[dingnuts]

well this guy was 45 and described as healthy in the article, but shows up to the hospital with a mysterious lung problem and then gets MRSA

it's not exactly a smoking gun but you can't blame the guy's age, either. 45 is just middle age, I hope

[cft]

The chance to die from all causes at the age of 45 is 0.41% https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html

Combined with the suicide two months ago (with his prior warning "please don't believe that I committed suicide") this deserves an investigation, not a simple dismissal.

[somenameforme]

Actuarial tables are for all people. So it also of course includes deaths from cancer, obesity related diseases, alcoholism/drug abuse, etc. The odds of a healthy 45 year old just randomly dying from a mysterious infection are going to be orders of magnitude lower than 0.41%.

[kingTug]

Does anyone know if they're investigating that? It was supposedly in his car, in the hotel parking lot he was staying at for the deposition. Seems implausible there wasn't a security camera somewhere in the vicinity.

[danielfoster]

People can easily be paranoid and suicidal at the same time.

[rootusrootus]

Heck, I bet that Venn diagram has quite a lot of overlap indeed.

[rootusrootus]

Per year. If the whistleblowers have been known for several years, then it's not just the current year that counts.

[tootie]

A friend died at 40 from lung cancer despite never smoking. It's rare but it happens. How many proven assassinations of corporate whistleblowers have happened in the US? I think it's zero in the last 100 years at least.

[jjk166]

https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdga/pr/two-sentenced-their-rol...

Assassinations of corporate whistleblowers also falls under the category of "it's rare but it happens."

[tootie]

I mean, that's not exactly the same. These guys were running a local tree-cutting serving, not a Fortune 500. And they weren't just accused of negligent business practice, they were accused of human trafficking and theft. They murdered a whistleblower to keep themselves out of jail, not to protect share prices.

[jjk166]

> These guys were running a local tree-cutting serving, not a Fortune 500.

I imagine Boeing can do anything a local tree-cutting service can do.

> And they weren't just accused of negligent business practice, they were accused of human trafficking and theft. They murdered a whistleblower to keep themselves out of jail, not to protect share prices.

Boeing execs are accused of committing massive fraud which endangered the lives of thousands, as well as other crimes to cover up the safety issues. They are currently under criminal investigation, with many individuals facing possible jail time. When people say corporate assassination, they mean people working for a corporation orchestrate the death of a person for reasons associated with the corporation.

[tootie]

So, for one, you just glossed over my point. Namely, no otherwise legitimate corporation has ever killed a whistleblower. Secondly, this tree-cutting service was run by two people who were caught. Boeing could not possibly pull of a murder-for-hire conspiracy without leaking. They can't pull off a skip-a-few-bolts-to-save-money conspiracy without leaking. And again, I ask what would they possibly be trying to accomplish by murdering people who's story is already told? What in the absolute world would they get out of murdering someone from a supplier while half the world thinks they just murdered someone else? They would be committing corporate suicide over cases they would probably be able to settle out of.

[jjk166]

> So, for one, you just glossed over my point. Namely, no otherwise legitimate corporation has ever killed a whistleblower.

You claimed no corporation had killed a whistleblower in 100 years. I gave an example of a corporation killing a whistleblower from the past 5 years. I don't know how I could have possibly addressed that point more clearly.

You subsequently made a "no true Scotsman" argument that this example of a corporation killing a whistleblower doesn't count, I argued the opposite. Even if we ignored this example, that would not make the statement "no otherwise legitimate corporation has ever killed a whistleblower" true. I'm not going to go through the effort of producing more evidence when what I have already presented proves my point, but that does not mean the example I provided was the only instance of such an occurrence.

> Secondly, this tree-cutting service was run by two people who were caught. Boeing could not possibly pull of a murder-for-hire conspiracy without leaking. They can't pull off a skip-a-few-bolts-to-save-money conspiracy without leaking.

So your argument is that they couldn't have committed a crime since they have been caught conspiring to commit too many crimes already? Absurd. For starters, just because they haven't been caught yet doesn't mean they won't be later. Then it does not stand to reason that a massive conspiracy to bypass safety regulations involving countless employees and multiple facilities is easier to keep secret than the clandestine actions of a small number of people or even perhaps a single person.

> And again, I ask what would they possibly be trying to accomplish by murdering people who's story is already told? What in the absolute world would they get out of murdering someone from a supplier while half the world thinks they just murdered someone else? They would be committing corporate suicide over cases they would probably be able to settle out of.

Again, multiple people at Boeing are facing criminal prosecution based primarily on the testimony of this whistleblower and others like him. If whistleblowers don't testify, they don't go to jail. The corporation would be able to settle, but the specific execs involved would not.

Why would anyone commit murder if they know they could be caught? And yet, murders occur, and murderers get caught. Hell, why would an aircraft company commit a skip-a-few-bolts-to-save-money plot if they could be caught? Obviously they take the risk that they can get away with it. Sure two whistleblowers dead in two months looks sketchy, but not one person has actually been accused of anything. Even if 5 more whistleblowers died in the next 24 hours, all found with gunshots to the back of the head, it wouldn't on its own be enough evidence to finger any particular person for the crime. And even if someone were caught, that doesn't necessarily mean every co-conspirator would be. If faced with a choice between guaranteed jail time for a crime someone is about to testify you committed versus a non-zero chance of getting away scot-free, many people would choose the latter.

[ClumsyPilot]

> they murdered a whistleblower to keep themselves out of jail, not to protect share prices.

And Boeing is accused of far worse, hundreds of people have died.

If a whistleblower has proof that a some executive has personally ordered to put into service a dangerous product, knowing full well that it will kill people? That's jailtime.

[rootusrootus]

As someone who crossed 45 not that long ago, I gotta say that I have definitely noticed an uptick in people dying who I'm acquainted with.

[lamontcg]

> then gets MRSA

That's just due to what is happening to health care in this country.

The underlying cause is the same short-term-profits capitalism that has fucked over Boeing.

The conspiracy is just the trivial one that requires only perverse economic incentives and not assassination.

[neom]

In my opinion it's highly unlikely he was murdered, however if he was, personally, I would be more inclined to pin the blame on an adversary of the Americans to sew some distrust vs Boeing or it's shareholders.