uestions Raised on Author’s Suicide-Murder Finding

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The shooting death of a California author and his two children a month ago prompted a prompt ruling of suicide — and later questions about whether the initial finding was correct.

Authorities said Philip Marshall, in his mid-50s, killed his son Alex, 17, daughter, Macaila, 14, Jan. 31 at their home in Murphys before killing himself with his Glock. The three are shown in a family photo at left. The family dog also was shot.
 
Freelance investigative reporter and author Wayne Madsen, a colleague of mine in Washington, DC, travelled to the crime scene to probe the matter further. His reports have argued against the original finding of suicide. Local authorities responded late last week by saying their investigation is continuing.

One question raised by Madsen, shown at right, pertains to the logistics of the Marshall’s shooting. In one column, Madsen reported: Exclusive: Investigative Author Phil Marshall right-handed but sheriff claims he shot himself in left side of his head. Madsen also questions why the local sheriff’s office arranged for the victims’ home to be cleaned so promptly. Sample news coverage is listed below in reverse chronological order.

As larger context, both Madsen and Marshall are authors writing about controversial topics. Marshall, a former United Airlines pilot, has written about his work with drug-runner Barry Seal during the Iran-contra scandal. Seal was murdered in 1986. Also, Marshall has challenged official accounts of 9/11. He was working on a new book about the 1963 assassination of President John Kennedy, one of more than 250 by various authors. 

Rember it seems from my father Jams Paul Dongan stories (and mother Glorian Donegan) he knew Barry Seal the TWA pilot, that pilot died at Salvatoni Army,

Adler Berriman “Barry” Seal was an American commercial airline pilot who became a major drug smuggler for the Medellín Cartel. When Seal was convicted of smuggling charges, he became an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration and testified in several major drug trials. Wikipedia

Updates:

Salon, Report: Michael Hastings feared his car had been tampered with, Aug. 21, 2013.

Wayne Madsen Report, Phil Marshall’s ‘docu-novel’ cites Poppy and Jeb Bush as villains in Iran-contra, March 18, 2013. (Subscription required)

Madsen, a former Navy intelligence officer and NSA analyst, has written a half dozen books with hard-hitting commentaries. The most recent are L’Affaire Petraeus, published in December on the resignation of the CIA director. Madsen argues in it that Petraeus was caught being disloyal to the president in the re-election campaign. Madsen published The Manufactured President about the president’s hidden past in June. 

Madsen is a shoe-leather muckraker who seeks to emulate the late Jack Anderson. Madsen has travelled to Rwanda to investigate genocide, for instance, and to Southeast Asia to expose VIP Western pedophiles.

In the United States, his topics range from scandals at the highest levels of government to Peter Falk/Columbo-style street reporting to ferret out clues of deaths that catch his attention. 

Last year, for example, he spent more than two hours talking to hearsay witnesses to piece together circumstances of a fatal fall from a restaurant ledge by a Defense Department employee whom the Washington Post had declined to name in a news story. I saw him in action for the first hour or so of that probe before I headed home to do my own work. What I saw was genuinely impressive in his ability to persuade those he encountered to share information. Sources included a federal security officer who witnessed the death’s immediate aftermath, and restaurant personnel who spoke to official investigators. I’m still not sure what that story added up to — but am glad someone is pursuing such leads with talent and an open mind. 

The reports below on the California death include two from Madsen’s investigative website, accessible by a monthly ($7) or yearly ($32) subscriptions.

Madsen told a radio interviewer that he was 100% certain of irregularities in the official account. He said, for example, that the crime scene was illegally and surreptitiously cleaned up by professionals, including “a SUV, license undetermined, with an array of communication antennas bristling from the roof.” Further, he told interviewer Kevin Barrett that all of Marshall’s neighbors believe it was a professional murder, not the murder-suicide claimed by local police.

His reports on the Marshall killing have generated controversy, including from some armchair bloggers who adopt a cynical or iconoclastic persona.

One criticism of Madsen is that he charges for his work. The criticism is preposterous. His reporting was based on travel to a remote section of California near the Nevada border to visit the crime scene and interview community residents. Subscriptions are necessary to fund that kind of travel, just as subsciptions and book sales fund travel for other independent writers.

Another more convoluted complaint from several pundits is that any suggestion of murder is absurd on its face because others besides Marshall write about controversial topics without being killed. 

Complaints from afar deserve little weight. Instead, the best answers will come from official investigations that are thorough, and monitored by independent news coverage. As one step, Madsen has launched a petition to the White House seeking a Department of Justice investigation to augment the work of local authorities.

Contact the author Andrew Kreig