Bombshell!! Dr. Ruehl on the death of Sonny Bono: "A 50-50 chance that Sonny was murdered!"

From time we started up the Tabloid Baby website in late 1999, we have asked why a possible conspiracy was not investigated in the death of US Representative Salvatore Bono.  No one witnessed the skiing accident said to have claimed his life on January 5th, 1998 at the Heavenly Ski Resort in South Lake Tahoe, California. Sonny Bono, an expert skier who knew the slopes, was skiing alone. He was reported missing around 4:30 p.m. and his body was found two hours later. Authorities said he had apparently crossed under a chairlift and slammed into a tree. One report said that no blood was found in the snow.

Bono’s mysterious death took place five days after Robert Kennedy’s son Michael died in a similar accident in Aspen, yet the coincidence led only to jokes like these:

Q: Why did Sonny Bono ski into the tree?
A: It's always been a good political move to keep up with the Kennedys.

Q: Why did Sonny die in a ski accident?
A: After being a mayor and a congressman, he wanted to be a Kennedy.

The general public can be forgiven for viewing the Bono tragedy as a bizarre Hollywood Babylon episode. After all, Sonny Bono was best known as a goofy, squeaky-voiced foil to his ex-wife Cher.

But journalists should know better. What happened during those two lost hours? The savvy producer-turned-politician was involved in the highest levels of power—and controversy. A former mayor of Palm Springs, California (where Frank Sinatra's mother and factotum were killed), Bono was a close ally and adviser to House Speaker Newt Gingrich. He was was the number one fundraiser for the Republican Party. He fought major corporate interests in his efforts to clean up The Salton Sea saline lake in the southern California desert. He’d become a Scientologist, yet was distancing himself from the Church.

And there’s much more. We asked Tabloid Baby pal, contributor, columnist and conspiracy expert Dr. Franklin Ruehl, Ph.D. to give us his view of the death of Sonny Bono.

Boy, did he ever:

Was Sonny Bono The Victim Of A Mob Hit?
by Dr.Franklin Ruehl, Ph.D.

Is it possible, just possible, that pop legend Sonny Bono's tragic death from slamming into a tree while skiing was a subtle gangland assassination? At first glance, his demise at Lake Tahoe's Heavenly Resort on Monday, January 5, 1998, appeared to be nothing more than a horrific accident.

However, his tough stance as a Congressman against narcotics, such as his co-sponsorship of the Methamphetamine Elimination Act of 1997, earned him the wrath of drug traffickers. Specifically, there is speculation that the Russian mob, endeavoring to cut out a piece of the lucrative southern California drug market for themselves, targetted Bono. After failing to blackmail him into cooperating with trumped-up allegations of drug abuse, they decided to off him.

One hypothesized scenario suggests that a three-person team coordinated his accident. The female team member faked a fall on the side of the ski trail Bono was using. Crying out for help, she attracted his attention. As he headed in her direction, two associates on skis suddenly emerged from hiding and pursued him. Whether they cleverly choreographed his crash into a tree or he conveniently collided with it as he fled their clutches is academic: the assassination appeared for all intents and purposes to simply have been an accident.

Support for this conspiracy theory is embodied in the following points:

* Bono was a superb skier quite conversant with the slopes at Heavenly Resort;

* An autopsy revealed no signs of alcohol and only minor traces of prescription drugs in his system;

* Three pages of a DEA report allegedly describing how informants had been providing Bono with inside information on mob drug activities were suspiciously blacked out for reasons of security;

* Bono's mother Jean expressed a feeling that his death was not accidental.

While it is, of course, conceivable that Bono's death was purely accidental, the possibility of a hit is certainly feasible.

Overall, I would assign this particular conspiracy theory a coefficient of credibility of 50%, that is, a 50-50 chance that Sonny Bono indeed was murdered.