Jonathan Wendland

Thank you for posting this article. It is good to know that the case is still alive. I think it is the first time the traditional media has identified Ron Pataky as the "Out of Towner" in Lee Israel's book. Some will remember Lee's discussions with me on this forum where she was originally reluctant to confirm this information that I had posted on my website. This information had come from David Herschel who had tracked down Pataky when he was a student studying journalism. He could not get the article published so he posted it on the internet in the 1990s. It was the great Penn Jones who first told the story of Kilgallen's friend who died at the same time as her. It appeared in Forgive My Grief (1967): Tom Howard knew too much from Ruby and he knew too well how the Dallas power structure and Police Department worked. Howard had to die. At the Ruby trial in Dallas during March of 1964, Dorothy Kilgallen had a private interview during one of the noon recesses with Judge Joe B. Brown. This was immediately followed by a thirty minute private interview with Jack Ruby in Judge Brown’s chambers. Even Ruby’s bodyguards were kept outside the Judge’s chambers. Joe Tonahill and others thought the meeting room in the jail was “bugged,” but it is doubtful if the Judge’s own chambers would be bugged. Judges have the power of contempt of court for such irregularities. This then, was the second person Ruby had talked to who could know for whom Ruby was acting; therefore Miss Kilgallen had to be silenced along with Tom Howard. Shortly before her death, Miss Kilgallen told a friend in New York that she was going to New Orleans in 5 days and break the case wide open. Miss Kilgallen 52, died November 8, 1965, under questionable circumstances in her New York home. Eight days after her death, a ruling was made that she died of barbiturates and drink with no quantities of either ingredient being given. Also strangely, Miss Kilgallen’s close friend, Mrs. Earl E.T. Smith, died two days after Miss Kilgallen. Mrs. Smith’s autopsy read that the cause of death was unknown. Many skeptical newsmen have asked: “If Miss Kilgallen knew anything, surely as a journalist wouldn’t she have left some notes?” This is a legitimate question. Possibly Mrs. Smith was the trusted friend with the notes. No one will ever know now. Unfortunately, Penn Jones, was unable to find out who Mrs. Earl E.T. Smith was. Her name was Florence Smith, the wife of the ambassador to Cuba when Castro seized power. Professionally, she always used the name Florence Pritchett. Penn Jones would have been fascinated by the fact that Florence Pritchett had been having an affair with John Kennedy since 1943 and was still going on at the time of his death. It was Florence who introduced Dorothy to JFK. Florence was also one of her important sources on JFK. Kilgallen was also well informed about Cuba (she was the first journalist to break the story that the CIA and the Mafia were working together in a plot against Castro). It is indeed puzzling that Sarah Jordan does not mention Florence Pritchett in her article. She clearly knows about the story as she must have visited my web pages on Dorothy Kilgallen (it is number one at Google when you type in her name). She also has visited this forum because she quotes Lee Israel's online statement about Ron Pataky that appeared on the forum on 20th December, 2005. John Simkin: Does Florence Pritchett’s son object to his mother being named as the long-time mistress of JFK or by the suggestion that she might have been one of Kilgallen’s sources? Lee Israel: Yes. He says his mother lay dying of leukemia for months so she couldn't have been Kilgallen's source on anything but side effects of medication that was scarcely available then. John Simkin: In your book you do not mention that Pritchett was JFK’s mistress. Is that because you did not know or was it a case of you protecting her privacy? Lee Israel: It was totally irrelevant. I didn't drop the name Judith Campbell Exner, either. John Simkin: You do not mention that Pritchett was married to Earl E. T. Smith, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Cuba (1957-59). Did you know that at the time you wrote the book? Is it not possible that Pritchett passed on information to Kilgallen as a result of her relationship with her husband and JFK? Lee Israel: Yes, I did know that. I also knew that when Kilgallen visited New Orleans and Dallas, the poor ambassador was preoccupied with his dying wife. John Simkin: In your book you make a lot of Kilgallen’s relationship with the man you call the "Out-of-Towner". In fact, you imply that he was in some way involved in her death. Is it correct that the man’s name is really Ron Pataky? Lee Israel: Yes. John Simkin: Did you find any evidence that Ron Pataky was working for the CIA? Lee Israel: No. Only that he dropped out of Stanford in 1954 and then enrolled in a training school for assassins in Panama or thereabouts. John Simkin: Do you believe that Ron Pataky murdered Dorothy Kilgallen? Lee Israel: He had something to do with it http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKkilgallen.htm http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKsmithF.htm I just want to say: Be wary of Penn Jones. He would get dates wrong, etc, and this served to make the subjects he "researched" trivial. For instance, he couldn't get the name of this woman, Smith. How did he find out about her and did he exaggerate too? A lot op people have such awe regarding Penn Jones, Jr. I've yet to see why. Also, how old was Ron Pataki when he was going out with Kilgallen? And: Kilgallen's husband, I've read, killed himself in 1970. Any connection? Kathy Ron Pataky was born May 21, 1935. Dorothy Kilgallen was born July 3, 1913. No, there was no connection between Kilgallen's husband's death and the conspiracy. His name was Richard Kollmar, and he died on January 7, 1971 of a massive drug overdose two days after fracturing his shoulder. He suffered emotionally from living in Kilgallen's shadow for the 25 years of their marriage. You can see that on the kinescope of Edward R. Murrow interviewing the couple on CBS television's Person To Person on January 20, 1956. You also can see Kollmar suffering on four episodes of What's My Line?. In 1967, a year and seven months after Kilgallen died, Kollmar married a famous American fashion designer named Anne Fogarty. If he married her thinking he could start a new career for himself, he was wrong. He tried to start an antiques business, but it failed. Anne Fogarty became even more famous in 1968, 1969, 1970 as secretaries, schoolteachers and mothers wore the latest Fogarty dresses to stave off the new trend of women's slacks and hippie garb. Now Richard Kollmar was living in the second wife's shadow. He became a lost man. This comes from an ophthalmologist who rented office space from Richard and Anne during this period. The doctor says Anne did all the talking when they discussed landlord / tenant issues. The doctor adds that Kollmar spent most of his time boozing at the Madison Avenue Cafe at the corner of Madison Avenue and East 69th Street. It is no longer there.

_____________________________ She and Jack Valenti were behind the cencorship of TMWKK portion regarding her husband "The Guilty Men". What's wrong with them doing that? We have no concrete evidence that in 1963 the vice president murdered the president. Millions of people got a chance to watch and record TMWKK in November of 2003. Is Jack Valenti raiding people's homes to seize their DVDs? Please explain. Barr has been contemplating litigation ever since, not sure where that presently stands. You mean to tell me that the TV commentators and newspaper / magazine reporters who said Oswald did it were either crooked or stupid, that the publishers of Encyclopedia Britannica and the World Book are either crooked or stupid, and on top of this whole mess of crooked and stupid people there stands tall one person named Barr McClelland? And he waited until the assassination was forty years old before he said anything publicly? Go, Jack Valenti! Tho I think the actual litigation may be more over the HC "response" to that hour, the so-called "three historians" take a look at Barr McClellan. That was disgusting, they did not discuss the evidence in the piece at all, just slandered Barr. IMO I think she knows the truth about most of what her husband did and has kept quiet and will go to her death that way. Dawn <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I agree with your reminder about the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Those who point out the 1982 Justice Department debunking of the Dictabelt miss an important point. Why did the HSCA say the conspiracy possibly involved members of organized crime ? That assertion does NOT come directly from the Dictabelt. If you use the Dictabelt as "evidence" of a fourth shot, then you're stuck with the question of whodunit. Hubert Humphrey could have fired it. If you debunk the fourth shot, then all you're debunking is a shot. You're still stuck with three shots and an invisible shooter. How does that sound as a logical explanation of why the 1982 Justice Department review in no way disproves the HSCA assertion that an organized crime conspiracy was responsible ? The 1982 Justice attorneys can make a sound wave do various things, but they can't erase the evidence of Dutz Murret being a father figure to the seven - year - old Oswald or the evidence of Ruby's many phone calls to the phone number of Mickey Cohen's girlfriend. Maybe Mickey himself was in those telephone conversations. No cell phones then.

It is untrue that very few people knew about JFK’s affair with Mary Meyer. You have to remember that in January, 1963, Philip Graham told a convention of journalists in Phoenix about the affair. JFK was able to stop any newspaper from publishing the story. No, the journalists had a gentlemen's agreement to keep Kennedy's sex life private. And Pat Speer is right. Very few people knew about the Kennedy - Meyer affair. Journalists at a convention constitute a small minority of the American population. And they kept secrets within the profession. Many professions still have their trade secrets to this day even though 21st century reporters prattle about everything they hear. JFK attempted to break-off the relationship but the White House logs show that by the late summer they are back in contact. They probably feel more secure after Graham commited suicide in August 1963. It was common knowledge amongst the Georgetown crowd (a group that included a large number of journalists) that Mary was having an affair with JFK. Nina Burleigh discovered this while carrying out interviews for her book A Very Private Woman. Burleigh even goes on to say that during the trial, that every white person in the courtroom, bar one (Alfred Hantman) knew about the affair. If Bradlee and Angleton were the only ones who knew about them searching for the diary it might well have remained a secret. The problem was that others knew about it from the beginning. James and Anne Truitt were initially the only ones who knew about the diary. As Angleton had Mary’s house bugged he might also have known about the diary. James and Anne Truitt were in Japan at the time of the murder. (James Truitt had been sent by Bradlee to run the Washington Post Bureau in Tokyo). The Truitts found out about the murder on the day it happened (probably via one of Mary’s friends). Anne then phones Antoinette Bradlee (Mary’s sister and Ben’s wife) and asks her to get Mary’s diary. Mary had asked Anne to do this before her death. Maybe she was worried about her reputation. However, I doubt this. She seemed very open about her attitude towards sex. A stronger reason was she was worried that her life was in danger. This of course is supported by what Timothy Leary has to say about her visits and phone calls after JFK’s. If she is murdered, then her thought on the JFK assassination are correct. She wants this to enter the public domain. Antoinette then tells Ben about the phone call. They go to her home together. When they arrive they find Angleton searching for the diary. He claims that Anne had phoned him to get the diary. This is highly unlikely. Especially if Mary had confided with Anne and James Truitt about the real reasons she wanted the diary saved from destruction. Bradlee's memoirs were published in 1995. The story of Bradlee and Angleton searching for the diary became public in March, 1976. This was as a result of James Truitt giving an interview to the National Enquirer. Truitt told the newspaper that Meyer was having an affair with John F. Kennedy when he was assassinated. He also claimed that Meyer had told his wife, Ann Truitt, that she was keeping an account of this relationship in her diary. Meyer asked Truitt to take possession of a private diary "if anything ever happened to me". It was only at this point that Bradlee admitted that he had searched for the diary (he lied about this incident when he gave evidence at Crump's trial). James Truitt, who had divorced Anne by this stage, knew a great deal about this case. He was very close to Mary (they were probably lovers). He had also been working for the CIA while at the Washington Post (part of Operation Mockingbird). James Truitt committed suicide in 1981. His widow, Evelyn Patterson Truitt, claimed that a CIA agent, Herbert Burrows, stole all his private papers soon after his death. He was not the last person to die. Leo Damore, a journalist who found out about the case while researching his book, Senatorial Privilege : The Chappaquiddick Cover-Up, began writing a book about Meyer's death. Damore claimed that a figure close to the CIA had told him that Mary's death had been a professional "hit". Damore committed suicide in October 1995. His book was never published. <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I missed that.

I don’t think this is significant. Dorothy Kilgallen had a large number of friends who were in show business. After all, she was mainly a gossip columnist. It might have been significant if she was seen having a meeting with Sam Giancana. Interestingly, there were rumours that she had been murdered by the mob. The rumours favored the U.S. government as the interested party. Ron Pataky had no ties to organized crime, but he did graduate from one of the schools for assassins that later became the U.S. Army School of the Americas. During the year and four months that he was close with Kilgallen he worked as a movie reviewer for a daily newspaper called the Columbus (Ohio) Citizen Journal. It no longer exists. Dawnlight Music was incorporated in New York on February 23, 1965 with the following shareholders: Pataky, Kilgallen, American singer Jerry Vale and Vale's manager Dee Anthony, who later became famous managing Peter Frampton and Joe Cocker. The purpose of Dawnlight was to promote Pataky's original songs. They were in the "cocktail" musical genre of Sinatra and Vale, NOT rock & roll. A short time after Dawnlight was incorporated, the Citizen Journal ran two strange film reviews by Pataky that contained non - sequiturs about American patriotism. Both appeared in April of 1965 when Kilgallen was hospitalized for a broken shoulder. She had a little more than six months left to live. Pataky's laudatory review of The Sound Of Music had a non sequitur at the end. He said in effect that Julie Andrews was the most wonderful woman in his life. "Next to Betsy Ross of course" are his very words. Shirley MacLaine was the star of the other film that reminded Pataky of his patriotism: "John Goldfarb Please Come Home." Pataky wrote that officials of Notre Dame in Indiana had complained about the silly way their football team was portrayed in the film. Pataky wrote that they were remiss for saying nothing about the silly way that U.S. intelligence agencies were depicted in the film. His very words: "Alma mater, si ? United States, no ?" The microfilm copies of Pataky's reportage in the Citizen Journal are available at several libraries in Columbus, Ohio and at Ohio University in the small isolated Ohio town of Athens (far away from Columbus and close to West Virginia). The microfilm collection at Ohio University evidently never got the attention of Dr. Eric Paddon when he taught history there in the 1990s. He authored the segment of Dr. John McAdams' web site that tries to debunk the Kilgallen - JFK theory. He doesn't refer to Pataky at all in it. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Are you saying that Lee Israel’s "Out-of-Towner" is Ron Pataky? You're not listening. Dorothy Kilgallen and Lee Israel are the ones who essentially said it. Kilgallen identified Ron Pataky as the newspaper critic from Columbus, Ohio who invited her to share a taxicab with him from London Airport (Heathrow ?) to the Dorchester Hotel. That's usually a long ride on a hot Friday (June 12), isn't it, Londoners ? Much traffic. While Israel doesn't cite that particular Voice of Broadway column, she does cite press agent Mike Hall (AKA Mitch) and the Out of Towner himself as sources on the fact that the Out of Towner was one of the 100 - plus journalists on that junket. Farther down on the same page, on the following page and several pages later Israel adds more details about the man that match Pataky: # 1 -- Some time before the journalists' junket, police reported to the scene when Israel's mystery man, in the company of his friends and his date, broke glass while he was drunk. Israel said, "Glass was broken; the police were called." This matches the front page of the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch of December 5, 1963. The banner headline that day concerned the arrest of Ron Pataky, movie critic for another Columbus newspaper, on charges of public intoxication and resisting arrest. The news story said he was with his girlfriend Anna Maria Alberghetti, visiting from Los Angeles, in the home of a Columbus friend when he (Pataky) hit his head on a glass door while drunk. # 2 -- Several pages after the segment on the journalists' junket, Israel reports that Dorothy Kilgallen tried to help the Out - of - Towner launch a new career "as a writer of popular songs." Sure enough, on a few days in 1965 the Columbus Citizen Journal plugged songs that its movie critic Ron Pataky wrote for cocktail singers Jerry Vale (April), John Gary (September) and Frankie Randall (December -- the month after Kilgallen died). All the newspaper accounts of that 20th Century Fox press junket place the number of participants in it between 100 and 120. We know that Ron Pataky was one of them. He is the only one who matches the Out of Towner on three points: a prior arrest record for public intoxication, a friendship with Dorothy Kilgallen that blossomed immediately after the journalists flew from Rome to London, and, finally, the subsequent launch of a new career as a songwriter with Kilgallen's help. How can more than one out of 120 people match those three conditions? This is what David B. Herschel claimed in 1993. You're citing an email that that person sent to the Internet Engineering Task Force in November of 1993. The Internet was much different then. IETF members and American college students constituted a large number of Internet users. Did you know what the Internet was in 1993 ? If you read the web site carefully you will note that a member of the IETF replied to Henschel's essay by joking that IETF stood for the "International Electronic Theater of Funnymen." Obviously, the IETF member circulated Henchel's essay because the member thought it was funny. Unless you used the fledgling Internet in 1993, you are foolish to cite this essay as a source. Stick with Lee Israel's book and Kilgallen's newspaper column. People have vouched for them as good sources on Kilgallen's career and social life. Some have disputed them, but many have defended them. Who can support what somebody circulated about dead people on the Internet in 1993 ? Nobody can. As far as I know Lee Israel has always refused to confirm that it was Pataky? She has always ignored my email questions about this. Nor has she been willing to answer this point on the forum. News flash: Ron Pataky is alive. He wants you to know that. Here's a link to his web site: Ron Pataky speaks. He doesn't mention Kilgallen or Oswald there, but you can see his psychotic sense of humor. Read the Midwest Today web site to get his quotes on Kilgallen. It has always puzzled me why Israel did not name “Out-of-Towner” in her book? It is not as if she accused him of murdering Dorothy Kilgallen. But she cites a taped interview with him in which he seems suspicious. He says he does not recall details of a telephone conversation with Kilgallen on the night she died, but he asserts that Kilgallen did call him from her New York home. He lived in Ohio. First he says she called him at about one a.m., then he says he can't remember the time. His remarks contradict several witnesses who placed Kilgallen in three places that night: CBS Studio 52, P. J. Clarke's and the cocktail lounge of the Regency Hotel. Nobody saw her go home. One witness said in 1999 that Kilgallen had a private, serious conversation with a man at the Regency lounge. The witness wanted to compliment Kilgallen on What's My Line? but Kilgallen and the man were so busy talking that interrupting them was a bad idea. Do you have your own evidence that "Out-of-Towner" is Ron Pataky? Or are you relying on the research carried out by Henschel? What part of "Kilgallen's first - person narrative" do you not understand ? Her column from June 14, 1964 has her first - person narrative of befriending Ron Pataky in London. It's not nuclear physics. <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Ah harken, the first Cookoo of spring! How are conspiracy theories about Mark Chapman not cookoo ? The man said on live television that he acted alone. Doubting that is cookoo. The reason people offer sane theories about Lee Oswald is that he denied shooting anyone. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Oh dear here we go again! Mr Wendland, you stated on the Penn Jones thread, that I doubt what Mark Chapman say's.I asked you to produce evidence of this, which you failed to do. So you see right through the Mark Chapman conspiracy theory ? It's another sign of the "first Cookoo of spring." Now you're making yourself clear. There is such thing as sanity. I'm not alone. I believe at least a few things I see on television. If someone confesses to murder on camera ten years after pleading guilty to a judge, then I buy it. Or was the New York City judge who heard Mr. Chapman's plea part of the conspiracy ? Was Ed Koch (then the mayor) part of it ? Etcetera. Now I ask again, where have I ever stated on this forum that I do not belive what Chapman(the scumbag) said.If you cannot do this then retract your above statement in relation to myself. Only now do you make yourself clear. You used the words "first Cookoo of spring" to describe those who see a connection between Michael Abram's heroin habit and Lyndon LaRouche's claim that Queen Elizabeth sold Mr. Abram the heroin. Those who see things in the Mark Chapman story that aren't there belong in the same category. If they have substance then that would mean that CNN producers conspired with Larry King to change what Mr. Chapman said. Don't forget the judge who heard the guilty plea. <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Shanet Could you enlighten the rest of us. debating with mr Wendland is like juggling smoke. The same goes for anyone who doubts what Mark Chapman said in American television interviews with Barbara Walters and Larry King. The King program was broadcast live unless you believe King and his producers at CNN conspired to alter Mr. Chapman's words on behalf of a secret conspiracy. Theories about people altering Mr. Chapman's statements belong in the same category as Queen Elizabeth controlling Michael Abram with heroin -- the category described by Stephen Turner as "the first Cookoo of spring." If you change what Mr. Chapman has said consistently for decades then I can change what Mr. Abram says. Fair is fair. The Chapman story spinners are juggling smoke, too. <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Are you saying that Lee Israel’s "Out-of-Towner" is Ron Pataky? This is what David B. Henschel claimed in 1993. As far as I know Lee Israel has always refused to confirm that it was Pataky? She has always ignored my email questions about this. Nor has she been willing to answer this point on the forum. Maybe because she tried to get people to leave Florence Pritchett alone, and they won't. She clarified for you, Mr. Simkin, why the name "Pritchett" doesn't appear in her book. She said in her message here that she interviewed people who knew Kilgallen at the end of her life, and none of them uttered the name "Florence Pritchett" or "Mrs. Smith." If the regulars here twist stuff about Pritchett, maybe Ms. Israel fears you'll do that with Ron Pataky. And he's still alive. It has always puzzled me why Israel did not name “Out-of-Towner” in her book? It is not as if she accused him of murdering Dorothy Kilgallen. But he comes across as suspicious, and lawyers for Ms. Israel's publisher removed his name for that reason. She includes in the "epilogue" the Out - of - Towner's 1976 taped interview in which he claims Kilgallen was in her house talking on the phone long - distance with him immediately before she died. That contradicts the claims of three people -- Harvey Daniels, Bob Bach and Mike Hall AKA Mitch -- that Kilgallen went from the television studio for What's My Line? (West 54th and Broadway) to P. J. Clarke's (Third Avenue and East 50th Street) to the Regency Hotel (Park Avenue between 61st and 62nd). Her house was on East 68th between Madison and Park. Ms. Israel could not find a driver for Carey Cadillac -- the limo company Kilgallen always used -- to verify that Kilgallen was alive when she voluntarily entered her house. The three sources cited by Ms. Israel agreed that the only reason Kilgallen would go to the Regency was for a romantic rendezvous or a private conversation with a close friend. The Regency did not have one of those trendy nightclubs in 1965. It had a lounge where a celebrity would go for privacy -- not to show off or be seen. Kilgallen knew the chances of finding an actor showing off there were slim to none. Remember, in that era actors wanted their names in her column. Then you have something that's not in the Israel book. One of the What's My Line contestants that night was a Kentucky woman who saw Kilgallen with a man at a banquette table in the Regency Hotel lounge. A cocktail party was going on in the lounge. That's why the Kentucky woman was there. Kilgallen and her male companion paid no attention to the cocktail party. They were not affectionate or romantic, either. "They were talking serious business of some kind," said the tourist from Kentucky in 1999. Do you have your own evidence that "Out-of-Towner" is Ron Pataky? Or are you relying on the research carried out by Henschel? The word "research" overstates the simple proof that Pataky is the man. You're in the U.K., right ? Let's see how accurate Kilgallen was reporting her own experiences there. Did Heathrow Airport used to be called London Airport ? Was the 20th Century Fox movie "Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines" filmed at an old airfield ? (Maybe Richard Branson later replaced it with something else.) At any rate, consult the passages in the Israel book about that 1964 European press junket for which 20th Century Fox flew more than 100 journalists to the location shooting of three films. Pay attention to the part about Kilgallen and the Out - of - Towner walking on Waterloo Bridge at dawn. What Ms. Israel does not say is that Kilgallen devoted a few of her columns - each in its entirety -- to the junket. In the last installment she wrote that Ron Pataky, a newspaper critic from Columbus, Ohio, shared a taxi ride with her from "London Airport" -- Gatwick was nothing then, right ? -- to the Savoy Hotel. That's a long ride. Pataky said to the cab driver, "I haven't any pounds with me. Will you take American money?" The cab driver replied, "Hop in, governor. It's the best money in the world." New Yorkers can find this on microfilm in the Journal American from Sunday, June 14, 1964. Are you in Maryland, the District of Columbia or Virginia ? If you are, read it in the Washington Post from Wednesday, June 17. The Cincinnati Enquirer printed the Kilgallen / Pataky encounter on Thursday, June 18. Want more opportunities ? As I said, the word "research" is an overstatement. Anyone can find the proof on microfilm at a number of American libraries. Could the London Evening Standard have printed a photograph or two of the 100 plus journalists at the location shoot of "Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines ?" Terry - Thomas was in it, and he was hot stuff in 1964. Maybe Kilgallen stands next to Pataky in one image. The Evening Standard wasn't the only London paper in 1964 likely to print large photographs of movie shoots, right ? Maybe rolls of microfilm in London could be of interest. The newspapers would have identified Kilgallen in the captions but not Pataky. Nonetheless American libraries do have her column with the proof that the colleague Kilgallen met on the press junket "from a small, out - of - town newspaper" (Israel's words) was the same man who shared a taxi ride with her paid with his American currency. If nothing else, I hope to persuade people to leave Florence Pritchett alone. She lay bedridden with leukemia for months, and a 12 - year - old is old enough to know that. Have some compassion. <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Ah harken, the first Cookoo of spring! How are conspiracy theories about Mark Chapman not cookoo ? The man said on live television that he acted alone. Doubting that is cookoo. The reason people offer sane theories about Lee Oswald is that he denied shooting anyone. <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I don’t think this is significant. Dorothy Kilgallen had a large number of friends who were in show business. After all, she was mainly a gossip columnist. It might have been significant if she was seen having a meeting with Sam Giancana. Interestingly, there were rumours that she had been murdered by the mob. Wrong. The rumours favored the U.S. government as the interested party. Ron Pataky had no ties to organized crime, but he did graduate from one of the schools for assassins that later became the U.S. Army School of the Americas. During the year and four months that he was close with Kilgallen he worked as a movie reviewer for a daily newspaper called the Columbus (Ohio) Citizen Journal. It no longer exists. Dawnlight Music was incorporated in New York on February 23, 1965 with the following shareholders: Pataky, Kilgallen, American singer Jerry Vale and Vale's manager Dee Anthony, who later became famous managing Peter Frampton and Joe Cocker. The purpose of Dawnlight was to promote Pataky's original songs. They were in the "cocktail" musical genre of Sinatra and Vale, NOT rock & roll. A short time after Dawnlight was incorporated, the Citizen Journal ran two strange film reviews by Pataky that contained non - sequiturs about American patriotism. Both appeared in April of 1965 when Kilgallen was hospitalized for a broken shoulder. She had a little more than six months left to live. Pataky's laudatory review of The Sound Of Music had a non sequitur at the end. He said in effect that Julie Andrews was the most wonderful woman in his life. "Next to Betsy Ross of course" are his very words. Shirley MacLaine was the star of the other film that reminded Pataky of his patriotism: "John Goldfarb Please Come Home." Pataky wrote that officials of Notre Dame in Indiana had complained about the silly way their football team was portrayed in the film. Pataky wrote that they were remiss for saying nothing about the silly way that U.S. intelligence agencies were depicted in the film. His very words: "Alma mater, si ? United States, no ?" The microfilm copies of Pataky's reportage in the Citizen Journal are available at several libraries in Columbus, Ohio and at Ohio University in the small isolated Ohio town of Athens (far away from Columbus and close to West Virginia). The microfilm collection at Ohio University evidently never got the attention of Dr. Eric Paddon when he taught history there in the 1990s. He authored the segment of Dr. John McAdams' web site that tries to debunk the Kilgallen - JFK theory. He doesn't refer to Pataky at all in it. The reason was her long-term feud with Frank Sinatra. He often made personal attacks on her during his concert performances. This conflict dated back to an article she wrote about Sinatra in 1956. Another enemy was Jack Paar. This is an extract from Lee Israel’s book on Kilgallen: Why does Lee Israel's book constitute 99 percent of your source material on Dorothy Kilgallen ? You don't care about the fact that Lee never mentioned Florence Pritchett in the text. Recently she tried to explain why, but you didn't listen. The document you cited about Johnny Rosselli avoiding a confrontation in a nightclub tells us nothing about Kilgallen. So what if she was there ? She visited those clubs hundreds of times. It was her job. Her relationship with Ron Pataky had nothing to do with her job. ”There had been some snide little items about her (Dorothy Kilgallen) in the columns, an occasional short profile in the magazines, and frequent strafing from television performers. Jack Paar led the pack in 1960, taking up Sinatra's slack. That tempestuous round began when Dorothy swiped at him in the column over his impassioned support of Fidel Castro. She was violently opposed to the new Cuban leader and peppered her column with anti-Castro items, many of which appear to have been fed to her by Miami-based exiles or CIA fronts on an almost daily basis. Paar retaliated on his prime-time, high-rated television show.” <{POST_SNAPBACK}>