Most coldspur readers will be familiar with the name of John Costello, a British journalist who wrote ‘Mask of Treachery’, and collaborated with Oleg Tsarev on ‘Deadly Illusions’. He died in somewhat suspicious circumstances on an airline flight from Gatwick to Miami in August 1995, and there has been speculation that he may have been murdered in order to hush him for good. It seemed odd that he could suddenly have been taken so ill, presumably from food poisoning, that he was dead before the plane landed.
I was prompted by an on-line correspondent to contact the Dade County coroner’s office, since he had had no luck in obtaining any documentation, possibly because he was writing from the UK. I thus recently sent a brief email, announcing my professional qualifications, and requesting an estimate for any costs of reproduction. To my amazement, within hours a full dossier arrived, at no cost, and with no restrictions placed on its further publication. I thus present it here for the historical record.
I shall leave it to medical professionals to study the material, but it does strike me as odd that Costello, who might well have suffered from AIDS, but had expressed no symptoms of distress or discomfort, apart from a case of food-poisoning a few weeks before, should suddenly expire from the strain of pneumonia known then as pneumocystis carinii. That has always struck me as a particularly horrible disease that gradually destroyed the lungs and body. I look forward to an open debate based on the evidence displayed here.