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THE DEATH OF AN OKLAHOMA BOMBING WITNESS
___________________________________________________________
By David Hoffman
Dr. Don Chumley, who ran the Broadway Medical Clinic about half a
"They had sent us around to the underground parking garage, where
Chumley, who was working with Dr. Ross Harris, was one of the few
Chumley was killed five months later when his Cessna 210 crashed
"It's a pretty mysterious circumstance. There's no apparent
Jones added that Chumley had been in a minor wreck during a
Would this contradict Jones' hypothesis?
"Well, from talking to pilots that I know, they say that can't
According to reports in The Daily Oklahoman, Chumley, who was on
Was Chumley's death an accident, a suicide, or something else?
"The thing that's odd to me is that Don was perfectly healthy,"
Investigators said they could find no evidence of an explosion at
Chumley's hunting partner Joey Chief said in an interview in The
"He was the kind of guy who did everything right, always. He
Mike Evett, a Federal Public Defender, had known Don Chumley for
"To me it's unusual because I know he was a good pilot," added
Yet Clint Boehler, a former Canadian County Sheriff and former
Yet Boehler is incorrect. The doctor did in fact have an
Did Dr. Don Chumley crash on the evening of September 25th due to
It was rumored that Chumley was about to go public with some
When Chumley learned of the government's hastily planned cover-
Notes:
1 Shaun Jones, interview with author.
Published in the Mar. 31, 1997 issue of The Washington Weekly
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Date: Mon, 31 Mar 1997 21:46:34 -0600 (CST)
From: Rick Lawler
To: snetnews@world.std.com
Subject: SNET: The Death Of A OKC Bomb Witness
Date: Sun, 30 Mar 1997 17:09:25 -0800
From: Jan Farmer
Subject: THE DEATH OF AN OKLAHOMA BOMBING WITNESS
Reporter David Hoffman has been investigating the
mysterious deaths of several witnesses to the 1995 bombing
of the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City. Trying to
answer the questions "What did they know?" and "How did
they die?" Hoffman has uncovered some truly disturbing
facts. What follows is the first in an exclusive series of
articles detailing Hoffman's findings.
___________________________________________________________
mile from the Federal Building, was one of the first to arrive at
the bombing site on April 19. Shaun Jones, Chumley's step-son,
was assisting him. Jones recalled the scene:
some people were trapped. Suddenly, three guys come running out
of the basement yelling, 'There's a bomb! A bomb! It's gonna'
blow!' Everybody panicked and ran screaming away from the
building as fast as they could." [1]
doctors who actually went into the Federal Building, while the
others waited outside. He had helped many people, including seven
babies, whom he later pronounced dead.
near Amarillo, Texas in what Jones calls "mysterious
circumstances."
reason--there's nothing we can think of," said Jones.
landing a year earlier when his plane became trapped in a vortex
caused by a large jet landing nearby. The small plane was forced
into a snow bank causing some damage to its left wing tip. The
damage had been repaired.
cause a plane to crash. I mean, as good a pilot as he is, that's
not going to cause his plane to go straight down into the ground.
Another pilot said, 'that's just like a car that's out of
alignment--it happens all the time--it's just something you learn
to fly with.' The plane had been flown several times since that."
a hunting trip that weekend, had twice landed earlier--on
Friday--due to bad weather conditions. The crash occurred three
days later, on a Monday.
The Daily Oklahoman article described how he had cried in front
of his friend Jim Taylor on the day of the bombing, after tagging
seven babies, and was not satisfied he had done all he could,
even after helping to organize a fund-raiser for the victims.
said Jones. "He was talking to the tower, and from one minute to
the next he just went straight smack down into the ground."
the macabre scene. Chumley's throttle was still set at cruise,
and his gear and flaps were up. The FAA inspector stated there
were "no anomalies with the engine or the airframe," and
"pathological examination of the pilot did not show any pre-
existing condition that could have contributed to the accident."
[2]
Daily Oklahoman:
was very cautious, very professional," Chief said, adding
[that] Chumley's plane was equipped with extra safety
instruments.
over twenty years. "I would never get into an airplane with
anybody I didn't know," said Evett, "and I would never be afraid
to fly with Don. For the life of me, this doesn't sit right with
me." [3]
Jones. "Everything was fine, he was in the air for 15 minutes,
he was climbing, he had just asked permission to go from six to
seven thousand feet. They tracked him on the screen at 6,900
feet, and the radar technician said he saw him on the radar, then
he looked back and he was gone, and the plane came straight,
straight down. I mean, no attempt to land... nothing, just
straight down."
FAA inspector, discounts that notion. "That was an accident
waiting to happen," said Boehler. "He didn't have an instrument
rating, and he went out into adverse conditions. One of the
classic symptoms of what's called stall-spin accidents, is people
who are in limited visibility or full IFR, meaning they can't see
the propeller in front of their face. And, they're not current or
trained or in some way up to speed on their operation. And
they'll get into some particular mode of flight, particularly a
climb, and their body and mind tells them their not doing what
their instruments say they're doing, and they tend to react to
that. And the results is sometime they stall the airplane, and
not necessarily spin it, but what it then does is it rolls over
to one side and begins a very tight, steep spiral that is gaining
speed all the way down. And if they ever do come out of the
clouds or obscuration or whatever it is, often they see the
ground at low altitude and they pull back on the wheel and
overstress the airplane as it hits the ground. And this is not an
uncommon thing. Its called spatial disorientation followed by the
graveyard spiral. And I can cite numerous examples of that. There
was a local doc here [who] went out west some time ago--went out
in a 210--and had the same scenario exactly." [4]
instrument rating, and was an experienced pilot, having logged
over 600 hours of flying time.
bad weather? Did he commit suicide due to his grief over what he
saw on the morning of April 19th. Or was Don Chumley murdered?
damning information. According to Michele Moore, who has
investigated the bombing, Chumley was asked to bandage two
federal agents who falsely claimed to have been trapped in the
building that morning. Since the pair was obviously not hurt,
Chumley refused. When the agents petitioned another doctor at the
scene, Chumley intervened, threatening to report them.
up, he apparently decided to go public. It seems he never got the
chance.
2 FAA Report, copy in author's possession. Investigators and
pilots I've talked to indicated various ways a plane can be
rigged to crash, including tampering with the fuel gauge so
it reads full when empty, and putting a corrosive acid on the
control cables.
3 Mike Evett, interview with author.
4 Clint Boehler, interview with author.
Copyright 1997 The Washington Weeklyhttp://www.federal.com
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