The Mel Gibson film, Conspiracy Theory co-starring Julia Roberts, was very entertaining but hardly credible. I am not a conspiracy theorist, at least, not without a lot of proof, but I was recently tasked to respond by an email from a young millennial and thus a potential Bernie Sanders supporter.

She asked if I knew how many people were on the Clinton Body Count. She was amazed not only by its sheer numbers but the fact that so many of the deaths were unsolved. My first inclination was to dismiss her query but then I decided to treat her with the same respect I give senior citizens who email me with similar puzzles.

Most of those I receive from my fellow senior citizens are sent back with a note claiming, "It's a Hoax; or the celebrity never said that about Obama, etc." I try to research the inflammatory claims against Obama or the Clintons before bouncing it back to that particular questioning correspondent. There are a lot of harebrained conspiracies out there but I had always wondered myself about why so many deaths occurred of those close or even tangentially connected with the Clintons. In addition, I wanted to learn how well informed Millenials are about the past. Many have never heard of Watergate, Chappaquiddick or Benghazi if we're to believe those interviewed on late night talk shows.

My emailer was a very intelligent 30 year old college graduate who had been interested in Bernie Sanders until he fell under Hillary Clinton's bus but was not quite on the Trump wagon. She used her computer skills to research the Clinton background and was shocked at what she found and asked me my opinion of this information. I expressed doubt that the Clintons had anything to do with these deaths yet chalking it all up to coincidence was not that simple either.

One of the usual sources to fact check is www.snopes.com however, I take their conclusions skeptically because they are liberals who tend to whitewash any events detrimental to the left wing but they do offer enough data that can be researched further. Under the heading, Clinton's Body Bags, the site lists the deaths of 48 individuals whom conspirators allege include dubious suicides and questionable accidents. The Snopes administrators have dismissed these claims as ridiculous stating:





"The bottom line on this piece of e-lore? It's a badly worked laundry list dressed up to appear significant. The promised damning connections to the Chief Executive are missing, with innuendo misinformation offered up in their place. Nothing ties Clinton to any of these deaths, something this list (and others of its ilk) conveniently glosses over. What evidence is offered that would compel a rational person to believe there was Clinton involvement in any of these deaths?" And . . . "Whereas a typical private citizen has a much smaller circle of acquaintance, those in public office come into contact with a great many people over the course of their careers. It is therefore not unusual to find at least a few accidental deaths, homicides, and suicides among any politician's list of contacts. (For example, a "body count" list exists for George Bush.)





The site does admit that there have been a â€˜couple of unsolved murders' but adds "All the best lies make sure to mix a bit of truth in with them, and the few genuinely unsolved murders work to cloak the many less credible claims in an aura of plausibility. Don't be overly bemused by them â€” study each entry on its own merits."

That's a good suggestion and this is what another site has done in depth. My millennial email correspondent sent me a link to www.whatreallyhappened.com. This website was started in 1994 by Michael Rivero and depends heavily on documents, news articles and clips to validate certain positions of the site. For instance, the Vince Foster â€˜suicide' has long been a conspiratorial hot point and Mr. Rivero has published various documents that conflict with the official White House statement. Mr. Foster was the Clinton's White House Deputy Counsel who had inside information on the Whitewater scandal and other Clinton secrets in Arkansas. He had spoken of being uncomfortable in his position at the WH and hinted that he might resign. Foster, the former law partner of Hillary Clinton was later found dead in Fort Marcy Park under suspicious circumstances but I suggest one examine all the particulars before jumping to conclusion.

What I found interesting about this site is that it has been updated to include all the recent deaths in 2016 to feed any anti-Hillary conspiracy theorists out there. One of the strangest ones this year was this:





"John Ashe Former United Nations General Assembly President Died: June 22, 2016 Initially reported as having died from a heart attack, John's throat had obviously been crushed. At that point the official story changed to him accidentally dropping a barbell on his own throat (the plot line from the episode "An Exercise in Fatality" from the TV series "Columbo.") crushing his larynx. Ashe was about to begin trial for a bribery charge involving Chinese businessman Ng Lap Seng, who had been implicated but not charged in the 1996 "China-gate" scandal for funneling illegal donations to Bill Clinton's re-election fund through Arkansas restaurant owner Charlie Trie. Ashe was supposed to testify about Hillary's links to Ng Lap Seng later the same day he died."

Okay, that does sound a bit suspicious but what if the Clintons are just plain unlucky or even worse are a jinx to close friends and acquaintances? What if they are, as Snopes sycophants claim, perfectly innocent of any involvement or perhaps simply have their own private Gollum cleaning up their messes? Why don't we treat Hillary as another Jessica Fletcher or Jane Marple? Every place these fictional characters went in their town or around the world, someone was murdered. The difference, of course, is that these murders are solved in the novels unlike the many on that list that aren't.

So I'll give the Clintons the benefit of all the doubts but seriously hope that Julian Assange and James .O'Keefe watch their backs