thedrifter
03-05-04, 10:01 AM
March 05, 2004
Government killed Marine officer, brother alleges
By Rod Hafemeister
Times staff writer
SAN ANTONIO — Did the U.S. government murder a decorated Marine Corps colonel to cover up an arms and drugs smuggling operation from the 1980s?
That’s the allegation made by Dr. David Sabow, whose brother, Col. James E. Sabow, was found dead in his backyard, a shotgun at his side, at El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, Calif., in January 1991. El Toro has since closed.
Marine Corps and Navy investigators declared the death was a suicide, that Col. Sabow took his own life because he was distraught over allegations he had misused government aircraft for personal use. But his brother has never been convinced, arguing that the evidence clearly shows the colonel was murdered.
And now he’s got the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee interested — the 2004 Defense Authorization bill includes language inserted by Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., ordering the Pentagon to convene a panel of outside medical and forensics experts to “determine the cause of the death of Colonel Sabow, given the medical and forensic factors associated with that death.”
The report is due late spring.
One of the key arguments the Sabow family makes is that the gunshot wound and blood spatter pattern are completely inconsistent with what should be seen from a suicide.
And an Air Force Times examination of documents found that one of the military’s counter-arguments is the testimony of an outside medical examiner and recognized expert on gunshot wounds: Dr. Vincent DiMaio — the same medical examiner who made the controversial declaration of suicide last year in the mysterious death of Air Force Col. Philip Shue.
Shue’s mutilated body was found behind the wheel of his car April 16 after he was seen driving erratically then left the highway and crashed into some trees near his home in Boerne, a town north of San Antonio.
Shue, a psychiatrist at Wilford Hall Medical Center at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, had received death threats and reported them to his superiors, but no investigation was ever done.
DiMaio, the Bexar County, Texas, medical examiner, supervised an autopsy and declared Shue had apparently mutilated himself, including cutting off his own nipples and cutting his chest, as part of a suicide plan.
Read more about the cases of Col. Sabow and Col. Shue in the March 15 issue of Air Force Times, available on news stands Monday.
http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-2703474.php
Government killed Marine officer, brother alleges
By Rod Hafemeister
Times staff writer
SAN ANTONIO — Did the U.S. government murder a decorated Marine Corps colonel to cover up an arms and drugs smuggling operation from the 1980s?
That’s the allegation made by Dr. David Sabow, whose brother, Col. James E. Sabow, was found dead in his backyard, a shotgun at his side, at El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, Calif., in January 1991. El Toro has since closed.
Marine Corps and Navy investigators declared the death was a suicide, that Col. Sabow took his own life because he was distraught over allegations he had misused government aircraft for personal use. But his brother has never been convinced, arguing that the evidence clearly shows the colonel was murdered.
And now he’s got the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee interested — the 2004 Defense Authorization bill includes language inserted by Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., ordering the Pentagon to convene a panel of outside medical and forensics experts to “determine the cause of the death of Colonel Sabow, given the medical and forensic factors associated with that death.”
The report is due late spring.
One of the key arguments the Sabow family makes is that the gunshot wound and blood spatter pattern are completely inconsistent with what should be seen from a suicide.
And an Air Force Times examination of documents found that one of the military’s counter-arguments is the testimony of an outside medical examiner and recognized expert on gunshot wounds: Dr. Vincent DiMaio — the same medical examiner who made the controversial declaration of suicide last year in the mysterious death of Air Force Col. Philip Shue.
Shue’s mutilated body was found behind the wheel of his car April 16 after he was seen driving erratically then left the highway and crashed into some trees near his home in Boerne, a town north of San Antonio.
Shue, a psychiatrist at Wilford Hall Medical Center at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, had received death threats and reported them to his superiors, but no investigation was ever done.
DiMaio, the Bexar County, Texas, medical examiner, supervised an autopsy and declared Shue had apparently mutilated himself, including cutting off his own nipples and cutting his chest, as part of a suicide plan.
Read more about the cases of Col. Sabow and Col. Shue in the March 15 issue of Air Force Times, available on news stands Monday.
http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-2703474.php