The GEC-Marconi scientist deaths conspiracy theory claims that between 1982 and 1990 a number of
British
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Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies.
** Britishness, the British identity and common culture
* British English, ...
-based
GEC-Marconi scientists and engineers who worked on the
Sting Ray torpedo project and
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
Strategic Defense Initiative-related projects died under mysterious circumstances.
The first deaths to gain widespread attention and be linked to the theory came in 1986-1987. In just about a year, six different scientists died in mysterious circumstances, three of whom had worked for the Marconi company, a subsidiary of the defence group
General Electric Company. Most deaths were ruled suicides or accidents. One died after driving his car, which had been packed full of petrol containers, into a building. Another tied a rope to his neck and a tree and then drove off in a car. A third died of carbon monoxide poisoning in his garage. No links were found between them. At the time, some opposition lawmakers in the
British parliament
The Parliament of the United Kingdom is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace of Westminster, London. It alone possesses legislative suprem ...
called for an investigation into the deaths.
Proponents of the conspiracy theory link the deaths like a
James Bond
The ''James Bond'' series focuses on a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, eight other authors have ...
-esque set of assassinations, variably blaming the Soviet spy agency
KGB
The KGB (russian: links=no, lit=Committee for State Security, Комитет государственной безопасности (КГБ), a=ru-KGB.ogg, p=kəmʲɪˈtʲet ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)əj bʲɪzɐˈpasnəsʲtʲɪ, Komitet gosud ...
, American spies, or even British spies.
Proponents of the theory claim that the deaths were linked because of the scientists working on the same few classified projects,
although most of the scientists had not been working closely together and were working on separate, mostly unclassified, projects.
References
Newspapers
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Books
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Media
* "Grave Secrets," a
20/20 segment which aired on
ABC; May 5, 1989. Reported by
Stone Phillips and available on the "20C History Project"
YouTube
YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...
channel.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gec-Marconi Scientist Deaths Conspiracy Theory
Deaths in the United Kingdom
Cold War history of the United Kingdom
Guglielmo Marconi
Science and technology-related conspiracy theories
BAE Systems
General Electric Company