The home owned by Edward Mueth, a St. Louis County health department official, is in the 400 block of Gray Avenue in Webster Groves. In 2010, six years after filing for bankruptcy, Mueth purchased the home for $1.475 million. Photo by Robert Cohen, rcohen@post-dispatch.com
Ed Mueth, an official in the St. Louis County Health Department, was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot on Sept. 19, 2013.
In the summer of 2013, St. Louis County health department staffers noticed something strange about a $187,450 invoice for technical services from a company called Gateway Technical Solutions.
Few health department workers, beyond the handful who had cut checks to the company, had ever heard of it. Records showed the company had sold the agency computer equipment and technical services for six years. But no one could recall ever using a laptop leased from the company or getting assistance when technical issues arose.
It turned out Edward Mueth, a health department official, had established a corporation that filed bogus invoices, falsely showing that the company sold the agency computer equipment and technical services. He even created a phony person to head the company.
In all, it would later be determined, Mueth embezzled some $3.4 million from the county. The health department actually received $60,000 in laptops from the fake company. Mueth took the remainder of the money and bought a $1.5 million Webster Groves mansion and had it landscaped for another $200,000. He also acquired $100,000 in firearms and bought expensive cars.
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When a team of employees uncovered Mueth’s scheme, they went to his superiors, assuming the police would immediately be contacted. Instead, officials cut off Mueth's access to the county computer system and summoned him to a meeting the next morning.
Hours after being told of the meeting, Mueth pulled into a parking lot near his home and shot himself in the head with a .40 caliber Glock handgun.
One question left in the wake of Mueth's death was why county officials didn't immediately contact police, instead of setting up a morning meeting in the office with a potentially suicidal employee. "He could have killed me, he could have killed my family, he could have killed my co-workers,” one fellow worker pointed out.
Another question was how Mueth managed to bilk the county of so much money over so much time without detection. County Executive Charlie Dooley lost his re-election bid in the Democratic primary the following year, possibly in part due to controversy over both Mueth's undetected crime and the county's subsequent reluctance to reveal information about it.
