DC Lobbyist Car Fire Death Still A Mystery After Medical Examiner Report
We’ve been following the D.C. lobbyist killed in a car fire in story since it was first reported in the press in January. We didn’t write about it until now out of respect to the family, the story of the tragic death of Ashley Turton, 37, a DC lobbyist and former chief of staff to Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT). Turton was the wife of Dan Turton, Obama White House deputy director of legislative affairs. The reason why we’ve followed the story, the bizarre ‘theories’ of how Turton died.
Info on Dan Turton from Obama’s President-Elect website:
Dan Turton, Deputy Director of Legislative Affairs for the United States House
Dan Turton began his career with Majority Leader Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri almost twenty years ago serving in a variety of positions including six years as Senior Floor Assistant. Turton served as a liaison between the House Democratic and Republican leadership and was Mr. Gephardt’s representative on the House floor – making floor procedure and scheduling decisions, coordinating House Democratic legislative strategy and advising members on day-to-day activity on the House Floor. Turton also served as the Democratic parliamentarian on the House floor. In 2006, Turton returned to the House of Representatives as the Majority Staff Director for the House Committee on Rules under Chairwoman Louise M. Slaughter of New York where he served as the Committee’s representative to the House Leadership and was responsible for coordinating priorities between all House Committees, Leadership and Members of the Rules Committee.
D.C. Lobbyist Ashley Turton
In the initial AP report filed on January 10th, a neighbor told reporters ‘At 4:30 in the morning all hell broke loose. You could hear popping and the garage went off and part of the house. Smoke everywhere’. Turton’s husband was able to get their three children out of the house while the fire burned. After firefighters responded to the scene they quickly knocked down the fire then discovered Turton’s body in her SUV. Also reported, ‘police consider the incident a single vehicle accident’ and are considering Turton had some kind of medical emergency before the fire.
Turton’s body was discovered in her car by D.C. firefighters on January 10th, two days after the Tucson shootings. On February 12th the Washington Post filed a rather curious report: Turton’s death was ruled accidental by the D.C. Medical Examiner’s Office. An accidental death that’s still under investigation by the D.C. Fire Department.
Washington Post:
The death of a lobbyist in a Capitol Hill garage fire last month has been ruled accidental by the D.C. medical examiner’s office, which said Friday that 37-year-old Ashley Turton died from burns and inhaling ‘products of combustion.’ An autopsy also found that “acute alcohol intoxication” contributed to her death, the office said.
And,
The medical examiner’s office declined to elaborate on its conclusion that Turton was drunk at the time of the predawn fire. The incident remains under investigation, D.C. Fire Department spokesman Pete Piringer said.
Authorities said they are continuing to look into Turton’s activities immediately before her death and studying the contents and layout of the garage and the mechanics of her 2008 BMW X-5 as they try to establish the sequence of events.
Washington Post’s theory on the sequence of events:
Investigators think Turton was backing out of the garage when the BMW rolled forward and struck a work bench, Piringer (D.C. Fire Department spokesman Pete Piringer) said.
The “low-speed” collision apparently ignited the fire, Piringer said.
Authorities have said they think Turton was striken by a medical problem or lost consciousness for some other reason as she backed up the inclined driveway.
The report from WTOP.com, another theory, the halogen headlights of Turton’s SUV caused the fire.
WTOP:
Authorities determined that the BMW ignited in the garage and damage was confined to that area. Now several sources familiar with the ongoing investigation reportedly told local radio station WTOP that investigators believe the radiator in the BMW was punctured when it rolled into a workbench. The halogen headlights, which emit a bluish light and illuminate the road better than conventional headlights, stayed on after the radiator was punctured.
And,
The working theory being investigated by D.C. police and fire investigators and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is the heat from the headlights, in proximity to the radiator’s antifreeze, either caused or exacerbated the initial fire, which eventually ignited the garage.
Antifreeze is flammable, although it catches fire at 240 degrees Fahrenheit — far above the temperature at which water boils.
Fire experts say antifreeze is rarely the ignition source in auto fires.
“It’s usually the last fluid to catch fire, in a fully engulfed fire,” according to a local fire department spokesman.
Another theory reported by the Daily Beast:
Based on evidence at the scene, D.C. Fire Department spokesman Pete Piringer said investigators’ “leading theory” is that Turton was trying to maneuver her BMW SUV out of her garage at 5 a.m. and around a car in the driveway when she apparently came into contact with some kind of flammable chemicals or other explosive materials. A workbench was located near the garage opening, he said.
“We’re waiting for lab results,” said Piringer. “It’s possible it was related to something mechanical, some kind of malfunction or it may be that she hit something in the garage, or something like a tricycle got stuck underneath the car.” He said Turton’s air bag did not deploy, indicating that if she did hit something, it was done at low speed. Piringer said that it was only once the fire was out and heavy smoke dissipated that responders could see that there was a body inside the car.
Wouldn’t investigators have found ‘something like a tricycle’ under the car after the fire?
Another theory, reported by Politico:
‘The leading theory is accidental, [that] the car crashed through the garage doors and…was found on fire in the garage area,” Piringer said, adding that the incident is under joint investigation by the fire and police departments. “There were some unusual circumstances – just the way the car was, low-speed, significant fire, things like that….For the most part, the fire was confined to the area of origin.’
In this leading theory there’s no info on which direction Turton was traveling when her car crashed through the garage doors, whether Turton was entering or backing out of the garage. One can only speculate why the SUV’s airbags failed to deploy if Turton was entering the garage and crashed through the garage doors? In the Washington Post report a photo of Turton’s SUV which reveals the rear of the vehicle, damage free.
Other info from the Politico report:
‘Neighbors said Ashley Turton was headed to the airport for an early flight.’
A report which contradicts the Washington Post:
‘The incident occurred as Turton was leaving home earlier than usual for work, anticipating a busy day in her office downtown, colleagues said.’
Based on the punctured radiator, halogen headlights theory, one can speculate investigators failed to find another another cause for the fire, i.e., an accellerant on, or near the workbench. The day after Turton was found dead in her burning garage, the report of a BMW that exploded in Arlington. An explosion which investigators quickly determined wasn’t foul play and caused by a tank of acetylene that had been stored in the trunk.
WTOP:
The trunk of an unoccupied BMW exploded in Arlington Tuesday morning, officials said.
The car was parked on the street in a residential neighborhood in the 2100 block of South 9th Street at about 8:30 a.m. when the back of it ignited, said Lt. Ed Hughes, a spokesman for the Arlington fire department. Nobody was injured.
Fire investigators are still looking into the incident, Hughes said Tuesday afternoon, but it appears accidental.
The explosion appears to have been caused by a tank of acetylene that had been stored in the trunk, said Hughes.
“We’re leaning toward that,” he said.
Detective Crystal Nosal, a spokeswoman for the Arlington police, also said the explosion was “probably” an accident.
In the Washington Post report, info on acute alcohol poisoning:
Marc S. Micozzi, a pathologist on the faculty of Georgetown University School of Medicine who is not involved in the Turton case, said in an interview that “acute” alcohol intoxication occurs when a person consumes a large amount of alcohol ‘very quickly, in a short time.’
On February 12, 2008, the report from WTOP, Woman Found Dead Inside Burning Car.
Catherine Ibacache, 31, of North Potomac, was found dead inside her burning VW Jetta which was ‘engulfed in flames’. According to the WTOP, Ibacache had been dogsitting at a home located where Ibacache was discovered dead inside her burning car.
In the initial reports, the D.C. police believed there wasn’t any foul play.
More from WUSA9:
The deadly incident happened shortly after midnight on Monday, in a row of townhomes at the 7900 block of Inverness Ridge Road in Bethesda.
“I tried to break the windows but couldn’t,” said an emotional neighbor, Wen Weldon. He says he enlisted the aid of a second neighbor to free the unresponsive woman from the fiery vehicle.
“When we did open the door, a second explosion blew us back and then the fire engulfed everything. It was too late,” Weldon added.
Weldon says he saw 31 year old Ibacache sitting unmoving in her VW Jetta when he first entered his home shortly before midnight. When he heard the first explosion, he ran out of his home and tried to get the victim out of the car.
In another report on Ibacache’s death, more details:
Ibacache had been dog sitting in the Potomac neighborhood since Friday. A resident saw her in the car and said an hour later it was burning and he tried to help her.
We were unable to find any followup news reports on Catherine Ibacache’s cause of death.
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[...] DC Lobbyist Car Fire Death Still A Mystery After Medical Examiner ReportDBKP – Death By 1000 PapercutsBy LBG1 We've been following the DC lobbyist killed car fire in story since it was first reported in the press in January. We didn't write about it until …DC lobbyist's death in car fire ruled accidentalWashington Postall 136 news articles » [...]
WOW!…usually lobbyists & other politically motivated murders are at least given a token investigation before the cover-up begins…they didn’t even wait for the ‘investigation’ to begin before offering the usual –ridiculous- explanations..do they think we are mentally challenged or just that we all must be under ten years old to believe this fairy tale….
I think a deaf mute could have run a better investigation
- She’s got a busy day at work so she gets going at 4:30 AM ? to work?
maybe…==maybe==
this ‘work’ couldn’t have been all that important considering she took the time to get blind drunk at the crack of dawn..before driving to the office?.. What was she planning on doing when her bosses/co-workers politely inquired why she stumbling drunk at work? hmmmm…. so was she catching a plane or not? come on now…
The biggest merger in their history and she’s going to this uber important meeting drunk? Does anyone believe that?
next bit of cover-up done badly:
http://media3.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/photo/2011/01/10/PH2011011006860.jpg
Luckily I am NOT blind, so I immediately noticed her car, the one she was BURNED ALIVE in, was not as ‘badly damaged’ as The Post wants us to believe..there is -some charring- around the rear window, other than that, it seems sparklingly white..considering that the ‘fire’ was so intense the incinerated woman at first was not even noticed..
Anyone else wondering if the ‘significant fire’ (admittedly) was confined to the area of origin (interior of car & garage)…since the body wasn’t discovered until after the fire was put out, why ia the car pretty much free from fire damage? It seems even more crazy when you see the slightly damaged car with a massive, charred wooden beam on its roof.. everything about this case is contradictory:
-on January 10th, a neighbor told reporters ‘At 4:30 in the morning all hell broke loose’. he must have been wide awake looking at the clock
-Her husband was able to get their three children out of the house while the fire burned. After firefighters responded to the scene they quickly knocked down the fire then discovered Turton’s body in her SUV.
This man is running about in a blazing house saving his kids (& himself) but is not in the least curious if his wife, who has vanished, might be trapped in the vehicle…he doesn’t even CHECK???
‘hmmm’ my garage and my wife’s car are ablaze…I cant find my wife….could it possibly be she is inside HER flaming vehicle? The one with the heavily charred beam on it’s roof?
‘no, couldn’t be…no need to even check
They say ‘Ashley Turton died from burns and inhaling ‘products of combustion.’
then in the same breath this mind bender:
“Turton’s body showed no obvious signs of trauma’
Who’s in charge here? Big Bird?
Also note the ludicrous assertion that the car -must have- hit a workbench (at a crawl) and therefore the radiator -must have- been punctured..and that the explosion and fire -must have- been caused by headlights heating up the spilled antifreeze to the point of combustion…
This is a good clue that the person who came up with that absurdity could barely keep their face straight; h(sh)e talks of dreaming up the theory that, well, we didn’t see any explosives, so it had to be the antifreeze that caught fire (exploded is what they want US to believe)
And to make this imposibility seem likely, they inexplicably talk about the wonders of the -GASP- halogen headlights…you see, HALOGEN lights emit a bluish light and illuminate the road better than conventional headlights..Completely irrelevant info but they want us to beleive halogen headlights not only are cool…and bluish…but can actually alter the laws of physics..
The fireman plainly states
“antifreeze is rarely the ignition source in auto fires” (you can feel for him because he’s fed a line of bs so absurd he can’t come out and say the headlights blew up the antifreeze and started the fire.he knows where his bread is buttered so I’ll let him off the hook: IT IS PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE
you could fill a tub with antifreeze and shine a halogen headlight on it for five weeks, it will NEVER ignite..one of the cool things about those deadly halogen headlights is , unlike a headlight from the 70′s, it gives off practically no heat…you can turn em on and lean your forehead against on all day you won’t get even a blister.. this story is on par with a 7 year old’s tale of a strange man who made off with the cookies Mom just baked…”he had one arm Mom!!”
It’s as silly as saying Jet fuel (Kerosene) can melt 4 feet thick titanium & steel support beams..
one more thing among many, the husband seemed to be right there on the scene immediately, he even knew the time (4:30 AM) he had his wits about him he ran around gathering his kids but made seemingly no move to try and save his Wife who was burning alive at the time in her car..I guess my final thought is if his wife goes downstairs at 4:30-5:00 AM, starts her car, then proceeds to run into walls, workbenches, doors and what have you, why wait until there is a huge fire & smoke to see if she may need assistance? isn’t the car starting at that hour, plus the thick smoke, and the banging and crashing of her driving in the garage blitzed out of her mind…sounds like the hubby was entering the world of the super rich, super elite that morning..and the wife had outlived her usefulness..
he’s now a genuine .01% uber elite… That’s why there is no investigation into her murder….
And no, saying she was killed by antifreeze is not an investigation, that’s an old fashioned Ken Lay/911 Commission style cover-up..
Listen to what they are telling us!!! Don’t listen to lies when deep down you know they’re lies!!! time to wake up people this is getting way to easy for them…we don’t even question even the obvious lies anymore….we deserve what’s happening & it’ll get worse and worse
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Geoff Reply:
February 14th, 2011 at 02:26
You’ve pointed out the flaws that I’ve been noticing in this case since it first hit the news. The acute alcohol poisoning that just came to light is a new wrinkle. Let the spin meisters tell us how anti-freeze started the blaze (are you f-ing KIDDING me?), what I want is an official comment on how she was .20 BAC (or whatever it was) at 4:30 in the AM. And why did they bring up the “driving up the inclined driveway” when any idiot looking at google street view can see that it’s dead level with the sidewalk, and then just a normal 5″ to the level street.
If it’s a cover up, what’s the motive? And why is it being covered up? Was hubby a pawn, a willing accomplice, being held hostage, or an innocent victim?
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half-wit Reply:
February 21st, 2011 at 19:36
It’s amazing that the only people even asking these kinds of questions are regular citizens who can plainly see something’s wrong here. Didn’t there used to be reporters out there who had enough of a brain to dig a little further than the given police reports?
WTF is this world coming to when the only people asking the right questions are restricted to doing so idly from their homes half-way across the continent?
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If she was going to work didn’t the husband notice his wife was drunk? I think this is a big cover-up.
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Not every possibility is sinister. She probably was out drinking with friends the night before at a nearby bar, stayed out too late and drank too much…. was able to drive home but wasn’t sober enough to get into the garage correctly and crashed into some flammable items before passing out in the car. If her husband was asleep he might not have noticed that she hadn’t come home. It could have taken an hour or two for the heat (from headlights or wherever)to build up to the point of igniting the flammable materials in the garage.
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You people are all missing the obvious. She was out drinking with Bush and Cheney, they got her drunk, pushed her car through the closed garage doors and into the work bench after Bush punctured the radiator with a bow and arrow then igniting the extremely flammable antifreeze with his Bic lighter. Then, the evil twins left for New Orleans to set some more dynamite charges under the levees just in case there’s another hurricane.
Simple.
It’s Bushs fault.
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Or this…an injection of alcohol for whatever purpose? Abduction, to discredit her, murder…something fails and the wrongdoer(s) cover it with a fire? The half out of the garage could have indicated an attempt to escape which the wrongdoer(s) may have thought would give them away since they were not behind closed doors any more, and may have caused them to light a fire to cover their tracks and to act as a diversion for their escape…
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Quite right…well the problem is the reporters don’t want to say anything that might offend the image of their worshipful obama and in case you might have noticed, this is one of of obama’s people.
You might want to take a look at Mexico to see how well the US press works these days. The US and Mexican administrations issue the press release, and the press release it as news. Laughable if it weren’t so dangerous.
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BIG Coverup.
Leaving drunk? Or coming home drunk?
TWO inside the “club” D.C. Insiders, one a lobbyist that just had a BIG DEAL go through – and one in the White House?
This has stunk since day one. It’s not Ernie or Big Bird investigating. It’s a puppet who has been told what to say. NO alcohol level yet? Two months later? No other reports back, on what burned? WAY too suspicious for my liking.
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this story still troubles me nearly 9 months later.
nothing adds up here.
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Win Weldon who says he tried to help Catherine Ibacache died earlier this year in March there was an obituary online.
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