**Strange disclaimer. Wait for the report disputing the notion that an anti-government type was involved because the word scrawled on his chest had too many letters and was spelled correctly.

It's been 12 days since his body was found; if the circumstances surrounding his death were not inflammatory, we would know by now.

"... Sparkman's feet were planted on the ground. A rope around Sparkman's neck was attached to a tree."

You can't possibly know how much better that makes me feel, knowing that he was garroted rather than strung up.

Lynching is lynching. However it occurs, the result is always the same.

"At this juncture".

Shades of Tawana Brawley / Al Sharpton here. Jumping to conclusions would be unwise.

Being from KY, and travelling to this part of the state a lot, I know this about the people:
1. They are suspicious of outsiders. This stems from who settled in the area (Scot-Irish, and Irish-Catholics)
2. They are very poor and grown cannibis to sell for income. The DBNF (Daniel Boone Nat'l Forrest) is a known area for growning cannibis. The Feds are always there destroying the crops. The growers deliberately set up ambushes to kill or maime the drug enforcement officers.
3. KY is a red state and this is Appalachia country and for some strange reason GOP everytime. They are even poorer.

This man was murdered because:
1. He is a fed employee
2. A outsider asking too many questions
3. Political reasons ( I blame Bachmann & beck for stirring the pot)
4. Or a combination of 1, & 3. He did not work for drug enforcement. He wasn't destroying illegal smokes. I am betting on 1 & 3 being the reasons. I doubt he was perfoming some sort of erotica on the job.
This is GOP territory and many of them would not be happy with the election results.

It seems unlikely that things would play out as they have over a suicide. Why wouldn't investigators end the rumors about the scrawling of "fed" if they were untrue? Vague statements aren't going to kill this story. Officials are just trying to keep the press away from the investigation.

"left the impression that [Sparkman] was found strung up in a tree because he was a federal employee," Beyer said. "At this juncture that's not accurate." Beyer added that Sparkman died of asphyxiation."

I find the FBI's walk back baffling. There's rope, there's a dead guy, there's a tree, all three items were attached, the guy wasn't laying on the ground. He died due to lack of oxygen (a common cause of death from a hanging.) If there's something inaccurate about the original it's really minor and it's because whoever leaked the circumstances merely reported what he saw.

Tree, rope around neck, dead from lack of air, FED written on chest...died while hung with FED written on chest, or died from poison mushrooms -- don't jump to conclusions, his feet were on the ground!

He was found dead, with a rope tied around his neck, attached to a tree, but his feet were touching the ground. That's so much better than swinging from a branch. I'm not as disturbed by it any more.

It's sad that we have troops on missions in Afghanistan rooting out Taliban when we could use them here in our Kentucky backwoods rooting out the American Taliban.

Have there been a lot of census people killed in the past(by pot growers or meth heads)?
Or is this murder just coincidentally this year when MICHELLE BACHMAN tied the Census in w/ACORN in her statement about "refusing to fill in the census?"
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/06/18/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry5095844.shtml

Suicide appears unlikely, assuming the word "Fed" was written on his chest. I doubt he would have bothered to do that, if he intended to kill himself.

Assuming he was murdered and the killer(s) wrote that word on Sparkman's chest as a warning, I find it odd that the body wasn't located in a more public area assuring the body and the warning would be discovered before it decomposed enough to obliterate the message. This raises the possibility that the person who reportedly discovered the body may be involved in the murder. Also, the killer may have written the word to direct suspicion away from him (or her). If this is the case, the killer likely is someone who believed law enforcement would regard him as a possible suspect, but for the message.

The slow strangulation theory by leaving him with his toes able to support his weight isn't consistent with assuring a public discovery in time to see the message unless his hands were tied behind his back and he was gagged preventing him from shouting for help.

We lack sufficient information to determine if Sparkman might have been murdered at another location and transported to the site where the hanging was staged. This might explain why Sparkman's feet were found flat on the ground because, depending on how much he weighed together with the stretchiness quality of the rope and flexibility of the tree branch, lifting his dead weight off the ground by pulling on the other end of the rope and maintaining the tension while tying it to the tree probably would require considerable strength. The task would be much easier if the body remained in contact with the ground. I wonder if law enforcement found any evidence at the scene indicating that Sparkman stood or was placed on an elevated platform with the rope around his neck and the platform was removed causing his body to drop and the rope to tighten asphyxiating him? The platform would still be there, if he committed suicide.

Was his vehicle found? If so, where? When did he last communicate with his office and what was his schedule?

If he had a cell phone with GPS and it was turned on, law enforcement can track everywhere he went with the exception of dead zones. The pinging signal travels in straight lines in all directions and will be picked up by a cell tower within 20 miles so long as a mountain or hill isn't in the way, which may be a problem in this case.

Why did the killer go to so much effort? Why not shoot him and bury the body deep in the woods where it wouldn't be found?

Perplexing case.

You also have to realize in this part of the country this was likely done by the halfwit inbred locals with no knowledge of physics and their only reference to hanging would be to some tv show they watch--pawpaw who was in the Klan died several years ago from lung cancer from the smokes the company store gave him so his expertise was not available. These people are not that bright on a scale most people can't imagine. They may have tried to hang him but blew it. Even being hanged by a state sanctioned hangmen requires all sorts of assessment of height, weight, drop, rope type, etc. If these guys thought it was just tie the rope and he falls it may not have worked that way and he was too close to the ground and got closer as he hung there so was not hanging or they had to pull on his body to break his neck when he did not drop with enough force to break his neck and was too close or on the ground. Hanging is about your neck breaking--a bad hanging results in a slow strangling (sometimes the intent though) or a decapitation (rarely the intent--remember Saddam?) I think this is the result of inbred halfwits who thought they knew how to hang someone from tv and messed it up.

The point is - there may be a murderer on the loose out there and don't the people who live around there have a right to know if they need to sit up with their loaded shotguns pointed at the door/window? Or if they can go about their business, not worrying about a murderer on the loose. that's the point to asking why the heck are they taking so long. If they had killed him in his house, the authorities would have come out a lot sooner with a theory, and not hidden the story for a week before it got national coverage. Worried about their image, perhaps.