The purportedly self-inflicted gunshot death of Boeing whistleblower John Barnett on March 9, 2024 is extremely suspicious. Just reviewing
I happen to be familiar with the literature on murders staged as suicides. Vernon J. Geberth—a retired Lieutenant-Commander of the New York City Police Department—has published extensively on this phenomenon. His paper Equivocal Death and Staged Crime Scene presents some basic elements of this type of crime.
I recently published a book about a series of gunshot deaths that happened in Dallas in the seventies and eighties. In two of the cases I investigated, the Dallas County Medical Examiner ruled the deaths suicides. However, as I show in my book, the evidence displayed in crime scene photos and the totality of circumstances reveal that the Medical Examiner made these rulings in error. In fact, both victims were murdered and their murders were staged to look like suicides.
I recently produced a documentary film in which I present the evidence that led me to draw this conclusion. Like Boeing whistleblower John Barnett, the second victim—a forty-year-old woman named Betsy Bagwell—was found shot to death in her car with the revolver in her right hand. Betsy Bagwell’s death—presented at 33:27 in my documentary—is an illustrative example of how a murder may be committed in the victim’s car and staged to look like a suicide.
I hope that John Barnett’s family and attorneys have obtained copies of the police crime scene photos and all other documentation of Mr. Barnett’s death and are having these analyzed by independent forensic experts.