Early one Saturday afternoon in July 2003, Washington DC based journalist and popular author Jackson Thoreau made a simple phone call to Margie Schoedinger, a Missouri City, Texas woman who had filed a rape lawsuit against President George W. Bush in December 2002. He expected to leave a message on a lunatic’s machine, so he was caught a little off guard when Schoedinger answered.
She sounded somewhat surprised, saying she hadn’t heard from many other reporters. But she talked to Thoreau about the legal action.
“I am still trying to prosecute,” said Schoedinger, a 38-year-old light-skinned African-American woman. “I want to get this matter settled and go on with my life.”
Well, Schoedinger didn’t go on with her life. In fact, three months after Thoreau spoke to her, she died in what was called a suicide. The matter remains unsettled.
The story did get reported in Great Britain, but not in the United States.
Schoedinger’s accusations – which include being sexually assaulted by Bush – are bizarre and hard for most people to believe. But as for her death – let’s just say government agents have made murders look like suicides before.
Schoedinger said police in Sugar Land, a Houston suburb where she said some assailants linked to Bush attempted to unsuccessfully abduct her from her car shortly before the 2000 election, refused to do anything about that incident. When she reported the crime to the Sugar Land Police Department, she was harassed by police. She was treated similarly by the FBI.
To make matters worse, her bank accounts were frozen, her academic records were expunged, her husband lost his job, and she became the subject of 24-hour surveillance.
She filed a lawsuit against the Sugar Land Police Department. In preparing its defense, Sugar Land police investigated and uncovered something remarkable: Margie had once dated young George W. Bush, when both of them were teenagers!
Just wait. This story gets stranger.
Thoreau remembers thinking, “I hope she doesn’t wind up on the wrong side of a gun.” Sure enough in late September of 2003, Schoedinger did exactly that.
The Houston Chronicle wrote a bare-bones obituary that stated only that Schoedinger “expired” on Sept. 22, 2003, and her burial was at Houston Memorial Gardens.
The Harris County Medical Examiner’s office quickly ruled the death a “suicide” by a “gunshot wound to the head” and ordered no further investigation.
Using a gun to commit suicide is predominantly executed by males, according to psychiatrists and other sources like pharmaceutical firm Merck & Co. Women are far more likely to overdose on drugs, although the number of gun suicides among women has increased slightly during recent years.
The news blackout on this story was unprecedented. I’ll bet you haven’t seen any stories on this strange death of a woman who filed a rape lawsuit against the U.S. president and wound up dead. There has never been a media blackout like the one on this story.
Police reports prove that someone apparently tried to kidnap this woman on October 26, 2000, just days before the election that would make George W. Bush President. Her would-be kidnappers were foiled by a passing DPS patrol officer, who broke up the melee, and called Missouri City cops to the scene, who then let her attackers go.
Schoedinger made it clear at the scene that the abductors were planning to kill her and that she knew why. Margie and several members of her family were then taken into police custody for ‘questioning’ while the alleged attackers were quickly set free.
After this, Schoedinger, fearing for her own safety, went public with the rape allegations against George W. Bush and filed her lawsuit. Remember that as all of this was happening, Bush was still not President Bush, he was still Texas Governor Bush.
Nine months after accusing the President of rape, Margie Schoedinger was found dead with a 9 mm bullet in her brain. There was no suicide note.
Maybe she was crazy, but if so, why has the media never discredited her? They didn’t even bother to report her existence, or the circumstances of her untimely death. She accused a man who was slated to become the leader of the free world of a heinous crime, and was then found dead with a bullet in her skull and apparently no one thought this might be newsworthy?
I know exactly how they feel, unfortunately this story will not die as easily as she did. It will not die because no one has answered any of the vital questions.
The scarcity of reporting coupled with the nature of the story make it seem surreal, almost like an urban legend; but every page of the police reports, lawsuits, and death records are a matter of public record right down the road in Fort Bend County.
Margie Schoedinger was a businesswoman who owned a communications firm, health and beauty business, travel agency, and publishing company. She had a college degree, and was reportedly working on her PhD at the time of her death. She had never in her life been treated, diagnosed, or accused of any kind of irrational behavior. At the time of her death she was an attractive 38 year old married professional black woman living with her husband in an upscale suburban community – with an admirable academic record, clean credit report, and not even the slightest history of arrests, criminal behavior, or irrationality of any kind.
Lest any suspect her allegations were motivated by politics, she was a registered Republican.
Lest any suspect she was seeking publicity, she never once contacted any media outlet or made any form of press release. Reporters had to track her down, and only two did so.
Those who knew her best simply cannot accept the idea that she killed herself, describing her as a positive, successful, and balanced person of above-average intelligence.
In view of the evidence, the case should be reopened as a possible homicide. (GATOR)
