Schweich served as Chief of Staff for former U.S. Senator John Danforth’s investigation of the federal government’s actions in connection with the 1993 FBI siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. He had announced his candidacy for governor just one month before his death, and was found with a gunshot wound to the left temple. Tom Schweich was right-handed. One month later, his media director, Robert “Spence” Jackson, was found dead of a similar wound.
Schweich was 54. He had been in office since January 2011 and had easily won election in November to a second, four-year term. He announced a month ago that he was seeking the Republican nomination for governor in 2016, and was gearing up for a primary fight against Catherine Hanaway, a former U.S. attorney and Missouri House speaker.
Schweich seemed unusually agitated — his voice sometimes quivering and his legs and hands shaking — when he told an AP reporter on Monday that he wanted to hold a press conference to allege that Missouri Republican Party Chairman Hancock had made anti-Semitic remarks about him.
Schweich was Danforth’s chief of staff for the 1999 federal investigation into the deadly government siege at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, and followed Danforth to the United Nations, where he was chief of staff for the U.S. delegation.
President George W. Bush appointed Schweich to the State Department in 2005 as an international law enforcement official. Two years later, Bush picked Schweich to coordinate the anti-drug and justice reform efforts in Afghanistan. (source)
“Tom Schweich publicly attacked what he thought was corruption in state government, and within a month of that, he was dead,” said Danforth. “Spence Jackson publicly called for the resignation of John Hancock, and within a month of doing so, he was dead.”
