On July 6, 1997, employees opening the Starbucks in Georgetown, DC found the body of Mary Caitlin Mahoney along with the bodies of her two co-workers, all shot dead. It had been an apparent botched robbery. In the 10 years that followed, there have been a great deal of talk about this event in the blogosphere, rumors and conspiracy theories propagate like rabbits on steroids. I, for one, would like to know what really happened. Why? I knew her personally. She was a friend and neighbor of mine, and I spent time with her the day before she died. It has been 10 years, and every so often I Google her to find out what is the latest. Some of what I see I find interesting, but most of it I think is pure nonsense. I have decided that it is time for me to do some looking into some of this stuff and try to figure out how much is real, plausible, or pure bull.
Here is what I know for sure:
Caity used to live in an apartment building in Baltimore that was formerly an orphanage for a Civil War era Episcopal Church. At the time she lived there, most, if not all, of the inhabitants were Lesbians, like herself.
Caity used to go running in the morning before dawn, much to the distress of some of her neighbors, who worried that this habit was not safe in that neighborhood. Caity, however, said that when it was her time to go, it was her time, and it would not matter whether she ran in the morning or not.
Caity moved out of that apartment in order to move to D.C. where she had gotten a job managing the Starbucks in Georgetown.
Caity loved Starbucks and loved her job there, and the day before she died, she was very excited about direction that her life was taking. She was very optimistic, and expressed repeatedly how positive everything in her life was at that moment.
On July 4, 1997, Caity went to a picnic in PA on a retired farm. She rode to that party from Baltimore with three other women (I was one of them), but she left before dark without saying good-by to me. I heard it was because she had to go to work. She did not mention having to leave early on the way there, so this is puzzling to me, but I do not have any other information about this at this time.
That is all I can think of for now. I will be investigating this further in future posts.
