When Peter Noyes' book Legacy of Doubt (Pinacle paperback, 197?) came out, focusing on Jim Braden, and how he was taken into custody as a suspicious person leaving the Dal Tex building shortly after the assassination, Noyes makes a lot of the fact that Braden had changed his name shortly before taking his trip to Texas.
Under his old name, Eugene Hale Brading, he was arrested numerous times for various things, most notably for selling black market gas coupons in Florida during World War II, and as a material witness in the gambling case of Dominic Mattia in Camden, New Jersey in 1948.
In his book Noyes wrote that he contacted the Camden PD and asked for a copy of Braden's arrest report from 1948 but that he got no response, but since Camden was notorious for being under the control of organized crime, there was certainly a coverup.
When I showed that passage to my father, a Camden police lieutenant at the time, he obtained the original 4 page arrest report, including mug shot of Braden, and gave it to me, saying that it was in the back of the dirty and dingy basement at city hall and the secretaries who got Noyes' letter said they just didn't want to go down there. So much for organized crime control of Camden PD.
So I made a half dozen copies of the 1948 report, and then looked up Dominic Mattia in the phone book and found him in Cherry Hill. I went out to Mattia's house and knocked on the door and asked him about the arrest report with Braden. Mattia said he was playing cards in the backroom of a business in Camden when they were raided by vice cops. He didn't know Braden at the time, but since he was from out of town they took him in as a material witness and booked him. And Mattia hadn't seen Braden since.
Mattia was later arrested in a pretty complicated rackettering scheme, so I'm pretty sure he was a low level mobster of some sort, but I believe him about his interaction with Braden at the time.
I made a half dozen copies of Braden's Camden arrest report and sent them out to Peter Noyes in California, John Judge and Jim Lesar in Washington, Bill Turner and a few others who had expressed interest.
Not long there after, Congress established the House Select Committee on Assasinations (HSCA) and former Philadelphia prosecutor Richard Sprague was appointed chief counsel. I read the book about Sprague's prosecution of Mine Workers boss Tony Boyle for the political assassination of his rival Jock Yablonski, so I had high hopes that Sprague would make a difference.
When I read in the papers that Sprague had ordered his staff to read a number of conspiracy books, including Noyes' Legacy of Doubt, I put a copy of Braden's 1948 Camden arrest report in an envelop and personally delivered it to Sprague's office in Philadelphia.
Then Sprague got sacked and G. Robert Blakey, the law professor from Cornell (Now Notre Dame) and author of the RICO statutes, replaced him as chief counsel to HSCA.
Blakey of course, revamped the investigation, steered it towards organized crime, and after they issued the HSCA Final Report, wrote a book with Billings on how the mob killed Kennedy, using as evidence the Jim Braden connection.
The HSCA had interviewed Braden twice in executive sessions but then Blakey declared that since all of the HSCA records were Congressional Records, they were locked away for 50 years (from 1978).
It was at that time, after the HSCA disbanded and their records were locked away, that I got a phone call from Michael Ewing at my home in Ocean City, NJ.
I recognzied Ewing from the Coincidence or Conspiracy? book and for being a HSCA staff member, and assistant to Blakey in writing his mob killed JFK book.
Ewing said that Blakey had just learned from Peter Noyes that I had obtained Jim Braden's 1948 Camden arrest report, and he and Blakey wanted to know if they could have a copy?
I explained to Ewing that I had give a copy to Sprague, Blakey's predecissor at the HSCA, and Ewing said that when Sprague left he took his papers with him and apparently didn't leave what I had given him.
I told Ewing that I was glad that Sprague didn't leave it behind because if he did it would be locked away for 50 years.
In any case, I sent Ewing and Blakey a copy of the report and expressed my feelings that they were wrong to try to pin the assassination on the mob, but they could have it as ammunition anyway.
Ewing then corresponded with me a few times, and I had his phone number, but a few years later, when I wanted to contact him, the number no longer worked.
The original guy, who asked John to post his questions about Ewing, implies that the Michael Ewing he knew may have had CIA connections.
I don't think Ewing was CIA.
That's my Michael Ewing story.
Camden mug shot:
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/CRIbraden1.htmNor do I think Jim Braden was a Dal Tex shooter, as he was never arrested for any violent crime ever. He was a racketter and con artists, not an assassin. He's also still alive today, and if anybody can find him I'd like to talk to him.
Bill Kelly