Going Door to Door, Family and Friends of Slain Democratic Staffer Hope to Find Clues
Seth Rich Image by Linkedin
By Nathan Guttman November 17, 2016
More than four months after the murder of Democratic staffer Seth Rich in Washington, D.C., his family, friends and a Republican lobbyist will go knocking on doors next week in hope of finding clues missed by the police in this unsolved mystery.
On November 21, Joel and Mary Rich, parents of the slain 27-year old Jewish staffer, will join lobbyist and lawyer Jack Burkman at the Bloomingdale neighborhood, where Rich was murdered, to launch a new drive aimed at discovering more information that could lead to the people responsible for the killing.
Burkman told the Forward last month that there was no political motive behind his offer to help Rich’s family. “I thought about my own mother receiving a call like Seth’s mother did and it really hit me, it just tugs on your heart,” he said.
Burkman’s idea is to employ campaign tactics, namely canvassing from door to door, in order to help achieve a breakthrough in the case. He is offering a $100,000 reward for information, an incentive he believes can help bring out people who know about the case but will need to relocate or seek shelter after proving their information.
Rich, who worked for the Democratic National Committee and was slated to join the Clinton campaign, was shot on July 10 not far from his apartment. Police had initially investigated the case as an attempted robbery, despite the fact that the attackers did not take any of his belonging.
Rich’s involvement in Democratic politics generated a slew of conspiracy theories claiming that his death had to do in some way with party infighting or with leaks of DNC emails to Wikileaks. Rich’s parents appealed to all those spreading these rumors in a request to “refrain from pushing unproven and harmful theories about Seth’s murder.”
Contact Nathan Guttman at [email protected] or on Twitter @nathanguttman
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
