For its part, the FAA listened,
and it did find at least some of those concerns
were valid.
But Boeing allegedly didn't listen.
Barnett claimed that his lifelong employer not only didn't listen
to him,
it punished him. And so he devoted his retirement to
an explosive lawsuit that now
technically is moot because he's dead.
Last week, Barnett was in Charleston,
SC, for depositions in the case,
but he missed an appointment on Saturday and was found
dead inside his pickup truck at the Holiday Inn.
The authorities say they found a silver handgun in his
lap finger on the trigger.
There was also a note in the passenger seat,
but they're not saying what was in that note,
not yet, anyway.
His attorneys say that none of this makes any sense.
They say there was no indication that he was in
any danger of taking his own life and that they
want a full investigation.
For its part, Boeing simply says we are saddened by
Mr.
Barnett's passing and our thoughts are with his family and
friends.
My thoughts can be summed up in one word,
forensics. Did he kill himself or did someone kill him
and make it look like he took his own life?
Because forensics will tell you that story from beyond the
grave.
And that's why Joseph Scott Morgan is here.
He's a certified death investigator,
A forensic analyst and a distinguished scholar of the stuff
at Jacksonville State University. OK,
so Joe, if you shoot yourself in the head,
your hand and the gunshot residue and the blood spatter
and the trajectory,
all that will tell the story,
won't it?
Yes, yes it will. And understand this,
the people that investigate suicides,
this primarily falls to the corner of the medical examiner.
This is not necessarily a crime.
So I find it interesting that the coroner's already stated
that this is a self-inflicted gunshot.
Unless the police can come up with more evidence that
this was in fact something that was done at another's
hand,
and that's how we define homicide,
death at the hands of another,
then they're probably going to go with the conclusions of
the coroner.
Right now, the police are waiting on that final conclusion.
So there's a letter they said that was found in
the seat beside them,
and they're not releasing any details of that,
which I also find unusual because wouldn't you want
to quell any of this Internet frenzy by saying the
letter was very clear?
Help me understand as a death investigator,
is it, is it frequent that there's a,
a a letter written under duress,
a suicide letter written under duress?
And can you tell?
Well, let's back up just a second.
First off,
suicide notes typically are atypical.
I think people are surprised by that.
You generally do not find a suicide note When people
decide to take their life,
they do it in in a second
most of the time. We in the medical legal community
investigate probably
at a rate of two to three suicides for every
homicide.
Suicides outpace homicides by that factor in this country.
So we have a lot of experience at this.
One of the things they're going to be doing if
this was a handwritten note is that they're going to
have exemplars.
And this is typical what we do
to look and see how this compares to his handwriting.
Now as to whether or not there was stress involved
in this,
if it was something that he was forced to do,
that's going to have to take it up to a
different level.
Probably the FBI would get involved in that.
So what about the the,
the hotel parking lot, the Holiday Inn,
and then the part that he's in a car in
public?
I'm trying to sort of place that amongst the norms
of people who take their lives.
Where does that fit in your,
you know, spectrum?
Yeah, well, to be within a vehicle firstly,
you know, most of the time when we think about
suicides and cars,
we think about carbon monoxide exposure.
We have a lot of those.
But no, it is not atypical for someone to take
their life in a car.
First off, it's an isolated area.
Many times
the victim will attempt to take their life in a
car because they don't want to mess up the house.
They don't want to mess up a location that goes
to almost a thoughtfulness on the part of these individuals.
If this was a rental car,
he could care less about the interior of the car,
so the fact that he did it there is not
surprising.
It's also a fear many people have.
I think of not having their bodies found that he
didn't go off into the woods to do this.
I think one of the keys here though,
you know when they talk about a a
self-inflicted gunshot wound, is there any evidence that he was
shot through the glass?
Is there any evidence that someone else could have been
in the vehicle?
The key here is going to be GSRI.
Think the deposition of the Antimony Antimony,
the Barium and the lead on his hand when they
do this testing.
That's what I thought you were gonna say.
Not only that, but if the guy came from behind
and shot him in in the
driver's seat, you know, seat right.
That trajectory would would be a different angle too.