Fact Check

Hillary Clinton Death Hoax

Conspiracy theory holds that Hillary Clinton was reported dead on 11 September 2016, but the news was subsequently covered up and she was replaced by a body double.

Published Sept. 13, 2016

Claim:
Hillary Clinton was reported dead on 11 September 2016, but the news was subsequently covered up and she was replaced by a body double.

On 12 September 2016, convicted felon Hal Turner's disreputable, conspiracy-flogging web site SuperStation95 reported that New York City television station WABC had announced the death of Hillary Clinton the previous evening, after the Democratic presidential nominee left a 9/11 anniversary memorial ceremony in New York prematurely earlier in the day due to health reasons (later attributed to pneumonia). SuperStation95 also maintained that a Hillary Clinton "body double," and not Clinton herself, had been spotted in New York a few hours after the candidate's abrupt departure from the 9/11 ceremony:

A video clip of WABC-TV Channel 7 "Eyewitness News" in New York City opened last night with Anchorman Joe Torre saying "more on Hillary Clinton's Death." The opening line, however, seems edited-OUT of the video archive!

Did Hillary die after leaving the 9-11 Ceremony in New York ... and the information is being concealed? A whole slew of irregularities have cropped-up indicating that may actually be the case!

Here is the video segment from the 11:00 PM "Eyewitness News" broadcast of September 11, 2016 in which Anchorman Joe Torre seems to say Hillary Clinton is DEAD:

BODY DOUBLE?

A short time later, a person ALLEGED to be Hillary, is seen leaving the East 26th Street home of Chelsea Clinton, but there are problems with this person.

First, the person who was allegedly Hillary Clinton, looked about thirty pounds lighter in body weight than the Hillary who was at the 9-11 ceremony! Here's the video of "Hillary" leaving Chelsea Clinton's home on East 26th Street:

Notice the body weight? Clearly, this person is significantly thinner than Hillary appeared just two hours earlier at the 9-11 memorial ceremony. Moreover, the gait of this person is dramatically different than the gait of Hillary Clinton seen just two hours earlier. It's almost as though this "Hillary" is ten years younger, with a strong, assured stride, versus the slower, meandering walk usually displayed by the real Hillary.

We have already debunked in a separate article the claim that the woman referenced above was Hillary Clinton impressionist (not "body double") Teresa Barnwell, who could not possibly be confused for Hillary Clinton by anyone who saw her up close due the two women's clear facial dissimilarities:

The suggestion that Hillary Clinton died, with her death being announced by WABC-TV during their 11 PM news broadcast on 11 September 2016 — who then excised that report from their video archive to conceal the truth — is also untrue. WABC anchorman Joe Torres simply misread a word during the introduction to a segment about Hillary Clinton; the station did not actually report her death (as was evident to anyone who actually watched the broadcast), nor does WABC provide an online archive of their news broadcasts from which this element could have been "edited out":

During a live introduction to a story about the health of Hillary Clinton, Joe Torres inadvertently said ‘death’ when he meant to say ‘health.’ It was clear from the context of the story, the reporters’ information, and graphics on the screen that Secretary Clinton was alive and recovering.”

Superstation95 is neither the web site of an actual broadcast media "superstation" nor a genuine news source, but rather an outlet that peddles false claims and misinformation from conspiracy monger Hal Turner, a felon who spent 33 months in prison for making death threats against three federal judges in 2009.

The Hillary Clinton death hoax isn't the first time  Superstation95 has made hay of a media frenzy to advance alarmist lies or conspiracy theories on social media. Superstation95 emerged in late 2015 and wasted no time in embellishing what were often genuine tragedies or real-life events with fabricated and upsetting details. Among the most widely shared were falsehoods about a large group of Muslim men firing upon campers and hikers in California, Fukushima radiation causing severe mutations in marine life, cargo ships mysteriously grinding to a halt and signaling an imminent global economic catastrophe, a deadly Las Vegas strip car crash involving a driver shouting "Allahu Akbar," the San Bernardino shooting being provoked by pork served at a holiday party just before the massacre, the Earth's "magnetosphere" inexplicably collapsing for two hours, a (nonexistent) suicide note left by an actual deceased ICE agent which warned of impending FEMA camps and mass enslavement, articles about the Orlando shooting appearing on Google News hours before the attack, and claims that a DEFCON warning indicated global conflict was expected to break out in June 2016.

None of Superstation95's opportunistic falsehoods has ever turned out to be accurate, and a significant number have fed the spread of painful conspiracies about actual tragedies immediately following the deaths of real people.

Kim LaCapria is a former writer for Snopes.