Former White House intern Mary Caitrin Mahoney, 25, manager of a Georgetown Starbucks, was killed along with two co-workers (Emory Allen Evans, 25 and Aaron David Goodrich, 18) on 6 July 1997 during a robbery of the shop. In March 1999 Carl Derek Havord Cooper (29) of Washington was arrested and charged with these murders.
Yes, it is unusual that three employees were killed in the course of a robbery during which nothing was taken. According to Cooper's 26 April 2000 guilty plea (he received life with no hope of parole), he went to the Starbucks to rob the place, figuring the receipts from the July 4 weekend would make for a fat take. He came in after closing, waved a .38, and ordered all three Starbucks employees into the back room. Once there, Mahoney made a run for it after Cooper fired a warning shot into the ceiling. She was ordered back to the room, but then went for the gun. Cooper shot her, then afterwards shot the other two employees. He left empty-handed, afraid the shots had attracted police attention. As regrettable as these three deaths were, this was nothing but a case of a robbery gone wrong.
And, right away, we have come to the first big lie of the "Clinton Body Count" list: Any unexplained death can automatically be attributed to President Clinton by inventing a connection between him and the victim. Mary Mahoney did once work as an intern at the White House, but so have hundreds of other people who are all still alive. There is no credible reason why, of all the interns who have served in the Clinton White House, Ms. Mahoney alone would be the target of a Clinton-directed killing. (Contrary to public perception, very few interns work in the West Wing of the White House or have any contact with the President. The closest most interns get to the chief executive is a brief handshake or a group photo.)
The putative reason offered for Mahoney's slaying ? that she was about to testify about sexual harrassment in the White House ? was a lie. This absurd justification apparently sprang from a hint dropped by Mike Isikoff of Newsweek just before the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke that a "former White House staffer" with the initial "M" was about to talk about her affair with Clinton. We all know now, of course, that the "staffer" referred to was Monica Lewinsky, not Mary Mahoney. The conspiracy buffs maintained that White House hit men rushed out, willy-nilly, and gunned down the first female ex-intern whose name began with "M" they could find.