Introduction

On November 11, 2002, The New York Times reported the death of US Senator Michael Franks.

According to the article, Senator Franks committed suicide the previous night in his Washington home.  He was found by his wife, who was out getting chicken for the night’s dinner.  When Mrs. Susan Franks arrived home, she walked into the living room as she usually did.  When she arrived, however, she found an empty bottle of whisky, several spilt bottles of anti-depressants, and blood.

The police arrived quickly, and dismissed the scene as an apparent suicide.  The note was tucked in Sen. Franks’ breast pocket, the gun was snug in Mr. Franks’ hand, and the bullet wound was consistent with a direct shot to the temple.  Running an autopsy, doctors discovered that Sen. Franks overdosed on anti-depressants, mixed it with large quantities of alcohol, and proceeded to commit suicide.

There was only one inconsistency: friends of Sen. Franks considered him a happy fellow, who neither drank nor took medication.  Sen. Franks had recently proposed a bill that would renovate the United States’ large national government, and give the majority of the nation’s power to state senates.  With a Republican majority in Congress, it met with approval and was projected to pass on November 11, 2002: the day after the apparent suicide of Michael Franks.

Analysts say that Sen. Franks realized that his bill, despite a very favorable projection, would not pass, and committed suicide because his life’s work was not going to succeed.

The bill failed by a slim margin, justifying Sen. Franks’ suicide, and nothing more was said about it, except the standard sob story on CNN.  And, as said above, all of this was reported by The New York Times.

Not reported, however, was the note at the bottom of the police report.  The gun was found to have been fired twice, and no doctor could verify that the anti-depressants were, in fact, Sen. Franks’.  Oddly, this information disappeared, and the media never got wind of it.