Story of 'Joe's dead intern' began Harris' slide, insiders say

[im10ashus]

TALLAHASSEE - Katherine Harris' floundering U.S. Senate campaign lost its high-level staff again this week and is groping for a message -- which doesn't surprise Republican insiders who trace the seeds of her trouble to the story of ``Joe's dead intern.''

This wasn't any old Joe.

It was Joe Scarborough, host of the prime-time MSNBC show Scarborough Country and a former Pensacola Republican congressman who was courted last summer by national Republicans to run against Harris. But before he could announce he wouldn't, Harris called major donors and suggested Scarborough would have to answer questions about the strange death of a former staff member in 2001, according to two former high-level Harris staff members, a GOP donor and Scarborough.

''That was the first clue that something wasn't right with Katherine Harris,'' Scarborough told The Miami Herald in a recent interview, noting that a medical examiner found his staff member's death was natural and not the result of foul play.

Harris, through a spokeswoman, denied Scarborough's account, saying she ''would never insinuate publicly or privately'' that he did anything untoward.

cont'd...

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/15034557.htm

[redqueen]

1. is that the medical examiner that was fired from his previous job?

just wondering if i have my scandal stories mixed up...

[Gabi Hayes]

2. yep...media is still protecting him from that huge scandal.

they had Gary Condit to choose from at the same time, and his story was much more 'compelling'

http://www.oldamericancentury.org/lori_klausutis.htm


proud to call him my friend, denis wright:

http://www.americanpolitics.com/20010808Klausutis.html

Once upon a time, the phrase "investigative reporter" actually meant something. It usually involved hard work, possibly even mentation. Now, it seems, they just make stuff up. Especially on the Fox News Channel, where an uninitiated viewer could easily think she/he had tuned in Comedy Central. It's "Chandra-Chandra-Chandra" with the occasional "Condit is just like Clinton" thrown in. Given our media's 24/7 obsession with the Gary Condit "scandal", you might assume that there is a real dearth of hard news to pursue.
In reality, there is indeed a news story percolating out there. The story bears remarkable and ironic similarities to the Condit/Levy story. Both involve Congressmen, rumors of infidelity, and the fate of a younger female subordinate. The details are so similar as to remind one of two alternate universes. The difference between the two stories? First, in the Klausutis case as not in the Levy case, there is a real body, very dead. Second, the Klausutis case involves a Republican.

The story had a brief flutter in the Northwest Florida press, which ran a few very short stories on Lori's death. With the exception of the Northwest Florida Daily News, they were of the "Aw-what-a-shame/ nothing-to-see-here-move-along-now-folks" variety. But nationally, this mysterious death earned a mere one paragraph mention in The Washington Post's NATION IN BRIEF column:

"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."

Unbelievably, that was it. The story was simply dropped. A young female employee of one of Florida's Congressmen had died unexpectedly in the Congressman's office. There were no witnesses to her death and the cause of death was not apparent. Klausutis' boss, Joe Scarborough had recently resigned from Congress prematurely and unexpectedly, amid rumors about his marital fidelity and soon after a divorce. He had also abruptly resigned as publisher of the Independent Florida Sun, claiming that resigning from Congress and as publisher was necessary to spend more time with his sons.

Such circumstances make one pause. Sick to death of the clear bias of the corporate owned media, and suspicious of the odd nature of this death, we began to dig for answers. The more information we discovered, the more unlikely, and the more newsworthy the story became.

[im10ashus]

4. Thanks, Gabi.

Link us up, baby!

[Gabi Hayes]

11. it's up there...the Denis Wright piece, in particular. the deal about

the medical examiner is astounding

he got fired in Kansas, IIRC

one of the things he got caught doing was driving around with BODY PARTS in his car!

[redqueen]

10. thanks!

:hi:

[Gabi Hayes]

13. Denis used to post here....a thread with a fun contretemps between

him and good old, infamous Fredda, who, along with Denis and several others who post here, used to post at an offshoot of the late, lamented American Prospect Forum, which was destroyed by delusional freepers, and is an excellent example of what happens at an unmoderated forum with not many resources

those aholes literall DESTROYED the forum, both with their serial spamming and their DOS attacks

http://www.democraticunderground.com/duforum/DCForumID66/567.html#20

[im10ashus]

12. Thanks!!!

:yourock:

This is a story that I am not that familiar with. Many thanks!

[sam sarrha]

5. not to worry he'll get hired by another Republican just in case they need

another strange death cover up.... like the dead woman found behind the desk of a Republican senator by the nite cleaning crew during the Clinton Impeachment..

seems that one got cleaned up real fast, and quietly

[redqueen]

9. a dead woman found behind a republican's desk?

i missed that one! can you recall the name of the senator?

funny how the so-called 'liberal' media keeps these scandals so hush hush. :eyes:

[sam sarrha]

26. sorry i forget names i'm an Aspie, Joe Scarborough.. the subject of the

origional post, the woman was a staffer of his.. died behind his desk, the autopsy was done by the doctor i refered to in the post.

[Rex]

3. HAHAHA!!! So a repuke turns on another repuke!

I love it! To bad the M$M loves Joe "I killed my secretary and got away with it" Scarborough. What is it with the M$M and hiring murders and traitors (Ollie North)?

[ncrainbowgrrl]

6. Yet another episode of "Republicans Eating their Own!"

I love this TV show! :hi:

[Rex]

14. My favorite show!

Wish it happened more often. :hi:

[sam sarrha]

7. they are know to eat their own..

[Cleita]

8. ''That was the first clue that something wasn't right with Katherine

Harris". Hey, I got newz for those guys. That wasn't the first clue. However, that being said. I think there's more to the dead intern story than Joe would like us to believe.

[Gabi Hayes]

15. I'd forgotten how fascinating this case was: from the above DU link....

Here are a few facts:
I don't know exactly why Joe Scarborough lied to the media about Lori's health. But he did. He called two television stations in Ft. Walton Beach and fabricated a pre-existing health problem when there was none. Perhaps someone can ask Joe about it.

I have the medical examiner's report and the police report (although further requests for copies by others were denied or ignored). The report lacks any description of the death scene. There was no diagram of the location of the body, its position relative to furniture, or observations of superficial wounds.

On the day Lori Klausutis' body was found, police denied finding any sign of trauma to her body. Two weeks later, in a press release, Dr. Berkland acknowledged that there was "a scratch and a bruise" on her head.

When the autopsy was finally released (only after Ralph Routon of the NW Florida Daily News wrote an editorial demanding it's release) the wounds were revealed to include:

1. A 7 1/4 inch long skull fracture extending from the right forehead across the top of the skull to the left parietal bone.

2. A deep scalp hemmorrhage in the BACK of her head.

3. "Eggshell" fractures deep inside the skull.

4. A 75-80 cc subdural hematoma, called a "contracoup" hemorrhage since it occurs on the opposite side from the fracture.

This final injury accounts for the "coning" --- the existence of which WAS, in fact, reported in the original story. This sort of coning can only occur when the heart is pumping blood into the brain. This directly contradicts Dr. Berkland's claim that a prolapsed mitral heart valve caused Lori to faint and fall in the first place. If that were the case, there would not be enough blood flow to produce the cone.

Furthermore, this case was not the first time Dr. Berkland's findings were not supported by the physical evidence. According to the Kansas City, MO Pitch Weekly:

"Berkland claims he 'sectioned' Klausutis brain during her autospy to determine that her head was injured by a fall, not by a blow from a weapon. But that's the same sort of claim that got Berkland run out of Kansas City in 1996, after he'd falsely reported that he'd sectioned brains later found whole by his boss."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/duforum/DCForumID66/567.html#128

[SpiralHawk]

16. Must we re-hash the Dead Repulicon Intern story?

Good

It merits full-scale investigation

Why does the right-wing corporate media always turn its back on republicon sex-corruption-brutality-murder scandals?

[redqueen]

19. *raises hand*

Because they're owned by the same corporations that own the GOPranos?

[grannylib]

17. If there were such a thing as 'liberal media' in this country, the name of

Lori Klausutis would have the same level of recognition as Chandra Levy, and Gary Condit would have his own cable TV show.

There were WAY too many holes in this story.

I remember also when 'Ordinary Joe' was covering the pukefest of the RNC, and he was outside talking to people near the barricades, and one young woman was hollering at him, asking him about Lori, and with one wave of the imperial ruling Republican elite hand, the cops came up and hauled her away.

That's all I needed to see. If there was nothing to hide, why won't anyone (especially Joe himself) talk about it?

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

18. So Lori the intern didn't have a family to raise a stink about her

suspicious death?

[SoCalDem]

20. Money talks...

She was married, but who knows.. If she and Beady-eyed Joe were "flinging", perhaps the husband was not that sad to be a widower (gets to keep all the stuff, gets sympathy and maybe a payoff to keep his trap shut).

[Gabi Hayes]

21. yes, she did, and that's a very sad story all by itself.

they were clearly kool aid drinkers and ACTIVELY refused to be confronted with any of the obvious physical evidence that showed how badly flawed the ME's report was.

see my above quote of a Denis Wright post on the subject

things did NOT happen the way they were portrayed by the media

her parents' reaction just sickened me

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

22. Yeesh. Any 28 year old dropping dead suddenly for any reason at all,

aside from obvious trauma or other KNOWN severe medical problem, is unusual and noteworthy.

[Gabi Hayes]

24. no room on the media plate for two dead women on congresscritters'

watch; just the one in DC...how convenient

Condit 'won' in a walk

I'm sure that his party affiliation had nothing to do with it, either

there WERE rumors about Joe's extracurrics, as well, and he DID get a divorce, but nobody in the media took the SLIGHTEST interest in his situation

none

[im10ashus]

25. It's interesting.

So many interesting things happening at that time in his life that would seem to make him, at the very least, a prime suspect. I wonder if the public has access to the police record.

[rniel]

23. Joe is quite the lady killer

so I'm told.

[Gabi Hayes]

27. kick for TT, TAP, TAPA, Atlantic Monthly Forum stalwarts