Word: sparkman
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Census Bureau worker in Clay County, Ky., who was found hanging from a tree, reportedly with the word Fed scrawled on his chest, rippled through the national consciousness more than other crimes from rural, tucked-away corners might have. The discovery of the body of Bill Sparkman, 51, a substitute teacher and a field worker for the bureau, comes at a time when talk media, tea parties and white-hot town-hall meetings have fanned antigovernment sentiment. Speculation has run rampant that the Sparkman case may be related to the vitriol. Kentucky, like many other Southern states, voted overwhelmingly...
...Sparkman's body was found on Sept. 12 near a small family cemetery in a remote patch of the Daniel Boone National Forest in Clay County, about 18 miles south of the county seat of Manchester. According to published reports, Sparkman died of asphyxiation. Kentucky state police, who are in charge of the investigation, with FBI assistance, have not determined whether the death was a homicide, suicide or accident, but an assistant director at the Census Bureau's southern office says the police have told them it is an apparent homicide. (See pictures of this summer's tea-party protests...
...Sparkman, who had worked with the Census Bureau in five counties since 2003, was a well-liked man who'd gone back to school to get his teaching certification, according to published reports. Despite his non-Hodgkin's lymphoma diagnosis, he continued working for the Census and substitute teaching at an elementary school in adjacent Laurel County while waiting for a full-time position to open up. (See pictures of crime in Middle America...
Retired Kentucky state trooper Gilbert Acciardo, who worked with Sparkman at the elementary school, told the Associated Press that he'd cautioned Sparkman about the Census work. "I told him on more than one occasion, based on my years in the state police ... when you go into those counties, be careful, because people are going to perceive you different than they do elsewhere." But Roy Silver, a sociology professor at Southeast Community College in Harlan County, told the wire service that he doesn't think "distrust of government is any more or less here than anywhere else in the country...
Hatfield says he's waiting to see where the FBI investigation leads before drawing any conclusions, but he notes that circumstantial evidence suggests Sparkman may have been killed because of his tangential association with the Federal Government. "It doesn't matter if you're a lowly postal worker or a law-enforcement official or a prosecutor or judge," he said. "History shows us people exact revenge wherever they can get it when they're angry...