Census worker hanged in Kentucky
BySeptember 24, 2009
When Bill Sparkman told retired trooper Gilbert Acciardo that he was going door-to-door collecting census data in rural Kentucky, the former cop drawing on years of experience warned: “Be careful.”
The 51-year-old Sparkman was found hanged from a tree near a Kentucky cemetery and had the word “fed” scrawled on his chest, a law enforcement official said Wednesday, and the FBI is investigating whether he was a victim of anti-government sentiment.
“Even though he was with the Census Bureau, sometimes people can view someone with any government agency as ‘the government.’ I just was afraid that he might meet the wrong character along the way up there,” said Acciardo, who directs an after-school program at an elementary school where Sparkman was a frequent substitute teacher.
The Census Bureau has suspended door-to-door interviews in rural Clay County, where the body was found, until the investigation is complete, an official said.
The law enforcement official, who was not authorized to discuss the case and requested anonymity, did not say what type of instrument was used to write the word on the chest of Sparkman, who was supplementing his income doing Census field work. He was found Sept. 12 in a remote patch of Daniel Boone National Forest and an autopsy report is pending.
Manchester, the main hub of the southeastern Kentucky county, is an exit off the highway, with a Walmart, a few hotels, chain restaurants and a couple gas stations. The drive away from town and toward the area Sparkman’s body was found is decidedly different, through the forest with no streetlights on winding roads, up and down steep hills and sparsely populated.
FBI spokesman David Beyer said the bureau is assisting state police and declined to discuss any details about the crime scene. Agents are trying to determine if foul play was involved and whether it had anything to do with Sparkman’s job as Census worker, Beyer said. Attacking a federal worker during or because of his federal job is a federal crime.
Sparkman’s mother, Henrie Sparkman of Inverness, Fla., told The Associated Press her son was an Eagle scout who moved to Kentucky to direct the local Boy Scouts of America. He later became a substitute teacher in Laurel County, adjacent to the county where his body was found.
She said investigators have given her few details about her son’s death. They did tell her his body was decomposed and haven’t yet released it for burial.
“I was told it would be better for him to be cremated,” she said.
Acciardo said he became suspicious when Sparkman didn’t show up for work at the after-school program in Laurel County for two days and went to police. Authorities immediately investigated, he said.
“He was such an innocent person,” Acciardo said. “I hate to say that he was naive, but he saw the world as all good, and there’s a lot of bad in the world.”
Lucindia Scurry-Johnson, assistant director of the Census Bureau’s southern office in Charlotte, N.C., said law enforcement officers have told the agency the matter is “an apparent homicide” but nothing else.
Census employees were told Sparkman’s truck was found nearby, and a computer he was using for work was inside, she said.
Sparkman had worked for the Census since 2003, spanning five counties in the surrounding area, conducting interviews once or twice a month. Much of his recent work had been in Clay County, officials said.
The Census Bureau has yet to begin door-to-door canvassing for the 2010 head count, but thousands of field workers are doing smaller surveys on various demographic topics on behalf of federal agencies. Next year, the Census Bureau will dispatch up to 1.2 million temporary employees to locate hard-to-find residents.
The Census Bureau is overseen by the Commerce Department.
“We are deeply saddened by the loss of our co-worker,” Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said in a statement.
Locke called him “a shining example of the hardworking men and women employed by the Census Bureau.”
Kelsee Brown, a waitress at Huddle House, a 24-hour chain restaurant in Manchester, when asked about the death, said she thinks the government sometimes has the wrong priorities.
“Sometimes I think the government should stick their nose out of people’s business and stick their nose in their business at the same time. They care too much about the wrong things,” she said.
Appalachia scholar Roy Silver, a New York City native now living in Harlan County, Ky., said he doesn’t sense an outpouring of anti-government sentiment in the region as has been exhibited in town hall meetings in other parts of the country.
“I don’t think distrust of government is any more or less here than anywhere else in the country,” said Silver, a sociology professor at Southeast Community College.
The most deadly attack on federal workers came in 1995 when the federal building in Oklahoma City was devastated by a truck bomb, killing 168 and injuring more than 680. Timothy McVeigh, who was executed for the bombing, carried literature by modern, ultra-right-wing anti-government authors.
A private group called PEER, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, tracks violence against employees who enforce environmental regulations. The group’s executive director, Jeff Ruch, said it’s hard to know about all of the cases because some agencies don’t share data on violence against employees.
From 1996 to 2006, according to the group’s most recent data, violent episodes against federal Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service workers soared from 55 to 290.
“Even as illustrated in town hall meetings today, there is a distinct hostility in a large segment of the population toward people who work for their government,” Ruch said.
Sparkman’s mother is simply waiting for answers.
“I have my own ideas, but I can’t say them out loud. Not at this point,” she said. “Right now, what I’m doing, I’m just waiting on the FBI to come to some conclusion.”
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McMurray reported from Lexington, Ky. Associated Press writers Roger Alford in Frankfort, Ky., Hope Yen in Washington and Dylan T. Lovan in Louisville contributed to this report.
13 Responses to Census worker hanged in Kentucky
gazelle1929
September 24, 2009 at 7:08 am
To those who badmouth the Government and who talk openly of revolution:
Gaze upon the fruits of your words. And be damned for all eternity.
Carl Nemo
September 24, 2009 at 12:50 pm
Up to this point in time, I’ve always given you credit for your intellect, attention to details etc., but your linking this isolated case of a census taker’s murder to people that talk about dissatisfaction with their government as being the catalyst for this violence is illogical and disconnected to say the least.
I can tell you are upset. Try to chill a bit and quit trying to preach to the people on this site or linking us to your perceptions of good vs. evil relative to the happenings in the world.
Whether you realize it or not, you are among friends in thought here. It’s just that we have differences in opinion on occasion. Bludgeoning site members through innuendo serves little purpose other than to irritate fellow posters.
Carl Nemo **==
Sandra Price
September 24, 2009 at 7:51 am
Gazelle, CHB does not allow words of violence or terrorism anywhere on the site. The Government has made terrible mistakes and the silence only tells the Congress that we agree with the actions.
I think damning anyone on this site, is breaking a rule. I know these people and have for many years, you misinterpret our words with consistency.
Sandy
gazelle1929
September 24, 2009 at 8:57 am
So throw me out. I will not sit silent while the vile spewing of hatred of our nation leads directly or indirectly to assassination solely because the victim works for the Government. If people condone this through action or inaction they have ceased to be human beings as far as I am concerned.
woody188
September 24, 2009 at 9:48 am
I know that part of Kentucky. You aren’t welcome snooping around if you aren’t family. We used to visit regularly until my wife’s grandmother died this past spring.
On many occasions we were stopped while hiking the mountains and asked who we are and “who’s our kin” by folks with shotguns. If you were unfortunate enough to come across someone’s patch of Kentucky Blue Grass (marijuana) there was a good chance of getting shot over it. There is no law other than common law in most of the hollows.
I’m willing to bet that is what happened to Sparkman. He probably found something someone didn’t want the Feds to know about and they killed him over it. Happens more than some like to admit, we just don’t hear about it because most of those killed are poor mountain people and not Federal employees.
Of course fascist plutocracy loyalists like Gazelle will try to say this was motiviated by debate and will try to use it to stop criticizism of the government. That’s part of controlling the discussion and stifiling dissent. So predictable…don’t you believe it!
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Our Liberties We Prize and Our Rights We Will Maintain
giving-up-in-nc
September 24, 2009 at 1:17 pm
Man it sounds like we have our own little version of Afghanistan down there complete with warlords.
I won’t bother commenting on the case itself because there is not enough info out there to do anything but speculate. I’ll leave the speculation to the morning talk shows. Better they sound like idiots than I.
giving-up-in-nc
September 24, 2009 at 1:17 pm
Man it sounds like we have our own little version of Afghanistan down there complete with warlords.
I won’t bother commenting on the case itself because there is not enough info out there to do anything but speculate. I’ll leave the speculation to the morning talk shows. Better they sound like idiots than I.
giving-up-in-nc
September 24, 2009 at 1:17 pm
Man it sounds like we have our own little version of Afghanistan down there complete with warlords.
I won’t bother commenting on the case itself because there is not enough info out there to do anything but speculate. I’ll leave the speculation to the morning talk shows. Better they sound like idiots than I.
woody188
September 24, 2009 at 4:38 pm
Between the law, the families, (it is where the Hatfield/McCoy feud took place) and the coal mining companies, it is pretty wild.
almandine
September 24, 2009 at 6:03 pm
As you know already Carl –
there is no use in tete-a-tete with Gazelle regarding the legitimacy of governmental authority. Had she been alive in 1770 she would have been at loggerheads with Washington, Jefferson, Madison, et al, and standiing shoulder to shoulder with the King of England… ditto for the Czar of Russia, Stalin, and Mao, had her roots been different geographically. I’m sure she could find honorable intentions in Kim Jong Il, Mugabe, I’manutjob, and all the other current-day authoritarians, too.
Clearly, Kentucky hillbillies have been tight-knit clans for as long as they’ve been there and nothing that posters on CHB or any other site have said drives their acts.
Perhaps we could take up a collection to get her a Greyhound ticket to coal country for a fact-finding mission.
Pogo
September 24, 2009 at 10:31 pm
To suggest that those unhappy with the government are murderers to census takes is equal to saying all white people condoned the murder of JFK.
The person that made that first comment either has and agenda or an emotional problem.
Logic, reason and accountability prevail.
Procrustes
September 25, 2009 at 4:28 am
There’s more of that critical thinking skill that I have come to love here.
Gazelle 1928 did not suggest that those unhappy with the Government are murderers. What she said was that the constant screaming about what a horrible government we have and about the need for revolution encourages sick people like those in Kentucky to do the things they did.
If you fan the flames you will reap ashes.
Sandra Price
September 25, 2009 at 10:11 am
Our government is not horrible but the frustration is that we the people elect horrible representatives. This fire is flamed up by all the input from the people themselves. These arguments have gone on for as long as I can remember but my eyes were opened when I went on line. There is something ugly when the people speak out anonymously.
If a Republican is in power, the Liberals come up with personal insults against the entire party. If a Liberal is in power, the Conservatives cut to the core of the other side of the aisle.
It has reached a new low and I believe it came about under Clinton when the moral majority wanted his balls removed for bopping an intern. Had the internet been around during the Kennedy years, we would have become used to the promiscuity.
How much truth and facts have been exposed is anyone’s guess. The moral majority has been in a state of shock to discover their Conservative representatives are breaking records for their bopping of girls and boys.
Being a fiscal conservative, I am very critical of a growing government over the lives of all Americans. I quit voting for the GOP as I would prefer a nation of sinners than a nation run under a police state. We need a revolution based on the academics lacking in the voters. From my point of view, these voters seem to believe that the bible sets our laws, not the Constitution.
Sandy