FALLS CHURCH, Va. -- A medical examiner ruled out foul play in the case of a former CIA employee who died before he could testify against his boss, convicted gun smuggler Edwin Wilson, but the FBI is keeping the case open.
Kevin P. Mulcahy died less than a month before he was to testify against the ex-CIA agent on charges of smuggling guns to Libya.
Dr. James Beyer, Northern Virginia's chief medical examiner, announced at Fairfax Hospital Thursday that the Oct. 26 death of Mulcahy, 40, outside a motel cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia was 'determined to be natural,' due to bronchial pneumonia.
A spokesman for the FBI field office in Alexandria said the FBI has not yet closed its investigation.
'We are going to continue to pursue a couple of items with respect to our investigation,' the FBI spokesman said. The spokesman said he was not casting doubt on Beyer's finding, 'But we want to make our own report.'
Mulcahy was the second potential witness against Wilson to die before the trial. Even without those witnesses, Wilson was convicted in Alexandria on charges of exporting five guns to Libya, part of what prosecutors said was an attempt to sell more than $20 million worth of arms to the North African country.
The first of the would-be witnesses, Rafael Villaverde, disappeared in a boating accident near the Bahamas eight months ago following an explosion aboard the boat. The Coast Guard ruled the death accidental.
Wilson is to be sentenced next month and faces numerous other charges in Washington and Houston.
Mulcahy's body was found jackknifed outside the doorway of a motel cabin near Woodstock, Va. The former CIA communications expert already had been evicted from the cabin for firing a shotgun blast through the window for unknown reasons. The cabin was locked as was his truck, which had all his possessions inside.
Several empty bottles of wine were found nearby. Relatives said Mulcahy, an alcoholic who suffered from emphysema, had become depressed and resumed drinking a week or two before his death.
Mulcahy left the CIA in 1968 to join Wilson's arms export enterprise with offices in Libya, Switzerland and England. But he had doubts about his new boss and reported to the CIA and federal authorities that he believed Wilson was supplying Libyan terrorists with weapons and bombs and instructors to demonstrate their use.
An autopsy performed Oct. 27 failed to turn up any signs that Mulcahy died of anything but natural causes. But before ruling on the cause of death, Beyer wanted to await the results of tissue samples that would disclose the presence of toxic substances.
'This case has certain unusual aspects to it,' he said at the time.
Beyer's statement Thursday said: 'The immediate cause of death was bilateral confluent bronchopneumonia.
'Contributory causes included marked fatty metamorphosis of liver and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
'Toxicology studies have been non-contributory to the cause of death.
'Manner of death determined to be natural.'
