I was reading comments about the 'V is for Vendetta' movie on another web site and saw a link to a story about a dead aide being found in Joe Scarborough's office in Florida in 2001.
Hello?
I am a total news junky, and allow myself an occasional donning of a tinfoil hat..
Why haven't I ever seen this story?
Update
Kossack normcash mentioned that Average Joe joke about this on Imus back in 2003 Average Joe on Imus 29 May, 2003
Yech
It's about 15:50 into the smarmy thing..
I first did a Google search on Lori Klausutis (the dead aide), Scarborough, and Florida to see what web sites were discussing the story - lots of old stories, but the stories were from various mainstream news sources, so my interest was piqued.
This Link about a 911 widow from last December is a good summary of the news articles I read. It also goes way out there into tinfoil land.. but today's tinfoil is tomorrow's NYT Headline, so read with your favorite headgear engaged..
Here are some straight (i.e., verifiable at other sources) quotes from the article:
The strange death of Lori Klausutis received only a few short stories in the Northern Florida press; and the Washington Post printed only 44 words in a Nation-in-brief report dealing with the covered up and mysterious death of a female staffer in a Republican congressman's district office--a story that shocked us after hearing about it from federal agents because the revelation was kept from the public. The 44 words released were:
"FORT WALTON BEACH, FL--Lori Klausutis, a 28-year-old office worker for Rep. Joe Scarborough (R-FL), was found dead in the congressman's district office. Police said preliminary findings from the medical examiner's office showed no foul play or any outward indication of suicide."
Curiously, Klausutis was reportedly active in Florida's Bush v. Gore 2000 election recount activity--raising questions about what she knew; and on Friday, July 20th, 2001, her body was found slumped next to a desk on the floor of Scarborough's Fort Walton Beach office where Lori served as a constituent services coordinator since May, 1999.
Klausutis was found around 8:00 a.m. on Friday morning by a couple arriving for an appointment, and she had been dead for some time as the police cordoned off the office for an investigation; but they later announced that there was no reason to suspect foul play, nor were there signs of suicide--but national news outlets commenced a total television blackout.
Scarborough had recently resigned from Congress--prematurely and unexpectedly--on the heels of reported rumors about his marital fidelity and shortly after his marriage ended in divorce.
One of the ironic themes in the web articles is the fact that the aide was found dead in a Congressman's office and almost no national news resulted. This was within 3 months of the 'Gary Condit' prolonged witch hunt that so preoccupied the media right up to the dropping of the WTC towers later that year.
It appears Joe was on the phone before the woman's family was even notified spreading what turned out to be 'incorrect' information about the state of the young woman's health.
I have often wondered why the 'Average Joe' didn't stay at the public teet - but find him so repellent that I didn't even want to dig into his history to find out.
Now I do.