Unanswered Sparkman Questions

The dust has finally settled on the Bill Sparkman case, and everyone seems to accept the final investigative report. It concluded Sparkman committed suicide in Hoskins Cemetery and faked it to appear as a murder, because he thought his cancer was coming out of remission and he wanted to leave behind an insurance policy for his son. Case Closed.

But I'm still uneasy about the whole thing. Don't know why, exactly. Something's just not quite right.

True, people do some crazy things, and true, they don't have to always make sense. In fact, the more a news story neatly makes a pat sort of sense, the greater likelihood it's been crafted and contrived. So, part of me thinks, maybe it is true. Maybe Sparkman did kill himself.

But ask yourself: if you were going to fake your own murder, couldn't you have thought of a better way? And couldn't you have done a better job of making it more realistic and believable?

Today's Washington Post:

Investigators said Sparkman's wrists were bound so loosely that he could have done the taping himself. He was touching the ground almost to his knees. To survive, "all Mr. Sparkman had to do at any time was stand up," Capt. Lisa Rudzinksi of the Kentucky State Police said.

I don't mean to speak ill of the dead, but that's just plain stupid. What kind of lynching is that? Did Sparkman really think anyone was going to believe that unknown perps captured him, tied his hands loosely, and then hung him in such an unlikely way? (And why would they even need to tie his hands, anyway? Presumably he wouldn't be going anywhere.)

Sparkman, we're told, was a teacher, a man of science, and highly intelligent. I have real trouble squaring this intelligent man with this poorly-executed hoax attempt.

Lowell Adams, a close friend of Sparkman's, told investigators that Sparkman had confessed his whole secret plan to him. Why would he do that? I don't know. It doesn't make sense. Why would Adams betray Sparkman and spill the beans? I don't know that either.

Some friend.

The Washington Post again:

"In reality Bill spoke with me several times about killing himself and, on the Saturday before his death he told me he was going to kill himself on the next Wednesday," Adams said in a written statement included in more than 200 pages of investigative records.

Adams said Sparkman, who once had lymphoma, preferred to kill himself rather than to die from cancer.

"Bill said he had chosen a place to kill himself 'in the woods' in Clay County and he intended to hang himself," Adams said. "He said he intended to tie his hands behind his back so it would appear that someone else did it, to appear like a murder."

Adams said Sparkman asked him if he wanted to get drunk with him the weekend before his death. Adams said Sparkman bought a case of Budweiser beer in Richmond. An autopsy found that Sparkman was not under the influence of any drugs or alcohol at the time of his death. It also found that Sparkman did not have cancer.

Wait, so he didn't have cancer? He did all this for nothing? So why did he think his cancer had returned? Did he get a doctor's diagnosis? If so, who's the doctor? If not, why not?

The two life insurance policies that Sparkman took out on himself were for accidental death, and would not pay out in case of suicide. Wouldn't it have been far easier to fake an accident than to fake a murder? Wouldn't it have been far easier to actually set a real accident into motion?

For instance, couldn't he have driven his car off a cliff while doing 90 MPH, but stepped hard on the brakes, knowing full well that the brake marks on the road would be accepted as suitable evidence that it was an accident? (Not a very pleasant way to go, but neither is carving the word "Fed" into your own flesh and choking yourself with a noose.) For that matter, couldn't he just have deliberately overdosed on something? Or drowned in a lake? Why this bizarre and implausible kidnapping-lynching scenario?

Lastly, Sparkman allegedly did all this to help his son, who he loved very much. He left detailed written instructions to his son about what to do after his demise, and he closed the letter with "I love you and will always do so." And yet we're to believe that he, in some sort of severely misguided "Spock kills self but saves the ship" act of self destructive heroism, abandoned his son and committed suicide?

Some father.

I can't swallow it. I just can't. There's something more here we haven't been told, but I can't begin to pretend to guess what. I don't necessarily mean to imply anything in the realm of conspiracy or cover-up, but I just can't shake the feeling that there's still a third party at work here, a missing puzzle piece, a shadow over Innsmouth, a speckled band.

State Police: Sparkman a Suicide

The official verdict is in: Bill Sparkman, the census worker recently found dead in Clay County with the word "fed" written across his chest, killed himself and staged it to look like homicide so his son could collect the insurance money. Or so the Kentucky State Police believe.

According to State Police Capt. Lisa Rudzinski, Sparkman's wrists were bound loosely in front of his body, allowing considerable mobility. Duct tape held his glasses in place, and his mouth was taped shut and stuffed with a rag.

Curiously, Rudzinski said Sparkman was not blindfolded, despite previous eyewitness accounts to the contrary. Even odder to me, now they're saying he actually wasn't in Hoskins Cemetery as originally stated from day one. Now they're saying he was actually in a clearing nearby.

"No defensive wounds were located on his body," Rudzinski said. "And a rag was found in his pants that was consistent with other rags scattered at the scene, including the rag that was in his mouth. The victim's clothes were found undisturbed in the bed of his pickup truck, which was also recovered at the scene." Rudzinski also reported that the autopsy indicated that the letters spelling "Fed" were written from the bottom up, as someone might do when writing on themselves.

From the official KSP report:

The investigation indicates that Mr. Sparkman died of asphyxiation/strangulation at the same location where he was discovered in Clay County, Ky.

Despite the fact that Mr. Sparkman was found hands, feet and mouth bound with duct tape, rope around his neck and the word "FED" written on his chest, analysis of the evidence determined Mr. Sparkman's death was self-inflicted. A thorough examination of evidence from the scene, to include DNA testing, as well as examination of his vehicle and his residence resulted in the determination that Mr. Sparkman, alone, handled the key pieces of evidence with no indications of any other persons involved.

Witness statements, which are deemed credible, indicate Mr. Sparkman discussed ending his own life and these discussions matched details discovered during the course of the investigation. It was learned that Mr. Sparkman had discussed recent federal investigations and the perceived negative attitudes toward federal entities by some residents of Clay County.

Without raising any red flag of conspiracy theory, let me just say that I'm inclined to think there's a little more to the story than we are being told. Just because no one's DNA was found at the crime scene is meaningless - criminals do wear gloves and stuff in this forensically conscious age, you know. And the whole "letters written from the bottom up" thing makes no sense to me. I stood in front of a mirror, imagining "What would Sparkman do?" and my first impulse was to start the letters at the top, not the bottom.

Finally, I'm puzzled that they claim to have "witness statements" (plural) in which Sparkman divulged his whole secret plan to others before carrying it out. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense. In fact, if this was a suicide staged as murder, it's a really, really, really stupidly done one. And from all accounts, Sparkman was a very smart man.

I'm just sayin'.

Secret Service Suicide

With all the talk of the Bill Sparkman case, I wonder if anyone thinks the case of Gary Joe Bergsen might need to be reopened, or at least reexamined. (Thanks to Dan Brandenburg for reminding me about this old X-file.)

In September 1990, Bergsen, a Secret Service officer from Spotsylvania County, Virginia, was found dead of a gunshot wound in a remote rural graveyard (Mountain Springs Cemetery) in the Daniel Boone National Forest. The cemetery is outside of Furnace, KY, near the Estill County-Powell County line.

Bergsen was on annual leave at the time and was not in Kentucky on official business, according to Secret Service spokesman Mark Rupert, quoted in the Washington Post. Neither the State Police nor the Secret Service could say what he was doing in Kentucky, especially in an obscure cemetery in the mountains. Previously, he had allegedly been visiting relatives in California, and went on a deer hunting trip while there. His hunting and camping equipment were still in his vehicle.


Kentucky State Trooper Ed Robinson told the Fredericksburg Free-Lance Star that all tests indicated that Agent Bergsen committed suicide with his own .38 pistol while sitting at the wheel of his own pickup truck. However, Robinson was also concerned about sightings of a 1976 Ford Sedan with Virginia license plates seen in the area that morning. Robinson noted it was unusual to see a car with Virginia plates in that area, but it may have been just a coincidence that two of them were around Mountain Springs Cemetery at the same time.

Hmmmm.

The Bergsen case was ruled a suicide, but the other troubling questions were never resolved. His sister said that during his visit in California just prior to his death, he was in great spirits, thrilled about his job and his life, and was, quote, "happy-go-lucky".


Two years later, the Free-Lance Star ran a follow-up piece about Bergsen's house at 7018 Soulier Lane, Battlefield Green subdivision, Fredericksburg, VA. Neighbors were starting to complain about his empty home falling into disrepair, and it was reported that after Bergsen's death, the house had been purchased by a pair of men named Carl Schleicher and Alton Perkins, both of whom were with an organization called the Mankind Research Foundation from Silver Spring, MD.

Although Schleicher told the paper that his organization's purpose was to provide low-cost housing to low-income families, a cursory Google search shows something quite different. This link describes them as:

"A New Age organization that aims to combine the efforts of leading researchers and experimenters in the multi-disciplinary and interacting fields of human development and humanistic psychology which include research involving the body, mind and those forces and phenomena acting upon the health, education and welfare of mankind. Areas of study include biocommunication, biocybernetics, biophysics, psycho-physiology, educational development, cancer research and mind-body developments. It is located at 1315 Apple Ave., Silver Spring, MD 20910."

And this link opens up more cans of worms than I want to think about right now. And then there's mindcontrolforums.com, which states that the late Christopher Bird, co-author of The Secret Life of Plants, was a member at some point.

Now, I don't mean to imply any connection between Agent Bergsen's death and whoever bought his house - I mean, someone had to buy it, right? - and I certainly do not go along with the above-linked conspiracy-kook websites that automatically classify any Remote Viewing, Psychotronic, or Parapsychological project as being inherently suspicious. (Christopher Bird, in fact, has always been a hero of mine and I corresponded with him sporadically in the 1980s and 1990s about Orgone energy, plant intelligence, and pleomorphic organisms.)

But that Agent Bergsen's house was taken over by a group with such a mysterious, controversial, and self-contradictory mission statement is, to me, very interesting for its own sake. Why did they tell the newspaper they were a provider of housing to low-income families when there's every indication that they were not, and never have been, in that line of work? Or did the paper just get the facts wrong?

The DC/MD/VA area is so filled with all manner of weird researchers, Remote Viewers, and triple agents of shadowy orgs, that it's probably just a coincidence. But a fascinating one nevertheless. If nothing else, it's an illustration of just how easily one thing leads to another when examining "fellow travelers" in such circles.


Meanwhile, back in KY, you can find the Mountain Springs Cemetery at Latitude 37.73640, Longitude -83.80550. How the heck did Agent Bergsen get here, halfway between two extreme rural locales as Cobhill and Furnace?

Was he there to visit a certain grave? Whose? Why? You can get a partial list of who's who six feet under at the cemetery here.

Why didn't he tell anyone about this unplanned trip? What was out here that brought him to this place, and then what possessed him to place his Secret Service revolver behind his ear and pull the trigger?

Sparkman Case Gets Weirder

Things just keep getting weirder in the case of Bill Sparkman, a U.S. Census worker whose corpse was found tied, naked and asphyxiated by a rope in Clay County's Hoskins Cemetery.

The Times-Tribune is reporting that they've received a fax regarding Sparkman titled "I Did It" which seems to state that he was killed because he was working for the Federal Government. The fax has been turned over to the FBI.

That same Times-Tribune article brings something even stranger to the table:

One police investigator, who asked to remain anonymous, told the Times-Tribune that Beyer’s statement indicated law enforcement officials were apparently still entertaining the notions of accidental death or suicide.

One press report indicated that Sparkman’s feet were touching the ground when police found his body. “If his feet were touching and he was hanging from a limb, you’d want to know if it was a broken limb or if the rope slipped,” the investigator continued, saying, “if it appeared his feet were touching when he was tied, it would make you start to think.”

The investigator suggested reporters research the death of David Carradine, an actor whose body was found bound in a closet following death by apparent autoerotic asphyxiation.

Meanwhile, conservative blogger Stacy McCain has written up extended remarks about his recent visit to the scene of the crime, and underscores the mystery fairly succinctly:

If Bill Sparkman hadn’t just driven up here to Hoskins Cemetery to enjoy the scenery, but rather had been lured up here or brought here by his killer, then whoever killed him was almost certainly a local resident, someone familiar with the area. No way somebody from out of town, a stranger to the area, would have driven past many other possible places to dump a body in order to reach this isolated location...

This cemetery was far away from town, and even farther from Sparkman’s home in Laurel County. Sparkman’s truck had been parked up here when his body was found. How did the truck get here? Did Sparkman drive up here, or had he been kidnapped by someone?

What had Bill Sparkman been doing up here in the middle of the woods? Who brought him here? Why did they kill him?

Fascinating as it sounds, I really can't buy the theory that Sparkman was romping around naked in cemeteries performing acts of Carradine-style sexual self-asphyxiation. (David Carradine, you may recall, was found half naked, bound, and hanging in a closet in a hotel this year. Curiously, in his final interview, which just aired on the show Celebrity Ghost Stories, he confessed that he feared a ghost in his closet was haunting him.)

However, neither can I really buy the idea that Sparkman was killed by druggies or militiamen (even though the coroner has now officially confirmed that the word "Fed" was indeed scrawled on Sparkman's chest with a felt-tip pen). The absolute last thing those kind of people would want is to cause a big scene that would focus the entire world's attention on little old Clay County, KY. They would have just disappeared Sparkman's body, simple as that.

Sparkman's son Josh has been voicing concern about the mixed messages and slow signals being given by the police in the matter. So far, law enforcement officials have still refused to rule out the possibility of suicide or accident as a cause of death. (Accident?? Seriously?) Josh insists that Sparkman was absolutely not capable of suicide, and he should know. He also points out that Sparkman had just won a lengthy battle with lymphoma. "No person on this planet is going to fight cancer like he did, then turn around and kill himself a year or so later."

Hoskins Cemetery

Conservative blogger Stacy McCain recently took a road trip to Clay County, KY to check out the scene of the alleged lynching of census worker Bill Sparkman.

I say "alleged" now, because the London Sentinel-Echo is reporting that the original Associated Press report about Sparkman was filled with factual errors. Contrary to previous reports, the Kentucky State Police are now saying that although a rope was around his neck, Sparkman was not hanging from a tree.

Check out McCain's report and photos here. (Photo above from McCain, photo below from AP)


Hoskins Cemetery (located at Lat: 37.1184229, Lon: -83.5874134) is referred to by some sources (and even by the road sign pictured here) as "Hoskin Cemetery" but that's a typo that's taken on a bit of a life of its own... it's clearly "Hoskins" because it was specifically created by and for the Hoskins family.

Google Maps shows the cemetery as being quite off the beaten path, but the aerial photography also seems to be indicating a major road running near it - one that isn't on the actual map. McCain must have had a heck of a time finding this place.

Census Worker Lynched in Clay County

From the Courier-Journal:

A U.S. Census worker found hanging from a tree near a Kentucky cemetery had the word "fed" scrawled on his chest, a law enforcement official said Wednesday, and the FBI is investigating whether he was a victim of anti-government sentiment.

The body of Bill Sparkman, a 51-year-old, part-time Census field worker and teacher, was found Sept. 12 in a remote patch of the Daniel Boone National Forest in rural southeast Kentucky.

The Census has suspended door-to-door interviews in rural Clay County where the body was found pending the outcome of the investigation. An autopsy report is pending...

A private group called PEER, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, tracks violence against employees who enforce environmental regulations, but the group's executive director, Jeff Ruch, said it is hard to know about all of the cases because some agencies don't share data on instances of violence against employees.

Ruch said that after the bombing in Oklahoma City, "we kept getting reports from employees that attacks and intimidation against federal employees had not diminished, and that's why we've been tracking them."