Eliot Spitzer Was Unavailable for Comment

More sad fallout from Troopergate. Another New York State Police employee with a peripheral relationship to the scandal has committed suicide.

A veteran State Police forensic scientist hanged himself yesterday under circumstances shockingly similar to the suicide of another state police official just eight days ago

Garry Veeder, 59, left a note in his Albany suburb home saying he was concerned about becoming a target of an internal probe regarding the handling of a high-profile case, the Albany Times Union reported.

But sources said Veeder, who recently put in his retirement papers, was not implicated in the investigation by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who is probing suspected political espionage by a rogue group of State Police officials.

Veeder's death comes eight days after Gary Berwick, a retired State Police inspector, was found by his daughter, hanged in his garage in the Albany area.

Veeder was found by his wife, also in his garage, at about 7:30 a.m. yesterday.

"She came out and screamed," a neighbor in Voorheesville said.

Sources said Veeder apparently overreacted - with tragic results - to a recently concluded report on a kind of forensic-science cheating called "dry-labbing."

Meanwhile, a central figure in the case was abruptly terminated Friday.

The New York Power Authority announced it has terminated Daniel Wiese effective this afternoon.

NYPA's action against its own inspector general comes amid a probe by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo into allegations of political espionage within the State Police. Weise, a former trooper who ran gubernatorial security details, has been a figure in the probe.

Weise's termination comes as he is mulling a lawsuit against his employer for suspending him without pay two weeks ago. On Monday, he advised the authority that it had no right to remove him from office and complained that it had harmed his reputation.

I hope Eliot Spitzer is enjoying his forced retirement.

Thanks to Instapundit for the link.