I wonder if there isn't a measure of disappointment among those absolutely convinced this unfortunate man was a victim of... what?... Rightwing extremists? Anti-government militiamen? Radical hillbilly teabaggers? The Achilles Heel of the Left is its own wishful thinking, it's own desire that an inaccurate appraisal of American political geography can't somehow, somewhere be true. If reality doesn't meet the template, we dump the template, not the other way around. We can't shout truth to life, we can't bend reality to fit our demanding delusions.

Give me a break, there is no way this was a suicide.

Pretty damn elaborate set-up for a suicide, but it happens when heirs are involved. Life insurance and the illusion that suicide is somehow dishonerable. If that is the case, pretty damn shitty thing to do, someone could end up in prison over it.

My feeling is this was some kind of robbery and once they found out he was with the census, they tried to make it look like that is why he was killed. I also don't think we will get a definitive answer as to how or why he died.

It's pretty common in rural areas like this for the local cops to either have family involved in the drug trade, or they are somehow involved or abbeting it themselves.

They have been pushing the suicide meme from the beginning, and it seems clear this was a homicide. Someone is covering this up and desperately trying to keep Federal authorities from getting involved.

The FBI needs to take this over at once.

Anonymous officials. Hmm. THEY'Re believable.

Couple thoughts. First off, does this seem to be taking a really long time to anyone else? This poor guy died two months ago and they still seem to have nothing but vague speculation. A federal employee has died, quite possibly murdered because of his job. A little more motivation would seem to be in order.

Secondly, handcuffing yourself I can see, tying your own hands with rope is going to be tricky but doable. How the hell do you bind your own hands with duct tape? He would have to have either torn the tape with his teeth (seems like it would be rather obvious if he had) or held a knife in his mouth. Either way there are going to be a very limited number of ways that his hands could be bound. And the roll of duct tape should be pretty easy to find - how far is he going to go with his hands and feet bound?

If the police legitimately believe the guy committed suicide, they must have some reason to believe that. There must be some sort of evidence pointing to how that could be the case. The fact that they leaked basically the same thing a month ago ("anonymous source says it's probably suicide") with nothing concrete backing that up stinks of buying time. A month ago I would have said that they are waiting for people to forget to sweep the whole thing under the rug. But after the balloon boy fiasco, perhaps this is a legitimate smoke screen for their investigation? One can only hope.

This feels like the same article from a few weeks ago that said absolutely nothing.

Is this being rehashed just to keep attention to it? If so, find a better way (like getting some new info after all this time)

Thx

Just cuz I'm in a cynical mood, sort of, it seems to me that someone really set on staging a suicide could do this (pre-cut the tape, mark his body, etc.) but we don't have enough of the evidence to know. However, this would have been a huge amount of effort to create a rather ambiguous message. Carving a backwards B in one's face and blaming an Obama supporter, or a parent falsely claiming someone kidnapped a child, because the parent killed the child is pretty straightforward. A part time government worker killing himself to drum up support for the government, by making it look like an anti-government murder seems rather far-fetched, especially for someone who didn't think living was worthwhile. Occom's razor points to a murder, unless there is more credible evidence to support otherwise.

Why wouldn't the Feds be automatically involved since he was working for them? Also, with such few people in the surrounding area, the amount of time involved seems suspicious. I hope TPM stays w this story.

Not being privileged to the details and only going with what's been reported (Hands BOUND with duct-tape, hanged from a tree with the word "fed" scrawled on his chest)- suicide is really difficult to accept. May be they know few things we don't.
By the way, didn't the guy just recently graduated and was looking forward to being a teacher or something? Usually suicidal people don't plan to better their lives; unless, he was on medication and skipped a dose or two. I think there are lots of things we just don't know. So, anything is possible.

Not to push the comparison too much here, but during the 50s and 60s, local and state police often came up with convenient and goofy excuses for obvious lynchings/race related murders.