Nearly five years after the shocking death of 45-year-old Christopher Sign - the popular Birmingham TV anchorman found dead in what authorities ruled a suicide - the mystery surrounding his final days has by no means gone away.

Today, those closest to him remain convinced he did not take his own life, even as they remain divided over what, exactly, led to his death.

Sign broke the explosive 2016 story about Bill Clinton's secret meeting on the tarmac in Phoenix with then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch, amid the ongoing investigation into whether his wife Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while Secretary of State was illegal.  

The journalist had told friends and colleagues that he got death threats and feared for his life because of the scoop.

The revelation of the meeting between Loretta Lynch and Bill Clinton sparked intense political backlash and prompted a public reckoning within the Justice Department. Both insisted it was an impromptu friendly chat.

It also led Lynch to pledge that she would accept the recommendations of career prosecutors and the FBI regarding the investigation into Hillary Clinton's email practices - while also becoming one of the most charged media stories of the 2016 campaign and placing Sign under heavy scrutiny. Clinton was never prosecuted  in connection with her email practices.

Sign repeatedly insisted - to friends and family and in the pages of his 2020 book, 'Secret on the Tarmac' - that he was not suicidal in case anything happened to him.

'I made it clear (to others) in front of my wife that I was not suicidal,' Sign wrote. 'We all laughed but deep down knew it was serious.'

He even appeared on Fox and Friends that year, describing how he was so concerned about his family's safety that he taught his three young sons 'secret code words.'

Yet, after he was found hanged from his home office door on the morning of June 12, 2021 by his wife and eldest son, the Jefferson County Coroner's office immediately ruled it a suicide.

The 6'1", 215lb former University of Alabama lineman had apparently hanged himself with a puppy leash and his feet were touching the floor.

'None of it makes any sense,' Bill Naugher, the Birmingham-based publisher of Sign's book, told the Daily Mail.

'It's very fishy. I don't know what to think but I know nothing in this story adds up.'

Despite multiple phone calls, emails and in-person visits by the Daily Mail to Hoover Police Captain Keith Czeskleba, who handled the case at the time, and former Hoover Police Chief Nick Derzis, who is now the mayor, both refused to comment.

Right wing conspiracy theorists including Alex Jones, Dan Bongino, Lauren Boebert and Charlie Kirk suggested at the time that Sign was another victim of the so-called 'Clinton Body Count,' and members of a Facebook group called 'Justice for Christopher Sign' posted comments after his death claiming that the Clintons had Sign murdered. No evidence has ever been presented and the Clintons have never been charged.

But as time has passed, the Daily Mail can reveal that many in Sign's inner circle are questioning everything about his death, including the theory that Sign's very vocal fears about being politically 'suicided' would make a good cover for someone who wanted him dead for other reasons.

His former University of Alabama football teammate Josh Swords, a former prosecutor and judge-turned defense attorney in Tuscaloosa, is one of many who swear that Sign was a devoted husband and family man who lived for his three young sons - and had no history of depression, financial difficulties, mental illness or substance abuse.

'This was a 45-year-old guy at the top of his game with a beautiful stay-at-home wife and three rising superstar sons,' Swords told the Daily Mail.

'He was planning to meet our friend Bubba from Tennessee the very next day with his son and they were all going to a baseball game. His boys were about to start full pad football. 

'Father's Day was coming up and all three boys had birthdays coming up. He even had a vacation scheduled. 

'He loves his job, he came home on a Friday night after a great week at work - and decides to kill himself at home where his boys are? No way, no how.'

Swords, like numerous friends and relatives of Sign's interviewed by the Daily Mail, are frustrated with what they say has been a lack of transparency about the case from the police as well as Sign's widow, Laura, 47, whom he met when they were both at the University of Alabama.

Naugher said the lack of a full autopsy remains one of the biggest unresolved issues.

'I don't know why we didn't pump the brakes a little bit and say, "Listen, it's in the book that he's not going to commit suicide, so let's at least honor his request and take a couple of days to do a full autopsy." But once the death was ruled a suicide that shut it down.' 

Laura, who is engaged to a local man whom she began dating within a year of her husband's passing, had Sign cremated less than 48 hours after his death without his family being consulted or being able to see his body.

The Sign family was especially upset that Sign was cremated miles away from Hoover in a shabby area of Birmingham across from the city's most dangerous housing project, Gate City.

They also say Laura has almost completely frozen Sign's family out of her life and her sons' lives.

Laura came into a reported $2 million life insurance policy when Sign died as well as a mortgage policy that paid off their suburban Hoover home.

She has since moved with her sons and fiancé, Matt Fagan, a divorcé who has three sons of his own, to a palatial $1 million home about 30 minutes away in a luxe gated community in rural Chelsea.

Sign's 80-year-old mother, Susan Sign, told the Daily Mail that she has not seen her grandsons since Christopher's funeral - a separation she says has only deepened the grief of losing him under circumstances she still struggles to accept.

Mrs Sign said that she had what she thought was a close and loving relationship with Laura - and was shocked at how she was greeted when she and her husband arrived at the Sign home the day after Christopher's death after driving in from Texas.

'There was just this sea of strange faces and Laura barely said hello to me,' Mrs Sign said.

'I expected her to take me aside to talk to me. Then I told her mother I would like to see his body and have his brother select his clothes, and the mother told me, "oh he's already been cremated." 

'That was a difficult moment for me, not to have the opportunity to take one last look at my son.'

Mrs Sign added that she sent her three grandsons gifts for Christmas one year - but they were returned and Laura accused her of spreading rumors that could harm the boys.

Sign's older brother, Bobby, also said he considered himself 'super tight' with Christopher and always liked Laura. 

Like many interviewed by the Daily Mail, Bobby said he saw no indication of tension between the couple - nor did he ever notice anything strange about Laura.

But lately, as he said he's slowly come out of the 'fog' surrounding his brother's death, he's become more angry about how he says Laura treated the Sign family after Christopher's death.

'It was almost like she was saying, "I'm done with your son and now I get to be done with you",' he said. 

'She treated my mom like s**t and all the Sign family had to find hotels when we came for Chris' funeral while Laura's family stayed at their house.'

When talking about his brother's death, he shared: 'So many things happened (and I think) somebody did this to him. Somebody turned off the cameras in his house. 

'Somebody took the body from his house and went to a bad part of town, to a morgue and had his body cremated. Somebody did this in the house with the kids there.'

Sign's older sister, Stephanie, told the Daily Mail that she was not particularly close to Laura and so was shocked when she said Laura called her out of the blue in the summer of 2023, a call she said was witnessed via speakerphone by her son Seth.

'She was like, hey, she wanted to tell me something so badly,' Stephanie recalled.

'She said, "This was a terrible, terrible mistake." I said, what was? And it sounded as if she was drinking or something and she just kept repeating it over and over for like an hour. 

'I kept saying to her, "what was the mistake? Tell me what it was." I kept her on the phone for as long as I could and then she just abruptly hung up.'

Two sources familiar with both Laura Sign and Matt Fagan told the Daily Mail that their children - her three sons and his three boys - all believe, in the words of one insider, 'that the Clintons did it.'

'It's sort of strange considering it was Laura's family that arranged the funeral and spoke to the priest and the priest's homily was all about suicide,' the source said. 

'If it was suicide, where are the boys hearing that it was the Clintons?'

Laura Sign has never commented publicly about her husband's death, though two friends of hers in Hoover staunchly defend her on the 'Justice for Christopher Sign' Facebook page - saying she's been unfairly trashed for circumstances beyond her control.

'I understand the curiosity and trying to make sense of something none of us can make sense of, but please understand that this is our life and we miss him daily,' she wrote in a text to the Daily Mail to explain why she declined to answer questions.

'The boys and I keep our focus on his life and legacy, on the outstanding husband, father, brother, friend and journalist he was, and not on the ending.'

Matt Fagan did not respond to the Daily Mail requests for comment.