John Barnett had worked for Boeing for 32 years, until his retirement in 2017.
In the days before his death, he had been giving evidence in a whistleblower lawsuit against the company.
Boeing said it was saddened to hear of Mr Barnett’s passing. The Charleston County coroner confirmed his death to the BBC on Monday.
It said the 62-year-old had died from a “self-inflicted” wound on 9 March and police were investigating.
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I am not a conspiracy theorist. Reality is trying it’s damnedest to make me one.
Eh. There will always be real conspiracies and then…lizard people conspiracies.
This shit right here? yeah…they killed him. 100%. No doubt in my fucking mind.
I mean, he was old…people die—
It said the 62-year-old had died from a “self-inflicted” wound on 9 March and police were investigating.
oh shit they totally fucking killed him
THEY FUCKING KILLED HIM!
Relevant Chart (open image in new tab to see it larger):
Not sure what to make of this chart except that a few items are misplaced imo and I agree conspiracy shit is an alt right pipeline in most cases. Maybe it wasn’t always but whatever.
Anyhow.
I haven’t followed up on the news. But there sure wasn’t much available yesterday. So as far as actual reliable evidence we the public have little.
The guy being dead with an apparent self inflicted wound (as BBC and others said) or gunshot (as Corp Crime Reporter said) during whistleblower court proceedings against a giant company is consistent with suicide from:
- Stress of the case or from blackmail
- Stress from something totally unrelated.
- Some other cause (depression, terminal illness…)
It is also consistent with:
- murder made to look like suicide to silence his further testimony and dissuade others
Any of these is certainly plausible at least. As is Epstein being murdered. Actually, that one is more plausible, given the few suspicious coincidences and the sheer number of people who wanted his secrets to stay that way. Whereas extra-terrestrial UFOs aren’t all that plausible based on our current body of scientific knowledge.
Epstein didn’t kill himself though. The circumstances where above the level of questioning, there were cameras turned off and he was supposedly on suicide watch.
As I much as I also believe that, there is no hard evidence (that we know of) that he didn’t kill himself. I think that’s why it’s in that section. The suspiciousness of it is through the roof, but we can’t prove it.
Sure we can’t prove it but that diagram puts it at the same level of UFOs.
Right, the chart is far from perfect, but they just grouped them both under the “we have questions” section. We have lots of unresolved questions about Epstein’s death, we have lots of unresolved questions about UFO sightings.
No, I understand we have questions but explaining epstein requires a couple of details, while UFOs require new laws of physics.
If it actually happened, it’s just a “conspiracy,” not a “conspiracy theory.”
He didn’t show any signs of depression or suicidal tendencies… signs like voluntarily flying on a boeing plane.
The Gulf of Tonkin incident being created by the US was a conspiracy theory until it wasn’t.
Not every “conspiracy theory” is wrong. Sometimes people in charge are actually trying to cover something up. It’s not insane to be skeptical of an official line until it’s backed up with proof.
Lizard people, however, don’t exist.
There are circumstances where conspiracy the likeliest explanation.
This is one of those.
It’s possible it was stress from the litigation. In fact, if you don’t specify whose stress, I’d almost guarantee it.
Ha!
It’s no longer a conspiracy when it’s proven true.
A conspiracy is when a group plans to do something unlawful. So if it’s proven true it’s still a conspiracy. It just stops being a theory.
A “theory” is a collection of information we currently understand to be true.
The term “conspiracy theory” is a misnomer that should be correctly expressed as “conspiracy hypothesis”. But that’s just a theory.
That’s the most annoying misunderstanding. A conspiracy is still a conspiracy when you prove it happened/it’s happening. Conspirators remain conspirators, which means they were working together to do something illegal in secret. Ok, so now it’s not secret anymore, but they still conspired.
This isn’t proof. That’s the crazy part. I hear ya. I’m with ya. I don’t see anything that is concrete physical evidence to tie it all together. As of now.
I agree, I just was making a joke. It’s a conspiracy until you realize it’s a fact. MK-ULTRA, Government spying on you (which time? ) , Big tobacco hiding that cigerettes cause cancer, Stacks of ET games are buried in New Mexico, even dark stories like the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments were all conspiracy theories at one time. Sadly they all turned out to be true.
Very few conspiracies are as dark and terrifying as (checks notes) Atari games buried in the desert.
There’s also the conspiracy theory of conspiracy theories that the government actually likes and even spreads conspiracy theories so that the real ones get lost in the noise and written off by the general public as “just another loony conspiracy theory”
I like that one because I absolutely don’t like it, but it’s hard not to like and think that it’s worth being a likable conspiracy theory.
And that’s the problem with conspiracy theories, you like to like them and then you can’t be sure.It’s just like that sometimes.
He was staying at a hotel out-of-state while giving evidence against Boeing.
He was found dead in his car in the hotel parking lot from a ‘self-inflicted wound’.There’s really no other way to look at it logically than he was murdered by Boeing. Nothing else adds up.
He wasn’t even done giving the deposition that he literally volunteered to give…
literall–
Downvote.
I don’t know what you were trying to achieve beyond publicly announcing you’re a petty, boring person.
Did he not literally volunteer?
I mean, I get it, I’m sick of “literally” meaning “figuratively”, and I’d die on that hill with you, but this is the dumbest possible time to make that stand. In this case “literally” just means “literally”.
You could’ve just done so and moved on, my guy. It’s not a profound statement.
I upvoted this.
Why?
Let me list the reasons: it’s creative, provocative and a little sultry.
I’m about half hard right now so you deserve it.
Downvote
You can have an upvote too!
I’m floppier then a rubber tube full of jelly but that’s because I’m in my refractory period.
Flaccid. Downvote
“Literally” CAN be used as an hyperbole. It’s just a more emphatic way to say “very”
Literally has been used as an intensifier for over 200 years. The Oxford English Dictionary includes a definition of literally meaning “figuratively”. Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry David Thoreau, James Fenimore Cooper, James Joyce, Charles Dickens, and Mark Twain all used it that way in their writing.
So until you write something as well respected and enduring as Sanditon, The Great Gatsby, Tom Sawyer, or Ulysses and collect your mother fucking Nobel prize in literature, please choke on a literal dick you confidently incorrect fuckwit.
In this case literally literally did mean literally, though, not figuratively. Which makes the fuckwit even more incorrect.
Look, I’m not gonna say Boeing did it. Though if they did, I’d bet money they drove.
I mean, I think the logical thing to do is wait until the evidence comes out and we know for sure. It’s entirely possible he was under a lot of stress from all this and did kill himself. Now, I don’t deny that it’s a HUGE. FUCKING. CONICIDENCE. but those do happen from time to time. Its also a hell of a story, good-guy whistleblower murdered by greedy multinational aerospace company and defense contractor…during an election year…if you wrote the script nobody would buy it.
Let’s be suspicious, but not jump to conclusions.
Jesus, do you think maybe they’re trying to run out the clock too? Who wants to bet that a certain CEO is angling for a political position within a certain potential administration? Perhaps head of the FAA?
This is the kind of go get em attitude a certain potential administration might be impressed by.
Hugely impressed. Big, so big. Huge
An investor could’ve threatened his family? (So not directly Boeing)
If he got a bunch of hate online, or had crippling anxiety about the testimony he still had to give? I mean you could even speculate he thought he would be killed someday, so he took it into his own hands.
(Please note the above is all BS!)
I would argue the jury is still out and that we may never know.
They don’t gain much. The FAA is breathing down their neck already.
The FAA has allowed this mess to continue for far too long because Boeing is an industry titan. Too big to fail. Well, maybe not anymore.
Watch politician holdings of Boeing stock.
The day before his testimony. He was 100% assassinated. Too bad Boeing is such a major company. This would have FBI agents crawling all over it if it wasn’t a company that can afford to buy every politician in DC.
Idk the DOJ opened a criminal investigation against them but that could just be theater. 100% this man was murdered though dude, no doubt about it. When I read that whole “our thoughts are with his friends and family” I got a chill man that’s so evil.
We are in the era of corporate aristocracy. They are considered people, have vast wealth to manipulate and avoid the law, and when they ARE caught acting horrifically, the government just sighs and says "Well we can’t stop having products so I guess it really was suicide lol’
And us normal peasants just have to suck it up.
Time to storm the fucking castle.
I’m not going to say that Boeing had this guy directly killed, but I can certainly see them and their legal team explicitly trying to make his life as hellish as possible until he felt that he only had one way out. Legal threats if you stop proceeding with your case, legals threats if you don’t, they want a terrible warning for any other whistleblowers.
Isn’t that exactly what happened to Aaron Schwartz? Not a whistleblower, but similar tactics
Yes the FBI wanted to make an example out of him for the crime of downloading research papers from a service he had legitimate access to. Even JSTOR thought the prosecution was absurd and didn’t want anything to do with it.
Guess the executives didn’t want to wait for him to take one of their planes and die naturally by getting sucked out at 35,000 feet when a door falls off.
Weird, but I read this article and before it said specifically that he died from a gunshot wound. Looks like it’s been updated (or redacted) to leave that bit out. Originally it said he died from a self inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
So Boeing executives murdered a whistleblower. huh.
Being in Quality Control myself, I’ve always felt pressure from higher ups around some of our bigger findings. Cool to know if I ever find something too big they’ll just straight up murder me.
I’ve thought about this way too much and if you seriously think you’re in danger, there’s a few things you can do. Obviously lots of security cameras with local and off-site backups. Then hidden cameras, whatever spy cameras you can find, with an SD card in each. Then you need to create a deadman switch. Something you must interact with at least daily or it automatically uploads all your videos and documents etc everywhere it can, and / or sends them to your lawyer or journalists if you think you can trust them. I err on the side of public release as well because as long as it’s in the public eye it will be subject to scrutiny. That’s also why I’d start establishing a social media presence. “HI I’m X, I blew the whistle on Y. There’s a hearing scheduled for Z and I would like to once again publicly state that I don’t have any current medical or mental health issues and I have no plans to ever take my own life. Anyway here’s how to make waffles” or whatever.
Something strange like that happened after that Sri Lankan family was murdered in Ontario. Was referred to as a mass shooting until no, wait, was a knife.
Sometimes reporters get details of the story wrong. I don’t know what’s so strange about that.
Bit of a lack of professionalism there.
Crime journalists write what the cops say. Blame the source, not the messenger.
That’s…a bit of a lack pf professionalism too. Way too common now.
“Local officials confirmed Mr. Barnett’s suicide. When asked how Mr. Barnett managed to fire the sniper shot through his bedroom window, the officer first on the scene only replied, “Trust me bro.”, while stuffing a large stack of 100 dollars bills back down the front of his pants.”
[2 week later] Former lead detective found dead in in what investigators have ruled a suicide. He apparently hung himself after a fit of rage where his house appeared to have kicked in his own front door, tore the hard drive out of his security camera hub, punched himself in the face a number of times, then tied the rope to a bannister and strung himself up.
i can’t find it online, but im reasonably certain i heard an interview with this guy on Canadian public radio several years ago that really shook me. he talked basically about how he wouldn’t fly on a Boeing plane, knowing what he knows and having seen what he’d seen, stuff like quality rejected parts getting taken back into inventory to meet quotas. the takeaway for me was that the quality control system that had previously worked so well was an invention of equal or possibly higher importance to any kind of aerodynamic innovation present on those planes. i work in an analogous role (in a different industry) and i really do take it more seriously after having heard the interview. nobody likes the work of quality assurance and you’ll never see someone doing a non-conformance report on TV but it’s a necessary condition for planes to stay in the sky. RIP to a real one and if he got murdered then i hope the industry burns
Neat, I’m jumping on a Boeing 737-700 in about 8 hours. Nice knowin ya while it lasted.
That model was created before they started cutting corners. You should be fine.
It’s not a MAX so you’ll probably be fine haha
My southwest flight will be on a max 8 both ways. Wish me luck.
John Oliver’s Boeing broadcast last week included a video of a guy walking around a Boeing production floor asking all the people if any of them would be willing to fly in a Boeing. Of everyone he asked a single guy said yes and then followed it up with “but I kind of have a death wish.”
There were more yes’s, but they were cut out of the video. However, Oliver mentions after the video what amount of them said yes and what amount said no. Most of them did say “no” though.
If Boeing was running a tight ship with safety in mind, they should all have been yes. If one said no, that could be a disgruntled employee for some reason or another, but jesus…
Anyways, Airbus for me it is.
This is “falling out of a window or down an elevator shaft in Russia”-level blatant.
This appears very loud and clear to any other potential whistle-blowers.
You forgot blown-up plane. For Boeing it is super easy.
Yes, a prominent manufacturer is likely to publicly destroy their product to target one person, rather than simply have their lawyers and accountants make life as difficult as possible for this person.
They seem to be just fine publicly destroying their products for better stock prices.
It said the 62-year-old had died from a “self-inflicted” wound on 9 March and police were investigating.
Ah yes the classic suicide by shot to the back.
Nothing to see here, citizen. Move along, and consoom Boeing.
What are us plebs going to do, boycott Boeing and buy our personal jets someplace else? I think I’m going to protest by never buying a 747. Get wrecked Boeing.
Check your flight and plane model before clicking “book”.
Kayak lets you filter by aircraft when searching too
i will not purchase any flights that are on a 787 or 737. i dont care if the other available flight costs twice as much. no amount of money can bring you back to life.
I know this is a joke but you can’t buy a new 747 from Boeing even if you wanted to. Boeing stopped taking orders for the 747 in 2020 and the last plane rolled off the production line in 2022.
That’s why he’s never buying one again. He’s buying 737 MAXes now
The first thing about that plane is it has plenty of ventilation
That’s what makes it Covid-safe.
It’s like the old biplanes, the key is to fly to a max altitude of 75 ft. Going higher is just frivolous anyway.
It was a gunshot wound to the head. Its plausible the wound was self inflicted, although its pretty clear Boeing probably did it. They are evil, not stupid.
One thing I learned from NCIS: “investigate suicides as if they were murders”.
Dunno if it was one of the Rules, tho.
So, the guy was expected to appear in court for thw second round of questioning and when he didn’t show up was found dead in his truck in the underground car park of the hotel. Doesn’t sound like someone that wanted to end it. Maybe I’m wrong but I wouldn’t book a room to go to court and then on a whim decide to end it.
They should investigate the coroner asap.
Sounds like Jeffrey Epsteins coroner.
Most people that kill themselves do so on a whim. Its probably not the case, but its not impossible. I’m guessing either the coroner is corrupt, or they have actual evidence it was a suicide. If it was a murder, then I doubt Boeing would do it without assurance it couldn’t be traced back to them. So regardless of what actually happened, the only official story there will ever be is that it was a suicide. That is, unless Boeing is as reckless about murder as they are about building planes.
Most people that kill themselves do so on a whim.
[Citation required]
I would argue that most likely than not there is a trail of depression and/or mental illness that leads up to the actual act being done.
Most people who commit suicide actually plan to do it. There is plenty of warning beforehand.
The timing is very convenient… for Boeing.
Boeing said it was saddened to hear of Mr Barnett’s passing.
I’m sure they were distraught.
This is something I thought would be on the Onion.
Deeply saddened by such a tragic loss, and we send our condolences to his family.
Meanwhile, Boeing execs
“self-inflicted” ahh huuh
He just wandered out to his car and died, bro. In the middle of a deposition. Its actually incredibly normal, bro. Why are you asking all these questions, bro? He just died, okay? Its fine.
Yeah, he just fell down an elevator shaft… onto some bullets…
Ah yes, “found dead” like the people who reported on the Panama papers “died in car accidents”
And they get away with it because we let them. We have proven time and time again that we’ll do nothing, so they’ll keep doing it.
No, WE don’t let them for forbid them from doing anything.
Those corporate jackoffs are the ones that control everything. All our elections are just for show.
These corporate jackoffs also have names and addresses, just sayin’. They’re only as untouchable as we let them be, and they’re terrified of the fact that we’re waking up to that (hence the bunkers n shit). They’re like “Nuh uh” and we’re like “Oh ok then” and give them our lunch money, their power is equal to that of a bully making rules on the playground, we just need to grow the fuck up.
The difference between terrorism and revolution is critical mass of supporters. If it was as easy as taking to the streets with guns I imagine more of the left would do it. We only have to look as far back as 2019 to Willem van Spronsen to see you’d likely just die in vain. Until then, train, agitate, and organize.
If it was as easy as taking to the streets with guns I imagine more of the left would do it.
I mean, isn’t that how lefty commies defeated the Nazi’s? Never said it was easy, but they got there in the end, and there’s still more work to be done it would seem. We got numbers on our side, $32.6trillion worth of them wouldn’t even fill up a single 737 airplane.
