Chapter 36

YOUTUBE TERROR SUSPECT “RAINBOW” DAVE:

AUTOPSY CONFIRMS POISONING

WCBV.com / Updated at 5:05 PM EDT / September 16, 2016

(BOSTON) A toxicology report released today reveals that the former YouTube celebrity and terrorism suspect, who appeared to suffer a fatal stroke at his arraignment in Boston Superior Court, in fact died of poisoning. The report, issued by the Massachusetts Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, shows that David Shoemaker had traces of gelsemium elegans in his system at the time of death. The rare Asian plant, also known as “heartbreak grass,” has been associated with Chinese and Russian contract killers in recent years. A spokesman for the FBI declined to comment on whether or not authorities are treating the death as a suicide.

Gelsemium made headlines in the UK in 2012, when it turned up in a toxicology screening for Aleksandr Perepilichny, a Russian oligarch believed by the US intelligence community to have been assassinated for providing evidence against Russian officials linked to the death of anticorruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.

Shomaker (23) of Stonybrook, NY, had been indicted on ten counts, including attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction. He was arrested following a thwarted terror plot at the Berklee Performance Center on August 17th and was also awaiting arraignment on multiple murder charges in his home state, including that of his associate Len Lemarchand. Lemarchand, who was not a suspect in the plot, alerted authorities to Shoemaker’s plans just minutes before he was killed by a remote detonated explosive device in Shoemaker’s home.