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)
