Ky. hanging, ruled a suicide, leaves bloggers at loss for words

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By Ben Conery

When news broke in September that a census worker had been found hanged in rural Kentucky with the word "fed" scrawled across his bare chest, a number of liberal commentators suggested that anti-government sentiment whipped up by conservative activists had inspired a heinous crime.

Now it turns out to have been a suicide, but the mistaken impression of the commentators was no accident.

Kentucky State Police announced Tuesday that William Sparkman Jr. staged his death to look like a homicide motivated by hatred toward the federal government in hopes that his family would be able to collect on his life insurance.

"While all the details of the investigation will not be released at this time, the unusual level of attention and speculation attributed to Mr. Sparkman's death necessitates this release of information," the state police said in a statement.

Mr. Sparkman's motive appeared to be financial stability for his family. Police said the 51-year-old had "recently secured two life insurance policies for which payment for suicide was precluded."

Shortly after Mr. Sparkman's death, there were attempts to blame the political climate fostered by Fox News commentator Glenn Beck; Rep. Michele Bachmann, Minnesota Republican, and other conservatives.

In a blog post from September titled "No Suicide," the Atlantic magazine's Andrew Sullivan wrote "the most worrying possibility - that this is Southern populist terrorism, whipped up by the GOP and its Fox and talk radio cohorts - remains real. We'll see."

At his site Tuesday night, Mr. Sullivan wrote, among other things, that "although I clearly suspected foul play and believed it wasn't suicide, I drew no firm conclusions about the actual perpetrators of this act. In every post, I made sure readers knew that the investigation was ongoing, and we did not yet know the full facts."

Neither Mr. Sullivan nor the magazine returned e-mail messages from The Washington Times seeking comment.

Mr. Sullivan and some other bloggers made it clear in earlier posts that Mr. Sparkman's death could have been the result of him stumbling across drug dealers as part of his duties as a part-time census worker. But they also theorized that Mrs. Bachmann's criticism of the census, which she discussed on Mr. Beck's show, may have motivated the apparent homicide.