aftermath of the Kennedy assassination. David Welsh reports on ten other "mysterious deaths, possibly related to the assassination of the President" in the November issue of Ramparts magazine. In very summary fashion they are as follows:
Jim Koethe was a young Dallas reporter who had investigated the assassination and was preparing a book on it. He was found dead in his apartment on September 21, 1964 swathed in a blanket. The notes for his book were removed from his ransacked apartment. The apparent cause of death was a karate chop.
Bill Hunter was present at a gathering at Jack Ruby's apartment along with Jim Koethe, Tom Howard and Ruby's roommate George Senator on November 24, 1963 just after Ruby killed Oswald. Hunter was shot to death by "accident" by a police detective in the Long Beach, California police headquarters on April 24, 1964.
Tom Howard who was Jack Ruby's first lawyer after he killed Oswald was taken to the hospital on March 27, 1965 by an unidentified person and died there. The doctor, without benefit of an autopsy, said he had suffered a heart attack.
Earlene Roberts managed the rooming house where Oswald was living. She was one of the key witnesses before the Warren Commission. She died January 9, 1966 in Parkland Hospital. Police said she suffered a heart attack in her home. No autopsy was performed.
Nancy Jane Mooney was a stripper in Jack Ruby's Carousel Club. She provided .the alibi for a man accused of attempting to kill a witness to events following the slaying of Officer J.D. Tippit, which Oswald is alleged to have done. She was picked up about a week later for disturbing the peace. Within a few hours she was dead. Police said she hanged herself with her toreador pants, in her private cell at the Dallas City jail. This occurred on February 13, 1964.
Hank Killam was so interesting to men representing themselves as "federal agents" investigating the assassination that they caused him to lose one job after another from their frequent visits. Killam moved to Tampa, Florida where on March 17, 1964 he was found on a sidewalk in front of a broken plate-glass window with his jugular vein cut. He bled to death en route to the hospital.
William Whaley was the taxi driver who picked Oswald up as Oswald was leaving the Texas School Book Depository. He was thus one of the few who had the opportunity to talk alone with Oswald between the assassination and Oswald's arrest. Whaley was killed in a head-on collision on December 18, 1965. Whaley had a perfect accident record since 1946 and was the first Dallas taxi driver to be killed on duty since 1937.
Edward Benavides was fatally shot in mid-February, 1964 in the back of the head in a Dallas bar. Police said it was a pistol shot, wrote up a cursory report and marked the case "unsolved." Edward Benavides resembled his brother Domingo who was a witness to the slaying of Officer Tippit. Domingo's father-in-law, J.W. Jackson, was so unimpressed with the police investigation that he started an inquiry of his own. Two weeks later Jackson was shot at in his home.
Dorothy Kilgallen, the widely syndicated gossip columnist, was passionately interested in the assassination case and told her friends that she firmly believed there was a conspiracy and that she would find out the truth if it took her all her life. Miss Kilgallen was once granted a 30-minute interview alone with Jack Ruby, something granted to no other reporter. Miss Kilgallen was also responsible for a number of important newsbreaks on the assassination case. She died in her bed on November 8, 1965. Dr. James Luke, a New York City medical examiner, said the cause of death was "acute barbiturate and alcohol intoxication, circumstances undetermined."
Lee Bowers was one of 65 known witnesses to the president's assassination who thought shots were fired from the area of the Grassy Knoll to the west of the Texas School Book Depository. Bowers was also uniquely situated in a 14-foot high railroad tower directly behind the Grassy Knoll. From that position he said he saw three cars slowly cruising around the parking area on top of the Knoll in-the 35 minutes before the assassination. He also observed the activities of two men on the Knoll just before and after the shots that killed Kennedy rang out. On the morning of August 9, 1966,
Bowers was driving south from Dallas on business. His brand new car veered from the road and hit a bridge abutment. A farmer who saw it said the car was going 50 miles an hour, a slow speed for that road. There were no skidmarks to indicate braking. Bowers died of his wounds that afternoon in a Dallas hospital. There was no autopsy, and soon afterward he was cremated. Doctors saw no evidence that he had suffered a heart attack.
In reporting at length about the circumstances of these ten deaths, David Welsh comes to this conclusion:
"The 'mysterious deaths' and intimidations alone are compelling enough reason for a new investigation, if only to establish whether or not they are related to the Kennedy assassination."
In other news connected with the Kennedy assassination and the Warren Report, Democratic Senator Russell B. Long of Louisiana, whose father was killed by assassin~ ation while in office as a senator, said on November 21 that he has always thought that a second person was involved in slaying President Kennedy. Long, who is the Democratic party's number two man in the U.S. Senate, said that although he did not doubt that Oswald played a part in the assassination "whoever fired the second shot was a much better shot than Oswald." He called for a new investigation.
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., a well-known historian and a former aide to President Kennedy, was reported on November 22 to have said that it "appears to me substantial facts and doubts do exist which would warrant a very intensive inquiry."
Sitting on the other side of the fence was the Democratic party's majority leader in the House of Representatives. The November 23 New York Times reports:
"Representative Carl Albert of Oklahoma, the House Democratic majority leader, said ‘he believed 'the commission answered the basic questions.'
"Mr. Albert said he had kept up with its proceedings through the newspapers and had read the book titled 'Portrait of the Assassin,' which was written by one commis~ sioner, Representative Gerald R. Ford, Republican of Michigan.
"'T never did get excited about minor inconsistencies such as an extra bullet, Mr. Albert said."
The New York World Journal Tribune of November 30 reported what appears to be the only overt contribution by any member of the Kennedy family to the current controversy over the Warren Report. The paper quotes Senator Robert F. Kennedy as saying, "I've made it a practice not to comment on the Warren Report." In referring to the article in the November 25 issue of Life magazine which criticized the findings of the Warren Commission, Kennedy added ambiguously, "That thing in Life last week -terrible.
In this connection, it is worth noting that the November 21 New York Times quoted Mark Lane as saying that he knew that Robert Kennedy had sent a message to Professor Hugh Trevor-Roper, who had written the introduction to Lane's book on the Warren Report, Rush to Judgment, in which Kennedy had said to keep up the good work. The Times went on to say that Roper denied this.
Lane says that the Times garbled this story. He reports that what happened is that two days after Roper had published some newspaper articles in Britain criticizing the Warren Report, a friend of Roper's was at a party in the United States at which Robert Kennedy told him to tell Roper when he got back to Oxford to "keep up the good work." Roper considered this person a reliable source of information and so informed Lane of what had transpired. After the Times heard Lane's story, the Times' London man asked Roper if he had received a "letter" from Kennedy which is what Roper responded to in the negative.
Fact magazine in its November-—December issue contains another interesting comment by Lane:
"The rumors about Johnson? Well, I've been on many radio and television telephone-format programs, where people call in, and at least 20% of the calls were from people who suggested Johnson was the assassin. I myself don't see any evidence that President Johnson was the assassin. I don't know who did it. I do know that the Warren Commission's conclusion that Oswald did it alone is ludicrous, but I don't know who did it. I'll have to leave the speculation to the Warren Commission."