Police have determined that a popular HuffingtonPost.com election correspondent who had weighed in several times throughout this election season on LGBT issues killed her former lover after stabbing her some 200 times with a Phillips-head screwdriver.
Carol Anne Burger then took her own life last Friday, authorities told Florida's Palm Beach Post. This week authorities connected Burger to the murder of her former lover and roommate, Jessica Kalish.
Authorities had grown suspicious of Burger’s involvement in her former lover’s death prior to the freelance journalist taking her own life. Before police could question Burger, she shot herself in the head in the backyard of the Boynton Beach, Fla., house she and Kalish shared together.
Kalish and Burger had been broken up for more than a year when Burger killed her ex by stabbing her with a screwdriver 222 times, according to a police report. According to friends, the two still lived together for financial reasons.
Various reports said trouble began to brew between the two women when Kalish, who had married Burger in Massachusetts in 2005, announced that she had met another woman.
A friend close to Burger said that the writer, who worked for numerous publications throughout South Florida, had sent several e-mails detailing her mood swings.
"I'm feeling pretty isolated myself," Burger wrote in mid August. "Part is simple depression, I suppose. The other part is simple withdrawal whenever I'm depressed. I just can't bring myself to punish people with my sad self whenever I'm down. But I usually bounce back in time."
Police who reconstructed the crime scene said that following the murder, Burger loaded Kalish's body into her car and abandoned it two miles from the house. The following day she reported Kalish missing but killed herself after learning that police had found her body.
Burger was one of several election correspondents taking part in "Off the Bus," a citizen-powered and -produced presidential campaign news page sponsored by the Huffington Post. She had been tapped to cover the election from Florida next Tuesday. (The Advocate)
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