Loose Ends

 

 Moving on from the now ancient Seth Rich story, we'll close off with some loose ends ....

Bungled Robbery or Bungled Hit

First, did we falsify the possibility that Seth Rich was assassinated (as we originally set out)? 

No, we didn't. Rather, we found (contrary to our expectation) that the circumstances of his lifestyle and murder would support either theory; i.e. a bungled robbery or a bungled hit. That being said, it doesn't prove either.

 

Motives Beyond Robbery

We found there is evidence to suggest Seth Rich may have been the source of the DNC leaks in that Seymour Hersh was recorded in a telephone conversation (unbeknownst to Hersh) with Ed Butowsky saying that a highly reliable FBI source told him that Seth Rich's computer contained evidence showing he had communicated with Wikileaks seeking money for the DNC emails in question, and sending them emails.

Last we heard, Judicial Watch is suing the FBI to get these records, and since no one's source is willing to come forward; i.e. another reporter - Malia Zimmerman with FOX said she also spoke with a (similarly unverified) FBI source who reported similarly to Hersh's source.

I agree that any or all of this might indicate a motive (outside bungled robbery) to target Seth Rich, and by any number of possible interests.

I also think Rich's discussed position in election data could relate to a motive. Seth Rich designed an app that helped voters find their polling locations, but also reportedly provided access to numerous election data bases around the country - access that could be valuable to hackers interested in election fraud.  Yet for all the concern over election hacking, we haven't seen any discussion around that possibility.

Again, bungled robbery works very well in this scenario; i.e. what DC homicide reportedly believes. Plus, as Seymour Hersh suggests in the leaked phone conversation, you could have a bungled robbery apart from whether Seth Rich is the Wikileaks "source." And, in the conversation, Hersh seems to subscribe to the view that it's a bungled robbery based on this same source/s within the FBI. He also sounds quite clear and adamant that the Russia hypothesis (which some say is more than hypothesis, and) with respect to the DNC emails is pure concocted U.S. intel bullshit.

Assange seemed to suggest in the controversial Dutch TV interview that Rich was the source, without fully divulging him as the source during the interview, and while he stated specifically that, as far as Wikileaks was aware, the Russian State was not the source. He has been very clear and unambiguous on this later point repeatedly. It was not Russia.

Wikileaks has never published inaccurate information and there is no evidence that Assange has ever lied to the public as a journalist, editor or publisher. His attorney, Jennifer Robinson, stated under oath in the recent extradition hearing that Donald Trump offered Assange a pardon in exchange for revealing his source for the DNC emails. She testified that Assange responded that he would not divulge his source.

Journalist Ellen Ratner, the sister of the late constitutional attorney, Michael Ratner, who also defended Julian Assange and Wikileaks, said she met with Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London on Nov 5, 2016 for 3 hours - three days before the Nov 8, 2016 election. On a U.S. talk show taped on Nov 9, 2016, she said that Julian Assange told her the Russian state and/or Russians were not the source of the DNC emails, and that it was an internal source from the Hillary campaign who didn't like Hillary Clinton. She appears to believe him. Listen below:

Here is the full program the excerpt is from:

 

In this further news interview from Jan 2017, Ellen Ratner states again that Julian Assange denied Russian involvement in the DNC leaks (i.e. during their Nov 2016 meeting) and suggests the possibility that someone from within the NSA who didn't like Podesta could have leaked the Podesta emails. 

Ed Butowsky asserts that Ellen Ratner told him, following her return to the U.S., Assange told her during this visit the leak was Seth Rich; Assange wanted her to contact Seth Rich's parents following news of his murder, and out of alarmed concern he may have been assassinated because he was the source. According to Butowsky, Ratner, however, didn't contact the parents - she told Butowsky instead, along with a number of people at FOX (if I understood him correctly). Then Butowsky contacted Rich's parents on Ratner's behalf.

 

Ellen Ratner, to my recollection, and for a rather substantial period of time neither affirmed or denied what Ed Butowsky reported about her meeting with Assange. Finally, Michael Isikoff phoned Ellen Ratner up to ask - upon which she denied that she ever said this to Ed Butowsky or that Julian Assange ever said Seth Rich was the source (at the link, fast forward to 18 minutes to begin hearing Ellen Ratner in episode 4 of Michael Isikoff's "Conspiracy Land"). 

But Ratner goes further than a simple denial. She says she "never heard of this character," meaning Seth Rich, which is hard to believe, and thus compromises her statement on "all the rest of the above." Michael Isikoff himself sounds incredulous at this claim. Unless this is some contextual misunderstanding; her speaking about the meeting only. 

After all, she was a FOX host, she knew Assange, she spoke on television about issues around his situation and the elections. The Seth Rich homicide was all over the national news and social media, especially FOX, and his murder was mentioned frequently in connection with speculations about Wikileaks and the election. Didn't Trump even say or tweet something about Seth Rich?

I bet you can't find Ellen Ratner on record, either, saying or writing anything about Seth Rich (which would prove she sure did know who he was in Nov 2016).

 

 

Butowsky is currently involved in a lawsuit with the Rich family. And who knows how the Assange case has affected Michael Ratner's family. (Michael Ratner passed away in May 2016; this 3 hour Assange meeting in Nov 2016 reportedly included other Ratner family, at least one brother, in addition to Ellen Ratner.)

Ratner and Butowsky were long-time friends by both of their accounts, in the Consortium News interview with Butowsky and according to this article by Ratner. Butowsky reports that this incident  i.e. their different versions of what she did or didn't say, severed their friendship.

The Crime Analysis

The most challenging part of the analysis for us were the logistics of a hypothetical hit from the perspective of a professional hit person. It's just not familiar territory for us. As we found, not much research information is available to the public because .. "successful" assassins aren't usually caught. So you might have noticed how we struggled with some of this material in our series. However, what we've concluded, while mulling over the material with time, is that the Adams street alley behind Flagler Market (connecting W St to Adams) is actually pretty classic "standard fare" for a hit person, and contrary to our initial impression; i.e. the hypothetical hit person/s can go in and out on a very direct route in a setting that is habitual and mundane as far as the victim is concerned, in this case, Seth Rich. 

Seth Rich's lifestyle habits in conjunction with this location by the Flagler Market provided such means, minus a few issues (nevertheless, resolvable) discussed around timing, with quick and concealed get-aways via assorted alleys, along with the cover of a location where muggings and run-of-the-mill street crime typically happen. The argument being, great location for a hit, too, if you want it to look like a robbery.

So. not to be redundant (but ok,) it's weird in that way - it could be either, supporting either theory, without proving either. Statistically, though, robbery is indeed plausible and not weird at all.

Of course we don't know where Seth Rich went during his roughly 2 hour phone conversation with his girlfriend. We've deduced what seems possible based on a reasonable pedestrian's approach to moving around in a city like D.C. late at night, and what was available in that area. And .. the 35 minute lapse in his phone calls is equivalent to the time it would take to walk to Howard University - in a direct route to his home - Howard being only another ten minutes away.

But wherever Seth Rich went for his two hour plus conversation - we're certain he walked a similar route from either his regular pub or girlfriend's home, or Wonderland (which he decided not to go to) - which were all in the same area. We're also very certain he regularly walked this same block (where he was shot) coming back from any of those places - and as part of his pedestrian routes - and probably even walking on the same side of the street - unintentionally out of the reach of the corner store cameras - and partly concealed by the trees. 

His girlfriend described him as a person of certain set habits. For example, always crossing the street the same way. We think he had methodical pedestrian routes, and again, we're very sure of this with respect to that last block he walked. We think it may be the case, too, in terms of how he handled his phone calls on the way home (he preferred to make calls outside the house because of cell reception - which I guess is also better on the Howard campus- our hypothetical destination in his two part journey home).

So you have these set behavioral patterns - a constellation of sorts - that would have made Seth Rich predictable in ways that would have worked well for a hypothetical hitman (with partner, in this case) who studies his victim's lifestyle habits in order to target him at a mundane and habitual location; i.e. where the hitman can go in and out directly and quickly - and in this case, the hit could also be made to look like a more run-of-the-mill street crime.

Police Corruption

Some of the more ardent posters (around the theory that Rich was targeted) point to possible police corruption. That is, they suggest that cops were assassins for the Democratic Party - or for individual Democrats. Which sounded pretty wild to me, even given the many deep and legitimate concerns about the Democrats. Also, if police had killed Rich, wouldn't Rich have been "finished off" at the site of the assault? And even if he fought back? They wouldn't have to be as concerned about "taking off" at the sounds of gun fire because the police would be on their way. (And "everyone knew" more police were stationed about the neighborhood.)

Also, the police officer who rode with Rich to the hospital sounded very credible. He described a man who seemed unaware that he'd been shot, appeared alert and was even talkative. We learned in our research this is not unusual for an assault victim who might have a concussion (which Rich exhibited symptoms of, in combination with alcohol). The policeman also shared that he was even surprised to hear later that Rich didn't make it because he seemed alert. This later statement struck me as a very human sort of observation he was spontaneously sharing - and not something a killer would say. 

But feel free to debate us on that - or disagree. We're not heavily invested in any one point of view beyond the opinion that he predictably walked that block home  - and on that same side of the street across from Flagler Market.

For the sake of argument - there is one window of time that was a little strange to us.. The neighbor hears the gunshots - he reports going to his window (he lived right across the street from where Seth Rich was shot - a direct western view down W St) and the police were already there over Rich's body in and across the street. That seemed an extremely fast response time, even given the close proximity of the responding squad car. And we don't have their exact location at the time the gun shots registered on their squad car device.

We also don't have the ballistics report .. but consider that Rich seems to have been shot off camera - he then walks into the intersection where he's recorded by the store security camera collapsing in the street. It seems that if the neighbor were walking to the window at the sound of the gunshots, and at the same time Rich is walking while shot - to the intersection, he might have seen Seth Rich collapsing in the street - or just having collapsed - without the police there yet.

Witness accounts, though, are notoriously unreliable. The neighbor reports hearing the shots and going to the window. But did he really just walk right up to the window? Did he perhaps freeze first at the sound of gunshots outside - then move across the room very cautiously and slowly to peek outside? And from which part of his home did he cross over from? How long did it really take the neighbor to cross over to his window?

In all fairness, though, to posters raising these issues, we did read that hired assassins can be former police (so perhaps police still on the job). We further speculate that gang members - also known to be in that area - could be hired to assassinate people, vs gang members engaged in a bungled robbery, which we hear a lot more about.

Security footage of two suspects

I wish this video had been shared with the public.We only heard that footage was very grainy and you couldn't see anything. In one account, it was just the legs and feet of two male suspects; in another account, their torsos.

I have so many questions about this footage that is allegedly near impossible to get information from. What were these two suspects wearing? It was reportedly a hot night. Were they in shorts? Long pants? Sweats? Khakis? Jeans? Sneakers or sandals or shoes? Were they heading east or west? Many deductions could be garnered about the suspects and the nature of the crime (robbery vs hired hit) if they would only release the footage to the public.

Conclusion

Other than that, unless we can obtain further factual information, we're moving on from the Seth Rich story. If you want to read all about it in our humble series, Part One is here at "Seth Rich Hypothesis," Part Two is here at "More On Seth Rich," Part Three is here at "Bungled Burglary vs Bungled 'Hit.'"Part Four is here at Wonderland. 

I guess this is Part Five.

10/13/2020 Loose Ends Addendum

Girlfriend Out Of Town

Returning to the fact that Seth Rich's girlfriend was out-of-town for the weekend .. it *might* indicate more likelihood that his homicide was indeed a "hit" or "contract killing." 

For example, it seems odd that he's murdered the same weekend she goes to visit family, and especially since his pedestrian route going home isn't that different whether he's coming back from her home, his neighborhood pub, or another bar like Wonderland, all of which are in the same area. 

Recall, too, the house-mate's off-handed comment to a reporter, "I thought he was walking back from his girlfriend's house like he usually does." His schedule and route wasn't that different from one activity to the other in that neighborhood. 

But maybe Kelsey Mulka sometimes walked back with him. And this would throw everything off for a planned hit at the Flagler Market location. For the sake of argument, not that often, so the location might still be "on," but nevertheless a possible problem they'd rather not have.

If Seth Rich were being monitored and followed, his phone calls or emails tracked, they'd easily know she was going out-of-town, so it would be a better time to move in on him. She wouldn't be around as a possible witness or some *unpredictable variable* interfering with their ability to more easily commit the crime. 

We found this interpretation is indeed supported by the limited research on hitmen. In one interview with a former hitman, he described how, during an attempted hit, the target came out of the *habitual and mundane* location, but unexpectedly, with his children. So the hitman backed off because of "witnesses," i.e. more complications the hitman didn't need. (And in that story, he then returned and horrifically killed this man at another time, but when the children weren't there.)

But the point being, Kelsey Mulka similarly would have been a potential witness and *complication* for a hypothetical contract killer.

So all things considered, her absence that fateful weekend could be a possible flag (we think) in this one respect.