Katie Kerekes, FISM News
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New details have been released in the death of a former advisor to the Bill Clinton administration, whose body was discovered on a ranch property in Arkansas last year.
The manner of death in the case of Mark Edward Middleton, 59, was ruled a suicide by the Arkansas State Medical Examiner after he was found hanging from a tree with an electrical cord tied around his neck and a shotgun wound to the chest.
The body was discovered by the Perry County Sheriff’s Department, which responded to a call from the Heifer Ranch staff of an unknown vehicle on the property. Sheriff’s Deputy Jeremy Lawson responded to the scene to find Middleton’s black BMW SUV, with “three boxes of buckshot and a gun case — but no weapon,” according to an initial report Wednesday by the Daily Mail.
However, further documents released Thursday indicate that the shotgun — a Stoeger 12-gauge coach gun — was discovered near the scene, around 30 feet from Middleton’s body. The Daily Mail reports that these documents give an explanation of how the department believes Middleton executed his own demise, stating that the recoil from the firearm’s discharge caused it to be launched so far from his body.
Middleton, who served as an aide to President Clinton as well as assistant to the chief of staff, Thomas “Mack” McLarty, has been linked to accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and was thought to act as a conduit between the former President and the financier. Middleton authorized at least seven of the 17 visits Epstein had to the White House between 1993 and 1995, and flew on Epstein’s private jet, the “Lolita Express.”
But, despite reports of the Arkansas State Medical Examiner’s ruling, suspicions surrounding Middleton’s death cease to be abated. Middleton is one of a “number of Clinton’s former associates [who] have died over the years in unexpected circumstances,” writes Martin Gould for the Daily Mail.
The murder of Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich in 2016 has yet to be solved, “with no culprit having been found,” and suspicions arose surrounding the 1993 suicide of deputy White House counsel Vince Foster, whose death has been questioned ever since the FBI files vanished from the National Archives.
After leaving the White House in 1995, a 1996 investigation by the White House found that Middleton “had abused his access to impress business clients” and was forbidden further access without senior approval. More recently, Middleton worked for his family’s Arkansas HVAC business, known to be the most popular HVAC company in the state.