Dear Bob,
In my opinion, your suspicions that Eugene Mallove may have been murdered are preposterous. There is no conceivable motive for such a murder. There is no way that killing Mallove could have suppressed any secret, or delayed or prevented any R&D. Mallove did not know anything that was not well known to other people. Yet all of his associates, including me, are still alive, and unmolested. In order to suppress the developments Mallove knew about, or delay any product or experiment, you would have to murder a dozen people, not one.
There are people who are working in a secret or semisecret fashion on cold fusion, ZPE and various other topics Mallove was interested in. For example, R. Mills has been working for years on his "shrinking hydrogen" theories and devices, and he has not shared much practical information with others. If he were to die, the research would probably die with him.
Mallove did conduct some research to confirm or refute other people's claims. But he did not do any original research himself. Everything he knew, he learned from other people, and all of those people are alive today, so he took no secrets to the grave. (This is true of many other people, including me.) Furthermore, all of the important information about cold fusion has been published in papers in scientific journals and conference proceedings. A large fraction of these papers are available at LENR-CANR.org, and approximately a half million people from all over the world have downloaded these papers, so there is no way any of it can made be secret.
To address your rhetorical question directly, you wrote:
> Do you think it is a mere COINCIDENCE that after winning a > 15-year fight, and penning his final editorial "Vindication!?" and > sending that issue to be printed, Gene Mallove was savagely beaten to > death?
Yes I am sure it was a coincidence, because beating someone to death would not interfere with, prevent, or "revenge" this vindication. By "vindication" I presume you (or Mallove) had in mind the upcoming DoE panel, or perhaps one of the experiments Mallove described. The panel will convene, the experiments will be conducted. Actually, I rather doubt that either of them will lead to any significant vindication or near term changes. The DoE panel may issue a tepid endorsement of cold fusion, but it is unlikely to lead to any recognition or funding. Furthermore, any form of vindication that does occur will not be Mallove's alone. Hundreds of other people share in it as much as he did, and -- while I would not downplay his contribution -- several other people also deserve credit for bringing about the DoE review. These other people, such as Peter Hagelstein, are still alive.
Finally, it should be noted that the police have targeted a likely suspect, who committed suicide I believe. The suspect probably beat to other people to death. Unfortunately, such things happen all the time. They should not surprise anyone, and there is no call to invoke a conspiracy to explain them.
- Jed Rothwell
