Sunday January 23, 2000

When Carl Derek Cooper confessed last March to the July 1997 slayings of onetime Clinton intern Mary Caity Mahoney and two other workers at a Washington, DC Starbucks, suspicions of a White House connection quickly evaporated.

But a funny thing happened on the way to Cooper's trial. He recanted his confession, the primary piece of evidence police had linking him to the crime.

And if that wasn't enough to set off a fresh round of frenzied speculation, now a new investigation suggests Mahoney could have been an extremely inconvenient witness in the Monica Lewinsky case.

"I swear on my father's grave and my son's life that I didn't do Starbucks," Cooper told the FBI shortly after he admitted his guilt to local police, according to courtroom testimony reported by the Washington Post last week.

Now it emerges that Cooper told police several different stories about the Starbucks murders; once blaming an acquaintance for the killings, another time claiming he was merely a lookout.

But after 54 hours of questioning, Cooper's lawyer says he buckled.

"No matter how many times Mr. Cooper denied his involvement, they kept pressuring him. They kept pressuring him until they got what they wanted," attorney Steven Kirsch told US District Court Judge Joyce Hens Green, according to Thursday's Washington Times. Kirsch wants Green to rule the confession inadmissible at trial on the grounds it was coerced.

The motive in the Starbuck's massacre was supposedly robbery, though none of the $10,000 cash on hand was taken even after Mahoney and her two co-workers were felled by a fusillade of bullets. Casting further doubt on the robbery theory: five of the ten shots fired hit the former Clinton intern, including an execution bullet fired into the back of her head.

The same week Cooper recanted, new information emerged about Mahoney's background and her possible ties to the Monica Lewinsky case.

Author David M. Hoffman, who spent a year investigating Mahoney's murder, tells Globe Magazine's Tom Kuncl that the Starbucks massacre came just three days after Monica told Clinton she was going to tell her parents about their relationship.

According to Monica Clinton reacted angrily, telling her, "It's a crime to threaten the President."

Hoffman's claim is corroborated by the Starr Report.

"Monica took the threat seriously," Hoffman told Globe, "telling Linda Tripp that she feared for both their lives if her affair with Clinton ever became public."

"I don't want to wind up like Caity Mahoney," Monica is rumored to have told friends.

The Tripp tapes amply document Monica's fears for her own physical safety, featuring no fewer than four exchanges where the Clinton girlfriend voices sentiments such as: "I would not cross these people for fear of my life."

Hoffman claims to have uncovered new details about Mary Mahoney's time at the White House, which, if true, suggest the White House alum could have played a key role in the Clinton sex scandal despite her own homosexuality:

"For many months, Mary, an outspoken lesbian and good hearted den mother for other young White House interns, had been listening to tearful stories from them about alleged sexual passes made at them by Bill Clinton. She'd begun to tell others she planned to do something to help them."

Also, reports Hoffman, "a blockbuster piece of gossip swirling through Washington (at the time of Mahoney's death) was based on a columnist's blind item that a former White House intern whose name began with the letter M was about to reveal news of a sexual relationship with Bill Clinton."

Was it Mahoney, Clinton damage controllers no doubt wondered?

Meanwhile, the fuse had been lit on another White House sex bombshell just two days before the Starbucks killings. That's when cyberscribe Matt Drudge first reported that Clinton had put the moves on a then-unnamed White House volunteer.

It would be three more weeks till the world knew her name: Kathleen Willey. But by early July 1997 White House damage controllers knew they had a serious intern problem on their hands.

Carl Derek Cooper is scheduled to go on trial for Mary Caity Mahoney's murder on April 10.

On July 6, 1997, a brutal triple murder took place at a Starbucks restaurant in an upscale Georgetown neighborhood. The victims were Aaron Goodrich, 18; Emory Evans, 25; and Mary Caitrin Mahoney, 25. According to a July 13 Washington Post story, ballistics test indicated that 10 shots were fired from two different guns, sometime after 9:15 p.m. The Post story characterized the crime as an "execution-style" murder.

The murders were strange for several reasons. First, the restaurant's doors were locked when the victims were found. Nothing appeared to have been stolen, although nearly $4,000 was in the store at the time. Police initially discounted robbery as a motive. Second, the restaurant was in a neighborhood that has a very strong neighborhood watch program. None of Washington D.C.'s 397 murders in the previous year had occurred in or near Georgetown, which is rated safer than many other American cities such as Palm Springs and Oceanside, California and Boulder, Colorado. Third, neighbors heard no gunfire, indicating that the assailants might have used silencers. Finally, multiple murders are rare even in violent areas of Washington D.C.

Making the story particularly interesting is the fact that Mary Mahoney was shot as many as five times, according to some press reports. As the Washington Post reported: She was almost unrecognizable. Caity, the coffee shop assistant manager, was first shot in the chest, police said. She had raised her hands to her face, possibly to protect herself. A bullet pierced her hands and hit her face. Then she was shot in the back of the head.

Ms. Mahoney had been heavily involved in presidential politics, working on Bill Clinton's campaign in 1992. She served as a White House intern for a while in the first Clinton Administration, arranging White House tours. After finishing a degree in Women's Studies at Towson State University in Baltimore in 1995, she moved to Washington permanently, taking a job as an assistant manager at the Starbucks restaurant. There Ms. Mahoney's path seems to have crossed that of another White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. George Stephanopoulos said last week that Lewinsky used to hang out at the Starbucks where he lived.

These connections to Lewinsky and the White House have raised eyebrows in many quarters. The January 23, 1998 Strategic Weekly Briefings contained the following account attributed to anonymous sources:

When Monica Lewinsky first met with Vernon Jordan in November 1997 she told him she didn't want to end up like Caity Mahoney. Jordan professed not to know whom Lewinsky was referring to until she identified Mahoney as the former White House intern who was murdered last summer in a Starbucks. . . .

Police are apparently no nearer to solving the crime than they were in July of 1997. In a December 6 story the Washington Post reported that a police informant in the case had been beaten to death outside a row house in Southwest Washington. Police sent the informant into a crack house to purchase cocaine, hoping to find grounds to search the house and question the occupants about the Starbucks case. Three men were arrested in the beating death, but police found no connection to the Starbucks murders.

Efforts by the Washington Weekly to gain information from the D.C. police have been unsuccessful. The following exchange occurred on Thursday of last week with D.C. police detective Tony Patterson, who is in charge of the case:

QUESTION: May I ask you some questions?
PATTERSON: It depends. Which case?
QUESTION: About the Starbucks murder. May I ask you some questions?
PATTERSON: No, no. I can't discuss that case.
QUESTION: You can't discuss that case?
PATTERSON: Not right now.
QUESTION: Can you discuss it off the record?
PATTERSON: No.
QUESTION: You can't discuss your informant who was beaten to death?
PATTERSON: No, that's what I said. Too much has been released to the press already.
QUESTION: Can you discuss aspects of the case that would not affect your investigation?
PATTERSON: No sir.
QUESTION: You can't discuss anything? You can't describe the murder scene?
PATTERSON: That's already known.
QUESTION: It's known from press accounts, but what is not known so well is what you have to say.
PATTERSON: I have nothing else to say about it.

Efforts to contact Starbucks management were somewhat more fruitful. The Washington Weekly talked to Kenny Fried, a Starbucks spokesman on Friday.

QUESTION: I would like to get a statement from you about where the Washington D.C. murder case is at this point.
FRIED: We're working on getting the store reopened at this point.
QUESTION: What is the status of the case with the police?
FRIED: They're definitely working on it. They've not closed it. It's a high profile thing here. But, unfortunately, the people--we've never sent any statements out or anything like that. We're trying to open our store at this point, that's our concern. The store will reopen February 20th. In Washington this was the biggest story for two weeks. It was on the front page of every paper and on the newscasts morning till evening, so it was very heavily on the minds of the media here.
QUESTION: Do you know at this point if the police have a suspect or suspects in the case?
FRIED: We don't know anything about that.
QUESTION: I take it this was very unusual for the store. It was located in a very nice neighborhood in Georgetown, is that correct?
FRIED: Yes, it's a nice area with a national retailer and Starbucks never had anything like this happen in their history. And so it's just unusual and three young people were killed and so these factors together created a lot of attention.
QUESTION: The Washington Post characterized this as an execution-style murder. Do you have any comment on that?
FRIED: I'm dealing mostly with the reopening of the store, so I won't comment on that. We have not talked to media because we just want to get the store reopened. I can tell you that our CEO has announced that all future net profits for the life span of the store will go to a designated anti-violence organization. The particular organization will be announced when the store opens.
QUESTION: There is a lot of speculation going around on the internet about who could have had a motive for this killing. And this is being connected to the fact that this young lady was a former White House intern, and that rumors were circulating in Washington at this time that an intern was going to come forward with information about the President's activities in the White House. Have you heard stories like that?
FRIED: No, I haven't.
QUESTION: Do you have any comment on that?
FRIED: I'm not the right person to comment on that. I can see if there is anyone at headquarters who could comment on that.
QUESTION: Do you know of any apparent motive in this slaying?
FRIED: No, we don't, nothing. There was speculation that it was robbery.
QUESTION: Was there any indication from the crime scene that it was an attempted robbery?
FRIED: That's all a police matter.

The Washington Weekly continues to investigate this case. Anyone with information on the case is encouraged to contact the Washington Weekly by email at: editor@dolphin.gulf.net . Confidentiality is assured.

Published in the Feb. 9, 1998 issue of The Washington Weekly. Copyright © 1998 The Washington Weekly (http://www.federal.com)

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