Posted on 06/21/2006 5:06:02 AM PDT by Renfield
Philip Merrill, the prominent publisher and former diplomat whose body was found floating in the Chesapeake Bay on Monday, suffered from a heart condition and apparently took his own life, his family said last night.
Merrill, 72, was found with a shotgun wound to the head and a small anchor tied around one or both ankles, according to a source familiar with the investigation.
~~~~snip~~~~
In 1996, former CIA director William E. Colby died from drowning and exposure after falling from a canoe off Charles County.
~~~~snip~~~~~
In 1978, another former high-level CIA employee, John A. Paisley, disappeared while sailing across the Chesapeake Bay. His body was found a week later near Solomons Island with a fatal gunshot wound in an apparent suicide.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Heart surgery also causes depression in many cases. It's not always the drugs especially if his doctor was still observing him.
He was ill. How seriously? We don't know but what you or I might regard as a small thing might have been big to him.
I know a woman who has flatly stated that she would kill herself if she had to be confined to a wheelchair and she means it.
Me? I would pout and then adjust. Hey, I can still kick butt on FR. :)
But I am not a super successful always healthy person either. I have to deal with the fact that I am less then perfect on a daily basis. Someone who has not had to deal with that can crumble under a hit that you or I would shrug off.
But I doubt that we will ever know. Unless it proves to be murder.
What evidence? I don't know about you, but if a member of my family had shotgun wounds to the head and was tied to an anchor, I'd not be so quick to accept the "legacy the ignominy" of suicide. I don't care how depressed they had been.
I see lots of speculation on this thread that it was murder, not suicide, but I see no evidence to support the speculation, and I have yet to hear anyone suggest a motive for such a murder.
The only "evidence" I've heard is that you have a dead body that was shot and in the water with a weight attached. How does one make the assumption that it was suicide? Simply because the family says he was being treated for depression?
I see lots of speculation on this thread that it was murder, not suicide, but I see no evidence to support the speculation, and I have yet to hear anyone suggest a motive for such a murder.
There is one other speculation. It's not him at all.
Somebody's been reading too much Agatha Christie. The old "mutilate the face and fake your own death" scenario was a nifty fictional device pre-DNA, but it's a little tough to see how you'd to pull it off these days.
You're right, it's possible it happened that way. But the question still remains of WHY? It would seem to me that a person committing suicide would WANT their body found, so why make it more difficult.
Was a DNA test done?
Why jump though so many hoops to kill yourself? You could set out to sail on a beautiful day, take a lethal overdose and die peacefully doing what you love best. Your relatives are not wondering for days what happened to you, and are not presented with a bloated corpse.
I agree, the circumstances are VERY strange, to say the least.
But remember that we dont have, and will never have, all the information. Did the poor guy just find out from his MD that he had inoperable cancer? Had he been started on a new med(s) that changed his outlook?
Did he know something that was not to come out?
That being said, the method of death was odd.......I am sure that it could be done alone, but why????
Exactly, why would the family be so willing to accept a suicide and not demand an investigation? We have only the family's word that he set out alone. Maybe he did. But did he pick up a passenger along the way (willingly or not)? I just find it highly unlikely that the family would just accept this suicide theory without an objection. There are just too many "why would he" to this story.
I agree. Unless they found a suicide note that was utterly convincing to his family, with details that couldn't have been coerced by a killer, I think the press is premature in labeling this a suicide. Given all the international and big-time organizations he was into, do the police think that his wallet not being stolen is conclusive evidence that he did it himself? God help us.
The guy was one of the most generous public benefactors in Maryland and DC. He was hardly a louse, and had certainly made up for whatever was spent in his family's behalf looking for him.
Phillip Merrill of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation
Phillip Merrill Center at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation
Philip Merrill (neo-con)
Center for Security Policy: Adviser
U.S. Export-Import Bank: President
Capital Gazette Communications: Chairman
Phillip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland
Washington Post editorial June 14 about Merrill
Phillip Merrill sworn in as President of the Import-Export Bank of the United States (EX-IM)
Phillip Merrill, owner of the Annapolis, MD newspaper Capital Gazette (he was also owner of the DC paper Washingtonian)
Statement of Cornell University on loss of alumnus Phillip Merrill
Phillip Merrill, benefactor of the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of the Johns Hopkins University, located in Washington, DC
Phillip Merrill Fellowship, the American Academy of Diplomacy
No freaking way, Jose. Ping to post 114
What a ludicrously stupid thing to say. It is a huge bay extending over a hundred miles, larger than states like Connecticut and Rhode Island, lined with dozens of rivers, streams and creeks, dotted with dozens of islands, and providing gorgeous estuaries full of fish, shellfish, the Maryland Blue Crab, water fowl, and lush water vegetation. The United States Naval Academy is at Annapolis, the captial city of Maryland, on the mouth of a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay. Millions of boaters enjoy the Bay each year. It is one of the most precious resources on the East Coast, and in many places is lined with huge shore mansions, in others with fishing villages. Real estate values along the Bay have been soaring for years, especially the parts in driving distance of Washington, DC. Look at a map.
I doubt it, LOL. The real world is not quite so paranoid as Free Republic, WADR.
Bobby Baker? Didn't a small plane blow up above the Chesapeake that was carrying a witness in that case?
His bookkeeper in an Ocean City Hotel that he owned (on the Atlantic coast, not the Bay) crashed a small plane into the ocean. http://www.maryland.com/articles/print.php?a_id=1
...And here's some more about Bobby Baker for all you JFK assassination conspiracy junkies out there...
http://home.earthlink.net/~sixthfloor/brennen.htm
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