Widow Blames LaRouche|for Husband’s Suicide

RICHMOND, Va. (CN) - A former acolyte claims Lyndon LaRouche told her husband to "consider suicide" after she testified at LaRouche's federal fraud trial - and he did kill himself. Marielle "Molly" Kronberg says LaRouche repeatedly defamed her and her late husband, Kenneth, who ran the printing company for LaRouche's publications.

In her federal complaint, Molly Kronberg says she is a former national committee member for LaRouche's National Caucus for Labor Committees. She claims the oddball presidential candidate, who professes a list of conspiracy theories, blamed her for his federal convictions for mail fraud, tax and conspiracy charges.

LaRouche was sentenced in 1988 to 15 years in prison. He served 5 years and was paroled.

Once freed, LaRouche and Barbara Boyd, treasurer of his political action committee, repeatedly published knowingly false statements that Molly Kornberg framed LaRouche and perjured herself at trial, according to the complaint. He also wrote increasingly critical missives about Kronberg's husband, she says.

In at least two of his post-conviction writings, LaRouche suggested the Kronbergs should consider suicide because of their "failings," the complaint states.

She says that after her husband did kill himself in 2007, LaRouche changed his focus, undertaking a campaign to blame her for her husband's death.

In an email to followers, titled "Bush-League Molly," LaRouche claimed Kronberg's husband killed himself because he felt betrayed by his wife for her financial support of George W. Bush in 2004, according to the complaint. He "committed suicide because his wife was on the other side and he [Kenneth] thought it was hopeless," LaRouche wrote.

Before their falling out, Molly Kronberg says, she had worked tirelessly for LaRouche, considering him a political genius with a "professed dedication to the betterment of society." She says she became disillusioned after she decided he used his followers to defraud elderly people of money to support an extravagant lifestyle.

She demands punitive damages for conspiracy to injure a witness and libel. She is represented by John Bond of Fairfax, Va., and John Markham of Markham & Read in Boston.

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