First JFK Conference in Kenner

 Unending quest for truth in JFK assassination

SLIVERS TO PUZZLE HOPE TO POLLINATE INTEREST IN EXONERATING OSWALD

 

KENNER--Shreveport and Barksdale Air Force Base were mentioned by various speakers at the first Oswald Conference that attracted people from all over the country in October to share pieces of the puzzle of President John Kennedy's assassination.

 

Featured over two and a half days were authors and researchers with a collective knowledge of hundreds of years. Judyth Baker, who worked in a coffee shop with Oswald in New Orleans in 1963 and claimed to be his mistress, spoke several times. She was a prodigy in cancer research who shortly thereafter worked with Dr. Mary Sherman who was murdered, and a cast of assassination characters with such familiar names as David Ferrie, a central figure in District Attorney Jim Garrison's investigation of the assassination that brought Clay Shaw to trial.

 

Organizer Kris Millegan called the assassination a coup d'etat. "I want my country back," he said. He said he was there because of his father's CIA service, for his children and for the country. "This is a huge political act to celebrate (Lee Harvey) Oswald's birthday," he said.

 

"I'm not standing here just for Lee, I'm standing here for Kennedy," Baker said. She is putting together a declaration of innocence and trying to find a Congressman to help. When Baker worked with Oswald, he had conversations with her about operations being conducted against Fidel Castro possibly involving biological weapons. They visited Ferrie's home where he apparently kept mice.

 

Speaker Jim Marrs, a journalist and author, said the only certainty is Kennedy was shot in the head in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. Marrs said there is fabrication, suppression, alteration and destruction of evidence and intimidation of witnesses.

 

Shreveport newspaper

 

Edgar Tatro, professor and author, mentioned a Shreveport newspaper which published a photo purporting to be Ferrie with Shaw at a party. It was published by Ned Touchstone, editor of the Councilor. Tatro called it a "fanatical right wing newspaper." The photo is with WDSU personnel from 1949.

 

While the Mafia, CIA, Russians, Cubans and any number of groups could have killed Kennedy, Tatro said, they could not have gotten Kennedy's car to drive only 11 m.p.h. without a bubbletop through Dealey Plaza. That came from Lyndon Johnson's inner circle, he said. The press vehicle was not in its normal slot either.

 

Tatro said notes from Kennedy's secretary, Eleanor Lincoln, indicated that JFK wanted to dump LBJ from the ticket, calling that motive. He said LBJ aide Bill Moyers was sent to smooth over the details of the motorcade.

 

Another tidbit: Tatro said La. Rep. Hale Boggs, member of the Warren Commission, wasn't satisfied with the results. Bill Clinton drove Boggs to the airport for the flight to Alaska where his plane disappeared.

 

Tatro also mentioned Larry King's involvement. At the behest of Miami financier Louis Wolfson, King arranged a dinner with Garrison that included Wolfson, Miami DA Richard Gerstein and King. Wolfson was interested in Garrison’s investigation and offered to quietly provide $25,000 to underwrite it. King, with Gerstein, agreed to act as an intermediary to deliver the monthly allotments of $5,000 to Garrison. King didn’t hold up his end of the bargain.

 

Barksdale and Shreveport doctor

 

Rose Cherami of Eunice is depicted in Oliver Stone's JFK traveling with two men on Highway 190. She was taken to a hospital after being thrown out of the vehicle that she said was traveling to kill the President, then taken to jail, then to a state hospital, said Todd Elliott.

 

Elliott mentioned a doctor from Shreveport who also practiced at Charity Hospital in New Orleans who treated a woman who was brought in and asked, "Did they get Ruby, too?"

 

Cherami was a known heroin addict involved with organized crime and was arrested at Barksdale at 19, aiding soldiers in escape, Elliott said.

 

He said Jack Ruby, who shot Oswald, would stay at a Eunice hotel.

 

Elliott suggested Rufus Youngblood moved a little too soon to protect LBJ during the shooting and was given a promotion to head of the Secret Service.

 

Louisianan Barry Seal and Barksdale

 

Ten days after Watergate, Barry Seal was arrested for sending seven tons of explosives via cargo plane on the way to Mexico to trade for heroin. President Richard Nixon needed hush money from a Mexican connection, said author Daniel Hopsicker.

 

A movie is being made about Seal, who is rumored to pilot a get-away plane from Dallas.  Recently in the news was a story about a lawsuit attempting to stop the movie.

 

When he was 16, Seal was in a two-week summer camp with the Civil Air Patrol at Barksdale and supposedly came under the command of Ferrie and met cadet Oswald.

 

One of Seal's flight instructors said he was "first cousin to a bird."

 

The speaker does not believe Seal was murdered by cartel rivals.

 

He said the CIA moves people in and out of places without being seen through general aviation. He discussed sheep-dipped planes (washed through another company). H.L. Hunt's granddaughter owned some of these planes. Hunt spent money in an anti-Kennedy campaign because Kennedy was interested in revoking the oil depletion allowance, a decision that would have meant steep losses for Texas oilmen.

 

Dr. Mary's Monkey

 

This article can't begin to go into the complicated Dr. Mary's Monkey by Edward Haslam. He says Dr. Alton Ochsner's hospital was a covert research center which the CIA set up. Haslam believes that Ochsner, who was plugged into the national power structure and was president of the American Cancer Society, recruited Sherman to run an operation that was involved in carrying out secret research into developing a vaccine to prevent an epidemic of soft-tissue cancers caused by polio vaccine contaminated with SV-40. A spinoff project included using a linear particle accelerator in New Orleans.

 

Panelist Victoria Hawes said she was neighbors to Sherman and Juan Valdes and heard constant toilet flushing, which she later believed to be mice cancer carcasses. She knew Oswald from junior high school and he knocked on her door once, mistaking it for the apartment of Valdes. She would accept packages for Valdes that had to be refrigerated and he would pay her back for calls he made to Cuba from her phone.

 

Sherman's 1964 murder is still unsolved.

 

More from Marrs

 

Marrs mentioned no Oswald fingerprints on the rifle, no gunpowder on his face or hands and a live oak tree in the way of the shot. He said Maj. Phil Willis, an eyewitness, said, "If you told the Warren Commission yes, they'd put down no."

 

Other tidbits I never knew

 

A random encounters panel said the man who assembled the rifle for packaging to Washington, D.C., said it had a dirty bore, meaning it would not have just been recently shot three times.

 

Harry Byrd, owner of the Texas School Book Depository, was granted a large defense contract to build fighter planes by Johnson. It was suggested that he knew Ferrie via the Civil Air Patrol.

 

The mayor of Dallas was the brother of Charles Cabell, who was deputy director of the CIA until he resigned in the wake of the Bay of Pigs invasion.

 

Nixon and Joan Crawford were in Dallas at a Pepsi convention the day of the assassination.

Part II research from book

In 1984, Billie Sol Estes told a grand jury investigating the 1961 shooting death of Henry Marshall, an official with the Department of Agriculture, that Mac Wallace was his murderer. Estes, a long-time conman who served two prison terms for his crimes, said that Marshall possessed information linking Estes's fraudulent schemes to a heavily funded political slush fund run by LBJ. According to Estes, he and Johnson discussed the need to stop Marshall from making their illegal ties public. In exchange for immunity from prosecution, Estes was also prepared to provide the Department of Justice information of eight killings orchestrated by Johnson, including the assassination. He claimed that Wallace persuaded Jack Ruby to recruit Oswald and that Wallace fired a shot that struck Kennedy.

Barr McClellan, author of “Blood, Money & Power: How LBJ Killed JFK,” reiterated many of Estes's claims in 2003 stating that Johnson, Wallace, Estes and Cliff Carter were responsible for the death of Marshall. According to McClellan, Wallace fired one shot at Kennedy from the sixth floor then ran and escaped. He stated that fingerprints and an eyewitness placed Wallace in that location and that Wallace could be seen as a "shadowy figure" in photos of the building. In their 2003 obituary of Estes, the New York Times wrote that none of Estes's claims against LBJ were backed by evidence. McClellan was a lawyer with the law firm in Austin that handled LBJ's secret financial empire before and after he became president.

Marshall had been asked to investigate the activities of Billie Sol Estes and discovered that over a two-year period, Estes had purchased 3,200 acres of cotton allotments from 116 different farmers. Estes sent his lawyer, John P. Dennison, to meet Marshall in Robertson County. At the meeting in January 1961, Marshall told Dennison that Estes was clearly involved in a "scheme or device to buy allotments, and will not be approved, and prosecution will follow if this operation is ever used." Marshall was then offered a new post at headquarters. He assumed that Estes had friends in high places and that they wanted him removed from the field office in Robertson County. A week after the meeting between Marshall and Dennison, A. B. Foster, manager of Billie Sol Enterprises, wrote to Clifton C. Carter, a close aide to Johnson, telling him about the problems that Marshall was causing the company. On June 3, 1961, Marshall was found dead on his farm by the side of his Chevy Fleetside pickup truck. His rifle lay beside him. He had been shot five times with his own rifle. He had a lame arm. Soon after County Sheriff Howard Stegall arrived, he decreed that Marshall had committed suicide. No pictures were taken of the crime scene, no blood samples were taken of the stains on the truck (the truck was washed and waxed the following day), no check for fingerprints were made on the rifle or pickup. Marshall was beaten so badly one eyeball was hanging from its socket

Marshall's wife and brother refused to believe he had committed suicide and posted a $2,000 reward for information leading to a murder conviction. The undertaker, Manley Jones, also reported: "To me it looked like murder. I just do not believe a man could shoot himself like that." The undertaker's son, Raymond Jones, later said his daddy said Judge Farmer told him he was going to put suicide on the death certificate because the sheriff told him to.

Sybil hired an attorney, W. S. Barron, in order to persuade the Robertson County authorities to change the ruling on Marshall's cause of death. One man who did believe that Marshall had been murdered was Texas Ranger Clint Peoples. He had reported to Col. Homer Garrison, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, that it "would have been utterly impossible for Mr. Marshall to have taken his own life." Peoples also interviewed Nolan Griffin, a gas station attendant in Robertson County. Griffin claimed that on the day of Marshall's death, he had been asked by a stranger for directions to Marshall's farm. A Texas Ranger artist, Thadd Johnson, drew a facial sketch based on a description given by Griffin. Peoples eventually came to the conclusion that this man was Wallace, the convicted murderer of John Kinser. In the spring of 1962, Estes was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on fraud and conspiracy charges. Soon afterwards it was disclosed by the Secretary of Agriculture, Orville L. Freeman, that Marshall had been a key figure in the investigation into the illegal activities of Estes. As a result, the Robertson County grand jury ordered that the body of Marshall should be exhumed and an autopsy performed. After eight hours of examination, Dr. Joseph A. Jachimczyk confirmed that Marshall had not committed suicide.

On April 4, 1962, George Krutilek, Estes’s chief accountant, was found dead. Despite a severe bruise on Krutilek's head, the coroner decided that he had also committed suicide. The next day, Estes, and three business associates, were indicted by a federal grand jury on 57 counts of fraud. Two of these men, Harold Orr and Coleman Wade, later died in suspicious circumstances. At the time it was said they committed suicide but later Estes was to claim that both men were murdered by Wallace in order to protect the political career of Johnson. It was eventually discovered that three officials of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration in Washington had received bribes from Billie Sol Estes. Red Jacobs, Jim Ralph and Bill Morris were eventually removed from their jobs. However, further disclosures suggested that the Secretary of Agriculture might be involved in the scam. In September 1961, Billie Sol Estes had been fined $42,000 for illegal cotton allotments. Two months later, Freeman appointed Estes to the National Cotton Advisory Board.

Tommy G. McWilliams, the FBI agent in charge of the Marshall investigation, came to the conclusion that Marshall had indeed committed suicide. He wrote: "My theory was that he shot himself and then realized he wasn't dead." He then claimed that he then tried to kill himself by inhaling carbon monoxide from the exhaust pipe of his truck. McWilliams claimed that Marshall had used his shirt to make a hood over the exhaust pipe. Jachimczyk discovered a 15 percent carbon monoxide concentration in Marshall's body. Even J. Edgar Hoover was not impressed with this theory. He wrote on May 21, 1962: "I just can't understand how one can fire five shots at himself." The Robertson County grand jury continued to investigate the death of Marshall. However, some observers were disturbed by the news that grand jury member, Pryse Metcalfe, was dominating proceedings. Metcalfe was County Sheriff Howard Stegall's son-in-law. On June 1, 1962, the Dallas Morning News reported that Kennedy had "taken a personal interest in the mysterious death of Marshall. As a result, the story said, Robert Kennedy "has ordered the FBI to step up its investigation of the case." In June 1962, Billie Sol Estes, appeared before the grand jury. He was accompanied by John Cofer, a lawyer who represented Johnson when he was accused of ballot-rigging when elected to the Senate in 1948 and Mac Wallace when he was charged with the murder of John Kinser. Billie Sol Estes spent almost two hours before the grand jury, but he invoked the Texas version of the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer most questions on grounds that he might incriminate himself. Despite the evidence presented by Jachimczyk, the grand jury agreed with McWilliams. It ruled that after considering all the known evidence, the jury considers it "inconclusive to substantiate a definite decision at this time, or to overrule any decision heretofore made." Later, it was disclosed that some jury members believed that Marshall had been murdered. Ralph McKinney blamed Pryse Metcalfe for this decision. "Pryse was as strong in the support of the suicide verdict as anyone I have ever seen in my life, and I think he used every influence he possibly could against the members of the grand jury to be sure it came out with a suicide verdict."

Billie Sol Estes was released from prison in December 1983. Three months later he appeared before the Robertson County grand jury. He confessed that Marshall was murdered because it was feared he would "blow the whistle" on the cotton allotment scam. Billie Sol Estes claimed that Marshall was murdered on the orders of LBJ, who was afraid that his own role in this scam would become public knowledge. According to Estes, Clifton C. Carter, Johnson's long-term aide, had ordered Marshall to approve 138 cotton allotment transfers. Billie Sol Estes also told the grand jury that he met Carter and Wallace at his home in Pecos after Marshall was killed. Wallace described how he waited for Marshall at his farm. He planned to kill him and make it appear as if Marshall committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. However, Marshall fought back and he was forced to shoot him with his own rifle. He quoted Carter as saying that Wallace "sure did botch it up." Johnson was now forced to use his influence to get the authorities in Texas to cover up the murder.

The grand jury did change the verdict on the death of Marshall from suicide to death by gunshot.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Killing Kennedy, new book by Jack Roth

At a recent JFK conference I attended, disturbing news regarding Dealey Plaza was discovered.. The city is planning to “renovate” it – meaning removing the picket fence, the grassy knoll and who knows what else, and replacing these markers of the assassination with something more acceptable to the city. We were told that the Dallas newspaper and The Sixth Floor Museum are pushing this idea. We see this as a move to begin removing any and all references to the assassination. Students (such as the ones who attended) or people new to the details of the assassination would not be able to see the terrain exactly as it was in 1963 and be able to make their own judgments about what happened there.

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” -- Carl Sagan

Now for my notes on the new “Killing Kennedy” by Jack Roth. Everything you read is like a storm drain. One thing leads to more that goes down the drain. Most excellent book and what I learned:

Ever heard anyone say I’m a patsy? No. Oswald did because he was. Jim Garrison said he is the only assassin who hopped on public transportation to get away. Oswald didn’t have money to travel as alluded.

Bullets over ballots could be a theme. The shots didn’t come from the grassy knoll. They came from the Pentagon. The assassination is not a stand-alone thing that happened on 11/22/63. Leaders didn’t suddenly become corrupt that day. It’s standard operating procedure. Governments are corrupt. Ninety percent believe there was a conspiracy. The other 10 percent work in the government and the media. Reporter Jim Koethe was killed with karate chop to the throat as he came out of the shower. It’s safe to say that is the only death of its kind. One of the chapters was from someone who examined backgrounds of politicians, celebs and business leaders and in almost every case the overwhelming majority of them were popular in high school. They played a sport. People who run things in high school go on to run society. That’s why they have a vested interest in social hierarchy because it has served them well.

Dave Morales, CIA--file has been sanitized. X-rays of JFK are copies.

Who controlled Texas? Some of the occupants of the TSBD included right-wingers like the Byrd family. They owned a lot of land in Dallas and were good friends with LBJ. You can see pictures of them at football games. Bill Shelley, Oswald’s supervisor at the TSBD was CIA. He had connections to anti-Communism groups. Dulles was fired but operated behind the scenes. LBJ put him on the Warren Commission so he is controlling the evidence after the assassination.

Josepha Johnson, LBJ’s sister, died mysteriously on Christmas Eve 1961. They had a party that night and Mac Wallace was there. She was found dead the next day. The coroner called it natural without examining over the phone. She was buried the next day. Wallace’s fingerprints were said to be found in the TSBD and he was said to be a good shot. And he practiced. Johnson was involved in murders back to 1951. The first was John Douglas Kinser. He took a liking to Josepha as well as Mac’s wife. Mac was at the Department of Ag in Washington as an economist. The job was arranged by LBJ. There was a menage a trois. Mac’s wife was said to be bisexual. Immediately after the first shot at Kinser, one golfer outside the clubhouse observed a man inside holding a revolver. Three golfers on the course observed the man running from the clubhouse and getting into his car, and one of them noted the car's make and license plate number. Three patrolmen with the Texas Highway Patrol stopped the car nine miles from Austin on the Burnet Highway. According to one of the patrolmen, the driver perfectly fit the description provided by the golfers and his shirt was torn and bloodied. The suspect and witness were taken to the headquarters of the Austin Police Department for questioning. Wallace was identified as the man leaving the scene with a snubnosed pistol, and three bullet shells were found near Kinser's body. Detectives revealed no motive in the killing as Wallace refused to answer their questions. He was charged the following day with murder and the justice of the peace set bail at $30,000. Two days after the killing, the district attorney accused the local sheriff of "obstructing the investigation" stating that he had refused to transport Wallace to the Texas Department of Public Safety for identification testing. According to the sheriff, Wallace protested the move and his defense attorney, Polk Shelton, had asked that Wallace not be moved. Wallace was represented at the trial by John Cofer, longtime lawyer to Johnson, who had also represented LBJ during his contested election to the United States Senate in 1948 that was tainted by allegations of voter fraud. A paraffin test on Wallace's hands tested positive for gunshot residue and that blood on his shirt matched blood found at the club house at the golf course. The prosecution did not attempt to establish a motive for the shooting, nor did it produce an eyewitness to it or the murder weapon. The following day, the prosecution and defense completed their closing arguments and the jury was charged that afternoon. After deliberating into the evening, the jury was sequestered. After listening to 29.5 hours of testimony from 23 different witnesses, on Feb. 27 the jury returned its verdict finding Wallace guilty of "murder with malice." He was sentenced to five years --suspended. Questioned as to why the prosecution did not attempt to provide a motive, Shelton stated that they were not required to establish a motive but it was "probably because they couldn't." On Jan. 7, 1971, Wallace died when his car ran off the road 3.5 miles south of Pittsburg, Texas, on U.S. Route 271. Noting that the highway was neither icy nor wet, the investigating patrolman stated that Wallace had struck a bridge abutment after apparently losing control of his car.

A number of authors claim Wallace was involved in a conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy upon orders from then-VP Johnson.

LBJ was manic depressive. He would stay in bed for days. He described it as being in a Louisiana swamp, drowning with the gators and snakes.

There was a plane crash at LBJ’s ranch in 1961 or 62. The actual crash was three days earlier than announced. He wasn’t on the plane. Taxpayers had paid for a runway on his ranch before he was president. The plane’s ownership was a mystery.

Two of JFK’s closer aides Dave Powers and Kenneth O’Donnell reported what they witnessed including the shots from the grassy knoll. Decades later Tip O’Neill was told by them that the FBI said it couldn’t have happened that way, that they were imagining things. So they testified the way they wanted them to and didn’t want to add more pain and trouble for the Kennedy family. This was not learned until O’Neill’s memoirs. Imagine what non-close friends were twisted to do.

One lady’s father filmed something, got in his car, drove from the TSBD to the First National Bank where his cousin was president and left the film.

A cheap metal casket was taken out of Kennedy’s hearse into the morgue at 6:30 p.m. The honor guard took the Britannica casket (empty/bricks}? from the motorcade at 8 p.m. There was a body switheroo on the helicopter during the swearing in. And one in an ambulance. Kennedy meant nothing while he was alive, so dead either.

JFK’s cerebellum was said to be swinging in the breeze.

Oswald’s landlady received threats, so she closed the house to the press and other visitors. But you can see the boarding house where Oswald lived today for a $30 cost of admission. It includes a sit-down with the granddaughter of the landlord. She said people want to know the man. She says she can help them do that. She was at her grandmother’s house every day after school, she says, so she recalls frequent interactions with “Mr. Lee.” He helped her with schoolwork and played with her brothers, she says. She remembers him as a kind young man.

In September 1980, Charles Harrelson surrendered to police after a six-hour standoff in which he was reportedly high on cocaine. During the standoff, he threatened suicide, stating that he had killed both Judge Wood and Kennedy. In a television interview after his arrest, Harrelson said: "At the same time I said I had killed the judge, I said I had killed Kennedy, which might give you an idea to the state of my mind at the time." Joseph Chagra later testified during Harrelson's trial that Harrelson claimed to have shot Kennedy and drew maps to show where he was hiding during the assassination. Chagra said that he did not believe Harrelson's claim, and the AP reported that the FBI apparently discounted any involvement by Harrelson in the Kennedy assassination. In 1982, Harrelson told KDFW-TV, "Do you believe that Lee Harvey Oswald killed President Kennedy, alone, without any aid from a rogue agency of the US government or at least a portion of that agency? I believe you are very naïve if you do."

Latest JFK Conference

Not to know what happened before you were born is to remain a child. Cicero. This was a quote by speaker David Denton at the JFK Assassination Conference this weekend. He said agents were removed from the security detail before the motorcade. “Maybe they had to go to lunch?”

A presentation was made by Paul Bleau who reviewed 16 textbooks and did email exchanges with authors. He said they skew Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone assassin. The only investigation referred to in any of them was the Warren Commission. One teacher did a lesson with a mock scene with 11 teams acting out various scenarios.

On Nov. 22, 1963, Ed Hoffman stood on the shoulder of the Stemmons Expressway in Dallas when Kennedy was assassinated. The deaf witness claimed he saw a man with a rifle moments after the shots were fired. He later described how a man wearing a dark suit and tie, with an overcoat, ran west along the wooden fence with a rifle and tossed it to a second man who was dressed like a railroad worker. The second man then disassembled the rifle and put it in a soft brown bag. Hoffman immediately tried to alert the Secret Service agents about what he had seen. However, unable to understand what he was trying to say, he was threatened with a machine gun (believed to have been George Hickey). He then attempted to tell his story to a Dallas policeman (believed to be Earle Brown). Unable to understand him, Brown waved him away. Hoffman then visited the local Federal Bureau of Investigation office. No officers were there and so he left written details with the receptionist. (The FBI never responded to this note.) Hoffman told his father, Frederick Hoffman, about what he saw. His father, concerned that his son could be in danger, urged him not to tell anyone about what he had seen. Hoffman did tell his story to his uncle, Robert Hoffman, a Dallas police officer. However, the police officer decided not to take the story to the Dallas Police Department. In June 1967, Hoffman took his story to the FBI.  When agents checked out his story they discovered his father did not want it investigated.  Hoffman did keep quiet until 1975 when he wrote to Edward Kennedy about his story. Kennedy replied: "My family has been aware of various theories concerning the death of President Kennedy, just as it has been aware of many speculative accounts which have arisen from the death of Robert Kennedy. I am sure that it is understood that the continual speculation is painful for members of my family. We have always accepted the findings of the Warren Commission report and have no reason to question the quality and the effort of those who investigated the fatal shooting of Robert Kennedy." On March 25, 1977, Hoffman contacted the FBI again. This time Hoffman took with him Richard H. Freeman, one of the supervisors at Texas Instruments where he worked. Freeman understood sign language and was able to help explain in more detail what Hoffman saw. Again the FBI showed little interest in pursuing the story.

S. M. (Skinny) Sam Holland on Nov. 22, watched the motorcade from the overpass in Dealey Plaza. He said that when Kennedy was shot he saw a puff of gunsmoke under the branches of a tree on the grassy knoll. Holland later gave evidence to the Warren Commission, who reported: "According to S. M. Holland, there were four shots which sounded as though they came from the trees on the north side of Elm Street where he saw a puff of smoke.

Motorcycle cop Bobby Hargis was riding to Kennedy's left and behind him, was struck by brain matter/skull when the President's head exploded. That must mean that the shot came from in front of Kennedy and to his right. This claim goes back to Josiah Thompson's book “Six Seconds in Dallas.”  This debris [from the President's head] hit Hargis with such force that he told reporters the next day, "I thought at first I might have been hit." It seemed like the motion of the President's head or his body and the splatter had hit me, it seemed like both the locations needed investigating, and that's why I investigated them. But you couldn't tell, there was -- it looked like a million windows on the Book Depository. You couldn't tell exactly if there was anyone in there with a gun.

Given Hargis' position to Kennedy's left and behind him, he should have been able to see the back of Kennedy's head blow out, if that indeed had happened. Yet he explicitly says that he saw a "splash come out on the other side." He, in other words, is describing a wound to the right side of Kennedy's head. So it's deeply ironic that conspiracy authors have used him as a "back of the head" witness. Hargis remained consistent in his story. He was on the force only a week when he was given the assignment to flank JFK's limo -- left side, ten feet behind. A few minutes later, while at the TSBD, a co-worker leaned forward and flicked something off Hargis' upper lip.

On Nov. 22, Abraham Zapruder filmed the motorcade. Zapuder's film was sold to Life Magazine. In charge of the purchase was C. D. Jackson, a close friend of Henry Luce, the owner of the magazine. According to Carl Bernstein, Jackson was "Henry Luce's personal emissary to the CIA." On the 29th Life Magazine, published a series of 31 photographs documenting the entire shooting sequence from the Zapruder film. It was only later discovered that the critical frames that depicted the rearward motion of Kennedy's head had been printed to indicate a forward motion. James Wagenvoord, the editorial business manager and assistant to Life Magazines executive editor, realized that a mistake had been made: "I asked about it when the stills were first printed, (they didn't read right) and then duped for distribution to the European and British papers/magazines. The only response I go was an icy stare from Dick Pollard, Life's director of photography. So being an ambitious employee, I had them distributed." In its Dec. 6 edition, Paul Mandel wrote an article about the assassination in Life Magazine. "The doctor said one bullet passed from back to front on the right side of the President’s head. But the other, the doctor reported, entered the President’s throat from the front and then lodged in his body. Since by this time the limousine was 50 yards past Oswald and the President’s back was turned almost directly to the sniper, it has been hard to understand how the bullet could enter the front of his throat. Hence the recurring guess that there was a second sniper somewhere else.”

The Texas State Archives once displayed the bullet-riddled clothes worn by Gov. John Connally on the day he was wounded. The white cotton shirt, with faded bloodstains clearly visible, and a black business suit were the centerpiece of a display. “There are bullet holes both in the back and the front of the suit jacket. There is one bullet hole in the wearer’s right cuff, and there is another in the left leg, on the front. Connally donated the shirt, suit and the striped tie he was wearing to the state archives while he was still hospitalized.

As was said, you don’t put all your marbles in one guy. As in if it was Oswald. But it wasn’t!

Tidbit: Marina Oswald’s mail was watched for seven years.

My Mother's Treasure Leads To Finding Author Who Hasn't Spoken To Media in 58 Years

My Mother’s JFK Treasure Leads To Finding Author Who Hasn’t Spoken To Media in 58 Years

By Mary Ann Van Osdell

A 15-year-old New York sophomore’s class assignment on President John Kennedy’s assassination went viral so to speak before social media even existed.

Barbara Jones Maher’s poem, “Special Delivery from Heaven,” was famous in 1963 and is still found on eBay. It was one of my mother’s treasures. It has been translated into 10 languages and made into a recording. People from all over the world (Europe and Asia) sent Barbara letters when they read it.

“This is the only time I have ever responded to someone wanting to talk about my JFK poem despite many such requests over the years,” Barbara said, adding that said has had her reasons for not speaking about it. “There seem to be a number of compelling reasons for me to do so at this moment in time,” she said.

“I felt the poem had little literary merit,” said Barbara, now 73, who has enjoyed writing since she was 5.

Her English class at Sacred Heart High School in Yonkers was asked to submit a eulogy for Kennedy for the school newspaper. Always obedient since it was a Catholic school, Barbara is still surprised she didn’t write a eulogy. “It was out of character for me.” She wrote the poem in 10 minutes.

“It came from my heart and was never meant for anyone else,” Barbara said. Yet it touched the city in which her father served as police lieutenant and later deputy chief (he worked on the Son of Sam case). He shared the raw copy with his precinct and so many others wanted copies that it was sent over the teletype system.

The school newspaper was being dedicated to the slain President. Because of Barbara’s sentiments, the New York Journal-American did a Sunday feature and other large newspapers also published -- before the Sacred Heart Green-Gold Echoes. The school newspaper lost the scoop.

“It went from friend to friend,” Barbara said. Her brother Edward, a student at Iona College, showed it around campus and he was also swamped with requests. More and more newspaper reporters got a hold of it.

“It just blew up,” Barbara said. “It gave people comfort.” Barbara said camera crews began following her around, even at the bowling alley.

The Post Office delivered mailbags to her high school and some put money in their letters. Barbara’s parents returned the money and responded personally to hundreds of letters “despite the expense of postage." The letters were kept in several large suitcases and poem-related articles and clippings were in several scrapbooks, but sadly their house was completely destroyed by fire. Barbara only has a few in her basement. Her father died as a result of the fire and her mother not long after.

Barbara got a formal thank you from Jacqueline Kennedy. The poem is in the Congressional Record. On  Jan. 15, 1964, in Rep. Jacob Gilbert’s extension of remarks, he called the poem “splendid” and  added that it had beautiful thoughts of a young lady that will touch everyone.

Notoriety was unwelcome to Barbara. She called herself a “nerd,” and most importantly, was someone who never wanted to profit from a murder. Barbara refused compensation for appearances in the tri-state area beyond gas and tolls.

Barbara did agree to read occasionally at her father's urging and they attended the annual Alfred E. Smith dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria. She wore a velvet gown and her father donned a tuxedo. She met Cardinal Francis Spellman and Bishop Fulton Sheen. Spellman founded the event in 1945 to raise funds for Catholic charities supporting children.

Barbara is also a lifetime member of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.

She turned down four academically-earned college scholarships as well as two others offered by generous benefactors touched by her poem. Instead, she married her high school sweetheart Bobby at age 19. Sadly, he died of cancer just ten years later, leaving Barbara to raise their two little girls alone.

She lucked into a teaching job at her alma mater, later got a bachelor’s degree and a master’s in psychology in three years and has taught college classes.

Barbara said she never gave an English assignment that she wouldn’t do herself. The students did not write their names on their papers, but used identification numbers. Therefore, they could talk about the papers, not knowing who wrote them. She put her own work in the mix. 

A giant laminated copy of her poem was placed at Sacred Heart and later sent to her parents.

Barbara is now retired and enjoys a memoir writing group with a dozen talented people. Barbara takes great joy in having her daughters and teenage grandson living nearby.

Barbara said she never set out to defy her parents about getting a free education, but thought marriage was the right thing and has no regrets. “We had nothing and we had everything,” she said.

“I value the same things as before,” she added.

She met “wonderful, generous people” as a young poet. She says sometimes she just says, “It happened and I can’t believe it happened.”

However, “any number of people claim to have written it” and one could buy copies on plates and placards from others. It’s disheartening, but Barbara has come to terms about everything and will no longer rule out going to Kennedy memorials or conferences in the future.

She doesn’t have an opinion on who killed Kennedy. “I don’t know. At the time I knew little,” she said. “I was enamored with him and deeply moved, but have no strong feeling on who did it.”

Barbara remembers being in Mr. McCormick’s American history class when a rare notice came over the public address system. The announcement said, “Something terrible happened and we need to say a prayer.”

Later, the students were told about the assassination and Barbara said you could hear a pin drop. Class was dismissed early.

Years later she was teaching in her classroom and watched the Twin Towers burn.

Editor’s Note: With the possibility that this story stirs up more media requests of Barbara, I wanted to make sure she was prepared. She answered, “Yes, I’m an adult now.”

 Sidebar

Everything happens for a reason. Nothing happens by accident.

Barbara said there are some really strange parallels/coincidences that appear to be at force after being tracked down for this story. She said she keeps humming a spiritual from a key scene in The Color Purple, “Maybe God’s trying to tell you somethin’.”

“I hope you don’t mind that I Googled you,” she told me after I also used Google to find her. I found her father’s obituary since his name was on the explanation of the poem. It led to finding Barbara’s sister on Facebook. Her sister passed on my phone number.

“Your interests are important to me,” Barbara texted.

Since reading “Gone with the Wind “ as a young girl, she’s been obsessed with all things Southern, from culture to cuisine and all things in between. Visits one day to New Orleans, Savannah and Charleston are at the top of her bucket list.

The ninth annual JFK Assassination Conference (where I have been asked to give the opening prayer and sparked my interest in finding Barbara) is being held at the Magnolia Hotel in Dallas where the famous Pegasus Flying Red Horse adorns the roof. Barbara’s brother flew F-15s and his squadron was called Pegasus. He died Nov. 5.

Barbara found that I love memoir writing. She does, too. She knew that I wrote a book called Hands Pointed Up, which includes inspirational sayings that include the word "up” to help people keep a positive attitude. She is always inspired by her late husband's positivity and his favorite expression in the face of ANY adversity--big or small--was “It’s Just A Little Inconvenience.” In fact, J A L I is the title of the memoir she is currently writing.

She noticed I once served on the Food Bank board of directors and said she, too, worked on food drives.

She thought my name was German and her brother loved to visit Germany. My maternal grandparents were born in Germany.

Yes, something, rather Someone, was at play for us to connect. Thank you, God.