Minneapolis / Confession doesn't stop conspiracy theories
Posted on Thu, Mar. 15, 2007
Minneapolis / Confession doesn't stop conspiracy theories
Some suspect sinister plot behind 2006 Uptown slaying of Zebuhr, a Scholars for 9/11 Truth member
BY EMILY GURNON
Pioneer Press
Michael Zebuhr
A teenage gunman admitted shooting Michael Zebuhr in a panic during a robbery in Minneapolis' Uptown neighborhood a year ago, but the Internet still buzzes with conspiracy theories about who killed the visiting doctoral student and why.
Zebuhr's death, which prompted outcries against random violence, also sparked talk of sinister plots involving the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and a government coverup.
Even with shooter Billy Ray Deshawn Johnson scheduled to get a 30-year prison sentence today, the conspiracy theories live on.
Zebuhr, 25, was a Clemson University student and member of a group called Scholars for 9/11 Truth, which contends there is evidence the U.S. government orchestrated the Sept. 11 attacks, or at least allowed them to happen.
A Web site at www.michael zebuhr.blogspot.com questions whether Zebuhr was a random victim. Zebuhr's work with the Sept. 11 group "led several professors, including me, to wonder if MZ was killed — not because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time during an armed robbery — but because of his participation in the effort to expose 9/11 as an inside job," wrote Morgan Reynolds, a professor emeritus at Texas A&M University and a member of the group.
Killing Zebuhr "would have a chilling effect on scholars" and others skeptical of the government's story, Reynolds wrote.
A prominent member of the Sept. 11 group, Judy Wood, was one of Zebuhr's professors at Clemson.
Daryl Bradford Smith, on his Web site www.iamthewitness.com, has another take on Zebuhr's murder: that two of Zebuhr's fellow Sept. 11 skeptics somehow helped the government kill him.
And sprinkled through the online writings are allegations that the Minneapolis police were suppressing evidence in the case.
Police Lt. Amelia Huffman denied the rumors, saying the crime was fully investigated.
"We were not part of any conspiracy to cover up any sort of government hit," she said.
Zebuhr was in Minneapolis visiting family and had gone out to dinner with his mother, his sister and a friend just before the group was confronted by two young men, one of whom took his mother's purse. Johnson, then 17, shot Zebuhr.
Michael Andregg, a local member of the Sept. 11 group, said he did not know Zebuhr. But Andregg, who has spent 20 years "studying spies" and teaches in the Justice and Peace Studies program at the University of St. Thomas, said he is skeptical of the idea of Zebuhr's death being part of a conspiracy.
With all due respect to Zebuhr, Andregg said, "Killing people is a real business, a real serious business, but professionals don't usually go after fish that tiny."
Emily Gurnon can be reached at egurnon@pioneerpress.com or 612-338-6516.
Sept. 11 Conspiracy Theories
Members of Scholars for 9/11 Truth contend the U.S. government either orchestrated the attacks to justify war against Arab nations or knew of the terrorist plot and chose not to act. The group's arguments include:
The World Trade Center towers collapsed in a controlled demolition. Molten metal at Ground Zero shows explosive material played a role in the towers' collapse.
The towers could not have collapsed as they did without explosives.
Jet fuel could not have burned hot enough to melt the towers' steel beams.
On The Other Hand
What the government and other experts say:
Al-Qaida carried out the attacks using hijacked planes.
Molten metal at Ground Zero might have been aluminum from the crashed planes.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology concluded damage and fires caused by the two crashed planes felled the towers.
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