JFK Assassination Documents to be released this year

[FISHY1118]

Casket switching? Seriously?

Switching caskets would require actual magic. Either the body has to be transferred between airplanes in mid-flight without anyone noticing or you need a second body close enough to JFK's body that it will fool x-rays and dental records.

Besides, no Conspiracy would need to switch caskets.

Other witnesses might be mistaken, but the casket switching nonsense means that O'Connell is either lying or delusional.

I see you chose the "Liar Liar pants on fire approach" ..... Again... You really need to study the records more closely .I'll make it easy for you ok .

[Herlock Sholmes]

Although it’s been shown that the theories that Roscoe White and Mac Wallace were involved in Kennedy’s assassination are laughably preposterous it has at least shown how strange is the situation that we find ourselves in on this subject. We get conspiracy supporters telling those that support a lone gunman that we have just been suckered by the establishment. It’s a typical CT outlook - conspiracy theorists are the clever, insightful truth seekers, whilst believers in the lone gunman theory are just stupid, sheep, dupes of the government etc. It helps some CT’s feel superior. Can anything be more ironic though when we consider the joke theories that proposed White and Wallace which have actually been taken seriously on this very thread. How is it possible to read the entirety of the evidence, and not the ‘cherrypicked from a conspiracy theorist website’ version, and still consider these two as plausible gunmen? I’d suggest that it isn’t possible at all. White and Wallace can safely be consigned to the dustbin of history along side ‘Badgeman’ and Jim Garrison and Beverley Oliver and Roger Craig and Bonar Menninger and a whole host of others distractions.

No one could have failed to notice how we regularly get the ‘mock trial’ trial in London being treated with derision. Of course no one has ever claimed this as a real trial (the clue is in the word ‘mock’ of course) but it involved two top prosecutors, a very reasonable selection of witnesses called by both defence and prosecution (considering they had to travel to the UK), a real judge, and a jury of average people with no preconceptions. But the point of course is this - does anyone on here think for a second that if Oswald had been found ‘not guilty’ any conspiracy supporter (mentioning no names of course) would have said: “oh well, it was only a MOCK trial.” Of course not. They would have been jumping up and down crowing endlessly about how a conspiracy had been proven. If certain people weren’t so annoyed by the fact that Oswald was unanimously found guilty then they wouldn’t bother mentioning it at every opportunity (even though no one else was mentioning it) would they?

So what can we look at next…how about witness Paul O’Connor? Yet another witness that someone has read about on a conspiracy theory website (advice - if anything is on a CT website it’s probably wrong)

O’Connor was a 21 year old Lab Assistant at the Bethesda morgue whose job was to assist in post mortem examinations. David Lifton, in his 700 page fantasy ‘Best Evidence’, devotes a chapter to him and his claim the Kennedy arrived at Bethesda with his brain entirely absent in a cheap casket and in a body bag. That his cranium just contained bits of brain matter. This is of course repudiated by the Autopsy Report which said that the left hemisphere of Kennedy’s brain was intact.

O’Connor was called by Gerry Spence for the defence at the London Mock Trial which conspiracy theorists like to dismiss because Oswald was found unanimously guilty (what other verdict could there have been?) Bugliosi then spoke to O’Connor getting him to explain how the missing brain must have been such a shocking sight. And how important such information would have been. He then asked why, when he was being interviewed at his home for the HSCA for ninety minutes in 1978, that he failed to mention it. O’Connor’s answer was that he had been told not to talk about it. The problem with this nonsense excuse is that the HSCA had got Harold Brown, the Secretary of Defence to rescind the November 22nd 1963 verbal order of Surgeon General Edward Kenney given to those present at the autopsy not to disclose their observation except under court order. In 1978 letters had been sent all personnel that were in the Autopsy Room allowing them to speak entirely freely to the HSCA. O’ Connor admitted that he had received his letter.

When Bugliosi had spoken to O’Connor over the phone though he had claimed that the reason that he hadn’t spoken about the absent brain was because he hadn’t been asked! So why the change of excuse?

But there’s a problem with this too because in 1979, over a year after speaking to the HSCA, he was contacted and interviewed by author David Lifton and O’Connor volunteered the story about the brain. Note…volunteered…without being asked.

Years later Bugliosi came into possession of a document, which he didn’t have when he first spoke to O’Connor, which showed that O’Connor had actually spoke to the HSCA in 1977 and that he had indeed mentioned the missing brain. Being an honest investigator Bugliosi made an apology in his book (and didn’t sit on it like some would have done) even though he wasn’t to know that O’Connor had already mentioned it in an earlier interview but he also made the very valid point that at no time in London did O’Connor mention this earlier interview! Why didn’t he say that despite not mentioning it in the 1978 interview he had mentioned it in the 1977 one? Why did he use the lame ‘I couldn’t talk excuse?’ This guy is hardly a straight talker. Imagine having a conversation with him…it would drive you insane.

When we look at the autopsy and take into consideration doctors, lab assistants, photographer, FBI agents, military personnel and others (including 4 men from the funeral home) we get a grand total of thirty two people. Only one of those claimed that the President’s brain being missing. Now what are the chances of thirty one being wrong and just one right? I mean..in the real world of course.

John Stringer Jnr, the Navy’s photographer at the Autopsy said: “Dr. Humes took the brain out of the President’s head and put it in a jar of formalin. I personally saw this. I don’t know how anyone could say that the President had no brain, except for money.” I have to agree.

O’Connor also told the HSCA that the President’s body arrived in a pink shipping casket. He told Lifton that it arrived in a “cheap, pinkish gray casket, just a tin box.” Ok..

FBI agents Sibert and O’Neill carried the coffin from the limousine to an anteroom next to the autopsy room. Sibert recalled that one of the coffin handles was damaged. He couldn’t recall the specific colour of the casket but: “it was a very expensive one, definitely not a shipping casket.” He also recalled that it was “very, very heavy.”

Photographer Stringer described the coffin as being: “an expensive, very heavy bronze casket. It definitely wasn’t a cheap shipping casket.”

O’Connor even claimed that the President arrived in a body bag. Does anyone else take the same position? Photography assistant Floyd Reibe said: “I think the President was in a body bag.” Dr. John Stover said: “I think I remember seeing a body bag peeled off the President.” Not massively confident sounding are they? Why the need for the word ‘think?’

What did Sibert and O’Neill say? : “the complete body was wrapped in a sheet and the head area contained an additional wrapping which was saturated with blood.” Sibert confirmed this in an 2000 telephone conversation with Bugliosi.

John Stringer said that the body was: “wrapped in two sheets, one around the head, the other around the rest of his body. The body was nude.” He was adamant that there was no body bag. No ‘i think’ about it.

In 1992 the disgracefully maligned Dr. Humes was asked about the ‘body bag’ and said: “ I cannot imagine how this talk about the President’s body being delivered in a body bag got started but it is absolutely false.” He added that the body was wrapped in sheets.

How about the two Parkland nurses who tended Kennedy’s body before it was put into the coffin. Were they ‘in on it’ to? Nurse Diana Bowron: “we wrapped some extra sheets around his head so it wouldn’t look so bad.” Nurse Margaret Henchliffe: “..after the last rites were said, we….wrapped him up in sheets.”

Conspiracy theorists love to quote Parkland staff as supporting their theories. They were all infallible in their observations according to CT’s. I bet those two Parkland nurses were the exception to the rule though.

Lifton, in a footnote, quotes a funeral home employee who also stated that the President wasn’t in a body bag he still chose to go with O’ Connor for his theory (a ‘to be expected piece’ of cherrypicking).


So…brain missing… thirty one say definitely ‘no’ one person says ‘yes.’ - Not difficult is it?

Cheapo coffin….not according to the majority.

Body in a bag, O’Connor and the uncertain two or…everyone else including the two nurses who wrapped Kennedy at Parkland before he was placed in his coffin? Not hard eh?


So we have yet another duff conspiracy theory witness. And someone on here posts about him as if he’s the smoking gun of the case. A salutary lesson (but one never learned of course) is that if it favours a conspiracy it’s 99% of the time going to turn out to be utter hogwash. O’Connor was clearly mistaken (putting it kindly) Personally, I tend think that he was a lying attention seeker.

[Fiver]

Gainesville man recalls JFK autopsy



Among the things he witnessed was what he calls "the casket switch." While he and the autopsy team were receiving a shipping casket bearing Kennedy's body, he said, Jackie Kennedy was arriving in Washington on a plane with another casket.

"The casket he was put in in Dallas was not the same one he came to Bethesda in," he said. "And I understand from talking with people at the emergency room in Dallas that he was not placed in a body bag. When he got to us he was in a body bag."

Casket switching? Seriously?

Switching caskets would require actual magic. Either the body has to be transferred between airplanes in mid-flight without anyone noticing or you need a second body close enough to JFK's body that it will fool x-rays and dental records.

Besides, no Conspiracy would need to switch caskets.

Other witnesses might be mistaken, but the casket switching nonsense means that O'Connell is either lying or delusional.

[Patrick Differ]

Highly recommend reading ( Google it) The Summary of Pleadings to District of Columbia Court dated January 31,1969. To get All copies of XRays and Photographs.
STill an issue in 1969. By Jim Garrison

The Summary includes 3 experts -
Dr Dave McClelland- senior surgeon at Parkland
Dr Robert Forman- Head of Anthropology at U of Wisconsin
Dr Cyril Wecht- One of Leading Forensic Pathologists in USA

In the Summary there are exhibits and analysis , including Warren Commission exhibits that illustrate the most thourough scientific analysis i have yet seen. Including JFKs admission note by McClelland which identifies the head wound to the Temple. ( keep in mind there was NO knowledge of Zapruder as the Frame 313 shows- a shot to the Temple) This was Parklands cause of death. Right there in the WC Report !

It also completely debunks the Single Bullet theory and fallacies of the Ramsay Clark autopsy analysis in 1968.
It uses angles of trajectory and the Zapruder frames to determine the conclusion that shows Oswald, from his perch on the 6th floor, and the vertical and horizontal angles, and the supposed exit wound in the throat, would have shattered Kennedys Vertebrae.

In addition, the Zapruder frames show that when Kennedy is hit ( around frame 225) , Connally does not react. In fact at 18.3 frames per second he does not react until almost 1 second later.Oswald could not have gotten the 2nd shot off in less than 1 second?

But wait..it was just a lag in the bullets trajectory. The full metal jacket bullet that hit NO bone in Kennedy but has a lag? The Magic Bullet. Ok.

There is obviously much more in this Summary including thorough analysis in metal fragments.

Bottom line is this Legal Appeal illustrates how the WC contradicts itself and fails actual scientific analysis.

Read it for yourself. Debunk the Experts if you wish.

Have Fun...don't let it drive you crazy ! Cheers.

[Fiver]

Joe Cooper is one of many who got caught up in things. I have met others like him.
His life changed forever. I consider him a victim of the assassination.

Some suicides are suicides and some are “suicides”

Hank Killam jumped or was pushed thru a first floor glass window. And crawled 40 feet and died on the sidewalk. The police called it “suicide.”
In Russia, they toss out of a tall buildings. An accidental death. Sure.
Most lists of the mysterious deaths lack a clean definition of mysteriousness,
But Hank Killam, Jim Koethe and Bill Hunter those are mysterious. That would be another topic.

Cooper's wife, two daughters, and a granddaughter ere in the apartment when the shot was heard from the bedroom and his wife rushed in. It might be accident, it might be suicide, but it could only be murder if his family were all part of the Conspiracy.

Killam fell though the glass window of a department store. His throat was cut by a shard of glass and witnesses saw him stagger about 35 feet before he collapsed and bled out. I don't see how this could be murder.

Hunter and Koethe searched Jack Ruby's apartment, along with photographer William Allen, lawyers C. A. Droby, Jim Martin and Tom Howard, George Senator, Ruby's roommate. They didn't know it, but the room had already been searched by three Dallas police.

Hunter was killed by a police fooling around who accidentally discharged his weapon. This happened on April 1964 in Long Beach. Hunter had won an award for an in-depth piece on the JFK and Oswald shootings and was convinced Oswald had killed JFK. And if Hunter knew to much, the Conspiracy had repalced him with two police who now know too much.

Koethe was killed by an intruder in September 1964. There were signs of a struggle and his neck was broken, but his body had been wrapped in a blanket. Several items had been stolen. His is a genuinely mysterious death.

Why would a Conspiracy murder 2 of the 10 men who were in Ruby's apartment and all of whom claimed to find nothing incriminating?

[cobalt]

Any mobster stupid enough to try to kill the President of the US would be killed by the mob.

I'm sure that is true. The same fate would have awaited LHO had he been the lone gunman who made his escape to Cuba.

However there is credible evidence of CIA/Mafia joint activity in relation to Cuba. Mafia members could have been sub-contracted and been working under the aegis of elements within the CIA.

[Fiver]

One I heard today was that if the CIA and FBI knew about Oswald well before the murder. That is confirmed. Did they screw up by not keeping track of Oswald or was he a Patsy.

The FBI has long been known to have lost track of Oswald multiple times. They only knew about Oswald's Mexico trip because the CIA told them.

Seems odd that they would lose the fact that Oswald was in the Book Depository and then 30 minutes after the assassination have a full APB on the guy.

The Dallas police never had an APB that identified Oswald by name.

12:45pm - "Attention all squads. The suspect from Elm and Houston is reported to be an unknown white male about thirty, slender build, five feet ten inches tall, one hundred sixty-five pounds, armed with what is thought to be a 30-30 rifle. No further description at this time, or information. 12:45."

12:47pm - "Signal 19, involving the President. Suspect: white male, thirty, slender build, five feet ten inches, one hundred sixty-five pounds, believed to have used 30 caliber rifle. Believed to be in the old School Book Depository, Elm and Houston, at this time."

12:49pm - "No clothing description. A white male, approximately thirty, slender build, five feet ten, weighs one sixty-five."

12:55pm - "Do you have any clothing description?
No. White male, approximately thirty, slender build, height five ten, weighs one sixty-five, is all the information."

1:08pm - "Got any clothing description yet? All we have is a white male, thirty, slender build, five feet ten, a hundred and sixty-five pounds, armed with a 30 caliber rifle."

1:18pm - "General Broadcast - All squads, we have a report that an officer has been involved in a shooting in the 400 E. 10th. 1:18 p.m."

1:22pm - "We have a description on this suspect over here on Jefferson. Last seen about 300 block of East Jefferson. He's a white male, about thirty, five eight, black hair, slender, wearing white jacket, a white shirt and dark slacks."

1:24pm - "Wanted for investigation for assault to murder on a police officer: A white male; approximately thirty; about five foot eight; slender build; has black hair; a white jacket; a white shirt and dark trousers. The suspect last seen running west on Jefferson from 400 East Jefferson. 1:24."

1:26pm - "White male, thirty, five feet eight, black hair, slender build, white shirt, black trousers. Going west on Jefferson from the 300 block."

1:28pm - "Stand by. Notify 1 that officer involved in this shooting, Officer J.D. Tippit, we believe, was pronounced DOA at Methodist 1:28 p.m.
Is there any indication that it has any connection with this other shooting?
Well, the descriptions on the suspect are similar and it is possible."

1:30ish - Roy Truly notices that Oswald is missing from the TSBD.

1:33pm - "White male, thirty, height five foot eight, very slender build, black hair, a white jacket, white shirt and dark slacks. 1:33."

1:34pm - "I got an eye-ball witness to the get-away man. That suspect in this shooting is a white male, twenty-seven, five feet eleven, a hundred sixty-five, black wavy hair, fair complected, wearing a light grey Eisenhower-type jacket, dark trousers and a white shirt, and (. . . ?). Last seen running on the north side of the street from Patton, on Jefferson, on East Jefferson. And he was apparently armed with a 32 dark-finish automatic pistol which he had in his right hand."

1:46pm - "We have a man we would like to have you pass this up on to the CID to see if we can pick this man up. Charles Douglas Givens, G-I-V-E-N-S. He's a colored male, thirty-seven, six foot three, a hundred sixty-five pounds. He has an ID number in the Sheriff's Department, 37954. He's a porter that worked on this floor up here. He has a police record and he left."

Givens had been outside the TSBD at the time of the shooting and police had refused entry when he tried to return.

1:52pm - "We have apprehended a suspect in the shooting at the Texas Theater."

[Fiver]

I would add General Curtis LeMay and the MOB to the list of Kennedy haters.

Neither Curtis LeMay nor the Mob were on the Warren Commission.

LeMay's beef was with the Secretary of Defense, McNamara. LBJ kept McNamara and forced LeMay into retirement. so LeMay gained nothing from JFK's death.

The most important government official anyone in the mob ever considered assassinating was Thomas Dewey, who was a special prosecutor for New York County. Dutch Schultz was the man who proposed a hit on Dewey. The Mafia Commission unanimously rejected Schultz and put on a hit on Schultz to make sure he didn't try to kill Dewey.

Any mobster stupid enough to try to kill the President of the US would be killed by the mob.

[Fiver]

First of all I guess I should have clarified who on the WC hated Kennedys guts so for the record it would be Dulles ( the real Power in the CIA ), Hoover ( FBI) and LBJ.

Hoover and LBJ weren't on the Warren Commission.

The Republicans and Democrats then as now had opposing views and Agendas. Civil Rights was being changed by MLK more than either Party. To think Republicans were fond of Kennedy is naive. The American South was very different back then but Republicans were ultra conservative. Not Liberal like Kennedy.

You have a fundamental misunderstanding of the politics of the 1960s. Both parties have drifted on position and become more polarized.

Lets look at the Civil Rights Act of 1964
In the House of Representatives, 37% of Democrats voted against, compared to 21% of Republicans.
In the Senate, 31% of Democrats voted against, compared to 18% of Republicans.

Most of the people who hated JFK's Civil Rights stance were Democrats.

[Fiver]

WC apologists are used to engaging with everyone who criticizes the mediocre autopsy. and so there is a knee jerk reaction to defend the autopsy.

So far as I know, everyone believes it was a mediocre autopsy. What we contest is the Conspiratist claim that it was a fraudulent autopsy. That would require the Army, the Navy, the FBI, the Secret Service, and JFK's personal physician to be part of the fraud. And the autopsy evidence has stood up to repeated independent testing.
.

[FISHY1118]

Gainesville man recalls JFK autopsy

GAINESVILLE - What Paul O'Connor of Gainesville saw on the autopsy table the night of Nov. 22, 1963, was not what is shown in some photos of the body of John F. Kennedy.

"One picture of the back of his head shows a complete skull and the hair is untouched," said O'Connor, who as a 22-year-old Navy corpsman at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland assisted in the autopsy of the assassinated president. "But it was all blown away."

Forty years later, O'Connor remains filled with doubt about what happened in Dallas. But the passage of time, he said, has convinced him that in his lifetime neither he, nor anyone else, will ever know what really happened that day.

"They'll be talking about JFK a hundred years from now just like we're still talking about Lincoln today," said O'Connor, a Vietnam veteran who moved to Gainesville in the early 1970s to earn a degree in audiology at the University of Florida.

He was one of the last people to touch Kennedy's body before it was interred.

After the autopsy was completed, he helped dress the body and place it in a casket. A Secret Service officer in the room assumed, correctly, that with a name like O'Connor, the young corpsman must be Catholic. The agent gave him a rosary, O'Connor said, and told him, "Put it in his hands like Catholics hold a rosary."

"I put it in his hands, but there's no special way Catholics hold a rosary."

Afterward, he said, he was "left with a mess to clean up." After going off duty at 9 the next morning, he slept for 12 hours and then joined the rest of the nation watching television coverage of the tragedy.

The last couple of weeks, as with most milestone anniversaries of the assassination, O'Connor's phone has rung off the hook with calls from news media and others wanting him to retell his experience. By the 40th anniversary it is getting a little tiresome, he said, but he still obliges.

"After the autopsy, we were called into the captain's office and had to sign orders that, under the threat of a general court-martial, we wouldn't talk about it at all," he said. "Then when the Freedom of Information Act came out, everybody started calling me - the nuts and honest people."

One of the Kennedy researchers he said he felt good about, William Law, has written a book in which O'Connor served as a consultant. "Eye of the Historian" was scheduled to come out this month, O'Connor said, but a problem at the publisher pushed its release to early 2004.

"It should be a good one because (Law) got hold of people who have never talked before," he said. "I decided to go one last time and help bring this book out and see if we can't shake some people up with it."

In countless interviews and television appearances, he has told what he knows to be the truth, from his own eyes.

"I wanted to get it off my chest," said O'Connor, 62, who was wounded in Vietnam and for the past 30 years has been disabled from a back injury.

Among the things he witnessed was what he calls "the casket switch." While he and the autopsy team were receiving a shipping casket bearing Kennedy's body, he said, Jackie Kennedy was arriving in Washington on a plane with another casket.

"The casket he was put in in Dallas was not the same one he came to Bethesda in," he said. "And I understand from talking with people at the emergency room in Dallas that he was not placed in a body bag. When he got to us he was in a body bag."

When Kennedy's body arrived on O'Connor's table, it was in a body bag. Unzipped, the bag revealed a gruesome sight.

"I looked at it and said, 'My Lord in heaven.' It looked like a bomb went off inside his head," he said. "My primary role was to get the body in and log it in, which I did, and then I was going to remove the brain. But there was no brain. Most of it was blown out."

Over the years, he said, he has talked to doctors and others who were at Parkland Hospital in Dallas when Kennedy was brought in. But he got little information.

"I remember thinking, somebody has got to those guys and scared the hell out of them," O'Connor said. "One doctor, who is dead now, told me he was told by higher-ups that he'd better keep his mouth shut if he wanted to continue working in medicine."

He said he's been criticized by some people who say he was just a young technician who didn't know what he was looking at during the autopsy.

"But I was a hospital corpsman on my second hitch in the Navy, and going to medical technology school," O'Connor said. "I knew anatomy and physiology. I had participated in 60 or 70 autopsies before Kennedy came in, so I knew what I was doing. All I tell (critics) is that I was there and they were not."

Although he tries to discuss only those things he personally witnessed and knows to be true, O'Connor has for years speculated on what killed JFK. And, he said, it wasn't a bullet.

"I've always said that what killed him was his back brace," he said. "And damned if it didn't come out on TV last night in one of the JFK specials."

"Kennedy had a bad back and he wore this rigid metal back brace, and when he got hit in the neck, the brace propped him up," O'Connor said. "If he didn't have the back brace, he would have fallen forward and wouldn't have been hit a second time. The neck wound wouldn't have been fatal."

"He was wearing something that was supposed to help him," he said, "and it killed him."

"They'll be talking about JFK a hundred years from now just like we're still talking about Lincoln today."

Paul O'Connor

Former Marine

Wow , Look what we have here another liar? perhaps , another idiot? surely not , mistaken i hear you say? , not likely , Maybe paul o,conner just plain never existed ?.

Truth is ,just like all the rest of them mentioned in this thread who saw and witnessed the back of JFKS head blown apart, this again is more proof the Warren Commission is an Utter Lie and a con job, that has fooled the gullible masses for 62 years , when will they ever learn .


Go on Fiver, show me where he changed his testimony [if he ever gave one ] to the warren commission 6 months later, like you seem to like to do

[scottnapa]

Cooper died in 1974 - either an accident while cleaning his gun or suicide. Cooper's wife, two daughters, and a granddaughter ere in the apartment when the shot was heard from the bedroom and his wife rushed in.

Such a wet blanket you are.
I am telling a story about people. I am presenting artifacts from a family history. It’s the granddaughter that showed me the photo.
It was interesting to hold something that has touched others. Interesting to listen to family stories.
Joe Cooper is one of many who got caught up in things. I have met others like him.
His life changed forever. I consider him a victim of the assassination.

Some suicides are suicides and some are “suicides”

Hank Killam jumped or was pushed thru a first floor glass window. And crawled 40 feet and died on the sidewalk. The police called it “suicide.”
In Russia, they toss out of a tall buildings. An accidental death. Sure.
Most lists of the mysterious deaths lack a clean definition of mysteriousness,
But Hank Killam, Jim Koethe and Bill Hunter those are mysterious. That would be another topic.

[Fiver]

More from Joe Cooper --

Even Jim Garrison didn't find Cooper credible enough to use as a witness at the Clay Shaw trial.

Cooper died in 1974 - either an accident while cleaning his gun or suicide. Cooper's wife, two daughters, and a granddaughter ere in the apartment when the shot was heard from the bedroom and his wife rushed in.

[FISHY1118]

Long stories defending the Warren Commission conspiracy mean diddly squat when we have proof the autopsy photo of jfks head were faked .

More to come on that .

[Herlock Sholmes]

I was perhaps a little surprised that Mac Wallace got a couple of votes of confidence on here recently considering that he usually only gets support on the outer edges of conspiracy fantasy world. His ‘story’ gets an outing in the book The Men On The Sixth Floor by Glen Sample and Mark Collom (which is a waste of paper) so let’s have a recap for the benefit of those of us that have tried to wipe this tissue of nonsense from memories already overloaded with unbelievable conspiracy theories. And for those that, quite remarkably, give this s*** a seconds credence.

Lawrence Lloyd Factor (known as Loy) from Oklahoma was a Chickasaw Indian and WWII veteran who had been declared ‘incompetent’ in 1948 by the Veteran’s Administration. This meant that this man had to have a Legal Guardian appointed before the government would pay him his $66 a month disability pay. So a great start.

Then, in 1968 he strangled his wife Juanita and was convicted the next year of First Degree Manslaughter. By 1971 the now one-legged diabetic was being treated for Hepatitis in Oklahoma State Prison. This upstanding citizen decided to tell a story to another Infirmary inmate, Mark Collom (co-author of the ‘book.’) So..are you sitting comfortably?

Apparently, in November of 1961 Loopy Loy decides to take his wife and kids to see President Kennedy in Bonham Texas where he was attending the funeral of a Senator called Rayburn. As he was waiting on a crowded street a Spanish speaking man sidles up to him and asked him how good he was as a marksman (nothing unusual about that of course)? According to Loy this was our Mac Wallace who, after Loy told him that he was a keen hunter, immediately gave him $20 and told he to take his family for a nice dinner (perfectly normal behaviour of course - although rarely on earth)

Now on to 1962, and with Loy having no further contact with Wallace apart from the once in Bonham, he turns up on his doorstep out of the blue (no phone call, no letter, nothing). Loy proceeded to demonstrate his expert marksmanship to Wallace by pinging bottles with a deer rifle. Wallace is so impressed that he immediately offered him $10,000 to do a ‘job’ for him but he didn’t say what (obviously no one in Bonham could shoot bottles like Loy). Wallace and his ‘people’ would pay him $2000 up front followed by $8000 when it was done (frankly I’m surprised that he could work out that 10000-2000=8000 but perhaps I’m being cynical?) Loy immediately agrees (who wouldn’t?)

A few days before the Kennedy assassination a young Hispanic girl called Ruth Ann turns up with a young Hispanic guy at Loy’s (if you want to add authenticity to a Kennedy conspiracy theory it often pays to throw in an Hispanic person or two) to take him on a drive to Dallas. Apparently Loopy Loy had by now twigged that they wanted him to kill someone but, as he told Collom, he was too scared to back out and needed the cash (probably to buy more bottles to shoot). They arrived at a small house and Wallace was already there waiting and for a few days they just sat around discussing the assassination of the President (Loy played no part in the planning though) and then guess who shows up…you guessed it…Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby (all the usual conspiracy theory ingredients are being put together in this recipe for waffle (not waffles) Don’t worry people, it gets even better.

Ruth Ann drives him to Dallas and led him up the stairwell to the 6th floor (yes, that’s right folks…two complete strangers just walk in unseen and carrying a rifle no doubt - probably disguised as curtain rods) Wallace and Oswald were already there (so make that three complete strangers entering unseen) Oswald and Wallace told Loy that he would be the back up should they miss (how poor were these two with a rifle?) Loy refused. No matter, Loy was sent to the southwesternmost window while Mac was two windows east whilst Oswald was in the Sniper’s Nest. Apparently Ruth Ann was on a walkie talkie (with other shooters on the Knoll) telling them when to fire. Loy claimed that he ejected a cartridge but he didn’t fire it.

One of the things that convinced the author Sample of his genuineness was that he said that he’d seen a table saw on the 6th floor. How could he have known that (this author is clearly easy to please when it comes to evidence - like most conspiracy theorists). Unfortunately for the theory an assassination researcher called Dave Perry and Gary Mack, the highly respected Curator of the Sixth Floor Museum, went through all photographs and film footage and hardly surprisingly there was no table saw on the sixth floor.

Loy said that after the assassination he and Ruth fled down the stairs (not only did no one see them enter or climb the stairs, no one saw them descend the stairs or leave the building [and with rifles I assume] Not one employee mentioned seeing a single stranger that day and, completely bizarrely, Factor claimed that he saw no one going in or coming out (he must have missed all those employees standing around the doorway - easily done I guess) She then drove him to the bus station and handed over the $8000 (even though he hadn’t fired a shot making that the most expensive ejected cartridge ever) Around an hour or so later, for some unexplained reason, Ruth Ann, with Wallace in tow, arrive at the bus station to find Loy still there! They said that they had to get him away from there as the heat was on.

According to Loy:

“We was headed up through Mead (Oklahoma) when the car broke down, right outside of Mead. I think the clutch went out.”


So he got out and hitchhiked. Who knows what Ruth Ann and Wallace did. Probably picked up by black helicopters and taken to Area 51 I’d imagine.

Interestingly, in the books acknowledgments, the authors thank everyone who “not only allowed us our fantasy but encouraged it.”

We are asked to believe that LBJ encouraged Wallace to do it as he was a part of LBJ’s inner circle. Not much is known about Wallace who died in a car accident in 1971 although he may actually have met LBJ at some point. He was a University graduate and one-time Washington economist for the Department of Agriculture and he was a murderer. He killed a golf pro in 1952 who had been having an affair with his wife. He got a 5 year suspended sentence and this had conspiracy theorist licking their collective lips when they found out that his lawyer John Cofer had been a lawyer for LBJ in one case. Why the light sentence? Naturally this is seen as evidence of conspiracy but, let’s face it, what isn’t seen as evidence of conspiracy? In 1986, D. L. Johnson (no relation to LBJ - don’t get excited) was one of the jurors in the Wallace court case. He was the only juror for acquittal and he forced the guilty-with-a-suspended-sentence verdict by threatening a hung jury. How a lawyer could supposedly have arranged this is beyond explanation of course.

The authors also tried to prove that Wallace killed an official for the Department of Agriculture called Marshall with a shotgun. This journey into insanity claimed that Marshall had to be ‘silenced’ because he could connect LBJ and an aide with the illegal activities of Billy Sol Estes, who was a Johnson supporter and fundraiser. Estes was certainly a crook who was convicted in 1963, parole in 1971 then convicted for another crime in 1979.

In August of 1984 Estes Lawyer, Douglas Caddy, said that Estes was willing to testify that LBJ had ordered the killing of Kennedy and that Wallace had been used. He also claimed that Johnson had ordered 7 other murders (unless he’d mistaken Johnson for Charles Manson of course) One of the alleged victims was…wait for it…LBJ’s own sister!

In 1998 conspiracy author Walt Brown said that a latent print examiner from Texas called Nathan Derby had been given a copy of the only unidentified print from the cardboard cartons in the Sniper’s Nest. He said that it matched the left little finger of Mac Wallace at 14 points. Problem? Actually yes…according to Loopy Loy, Wallace wasn’t ever in the Sniper’s Nest so how could his print have been on a carton? Any more problems? Actually yes…a whopper.

Enter Conspiracy theorists favourite Vincent Bugliosi (one of the countries most respected prosecutors and author of…by a thousand miles…the best book ever written on the case [which strangely most on here appear unwilling to read]) He contacted Darby in 2001 and told him that he was a little concerned about his matching the only unidentified fingerprint with Mac Wallace. “Why,” said Derby. The answer…the unidentified latent print on the 6th floor was a palm print and not a fingerprint. The completely honest Derby immediately accepted that he’d been taken in. Not all conspiracy theorists are dishonest of course. Only a lot of them (I’ll stress again that I’m not accusing anyone on here of that)

Then Barr McClellan surfaced. He was another Lawyer whose firm had, at one time, represented LBJ. He said that Wallace put together a three man team with Oswald firing two from the Snipers Nest, Wallace firing one from the third window over and someone called ‘Junior’ firing from…you guessed it..the Grassy Knoll. McClelland reckoned that LBJ was behind eleven murders with a possible nine more (almost the Ted Bundy of arranging murders - it’s a wonder that he had time to be President) He even added a bit of detail for colour in that a coworker entered the sixth floor and Wallace was about to kill him when he turned around and left…phew! McClellan of course offers no evidence for any of this but hey..it’s a conspiracy theory..who needs evidence. It’s only a pity that he waited a full thirty years to spill this particularly unsavoury beans. Could it get worse? Yes, of course it can, we’re in conspiracy world.

A colleague of McClellan’s called Don Thomas allegedly heard LBJ confess on his deathbed to being behind Kennedy’s murder. It gets even worse…he asks Thomas to tell the world after he and his wife had died. And why would he want the world to know this? It’s an absolute gem…LBJ said that his reputation was bad and so if he confessed “..my damned legacy just might improve. Hell. Might just improve my reputation, you know.” !!!!! And people believe this kind of stuff. How?!

After this contemptible balderdash appeared on an episode of the fantasy documentary ‘The Men Who Killed Kennedy’ the History channel received floods of angry letters. Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter both protested to the channel so they set three historians to the task of investigating McClellan’s story and, unsurprisingly they found not a shred of truth in the accusations. The absolute most that could be said was that there was a chance that LBJ might have met Wallace at some point during his Presidential duties.

People actually believe this stuff and then have the unmitigated gall to express amazement that non-conspiracy theorist ‘just don’t get it.’ Well I certainly don’t want to get this appalling tissue of fantasy. I’ll leave the final word to former President Jimmy Carter who continued to complain even after the History channel apologised for screening such inaccurate, poorly researched bilge:

He said that it was one thing for an independent like McClellan to produce such “despicable….trash, but a reputable media organisation, which the public trusts to give accurate, unbiased information (was) swept into this frenzy. Who or what is next? Will I be inducted into the JFK assassination ring when I am no longer able to defend myself? America needs to get a grip on this hysteria.”




I couldn’t agree more Jimmy.