Could this be David Morales in Dealey Plaza?

[Myra Bronstein]

Discussion continued here:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=10596

on the subject(s) of the original plot (i.e., what would have occurred if Oswald had not been captured alive),

and the impact of the Oswald arrest on the original plot.

[Gene Kelly]

Thanks James

[David Boylan]

Well, the subject of the Johnson rifle is new to me so I found this:

http://www.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_i...ue/guns_dp.html

......... Hall and "a fat, Mexican fellow came in and redeemed the rifle" ten to fifteen days before the assassination. The

next day Hall and the Mexican left for Miami.

I'm presuming this was Lawrence Howard? He fits the bill on both accounts - i.e. being both 'fat and Mexican'.

Francesca,

This was indeed Lawarence Howard. Hall, Howard, and Celio Castro Alba, aka Juarito, picked up a load of weapons from Clint Wheat's house before picking up the Johnson and driving to Dallas. There is a report that Wheat made a hurried visit to Dallas just before 11/22, possibly to meet up with Hall(?) The Johnson reportedly ended up at a Miami dentist's house, a Dr. Crockette.

Here's Hathcock:

FFIDAVIT OF RICHARD HATHCOCK

My name is Richard Hathcock. I once owned and operated Allied International Detective Agency. At the time that we're interest in, my offices were at 6715 Hollywood Boulevard in the Outpost Building. About two months before the John Kennedy assassination in Dallas, two men came to see me in my office.

One was Jerry Patrick Hemming, who was using the name of Jerry Patrick. The other man was Lorenzo Hall, who like to called Skip Hall, whose real name was Pacillio, which I understand is a Cuban name. These men came to see me one afternoon, stating that they had heard of me because of my many years of undercover investigation of communism on the state college campuses here when I worked for the Hearst chain, and some other activities, anti-communist activities that I had been involved in. They were here, they told me, to raise money with which to buy medicines and equipment, military hardware for a planned invasion of Cuba. That they were going to train troops in Guatemala, which they actually did later. They told me that they were dead broke, and that they were going to be here for two or three weeks, they had some other contacts that they wanted to see, raise money, but meantime they needed a hundred dollars. They wanted to borrow the hundred dollars, and what they had for security was a set of golf clubs and a rifle which was a 30 caliber Johnson, modified to sem-automatic operation, which I believe held nine rounds, and also was equipped with a 30 power Bushnell variable scope.

I gave them the hundred dollars, they left the golf clubs and the rifle.

For several weeks after that, I saw both men frequently, then my understanding was that Jerry Patrick returned to Miami to set things in operation down there for the planned invasion of Cuba. What they had planned essentially was to blow up some oil storage tanks on the west coast. Lorenzo Hall stayed here, and was in the private eye office very often, almost every day. He told me that both he and Patrick had originally been in Castro's army when they believed that he was really trying to free Cuba from Batista, that they had fought, fought hard, helped to put Castro in power, found out that he was a communist, had no interest in the poeple, and they turned on Castro with the result that both were imprisoned, and sentenced to be shot.

Both, through manipulations and through friends managed to escape and get to this country. They showed me lots of photos, gave me documents, and I do believe what they told me about those things. Eventually, as I say, Patrick went back to Miami, and I did not see him after that. Shortly before the assa ssination, if memory serves me correctly, it was no more that ten days before the assassination, Skip Hall and a big, fat Mexican whom I'd never seen before, and whose name I don't recall at this time, but I'm sure the FBI has it, came to see me, told me that they were going to Dallas to pick up some medicines and some other material, they wanted to redeem the rifle. They gave me $50, told me to keep the golf clubs, I got a note signed by Skip Hall that he had picked up the rifle, which I later gave to Jerry Crow, of the FBI. What happened to that rifle, I don't know. Jim Garrison showed me a photo at one time, an 8X10 enlargement, which he said was made by a Dallas Morning News photographer seconds after the killing in Dallas. The photo showed a Dallas detective holding the rifle which was picked up on Dealey Plaza. The rifle looked to me exactly like the one I'd had in my office. I have combed the Warren report stem to stern. I find no mention of that rifle which was picked up on Dealey Plaza. I also found no mention of antoerh rifle found on the second floor of the book depository building. Skip Hall later told me that he had turned that rifle over a doctor friend of his in Miami, Florida. Jerry Patrick told me later that that was a damn lie, that he talked to Hall, and as far as he could find out that was a lie about where the rifle was. But he told me that he had never recovered the rifle. The rifle was in my office all those weeks, and one of the gentlemen who worked with me in the detective business, Roy Payne, who is a gun expert and a gun nut, assembeled and disassembled and reassembled that rifle on numerous occasions. And I'm sure that Mr Payne can tell you a great deal more about the rifle than I can.. The day after John Kennedy was killed in Dallas, I received a phone call from Jerry Crow, an FBI agent here in Los Angeles, who asked if I had an agent working for me who was named Pay Payne, and I said yes. Jerry wanted to know if he could come by the office and see me and Mr Payne, and we arranged for that meeting. It's my opinion that the reason he wanted to see Mr Payne was because Payne's fingerprints undoubtly were all over that rifle from his having handled it many times. It's also my opinion that, unless that particular rifle had been found or in some way involved in this whole thing, that the FBI would have no interest init. And I think that we'd better let Mr Payne pick it up from here.

Declare under penalty of perjury that the above three-page affidavit true and correct to the best of my belief and knowledge.

Signed - Richard Hatcock

State of California

County of Los Angeles

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Here's Payne:

AFFIDAVIT OF LEROY BARTON PAYNE

My name is Leroy Barton Payne. I was a co-partner, an agent for Allied International Detectives with Dick Hathcock. Our offices at the time of this occurrence were at 6715 Hollywood Boulevard in the outpost building. I have heard and have listened to Mr Hathcock make his statement and I agree with him in every aspect of his statement, and I will, to the best of my recollection, account my experiences with Jerry Patrick and Lorenzo Pacillio, alias Skip Hall or Lorenzo Hall.

I first met them when they came into the office on, in the outpost building, and in the description of these two gentlemen, Jerry Patrick was tall, blond, wearing jump boots and the trousers tucked into the top, very much a Joe Palooka type. Skip Hall professed to be an ex-Marine, I believe officer, I'm not sure, at least this is what he told us, small, wiry, dark hair, olive complexion he at one time introduced us to his wife. I do not recall what her name was. They lived in an apartment in, I believe, in Monterey Park, somewhere near the state college campus. They were out here on a speaking and fund raising campaign for going back to Cuba, and as I remember, they were out gathering various types of military accouterments, weapons, medicines, so on and so forth. How they obtained these weapons was not part of any information that was given to either Mr Hathcock or myself. Though they did tell me, or rather Lorenzo Hall did tell me that he had his closet in his apartment full of weapons, and that he was afraid that the FBI was going to come in there and raid the place and take him along, and they were going to have to smuggle them out. And they were getting ready to go to, to go back to Cuba. He drew us a map on an inlet on the shore of south of Havana or near Havana that was the oil storage reservoir and tank farm. It showed on this map the tank farm and several storage docks, and what they had planned on doing was taking a boat to Kingston, Jamaica, refueling, and then going in as frogmen to take satchel charges of plastic explosives and set them on the storage tank farm and the dock area and destroy this to cripple Cuba by getting rid of all of the fuel, oil, gasoline, etc., that was presently sotred for Castro. About I would say, ten days, fifteen days, maybe a month, somewhere along in there, prior to President Kennedy's assassination, here I am fuzzy on the exact period. But Lorenzo Hall and a fat, Mexican fellow came in and redeemed the rifle. Now this rifle I had been told that it would, that it had gone on several Cuban raids in the past, and knowing that it is very easy to modify a weapon such as this to make it full automatic, and that it did have nine rounds in the chamber, nine rounds in the weapon and one in the chamber, making it ten rounds that could be fired automactically, I took the weapon and test fired it, and then pulled it apart to make sure that it had not been tampered with. It had not and was a straight semi-automatic weapon. It was a Johnson semi-automatic 30.06, it had a 30 power variable Bushnell scope, very much like a telephone lens, on a camrea. I would say that this weapon properly sighted in would put a hole in a dime at 500 yards. The bullets would be fired as fast as one could pull the trigger. Ten seconds, ten rounds, or les. They picked this weapon up and signed a note that they had picked it up as I was present in the office when these two gentlemen were there to pick the weapon up. Approximately the next day or two, they left for Miami, and I made the statement to this Lorenzo Hall that, well, we'll be reading about you in the paper. Well, Dick and I went about our business as normal as far as the agency was concerned and didn't really think about them except to say, well, we hadn't heard anything. Five days prior to the assassination of President Kennedy, on a Monday, Mr Patrick, excuse me, Mr Hall, was in Hollywood, California, in front of out building, talking with Mr Hathcock, and I stopped and talked to them, and of course I said, well, why don't you come over and let's go get a cup of coffee, and tell us what happened, and he said, well, no he I've got to make the plane for Dallas. The situation with Mr Pacillio or Mr Hall is that he stated to me when I asked him, well, you know, what happened during the situation we didn't hear anything. He said that the CIA confiscated and arrested everybody at the boat in Miami, and I asked him at the time why didn't he get himself arrested also, and he said, well, he was on the dock and could not, be connected with tthe situation. They didn't have any evidence against him. I'm going to make an assumption now, or a realtively educated assumption. The CIA is not an arrestive body, nor are they an internal United States intelligence agency functional agency. This I did not recall, it just didn't make any sense to me until later. Of course Friday, I believe, November 22, was the assassination that Friday was the assassination at noon in Los Angeles, out time, and the next day I received a telephone call from my business partner Dick Hathcock, telling me that there was a gentleman coming into the office that wanted to talke to us, that gentleman was a special agent of the FBI, a Jerry Crow, who is stall presently with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and at the Los Angeles field Office. Mr Crow came in and I opened the door for him and he showed me his identificaiton, he had a big bundle of papers with him and a large, in a large manilla envelope, and he introduced himself, and I said, "Hi, my name is Roy Payne, come in." I introduced him to Mr Hathcock, my partner, and Mrs Hathcock was there also, and he put his bundle down on the chair in front of the desk and took some papers out and said, "I would like to ask some questions about Skip Hall and Roy Payne," and I said, well, "I'm Roy Payne, why don't you ask me whatever you want to ask." He seeemed rather surprised that I was there. At least that was the impression that I got. We discussed the situation about what had occurred and what has gone on with Jerry Patrick Hemming and SKip Hall, Lorenzo Pacillio, and so on, then I did not see him

for quite some time after that. I did, however, find that the FBI, or

someone, was, I can only make assumption, was following me and did tail me for some months after that. I had an ex-brother-in-law who was, and I am not correct with this, he is deceased now, and his was Harvey Berkey, who was the assistant agent in charge of the local field office for the FBI here. In asking or making an attempt to ask Harvey what the heck was going on, Harvey refused to talk to me, and I could not gain entrance to his house, he would not answer the door, nor would his wife nor his children. There was on one occasion, I did run into Harvey Berkey outside of my office with Mr Hathcock, and he did not want to talk to me at all and excused himself and said he had to go. I did, within the week after the assassination of the President, have occasion to go to Palm Springs, I believe it was on a Thursday, and I stayed at a small motel upon entering the town, and about three o'clock in the morning had occasion to see two gentlemen go through my vehicle pretty thoroughly, and they had keys to enter and to go through my car, they went through the glove compartment, I had had evidence prior to that that my vehicle had been entered and searched as well as out offices, which then had been moved to, Allied Detectives moved to 6605 Hollywood Boulevard, on the third floor. We had Suite 310, which covered several rooms, adn we did have a system to show whether our offices had been entered and the file had been searched several times. We feel, or felt that out telephone, both at home, the answering service for the office, and both our

homes had been tapped. This went on for several months. The next night,

Saturday, after the assassination, I had to drive to Santa Maria and was there overnight. There were three vehicles that followed my car up Pacific Coast Highway all the way up to Santa Maria and then again picked me up the next day when I went through several of the small towns in the rural area and up to Highway 99, which is now I-5, and then comeing back the Ridge Route.

The same subject vehicles that followed me the next day after the assassination were the same vehicles that I saw in Palm Springs for the a week later, along with the same gentlemen, that were in them. Like I say, this went on for quite some time, two to three months after the assassination. One afternoon, about ten days or two weeks after the assassination, about 4:30 in the afternoon, I received a telephone call at the office from Lorenzo Hall, or Lorenzo Pacillio. I said, "Hey buddy, you better have a lot of witnesses because you were in Dallas at the time of the

assassination,: and he said, "I've got witnesses to prove that I was right in the middle of the lobby of the Hilton Hotel, and a hundred people know I was there, and I was nowhere near where Kennedy was assassinated." When the District Attorney of New Orleans, Jim Garrison, came to California with an order or request for extradition of two gentlemen, one gentleman was from Burbank, the other gentleman was Skip Hall, or Lorenzo Pacillio, the same man, in a newspaper statement that Mr Hall or Mr Pacillo had made, he stated that he had never been in the state of Texas, yet he had told me that he had gone to Texas, that he was leaving that Monday prior to the assassination to go to Dallas, and that he has a hundred witnesses in a hotel to show that he had been in Dallas, Texas, but was nowhere near the assassination site.

Let's see here. I have never heard from again this Lorenzo Pacillio, or Lorenzo Hall, he had never made any attempt to contact me or call me, he did tell me at the time of this one phone call, that several attempts had been made on his life, that his car had been boobed once or twice, and it had been blown up. He said someone else who had started the vehicle had been blown up with it. I have no direct knowledge that there was an automobile bombing. I have never pursued the situation. I did on one occasion go and drive out to visit with Jerry Patrick Hemming, who was living somewhere off the San Berardino Freeway, Monterey Park, Montebello, in that specfic area. He discussed with me at the time about turning over the rifle to them and he didn't like the idea that the rifle went down there, since he felt it was his rifle and the golf clubs that were also hocked at that time the original meeting were Lorenzo Pacillio;s, and that the rifle was his, and other than that particular conversation, I have never had any further contact Jerry Patrick, or as I say, no further contact at all with Lorenzo Hall. I understood that he had been living in central California for some period of time, and in a compuound type of area, and operated a bar or a cocktail lounge or a beer bar or tavern in the downtown area. Then I understood later from Dick Hathcock that he is now back down here in Southern California and is living somewhere out in the Monterey Park Montebello area and has been in and out of the hospital once or twice, but other that that I have no direct knowledge to bring situations up to date.

I declare under penalty of perjury that the above eight-page affidavit is true and correct to the best of my belief and knowledge.

signed LEROY BARTON PAYNE

[Francesca Akhtar]

Francesca,

This was indeed Lawarence Howard. Hall, Howard, and Celio Castro Alba, aka Juarito, picked up a load of weapons from Clint Wheat's house before picking up the Johnson and driving to Dallas. There is a report that Wheat made a hurried visit to Dallas just before 11/22, possibly to meet up with Hall(?) The Johnson reportedly ended up at a Miami dentist's house, a Dr. Crockette.

Here's Hathcock:

AFFIDAVIT OF RICHARD HATHCOCK

My name is Richard Hathcock. I once owned and operated Allied International Detective Agency. At the time that we're interest in, my offices were at 6715 Hollywood Boulevard in the Outpost Building. About two months before the John Kennedy assassination in Dallas, two men came to see me in my office.

One was Jerry Patrick Hemming, who was using the name of Jerry Patrick. The other man was Lorenzo Hall, who like to called Skip Hall, whose real name was Pacillio, which I understand is a Cuban name. These men came to see me one afternoon, stating that they had heard of me because of my many years of undercover investigation of communism on the state college campuses here when I worked for the Hearst chain, and some other activities, anti-communist activities that I had been involved in. They were here, they told me, to raise money with which to buy medicines and equipment, military hardware for a planned invasion of Cuba. That they were going to train troops in Guatemala, which they actually did later. They told me that they were dead broke, and that they were going to be here for two or three weeks, they had some other contacts that they wanted to see, raise money, but meantime they needed a hundred dollars. They wanted to borrow the hundred dollars, and what they had for security was a set of golf clubs and a rifle which was a 30 caliber Johnson, modified to sem-automatic operation, which I believe held nine rounds, and also was equipped with a 30 power Bushnell variable scope.

I gave them the hundred dollars, they left the golf clubs and the rifle.

For several weeks after that, I saw both men frequently, then my understanding was that Jerry Patrick returned to Miami to set things in operation down there for the planned invasion of Cuba. What they had planned essentially was to blow up some oil storage tanks on the west coast. Lorenzo Hall stayed here, and was in the private eye office very often, almost every day. He told me that both he and Patrick had originally been in Castro's army when they believed that he was really trying to free Cuba from Batista, that they had fought, fought hard, helped to put Castro in power, found out that he was a communist, had no interest in the poeple, and they turned on Castro with the result that both were imprisoned, and sentenced to be shot.

Both, through manipulations and through friends managed to escape and get to this country. They showed me lots of photos, gave me documents, and I do believe what they told me about those things. Eventually, as I say, Patrick went back to Miami, and I did not see him after that. Shortly before the assa ssination, if memory serves me correctly, it was no more that ten days before the assassination, Skip Hall and a big, fat Mexican whom I'd never seen before, and whose name I don't recall at this time, but I'm sure the FBI has it, came to see me, told me that they were going to Dallas to pick up some medicines and some other material, they wanted to redeem the rifle. They gave me $50, told me to keep the golf clubs, I got a note signed by Skip Hall that he had picked up the rifle, which I later gave to Jerry Crow, of the FBI. What happened to that rifle, I don't know. Jim Garrison showed me a photo at one time, an 8X10 enlargement, which he said was made by a Dallas Morning News photographer seconds after the killing in Dallas. The photo showed a Dallas detective holding the rifle which was picked up on Dealey Plaza. The rifle looked to me exactly like the one I'd had in my office. I have combed the Warren report stem to stern. I find no mention of that rifle which was picked up on Dealey Plaza. I also found no mention of antoerh rifle found on the second floor of the book depository building. Skip Hall later told me that he had turned that rifle over a doctor friend of his in Miami, Florida. Jerry Patrick told me later that that was a damn lie, that he talked to Hall, and as far as he could find out that was a lie about where the rifle was. But he told me that he had never recovered the rifle. The rifle was in my office all those weeks, and one of the gentlemen who worked with me in the detective business, Roy Payne, who is a gun expert and a gun nut, assembeled and disassembled and reassembled that rifle on numerous occasions. And I'm sure that Mr Payne can tell you a great deal more about the rifle than I can.. The day after John Kennedy was killed in Dallas, I received a phone call from Jerry Crow, an FBI agent here in Los Angeles, who asked if I had an agent working for me who was named Pay Payne, and I said yes. Jerry wanted to know if he could come by the office and see me and Mr Payne, and we arranged for that meeting. It's my opinion that the reason he wanted to see Mr Payne was because Payne's fingerprints undoubtly were all over that rifle from his having handled it many times. It's also my opinion that, unless that particular rifle had been found or in some way involved in this whole thing, that the FBI would have no interest init. And I think that we'd better let Mr Payne pick it up from here.

Declare under penalty of perjury that the above three-page affidavit true and correct to the best of my belief and knowledge.

Signed - Richard Hatcock

State of California

County of Los Angeles

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Here's Payne:

AFFIDAVIT OF LEROY BARTON PAYNE

My name is Leroy Barton Payne. I was a co-partner, an agent for Allied International Detectives with Dick Hathcock. Our offices at the time of this occurrence were at 6715 Hollywood Boulevard in the outpost building. I have heard and have listened to Mr Hathcock make his statement and I agree with him in every aspect of his statement, and I will, to the best of my recollection, account my experiences with Jerry Patrick and Lorenzo Pacillio, alias Skip Hall or Lorenzo Hall.

I first met them when they came into the office on, in the outpost building, and in the description of these two gentlemen, Jerry Patrick was tall, blond, wearing jump boots and the trousers tucked into the top, very much a Joe Palooka type. Skip Hall professed to be an ex-Marine, I believe officer, I'm not sure, at least this is what he told us, small, wiry, dark hair, olive complexion he at one time introduced us to his wife. I do not recall what her name was. They lived in an apartment in, I believe, in Monterey Park, somewhere near the state college campus. They were out here on a speaking and fund raising campaign for going back to Cuba, and as I remember, they were out gathering various types of military accouterments, weapons, medicines, so on and so forth. How they obtained these weapons was not part of any information that was given to either Mr Hathcock or myself. Though they did tell me, or rather Lorenzo Hall did tell me that he had his closet in his apartment full of weapons, and that he was afraid that the FBI was going to come in there and raid the place and take him along, and they were going to have to smuggle them out. And they were getting ready to go to, to go back to Cuba. He drew us a map on an inlet on the shore of south of Havana or near Havana that was the oil storage reservoir and tank farm. It showed on this map the tank farm and several storage docks, and what they had planned on doing was taking a boat to Kingston, Jamaica, refueling, and then going in as frogmen to take satchel charges of plastic explosives and set them on the storage tank farm and the dock area and destroy this to cripple Cuba by getting rid of all of the fuel, oil, gasoline, etc., that was presently sotred for Castro. About I would say, ten days, fifteen days, maybe a month, somewhere along in there, prior to President Kennedy's assassination, here I am fuzzy on the exact period. But Lorenzo Hall and a fat, Mexican fellow came in and redeemed the rifle. Now this rifle I had been told that it would, that it had gone on several Cuban raids in the past, and knowing that it is very easy to modify a weapon such as this to make it full automatic, and that it did have nine rounds in the chamber, nine rounds in the weapon and one in the chamber, making it ten rounds that could be fired automactically, I took the weapon and test fired it, and then pulled it apart to make sure that it had not been tampered with. It had not and was a straight semi-automatic weapon. It was a Johnson semi-automatic 30.06, it had a 30 power variable Bushnell scope, very much like a telephone lens, on a camrea. I would say that this weapon properly sighted in would put a hole in a dime at 500 yards. The bullets would be fired as fast as one could pull the trigger. Ten seconds, ten rounds, or les. They picked this weapon up and signed a note that they had picked it up as I was present in the office when these two gentlemen were there to pick the weapon up. Approximately the next day or two, they left for Miami, and I made the statement to this Lorenzo Hall that, well, we'll be reading about you in the paper. Well, Dick and I went about our business as normal as far as the agency was concerned and didn't really think about them except to say, well, we hadn't heard anything. Five days prior to the assassination of President Kennedy, on a Monday, Mr Patrick, excuse me, Mr Hall, was in Hollywood, California, in front of out building, talking with Mr Hathcock, and I stopped and talked to them, and of course I said, well, why don't you come over and let's go get a cup of coffee, and tell us what happened, and he said, well, no he I've got to make the plane for Dallas. The situation with Mr Pacillio or Mr Hall is that he stated to me when I asked him, well, you know, what happened during the situation we didn't hear anything. He said that the CIA confiscated and arrested everybody at the boat in Miami, and I asked him at the time why didn't he get himself arrested also, and he said, well, he was on the dock and could not, be connected with tthe situation. They didn't have any evidence against him. I'm going to make an assumption now, or a realtively educated assumption. The CIA is not an arrestive body, nor are they an internal United States intelligence agency functional agency. This I did not recall, it just didn't make any sense to me until later. Of course Friday, I believe, November 22, was the assassination that Friday was the assassination at noon in Los Angeles, out time, and the next day I received a telephone call from my business partner Dick Hathcock, telling me that there was a gentleman coming into the office that wanted to talke to us, that gentleman was a special agent of the FBI, a Jerry Crow, who is stall presently with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and at the Los Angeles field Office. Mr Crow came in and I opened the door for him and he showed me his identificaiton, he had a big bundle of papers with him and a large, in a large manilla envelope, and he introduced himself, and I said, "Hi, my name is Roy Payne, come in." I introduced him to Mr Hathcock, my partner, and Mrs Hathcock was there also, and he put his bundle down on the chair in front of the desk and took some papers out and said, "I would like to ask some questions about Skip Hall and Roy Payne," and I said, well, "I'm Roy Payne, why don't you ask me whatever you want to ask." He seeemed rather surprised that I was there. At least that was the impression that I got. We discussed the situation about what had occurred and what has gone on with Jerry Patrick Hemming and SKip Hall, Lorenzo Pacillio, and so on, then I did not see him

for quite some time after that. I did, however, find that the FBI, or

someone, was, I can only make assumption, was following me and did tail me for some months after that. I had an ex-brother-in-law who was, and I am not correct with this, he is deceased now, and his was Harvey Berkey, who was the assistant agent in charge of the local field office for the FBI here. In asking or making an attempt to ask Harvey what the heck was going on, Harvey refused to talk to me, and I could not gain entrance to his house, he would not answer the door, nor would his wife nor his children. There was on one occasion, I did run into Harvey Berkey outside of my office with Mr Hathcock, and he did not want to talk to me at all and excused himself and said he had to go. I did, within the week after the assassination of the President, have occasion to go to Palm Springs, I believe it was on a Thursday, and I stayed at a small motel upon entering the town, and about three o'clock in the morning had occasion to see two gentlemen go through my vehicle pretty thoroughly, and they had keys to enter and to go through my car, they went through the glove compartment, I had had evidence prior to that that my vehicle had been entered and searched as well as out offices, which then had been moved to, Allied Detectives moved to 6605 Hollywood Boulevard, on the third floor. We had Suite 310, which covered several rooms, adn we did have a system to show whether our offices had been entered and the file had been searched several times. We feel, or felt that out telephone, both at home, the answering service for the office, and both our

homes had been tapped. This went on for several months. The next night,

Saturday, after the assassination, I had to drive to Santa Maria and was there overnight. There were three vehicles that followed my car up Pacific Coast Highway all the way up to Santa Maria and then again picked me up the next day when I went through several of the small towns in the rural area and up to Highway 99, which is now I-5, and then comeing back the Ridge Route.

The same subject vehicles that followed me the next day after the assassination were the same vehicles that I saw in Palm Springs for the a week later, along with the same gentlemen, that were in them. Like I say, this went on for quite some time, two to three months after the assassination. One afternoon, about ten days or two weeks after the assassination, about 4:30 in the afternoon, I received a telephone call at the office from Lorenzo Hall, or Lorenzo Pacillio. I said, "Hey buddy, you better have a lot of witnesses because you were in Dallas at the time of the

assassination,: and he said, "I've got witnesses to prove that I was right in the middle of the lobby of the Hilton Hotel, and a hundred people know I was there, and I was nowhere near where Kennedy was assassinated." When the District Attorney of New Orleans, Jim Garrison, came to California with an order or request for extradition of two gentlemen, one gentleman was from Burbank, the other gentleman was Skip Hall, or Lorenzo Pacillio, the same man, in a newspaper statement that Mr Hall or Mr Pacillo had made, he stated that he had never been in the state of Texas, yet he had told me that he had gone to Texas, that he was leaving that Monday prior to the assassination to go to Dallas, and that he has a hundred witnesses in a hotel to show that he had been in Dallas, Texas, but was nowhere near the assassination site.

Let's see here. I have never heard from again this Lorenzo Pacillio, or Lorenzo Hall, he had never made any attempt to contact me or call me, he did tell me at the time of this one phone call, that several attempts had been made on his life, that his car had been boobed once or twice, and it had been blown up. He said someone else who had started the vehicle had been blown up with it. I have no direct knowledge that there was an automobile bombing. I have never pursued the situation. I did on one occasion go and drive out to visit with Jerry Patrick Hemming, who was living somewhere off the San Berardino Freeway, Monterey Park, Montebello, in that specfic area. He discussed with me at the time about turning over the rifle to them and he didn't like the idea that the rifle went down there, since he felt it was his rifle and the golf clubs that were also hocked at that time the original meeting were Lorenzo Pacillio;s, and that the rifle was his, and other than that particular conversation, I have never had any further contact Jerry Patrick, or as I say, no further contact at all with Lorenzo Hall. I understood that he had been living in central California for some period of time, and in a compound type of area, and operated a bar or a cocktail lounge or a beer bar or tavern in the downtown area. Then I understood later from Dick Hathcock that he is now back down here in Southern California and is living somewhere out in the Monterey Park Montebello area and has been in and out of the hospital once or twice, but other that that I have no direct knowledge to bring situations up to date.

I declare under penalty of perjury that the above eight-page affidavit is true and correct to the best of my belief and knowledge.

signed LEROY BARTON PAYNE

Hi David,

thanks for posting those affidavits. Wow some pretty explosive statements in there! Is Lawrence Howard still alive, anyone know?

Incidentally, I found this document about Roy Payne and Loran Hall on NARA - interestingly it is still postponed in full. I wonder what information is so sensitive?

AGENCY INFORMATION

AGENCY : HSCA

RECORD NUMBER : 180-10105-10159

RECORDS SERIES : NUMBERED FILES

AGENCY FILE NUMBER : 002188

DOCUMENT INFORMATION

ORIGINATOR : HSCA

FROM : MATHESON, ROBERT H.

TO : LOS ANGELES

TITLE : ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT KENNEDY

DATE : 00/00/0000

PAGES : 1

DOCUMENT TYPE : PAPER, TEXTUAL DOCUMENT

SUBJECTS : HALL, LORAN; PAYNE, ROY; FBI

CLASSIFICATION : UNCLASSIFIED

RESTRICTIONS : REFERRED

CURRENT STATUS : POSTPONED IN FULL

DATE OF LAST REVIEW : 08/08/1993

COMMENTS : 52-3. Box 52.

[Francesca Akhtar]

Francesca,

This was indeed Lawarence Howard. Hall, Howard, and Celio Castro Alba, aka Juarito, picked up a load of weapons from Clint Wheat's house before picking up the Johnson and driving to Dallas. There is a report that Wheat made a hurried visit to Dallas just before 11/22, possibly to meet up with Hall(?) The Johnson reportedly ended up at a Miami dentist's house, a Dr. Crockette.

Here's Hathcock:

AFFIDAVIT OF RICHARD HATHCOCK

My name is Richard Hathcock. I once owned and operated Allied International Detective Agency. At the time that we're interest in, my offices were at 6715 Hollywood Boulevard in the Outpost Building. About two months before the John Kennedy assassination in Dallas, two men came to see me in my office.

One was Jerry Patrick Hemming, who was using the name of Jerry Patrick. The other man was Lorenzo Hall, who like to called Skip Hall, whose real name was Pacillio, which I understand is a Cuban name. These men came to see me one afternoon, stating that they had heard of me because of my many years of undercover investigation of communism on the state college campuses here when I worked for the Hearst chain, and some other activities, anti-communist activities that I had been involved in. They were here, they told me, to raise money with which to buy medicines and equipment, military hardware for a planned invasion of Cuba. That they were going to train troops in Guatemala, which they actually did later. They told me that they were dead broke, and that they were going to be here for two or three weeks, they had some other contacts that they wanted to see, raise money, but meantime they needed a hundred dollars. They wanted to borrow the hundred dollars, and what they had for security was a set of golf clubs and a rifle which was a 30 caliber Johnson, modified to sem-automatic operation, which I believe held nine rounds, and also was equipped with a 30 power Bushnell variable scope.

I gave them the hundred dollars, they left the golf clubs and the rifle.

For several weeks after that, I saw both men frequently, then my understanding was that Jerry Patrick returned to Miami to set things in operation down there for the planned invasion of Cuba. What they had planned essentially was to blow up some oil storage tanks on the west coast. Lorenzo Hall stayed here, and was in the private eye office very often, almost every day. He told me that both he and Patrick had originally been in Castro's army when they believed that he was really trying to free Cuba from Batista, that they had fought, fought hard, helped to put Castro in power, found out that he was a communist, had no interest in the poeple, and they turned on Castro with the result that both were imprisoned, and sentenced to be shot.

Both, through manipulations and through friends managed to escape and get to this country. They showed me lots of photos, gave me documents, and I do believe what they told me about those things. Eventually, as I say, Patrick went back to Miami, and I did not see him after that. Shortly before the assa ssination, if memory serves me correctly, it was no more that ten days before the assassination, Skip Hall and a big, fat Mexican whom I'd never seen before, and whose name I don't recall at this time, but I'm sure the FBI has it, came to see me, told me that they were going to Dallas to pick up some medicines and some other material, they wanted to redeem the rifle. They gave me $50, told me to keep the golf clubs, I got a note signed by Skip Hall that he had picked up the rifle, which I later gave to Jerry Crow, of the FBI. What happened to that rifle, I don't know. Jim Garrison showed me a photo at one time, an 8X10 enlargement, which he said was made by a Dallas Morning News photographer seconds after the killing in Dallas. The photo showed a Dallas detective holding the rifle which was picked up on Dealey Plaza. The rifle looked to me exactly like the one I'd had in my office. I have combed the Warren report stem to stern. I find no mention of that rifle which was picked up on Dealey Plaza. I also found no mention of antoerh rifle found on the second floor of the book depository building. Skip Hall later told me that he had turned that rifle over a doctor friend of his in Miami, Florida. Jerry Patrick told me later that that was a damn lie, that he talked to Hall, and as far as he could find out that was a lie about where the rifle was. But he told me that he had never recovered the rifle. The rifle was in my office all those weeks, and one of the gentlemen who worked with me in the detective business, Roy Payne, who is a gun expert and a gun nut, assembeled and disassembled and reassembled that rifle on numerous occasions. And I'm sure that Mr Payne can tell you a great deal more about the rifle than I can.. The day after John Kennedy was killed in Dallas, I received a phone call from Jerry Crow, an FBI agent here in Los Angeles, who asked if I had an agent working for me who was named Pay Payne, and I said yes. Jerry wanted to know if he could come by the office and see me and Mr Payne, and we arranged for that meeting. It's my opinion that the reason he wanted to see Mr Payne was because Payne's fingerprints undoubtly were all over that rifle from his having handled it many times. It's also my opinion that, unless that particular rifle had been found or in some way involved in this whole thing, that the FBI would have no interest init. And I think that we'd better let Mr Payne pick it up from here.

Declare under penalty of perjury that the above three-page affidavit true and correct to the best of my belief and knowledge.

Signed - Richard Hatcock

State of California

County of Los Angeles

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Here's Payne:

AFFIDAVIT OF LEROY BARTON PAYNE

My name is Leroy Barton Payne. I was a co-partner, an agent for Allied International Detectives with Dick Hathcock. Our offices at the time of this occurrence were at 6715 Hollywood Boulevard in the outpost building. I have heard and have listened to Mr Hathcock make his statement and I agree with him in every aspect of his statement, and I will, to the best of my recollection, account my experiences with Jerry Patrick and Lorenzo Pacillio, alias Skip Hall or Lorenzo Hall.

I first met them when they came into the office on, in the outpost building, and in the description of these two gentlemen, Jerry Patrick was tall, blond, wearing jump boots and the trousers tucked into the top, very much a Joe Palooka type. Skip Hall professed to be an ex-Marine, I believe officer, I'm not sure, at least this is what he told us, small, wiry, dark hair, olive complexion he at one time introduced us to his wife. I do not recall what her name was. They lived in an apartment in, I believe, in Monterey Park, somewhere near the state college campus. They were out here on a speaking and fund raising campaign for going back to Cuba, and as I remember, they were out gathering various types of military accouterments, weapons, medicines, so on and so forth. How they obtained these weapons was not part of any information that was given to either Mr Hathcock or myself. Though they did tell me, or rather Lorenzo Hall did tell me that he had his closet in his apartment full of weapons, and that he was afraid that the FBI was going to come in there and raid the place and take him along, and they were going to have to smuggle them out. And they were getting ready to go to, to go back to Cuba. He drew us a map on an inlet on the shore of south of Havana or near Havana that was the oil storage reservoir and tank farm. It showed on this map the tank farm and several storage docks, and what they had planned on doing was taking a boat to Kingston, Jamaica, refueling, and then going in as frogmen to take satchel charges of plastic explosives and set them on the storage tank farm and the dock area and destroy this to cripple Cuba by getting rid of all of the fuel, oil, gasoline, etc., that was presently sotred for Castro. About I would say, ten days, fifteen days, maybe a month, somewhere along in there, prior to President Kennedy's assassination, here I am fuzzy on the exact period. But Lorenzo Hall and a fat, Mexican fellow came in and redeemed the rifle. Now this rifle I had been told that it would, that it had gone on several Cuban raids in the past, and knowing that it is very easy to modify a weapon such as this to make it full automatic, and that it did have nine rounds in the chamber, nine rounds in the weapon and one in the chamber, making it ten rounds that could be fired automactically, I took the weapon and test fired it, and then pulled it apart to make sure that it had not been tampered with. It had not and was a straight semi-automatic weapon. It was a Johnson semi-automatic 30.06, it had a 30 power variable Bushnell scope, very much like a telephone lens, on a camrea. I would say that this weapon properly sighted in would put a hole in a dime at 500 yards. The bullets would be fired as fast as one could pull the trigger. Ten seconds, ten rounds, or les. They picked this weapon up and signed a note that they had picked it up as I was present in the office when these two gentlemen were there to pick the weapon up. Approximately the next day or two, they left for Miami, and I made the statement to this Lorenzo Hall that, well, we'll be reading about you in the paper. Well, Dick and I went about our business as normal as far as the agency was concerned and didn't really think about them except to say, well, we hadn't heard anything. Five days prior to the assassination of President Kennedy, on a Monday, Mr Patrick, excuse me, Mr Hall, was in Hollywood, California, in front of out building, talking with Mr Hathcock, and I stopped and talked to them, and of course I said, well, why don't you come over and let's go get a cup of coffee, and tell us what happened, and he said, well, no he I've got to make the plane for Dallas. The situation with Mr Pacillio or Mr Hall is that he stated to me when I asked him, well, you know, what happened during the situation we didn't hear anything. He said that the CIA confiscated and arrested everybody at the boat in Miami, and I asked him at the time why didn't he get himself arrested also, and he said, well, he was on the dock and could not, be connected with tthe situation. They didn't have any evidence against him. I'm going to make an assumption now, or a realtively educated assumption. The CIA is not an arrestive body, nor are they an internal United States intelligence agency functional agency. This I did not recall, it just didn't make any sense to me until later. Of course Friday, I believe, November 22, was the assassination that Friday was the assassination at noon in Los Angeles, out time, and the next day I received a telephone call from my business partner Dick Hathcock, telling me that there was a gentleman coming into the office that wanted to talke to us, that gentleman was a special agent of the FBI, a Jerry Crow, who is stall presently with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and at the Los Angeles field Office. Mr Crow came in and I opened the door for him and he showed me his identificaiton, he had a big bundle of papers with him and a large, in a large manilla envelope, and he introduced himself, and I said, "Hi, my name is Roy Payne, come in." I introduced him to Mr Hathcock, my partner, and Mrs Hathcock was there also, and he put his bundle down on the chair in front of the desk and took some papers out and said, "I would like to ask some questions about Skip Hall and Roy Payne," and I said, well, "I'm Roy Payne, why don't you ask me whatever you want to ask." He seeemed rather surprised that I was there. At least that was the impression that I got. We discussed the situation about what had occurred and what has gone on with Jerry Patrick Hemming and SKip Hall, Lorenzo Pacillio, and so on, then I did not see him

for quite some time after that. I did, however, find that the FBI, or

someone, was, I can only make assumption, was following me and did tail me for some months after that. I had an ex-brother-in-law who was, and I am not correct with this, he is deceased now, and his was Harvey Berkey, who was the assistant agent in charge of the local field office for the FBI here. In asking or making an attempt to ask Harvey what the heck was going on, Harvey refused to talk to me, and I could not gain entrance to his house, he would not answer the door, nor would his wife nor his children. There was on one occasion, I did run into Harvey Berkey outside of my office with Mr Hathcock, and he did not want to talk to me at all and excused himself and said he had to go. I did, within the week after the assassination of the President, have occasion to go to Palm Springs, I believe it was on a Thursday, and I stayed at a small motel upon entering the town, and about three o'clock in the morning had occasion to see two gentlemen go through my vehicle pretty thoroughly, and they had keys to enter and to go through my car, they went through the glove compartment, I had had evidence prior to that that my vehicle had been entered and searched as well as out offices, which then had been moved to, Allied Detectives moved to 6605 Hollywood Boulevard, on the third floor. We had Suite 310, which covered several rooms, adn we did have a system to show whether our offices had been entered and the file had been searched several times. We feel, or felt that out telephone, both at home, the answering service for the office, and both our

homes had been tapped. This went on for several months. The next night,

Saturday, after the assassination, I had to drive to Santa Maria and was there overnight. There were three vehicles that followed my car up Pacific Coast Highway all the way up to Santa Maria and then again picked me up the next day when I went through several of the small towns in the rural area and up to Highway 99, which is now I-5, and then comeing back the Ridge Route.

The same subject vehicles that followed me the next day after the assassination were the same vehicles that I saw in Palm Springs for the a week later, along with the same gentlemen, that were in them. Like I say, this went on for quite some time, two to three months after the assassination. One afternoon, about ten days or two weeks after the assassination, about 4:30 in the afternoon, I received a telephone call at the office from Lorenzo Hall, or Lorenzo Pacillio. I said, "Hey buddy, you better have a lot of witnesses because you were in Dallas at the time of the

assassination,: and he said, "I've got witnesses to prove that I was right in the middle of the lobby of the Hilton Hotel, and a hundred people know I was there, and I was nowhere near where Kennedy was assassinated." When the District Attorney of New Orleans, Jim Garrison, came to California with an order or request for extradition of two gentlemen, one gentleman was from Burbank, the other gentleman was Skip Hall, or Lorenzo Pacillio, the same man, in a newspaper statement that Mr Hall or Mr Pacillo had made, he stated that he had never been in the state of Texas, yet he had told me that he had gone to Texas, that he was leaving that Monday prior to the assassination to go to Dallas, and that he has a hundred witnesses in a hotel to show that he had been in Dallas, Texas, but was nowhere near the assassination site.

Let's see here. I have never heard from again this Lorenzo Pacillio, or Lorenzo Hall, he had never made any attempt to contact me or call me, he did tell me at the time of this one phone call, that several attempts had been made on his life, that his car had been boobed once or twice, and it had been blown up. He said someone else who had started the vehicle had been blown up with it. I have no direct knowledge that there was an automobile bombing. I have never pursued the situation. I did on one occasion go and drive out to visit with Jerry Patrick Hemming, who was living somewhere off the San Berardino Freeway, Monterey Park, Montebello, in that specfic area. He discussed with me at the time about turning over the rifle to them and he didn't like the idea that the rifle went down there, since he felt it was his rifle and the golf clubs that were also hocked at that time the original meeting were Lorenzo Pacillio;s, and that the rifle was his, and other than that particular conversation, I have never had any further contact Jerry Patrick, or as I say, no further contact at all with Lorenzo Hall. I understood that he had been living in central California for some period of time, and in a compound type of area, and operated a bar or a cocktail lounge or a beer bar or tavern in the downtown area. Then I understood later from Dick Hathcock that he is now back down here in Southern California and is living somewhere out in the Monterey Park Montebello area and has been in and out of the hospital once or twice, but other that that I have no direct knowledge to bring situations up to date.

I declare under penalty of perjury that the above eight-page affidavit is true and correct to the best of my belief and knowledge.

signed LEROY BARTON PAYNE

Hi David,

thanks for posting those affidavits. Wow some pretty explosive statements in there! Is Lawrence Howard still alive, anyone know?

Incidentally, I found this document about Roy Payne and Loran Hall on NARA - interestingly it is still postponed in full. I wonder what information is so sensitive?

AGENCY INFORMATION

AGENCY : HSCA

RECORD NUMBER : 180-10105-10159

RECORDS SERIES : NUMBERED FILES

AGENCY FILE NUMBER : 002188

DOCUMENT INFORMATION

ORIGINATOR : HSCA

FROM : MATHESON, ROBERT H.

TO : LOS ANGELES

TITLE : ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT KENNEDY

DATE : 00/00/0000

PAGES : 1

DOCUMENT TYPE : PAPER, TEXTUAL DOCUMENT

SUBJECTS : HALL, LORAN; PAYNE, ROY; FBI

CLASSIFICATION : UNCLASSIFIED

RESTRICTIONS : REFERRED

CURRENT STATUS : POSTPONED IN FULL

DATE OF LAST REVIEW : 08/08/1993

COMMENTS : 52-3. Box 52.