How a US Murder Suspect Became a 9/11 Truther Abroad

'GQ' examines the convoluted case of Kurt Sonnenfeld
By Newser Editors,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 29, 2016 11:58 AM CDT
How a US Murder Suspect Became a 9/11 Truther Abroad
A 2002 photo of Kurt Sonnenfeld, right, as he is led into court in Denver.   (AP Photo/The Denver Post, John Prieto, File)

On its own, the suspicious death of Kurt Sonnenfeld's wife would be worthy of a magazine article. On Jan. 1, 2002, his 36-year-old spouse was found shot to death in their upscale Denver home. Sonnenfeld insisted she killed herself, but prosecutors filed murder charges against him—only to drop them five months later. Then they charged him again in 2003, before discovering that he had moved to Argentina. The case involves the intricacies of forensics, theories about gun angles, a possible suicide note, and now international borders. But as a lengthy piece in GQ explains, that's only the half of it. It was only in Argentina that Sonnenfeld's work as an official videographer at Ground Zero for the federal government entered the picture. Sonnenfeld, with the help of his new wife in Argentina, has over the years become a media superstar in the country by championing the idea that the US knew about the 9/11 attacks in advance.

Among other things, he argues that he was summoned by FEMA suspiciously fast, and he speculates about why a vault found in the wreckage was empty—FEMA must have emptied it in advance. So, sure, he sounds like a crackpot. But his advocates say that the US government wants to have him extradited on the murder charges so he can be silenced through execution. If the truther-ism is a ploy, it seems to be working: The Argentine government refuses to extradite him, even though Denver authorities say they're not interested in the death penalty. "One camp in this affair portrays Sonnenfeld as a devious murderer, while the other paints him as a persecuted whistle-blower," writes Evan Hughes at GQ. "But it is possible that neither is true: Even if you believe that Sonnenfeld made up a lunatic story in a desperate plea for Argentine protection, you can still believe that he's innocent of the crime." Click for the full story. (More Argentina stories.)

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