Home

QUESTION: CIA involvement in murder of Bob Sheldon?

Submitted by Anonymooose on Mon, 09/06/2010 - 4:03pm
question / pregunta: 

I'm curious about the murder of Bob Sheldon, founder of the famous Chapel Hill infoshop, Internationalist Books, with especial focus on the reference to CIA involvement in the Sonic Youth song, "Chapel Hill." Written in 1991, the song contains two explicit references to Sheldon's murder that point to possible CIA involvement:

Back in the days when the battles raged
And we thought it was nothing
A bookstore man meets the CIA
And we know

...and...

Lookin' away it's another day
And of course we love you
But radical man meets the CIA
And we said no

I'm wondering if there is any credible evidence tying the CIA or local police to Sheldon's murder. It seems the CHPD and local FBI office did as little as possible to apprehend the killer with most people accepting that it was either a bungled robbery or perhaps retaliation from nationalist, pro-war citizens (Sheldon was murdered shortly after the start of the first Gulf War and he was predictably outspoken against it).

Here's a story commemorating Sheldon's life from the local alt-weekly:
http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/bob-sheldons-legacy/Content?oid=1183160

And here's the Wikipedia article on Internationalist Books:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalist_Books

Thank you!

Answers

Answer posted by: Anonymooose

Thanks for your question.

I've searched a number of academic, legal, and newspaper sources to try and uncover some information on this topic. I unfortunately have not been able to locate any material pointing to CIA/police involvement in the death of Bob Sheldon.

One idea would be to contact Jon Elliston, the author of the following article: http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/bob-sheldons-legacy/Content?oid=1183160 He might be able to provide you with some of the sources he used to write this article. Additionally, since the Internationalist is still open it could possibly help you to contact the store and see if they have any leads: http://www.internationalistbooks.org/