WIFE
OF `KILLER' SPEAKS
Cyndi Steele goes public;
says her husband has been framed
By Pat Shannan
 |
. When
Cyndi Steele, the wife of imprisoned lawyer Edgar J. Steele,
first heard that her husband had been arrested and charged
with hiring their handyman to have her and her mother
killed, she simply didn’t believe it. Then, as FBI
agents attempted to persuade her to accept the nonsensical
“plot,” she became suspicious of the agency
and went into seclusion.
 Mrs.
Steele recently spoke with AFP in an exclusive interview,
relating how she now believes her husband was framed.
Steele
has been held in solitary confinement since his arrest
on June 11, 2010. In October, Mrs. Steele was finally
allowed to visit with him.
“[The
FBI] lied to me from the beginning,” said Mrs. Steele,
explaining how FBI agents accused her of cheating on her
husband. “First they claimed they had a private
investigator who had pictures of [me and my boyfriend]
together, but I knew they couldn’t, because there
is no boyfriend. Finally, they admitted they had made
that up and then jumped over to the next lie: that Ed
had a Russian girlfriend, and that’s why he wanted
to kill me. They just kept trying to intimidate me into
believing their own lies.”
A
more likely scenario might be that Steele was targeted
because of his history defending the politically incorrect
in court.
Unbeknownst
to the Steeles, the man at the center of the crime, handyman
Larry Fairfax, had been a longtime FBI informant when
the Steeles hired him last December. Steele had been recuperating
from a near-fatal heart operation at his home in Idaho.
It’s believed the FBI had re-enlisted Fairfax to
spy on Steele when he told them where he was working.
However, when Fairfax was unable to turn up anything incriminating,
the feds resorted to more drastic measures.
Fairfax
claims that Steele had offered him $25,000 to murder Mrs.
Steele and her mother. According to Fairfax, this amount
and “maybe even more” would be paid after
Steele collected on the life insurance. Conveniently,
because the mother-in-law resides in Oregon, the “crime”
qualified for federal jurisdiction under the FBI.
Mrs
. Steele has finally brought to the table the piece of
evidence that has the federal prosecutors scrambling for
yet another new motive: There is no life insurance. The
Steeles had canceled it after the last child left home
a few years ago.
Another
perplexing point is the mystery man who rode with Fairfax
to the Oregon home of Mrs. Steele’s mother to inspect
and possibly install the pipe bomb discovered under Mrs.
Steele’s car.
Mrs.
Steele’s attorney Wesley Hoyt received an anonymous
tip naming the accomplice as James Maher, a neighbor and
friend of Fairfax. When Hoyt and client played the tip
for federal prosecutor Tracy Whelan, she admitted that
Maher was the ride-along friend but claimed he had done
nothing wrong. Maher is the brother of prominent HBO television
talk show host and comic Bill Maher.
 Pat
Shannon is a contributing editor to American
Free Press newspaper. He is also the author
of several videos and books including One
in a Million: An IRS Travesty and I
Rode With Tupper, detailing Shannan’s
experiences with Tupper Saussy when the American
dissident was on the run in the 1980s. Both
are available from FIRST AMEND-MENT BOOKS for
$25 each. |
|
(Issue #51, December 20, 2010, AMERICAN
FREE PRESS)
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at
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