Roger Fong

I was going to make a comment about "solving the case" under the Jim Leavelle thread, but I didn't want to appear to hijack THAT thread. But one cannot be accused of hijacking one's own thread, right? So here goes.

When people find out that I'm interested in the Kennedy assassination, the number one question, and for the most part the only question, I'm asked is: Who do YOU think did it? Well, I can honestly say that I don't know, and I don't think the case will be solved in my lifetime. Now, that's no reason to despair, lose interest or abandon the case. Life is full of mysteries and we'll never have all the answers. The Kennedy assassination is the greatest murder mystery of all time. And like a great mystery novel that you can snuggle up to each night, I'm not ready for it to end. Besides, I'm a little apprehensive that the denouement will be a disappointment. The journey may turn out to be more satisfying than the destination.

Roger

November 22 is always about a week or less before the U.S. national holiday known as Thanksgiving, which is on the fourth Thursday of November. This year, November 22 is on a Tuesday, and Thanksgiving is on the following Thursday, two days later. Because of the proximity of these two important dates, I've never been able to go to Dallas on November 22 due to family obligations (my household is responsible for cooking the annual Thanksgiving dinner for the extended family). So looking ahead on the calendar, I'm trying to figure out a good year for me to make a one time break with family tradition and finally be in Dallas on November 22. Well, it looks like 2013 is the year! 2013 will be the 50th anniversary of the assassination and November 22 that year falls on a Friday - I think that's significant. So barring some unforeseen circumstances, see you all in Dallas in 2013!

Roger

The Jack Lawrence case will probably not tell us too much about who killed Kennedy, but it does tell us a thing or two about some of the issues faced by people who study the Kennedy case. Here's what author Sheldon Inkol says about his responsibility as a researcher:

"I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to Jack Lawrence. I wrote an article for publication which accused him of conspiracy to commit murder. A man I had never met, a man I had newer spoken to, accused on the basis of third, fourth, fifth-hand, and unsworn testimony. I think it is too easy for we assassination researchers to forget that the suspicious characters we spend so much time studying and theorizing about are real people with families and reputations who may in fact be entirely innocent, and are without question innocent until proven guilty."

On the other hand, here's what Jerry Rose, Third Decade editor, says about the testimony of witnesses who are suspects:

"Although Jack Lawrence is certainly entitled to the "response" described by Inkol, I do not feel that Jack Lawrence (or any other "suspect") can be permitted the "last word" on Jack Lawrence. Inkol's article is a useful corrective to some of the unsubstantiated claims about Lawrence that have developed over the years. However, Lawrence's own version of events, as described by Inkol, seems to compromise his credibility in a number of ways, several of which I hope to develop in a future article."

If you're interested in reading the article and forming your own opinion, I've scanned it and you'll find it here:

http://www.ridetiger.com/jfk/JLR.pdf

Thanks Ron for the informative post.  The Lawrence story is interesting indeed.  It would be great if he would give an interview or answer some questions because it is still some odd behavior he exhibited that day.

Inkol's article takes up 16 pages and includes 54 footnotes. While Ron has done an admirable job responding to the issues surrounding Jack Lawrence, there really is no substitute for reading Inkol's original article. Lawrence comes through as a very decent fellow. Yes, a few unanswered questions remain, but that's not a good reason for continuing to vilify him.

"Jack Lawrence Reponds" was published in September 1992. In the July 1997 issue of The Fourth Decade, p. 30, Inkol makes the following comments in a letter referring to Beverly Oliver's report that she had seen Lawrence at the Carousel Club and had danced with him:

I find it frustrating that several authors and researchers persist in ignoring or disregarding Jack Lawrence's denials and my careful research on the one hand, while on the other hand they insist on repeating Beverly Oliver's dubious statements at face value. She offers no evidence for her claims, contradicts herself, constantly amends and embellishes her stories, is caught in factual errors (there were no Super-8 cameras in 1963), and profits from the assassination. Why is her word better than Jack Lawrence's? Here, after all, is a person who (by her own admission) supposedly knew Jack Ruby, met Oswald and Ferrie, was there in Dealey Plaza, worked for the Great Southwest Corporation (see Deep Politics, p. 294), dated an assassin, and married a gangster! In addition, according to Peter Dale Scott, "the problem of how to handle the 'Babushka Lady,' and some of her wilder claims, bedeviled the first months for the [HSCA]...and helped precipitate the crisis of confidence which almost wrecked the Committee..

Re: John Simkin's Namebase list of Jack Lawrence references

Duffy,J. Ricci,V. The Assassination of John F. Kennedy. 1992 (272)

Giancana,S.& C. Double Cross. 1992 (334)

Groden,R. Livingstone,H. High Treason. 1990 (133-4, 292)

Marrs,J. Crossfire. 1990 (339-40)

Here's a more complete list from Walt Brown's JFK index.

569, 571 in Brown, People v. Lee Harvey Oswald;

161 in Brown, Treachery in Dallas;

350 in Brown, Warren Omission;

217-218 in Buchanan and Oliver, Nightmare in Dallas;

115-116 in Groden and Livingstone, High Treason;

334 in Giancana, Double Cross;

7, 110 in Groden, The Killing of a President;

123-124 in Jones, Forgive My Grief, II;

155 in Jones, Forgive My Grief, IV;

390, 397, 508 in Livingstone, Killing the Truth;

339-340 in Marrs, Crossfire;

307-308 in Moscovit, Did Castro Kill Kennedy?

90, 110 in Shaw and Harris, Cover-Up;

681-682, 700, 722, 732, 740 in Twyman, Bloody Treason;

Warren Commission 26 Volumes: XXVI, 452-453, 687-688, 704

It's curious that Twyman's book is not included in the Namebase list. Twyman's comments about Lawrence are within the context of his long and rambling chapter on Gerald Patrick Hemming. Although Twyman acknowledges Inkol's research, he (Twyman) repeats some of the stories refuted or denied by Lawrence in Inkol's article, including the reports that Lawrence returned to Downtown Lincoln-Mercury "pale, sweating profusely, out of breath, and with mud on his clothes, and had run into the restroom and vomited." Lawrence explains that because of the conjestion, he had to park his car near the YMCA where he was staying and walk approximately a mile to get work. He denies that the car was parked behind the picket fence on the grassy knoll. He later got a ride from one of the other salesmen known as "the Colonel" to retrieve the car. If the car had been near the grassy knoll, he would not have needed a ride. No one, including Lawrence, has been able to positively identify this colonel.

One additional curiosity: Major Phil Willis also worked at Downtown Lincoln-Mercury.

This is from Joseph Trento's book, "The Secret History of the CIA", page 219:

While he [Oswald] was being processed out of the Marines in Los Angeles, the FBI photographed him meeting with Lieutenant Colonel Pavel T. Voloshin, a top KGB recruiter who was in LA with a Soviet dance troupe. The FBI placed the picture in a counterintelligence file on KGB "watchers" of cultural organizations visiting the United States. The FBI also took another picture of Oswald, this time as he was visiting the Cuban consulate in Los Angeles.

In Groden's book "The Search for LHO" there are photos of Oswald TAKEN BY the KGB, but I don't recall ever having seen the FBI photos. Does anyone have any information? Thanks.

Roger

Walt provided the leads for the Newsweek photo and the Dean Martin film.

I have not seen any evidence showing that Peck impersonated LBJ at the time of the assassination. If you know of any, I'll be interested in seeing it. The fact that he looked like LBJ might be a red herring. What he knew might have been more important than what he looked like.

Roger

JOHN LIGGETT and the murder of LBJ look-alike, JAY BERT PECK

On Tuesday, March 27, 1974, 44-year-old Dorothy A. Peck of 1202 Melrose in Garland, Texas, staggered from her home and asked a neighbor to summon police and firemen. She had been brutally beaten and a fire had been started from clothing stuffed beneath her bed. Her bed had been destroyed and her bedroom scorched before firemen doused the flames. She had been left for dead, but she survived to identified her assailant. From her hospital bed, she identified John Melvin Liggett as the man who had accompanied her home from a bar the night before, attacked her with a hammer, and set fire to her bed.

Curiously, approximately 5 years earlier on July 5, 1969, Jay Bert Peck, of the same Garland address and presumably Mrs. Peck husband (although he was nearly 30 years her senior), was murdered at the same location. Mrs. Peck heard a shot in the bedroom, rushed in and found Peck in bed with a bullet wound in his head. He was rushed to Parkland Hospital where he died 12 hours later. Peck, a cousin of Lyndon Johnson, and an LBJ look-alike, achieved a certain degree of notoriety impersonating the president. He made appearances at parties and political functions. He even had a small part in Dean Martin’s Matt Helm movie, The Wrecking Crew, in which he appeared as the president.

After Liggett’s arrest, police started looking into possible Liggett involvement in several unsolved murders. Susan Thompson Payne, a 41-year-old women was found dead in a fire-gutted North Dallas apartment on February 10, 1974. Her body had been mutilated and sexually abused. There were several other fire-related murders in the Dallas area in the early 70s and Liggett was a prime suspect.

All of the above information is in the public domain, in Harrison Livingstone’s book, “Killing Kennedy”, in contemporary newspaper accounts (Dallas Morning News), and in Nigel Turner’s TV show. Here are some unanswered questions:

· Was John Melvin Liggett part of a witness elimination program as claimed by Harrison Livingstone in “Killing Kennedy”?

· It seems very likely the Liggett did try to kill Mrs. Peck. Did he also murder Jay Bert Peck? Did Peck know something and was that what got him killed? Did he tell his wife and was that the reason an attempt was made on her life? Is there any significance to the fact the Peck was a relative of LBJ? Or is this just another one of those coincidences that keep cropping up in this case?

· What did the other murder victims know?

· As reported by Livingstone, Larry Howard of the Assassination Information Center was looking into this case in 1993 when he had two strokes and died. Is there a connection?

· What does Billie Sol Estes know about this case? He’s been shopping the story around.

Thanks to Walt Brown for providing several key leads.

Here are some photos that may be of interest to readers of this forum:

Jay Bert Peck appeared in the Dean Martin Matt Helm film, “The Wreaking Crew.” He was paid $1,000 for this brief appearance and is credited in the Internet Movie Database (imdb.com) as J.B. Pick. Even though it’s only a shot from the rear, the resemblance is quite striking.

Here is a publicity shot for the film. This picture appeared in Newsweek, August 5, 1968. The lovely lady on the left is Elke Sommer, one of the stars of the film.

This is a photo of Jay Bert Peck that was printed with his obituary in the Dallas Morning News, July 6, 1969.

Here’s a picture of John Melvin Liggett printed in the Dallas Morning News on March 31, 1974 after his arrest for the attempted murder of Dorothy Peck.

The ID of Malcolm Liggett in that photo with Ruby may be in dispute, but we should be careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water. Brother John Liggett is still a very suspicious character. John was shot to death while in police custody, presumably because he was attempting to escape. He was under suspicion for a string of brutal mutilation-murders in the early 70s. I've been tracking down some leads, but I'm not quite ready to report on these yet. Maybe next week.

Roger

Also, I know a URL that lists property ownership and assessment info, by address,  for most counties in Texas ( including Dallas )

Ian,

What is that URL?

Thanks,

Roger

Thomas Karamessines is discussed in Richard Helms 2003 book, A Look Over My Shoulder. I guess I don't have to remind you to consider the source. Here's a photo of Karamessines.

In the heat of battle, anyone can make mistakes, even reporters. So I wouldn't lose too much sleep over the height difference, or even the Spanish accent comment. Although I've studied linguistics, I'm not an expert by any stretch. However, I think many people familiar with American idiomatic speech will agree that Oswald is not that easy to pin down. His speech pattern is kind of uniquely his own, with maybe a trace of southern. Amazingly, Englishman Gary Oldman nailed it in the JFK movie.

Here's that photo of Julia Postal from Groden's book, "The Search for Lee Harvey Oswald." It's not a great shot, but it doesn't look like the same women. Below that is John Calvin Brewer from the same book.

Roger

John,

My copy of The Oswald Affair is a second printing dated 1966. It was published by The World Publishing Company in Cleveland. On the back of the title page, the publisher notes the book was published simultaneously in Canada by Nelson, Foster & Scott Ltd.

Roger

I've also seen the following attributed to Oswald:

"You're the police; you figure it out..."

Anyone know the source for this quote? Did he really say this? If so, when and under what circumstances?

I can't find this quote in Mae Brussell's compilation.

Robin. Yes, interesting photos. I've never seen the one that looks like the Mystery Man from the rear. This was not one that was published in the Warren Report. What is the source of these unpublished photos?

Speaking of the Mystery Man, does anyone know anything about one Ralph N. Geb? He's been proposed by some as the Mystery Man. All I know is that Geb attended Woodrow Wilson High School, the same school that Mac Wallace and John Thomas Masen attended. Must have been some school!

DiEugenio doesn't accept all of Timothy Leary's story but he doesn't actually dispute that Mary was Kennedy's mistress or that they might have done drugs together. The principals, like the characters in Rashômon, do seem to have mutually irreconcilable versions of what happened after Mary's death: who was there, how the diary was discovered and what happened to it afterwards. There is even a report that some of those involved got together years later to participate in a seance to commune with Mary's departed spirit.

What's most interesting to me is Angleton's involvement. It's not clear whether it was Mary's wish that Angleton end up with the diary. Depending on who's tellling the story, Angleton either found the diary himself or had it handed over to him; he was supposed to destroy it right away, but he apparently did not. He either destroyed it later or gave it back to Mary's sister Tony who destroyed it. Angleton does seem to make a habit of descending vulture-like after a death to sweep up documents. He did that in Mexico City after Winston Scott's death to confiscate Scott's manuscript, The Foul Foe.

Jim DiEugenio is skeptical of Leary's story. Here's Jim's take:

From "The Posthumous Assassination of John F. Kennedy"

by James DiEugenio (reprinted in The Assassinations)

As noted earlier, Jim Truitt gave this curious tale its first public airing in 1976, on the heels of the Church Committee. From there, the Washington Post (under Bradlee) picked it up. There had been an apparent falling out between Truitt and Bradlee, and Truitt said that he wanted to show that Bradlee was not the crusader for truth that Watergate or his book on Kennedy had made him out to be. In the National Enquirer, Truitt stated that Mary had revealed her affair with Kennedy while she was alive to he and his wife. He then went further. In one of their romps in the White House, Mary had offered Kennedy a couple of marijuana joints, but coke-sniffer Kennedy said, "This isn't like cocaine. I'll get you some of that."

The chemical addition to the story was later picked up by drug guru Tim Leary in his book, Flashbacks. Exner-like, the angle grew appendages. Leary went beyond grass and cocaine. According to Leary, Mary Meyer was consulting with him about how to conduct acid sessions and how to get psychedelic drugs in 1962. Leary met her on several occasions and she said that she and a small circle of friends had turned on several times. She also had one other friend who was "a very important man" whom she also wanted to turn on. After Kennedy's assassination, Mary called Leary and met with him. She was cryptic but she did say, "They couldn't control him any more. He was changing too fast. He was learning too much." The implication being that a "turned on" JFK was behind the moves toward peace in 1963. Leary learned about Meyer's murder in 1965, but did not pull it all together until the 1976 Jim Truitt disclosure. With Leary, the end (for now) of the Meyer story paints JFK as the total '60s swinger: pot, coke, acid, women, and unbeknownst to Kennedy, Leary has fulfilled his own fantasy by being Kennedy's guide on his magical mystery tour toward peace.

But there is a big problem with Leary, his story, and those who use it (like biographers David Horowitz and Peter Collier). Leary did not mention Mary in any of his books until Flashbacks in 1983, more than two decades after he met Mary. It's not like he did not have the opportunity to do so. Leary was a prolific author who got almost anything he wanted published. He appears to have published over 40 books. Of those, at least 25 were published between 1962, when he says he met Mary, and 1983, when he first mentions her. Some of these books are month-to-month chronicles, e.g., High Priest. I could not find Mary mentioned, even vaguely, in any of the books. This is improbable considering the vivid, unforgettable portrait that Leary drew in 1983. This striking-looking woman walks in unannounced, mentions her powerful friends in Washington, and later starts dumping out the CIA's secret operations to control American elections to him. Leary, who mentioned many of those he turned on throughout his books, and thanks those who believed in him, deemed this unimportant. That is, until the 20th anniversary of JFK's death. (Which is when Rosenbaum wrote his ugly satire on the Kennedy research community for Texas Monthly, which in turn got him a guest spot on Nightline.) This is also when Leary began hooking up with Gordon Liddy, doing carnival-type debates across college campuses, an act which managed to rehabilitate both of them and put them back in the public eye.

There is another problem with Leary's book: the Phil Graham anecdote. In his book, Leary has Mary tell him that the cat was out of the bag as far as she and JFK were concerned. The reason was that a well-known friend of hers had blabbed about them in public. This is an apparent reference to Post owner Phil Graham's outburst at a convention in Phoenix, Arizona in 1963. This famous incident (which preceded his later alleged mental breakdown) included--according to Leary--a reference to Kennedy and Mary Meyer. The story of Graham's attendance at this convention and what he did and said has been described in different ways in different books. Unfortunately for Leary, his dating of the convention does not jibe with any that I have seen. In 1986, Tony Chaitkin tracked down the correct date, time, and place of the meeting. No one had done it correctly up to that time. But Chaitkin and his associates went one step further. They interviewed people who were there. None of the attendees recalled anything said about Mary Meyer.

To me, this apocryphal anecdote and Leary's book seem ways to bolster a tale that needed to be recycled and souped up before its chinks began to show. Leary's reason for being a part of the effort may be because he was never enamored of the Kennedys' approach to the drug problem, which was antagonistic to Leary personally and a lot less liberal in its approach. Leary was quite frank about this in his book High Priest (p. 67), and later in the book, Changing My Mind (pp. 143 ff.). Whatever his motives, Leary's retroactive endorsement is just not credible.

Oops, it looks like the DiEugenio essay is NOT on the CTKA website afterall. What they have there is just a teaser. You'll have to get the book or find a back issue of Probe.

James, in your post, the photo on the right IS Mary Meyer (according to Burleigh) and the photo was taken by White House photographer Cecil Strougton. Stroughton was in the motorcade in Camera Car No. 2 (I believe that's Robert Cutler's designation) on November 22. 1963.

Here's a scan from the Burleigh book of the same photo, but not cropped as much. On the left is Mary's parents and sister Tony in the striped dress.

Jim DiEugenio wrote an excellent analysis of the Mary Meyer story in an essay called "The Posthumous Assassination of John F. Kennedy", first printed in Probe Magazine then reprinted in the book "The Assassinations". It can also be found on the CTKA website:

http://www.webcom.com/ctka/pr997-jfk.html

The photo can also be found [Meyer looking left] in 'A Very Private Woman' - the biography of Mary Pinchot Meyer by Nina Burleigh.

- lee

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hmmm. This photo is not in my copy of Burleigh's book (Bantam trade paperback edition, October 1999).

What IS there is the Cecil Stoughton shot of JFK and Mary with her sister and parents. The caption is worth quoting: "JFK with Mary (far right), Tony, and Ruth in 1963. After this picture was taken, the president retreated into the Pinchots' "little house" to look at baby pictures of Mary and Tony with their mother, who was already contributing to Barry Goldwater's campaign."

James, do you have a good scan of this photo?

Roger

There are several photos at the Cuban Exile website including a couple of gruesome ones.

http://cuban-exile.com/menu2/2delval.html

John Abt was a New York lawyer who was chief counsel for the American Communist Party. When Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested following the assassination, Oswald called Abt's office collect to ask for help. 'I want that attorney in New York, Mr. Abt. I don't know him personally but I know about a case that he handled some years ago, where he represented the people who had violated the Smith Act ... If I can't get him, then I may get the American Civil Liberties Union to send me an attorney.' Oswald referred to Abt at least 6 other times during that weekend.

As it turned out, Abt had left his New York office early that Friday for a long weekend in Kent. Reporters located Abt at his weekend retreat, but Oswald never connected with Abt. By the time Abt returned to New York on Sunday everning, Ruby had already killed Oswald.

More information on Abt can be found in his biography: Advocate and Activist: Memories of an American Communist Lawyer, 1993.

It was Debra Godwin who made the identification (on camera). Debra is John Liggett's step-daughter and the daughter of wife Lois. If this was a mistaken identification, that's very interesting. You'd think that Debra would correctly identify her own relatives. Debra is not mentioned in the Sun Sentinel article.

John Melvin Liggett (November 7, 1933 - February 14, 1975?) is not listed in the Namebase database, and there are only two citations in Walt Brown’s Global index, both from Harrison Livingstone (Killing the Truth and Killing Kennedy).

In November 2003, the History Channel broadcast three new chapters in Nigel Turner’s series, The Men Who Killed Kennedy. The John Liggett story is told in Chapter VII, “The Smoking Guns.” All three episodes were briefly available on DVD from the History Channel website. But they were suddenly withdrawn due to heavy pressure from supporters of LBJ (Chapter IX – “The Guilty Men” implicates LBJ, Clint Murchison and Mac Wallace.)

The De Mohrenschildt connection in Shanet’s post is new (at least to me) and is not discussed in “The Smoking Gun.” Is the French book the only source?

Here’s a summary of the story as told in TMWKK:

John Liggett was a highly-skilled embalmer who worked at the Restland Funeral Home in Dallas. Co-worker Charles Smith remembered him as being the best person around doing reconstructive work. But Liggett also had a secret life and would be gone from the job for days or even weeks at a time. On the day of the assassination, Liggett was at Restland attending the funeral for the aunt of his wife of three months, Lois. He was suddenly called to the office from the grave side and when he returned he told his wife that the president had been shot and that he had to go to Parkland Hospital.

When he returned home about 24 hours later, he was tired, disheveled and agitated. He told his wife and step-children that they had to get out of town for a while “until all of this blows over.” They drove at high speed to Austin, then San Antonio. There were brief stops along the way for huddled conversations with various contacts. On Sunday, they were watching television in a hotel room in Corpus Christi and saw Ruby shoot Oswald. As soon as he saw that, he turned to his wife and said, “Everything’s OK now.”

They returned to Dallas, but their life-style changed. After the assassination, Liggett seemed to have come into a lot of money. They moved into a luxury home and Liggett became a big time gambler hosting big, wild poker parties. At one point, there was a visit from one of Liggett’s eccentric friends from New Orleans. He told his family that he and this friend had been together in the Civil Air Patrol. The family now thinks the visitor was David Ferrie.

Liggett and Lois divorced in 1966. They both remarried but remained close. In 1974, Liggett was arrested for the attempted murder of Dorothy Peck. About a year later, Lois was contacted by Malcolm Liggett, John’s brother. Malcolm told Lois that for the safety of herself and her family, that she should have no further contact with John. Lois and her family moved to Lubbock and a few weeks later John was shot in the back. On the morning of February 14, 1975 John Liggett was being transferred, with other prisoners, from the Dallas courthouse to the county jail. Liggett slipped from his handcuff and was shot in the back while trying to escape.

But there are further mysteries in the John Liggett story. In 1992, Leona, John’s wife at the time he was killed, disclosed that the body that she was asked to identify in 1975 was not the body of her husband John. For one thing, the corpse had a mustache and John Liggett never had a mustache and was not capable of growing one.

Recently, Lois was convinced that she spotted John in a casino in Las Vegas. After his divorce from Lois, John worked for several years in a casino in Las Vegas. Also recently, a photograph surfaced showing John Liggett’s brother Malcolm posing with Jack Ruby in Ruby’s Carousel Club.

Here’s that photo taken at the Carousel. From left to right: Susanne Liggett (wife of Malcolm), Malcolm Liggett (brother of John), Jack Ruby, unidentified person, Iris Campbell who was later to become a friend of Lois and her daughter Debra Godwin. The rest of the people in the photo are unidentified. Sorry for the poor quality of the photo. If anyone has a better version, please let me know.

Perry Russo (May 14, 1941 - August 16, 1995) was an interesting character: had strong views, was very articulate, and was not easily intimidated. Here's a picture of him from Oliver Stone's JFK in which he plays a right winger in a bar cheering JFK's death. His own views, especially at the time of the Garrison investigation, was definitely more right than left, which is interesting because his testimony at the Shaw trial would seem to implicate the right although Clay Shaw called himself a Wilsonian-Franklin-Delano-Roosevelt liberal.