Author: Rebekah Gleaves

When Shelby County commissioner Tom Moss was appointed to his District 4 county commission seat

in December 2000, controversy swirled up because

Moss had only been living in the district for about six

weeks and was renting his home from developer

Rusty Hyneman, also no stranger to controversy. After

only three weeks in Hyneman’s house, Moss began using a different address,

then another, then another, then another, for a total of at least six, maybe

seven, residences in the 17 months he’s had the commission seat.

Even Moss isn’t exactly sure where he’s lived.

“I’ve been in this house [1255 Stable Run] since, I think,

November,” says Moss. “Before that I was over in, oh, uh, Cumberland Farms. I

don’t remember the address there. I’d have to look it up.”

When asked a second time for the order of his moves, beginning

with Hyneman’s 10211 Macon Road house in December 2000, Moss’

story changes.

“I stayed there [10211 Macon Road] for a while,” says Moss. “Then

I stayed across the street on Stable Run, and then I stayed down at the

other end of Stable Run. Then the market slowed and I had more choices, so I

chose this place [1255 Stable Run].”

The issue of where Moss lives is important to the county commission,

whose members include seven white Republicans (including Moss) and six black

Democrats. Moss was appointed to his seat as part of an intricate political deal. As

a developer and homebuilder, he is a critical vote on zoning and

suburban-sprawl issues. The residency requirement is clear, although Moss is not the first

politician to be questioned about it. His main accuser, Monya Jackson, is a

disgruntled homeowner who spent election day two weeks ago driving around in a van

trying to get her story out. But her credibility is bolstered by the fact that

Moss’s wife and children live in another house he has owned for several years in

another district District 1.

Moss’ moves started shortly after he took office. When he received the

appointment, Moss told The Commercial

Appeal that he did not plan to stay in Hyneman’s 10211 Macon Road house which coincidentally Hyneman

had that very month quit-claimed to Doug Beaty, Moss’ attorney. The

CA reported that Moss intended to move into a home he had built at 1470 Siskin

Road, which is located in District 4 and, according to Moss, is more to his liking.

Moss gave the 1470 Siskin Road address to the county commission and to the

Shelby County election commission as his official residence.

But, when pressed a third time for the chronology of his moves,

beginning again with Macon Road, Moss’ story changes again.

“That [1470 Siskin Road] house is where I moved from, I think,” says

Moss. “Yeah, that’s where I moved from when I moved out of there [10211

Macon Road]. I was having allergy attacks from the shag carpet. So, yeah, I stayed

there for a while. I moved from Macon Road to Siskin Road then to a second

address on Siskin Road that I can’t remember. I just basically moved around in the

district. But now I spend the night here [1255 Stable Run]. I’ll be here for at least

a year, or at least until the election is over.”

But it’s unlikely that Moss ever lived at 1470 Siskin Road and no

one knows that better than Monya Jackson.

You’ve Got Mail

“We moved into this house [1470 Siskin Road] in February of 2001 after

we had looked at it in December and January,” says Jackson.”When we were

looking at it, the house was brand-new and empty. No one had ever lived in it.”

Jackson’s grandmother, Frances Briscoe, bought the house from Moss in

February 2001 and has rented it to Monya Jackson and her husband Tom ever

since. When Briscoe purchased the house, Moss issued a warranty saying the house

was new construction and had no previous owners.

According to Jackson, appliance warranty documents were still inside

the dishwasher, microwave, and oven when her family moved in. The walls

were free of nail holes, and the carpet didn’t have any marks from furniture,

all evidence that has Jackson convinced that no one other than her family

has lived in the house.

For this reason, Jackson was surprised when trips to her mailbox

yielded mail for Moss, some of it official issue from the county government

office. Over the last year, she has received many letters addressed to Moss from

a host of sources, including his 2001 county commission W-2. Following

their real estate agent’s instructions, the Jacksons initially threw Moss’ mail away.

But, one day, their 2-year-old daughter ripped into one of the letters

and Jackson saw that it was an electronic-deposit pay stub sent to Moss from

the county commission. Jackson now believes that Moss was using her address

to defraud voters.

Moss, however, says the story is much more innocent.

“The county commission still has that address

because I haven’t bothered to change it,” says

Moss. “I had so little mail going there I

never got around to changing the address. It never

crossed my mind to change the county W-2. If somebody’s not reminding me to

do something, I forget. I mean, I forgot my anniversary last week.”

Political “Give and Take”

Moss has attracted attention since he first joined the county commission.

In December 2000, he was appointed to the commission to fill the seat

previously occupied by Mark Norris, who had been elected to the state Senate in

November. Moss, a Republican, was appointed at the same time Shep Wilbun, a

Democrat, was appointed to the Juvenile Court clerk’s position vacated by Bob

Martin. Public speculation arose that party vote-swapping was responsible for both

men getting their new jobs.

“I don’t look at it as anything more than just politics,” says Moss. “It’s

political give and take. People can go to the polls in August and tell us if they like

me and Shep Wilbun or not. This is all like Jell-O on the wall. Every time you

think you’d like to focus on one thing, something else comes up.”

Republican county commissioner Clair VanderSchaaf, who recently

lost his reelection primary bid after 26 years in office, told

The Commercial Appeal in December 2000 that both appointments were the result of a

vote-swapping deal. Speculations quickly surfaced that Moss, a home

developer, president of the local National Homebuilders Association, and a former

member of the Land Use Control Board, was selected by VanderSchaaf and

friends to tilt future commission votes in favor of developers. Moss’ renting the

house from Hyneman, one of Shelby County’s most prominent and politically

connected developers, only served to aggravate the suspicions.

Monya Jackson believes something is still fishy with Moss’ tenure on the

commission. Specifically, she thinks the reason Moss used her address was so he

would meet the residency requirements for the commission.

In order for Moss to represent District 4, he has to live there, and up until

the time of his appointment to the commission, he didn’t. He lived in a big house

at 2029 Woodchase Cove located squarely in District 1 the house where his

wife and two young sons still live. This is the only house Moss owns personally,

and the phone and utilities for that house are still in his name.

But with some creative shuffling, Moss may be able to get around

the residency requirement. According to Rich Holden, secretary of the

election commission, the law that applies to residency “is not terribly restrictive.

The statute has nothing to do with the amount of time a person has lived there.”

Interestingly enough, the statute (T.C.A. 2-2-122) applying to

representative residency does provide in Section Five that “[t]he place where a married

person’s spouse and family have their habitation is presumed to be the person’s place

of residence, but a married person who takes up or continues abode with the

intention of remaining at a place other than where the person’s family resides is

a resident where the person abides.”

In other words, legally speaking, Moss may be in the clear. All he needs is

an address in the district that he can use for a residence, be it for a day, a week,

a year, or more. And as one of suburban Shelby County’s top developers, Moss

has lots of addresses at his disposal. Especially in Lakeland, where planned unit

developments are the kudzu of the new South.

Plus, with friends like Hyneman, Moss’ address options expand

exponentially. When he had only a few weeks to find a District 4 home, it was

Hyneman who helped him. Moss describes the two as good friends.

“I’ve bought lots from him. I’ve let him fly my airplane, and he’s let me fly

his. We’re friends,” explains Moss. “He’s in business, and his approach is

sometimes controversial, but he’s a friend. I contacted him when I was hoping to

be appointed to see if he had a place where I could stay,

and he let me move in the Macon Road house.”

When the Flyer asked Moss if his wife and

children live with him at 1255 Stable Run or have lived at any

of the other addresses, he initially refused to answer

what he termed “family questions.” When pressed, Moss

acknowledged, “They’re here sometimes with me.

When I took this on I chose not to move them too many times.”

Moss also jokes that it wouldn’t be politically

beneficial for his family to live in District 4 with him.

“My wife is a liberal Democrat. It wouldn’t do any good

for me to have her in my district. That would just be a

vote for the other guy,” says Moss. “I don’t want to talk

about my family, but I will say that I chose to live this

lifestyle until, number one, I got reelected and, number

two, we are able to sell a house that has recently been

annexed.”

So Moss currently maintains at least two

primary residences. When asked, the commissioner took it a

step farther. “I maintain more than two,” says Moss.

“I’ve also got a house over on Kirby and a house in

Florida. But this [1255 Stable Run] is my primary

residence. This is where I go to sleep at night and wake up in the

morning and go walking down the street.”

Still, another problem may remain for Moss: If, as

Jackson believes, he never lived in her house and doesn’t live in

the 1255 Stable Run house, he has given false addresses to

the county commission and the election commission, which,

according to the election commission’s Holden, is a felony.

“You confirm your residency when you sign your

voting form,” says Holden. “If you falsify that, it’s a Class C

felony. Also, you sign an affidavit when you early-vote saying that

you are giving the correct address.”

What’s “New”?

Moss also has a problem if he did live in Jackson’s

house. When Moss sold the house to Monya Jackson’s

grandmother, he gave her a warranty saying that it was new

construction, meaning it was never lived in.

Under Tennessee law, a seller is only excused from

providing a Residential Property Condition Disclosure if the home

is new construction and therefore has no known problems.

Moss did not complete a condition disclosure for Jackson

alerting the buyer and the warranty company to the house’s

supposed lived-in condition.

“I don’t think my living there changed the

‘new’ status,” says Moss. “I don’t think I was there for

more than a couple of months. The house had FHA

and all the inspections done on it. It basically was

new construction. I don’t know how else you define ‘new’.”

He adds that he believes the definition of

‘new’ hinges on the trail of ownership. “The house was

still in Moss Construction’s name when it was

transferred [to Jackson’s grandmother]. If and when this

[1255 Stable Run] house sells, it will be sold as new too.

If the carpet needs to come out before that, I’ll

change out the carpet and the appliances.”

So, to Moss, a house isn’t lived in until it’s

sold. Jackson, who believes the addresses are mere

fronts for Moss to establish residency, says she can

almost understand his logic.The houses haven’t actually

been lived in anyway. Only the addresses, not the

appliances, have been used. Moss just presumed no

one would care.

But Jackson cares. She cares so much that on

May 7th, primary voting day, she used her minivan as

a rolling billboard in an unsuccessful attempt to

get Moss defeated at the polls.

“I used some interior house paint

ironically, some he left behind from when he built the house

to paint on my van,” says Jackson. “I painted

‘Tom Moss Lies’ on one side, ‘Tom Moss is a Fraud’ on

the other, and ‘Do Note Vote for Tom Moss. He is a

Liar and a Fraud’ on the back. Then I drove to all

the polling places in District 4.”

Jackson kept up her crusade the entire day. And

she says she’ll do it again in August for the final election.

A “Locust Experience”

Moral stances aside, Monya Jackson’s anger

may as likely be fueled by buyer’s remorse. Within

weeks of moving into the Siskin Road house, it looked

less and less like a suburban dream and more and

more like a money pit. Jackson says heavy rains

revealed that the windows had never been caulked.

Within months of moving in, she says, large cracks began

to appear on the walls and ceilings. She says they’ve

also had problems with the wiring and phone lines.

Monya and Tom Jackson reported the

problems to Moss, and he sent some workers to fix them.

But the repairs were not enough to sweeten the

Jacksons’ dissatisfaction with the house.

“I wish I had never moved into this house,”

says Jackson. “It’s been a nightmare.”

Moss tells a different story. In his opinion, Jackson

is the sort of buyer that builders dread: a woman

with outlandish demands and too much time on her hands.

“Some of her complaints are legitimate, but

some of them are just ridiculous,” says Moss. “We’ve

been over there to fix things so many times. I get a

customer like that about every seven years. It’s a

locust experience. She’s somebody that has continued

to pursue this as a way to vent, or whatever. It’s her

personality.”

No longer happy with the home, Jackson says

she went to a neighborhood meeting for residents of

another community Moss was developing, where Moss was scheduled to speak. When she raised her hand

to ask the commissioner a question, Jackson says

he pointedly ignored her. Eventually, the moderator

recognized her and Jackson publicly asked Moss if

he planned to take advantage of other home buyers

the way she felt he had taken advantage of her.

Moss replied that he didn’t think the meeting

was the appropriate time or place to discuss the matter.

After that meeting, Jackson says she became more irritated that Moss was

using her address. She called Moss and told him she knew about his “scam”

and wanted it to stop. She says he came by her house and handed her one of his

business cards, with “10211 Macon Road” written on the back.

“That’s when he said, ‘If anyone asks you where I live, tell them 10211

Macon Road,'” Jackson says. “He also

told me he and his wife were separated,”

she adds.

And then, true to form, Moss changed addresses again. Currently,

the election commission and the county commission offices have 1255

Stable Run as Moss’ official address. But records in the tax assessor’s office

show that, as with all the other addresses he’s claimed, Moss never bothered to

transfer the property from Moss Construction Company to himself. In

fact, property records show that the only home Moss owns personally is

2029 Woodchase Cove, the Cordova home in District 1 where his family lives.

Moss says he did not transfer the properties to himself because it was

a better deal for him economically to keep the house in the company’s name.

“The rates are cheaper in the situation it’s in now,” says Moss. “It’s under

a construction loan, which is at a more favorable rate. I’m the sole owner of

Moss Construction, so I’m paying it one way or the other.”

So where does Tom Moss actually live? Only Moss knows, and, apparently,

some of the time even he’s not sure.

Few things epitomize America like the open road. Songs and books have chronicled ragtop journeys through the heartland and the free feeling you get when the gas gauge reads “full.” But for most Americans the romance of the open road is dead. Oddball motels and quaint cafes still exist as temples to kitsch on the country’s backroads, but most people don’t see them anymore. For long trips, most of us use long, dull arteries of asphalt called interstates, exiting only for ubiquitous fast food and bathroom breaks.

For commuters, interstates are a daily necessity. Without I-40, Nonconnah Parkway, and Paul Barrett Parkway, many locals would have to leave home an hour earlier each morning. Ugly and soulless as interstates are — even with wildflowers planted on the median — they are an integral facet of American cities.

And Memphis is about to get another one.

Interstate 69, an ambitious highway project linking Canada to Mexico, is still in the planning stages. The largest interstate project undertaken in years, I-69 is the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) for truckers — a 1,600-mile highway that will make north-south transport across North America easier than it’s ever been. When completed it will zip through nine states from Lake Michigan to the Gulf of Mexico — Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas.

Studies have shown that more than 4 billion tons of freight could move along the I-69 corridor each year. Memphis’ central location and transportation-hub facilities mean much of this freight will pass through here.

But, by all accounts, Memphians won’t be driving locally on I-69 for a while.

“The whole thing has to be funded, and we would probably contract out to do the section closest to Kentucky first,” says Luanne Grandinetti, spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT). “Basically, it’s going to be a while before construction starts.”

The Memphis Planning Organization speculates that it could be as long as 10 years before I-69 is completed in this area. But before the road can be built it has to be planned, and that’s what has many local people concerned: Just where exactly will Segment of Independent Utility 9 (SIU 9) — the Memphis portion of I-69 — pass through the city? There are two basic options, and both are controversial, mostly because everybody wants to live near an interstate — but not too near.

West

The various options associated with route “A,” the western alignment, project I-69 running south through Millington, possibly joining Highway 51 near Frayser, cutting through north Memphis, and eventually aligning with I-240 through Midtown, widening that road. From there it would align with I-55 south into Hernando, Mississippi, where SIU 10, the Mississippi portion, would begin.

“A major interstate highway passing through or near downtown would unquestionably be a boost for the center city,” says Jeff Sanford, president of the Center City Commission. “Downtown would gain accessibility and additional people would come in. It would also make the community easier for residents in suburban areas to commute to and could potentially increase the office real estate market.”

City councilwoman Barbara Swearengen Holt, who represents north Memphis, wholeheartedly welcomes I-69 into her neighborhood.

“I’m in favor of I-69 coming through the city,” says Holt. “Both mayors are fighting for it to come through, for the economic impact Memphis needs. It will be good for my community and good for the city. We need to find a way to get it.”

Sanford believes that having I-69 near downtown could further propel improvements the city has made to the center-city area.

“The prospect of a new interstate in proximity to downtown comes at an interesting time downtown,” says Sanford. “There’s a renewed interest in downtown, and over $2 billion in projects are already underway in the area. If downtown was where it was 20 years ago, a nearby I-69 might not be as important as it is now.”

But many Midtown residents, particularly in the Annesdale-Snowden Historic District, worry that expanding I-240 could result in lost homes, decreased property values, and possible encroachment on historic Elmwood Cemetery.

“It’s going to be a challenge to expand the roadway within the existing right-of-way and still meet current highway standards,” says Marty Lipinski, an Annesdale-Snowden resident and chairman of the civil engineering department at the University of Memphis.

The Annesdale-Snowden neighborhood association has hosted several community meetings to discuss I-69 concerns, which include Historic Elmwood Cemetery — with its 70,000 graves, including 20 Civil War generals, veterans from every American war, senators, mayors, and governors — and the Greenstone Apartments, both of which are on the National Register of Historic Places. Residents also worry that their homes will be impacted by the widening of I-240 and cite the I-40/Overton Park right-of-way battle in the 1970s which left many old homes destroyed, leaving vacant lots in their place. Other concerns are that widening will impact the new Bruce Elementary School on Lamar Avenue and that the additional truck traffic will bring increased air pollution, noise, and transport of hazardous materials.

“Annesdale-Snowden residents should monitor the progress and make sure the environmental-impact statement covers all the key points,” warns Lipinski.

Annesdale-Snowden residents want to be assured that steps are taken to make the project as unobtrusive as possible.

“For instance, if they can get the road on the ground instead of in the air, they can put in sound barriers,” says Nancy Jane Baker, manager of the Memphis Landmarks Commission. “I-240 at Annesdale-Snowden is elevated. If they can plan all of the overpasses to be on the ground instead, they can cut down on the noise.”

Because I-69 is federal and not solely a state project, Grandinetti says TDOT will have to adhere to federal guidelines in terms of design.

“Noise walls would be considered, as with any project,” says Grandinetti. “We would go by the federal standards on noise walls.”

Which leaves the problem of traffic. Opponents of the widening of I-240 say that traffic is already congested during peak hours and that routing what is expected to be one of the country’s most traveled interstates through Midtown is only going to make it worse.

Proponents say it won’t be a problem. “[If] the proper roadway is designed, I think truck traffic won’t be any more of a problem than it is in other major markets,” says Sanford. “In the end, I say bring it on.”

“The engineer’s study is not expected until October. We’re not saying we should do the western alignment at all costs, we just prefer it. North Memphis and Frayser need new development, and that’s important,” says Dexter Muller, senior vice president of infrastructure development for the Chamber of Commerce and former director of the Office of Planning and Development.

“The environmental assessment will show potential alignments, tell you how many houses, cemeteries, etc. would be affected. Those neighborhoods are important, and we need to be sensitive to them. I’m looking at trying to grow the community. I believe the roadway is very important to the inner city,” says Muller, who has been involved in the planning of I-69 since the so-called NAFTA highway was proposed in the mid-1990s.

East

If the western alignment has aroused concern in Midtown, the eastern-alignment option is stirring emotions just as high in Collierville. Residents complain that they don’t want an interstate in their backyard, and they mean that literally. Portions of I-69 would come within 1,500 feet of some of the town’s pricier homes. Collierville residents have turned out in droves at the public planning meetings to express their disdain for the “B” route. Many say they moved to the eastern side of the county to get away from the massive development occurring closer to Memphis.

The B option would also join I-69 near Millington, but, instead of cutting through Frayser and North Memphis, the interstate would align with Paul Barrett Parkway (385) north of the city, curve through Collierville, and eventually link up with Nonconnah Parkway (385) to form an outer loop around Memphis.

Even with all the governmental support for the western alignment and the opposition of Collierville residents to the eastern alignment, most involved in I-69’s planning maintain that an outer loop would benefit more people than it would harm, whether it is called I-69 or not.

“The city and county administrators and the chamber of commerce board have all endorsed the western alignment,” says Muller. “But I also want to make it very clear that the [eastern] outer loop — State Route 385 — is being built. It’s being designed, it’s gone through hearings, and the right-of-way is being purchased. It could be done before I-69. It would form an outer loop that would connect all the way to 385 north of Memphis.”

So, for Collierville residents, the fight is for the lesser of two evils. If they don’t want a road at all, they certainly don’t want one that will carry all of the shipping traffic between Canada and Mexico.

“There was opposition to 385 due to its location. it got too close to the neighborhoods,” says Collierville’s town administrator James Lewellen. “There is still opposition due to the high traffic.”

Opponents of the eastern loop feel that not only would an I-69 segment disrupt their quality of life, the eastern loop would be ignored by those not wanting to take the Memphis detour.

“If it is called I-69, I think it will be a more symbolic than functional route,” says Lewellen. “I think going the straight route through Memphis would be the route most truckers would prefer rather than going around the loop.”

But Memphis and Tennessee officials aren’t the only ones with influence on the alignment decision. SIU 9 also includes northern Mississippi’s Desoto County and the Mississippi Department of Transportation (MDOT) has its own road plans that it would like to see helped along by the construction of the NAFTA highway.

“For me, it makes more sense to take the eastern route, but, first, we need to do the study and see what the need is,” says Claiborne Barnwell, environmental division engineer for MDOT.

Long before the federal plans for I-69 were laid, MDOT anticipated building a road that would link I-55 to Nonconnah Parkway, which would speed traffic flow throughout northern Mississippi and bring major roadways to largely underserved areas.

“This project is extremely complicated,” says Barnwell. “Mississippi knew a long time ago that Highway 304 needed to be reconstructed, and we took that on without any consideration to I-69. That portion from Hernando to Robinsonville later became a portion of the I-69 plans. Our plan was always for Highway 304 to wind around and tie in with Nonconnah Parkway. We anticipate building that road whether or not it is called I-69.”

The secondary focus of I-69 is to serve underdeveloped areas like the lower Mississippi Delta region and the lower Rio Grande Valley in Texas, which currently have little access to interstate highways. MDOT, like TDOT in Tennessee, sees the federal funding that I-69 will provide as an opportunity to combine the two goals. By better linking roadways throughout Mississippi, MDOT can help bring development to the poorest areas of the state.

“In Memphis, the officials answer to the people who elected them, so I don’t think they should be the ones we go to on this,” says Barnwell. “We’re talking about moving vehicles from Mexico to Canada. I don’t think you should go to people with specialized interests for answers. That might not be the best choice, and the Memphis leaders shouldn’t be the people everyone is listening to. This project is bigger than Memphis.”

It’s going to happen anyway

Despite differing opinions on routing, everyone involved is working together amicably. In fact, the resounding opinion of officials on both sides of Stateline Road is that, no matter the names, both routes will be built.

“TDOT has no preference on the routing of I-69,” says Grandinetti. “But there is widening already planned for I-240 north of Walnut Grove to south of Poplar.”

However, route A is the preferred alignment of the city and county mayors, the chamber of commerce, the Center City Commission, the city council, and the county commission. According to all concerned — and TDOT — portions of I-240 will be widened anyway.

“It’s not an either/or situation; we need both corridors,” says Muller. “If you don’t do the western alignment, all you get is traffic and air quality with no road. You wouldn’t have the connection. What we’re looking for is a win-win for everyone.”

Mississippi’s Barnwell agrees. “In the Millington area, I think something needs to be done up there too, whether it is called I-69 or not,” he says. “From a practical standpoint, all of these roads probably need to be scrutinized and built.”

So it seems inevitable that I-240 through Midtown will be widened and that the outer loop through Collierville will be constructed — despite objections.

“Whether it’s called I-69 or I-240, the widening of I-240 will take place before the I-69 issue is solved,” predicts Baker. “The more property-owners voice their opinions individually and collectively before the designs are complete, the more impact they can have on the design.”

But from a public-utility standpoint, most agree that it will be convenient to hop on State Route 385 and travel from Millington to Hernando, Mississippi, relatively unencumbered — and in half the time it now takes. Likewise, a widened I-240 corridor would theoretically mean less congestion, and another major interstate would only improve Memphis’ position as a transportation hub — in Shelby County mayor Jim Rout’s words, taking Memphis from being “America’s Distribution Center” to being “North America’s Distribution Center.”

“I look at this as the national model. It’s an important national issue,” says Muller. “This route has the highest percent of cost/benefit of any corridor in the country because of all the industries located along it. We knew from the start that this was a long-term effort. Now we’re at the point where we have to choose an alignment.”

It sounds like a mystery for Mulder and Scully. A string of scientists working on similar projects all over the world are found dead. A mysterious Russian with ties to biological warfare tells tales of threats that boggle the mind. A Tennessee driver-testing center employee is burned to death after being implicated in a license-selling scandal. And the United States government pushes states to adopt a doomsday law that dramatically reduces civil rights.

Chock-full of conspiracy theories and a surprising amount of verifiable data, it’s a story that’s got Web sites and talk-radio callers churning with speculations. And the theories stem from events right here in Memphis.

Formula For Death

Late on November 16, 2001, Dr. Don C. Wiley, a prominent Harvard-based microbiologist, went missing in Memphis. After attending a banquet for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital at The Peabody hotel, Wiley — one of the world’s top biochemists and rumored to be headed toward a Nobel Prize — disappeared without a trace. Four hours after he left the Peabody, Wiley’s rented white Mitsubishi Galant was found abandoned with a full tank of gas and the keys in the ignition, pointed west on the Hernando DeSoto bridge into Arkansas.

A month later his body was found snagged on a tree 320 miles downstream in a sidewater of the Mississippi River near Vidalia, Louisiana. Bloated from the water and rendered unrecognizable by exposure to the elements, Wiley’s body was nonetheless easy to identify because his wallet and identification were still in his pants pocket.

Across the Atlantic in a rural village near Wiltshire, England, a seemingly unrelated death occurred a week after Wiley’s disappearance. Vladimir Pasechnik died of a stroke on November 23rd in the yard behind his house. Pasechnik, a Russian who defected to England in 1989, was once in charge of the Institute of Ultra Pure Biochemical Preparations, first in St. Petersburg and later in Leningrad. Pasechnik and his comrades developed and perfected potential biological weapons such as anthrax, Ebola, Marburg virus (similar to Ebola), plague, Q fever, and smallpox, eventually creating strains of these viruses stronger than any scientists had ever imagined possible.

On December 10, 2001, back in the United States, Dr. Robert M. Schwartz was found stabbed to death in his rural Loudoun County, Virginia, home. Authorities speculated at the time that Schwartz might have interrupted a burglary in process. However, investigators found no signs of forced entry and nothing seemed to be missing from the home. Schwartz, who lived alone, was a founding member of the Virginia Biotechnology Association and executive director of research and development at Virginia’s Center for Innovative Technology. He was extremely well respected in the field of biophysics and considered something of an expert on DNA sequencing.

Two days later and a few hundred miles south, Dr. Benito Que was found comatose on a Miami street near the University of Miami Medical School laboratory where he worked. Que died of injuries Miami police initially suspected were the result of a mugging. Later Que’s death was determined to be “natural”– the result of a heart attack. Que was a cell biologist involved in research on infectious diseases and worked in the hematology department of the medical school.

On December 14th, two days after Que’s death, Dr. Set Van Nguyen was found dead in Geelong, Australia. Nguyen had worked as a scientist in the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization’s animal-diseases facility for 15 years. Earlier last year two scientists at that facility were written up in the esteemed science journal Nature for their work in genetic manipulation and DNA sequencing. Specifically, the two had created a virulent form of mousepox.

“Australian scientists, Dr. Ron Jackson and Dr. Ian Ramshaw, accidentally created an astonishingly virulent strain of mousepox, a cousin of smallpox, among laboratory mice. They realised that if similar genetic manipulation was carried out on smallpox, an unstoppable killer could be unleashed” read the Nature article on the scientists.

According to the Victoria police department, Nguyen died after entering a refrigerated storage facility. “He did not know the room was full of deadly gas which had leaked from a liquid nitrogen cooling system. Unable to breathe, Mr. Nguyen collapsed and died” reads the official report.

Then, in January 2002, Ivan Glebov and Alexi Brushlinski — both members of the Russian Academy of Science — were killed. The Russian daily newspaper Pravda reported that Glebov died as the result of a bandit attack and simply says that Brushlinski was killed in Moscow.

On February 9th, Pravda reported the death of Victor Korshunov, head of the microbiology sub-faculty of the Russian State Medical University. Korshunov died of massive head trauma. His body was found February 8th at the entrance of his Moscow house.

Less than a week later, on February 12th, the body of Ian Langford, a senior fellow at the University of East Anglia’s Center for Social and Economic Research, was found in his blood-spattered and ransacked Norwich, England, home. The Times of London reported the following day that police and emergency technicians discovered Langford naked from the waist down and partly wedged under a chair. Coroners were unable to determine the exact cause of Langford’s death. Langford was described by The Times as being one of Europe’s leading experts on the links between human health and environmental risk.

In less than four months, then, nine of the world’s top microbiologists were dead. All had been doing research that had connections with the creation and prevention of biological warfare. But there is more to the story.

On October 4, 2001, a Siberian Airlines flight from Tel Aviv, Israel, to Novosibirsk, Siberia, was shot down over the Black Sea by an “errant” Ukrainian surface-to-air missile, killing everyone on board. The highly publicized crash rattled the 9/11-shaken nerves of people everywhere, but, according to conspiracy theorists, none were rattled more than the Israeli science community. Many in Israel believe the flight carried four or five microbiologists headed to work in one of the 50-plus scientific laboratories in Novosibirsk.

Just before the Black Sea crash, Israeli journalists were claiming that two Israeli microbiologists had been murdered by terrorists. After the crash, these same journalists claimed that Avishai Berkman, Amiramp Eldor, and Yaacov Matzner — flight manifests confirm they were on the plane — were top microbiologists in Israel. These journalists say that the men were the head of hematology at a major hospital, the director of Tel Aviv’s public-health department, and the director of the Hebrew University’s school of medicine, respectively. However, the names and the titles don’t match.

Then on November 24, 2001, a Swissair flight from Berlin to Zurich crashed during its landing approach. Twenty-four of the 33 people on board were killed, including the head of the hematology department at Israel’s Ichilov Hospital and directors of the Tel Aviv public-health department and the Hebrew University school of medicine.

Meanwhile, back in Memphis, on February 10th the burned-beyond-recognition corpse of Katherine Smith, a driver-testing center employee, was found in her car on U.S. 72 near Fayette County. Smith was scheduled to testify before a federal magistrate the following day against five Middle Eastern men who allegedly paid her $1,000 each for fraudulently issued Tennessee driver’s licenses.

What does it all mean? Is it a worldwide conspiracy? It sounds like a plotline from The X-Files, but these are the facts, and they’ve got conspiracy theorists all over the globe buzzing.

Terror Talk

“As a talk-radio host you get these conspiracy types all the time. I like to say to them, ‘Sir, you are being misled,’” says Lowell Ponte, host of radio’s The Lowell Ponte Show (www.talkamerica.com/lowell/) and a frequent contributor to FrontPage Magazine (www.frontpagemag.com), a news site edited by controversial writer David Horowitz.

But when he heard about the dead scientists and the driver’s-license scheme, Ponte says he realized that maybe the conspiracy theorists were onto something this time. So he read up on the issues and penned a column titled “Terror in Tennessee: The Middle East echoes in America’s Heartland.” In the column, Ponte discusses the mysterious deaths of Wiley and Smith and speculates on the possible links to global terrorism. Ponte ends the column by writing, “Reasonable people would say that any prudent look at such fatal coincidences should lead us to support President George W. Bush’s life-and-death, open-and-clandestine war against terrorism. Those with a more ‘liberal’ imagination prefer to believe that Denial really is just a river flowing past Memphis, Tennessee.”

Ponte told the Flyer that he wrote that column after reading about the Katherine Smith case in several national newspapers and reading about the dead microbiologists on some Web sites devoted to traditional news and some devoted to conspiracy theories.

“When you have two people — both of whom are involved in activities that are significant to terrorists — who die in the same community during a short period of time, you have to at least entertain the idea that the [events] are related,” said Ponte.

London-based author Ian Gurney also became interested in the scientists’ deaths while doing research for his next book. The book is about biological warfare and is tentatively titled The Spawn of the Devil.

“I was doing research for my book and it seemed like every week I would receive a news alert about another microbiologist dying,” Gurney told the Flyer. “The story was all over the place but no one had really connected the deaths yet.”

So Gurney began researching the various deaths himself and saw a common theme — all were working on projects related to biological warfare. Considering the post-9/11 climate worldwide, he thought these links were more than just coincidental.

“I don’t believe that much in coincidence,” said Gurney. “Most people in America, like most people in my country, tend to only scan the news for about 30 minutes. That’s all we can take before we have to go make a cup of tea. We don’t usually get into the stories behind the stories. The news doesn’t usually get in depth.”

Gurney took it upon himself to visit the Web sites of major newspapers all over the world. Reading articles and obituaries, he pieced together a web of deaths — some natural, some violent — that he believes are related to current advancements in biological weapons. Gurney began publishing articles on the connections on his Web site (www.caspro.com), and his stories were soon picked up or modified by other sites like FrontPage Magazine and the conspiracy-theory-heavy site Rense.com (www.rense.com) run by talk-radio host Jeff Rense.

“The news doesn’t really go in depth,” said Gurney. “The majority of people in your country and in mine are being treated like mushrooms. We’re being kept in the dark and having bullshit heaped over us. If there is a conspiracy and we don’t pay attention to the signs, they’re going to get away with it.”

Dr. Death

Conspiracy theory or not, there is an unmistakable and frightening connection between one of the dead scientists and a man referred to by London newspaper News of the World as “The Third Horseman of the Apocalypse.”

Vladimir Pasechnik, the Soviet scientist who died in England last fall, and Dr. Ken Alibek, the scientist formerly known as Kanatjan Alibekov, worked together at Biopreparat — the Soviet germ-warfare laboratory. Alibekov defected to the United States in 1992, changed his name, and made the talk-show circuit. After September 11th, many Americans saw Alibek sharing his views on cable and network news. His life begun anew, Alibek now spends his days in a tiny office at George Mason University, near Washington, D.C., trying to undo the horrors he spent the first part of his scientific career creating.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Pasechnik and Alibekov were the top two scientists at Biopreparat, but they were hardly the only scientists there. According to U.S. Senator Sam Nunn, at its height Biopreparat employed as many as 70,000 scientists and technicians — many of whom worked solely on creating biological weapons of mass destruction.

“Through our program, we stockpiled hundreds of tons of anthrax, plague, and smallpox for our use against the West,” Alibek told News of the World in October. “What went on in our labs was one of the most closely guarded secrets of the Cold War.”

But when the Soviet Union collapsed, funding for Biopreparat disappeared with it, and the previously employed scientists began selling their services to the highest bidders. According to Alibek: “Many went to Europe and Asia or have simply dropped out of sight. I’ve heard that several went to Iraq and North Korea.”

Of Pasechnik, Alibek says this: “He was behind some of our best work, devising a machine that turns viruses into a fine powder. It had been a huge breakthrough because it complemented another project, using cruise missiles to fly low over enemy territory, spraying out clouds of disease.”

Originally trained as a doctor, Alibek says he is holding himself accountable to the Hippocratic oath he ignored for so long. In July 2001, well before the September attacks, Alibek told New Scientist magazine that he was devoting his time to enhancing “innate immunity” in the respiratory tract.

“Our objective is to develop an inhaler containing micro-encapsulated cytokines to prevent degradation and toxicity. The inhaler could be used to treat people before a biological weapons attack and after they are exposed,” Alibek told New Scientist.

In a Frontline interview that aired October 13, 1998, on PBS, Alibek said that scientists at Biopreparat had specifically selected smallpox as a biological weapon because it was highly contagious and because it was a “dead” virus — meaning in the future most people would not be vaccinated against it. When asked if the Russians would have vaccinated their citizens against smallpox before unleashing it, Alibek was grim.

“In my opinion,” he told Frontline, “nobody cared what would happen to the Russians because this weapon would be used just in case of a total war.”

Dark Winter

That’s just what U.S. government officials feared early last summer when representatives from several major departments met to stage a mini-war. Alibek was not the only person in the United States to realize that we need to develop a defense against biological weapons and these officials wanted a test to see if the U.S. could withstand a major biological attack.

They called their fake war “Dark Winter.” In the exercise, smallpox is discovered in Oklahoma and Georgia. State governments had to try and consolidate efforts with the federal government to ensure that the disease was not spread. The participants hoped to determine how each department would respond in a crisis situation. The results were grim.

“We, all in the room, were humbled by what we did not know and could not do and were convinced of the urgent need to better prepare our nation against this gruesome threat,” Margaret Hamburg, M.D., said in her July 23, 2001, testimony before the House Committee on Government Reform, following the Dark Winter exercise.

Hamburg participated in the exercise as the secretary of health and human services. Many Americans may be familiar with her name because, like Alibek, she appeared on many cable and network news shows following the September 11th and anthrax attacks last fall. Hamburg had previously been the New York City health commissioner when the World Trade Center was bombed in 1993 and also was an assistant secretary in the federal department of health and human services.

Hamburg also told the committee, “People should not be exchanging business cards on the first day of a crisis.”

Frank Keating, the current governor of Oklahoma, played himself in the exercise. Keating was also governor of Oklahoma in April 1995 when the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was bombed. Emergency response groups now look to Oklahoma’s response as the model of governmental efficiency during a crisis situation.

In his testimony before the House committee, Keating placed particular emphasis on the need to be open with the public and media and encouraged the committee to “resist the urge to federalize everything.”

Likewise, Senator Sam Nunn, who played the role of U.S. president, realized that both the nation as a whole and the individual states were ill-prepared to cope with biological warfare.

“In the evolution of warfare,” said Nunn, “arrows were countered with shields; swords with armor; guns with tanks; and now biological weapons must be countered with medicines, vaccines, and surveillance systems.”

All of the participants testified that the U.S. would have a long way to go before it would be ready to handle a biological attack. They all also testified that several legal hurdles currently stand in the way of officials, hurdles they believe need to be removed in advance.

Legislative Action

After the results of Dark Winter, and particularly after the September 11th attacks, federal policymakers decided that it was time to overcome these legal hurdles. A panel composed of law professors from Georgetown University and medical professors from Johns Hopkins University worked together to create a law to address the problems. After only 18 days of discussion, the Model Emergency Health Powers Act (MEHPA) was finished.

The act has since been introduced in every state legislature, where “Model” is replaced with the state’s name. In Tennessee, TEHPA (House Bill 2271/Senate Bill 2392) is currently being reviewed in committee.

However, nationwide left- and right-wingers alike are sounding off on MEHPA-based laws in Web chat rooms and bulletin boards. At issue are the vast and truly frightening powers the laws bestow upon state governors and their appointees.

Under MEHPA, and Tennessee’s TEHPA, a governor or his appointee, after declaring a “public health emergency,” has the power to take a number of actions. In the event of such an emergency, MEHPA allows each state to transform into something that would shock even George Orwell. The Model Emergency Health Powers Act allows officials to require an individual to be vaccinated. Anyone who refuses vaccination could be charged with a felony and forcibly quarantined. Likewise, it allows officials to require individuals to receive specific medical treatment or also be charged with a felony and quarantined. The state would also be allowed to seize any property, including real estate, deemed necessary to handle the emergency, and the property could be destroyed or retained without any compensation for the owner.

During a “public health emergency,” officials would be able to draft a person or business into state service and to impose rationing, price controls, quotas, and transportation controls. Any preexisting law thought to interfere with handling the emergency would be suspended. State governments would also be able to control the availability and distribution of medicines and vaccines and would be permitted to collect specimens from and perform tests on living persons.

Regardless of whether or not a connection exists between the dead microbiologists, between Don Wiley’s and Katherine Smith’s deaths, or between the events of September 11th and the anthrax attacks, the federal and state governments seem now at least to be aware of the threat of biological attack. What remains to be seen is how Americans will respond. And the links — real or imagined — between the rash of mysterious deaths? That’s a mystery even Mulder and Scully couldn’t solve.

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