Interesting, why would the Chief of Police never look at the body of Lori, with it being such a high profile death

EDITORIAL

Death probe leaves vexing questions

For a little over two weeks, it was a real-life puzzle worthy of a mystery novel. A popular Florida congressman suddenly announces he’s giving up his seat and withdrawing from the Washington scene.

Less than two months later, a 28-year-old female aide is found dead in his Fort Walton Beach office. The aide had seemed perfectly healthy. Initial autopsy results raise only more questions

The story fired imaginations.

This newspaper received numerous inquiries about the case, from Massachusetts and Oregon and dozens of places in between. Some of the writers had dug into the backgrounds of the individuals involved.

“People are waiting and watching,” one said. Those who were waiting and watching likely were disturbed by the news we reported Tuesday. We certainly were.

Associate Medical Examiner Michael Berkland said Monday that the aide, Lori Klausutis, suffered a heart condition previously unsuspected and undiagnosed that caused her to collapse in U.S. Rep. Joe Scarborough’s office on the afternoon or evening of July 19.

She fell and hit her head on a desk, he said, and a resulting blood clot caused her death. The fall left “a scratch and a bruise,” Dr. Berkland said.

That seems to conflict with previous official statements that the aide’s body bore no sign of trauma. Dr. Berkland acknowledged as much. He said the original denials were intended to prevent public speculation about the aide’s death.

“The last thing we wanted to do was answer 40 questions about a head injury,” he said. Now, of course, there are deeper questions.

“That we’ has got nothing to do with me,” Fort Walton Beach Police Chief Steve Hogue told us Tuesday, referring to Dr. Berkland’s explanation that “we” wanted to keep the head injury quiet.

“I have never lied to the news media. I would never mislead the media for any reason.”

Chief Hogue said he “never looked at the body” after it was discovered July 20

“I never heard anything about a scratch,” he added, although Dr. Berkland did tell him there was a small bruise on the aide’s head. The chief said that when he told reporters there was no trauma to the body, he meant that a preliminary examination had uncovered no major trauma. And he said he is satisfied with Dr. Berkland’s work.

We’re not.

This story has raised serious questions from the beginning and continues to confound. Now, because of Dr. Berkland’s statements, our questions are not just about a 28-year-old woman’s death but also about the investigation of her death.

Who, exactly, decided the head injury would not be disclosed? Can we depend on authorities to be honest about the progress of future investigations? What else, if anything, might the medical examiner have kept under wraps? Nobody ever got in trouble by keeping his mouth shut, the saying goes. Maybe not, but nobody ever won the public’s trust that way, either.

_________

Published: Thursday Aug. 23, 2001

https://www.nwfdailynews.com/news/20171208/from-archives-stories-from-2001-related-to-scarborough-aide-klausutis-death

Another article on Lori Klausutis, notes from autopsy and guise you wanted the names of the witness’s that found her, see below

How does this witness, a nurse, know that Lori obviously had a seizure?

Some interesting items found or not found in the report include:

• Tiffany Bates, an aide in Scarborough’s Pensacola office, was the last person known to have spoken to Klausutis, at shortly before 5 p.m. on July 19. Bates congratulated Klausutis on an upcoming job interview and Klausutis told her she wasn’t feeling well.

Reached in Pensacola Tuesday, Bates declined to comment. She said members of Scarborough’s staff had been directed to refer all questions about the Klausutis case to Scarborough spokesman Miguel Serrano.

• An admission from Don Graham, owner of D-Train security company, that he “may have missed” checking to see if the doors at Scarborough’s office were locked when patrolling the office complex between 11:30 p.m. and midnight on July 19. Graham had originally told investigators that the congressman’s office doors were locked, its lights out and that there were no cars parked in front on the night Klausutis died.

An employee at the International House of Pancakes, arriving for work at about 5 a.m., reported seeing Klausutis’ car parked in front of Scarborough’s office and said lights inside the building were on. Graham could not be reached for comment.

Juanita Marie Bergmann, a Destin resident and former nurse, and her husband, Andreas Bergmann, were the couple who found Klausutis’ body. Juanita Bergmann checked the pulse of the young woman while her husband called 911. She said she saw no indication of a head injury and no indication of foul play

“She’d obviously had a seizure,” Bergmann said. “My assumption was she had a seizure and it caused her to go into cardiac arrest.”

Bergmann did say she wonders why there hasn’t been more public discussion of the Klausutis case, but respects the decision of the victim’s family to accept the findings of the police and medical examiner

“If they’re comfortable with what’s being said I can accept that,” she said. “They’re the ones who know what’s best.”

• Staff Writer Tom McLaughlin can be reached at 863-1111, Ext. 435, or tomm@nwfdailynews.com

This is the site with ALL of the articles written by NWFlorida daily news

https://www.nwfdailynews.com/news/20171208/from-archives-stories-from-2001-related-to-scarborough-aide-klausutis-death

There’s some connection between Rubio and Psycho Joe

Marco Rubio’s convenient media feud with Joe Scarborough

Callum Borchers

What's up between Marco Rubio and Joe Scarborough? Once friendly — on the air, at least — the Republican presidential candidate and MSNBC host are in what the New York Times on Monday termed an "unusual spat."

When the conservative National Review magazine explored the obvious frictionbetween the two men in November, it traced the origin to Rubio's Senate run six years ago, "when Scarborough argued that Rubio was too young, too unseasoned, and — perhaps most seriously — too compromised by ethical issues to win the Senate seat

The first flare-up was on April 21, 2010. The night before, on April 20, the Miami Herald reported on a criminal investigation into the use of credit cards issued by the Florida GOP. The report cited an anonymous source alleging that the Internal Revenue Service was combing through Rubio’s tax records, along with those of two other Florida Republicans — which the Rubio campaign furiously denied, and which has never been confirmed.

The following morning, Scarborough led his show with the story, alleging that it might be merely the first of several forthcoming disclosures that could threaten Rubio’s campaign

Yet Rubio, who had appeared at least three times on "Morning Joe" before that Miami Herald story, rejoined Scarborough soon after and showed no sign of displeasure with his treatment. In fact, he praised Scarborough and co-host Mika Brzezinski for broadcasting from Pensacola Beach in the aftermath of the Gulf oil spill.

"Thank you for doing this program from Pensacola," Rubio said. "The images you're showing this morning and the attention you're giving to this is an extraordinary, I think, boost to the spirits of the people in Northwest Florida."

SEAN HANNITY: I don't think, in this insurgency year, you want to be labeled "establishment." Am I right about that?

RUBIO: Yeah, well, it's not an accurate label. I reject all these labels. Those are things the media comes up with because it makes it easier for them to cover the political news.

I'm sure that Rubio hasn't appreciated some of the things Scarborough has said about him. But he's managed to ignore them until now. Taking issue with Scarborough now doesn't seem personal. It looks like political strategy.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/02/08/marco-rubios-convenient-media-feud-with-joe-scarborough/

Does anyone find it strange that the witness was a former nurse that found Lori? I wonder if Joe sent them (nurse and spouse) there that morning to make sure she was not alive. Plus the whole theory of seizures started with the nurse. And how is it, a nurse said she didn’t see any trauma to the body but based on the skull fracture and trauma, it would be odd a nurse didn’t see that

t r u t h o u t | January 6, 2001 - On July 20, Fort Walton Beach Police Chief Steve Hogue said that a preliminary investigation into Lori Klausutis' death had not turned up any evidence of foul play, trauma to her body or any outward indications of suicide.

However, the autopsy issued by Associate Medical Examiner Michael Berkland on August 6 shows clear evidence of severe trauma to the head: a 7 1/2 inch long fracture stretching from the right temple across the top of the head, a contusion in the occipital region (at the base of the skull), a subdural hematoma a collection of blood on the surface of the brain under the skull on the left side opposite the fracture, and eggshell fractures under the brain above the eye socket

Certainly this evidence, in itself, should have been sufficient to launch an all-out police investigation. But, despite these findings, Berkland concluded the death was accidental. This apparently caused the police to close the case.

In the autopsy, Berkland disclosed that Lori had an "undiagnosed cardiac arrhythmia." Northwest Florida Daily News, the cardiac arrhythmia had "halted Klausutis' heart and stopped her breathing," and the "blow to the head contributed to the death because blood pooled at the point where the fracture occurred."

However, the autopsy states that the subdural hematoma (the blood pooling) was on the opposite side of the brain from the fracture.

__Wright and George speculated that the heart valve condition was Mitral Valve Prolapse (MVP), although Berkland does not come out and state this in the autopsy__Berkland told the press that "to his knowledge, Klausutis never visited a doctor for irregular heart patterns and had no long-term medical problems aside from lingering injuries from an auto accident years ago." Indeed, Lori's family members apparently wrote the Northwest Florida Daily News, saying that Lori did not have a history of medical problems.

Why, then, did the ABC affiliate in Pensacola (WEAR, channel 3) publish on its website, within three hours of Klausutis' death (before her husband had even been notified) that "Scarborough's office says Klausutis had a history of health problems"? Anna Dobbins of WEAR stated that it was Joe Scarborough himself who called, saying that Lori had a complicated medical history, specifically surrounding "stroke and epilepsy Dobbins added that about a week later, Scarborough's press secretary Miguel Serrano asked them to drop the "complicated health history" story, saying Joe had spoken in error. Tiffany Bates, a Scarborough aide from Pensacola was the last person to speak to Lori alive. According to the press, Bates said that Lori told her she was not feeling well.

There were also rumors of epilepsy. It seems to have first been mentioned by Juanita Bergmann, the woman who found Lori's body. According to the Northwest Florida Daily News, Juanita, a former nurse, speculated that Lori had had a seizure

Mary Potthast, a friend of Lori's said she thought Lori might have mentioned having mild seizures during her youth, but called Lori "the picture of health." Lori's father-in-law, Norm Klausutis, according to Wright and George, "categorically denied that his daughter-in-law had ever had a seizure."

Berkland concluded that she had suffered a severe cardiac arrhythmia, or abnormal heart rhythm, which had stopped her heart, causing her to go unconscious and fall, hitting her head on the corner of the desk on her way down. He did not explain how he had ruled out an attack He said, "We know for a fact she wasn't whacked in the head because of the nature of the injury."

Neither of these statements is supported by the medical literature. Quite the contrary. George and Wright quote from a 1997 study of closed head injuries, "In physical terms, the difference between the head moving or being stationary on impact is solely in the frame of reference. There is no physical difference between the forces involved in a stationary head being hit or a moving head striking a fixed object

Furthermore, neither the police report nor the autopsy contain a drawing of the room in which Lori was found, or of the position of her body relative to the furniture. According to Chris George, Juanita Bergmann, the woman who discovered Lori's body, told George that she found the body near a chair, not near the desk

https://web.archive.org/web/20021030163522/http://www.truthout.org/docs_01/01.07B.Klausutis.3.htm