The Clinton Body Count

Overview

Somewhere on the internet right now — probably on several hundred websites simultaneously — there is a list. The list has been circulating in various forms since 1993. It has been forwarded in chain emails so many times that the formatting has degraded into a kind of digital palimpsest, each forwarding adding a new layer of “FW: FW: FW: YOU NEED TO READ THIS.” It has been printed out and taped to breakroom walls, read aloud on talk radio, shared in Facebook groups with names like “Patriots Who Know The Truth,” and cited in at least one United States Senate campaign.

The list purports to document the suspicious deaths of people connected to Bill and Hillary Clinton. Depending on which version you encounter, it contains anywhere from 40 to over 100 names. The implication — sometimes stated explicitly, sometimes left as an exercise for the reader — is that the Clintons have orchestrated the murders of associates who knew too much, witnesses who might have talked, and rivals who got in the way.

It is, to put it plainly, nonsense. But it’s extraordinarily durable nonsense, and its durability tells us something important about how conspiracy theories function in American political culture. The Clinton Body Count is less a theory than a template — a format that can absorb any death, however unrelated, into a narrative of omnipotent political evil. Every name on the list has been investigated. Every death has a documented explanation. And yet the list keeps growing, because the Clinton Body Count isn’t really about the Clintons. It’s about the human need to believe that death has a reason, and the political utility of casting your opponents as monsters.

Origins & History

Linda Thompson and the First List

The Clinton Body Count originated in 1993, during the first year of Bill Clinton’s presidency. Linda Thompson, an Indianapolis attorney who had become a prominent figure in the early militia movement, compiled the first widely circulated version. Thompson was already known for producing conspiracy videos about the Waco siege and had declared herself “Acting Adjutant General of the Unorganized Militia of the United States” — a title that, it must be noted, she gave to herself.

Thompson’s list initially contained about two dozen names. It was distributed through fax networks (this was 1993, after all), early bulletin board systems, and the nascent World Wide Web. The list gained traction because it arrived at a moment when conservative distrust of the Clintons was reaching a fever pitch — Whitewater, Travelgate, and a dozen other “-gates” were dominating talk radio, and the American right was developing what Hillary Clinton would later call, not inaccurately, a “vast right-wing conspiracy.”

The Vince Foster Catalyst

The event that supercharged the Clinton Body Count was the death of Vince Foster on July 20, 1993. Foster was a partner at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, a childhood friend of Bill Clinton, and served as Deputy White House Counsel. He was found dead in Fort Marcy Park in Virginia with a gunshot wound from an antique revolver he owned.

Five separate investigations — including those by the U.S. Park Police, the FBI, independent counsel Robert Fiske, independent counsel Kenneth Starr (who was otherwise no friend to the Clintons), and a Senate investigation — all concluded that Foster died by suicide. Foster had been suffering from clinical depression, had lost significant weight, had been prescribed antidepressants by his doctor, and had written a note (found torn into 27 pieces in his briefcase) expressing despair over the pressures of Washington life and what he perceived as the Wall Street Journal editorial page’s personal attacks against him.

The note included the line: “Here ruining people is considered sport.”

None of this mattered to conspiracy theorists. They focused on claimed irregularities: the position of the gun, the supposed lack of blood at the scene, the question of whether the note was forged. Each of these objections was addressed and refuted by the investigations, but the Foster case became the cornerstone of the Clinton Body Count — the foundational entry that made all subsequent entries seem more plausible.

The Chain Email Era

The list exploded during the mid-to-late 1990s through chain emails — the primary viral content distribution mechanism of the pre-social-media internet. These emails typically arrived from a trusted contact (your uncle, your coworker, your church friend) with a subject line like “EXPOSED: People who crossed the Clintons and DIED” and contained the list with brief descriptions of each person and their cause of death, often with strategic use of quotation marks around words like “suicide” and “accident.”

The chain email format was perfect for the Clinton Body Count because it allowed the list to grow organically. Each person who forwarded it could add names, embellish descriptions, and remove qualifying language. By the time a given version had been forwarded a dozen times, entries that originally read “died in a plane crash” had been transformed into “died in a SUSPICIOUS plane crash that investigators REFUSED to examine.”

The Social Media Revival

The list experienced a massive revival during Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. Social media — particularly Facebook and Twitter — gave the list distribution capabilities that chain emails could only dream of. Memes summarizing the “body count” were shared millions of times. The theory was amplified by figures including Donald Trump, who retweeted accounts promoting the conspiracy, and Roger Stone, who published a book called The Clintons’ War on Women that incorporated body count claims.

The 2016 murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich added the most politically potent name to the list since Vince Foster, and Jeffrey Epstein’s 2019 death in federal custody — which spawned its own standalone conspiracy theories — was immediately absorbed into the Clinton Body Count framework.

The List: A Closer Look

The Clinton Body Count typically includes several categories of deaths. Examining the actual cases reveals the methodology (or lack thereof) behind the list:

The “Too Convenient” Deaths

Vince Foster (1993): As discussed above, five investigations confirmed suicide. Foster was suffering from documented clinical depression. Conspiracy theories about his death have been debunked more thoroughly than almost any other event in modern American history. Kenneth Starr — who spent years and millions of dollars trying to find Clinton wrongdoing — concluded it was suicide. If Starr couldn’t find evidence of foul play, it’s because there wasn’t any.

Seth Rich (2016): A 27-year-old DNC staffer who was shot and killed during what police concluded was a botched robbery in Washington, D.C. Conspiracy theorists claimed Rich was murdered because he was the source of leaked DNC emails to WikiLeaks. The D.C. Metropolitan Police, the FBI, and Rich’s own family all rejected this theory. Fox News retracted its reporting on the conspiracy, and the network paid Rich’s family a settlement. Julian Assange, who could have confirmed Rich as a source, never did. WikiLeaks’ original hints toward this theory appear to have been strategic misdirection to obscure the actual source of the emails — Russian intelligence, as confirmed by the Mueller investigation.

Ron Brown (1996): Secretary of Commerce who died when his Air Force plane crashed into a mountainside in Croatia during bad weather, along with 34 other people. Conspiracy theorists claimed Brown was about to testify against Clinton. In reality, Brown was not under subpoena, the flight conditions were documented as dangerous, and the crash killed everyone aboard — an odd assassination method if the target was one specific person.

The “Barely Connected” Deaths

A significant portion of the list consists of people whose connection to the Clintons is tenuous at best:

Mary Mahoney (1997): A former White House intern murdered during a robbery at a Starbucks in Georgetown. The killer, Carl Derek Cooper, was convicted in 1999. His motive was robbery. His connection to the Clintons was nonexistent. Mahoney was added to the list solely because she once worked as a low-level intern in the Clinton White House.

Admiral Jeremy Boorda (1996): The Chief of Naval Operations who died by suicide after learning that Newsweek was about to publish a story questioning his Vietnam-era combat decorations. Boorda’s death had nothing to do with the Clintons — he was a military officer facing a personal scandal. He was added to the list because he died during the Clinton presidency.

James McDougal (1998): The Clintons’ former business partner in Whitewater who died of a heart attack in federal prison. McDougal had already cooperated extensively with Kenneth Starr’s investigation and had testified against the Clintons. His testimony was already on the record. Killing him would have accomplished nothing, and his documented history of heart disease made his death at 57 unsurprising.

The Statistical Illusion

This is the fundamental problem with the Clinton Body Count, and with all “death list” conspiracy theories: they exploit a statistical illusion.

Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas for twelve years and president of the United States for eight. During that time, he and Hillary Clinton personally knew or were professionally connected to thousands of people — staffers, donors, political allies, government employees, business associates, law enforcement officials, military personnel, and members of the media.

Given that the average American knows approximately 600 people, and that the Clintons’ network extends to many multiples of that, the question isn’t “why did so many people connected to the Clintons die?” The question is “what would be the expected number of deaths in a network of this size over a 30-year period?”

The answer: many. People die. They die of heart attacks, car accidents, plane crashes, suicides, robberies, and every other cause of death. The Clinton Body Count works by collecting these statistically inevitable deaths, presenting them in list form, and implying a pattern that doesn’t exist.

Snopes fact-checker David Mikkelson calculated that if you applied the same methodology to any prominent political figure — collecting every death of anyone even tangentially connected to them — you would produce an equally “suspicious” list. Someone did exactly this for George H.W. Bush and produced a comparable list, which no one circulated because it didn’t serve the same political purpose.

Why It Works (As Propaganda)

The Gish Gallop of Death

The Clinton Body Count employs a technique that debaters call the “Gish Gallop” — named after creationist Duane Gish, who would overwhelm opponents with a rapid succession of weak arguments that collectively felt overwhelming even though each individual argument was easily refuted.

When someone presents you with a list of 50 deaths, your brain processes it as “there are 50 data points, and even if some are weak, the sheer volume must mean something.” This is a cognitive error. Fifty individually debunked cases don’t become more convincing in aggregate — they become fifty debunked cases. But the psychological impact of the list format is powerful enough to override this logic for many people.

Confirmation Bias as a Growth Engine

The list is self-expanding by design. Once you accept the premise — the Clintons kill people who threaten them — every subsequent death of anyone connected to them confirms the theory. A Clinton associate dies of cancer? “They gave him cancer.” A political figure dies in a car accident? “It was arranged.” An elderly Clinton donor dies of old age? “The timing is suspicious.”

This creates a ratchet effect: the list only ever grows. No death is ever removed from the list because the death was satisfactorily explained. Every explanation is treated as a cover-up.

The Political Utility of Demonization

The Clinton Body Count serves a specific political function: it transforms the Clintons from political opponents into literal serial killers. This is useful because it eliminates the need for substantive political critique. You don’t have to argue against Hillary Clinton’s healthcare policy if she’s a murderer. You don’t have to engage with Bill Clinton’s economic record if he’s ordering assassinations.

The theory has been deployed most aggressively during election years — 1996, 2008, and especially 2016 — when its political utility is highest. It functions as opposition research for people who find actual opposition research insufficiently exciting.

The Damage

Harassment of Grieving Families

The most concrete harm of the Clinton Body Count is the harassment directed at the families of people on the list. The Rich family has been particularly victimized — Seth Rich’s parents have had to publicly plead with conspiracy theorists to stop using their son’s death for political purposes. They have sued Fox News and various right-wing commentators who promoted the conspiracy theory about their son’s murder.

Aaron Rich, Seth’s brother, won a defamation lawsuit against a writer who falsely claimed Aaron had helped Seth leak DNC emails. The case produced a $1 million settlement.

Erosion of Trust in Investigations

When five investigations into Vince Foster’s death are dismissed as cover-ups, it doesn’t just affect the Foster case — it teaches people that investigative conclusions can always be dismissed if they don’t fit the preferred narrative. The Clinton Body Count has contributed to a broader erosion of trust in law enforcement investigations, coroner’s reports, and forensic evidence.

The Epistemic Death Spiral

If you believe the Clintons have killed 50 people with impunity, several conclusions follow logically:

1. Law enforcement is either complicit or powerless
2. The media is covering it up
3. The entire system is corrupt beyond repair
4. Extraordinary measures are justified to stop them

This escalation ladder — from “the Clintons are politically corrupt” to “the entire system is controlled by murderers” — has real consequences. It contributed to the radicalization environment that produced phenomena like QAnon and the January 6th Capitol breach.

The Epstein Complication

Jeffrey Epstein’s death in a federal detention center on August 10, 2019, while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, created a genuine problem for Clinton Body Count debunkers. Epstein had documented connections to Bill Clinton (who flew on Epstein’s plane multiple times), and his death involved actual, documented irregularities: guards who fell asleep, cameras that malfunctioned, a previous suicide attempt that should have kept him on watch.

The difference between the Epstein case and the typical Clinton Body Count entry is that Epstein’s death actually does have unresolved questions, and the people with motives to want him dead extend far beyond the Clintons — Prince Andrew, various billionaires, politicians from both parties, and potentially intelligence agencies all had reasons to prefer Epstein’s silence.

But the Clinton Body Count absorbed Epstein seamlessly, treating his death as confirmation of the entire list rather than as a single case with unique circumstances. The conspiracy theory’s treatment of Epstein illustrates its fundamental methodology: take a complex situation, strip it of nuance, and present it as evidence for a predetermined conclusion.

Cultural Impact

The Clinton Body Count has become a template that has been applied to other political figures. “Body count” lists now exist for the Bush family, the Obama family, and various other politicians. The format — present a list of deaths, imply a connection, ignore alternative explanations — has become a standard tool in the conspiracy theory toolkit.

The phrase “Arkancide” — a portmanteau of “Arkansas” and “suicide” — entered the conspiracy lexicon through the Clinton Body Count and remains in use. It implies that people connected to the Clintons are murdered but their deaths are staged to look like suicides.

The theory has also influenced mainstream political discourse. During the 2016 presidential debate, Donald Trump brought several women who accused Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct to the debate venue. While the accusations were not body-count related, the willingness to use the Clintons’ alleged dark history as a political weapon drew from the same well of suspicion that the body count list had been filling for two decades.

Timeline

Sources & Further Reading

• Mikkelson, David. “The Clinton Body Count.” Snopes, comprehensive fact-check, updated regularly.
• Starr, Kenneth. Report of the Independent Counsel in re: Vincent W. Foster, Jr. October 10, 1997.
• Folkenflik, David. “Behind Fox News’ Baseless Seth Rich Story.” NPR, August 2017.
• Weigel, David. “The long history of the ‘Clinton Body Count’ conspiracy theory.” Washington Post, August 2016.
• Isikoff, Michael. “The Clinton Body-Count Meme.” Yahoo News, October 2016.
• Stone, Roger, and Robert Morrow. The Clintons’ War on Women. Skyhorse Publishing, 2015. (Primary source for the conspiracy theory’s modern form.)
• Rich v. Fox News Network, LLC. Settlement, 2020.

Related Theories

• Vince Foster Murder — The foundational case in the Clinton Body Count
• Epstein Murder Conspiracy — The most recent high-profile addition
• Seth Rich DNC Murder — The most politically potent modern entry
• Frazzledrip — Extreme Clinton conspiracy theory
• Pizzagate — Related Clinton conspiracy theory