SUICIDED 2
Five years ago, SUICIDED introduced the world to 8 brave individuals who died under suspicious circumstances while exposing or combating human trafficking.
Watch SUICIDED 2 (Full Documentary)
Martin Burns, born in 1957, was an award-winning veteran investigative reporter and senior producer for Fox 11 in Los Angeles. During the 1990s, he was the senior producer of the popular KCET series “Life and Times”, which won numerous Los Angeles area Emmy Awards. He was also nominated for LA Emmys several other times, most recently for a 2010 report titled, “Cartel Crimewave”.
According to one of his colleagues, Gerri Shaftel,
“Martin, an amazing and talented investigative producer, put his life on the line repeatedly to chase stories. … He was the guy the rest of us worried about. Martin survived close encounters with flying bullets and cross-border drug wars.”
On August 26, 2013, a hiker discovered Martin Burns’ body at the bottom of a ravine in the Santa Monica Mountains in Malibu, California. His body was found 30’ east of the east edge of the Castle Canyon trail leading to Inspiration Point. The preliminary cause of death was reportedly trauma sustained from falling off a cliff. It was determined that Burns had died the previous day and there were no witnesses.
The media claimed that Burns was an experienced hiker. However, those who personally knew him reject that claim. They insist that he was not in the fittest condition at the time and hiking was unusual behavior for him.
His obituary, written by close loved ones, reads,
“While we may never know exactly what happened, Martin appeared to have suffered a fatal heart attack, causing him to fall from the steep trail.”
On October 18, 2013, The Washington Times published an article by Clare O’Toole titled Fight Against Child Abuse Loses Another Prominent Voice.
“His death has been added to a growing list of prominent child justice campaigners who all died just ahead of a planned release of either, a documentary containing highly sensitive information, or a bid for new legislation to contain child trafficking and abuse.”
The same day the article was published, The Washington Times removed it from their homepage and their archive.
In 2015, The Millennium Report asked,
“Why would The Washington Times take the extraordinary initiative to remove every reference to and post of their article that lauded a recognized champion of child abuse investigative reporting?”
The Washington Times article was immediately retracted, but the public was already drawing its own conclusions about Martin Burns’ freak accident and the rash of deaths from other prominent anti-human-trafficking figures.
In the years leading up to his death, Martin Burns relentlessly focused on child welfare stories and the foster care system. He directed Fox11’s team to produce Lost in the System [clip 1 and clip 2] in 2012 and The Children Are Dying: Foster Family Failure in 2013, in addition to the ongoing series True Crime Stories. Under Martin Burns’ leadership, Fox11 documented child trafficking coverups and profiled families unjustly torn apart by the judicial system, the Department of Social Services, the Children’s Bureau, local Child Protective Services, and other such agencies. In working with victimized families, Burns came to learn how the CPS, in concert with corrupt judges and prosecutors, works to traffic children out of state, and in some cases, out of the country.
Lost in the System documented the disturbing case of Dr. Ruby Dillon whose 7-year-old, Lexi, repeatedly alleged that her father, Mahathep Srikureja, was sexually abusing her. After Dr. Ruby reported her husband’s crimes to the authorities, Judge James Waltz ordered Lexi to be placed in her father’s custody. Her father was an illegal immigrant from Thailand and would later exfiltrate Lexi to Thailand.
Multiple doctors including psychiatrists, pediatric gynecologists, emergency room physicians, forensic psychologists, and police officers reported Lexi’s abuse to CPS. Judge James Waltz then colluded with Judge Glenn Salter in dozens of unlawful ways to coverup this case.
A board-certified gynecologist said,
“In addition to this alleged sexual abuse, Alexandria, of her own free will, also informed me that her father hits her repeatedly in the head. This puts her at risk for concussions and the long-term effects of traumatic brain injury.”
An MD psychiatrist said,
“Alexandria reported that her father was kissing and touching her genitals and nipples. Alexandria reported that this occurred almost every time she was with her father.”
On May 7, 2013, OC Weekly reported that attorney Brian Claypool got involved and filed a civil lawsuit against Orange County Social Services Agency for “willfully abducting” and “trafficking” Lexi Dillon by “fabricating evidence, committing perjury, and routinely violating the law.” Claypool claimed that OC CPS is a “protected empire” motivated by $2.2 billion in state and federal funding that is guilty of “aiding and abetting the commission of child abuse and child endangerment.” CPS denied involvement in the case and claimed the matter was being settled in family court.
When CPS sent a young male social worker to investigate, he failed to conduct a medical exam in which colposcopic photos would have been taken. Unfortunately, this failure to obtain crucial evidence would later derail the entire case.
Regarding this botched investigation, State of the Nation 2012 reported,
“This is not uncommon as a statewide audit of CPS in California, spear-headed by then Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, revealed similar errors in all three counties audited.”
Then California Governor Jerry Brown and Attorney General Kamala Harris both had the power to block Lexi from getting trafficked to Thailand, but despite public outrage, they failed to intervene.
To put it simply, Fox11’s array of investigations presented cold hard evidence to the mainstream clearly demonstrating the reality of government-sponsored child trafficking. Burns was eager to continue reporting on related cases as the prevalence of this corruption was shockingly widespread.
As a result of Fox11’s coverage and Claypool’s public campaign, a lot of negative attention was drawn to Judge James Waltz, Judge Glenn Salter, and others. Martin Burns had disturbed a hornet’s nest.
NANCY AND BRUCE SCHAEFER
In 2004, Nancy Schaefer was elected to the Georgia State Senate and served two terms as a Republican. The following year, Schaefer began sponsoring resolutions and bills such as S.R.1270 to audit and increase oversight of Georgia’s Department of Family and Children Services. She became a vocal advocate for parental rights and reforming CPS by pushing for transparency and accountability measures.
On November 16, 2007, Senator Schaefer published a widely circulated document titled The Corrupt Business of Child Protective Services. The report is detailed and thorough and condemns the CPS.
Senator Schaefer writes,
“I believe Child Protective Services nationwide has become corrupt and that the entire system is broken almost beyond repair. I am convinced parents and families should be warned of the dangers.
… Having worked with probably 300 cases statewide, I am convinced there is no responsibility and no accountability in the system.”
Schaefer was not mildly criticizing these government institutions. She was unambiguously defining them as taxpayer-funded child trafficking operations. (10:40 Infowars interview)
“The Adoption and the Safe Families Act, set in motion by President Bill Clinton, offered cash “bonuses” to the states for every child they adopted out of foster care. In order to receive the “adoption incentive bonuses” local child protective services need more children. They must have merchandise (children) that sell and you must have plenty of them so the buyer can choose. Some counties are known to give a $4,000 bonus for each child adopted and an additional $2,000 for a “special needs” child. Employees work to keep the federal dollars flowing.”
Schaefer grew increasingly exasperated by the lack of progress and lack of interest amongst lawmakers and representatives. (27:50 Infowars interview)
“…they have told me if they help, if they do anything, they will lose their job.”
Although Schaefer left the Georgia Senate in 2008, she continued to use her platform to raise awareness of CPS corruption. On August 11, 2009, Schafer spoke at the International Congress of Families in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Schaefer also announced that she was working on a book on cases and materials related to CPS abuse. Although unverified rumors circulate online about this book, little is known about it. On March 26, 2010, Schaefer contacted a friend to discuss her progress on her book. Nancy explained that she needed to make a trip to Washington D.C. and was concerned about her safety, and planned on asking her husband, Bruce, to accompany her for protection. Just hours after this call, both Nancy and Bruce would die from gunshot wounds.
Although it was reported that they lived in a gated community, this paints an inaccurate picture of their safety. There was a gate guard at the entrance to their neighborhood, but the Schafer’s house was accessible by foot via a backroad that passed behind their home.
According to John Bankhead, the spokesman of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation,
“This is as clear-cut a case of murder-suicide as you’ll see.”
According to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s official report, Bruce shot his sleeping wife once in the back with a .38 caliber handgun before shooting himself once in the chest. For reference, only 10-20% of firearm suicides are from chest wounds, according to U.S. data sets.
According to Atlanta Journal-Constitution,
“Investigators discovered a suicide note, as well as notes to each of the couple’s five children.”
Nancy and Bruce had been married for 52 years, were deeply religious, and in addition to their five children, they had 13 grandchildren.
No clear motive has ever been identified for Bruce. Although they had recently received a foreclosure notice on their home, family members did not believe this was severe enough to warrant Bruce’s alleged killing spree.
Two years before her death, Schafer introduced S.B.415 which would have resulted in sweeping changes to the Department of Human Resources. It would have required, among other things, “a court order to enter the residence of a parent or guardian to seize a child under certain circumstances,” to increase transparency into such cases, and to increase efforts to place children with relatives prior to placing them in the custody of strangers.
Some internet sources claim that the Schaefers were receiving death threats at an accelerated rate, but this cannot be verified.
There is a misconception that Schaefer was working with filmmaker Bill Bowen on a documentary exposing CPS titled Innocence Destroyed, slated to premiere in the winter of 2009-2010. Bill Bowen died six months after the Schaefers, and his documentary was never released. However, the Schaefers were actually working with filmmaker William Fain.
On April 1, 2010, just 6 days after the Schaefers were killed, Fain appeared on Infowars claiming that he and Nancy met up to discuss the finishing details on a four-year long hidden-camera documentary project titled In the Best Interest: Exposing the Horrors of DFACS in Georgia five days before her death.
It may be worth noting that one of the sponsors of S.B.415 was Senator Robert Brown. On December 8, 2011, Brown was found dead in his home with a gunshot wound to the head and a .32-caliber revolver in his hand. His death was ruled a suicide.
Schaefer and Brown were not the only senators whose deaths stirred conspiracy theories and speculation of murder.
LINDA COLLINS-SMITH
Linda Collins-Smith served as a Republican Arkansas State Senator from 2011 to 2019. During her tenure, she engaged with Arkansas DHS and foster-care related oversight issues.
On June 4, 2019, Linda’s son and father discovered her body face down in her driveway with multiple stab wounds and wrapped in a comforter. It was determined that she had been killed one week prior. After police reviewed Linda’s home security footage, it was revealed that Linda’s friend, Rebecca O’Donnell, was caught tampering with the cameras while holding a bloody knife. O’Donnell was described as Linda’s best friend and the two were referred to as “sisters” by friends in their community. After eventually confessing to the murder, O’Donnell was sentenced to 50 years in prison.
Linda’s murder gained national attention. ABC’s 2020, season 45 episode 6 titled Red Handed, explored the case in an 80-minute documentary. NBC’s Dateline: Secrets Uncovered also produced an episode dedicated to the case titled Hands of the Killer. Authorities determined that O’Donnell’s motives were personal, not political… but there is more to the story.
Linda was friends with a woman named Kathy Hall whose granddaughter, Brooklyn, was kidnapped by the state after Brooklyn’s mother was killed in a hit-and-run in Arkansas. Linda had been helping Hall regain custody of her granddaughter and was in almost daily communication with Hall until the time of her murder. Hall was interviewed by ABC, but for some reason her testimony was excluded from the documentary. Moreover, the day before O’Donnell confessed to the murder, Hall’s house was burned down, ostensibly from a “gas leak,” killing her two dogs and cat.
At the behest of Judge Stacey Zimmerman, Hall and her husband were prohibited from presenting their case to the court to assume custody over Brooklyn, who was subsequently placed in the custody of a Mormon family who refused to allow her grandparents to have any contact with her, including written letters.
The same year that all of this was going down, a former Mormon politician was sentenced to 11 years in prison for running an illegal adoption scheme where he sold at least 70 babies from women in the Marshall Islands to couples living in Arizona, Utah, and Arkansas. The judge that approved of these illegal adoptions was Judge Zimmerman, the same judge who blocked Hall and her husband from gaining custody over their granddaughter, Brooklyn. Hall claims that Linda was investigating Judge Zimmerman and other, more extreme, abduction cases at the time of her murder. This government-sponsored trafficking ring that Linda was investigating was allegedly tied in with the MERS system, or the Mortgage Electronic Registration System, a putative pipeline of child trafficking.
There are claims that Linda was about to expose the judges involved in this illegal trafficking network and that O’Donnell had been given access to her safe containing this information.
While the ABC documentary states that Linda had just returned from a trip to Washington D.C. before she was murdered, it conveniently leaves out the fact that before returning from D.C., she first flew to Arizona to meet with lawmakers, ostensibly to discuss the Paul Petersen case and the corrupt judges trafficking children in Arizona, Utah, and Arkansas.
The deeper one investigates the people and events surrounding Linda Collins-Smith’s death, the more anomalies one finds, raising more questions and fueling fierce debate about the tactics that human trafficking networks will use to silence anyone seeking to expose them.
REP. JACKIE WALORSKI
Jackie Walorski started her career as a television news reporter and spent four years as a missionary with her husband in Romania where they founded an organization that provided food and medical supplies to impoverished youth.
In 2013, she was elected as a Republican to the Indiana House of Representatives. As a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, she backed measures that increased oversight of foster care and adoption systems. Walorski quickly became one of the strongest proponents for anti-human-trafficking efforts in the House.
In 2014, she co-sponsored H.R.5135, the Human Trafficking Prevention, Intervention, and Recovery Act, which set out to strengthen prevention, coordination, intervention, and recovery efforts in response to human trafficking, especially child trafficking.
In 2015, she co-sponsored H.R.159, the Stop Exploitation Through Trafficking Act which encouraged states to adopt safe harbor laws to protect underage victims from prosecution and connect them to support services.
In 2016 and 2017, she co-sponsored H.R.4406 and H.R.2664, two versions of the Enhancing Detection of Human Trafficking Act. Also in 2017, she co-sponsored H.R.2200, the Frederick Douglass Trafficking Victims Prevention and Protection Reauthorization Act, a cornerstone anti-trafficking law which reauthorized funding for programs that assist victims, provide prevention education, and enhance law enforcement efforts to crack down on trafficking operations.
In 2018, she co-sponsored H.R.1865, the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act aimed at holding websites accountable for knowingly facilitating sex trafficking. The same year, she co-sponsored H.R.767, the Stop, Observe, Ask, and Respond to Health and Wellness Training Act, which required HHS to train medical professionals to identify and respond to signs of human trafficking.
In 2019, she co-sponsored H.R.3942, a newer version of the Trafficking Victims Prevention and Protection Reauthorization Act which continued funding for anti-trafficking programs and prevention initiatives. In 2022, she once again co-sponsored a newer version of this act, H.R.6552, which reauthorized $1 billion over five years for programs to prevent human trafficking, protect victims, and prosecute offenders.
On August 3, 2022, it was reported that Walorski and two staffers, Zachery Potts and Emma Thomson, were traveling south in a silver Toyota RAV 4 when a maroon Buick LeSabre suddenly veered left into their lane causing a head-on collision that killed all three passengers and the driver of the other vehicle. The incident occurred on State Road 19 near the intersection with State Road 119 between Nappanee and Wakarusa.
Initial reports indicated that Edith Schmucker, the 56-year-old driver of the other vehicle, caused the fatal collision. The investigation concluded the following month, and Elkhart county police later reversed the story, officially determining that Walorski’s SUV was the one that crossed into oncoming traffic, ostensibly traveling at 80 miles per hour to pass a flatbed truck. The police claimed that video evidence was responsible for the revised determination, but such footage has never been made available to the public.
In the rare instances when noble and altruistic individuals who, against all odds, manage to make their way into government, they face fierce opposition when battling the most entrenched corruption. Child trafficking networks are not weak; they do not play games. So what happens when good people become obstacles to the goals of these syndicates? When an unstoppable force meets an immovable object, both cannot exist simultaneously.