There wasn’t much of an outcry over this. A blogger for the Sentinel named Willoughby Mariano scoffed at the conspiracy theories around the case, especially attempts to link Ralph to Jack Abramoff — even though she failed to address the more likely connection to Tom Feeney.

Here is Willoughby, on her blog, criticizing “bloggers” for making assertions without any evidence:

Bloggers went nuts. They played a game of Six Degrees of Disgraced Republican Lobbyist Jack Abramoff, tying Gonzalez (often tenuously) to a laundry list of controversies that they insinuated may have something to do with the killing. They never bothered to confirm any of this. The weirdest conspiracy theories tied Drake to a gay escort ring with Republican ties. Again, pure speculation.

A more mainstream site described the killing with a freakish mystique. Beltway gossip hounds at Wonkette.com called it a “bit of bizarre Lynchian violence and mystery” and asked if there were gay Cuban hustlers involved.

That Cuban hustler line was funny if you didn’t know that other media outlets reported the killing as a result of a gay Republican love triangle (again, unconfirmed speculation). If the victims survived, it bordered on libelous if any of them were straight conservative Christians who believed homosexuality is immoral.

Furthermore, what did gayness have to do with it? It only comes into play if this were an case of domestic violence. We never established it was, and it’s not clear that detectives have either.

The rampant conspiracy theories taught me two things:

1. Bloggers often stink. Don’t confuse them for reporters.

2. Current public distrust of Republican politicians — even ones who operate on a relatively small scale — is spectacular. Mention “Republican” and “gay” in the same sentence and boom, there’s an avalanche of wild, crazy, speculative tales. No Zapruder film or grassy knoll necessary.

There. I’m off my soapbox.

I guess no one at the Sentinel edits or fact-checks their reporter’s blogs, because no legitimate journalistic outlet would knowingly publish an assertion as erroneous as Mariano’s suggestion that it was libelous to suggest that the victims were gay. There is nothing innately wrong with being gay, so it cannot be libelous to suggest someone is gay, even if the person is a fundamentalist Christian like, say, Marcus Bachmann.

But in her next and final report on the murder investigation, Mariano makes an incredible, unfounded assertion of her own:

Detectives determined Jason Drake, a tile worker who knew Gonzalez, was the gunman. He killed himself at the scene.

The Orange County Sheriff’s Office released a final report on the case.

No motive was determined.

Drake left no note or other indication as to why he would want to kill. He had a complicated past that included drug use and a dishonorable discharge from the military.

People who knew Drake described him as guarded and self-righteous. They told investigators he appeared upset and left work unexpectedly in July. When he returned, Drake told an acquaintance he was in Arizona and had to leave town before he killed someone.

Drake had a red Nike backpack when he was found, according to the report. It contained a gun holster, a Glock magazine with 14 live rounds, miscellaneous paper, clothing, a tooth brush, a gun lock, and a book called Journey to Ixltan by Carlos Castaneda.

There you go. Not much, but case closed.

The murderer was a crazed loner. A dishonorably discharged, guarded and self-righteous tile worker with a complicated past. Those may be verifiable facts, but they are not evidence.

No motive was uncovered but “case closed.” Willoughby has a career waiting for her at Fox News or some other propaganda outlet.

You have to wonder whether the investigation by the Orlando police — and by reporters like the Sentinel’s Willoughby Mariano — into the killer’s motives and the victims’ connections to powerful political figures about whom there were already alleged ties to murders, if the victims had been Democrats.

When you consider that sex scandals (particularly ones that could involve gay sex) and murder stories are immediately bumped to the front page, it really causes a person to wonder about the media in Florida when this kind of thing is bumped, instead, to the back page.

Your site is to be praised for covering this sort of thing.

The evidence he had in 2004 would have SHUT DOWN the Yang voter software to Diebold voting and allowed DEMOCRAT WINS.

As we speak, in 2006, Mr. Curtis, the software programmer that met FEENEY (jeb bush’s running partner in 1994 Fla Gov) and wrote the software for his old company YANG ENTERPRISES testified against FEENEY in 2006 before US congress Republican judiciary.

Ga 2002 elections had massive voter Diebold software fruad, democrat heavy neighborhoods became WHITE REPUBLICAN. Ralpg Gonzalez, in my review of voter evidence, was murdered, as Wash post and NY times had Yang eneterprise stories about Feeney’s envolvement and Rove voter Diebold software manipulation in national elections…