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  • Mystery?

    Police find US diplomat dead
    By Jean Christou

    POLICE yesterday found the badly decomposed body of the US embassy’s military attach? Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Mooney in a remote area near Orkonta four days after he disappeared.

    According to post mortem results Mooney, 45, who was third in command at the embassy, is likely to have committed suicide. He was found with this throat cut in a ditch some 100 metres from his locked and undamaged car.

    Forensic pathologist Marios Matsakis, who was called in by Cyprus police, said the wound was self-inflicted. “The cause of death was bleeding due to a wound to the blood vessels in the neck,” Matsakis told Cyprus Mail immediately after carrying out the post mortem last night. “There was no evidence of foul play. Definitely not.”

    Matsakis, who was assisted in the post mortem by state pathologists Sophocles Sophocleous and Nicos Charalambous, said he could not comment on reports on the presence of a razor blade, although it is believed one was found at the scene.

    Matsakis was present at the scene when Mooney’s body was found around 10am yesterday. Police had received information from a local man who spotted Mooney’s car on a dirt road, and then his body some metres away. Orkonta is some 45 kilometres north west of Nicosia.
    Mooney’s body was not immediately identifiable and it was not until late afternoon after he had been identified through dental records that the US embassy confirmed that it was the Lieutenant Colonel. He had been dressed in civilian clothes at the time of death.

    “After the notification of next of kin, with deep sadness, I announce that LTC Thomas Mooney, who served his nation with distinction as our Defense Attach?, was found dead by Cypriot authorities on Monday,” US ambassador Ronald Schlicher said in a statement published on the embassy’s website.

    “We appreciate the extraordinary support the Cypriot authorities and the Cypriot people have provided in locating LTC Mooney,” he added.

    The US diplomat, who was on his second tour of duty to Cyprus in five years, had been on the island since June 2006. His wife and children had remained in the US. Mooney was last seen leaving the embassy in Nicosia on Thursday afternoon driving off in his black Chevrolet Impala. He lived alone in Latsia. One western diplomat acquainted with Mooney described him as “very pleasant”.

    Some reports quoted a colleague of Mooney’s saying he had been going to a gym in a Nicosia hotel, while another said he had been on his way to Larnaca airport to pick someone up.

    It was more than 24 hours later that the embassy publicised the fact that “an employee” was missing. There was no indication how senior an official he was until a day later.

    Mooney was photographed after briefing US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at Larnaca airport during last summer’s Lebanon crisis when she made a brief stopover on her way to Israel and Beirut. According to reports he had also served in Afghanistan and Iraq.

    But Washington yesterday dismissed any connection. "I would not point you in the direction of an act of terrorism," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said. “I don't think there is anything pointing in that direction," he added.

    The embassy in Nicosia also cancelled its Independence Day reception, which was due to take place last night in light of these “sad circumstances'' Schlicher said.

    Copyright © Cyprus Mail 2007
    I quote the above copyright report verbatim under the "fair use" clause.

    I have many questions about this "suicide".

    If you were going to commit suicide, would you drive into the wilds, knowing your body would rot and become a "bloater" in a few hours in this weather (40°C)? Would you then walk 100 m in the heat before committing your soul? If you were going to use a razor blade, would you choose to cut your throat? If you were a Lt.-col in the military, in charge of all the Embassy armoury, would you choose a razor blade, in preference to a gun (nearly all professional military guys who top themselves, use a gun)? None of the number of reports make any mention of a suicide note. The whole thing smells to me as much as his corpse must have done after 4 days in the sun. However, I suppose we'll never know.
    Brian (the devil incarnate)

  • #2
    1. Many people isolate themselves when they commit suicide. If they're properly determined, they don't want anyone stumbling upon them and giving them the "you have too much to live for speech." And men generally don't care about how they're going to look when they're eventually found.

    2. A razor to the throat is definitely not the preferred mode of departure for many suicides. But a military man would have the training to know where to cut to cause death relatively quickly, if not painlessly. It wouldn't have to be a very big incision at all.

    3. I've never worked in an embassy, but I imagine there are all sorts of safety procedures and protocols to follow when checking out a weapon from an embassy armory. One would have to have a damned good reason to do so. Exit security is probably not so tight, so he probably could have gotten a firearm out of the compound, IF he could procure one from the armory in the first place. Then he's subject to local laws and deep in the doo-doo if he's caught with the gun by local authorities. To say nothing of his plan being thwarted.

    Without seeing the crime scene it's impossible to comment on the subject any further. If he was found in a relaxed position in a large pool of his own blood with no signs of struggle and the razor blade still in his hand, Occam's Razor likely applies. (No pun intended.)

    Unfortunate. Sad.

    Kevin

    Comment


    • #3
      A razor to the throat is what points to "not a suicide." I would agree that most military men would use a bullet from a standard issue .45 calibur handgun. And being a military man he would have his own guns. Diplomatic immunity and all would prevent any local laws from really stopping him.

      On top of that, most razoer blade suicides are performed by slitting the wrists in a hot bath. The warm water increases circulation and makes you bleed out faster.

      Either way, sad to hear.
      “Inside every sane person there’s a madman struggling to get out”
      –The Light Fantastic, Terry Pratchett

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      • #4
        It would seem that I was not alone in speculation!

        To put it in context, Matsakis is a forensic pathologist (he lives in the next village to me) but he has not practised for many years. He has been in trouble before for botched autopsies and, I believe, was suspended from medical practice. He is a trouble-maker and politician (Member of the European Parliament) and has been arrested many times for violence, damage to property, insults, attempts at corrupting a policeman (charge dropped) and breaking the law on holding antiquities, some of which were stolen property. In all, an unsavoury character, by all accounts. Why was he brought out of hiding to lead the autopsy? I wouldn't trust him as far as I could throw him. I wonder why Sophoclous, the State Pathologist, was sidelined.
        Brian (the devil incarnate)

        Comment


        • #5
          Definitely does not sound like a suicide. As Jamm said, usual method for a military man would be a pistol to the head.

          Found out yesterday that my uncle (a retired USN Captain) actually knew this guy fairly well. He was rather surprised about it all.
          “And, remember: there's no 'I' in 'irony'” ~ Merlin Mann

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