Going Door to Door, Family and Friends of Slain Democratic Staffer Hope to Find Clues

Russian intelligence planted seth rich story

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

Nathan Guttman, staff writer, was the Forward’s Washington bureau chief. He joined the staff in 2006 after serving for five years as Washington correspondent for the Israeli dailies Haaretz and The Jerusalem Post. In Israel, he was the features editor for Ha’aretz and chief editor of Channel 1 TV evening news. He was born in Canada and grew up in Israel. He is a graduate of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

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