Mary Mahoney

Mary Mahoney (Intern, Clinton body count, Premature death)
Born	Mary Caitrin Mahoney ca. 1972
Died	July 1997 (Age 24)
Cause of death	gunshot
Nationality	US
Victim of	• premature death • murder
Interests	• Bill Clinton
White House intern murdered randomly just as she was to go public with her story of sexual harassment in the Clinton White House

Mary Caitrin Mahoney was a "former White House intern was murdered July 1997 at a Starbucks Coffee Shop in Georgetown. The murder happened just after Mike Isikoff of Newsweek dropped a hint just before the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke, that a "former White House staffer" was about to talk about her affair with Clinton.

The Victim

Mahoney interned for Doris Matsui, the White House official responsible for liaison with the Asian-American community, headed the Asian Pacific American Working Group (APAWG), which coordinated the activities of the White House, the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton-Gore re- election campaign with regard to Asian-Americans.

Mahoney was one of a core group of six women who founded the Baltimore Lesbian Avengers, a political activist group, in February 1995. Mahoney's activism spanned many arenas, including founding a women's issues discussion group at Towson State University in 1993; sitting as a board member of the 31st Street Bookstore in Baltimore, a Lesbian/feminist cooperative; and working on Bill Clinton's presidential campaign as well as interning for the Clinton White House when he was newly elected.

The Murder

On July 7, 1997, the bodies of 25 year-old Mahoney and two others, Emory Allen Evans (also age 25) and Aaron David Goodrich (age 18) were all found in the cold storage room by the morning crew at the Starbucks Coffee shop where Mahoney worked as a night manager. All had been shot to death.

The execution-style killing occurred amid the pre-trial media coverage of the Paula Jones lawsuit against Clinton, and only three days after Mike Isikoff of Newsweek announced that a “former White House staffer” was coming-out with her story of being sexually harassed while working for Bill Clinton

The three worked at the Starbucks, located in the relatively low crime area of Burleith, north of Georgetown in DC, “a community generally immune from such violence.” George Stephanopoulos, Monica Lewinsky and Chelsea Clinton were all regulars at the Starbuck's. When this event occurred, only the White House was aware it had an "intern problem."

The motive in the Starbuck's massacre was supposedly robbery, though none of the $10,000 cash on hand was taken even after Mahoney and her two co-workers were executed.

The store’s doors had been locked from the outside, as if the night crew had locked them before leaving the night before, as they did every night. Apparently, the assailant(s) locked up behind them after committing the murders.

The Convicted Perpetrator

In March 1999 Carl Derek Havord Cooper (29) was arrested and charged with these murders. For two years, working only on a tip from a caller into America’s Most Wanted, police pursued and surveilled him, but never had enough evidence to make a case against him. That is, until he confessed after a 54-hour interrogation, a confession he later recanted.

Prior to the murders, a 9:15 witness had tried to gain entry only to find the front door locked, with the employees cleaning up inside and waving him away, leaving it unclear how Cooper was able to gain entry later for his botched robbery. The three were shot reportedly because she refused to give him the keys to a safe that held more than $10,000 in cash. The cash was not taken, but Mahoney was shot dead.

The lead detective in the case for the DC government, Jim Trainum, who has a lawsuit pending against him for allegedly and unwittingly getting an innocent woman to confess to murder. In February 1994, working a case about a body found near the Anacostia River, Trainum interrogated the suspect, Kim Crafton. After a 17-hour interrogation, Crafton confessed to the murder. But Trainum soon discovered through the logs at Crafton's homeless shelter that she couldn't have committed the crime. She was released from jail 10 months later.

Cooper in his confession says that he used both guns in the killing and says that he then buried them on the grounds of a Catholic home for unwed mothers in Hyattsville, Maryland, near his DC home. The police claim they went digging in search of the guns but came up empty. Sister Josephine Murphy, the head of the facility, said she "never knew the police were looking for anything. I was just so surprised", making analyst David Martin point out "It is virtually inconceivable that the police would have gone digging on Sister Josephine’s property not just without her permission but also without her even having realized it."

In April 2000, Cooper was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole after pleading guilty. In addition to the Starbucks triple murder, Cooper pleaded guilty to murdering a security guard in a D.C. apartment building, the attempted murder of a Prince George's County, Md., police officer, robbery, racketeering, conspiracy and operating a continuing criminal enterprise.

The Washington Post reported during his trial that Cooper told FBI agents: “I swear on my father’s grave and my son’s life that I didn’t do Starbucks.”

Eric Butera

An police informant in the case, Eric Butera, who was trying to help homicide detectives solve the triple killing, was beaten to death in an unrelated sting operation.

Rating

10 October 2021 Terje 

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