Search the Community

I am trying to keep my mind off other things right now and thought I would present this to the Forum. In my research, I found that Lucille Connell, a good friend of Sylvia Odio and Father Machann, testified to the WC that Sylvia Odio went to the Lakewood Theater with her younger sister Annie and her cousin, Marcella Insua. During the movie, Sylvia said she had to go to the Ladies Room, but never came back. Alarmed, Annie and Marcella searched for her frantically. They then called Lucille Connell who called Father Machann to see if he knew where she was. She was found wandering around the Turtle Creek area. Now, the thing is, who picked her up? How did she get there? And why isn't there a record of this? This was April 10th, 1963. The same date LHO allegedly took a shot at Walker. The police picked Odio up and took her to Connell's home. I asked the DPD, FOIA'ed, everything I could do to find evidence of this. Does anyone else have any info? I checked the KENNEDY RIPPLES thread to see if I could find any more info but to no avail. I wrote a chapter I left out of my last book about all this because I couldn't find supporting evidence, just hearsay with no police report.

There is a weak consensus among CTers that since Lee Harvey Oswald did not shoot at JFK, then he "could not have" shot at General Walker, as if there is some real connection between the two. I have maintained for six years on this Forum that Lee Harvey Oswald was not one of the JFK shooters -- nevertheless, he certainly was one of two shooters at General Walker. My material evidence for this claim, ironically, comes from General Walker himself, in a letter he wrote to Senator Frank Church in 1975. Here is the letter: http://www.pet880.com/images/19750623_EAW_to_Frank_Church.pdf It is precisely because of the content of this letter that General Walker tracked Lee Harvey Oswald from April 1963 through November 1963, including the Mexico City episode. General Walker, I propose, planned both the deaths of JFK and of Lee Harvey Oswald to occur on 11/22/1963. All best, --Paul P.S. After some weeks into this thread, it became clear that to speak of General Walker was to speak of the Dallas Radical Right, and thus to include more people in Dallas than only Walker and Oswald. Dallas Officials who testified to the Warren Commission became a special target of this expansion, so the title of this thread was changed in early April to include "Dallas Officials."

There's already a thread on Jack S. Martin, the old guy who worked for Guy Banister in New Orleans when LHO was there at 544 Camp Street. But there's another Jack Martin, namely, Jack T. Martin (a.k.a. John T. Martin) who made a home movie showing his airplane flight to Dallas, then General Walker's shot-up home in Dallas; then his airplane flight to New Orleans; and finally Lee Harvey Oswald handing out FPCC fliers on Canal Street. One of the last things that Gary Mack did as director of the 6th Floor Museum in Dallas, there in 2015, was to post Jack T. Martin's home movie on the Internet for everybody to see, free of charge. Here's Martin Shackelford's 1996 description of the "Jack Martin Film": The Jack Martin Film (8-9-63) In another of those aforementioned ironic twists, a tourist named Jack Martin was in Dallas in August 1963. His film records his view from the airplane. Next, he visits General Edwin Walker, under whom he had served, allegedly target of an assassination attempt by Lee Oswald in April of that year. The film documents the scene of that attempt: the window through which the shot was fired, the bullet hole, and the wall from behind which it was most likely fired, ending with shots of Walker's flag and mailbox, and a nearby building under construction (allegedly also photographed by Oswald prior to the attempt!) . Then we see the entrance to a movie theater, cypress trees, a seal at the edge of a pool,and the statue of Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Park in New Orleans. Aroused by a commotion on Canal Street, Martin crossed to see what was happening, and began filming. We see Lee Oswald, leaflets in hand,standing on the sidewalk, being harangued by anti-Castro militants including Carlos Bringuier. Four police officers are seen arriving. The film ends with a view of the yellow leaflets scattered on the sidewalk after Bringuier knocked them out of Oswald's hands, and a brief aerial view of a subdivision. Parts of the film have only been used, to my knowledge, on the French television documentary, "Le Mystere Kennedy." The documentary is available on video, and frames from the film as well, from The Collector's Archives. A still from this film was finally published in Robert Groden's 1995 book, "The Search for Lee Harvey Oswald," an essential photo archive on Oswald. (Martin Shackelford, 1996)On that older thread of Jack S. Martin, we learned that Jack S. Martin was in his fifties, while Jack T. Martin was a teenager in 1963. In 1968, Harold Weisberg and his right-hand assistant, Gary Schoener, received the Jack Martin home movie, from Jack Martin himself, who had turned pacifist, and had a sit-down meeting with the young Jack T. Martin. I interviewed Gary Schoener in 2012, who told me that he and Weisberg learned that young Jack Martin had been a rightist extremist in 1963, a former trooper under General Walker in Germany, as well as a member of the Minutemen and the John Birch Society. I was delighted when Gary Mack obtained this home movie for the 6th Floor Museum, and posted it for free on the Internet. Here it is. http://emuseum.jfk.org/view/objects/asitem/classification@Films/9/title-asc?t:state:flow=38c26749-3dc5-4b4e-80e1-b58d2275024f I implored Gary Mack to set up an interview with Jack T. Martin, but Gary told me that the sole condition for obtaining the Jack Martin film was that Jack T. Martin must never be contacted by anybody at any time. So, Gary refused to give me Martin's contact info. By the way, Gary Mack finally became interested in General Walker as a suspect in the JFK assassination, and he asked me for all my copies of General Walker's personal papers that I had obtained 2012-2014 from the Dolph Briscoe Center for the Study of American History at UT Austin. I remain convinced that the Jack T. Martin video is one of the most important clues that we possess with regard to the JFK assassination conspiracy. It harmonizes with Dr. Jeff Caufield's recent book, General Walker and the Murder of President Kennedy: the Extensive New Evidence of a Radical Right Conspiracy (2015). Best regards, --Paul Trejo

Combining Jeff Caufield's recent Walker-did-it CT (2015) with the testimony of Harry Dean and Sylvia Odio, I find many points in common. Harry Dean is certain that his friends in the Radical Right in Southern California in 1963 were connected with Lee Harvey Oswald (LHO) through General Edwin Walker. Although Harry Dean himself never met LHO, he did know two Hispanic Americans, Loran Hall and Larry Howard, who used the war names, "Lorenzo and Alonzo." Harry Dean claims that he helped Loran Hall and Larry Howard load a trailer with military supplies for mercenaries planning to shell Cuba in Right-wing raids. They collected funds and supplies from John Birch Society supporters in Southern California, and stored them in the garage of war-hero Gabby Gabaldon. Gabaldon was also Harry Dean's personal friend, and a heroic figure to Loran and Larry. Some of these supplies might go to Interpen, to La Sambra, to Lake Pontchartrain, or to Cuba raid camps in Miami. In any case, Harry Dean's memoirs say that one day in mid-September, Gabby Gabaldon received a large cash donation from California Congressman John Rousselot, and he gave part of this to Loran and Larry. After their trailer was loaded, Gabaldon gave Loran and Larry instructions to park the trailer somewhere, and pick up LHO in New Orleans, and drive LHO to Mexico City by going through Dallas, by September 26, 1963. According to Harry Dean, on their way to Mexico City, for some reason Loran, Larry and LHO decided to stop and visit Sylvia Odio. Sylvia thought the two Hispanic men were Cuban, and she remembered their war names as "Leopoldo and Angelo", though she also admitted that her memory was vague about their names. But she did remember that they introduced the American as Leon Oswald. This is what Sylvia Odio told the Warren Commission. Sylvia said of the two Hispanic men, one was taller (Lorenzo), looked Cuban, and did most of the talking in Spanish. The other was heavier and more hairy (Alonzo) and looked more Mexican than Cuban. In fact, Larry Howard was a heavy, hairy Mexican American from Southern California. Loran Hall was a slimmer, taller, Cuban-American from Kansas. So, Harry Dean is certain that Loran Hall and Larry Howard were with Lee Harvey Oswald at Sylvia Odio's door, on or about September 25, 1963. What was their business at her door? Sylvia told the Warren Commission -- and in December 1963 had told James Hosty -- that their purpose seemed to be based on a mistaken information that she, Sylvia, had the ability to recommend that JURE (the anti-Castro group of which she was a member) accept new members. So they tried for a long time to persuade her that "Leon Oswald" would be perfect to help JURE with their goals to overthrow Fidel Castro. Sylvia didn't have that power, and she didn't trust these guys, but she did hear them out for about 20 minutes on her front porch of her apartment before she sent them away empty-handed. She also wrote to her father in a Cuban jail cell to tell him about their visit. We have her father's reply (which the Cuban government permitted to be mailed 10 weeks later). In any case, the next day, after work, Leopoldo called Sylvia Odio on the telephone, and again tried to persuade her to accept Leon Oswald into JURE. Leopoldo tried two tactics: the direct tactic, and when that didn't work, a negative tactic, i.e. he said that Leon told him that Cubans didn't have any guts; that they should have shot JFK after the Bay of Pigs, because it was JFK who was holding back the freedom of Cuba. Then Leopoldo said that Leon was "kind of loco" and was a Marine sharpshooter who said it would be easy to kill that SOB. Sylvia Odio knew very well that JURE wanted to topple Fidel Castro from power -- but she also knew that being a member of an organization like JURE meant being very careful not to allow anybody to infiltrate the organization, even if they have a good story. Sylvia was disturbed by this telephone call, and just hung up. She told her priest and her psychiatrist about it, and later told the FBI and the Warren Commission. Now -- how does all this fit in with Jeff Caufield's recent Walker-did-it CT -- that's the question. It seems to me that Harry Dean, like Jeff Caufield, is portraying LHO among the Radical Right in politics, in which his Leftist Persona was just a cover. This corresponds with the Hardway-Lopez Report (2003) which reveals FOIA documents from the CIA that portray LHO with a Fake FPCC resume in Mexico City, trying to get easy access into Cuba -- which failed to impress the Cuban Consulate and USSR Embassy staff. What was LHO doing in Mexico City? According to the Consulate staff, LHO was trying to sneak into Cuba, disguised as an FPCC officer. It is likely, IMHO, that LHO planned (in cooperation with Guy Banister and Ed Butler) to meet an Anti-Castro team in Cuba, and join their efforts. If this is true then we can also explain why Loran, Larry and LHO stopped by to visit Sylvia Odio on September 25, 1963 -- namely -- to have an alternate plan in case the Fake FPCC resume plan did not work in Mexico City. If Sylvia Odio could have introduced LHO to JURE, then they might have hustled LHO into Cuba in their own ways. This also corresponds to Marina Oswald's (and Ron Lewis') claim that LHO talked about hijacking an airplane to Cuba in early September 1963, and sat in his kitchen and cried. It seems that LHO was under tremendous pressure to get into Cuba. Very likely LHO was offered a lot of money for this mission, and he had no job, and his young wife was pregnant with their second baby, and LHO was desperate. LHO was probably also promised that if he was successful in his Cuba mission, he would get a full-time job with the CIA or the equivalent. The pressure was on. Yet at the same time, the danger was high. Richard Case Nagell, a CIA-KGB double-agent, warned LHO that if he succeeded in getting into Cuba, Nagel would have to shoot LHO dead. The pressure was on. In conclusion: I accept Jeff Caufield's Walker-did-it CT which portrays extensive new evidence of a Radical Right conspiracy in the JFK assassination, and I accept his portrait of LHO as a double-agent wannabe, who would do anything to infiltrate Cuba and assassinate Fidel Castro. The Fake FPCC in New Orleans had no other purpose. It is no coincidence that this correct solution to the JFK mystery also confirms the eye-witness accounts from both Harry Dean and Sylvia Odio. Regards, --Paul Trejo

dupe deleted

I have the book titled "The Assasssination Story" Printed by American Eagle Publishing Co. & President Robert A. Surrey. As it's been stated, this book was apparently printed in the home of General Edwin. A. Walker. It consists of 100's of newspaper clippings all from both The Dallas Morning News & The Dallas Times Herald from dates as early as November 17, 1963 through Late December of 1963. Apparently there were only 3,000 printed & they had sold 900-1,000 before the Dallas Times Herald ordered a cease & desist against American Eagle to stop printing them. The only place I can find this book even mentioned is in The Warren Commission. The articles are simply amazing to read & have them all pulled together in one book. I'm not sure of "The Truth", as I do not believe the truth will ever be known. However, according to the articles in this book, it's hard to see that LHO was alone in this Assassination. I'm sure all these articles can be discovered on microfilm, however being that Dallas Times Herald closed its doors in 1991, I'm not sure of what happened to the history of their news articles. I'm very curious as to what people make of this book, published by Robert Surrey & obviously General Edwin Walker (even though he isn't listed). He is however mentioned in newspaper clippings.

Gayle Nix Jackson this week told me about a book I'd never seen or heard of before, namely, the 2002 book by an author who calls himself "Will Fritz", entitled, The Kennedy Mutiny. This book agrees sharply with my theory that Ex-General Edwin Walker completely coordinated the events that led up to the 11/22/1963 murder of JFK in Dallas. This book also disagrees sharply with my theory on three central points: "Will Fritz" claims that: (1) Edwin Walker and Lee Harvey Oswald were good friends, and Oswald followed Walker's orders. (2) Edwin Walker staged his own April shooting, using Lee Harvey Oswald and at least one other member of the "Friends of Walker". (3) Edwin Walker's plan for Dealey Plaza was supposed to "miss" JFK, and only scare Americans, and then convince them that the attempt was a Communist plot These three differences are all ridiculous, IMHO, yet what is more surprising is the many points in which this alleged, "Will Fritz" actually agrees with my CT. (I) For one thing, Walker's motives were the same as in my CT. Walker was frustrated by the problems of Cuba and Civil Rights. (ii) Walker's followers were all volunteer and fanatical. Walker worked closely with the Dallas right-wing, especially the John Birch Society and the Minutemen. (iii) Walker manipulated Lee Harvey from early in 1963, all through 1963. (iv) The Dallas yuppie party with George DM, Voikmar Schmidt, Mike and Ruth Paine and Everett Glover was a turning point in the Walker plot. Some additional data has piqued my interest, e.g. the main plotters according to "Will Fritz", namely: Edwin Walker, Robert Allen Surrey, James Hosty, Forrest Sorrels, Bill Alexander, Harry Holmes, Gerald Hill and Everett Glover. There is much to discuss about this book, IMHO, and yet I've been here since 2011, and never once heard any whisper about this book. Clearly the "Will Fritz" who was captain of Dallas Homicide in 1963 could not have published this book in 2002 -- since he died in 1984. But is it possible that this book was written by a relative? Was there an original manuscript that was used to construct this namby-pamby excuse about an alleged JFK "miss"? I'd like to hear from those who have seen or heard of The Kennedy Mutiny before. (Note: Amazon.com lists this book as OUT OF PRINT, however, I have limited access to the Library of Congress copy.) Regards, --Paul Trejo

As it happens, Larrie Schmidt turned out to offer nothing more than information already known. Presuming that he's telling the truth and not covering for his old Dallas contacts and memories, his memoirs remain for me so much useless trivia. I have far more interest now in Bernard William Weissman (Bernie), who was one of those who testified before the Warren Commission. His testimony is interesting, and in light of the naivete exhibited by Mr. Schmidt, I now suspect that Bernie Weissman was the one member of CUSA who had any real brains -- or any real honesty. The members of CUSA are public knowledge -- all listed by the Warren Commission (and to a lesser extent in the January 1965 LIFE Magazine article that told the story about the CUSA). Bernie Weissman's sworn testimony gave us the true character of these few. Of them all, Larrie was the only member that Bernie looked up to -- somewhat. But Bernie would hold things back even from Larrie. CUSA was set up by five liberal Army guys -- nothing right-wing about them -- who had black and Jewish friends, and who read Barry Goldwater's Conscience of a Conservative and decided that they could take over the right-wing in the USA when they got back to the States -- if they wanted to. Larrie Schmidt was their leader because he actually finished Ayn Rand's, Atlas Shrugged. He was the intellectual of the group. But he wasn't a trained politician -- he wasn't even a poli-sci student -- he was a journalist by education, and an Advertisement copy writer by trade. As a follower of Ayn Rand, as an atheist Objectivist, Larrie conceived the notion of CUSA as a means to take over the rightist political parties in the USA from the top -- from their headquarters. All his underlings liked the idea -- it was great fun. But Larrie was in love with the idea. When he got out of the Army in October 1962 (this is all part of that LIFE article and also part of the Warren Commission testiomony) he went straight to Dallas and planned to get married -- yet the day before he got married in early November 1962, he had already convinced the NIC (National Indignation Convention) of Dallas to given him control of their headquarters. So, Larrie made the start, and wrote back to Bernie Weissman and Larry Jones in the US Army in Germany that he was preparing things for them when they got out of the Army. They were amused and even intrigued, but nowhere near as motivated as Larrie Schmidt. Over the course of 1963, Larrie's contacts in the right-wing in Dallas gradually grew, and he found a job for his brother Robbie when Robbie was discharged from the Army -- Robbie was going to be the chauffeur of ex-General Edwin Walker. During all this time, Larrie kept writing letters of encouragement to his Army buddies, telling them how great CUSA was progressing in Dallas. By this time, Larrie had also taken over the YAF (Young Americans for Freedom), and was expanding his influence among the John Birch Society in Dallas. This is where it started to get hairy. Later, during October, 1963, the John Birch Society -- and especially its most perhaps exhibitionistic Dallas member, ex-General Edwin Walker, chose to set up a US-Day event the night before Adlai Stevenson's UN-Day Event (using the same venue, the Dallas Memorial Auditorium). As Chris Cravens amply documented, Walker and the John Birch Society used the entire night to plan their relentless heckling of Adlai Stevenson's speach planned for the following evening. They were to buy up as many tickets as they could afford, and bring Halloween noisemakers, and in general make it impossible for Adlai to get a message across. They were to picket all day and night. Larrie Schmidt was one of the volunteers in that organization, as he admitted in one of his letters to Bernie Weissman. When the scandal of the Dallas treatment of Adlai Stevenson hit the national newspapers, Bernie Weissman decided that Larrie Schmidt had really become a powerful person in Dallas -- he must have had tremendous social influence amongst the right-wing in Dallas to lead this national scandal. Bernie chose to move to Dallas right away. When Bernie got to Dallas, he found a different situation than he expected. Rather than having a paying job in the NIC or the YAF, Bernie was expected to get any old job, and support himself and work for CUSA on the side. Larrie didn't have any unusual influence in Dallas at all. Actually, contrary to appearances, Larrie Schmidt was a roadie in the orchestration of the Adlai Stevenson heckling scandal. Larrie brought some college kids to the event to carry signs outside the Auditorium before the speech, but those kids left early. That was basically it. Then, the day after the scandal, Larrie Schmidt stepped up to the Dallas Times Herald newspaper and spoke as an eye-witness defending the protesters -- they were peaceful, he claimed, and the stories about misbehavior were grossly exaggerated. Yes, this did earn him extra points among the John Birch Society leaders. How many points would become apparent to Bernie Schwarz two weeks after he arrived in Dallas. Larrie had been working the Joe Grinnan of the John Birch Society to draw up a newspaper ad to criticize JFK, and suggest that he was a Communist. Well, Larrie's expertise was newspaper advertising, and so he took the job, as a volunteer, and he also volunteered CUSA member Bernie Weissman to add his name to the advertisement. Bernie told the Warren Commission he did not know where the text came from for the advertisement, except that he himself struggled to change one of the sentences. Larrie may have changed a sentence or two -- but the actual and original source of the copy text for the ad was unknown to Bernie. It seemed, however, that the people paying for the ad would send in their demands for a new item, or to change an existing item, on a daily basis for two weeks up until the finalization of the ad. But Bernie never knew their names. All he saw was that Larrie and Joe would back anything the funders wanted. Who actually provided the text for the ad? Bernie honestly doesn't know, and probably Larrie didn't know either -- he claims that he didn't know. Joe Grinnan of the John Birch Society was the middle-man between the Real Creators of the black-bordered ad, and the mere mechanics -- Larrie, Bernie and the Dallas Morning News advertising desk. The Warren Commission and the FBI dug deeper -- they found the names of the funders who had given all of the money to Joe Grinnan. All were members of the John Birch Society. But at that point they let the topic drop. Thus, in two weeks, on the morning of 22 November 1963, the Dallas Morning News published a full page advertisement, for one siingle day, at the cost of $1,600 (which is about $16,000 in today's dollars). Bernie's main contribution (except for that one sentence that he amended) was his recommendation of a much thicker black-border on the ad than usual. The black-bordered ad was published anonymously as far as the Real Creators of the ad were concerned -- but to the public, the name of Bernard Weissman would capture their imagination for a long time. Anonymity of the Real Creators was assured, since Bernie Weissman only knew Larrie Schmidt, and Larrie Schmidt only Joe Grinnan, and Joe Grinnan could be relied upon to keep quiet. This was probably the main reason for choosing Bernie Weissman as the alleged author of the black-bordered ad. The second reason, as Larrie Schmidt had suggested to LIFE magazine, was to put a Jewish name on the ad to prove that the right-wing also had Jews on their side. Anyway, the black-bordered ad will never be forgotten as a historical icon of the JFK assassination. Its twin handbill of the day, attached to the Dallas Morning News externally, and also passed around Dallas during the daytime, is the infamous "WANTED FOR TREASON: JFK" handbill. When asked about this, Bernie Weissman swore that he had nothing to do with it -- but that he did see at least one copy of that handbill -- perhaps a stack -- in the back floorboard of ex-General Walker's automobile that Robbie Schmidt had been driving that day. When the Warren Commission asked Bernie what he first thoughts were regarding the JFK assassination, he admitted his first thought was that he fervently hoped that General Walker's people had nothing to do with the killing, otherwise, all of the members of CUSA faced the possibility of serious prison sentences. The connection with ex-General Walker (not retired, but resigned from the US Army) with the events of Dallas on 22 November 1963 has never been fully explored by anybody -- not the Warren Commission, not Jim Garrison and not the HSCA (House Select Committee on Assassinations). Today, the only person left standing who can tell us more about these daily Dallas activities is, IMHO, Bernie Weissman. He will turn 75 next month. He was living in New Rochelle about 50 years ago. Where is he today? Does anybody know? Best regards, --Paul Trejo, MA <edit typos>