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This article was originally written for a paranormal magazine called The Paranormal Journal, it became known as The Underground Files covering ghosts, ufos, cryptozoology, and government conspiracies amongst others. I no longer write for the magazine and it is no longer in existence. 22 British Star Wars Scientists Suspiciously Commit Suicide August 1988, a glorious sunny day; a Sunday afternoon, Alistair Becham drives his wife to work, then walks through his back garden to the tool shed, he wires his wrists with bare electrical cords leading from the plug point, stuffs a hanky into his mouth and effectively electrocutes himself, efficiently committing suicide in a very 'scientifically' thought out way. He was fifty-years-old, a successful British aerospace-projects engineer, designing computer software for sophisticated navel defence systems. He'd been working on a pilot program for America's Strategic Defence initiative - formerly known as the Stars War Program under the Reagan administration. He was in a long list of hundreds of other British scientists connected to the top secret project. Conclusively, his name appears on another list, dating as early as 1982, of British scientists who've died or disappeared in mysterious circumstances, all computer engineers, all involved in the Star Wars program, all with no apparent reason for killing themselves or with a hidden agenda of an emotional need of 'wanting to get away from it all', if this best describes the situation of someone suddenly disappearing leaving a successful and lucrative career behind them. The British government state the deaths are coincidence, the British press blame stress for the reason, as others evaded an on-going fraud investigation into the country's leading defence contractor, while the families are left distressed wondering just what to think of it all. “There weren't any women involved. There weren't any men involved. We had a very good relationship,” says Mary Becham, Alistair's widow. “We don't know why he did it, if he did it. And I don't believe he did do it. He wouldn't go out to the shed. There had to be something...” The unexplained deaths can be traced back to March, 1982, when Dr. Keith Bowden, an Essex University computer scientist, died in a car crash on his way home from a London social function; the authorities claiming he was drunk, his wife and friends saying otherwise. Bowden was 45, a super-computers and computer-controlled aircraft expert, was co-founder of the Department of Computer Sciences at Essex and had worked for one of the major contractors for the Star Wars program in England. The police testified that Bowden's blood alcohol level was above the legal limit and that he had been driving too fast. His death was ruled accidental at the inquest. His Rover careered across a four-way highway and plunged off a bridge, down an embankment and into an abandoned rail yard. Bowden was found dead at the scene. His wife, Hilary Bowden, and her lawyer suspected a cover-up, while friends, he supposedly spent the evening with, stated he wasn't drunk, and closely following this interpretation were the suspicious circumstances of the condition of his car. “My solicitor instructed an accident specialist to look at the automobile,” Hilary Bowden states. “Somebody had taken the wheels off and put others on that were old and worn. At the inquest this was never allowed to be brought up. Somebody asked if the car was in sound condition, and the answer was yes.” Hilary Bowden never contested the inquest verdict, grief stricken and too much in a state of shock to consider otherwise at the time. She still stands by her thought the car had been tampered with, “It certainly looked like foul play.” 1987 is the year the British press added the name of Keith Bowden to what was becoming a long list of deaths associated with the British scientists that had worked on the Star Wars program. First there appeared to be two connected deaths, then six and suddenly twenty-two staring them in the face, a hard number to deny mysterious circumstances, their careers and involvement with the Star Wars program now labelling an unsettling amount of coincidences hard to ignore. 37-year-old David Sands was the turning point for the British authorities to become suspicious of the circumstances piling up - Sands a senior scientist at Easams working on a highly secretive project of a computer-controlled-satellite-radar system. In March 1987, Sands made a U-turn on his way to work, driving headlong into a wall of a vacant restaurant, the boot loaded with full petrol cans, the car igniting soon after the smash. This time given the circumstances of the 'accident' and no plausible reason for suicide, the coroner would not rule out the possibility of foul play, yet information leaked to the press suggesting Sands was under heavy emotional stress. Margaret Worth, Sands mother-in-law, claims these stories are highly inaccurate. “When David died, it was a great mystery to us,” she declares, “He was very successful. He was very confident. He had just pulled off a great coup for his company, and he was about to be greatly rewarded. He had a very bright future ahead of him. He was perfectly happy the week before this happened.” The wave of suspicious deaths in the ultra secret industry of sophisticated weaponry have not gone unnoticed by the United States government. The American Embassy in London publically requested a full investigation into the incidents by the British Ministry of Defence (MOD). Members of the British Parliament were concerned, as was the Labour MP, Doug Hoyle, co-president of the Manufacturing Science & Finance Union, and had made similar requests for more than two years. The Thatcher government had refused any sort of inquiry. “How many more deaths,” Hoyle asked, “before we get the government to give the answers? From a security point of view, surely both ourselves and the Americans ought to be looking into it.” The Pentagon refused comment on the deaths, but the Reagan Administration did say, it is rumoured, “We cannot ignore it anymore.” British and American intelligence services had been looking into the situation. When the Sunday Times in London published the details of twelve mysterious deaths, sources at the American embassy admitted being aware of at least ten additional victims, their names having already been sent to Washington. The sources added the embassy had been monitoring reports for two years. English Intelligence had suffered several damaging spy scandals in the 20th century, the CIA suspecting the deaths were indications of security leaks, and that Star Wars secrets were being sold to the Russians. The scientists may have been blackmailed into giving classified details to Moscow - suggesting suicides in some cases, others connected to spy rings and therefore were silenced. NBC news London correspondent, Henry Champ, put it in these terms, “In the world of espionage, there is a saying: Twice is coincidence, but three times is enemy action.” In return for the Thatcher government's early support in the Star Wars program, the Reagan Administration, promised a substantial number of lucrative Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI) contracts to the British defence industry amounting to hundreds of U.S. dollars the struggling British economy could not afford to lose at that time. It would appear that only these initial promises made to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher stopped the U.S. from cutting its losses and pulling out of the agreement. A high-ranking America source was quoted in the Sunday Times saying, “If this happened in Greece, Brazil, Spain, or Argentina, we'd be all over them like a glove!” The Thatcher government's PR problem was the scandal centred around Marconi Company Ltd., Britain's largest defence-contractor and seven of Marconi's scientists are among the dead. Marconi, which employed 50, 000 workers worldwide, a subsidiary of Britain's General Electric Company (GEC) and at the time, GEC managing director Lord Wienstock launched his own internal investigation but the GEC and the Ministry of Defence still contended the 22 deaths were coincidence. A Ministry of Defence spokesman claimed to have found “no evidence of sinister links between them.” An article in the British publication, The Independent, stated the incidence of suicide among Marconi scientists was twice the national average of mentally healthy individuals. This suggests Marconi was employing abnormally unstable scientists or something was very wrong outside the company. 22 British Star Wars Scientists Suspiciously Commit Suicide written by Bill Barber |
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