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Reporter missing in New Jersey
Melanie Eversley, USA TODAY 1:42 a.m. EST January 16, 2014
Journalist and marathoner David Bird of New Jersey has been missing since Jan.
11.
Police, volunteers and the running community have rallied around the search for
a 55-year-old marathoner from New Jersey and Dow Jones reporter who went missing
on Jan. 11.
David Bird left his home in Long Hill Township, N.J., to go for an afternoon
walk after a bout with an intestinal bug and never returned, according to
published reports. Two hours after he didn't return, his wife, Nancy Bird,
contacted police.
"I knew this wasn't right. Something was wrong," Nancy Bird told the Wall Street
Journal. "He's a really great dad and a great husband."
Bird is a liver transplant patient who needs medication regularly, his wife has
said.
He ran the 2013 ING New York City Marathon and Runner's World magazine published
a piece asking the public for help in finding Bird.
Bird covers energy markets for the Wall Street Journal and has worked for Dow
Jones for more than 20 years, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The Facebook page of the Long Hill Township Police Department has turned into a
detailed feed focused almost exclusively on what appears to be an intense effort
to find Bird.
"The search for Mr. Bird enters its 5th day and 89th hour today," someone posted
to the page on Wednesday. "We want to assure the public that everything related
to a missing person investigation that can be done is being done with assets
from local, county, state resources."
A Community Response Team of volunteer civilians has been working since Sunday
morning to provide food to law enforcement, help search and distribute fliers,
according to the page.
A poster circulated by the police department indicates that Bird has blue eyes
and gray hair and has a scar on his abdomen. When he left home, he was wearing a
red jacket, jeans, sneakers and glasses, according to the poster.
He is 6'1" and 200 pounds, according to the police department Facebook page.
Anyone with information is asked to contact the Long Hill Township Police
Department at (908) 647-1800.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/01/16/david-bird-missing-new-jersey/4504019/
MARCH 19, 20152:55 PMUPDATED 6 YEARS AGO
UPDATE 1-Body found in New Jersey river is missing WSJ reporter
Reuters News Department
2 MINUTE READING
(Body is identified as missing journalist)
NEW YORK, March 19 (Reuters) - A body found in a New Jersey river
has been positively identified as David Bird, a Wall Street Journal
reporter who disappeared more than a year ago, officials said on
Thursday.
Dental records were used to identify Bird, 55, an energy markets
reporter at the Journal, published by News Corp , who had been
missing since taking a walk from his home by the Passaic River in
Long Hill Township, New Jersey, on Jan. 11, 2014, the Morris County
Prosecutor’s Office in a statement.
https://cn.reuters.com/article/usa-search-reporter/update-1-body-found-in-new-jersey-river-is-missing-wsj-reporter-idUSL2N0WL1V820150319
Wall Street Journal reporter David Bird’s body found in a N.J.
river
By
Lindsey Bever
March 20, 2015 at 9:17 a.m. UTC
About a week after New Year’s Day in 2014, longtime Wall Street
Journal reporter David Bird had just finished helping his family
take down Christmas decorations in their New Jersey home. A
rainstorm was rolling in, and he wanted to get in a quick walk
before the deluge, so he zipped up his red raincoat and headed out.
He never returned — and though his body has now been found, no one
has said what happened to him.
Following an unsuccessful search by local law enforcement and state
and federal investigators over the past 14 months, two men canoeing
Wednesday spotted a red raincoat in some branches near New Jersey’s
Passaic River, more than a mile from Bird’s house. Then police found
a body. Authorities announced Thursday the body had been identified
as Bird, who was 55 when he disappeared. The match was made using
dental records, though the medical examiner has not yet determined a
cause of death.
“David Bird was a long-standing and valued member of the Dow Jones
newsroom, and we are deeply saddened to learn today of his death,”
editor in chief Gerard Baker said in a statement. “Our thoughts and
prayers are with his family and friends.”
Raised with five older siblings in Trenton, N.J., Bird graduated
from Rider College and later joined the Wall Street Journal’s
publisher, Dow Jones & Co., where he most recently covered energy
markets, Baker said in an internal e-mail.
Eventually, Bird was named deputy managing editor of the Dow Jones
Energy Service.
“David was among the most respected energy journalists anywhere — a
must-read for energy-market professionals, known as an acute
observer and commentator on the global oil market who was devoted to
his beat and generous with his colleagues,” Baker wrote Thursday.
“He was instrumental in the expansion of energy coverage at Dow
Jones in the 1990s, leading its coverage of OPEC and energy markets
and building a team regarded as among the best in the business. He
later launched a highly regarded column on the topic.”
In his downtime, Bird was a hiker, cyclist and marathoner. He ran
the New York City Marathon in 2013. He liked listening to reggae
tunes and watching Boston Red Sox games. And he was a devoted Boy
Scout troop leader.
A decade ago, he hit an unexpected challenge — and, by all
appearances, won.
In 2004, he found out he had a severe form of hepatitis that,
doctors thought, he had contracted during a business trip in Beirut.
He needed a new liver. He became extremely ill and shot to the top
of the donor list. Then on Dec. 19, 2004, his wife, Nancy, wrote a
message from the New York University Medical Center on Bird’s blog,
which is still called SaveDavid.org: “Our Christmas miracle is
happening today. David is getting his liver today. Please keep your
prayers alive for a smooth operation and speedy recovering.”
On Dec. 30, Bird went home and went right back to his keyboard.
“Nancy and I got home around 3:30 PM to find that neighborhood elves
had strung yellow ribbons and ‘Welcome home, Dad’ balloons all
around the front of the house,” he wrote on his blog. “We celebrated
in relaxing style — with a roaring fire in the fireplace, Pizza Mill
pizza and sparkling cider and a cocktail of 14 different meds.
Looking forward to tomorrow when the final neck bandage comes off
and I can shave my face, so I don’t resemble a just out of his
spider hole Saddam.”
He talked about how excited he was “strolling into a warm 2005” and
spending time with his family.
“Tasha introduced me to her new bug and butterfly collection while
Alex showed what a true Jedi he has become with his one-sided green
light sabre,” he wrote about his children. “The song on loop in my
head today continues to be Oh Happy Day, by the Edwin Hawkins
singers. It will take a while to pry that one loose — May the Force
Be With You.”
On Jan. 11, 2014, Bird left his home near Long Hill Township, about
30 miles from New York City. His family assumed he had headed toward
Hicks Tract, a wooded area close to home where he liked to walk. He
didn’t take his cellphone with him. And he didn’t have medication
that, following his liver transplant, he was required to take twice
a day. His wife feared he would become ill without it.
“I knew this wasn’t right. Something was wrong,” she told the Wall
Street Journal at the time. “He’s a really great dad and a really
great husband.”
Hundreds came together to search for him. Police helicopters roared
overhead. People on horses and ATVs roamed the woods. Divers scoured
the Passaic River.
There seemed to be no clues. Nothing turned up. “We’re just
befuddled by how little we have to go on,” Long Hill Police Chief
Michael Mazzeo told the newspaper.
Investigators pored over his financial records, including his
credit-card purchases and bank account activity. They went through
his computer and cellphone logs to determine where he might have
gone. At the time, an unnamed source told NBC News that Bird’s
credit card was used in Mexico just days after his disappearance,
but police have since downplayed the rumors.
Advertisement
Eventually, severe rain and snow stopped the ground search. Then, in
late March of last year, authorities returned to the scene — with
little success.
Over the summer, a $10,000 reward was offered for information that
might help investigators find him. Nancy Bird told reporters that
Dow Jones put up the reward money, though the company didn’t
disclose how much it provided.
“We’ve had nothing to send this [investigation] in one direction or
another,” police department spokesman Lt. Ahmed Naga told the Wall
Street Journal earlier this year. He urged anyone with information
to speak up “whether they feel it is significant or not.”
On the one-year anniversary of Bird’s disappearance, hundreds in the
community gathered for a fundraiser and a candlelight walk. Nancy
Bird told the newspaper she still takes the same path he took the
day he left their home forever.
“And every time, I continue to look for David,” she said.
It wasn’t until this week she learned what she had feared the most.
“The Bird family would like to thank the many members of law
enforcement, especially Chief Michael Mazzeo and the Long Hill
Township Police Department, for their tireless efforts to find
David,” a family spokesman said in a statement posted on a site
created to help in Bird’s search. “They would also like to thank the
countless friends, neighbors and strangers who have prayed for David
and for the family over the past 14 months.”
He is survived by his wife and two teenage children, Alex and
Natasha.
“On behalf of everyone at Dow Jones, I want to extend our deepest
condolences to his wife, Nancy, and their two children, Alex and
Natasha, who have borne the unknowing of the last year with such
grace and dedication, and how have now been so tragically bereaved,”
Baker wrote in his e-mail. “Please remember them in your thoughts
and prayers.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/03/20/wall-street-journal-reporter-david-birds-body-found-in-a-n-j-river/
Investments
More details emerge about three bankers who died in six days
Some speculate missing WSJ reporter case shares circumstances
February 7, 2014, 4:02 pm By Trey Garrison
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HousingWire first reported Feb. 1 that three prominent bankers were
found dead in apparent suicides spanning the course of just six
days.
Since then, details emerged about the work of the three that
suggests at least a passing commonality – that is, the institutions
they worked for were all connected to investigations in the United
States or the United Kingdom for various types of fraud or
misconduct.
Former Federal Reserve economist Mike Dueker, 50, was found dead in
an apparent suicide near Tacoma, Washington on Jan. 31. Dueker was
chief economist at Russell Investments.
On Jan. 26, William Broeksmit, 58, a former senior manager for
Deutsche Bank, was found hanging in his home, also an apparent
suicide.
On Jan. 28, Gabriel Magee, 39, vice president at JPMorgan Chase (JPM)
London headquarters, apparently jumped to his death from a building
in the Canary Wharf area.
New York state Department of Financial Services subpoenaed Russell
Investment as well as other major firms in November 2013 as part of
an investigation by Superintendent Benjamin Lawsky into how the
firm’s handle investment proposals, compensation practices,
relationships with money managers and investment tracking practices.
Lawsky is the same regulator who on Thursday put an indefinite hold
on a $2.7 billion MSR deal between Ocwen Financial Corp. (OCN) and
Wells Fargo (WFC). Lawsky has been described in press reports as "an
enforcer with zeal."
The New York Times wrote on Nov. 5 that “regulators appeared to be
trying to learn whether any consultants were being paid by the firms
they recommended, including in-kind payments or job offers.”
Broeksmit, a top executive at Deutsche Bank who had retired in 2013,
had been found hanged in his home in the South Kensington section of
London, according to London newspapers.
Global regulators are currently investigating Deutsche Bank for
allegedly rigging foreign exchange markets. It settled similar
charges in 2013 over involvement in the manipulation of the Libor
interest rate benchmark.
Two days after Broeksmit’s death, former Deutsche Bank risk analyst
Eric Ben-Artzi spoke at Auburn University in Alabama, alleging that
Deutsche hid $10 billion in losses during the financial crisis.
Other whistleblowers have come forward with similar allegations.
Magee’s employer, JPMorgan, is under investigation by U.S.
legislators for misconduct in physical commodities markets in both
the U.S. and U.K. JPMorgan is currently under investigation for the
same kind of alleged involvement in manipulating foreign exchange
rates as Deutsche Bank.
Magee’s parents have told the London Evening Standard that they
don’t believe their son would commit suicide, and they have raised
troubling questions about how their son was able to access the roof
from which he is said to have jumped to his death.
Meanwhile, among those following developments in these deaths, there
is chatter about the disappearance of another Wall Street regular,
veteran Wall Street Journal oil commodities markets reporter David
Bird.
The markets Bird covers are currently under investigation by the
U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations for physical
commodities manipulation. His family tells the New York Daily News
that they are concerned his disappearance may be connected to his
investigative coverage of OPEC.
Bird has been missing since Jan. 11. Bird told family he was going
for a hike and left his New Jersey home without critical daily
medication he takes. Five days after he disappeared, a credit card
in his name was used in Mexico.
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