, or especially, the ones running drug operations, are very wary of police and the government. When law enforcement drops by, they run.

And when it’s some harmless guy from the Census Bureau, they don’t abduct, kill and hang him. And then write ‘fed’ on the body. That’s a particularly lurid, public message that doesn’t really serve a foreign drug operation. Perhaps Mexican drug-dealer/manufacturers in Mexico, maybe, but not here.

This murder really looks like an act of rage, and Conservatives just refuse to admit they have had a hand in pouring gasoline on already-present anti-government feelings in that part of Kentucky. I don’t imagine the moonshining days are all that far back. Instead, they’re going to keep coming up with ever-more preposterous scenarios, some that obscenely blame the blameless Sparkman for his own murder because, frankly, these right-wingers are cowards.

If it does turn out to be some paranoid ‘Federal Government Rapes and Kills!’ lunatic, watch them pile on that the killer was actually a hard core liberal. Yes, they are that dumb and shameless.

The faculty and staff of Salt Lake City’s Western Governors University posted this, in his memory. Many thanks to them.

Why wouldn’t somebody understandably enraged at a child molester plan and follow him to some far-flung precinct, abduct him, bind his hands and feet, kill him, strip his body naked, hang it from a tree, and scrawl ‘fed’ across his belly? Slap his census i.d. to his side? It’s all so simple.

So many questions…
———————————————————————————————————————————
Was blogger Dan Riehl cramming his balls up a goat’s ass?

…look, before any more people start going bonkers that I’m accusing Riehl of anything, take a breath…

———————————————————————————————————————————
Was Dan Riehl chatter-chewing the hair off the bunghole of an African Elephant?

…hey, before any more Liberals start staining their g-strings that I’m accusing Riehl of anything, take a breath…

———————————————————————————————————————————

>Was Census Worker Bill Sparkman A Child Predator?
Riehl World View
Sunday, September 27, 2009

UPDATE: Before any more people start going bonkers that I’m accusing Sparkman of anything, take a breath. I’ve done a fair amount of crime blogging mixed in with politics over time. One doesn’t rule anything in or out without some firm answers. People feel free to speculate about Meth labs and pot fields but none have been reported in the area, yet. All I’m doing is looking at any and all possibilities. You’d think a moonshiner, or Meth head would have just buried the guy. Why hang him and invite the Feds into it by writing Fed on his chest? Why strip him naked and bind and gag him, which has serious sexual overtones?

I have no idea what happened, but from the reporting I’ve seen, neither does anyone else. If he adopted a boy as a single man, or was married and split with the wife and kids, who knows. But I never assume I know a story or motive until I know it. Right now we don’t. I’m simply speculating on one possible alternative, however impolite.

Someone may as well say it given some peculiar details. The strangest quote I’ve seen in all the reporting around apparently murdered Census worker Bill Sparkman is this one from his Mother located in Florida.

“I have my own ideas, but I can’t say them out loud. Not at this point,” she said. “Right now, what I’m doing, I’m just waiting on the FBI to come to some conclusion.”

She didn’t say she had been advised not to speculate. Being in Florida she has nothing to fear from Kentucky locals, so why the secrecy? Add that to the somewhat mysterious way this case is being revealed by authorities and whatever is behind it, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s another surprise in store here.

The condition of the body and his being naked also seems curious. Why strip someone down to their socks only to kill them? Finally Sparkman’s bio and work history suggests at the least he was not just your average guy. No teaching degree, no full-time means of employment and no wife or kids so far as I am aware. But he certainly did gravitate towards children. I can’t help but wonder if this wasn’t a revenge killing disguised to look like something else. If he did have issues in this regard and messed with the wrong kid, it isn’t as if something like that can be ruled out until we know more.

Sparkman’s mother, Henrie Sparkman of Inverness, Fla., told The Associated Press her son was an Eagle scout who moved to the area to be a local director for the Boy Scouts of America. She said he later became a substitute teacher in Laurel County and supplemented that income as a Census worker.

There also seems to be a huge number of small unnamed cemeteries in that area. I haven’t even seen the name of the cemetery he was found in released. Interesting case, if nothing else. But I’m far from certain it has any political ramifications.

Web Conservative Robert Stacy McCain tragically obsesses over Andrew Sullivan and sings his own praises over deciding to chase the Sparkman story. And he needs you to send him money while he paints his perceived enemies as ‘AIDS-infected.’

UPDATE 1:50 a.m.: Well, folks, it looks like I’m going to be Kentucky-bound to cover this story in person — another one of those double-dog-dare-ya adventures in shoe-leather reporting.

Thanks to TB in North Carolina, BD in Maryland, AL in Rhode Island, a big thanks to JS in Virginia, and a huge thanks to Nathan in Missouri, the Shoe Leather Reporting Fund quickly collected enough to get me to Kentucky and back.

Additional contributions are welcome, to enable me to extend this trip. Just got off the phone with the lady at the desk of a hotel near I-75, about 20 miles from Manchester, Ky. A single room is about $95 per night, tax included. If you figure 2 packs of smokes/day at $5 each, five cups coffee/day at $2 each, continental breakfast comes with the room, so two meals/day at $5 each — the basic daily expenses come to $125. Of course, I’ve got regular bills to pay, but I’ll worry about that later.

Our hero, what an extraordinary challenge. Seven links to his PayPal account, so far.

Just think about Andrew Sullivan sitting there in Pathum, Thailand — I’m not kidding — lecturing Michelle Malkin (!) on conservatism:

By the way, there is nothing conservative about Southern populism.

Turns out Andrew–I’m not kidding–might not be in Thailand. And what if he were, what’s so wild about that? McCain is a child.

OK, Sully, enjoy your Thai holiday, while I get my 2004 KIA ready for a 500-mile road trip to Clay County, Kentucky (Monday’s forecast for Manchester, Ky.: High 70F, low 47F, cloudy, 20% chance of rain) and let me show you how it’s done. You just go on back to speculating about Sarah Palin’s uterus and leave Kentucky to me.

C’mon, dear brothers, can I get an “amen“?

CORRECTION: I don’t think Sully’s actually in Thailand. His “View From Your Window” feature seems to be about readers e-mailing him photos of the view from thir windows, rather than his own global photographic travelogue.

My mistake and I’m happy to correct it. Harvard-educated, obstretric-obsessive, AIDS-infected, dope-smoking British immigrants don’t have a monopoly on jumping to incorrect conclusions, you know.

BTW, some people have a crazy hunch this Kentucky thing might involve teenagers and the horrorcore rap scene. Maybe they’re wrong about that, too . . .

I doubt ‘Sully’ knows what ‘obstretric’ or ‘thir’ are, but I know calling him ‘AIDS-infected’ when you get embarrassed rates you for an internet coffin, McCain. Goodbye.

“The shit’s supposed to be on low boil…

[knock knock]

What the FUCK!? Shshshshshshshhhhhhh….

…MOTHERFUCKING RAT-TURD–go get my 30 foot rope! it’s in the toolshed! SKYE–I’ve got 3 rolls of duct tape in the garage–once we’ve knocked him down on the porch, come running out, fast…WORM–you gotta find some sorta black marker…..“

Bill Sparkman was a regular guy. Had a couple children, managed to get them grown up. Worked with the Boy Scouts, worked with kids as a substitute teacher. Also worked for the U.S. Census, probably to help make ends meet. He, unfortunately, also got cancer and fought for his life with regular doses of chemotherapy.

In between sessions of chemo, while working as a census taker near Big Creek, Kentucky, somebody savagely murdered him. Abducted him, gagged him, stripped him naked, bound his hands and feet and hanged his body from a tree. They also marked him, scrawling ‘fed’ across his body and taping his Census Bureau i.d. to his neck.

Immediately, anybody familiar with the hysterical screeching of the right-wing in the wake of the presidency’s changing hands cringed. Conservative paranoia about the census had been boiling for months.

Bachmann’s irrational diatribes about scary stalking Census workers quickly spawned a right-wing movement. During an interview with Bachmann, Fox News’ Glenn Beck said, “Ok, so let me talk about the Census because there’s a lot of people that are concerned with it because they don’t want to fill it out, they’re not comfortable with ACORN members coming to find out all this information, they don’t want to give the government all this kind of information.”

Conservative radio host Neal Boortz told a caller, “Most of the rest of the [Census] information is designed to help the government steal from you in order to pass off your property to the moochers. They’re looters.” Boortz urged his listeners to resist the Census workers. “If somebody comes to my — if a burglar came to your house, are you going to show him where the silverware is?” he asked. “Maybe you will if he pulls out a gun.”

The door-rapping ethnics of ACORN? Stealing? Burglars, guns? That sort of hideous vilification of the census and its workers alone qualifies you as whacko dirtbags. It’s required by the Constitution, jerks.

So now we have to come to grips with this murder, an absolutely shocking event, a nightmare. If it turns out to be the hysterical lashing out of an anti-government/census lunatic, it’d indicate the country has a bigger problem than we’d perhaps like to admit: political hysteria-speech affects ‘regular folks’, to the point of enabling, if not outright stoking, homicide.

And, well, don’t the same mindless Conservatives who run their neon-red-raged mouths know it? What was the response to the silence-of-the-lambs killing of an innocent, mild-mannered census worker? What were they immediately inspired to say? This: ‘You liberals are So Fucking Stupid, HAHA.’

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The callous idiot Michelle Malkin can shut the hell up now.

Witness: Census worker’s hanging body naked, bound

BIG CREEK, Ky. – A part-time census worker found hanging in a rural Kentucky cemetery was naked, gagged and had his hands and feet bound with duct tape, said an Ohio man who discovered the body two weeks ago.

The Census Bureau has suspended door-to-door interviews in the rural county pending the investigation…