Jonathan Luna. Robert Clay. Kenneth N. Harris Sr.
A federal prosecutor. A prominent businessman. A former city councilman.
Did they all die as simply as authorities say - in eerie succession in 2003, 2005 and 2008 - the first two by suicide, the third in a botched robbery at a jazz club?
Or were they killed, as some now claim, as part of a conspiracy to silence those who knew too much about Baltimore's underworld, about how, it is quietly alleged, a culture of drugs and corruption survives and helps build parts of this city while turning the rest into wastelands of addiction and despair?
Five years ago today, Luna was found dead in a rural Pennsylvania ditch, 100 miles from his desk at the U.S. attorney's office on Lombard Street, where hours earlier he had been hammering out a plea deal in a drug case that turned sour when a key witness changed his story about heroin being sold from an upstart recording studio in Hampden.
Luna had been stabbed 36 times, and the local coroner ruled the death a homicide. But tantalizing details soon emerged - Luna had job trouble, had mounting debt, may have had an office affair and was about to be questioned in connection with the disappearance of $36,000 that had been evidence in a bank robbery. Authorities said his wounds were superficial, implying that he took his own life for personal reasons.
Now, five years later, the case is nowhere. The U.S. attorney's office declined to comment. Luna's family won't talk, and neither will the coroner, despite what seems a concerted effort to discredit his findings. This silence only fuels rumors and raises questions about whether anyone will ever know or wants to know how an assistant United States attorney met an untimely end.
Did his troubled personal life get him killed or prompt him to kill himself, or was his death linked to his drug case, or a combination of both?
This is how Luna's name got linked to Harris and Clay at a recent City Council hearing, where activist Daren Muhammad repeated conspiracy theories once only whispered, stories that in part cost him his spot on a local radio station and earned him blank, angry stares from elected officials.
Muhammad's tale that the three men might have been getting too close to a truth nobody wants revealed is easy to dismiss, and perhaps should be. I don't think they're connected, and I have discovered that stories like this are often woven from fiction and are easily knocked down once facts are revealed. So the quicker that can be done in all the cases, the better.
