Birmingham TV anchor and veteran newsman Christopher Sign was found dead Saturday morning of an apparent suicide, police said.
After receiving a call at 8:13 a.m., Hoover, Alabama police and fire personnel arrived to find the 45-year-old Sign dead, which Hoover police Lt. Keith Czeskleba said is being investigated as a suicide, AL.com reported.
Sign was a longtime reporter for several local ABC affiliates and had been the evening anchor on ABC 33/40 since 2017.
“Our deepest sympathy is shared with Chris’s loving family and close friends,” Sinclair Broadcast Group Vice President and General Manager Eric S. Land said. “We have lost a revered colleague whose indelible imprint will serve forever as a hallmark of decency, honesty and journalist integrity. We can only hope to carry on Chris’s legacy. May his memory be a blessing.”
In June 2016, while he was working as a reporter and morning anchor at ABC affiliate KNXV-TV in Phoenix, Sign broke the story of a secret tarmac meeting that occurred between former President Bill Clinton and then Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
The meeting came days before then FBI Director James Comey announced the bureau would not recommend charges against then Democratic nominee for president Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server while secretary of state, although he called her handling of classified information “extremely careless.”
Both Lynch and former President Clinton claimed that the email investigation did not come up during their meeting. Lynch also said at the time that she would not recuse herself from the investigation but would accept the recommendation from the prosecutors. (RELATED: Trump Labels Death Of Former White House Aide Vince Foster ‘Very Fishy’)
Sign told Fox News in February 2020 that his family received numerous death threats after he broke the story, which was widely cited during the 2016 election cycle.
“My family received significant death threats shortly after breaking this story. Credit cards hacked. You know, my children, we have code words. We have secret code words that they know what to do.”
Sign also wrote a book about the story called “Secret On The Tarmac.”
In addition to the tarmac story, Sign also won a 2014 Emmy Award for breaking news for his coverage of the shooting of two Phoenix police officers and an Edward R. Murrow Award for spot news for his coverage of the search for the “Baseline Killer” and “Serial Shooter” who terrorized Phoenix in the summer of 2016.
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Sign attended the University of Alabama in the 1990s where he spent four years as an offensive lineman for the Crimson Tide.
He is survived by his wife Laura and their three sons.