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http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/0905quig.html
A simple car accident ... or was it?
Conspiracy theories a big part of man's life and death
Dennis Wagner
The Arizona Republic
Sept. 5, 2003
12:00 AM
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Like Mel Gibson in the Hollywood movie Conspiracy Theory, Quig devoted his life to connecting dots and exposing plots. A voracious reader with an IBM memory and a Disney imagination, the 54-year-old Phoenix resident reveled in CIA black operations, mob hits and political skullduggery.
More than anything, he was obsessed with the theory that secret power barons are manipulating America, and that he must stop them.
"His main job in life was he wanted to make America better," explained a sister, Phyllis Beninati of Long Island, N.Y.
Quig died earlier this summer after being struck in an accident with none of the intrigue that gave meaning to his life.
According to a Phoenix police report released Aug. 21, he was pushing a shopping cart down 75th Avenue near his west Phoenix home on June 16.
Eighteen-year-old Andy Martinez of Glendale was behind the wheel of a Toyota, listening to music and talking with two friends.
Martinez told detectives a man loomed in his windshield. He hit his brakes and swerved, to no avail. A plywood board in the shopping cart smashed through the windshield, injuring passenger Eric Colon, 18. Quig died a short while later at St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center.
Martinez was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence of marijuana, but investigators determined that was not what caused the accident.
Quig had been remodeling a home in the neighborhood, trading work for a place to stay. But why he was hauling wood at that hour is a puzzle that might have driven him crazy, and still troubles admirers.
It didn't take long for some to talk of a cover-up.
"These 'accidents' do not occur in a vacuum," noted one, Virginia Lee McCullough, in a commentary on a Web site. "They are made to happen to silence the speech that used to be free in this country."
In another Internet posting, Stew Webb listed the "known facts" about his friend's death. Among them: Quig's body was cremated and "never identified by anyone who knew him."
Detective Alan Pfohl, who investigated the traffic fatality, said more than a dozen Quig acquaintances contacted him to insist it was no accident.
"But it's kind of a cut-and-dried deal," Pfohl added. "Mr. Quig was found responsible for his own death, for walking in the roadway."
Days before his death, Quig fretted to The Arizona Republic about a libel suit filed against him by a Phoenix developer and ranted about police investigators who mistook him for a burglar, prompting an enraged letter of complaint.
Longtime friend Paul Rademacher of Phoenix did some snooping about the accident without finding any funny business.
However, Rademacher noted, Quig was more adept at identifying cover-ups.
"He could jump from one thing way over the moon to something else. He used to say, 'I see the big picture.' I'd laugh, but he believed it. And he was a bright cookie."
Quig was especially proud of his Internet site (still active at www.dcia.com), created to expose the lords of darkness and show how they operate through the CIA, White House and international corporations.
The premise: "It was human folly for the UNITED STATES to empower an agency of government to specifically break its own laws."
Even acquaintances concede that Quig, unfettered by rules of evidence, embraced rumors as fact and leaped from dubious assumptions to bullheaded conclusions.
Pointing out those flaws often proved futile because of his capacity to overwhelm critics with details.
When confronted with facts that appeared to disprove his theories, Quig would smile and explain that the conspirators were so clever they had covered up the truth by manufacturing false evidence.
Born into a Quaker family, Quig served as a congressional researcher investigating organized crime, a headhunter for business executives and a reporter for The Grapevine, a Phoenix tabloid distributed by the homeless. He did public relations for the nuclear power industry.
He helped out with Joe Arpaio's first campaign for Maricopa County sheriff and worked on a book with right-wing presidential candidate Bo Gritz.
He ran a speakers bureau, worked as a busboy and promoted Omega 3 fatty acid from seafood as a medicinal panacea.
Marian Quig of Sun City said she never understood her son's politics: "I didn't see where it was going to get him. I said, 'Brian, get a real job.'
"He never spoke ill of anybody," she added. "He was just a good fellow."
Rademacher and Schoen said they accepted Quig's hyperbole and his financial shenanigans, such as a habit of forgetting his wallet, as benign eccentricities.
Quig always lived hand-to-mouth, they said. And he never got anything out of his Quixotic adventures except the righteous joy of a crusader for goodness.
Said Schoen: "He didn't accomplish much. He never wrote a book or was on TV that I know of.
"But I feel very good about Brian Quig's life."
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