Another story for you about possible witness tampering of a bad kind. There are some perps out there that enjoy their wet work a little to much if you ask me. Let's hope they're caught soon. (sorry for the formatting again)
D.C. Police Silent on Murder of Former White House Intern
Washington Weekly
2/9/98
D.C. Police Silent on Murder of Former White
House Intern
On July 6, 1997, a brutal triple murder took place at a Starbucks restaurant in an upscale Georgetown neighborhood.
The victims were Aaron Goodrich, 18; Emory Evans, 25; and Mary Caitrin Mahoney, 25. According to a July 13
Washington Post story, ballistics test indicated that 10 shots were fired from two different guns, sometime after 9:15
p.m. The Post story characterized the crime as an "execution-style" murder.
The murders were strange for several reasons. First, the restaurant's doors were locked when the victims were found.
Nothing appeared to have been stolen, although nearly $4,000 was in the store at the time. Police initially discounted
robbery as a motive. Second, the restaurant was in a neighborhood that has a very strong neighborhood watch
program. None of Washington D.C.'s 397 murders in the previous year had occurred in or near Georgetown, which is
rated safer than many other American cities such as Palm Springs and Oceanside, California and Boulder, Colorado.
Third, neighbors heard no gunfire, indicating that the assailants might have used silencers. Finally, multiple murders
are rare even in violent areas of Washington D.C.
Making the story particularly interesting is the fact that Mary Mahoney was shot as many as five times, according to
some press reports. As the Washington Post reported:
She was almost unrecognizable. Caity, the coffee shop assistant manager, was first shot in the chest,
police said. She had raised her hands to her face, possibly to protect herself. A bullet pierced her
hands and hit her face. Then she was shot in the back of the head.
Ms. Mahoney had been heavily involved in presidential politics, working on Bill Clinton's campaign in 1992. She
served as a White House intern for a while in the first Clinton Administration, arranging White House tours. After
finishing a degree in Women's Studies at Towson State University in Baltimore in 1995, she moved to Washington
permanently, taking a job as an assistant manager at the Starbucks restaurant. There Ms. Mahoney's path seems to
have crossed that of another White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. George Stephanopoulos said last week that
Lewinsky used to hang out at the Starbucks where he lived.
These connections to Lewinsky and the White House have raised eyebrows in many quarters. The January 23, 1998
Strategic Weekly Briefings contained the following account attributed to anonymous sources:
[W]hen Monica Lewinsky first met with Vernon Jordan in November 1997 she told him she didn't want
to end up like Caity Mahoney. Jordan professed not to know whom Lewinsky was referring to until
she identified Mahoney as the former White House intern who was murdered last summer in a
Starbucks. . . .
Police are apparently no nearer to solving the crime than they were in July of 1997. In a December 6 story the
Washington Post reported that a police informant in the case had been beaten to death outside a row house in
Southwest Washington. Police sent the informant into a crack house to purchase cocaine, hoping to find grounds to
search the house and question the occupants about the Starbucks case. Three men were arrested in the beating
death, but police found no connection to the Starbucks murders.
Efforts by the Washington Weekly to gain information from the D.C. police have been unsuccessful. The following
exchange occurred on Thursday of last week with D.C. police detective Tony Patterson, who is in charge of the case:
QUESTION: May I ask you some questions?
PATTERSON: It depends. Which case?
QUESTION: About the Starbucks murder. May I ask you some questions?
PATTERSON: No, no. I can't discuss that case.
QUESTION: You can't discuss that case?
PATTERSON: Not right now.
QUESTION: Can you discuss it off the record?
PATTERSON: No.
QUESTION: You can't discuss your informant who was beaten to death?
PATTERSON: No, that's what I said. Too much has been released to the press already.
QUESTION: Can you discuss aspects of the case that would not affect your investigation?
PATTERSON: No sir.
QUESTION: You can't discuss anything? You can't describe the murder scene?
PATTERSON: That's already known.
QUESTION: It's known from press accounts, but what is not known so well is what you have to say.
PATTERSON: I have nothing else to say about it.
Efforts to contact Starbucks management were somewhat more fruitful. The Washington Weekly talked to Kenny
Fried, a Starbucks spokesman on Friday.
QUESTION: I would like to get a statement from you about where the Washington D.C. murder case is
at this point.
FRIED: We're working on getting the store reopened at this point.
QUESTION: What is the status of the case with the police?
FRIED: They're definitely working on it. They've not closed it. It's a high profile thing here. But,
unfortunately, the people--we've never sent any statements out or anything like that. We're trying to
open our store at this point, that's our concern. The store will reopen February 20th. In Washington
this was the biggest story for two weeks. It was on the front page of every paper and on the
newscasts morning till evening, so it was very heavily on the minds of the media here.
QUESTION: Do you know at this point if the police have a suspect or suspects in the case?
FRIED: We don't know anything about that.
QUESTION: I take it this was very unusual for the store. It was located in a very nice neighborhood in
Georgetown, is that correct?
FRIED: Yes, it's a nice area with a national retailer and Starbucks never had anything like this happen
in their history. And so it's just unusual and three young people were killed and so these factors
together created a lot of attention.
QUESTION: The Washington Post characterized this as an execution-style murder. Do you have any
comment on that?
FRIED: I'm dealing mostly with the reopening of the store, so I won't comment on that. We have not
talked to media because we just want to get the store reopened. I can tell you that our CEO has
announced that all future net profits for the life span of the store will go to a designated anti-violence
organization. The particular organization will be announced when the store opens.
QUESTION: There is a lot of speculation going around on the internet about who could have had a
motive for this killing. And this is being connected to the fact that this young lady was a former
White House intern, and that rumors were circulating in Washington at this time that an intern was
going to come forward with information about the President's activities in the White House. Have you
heard stories like that?
FRIED: No, I haven't.
QUESTION: Do you have any comment on that?
FRIED: I'm not the right person to comment on that. I can see if there is anyone at headquarters who
could comment on that.
QUESTION: Do you know of any apparent motive in this slaying?
FRIED: No, we don't, nothing. There was speculation that it was robbery.
QUESTION: Was there any indication from the crime scene that it was an attempted robbery?
FRIED: That's all a police matter.
The Washington Weekly continues to investigate this case. Anyone with information on the case is encouraged to
contact the Washington Weekly by email at editor@dolphin.gulf.net . Confidentiality is assured.
Published in the Feb. 9, 1998 issue of The Washington Weekly. Copyright c 1998 The Washington Weekly
(http://www.federal.com). Reposting permitted with this message intact. |
