Who Killed Steve Kangas?

Who killed Steve Kangas?

A letter from John Van Matre

When I first heard that Steve Kangas may have died in Pittsburgh, I searched for an obituary and could find none. I wanted to know about the circumstances. I knew Steve Kangas had written an investigative essay on Richard Mellon Scaife and wondered whether there might be a connection, though I really didn’t expect to find one. Finally, someone with Lexus Nexus access verified that Steve Kangas had actually died, and sent me the short obituary from the the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette of Feb. 12:

“The body of a 37-year-old man found in a 39th floor bathroom of One Oxford Centre late Monday night has been identified as Steven Kangas of Las Vegas. He died of a gunshot wound to the head. The Allegheny County coroner’s office ruled the death a suicide.”

I plugged in One Oxford Centre and Scaife what popped up made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

Scaife Foundations
One Oxford Centre
301 Grant Street, Suite 3900
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15219-6401

Since then, the questions surrounding the death of Steve Kangas have snowballed. There were two parallel tracks being taken. One track was seeking more information about Steve’s death and wanting a further investigation. The other track was bent on smearing Steve’s reputation and turning him into everything from an embezzler to a neo nazi to a down and out womanizing drunk to an assassin out to murder Richard Mellon Scaife. For instance Tucker Carlson, in an article “Stalking Scaife” characterized Steve Kangas as, “Kangas, a 37-year-old Internet pornographer from Las Vegas” and Tony Snow, in an article “Steve Kangas Left-Wing Vince Foster” characterized Steve Kangas as, “Squeeky Frohme with intellectual pretensions.”

For any who are unfamiliar with Steve Kangas and wish to make up their own mind, I suggest you visit his web page and read through his essays (“The Origins of the Overclass” is the essay that mentions Scaife).

http://www.scruz.net/~kangaroo/tenets.htm

He posted his last essay to his Web site on February 3, just five days before his untimely death. In my opinion, it is not the writings of a man in throes of alcoholism, though people like Richard Scaife have suggested as much and he may well view Steve’s work as pornography. See:
~kangaroo/L-PowerDistribution.html

There are more questions than answers. Richard Scaife hiring a detective to try and dig up dirt on Steve Kangas raises a red flag. He used the same detective, Rex Armistead, that was used to try and dig up dirt on President Clinton for the Arkansas Project. The Pittsburgh police should have been so thorough. I doubt the police even questioned Richard Scaife, though one report did say they were thinking about it. The systematic attempted trashing of Steve Kangas’ raises questions. Discrepancies between the coroner’s report, in which Steve was injured when first found, and the police report, with no mention of injuries when he was first found raises questions. The quick cremation and the erasure of Steve Kangas’ hard drive raises questions.

If magically I could have three questions about the circumstances around this case answered, I suppose they would be — (1) Is the checking of the circuit breakers in One Oxford Centre rest rooms sop, and is there a log to prove this? (2) Was the gun that killed Steve empty when found? The news articles infer this, stating 47 rounds were found in his backpack and in one pocket. This is important because if Steve Kangas were in custody of Scaife security, they may have initially taken his gun away and emptied the clip. There may even be prints on the bullets or the clip, if the gun is still in evidence. (3) One intriguing puzzle piece that doesn’t fit with the theory of suicide — the bullet found around the time that Steve Kangas was found. There was a bullet hole found in the window of a street level clothing store. The slug was found inside the store. The bullet got there somehow. The location of One Oxford Centre doesn’t appear to be a part of Pittsburgh where random bullet holes would be found. I suspect this may be the first time ever that a bullet hole was found in a window of one of the shops. Maybe some time after all the stores had closed, Steve Kangas had attempted to leave, was stopped by Scaife security, shots or a shot were fired, with Steve Kangas was forced to go back up to the 39th floor. If that bullet is connected, suicide becomes implausible.

I don’t know what happened to Steve Kangas on the evening of February 8. I can write several scripts from the facts, as reported in the various newspaper articles. Many of the facts of the case seem suspicious and do not fit well with the theory of suicide. When I started digging on my own, that is what I expected to find. But from the burglar alarm system, to the $300 gun, to the intensive work he’d been doing on his political web site, that does not seem to be where Steve Kangas was at.

And then there is that bullet hole in the window of the Kountz and Rider clothing store.

For Steve’s sake, this case deserves to be investigated further by someone with the means and abilities far greater than I. Hopefully someone, or some agency, will investigate the death of of Steve Kangas in the manner it deserves.

Rest in peace, Steve Kangas.

John Van Matre
email: jbvm@worldnet.att.net

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