Hugh Aynesworth passing.

[Pete Mellor]

On November 12 this year, after Aynesworth was admitted to the UT Southwestern emergency room, doctors determined he had suffered a stroke months before. After a week at the hospital and a week in rehab, he returned home on November 25.

Earlier this month, his wife, Paula Aynesworth, decided he needed to enter hospice care.

He died Saturday at home. Aynesworth was 92.

[Joe Bauer]

So many questions about HA.

Where does one begin?

Did he really tell someone he bedded Marina Oswald?

 

[Sandy Larsen]

Hugh Aynesworth BIH.

 

[Joe Bauer]

1 hour ago, Sandy Larsen said:

Hugh Aynesworth BIH.

 

BIH?

Please explain.

[Sandy Larsen]

22 minutes ago, Joe Bauer said:

BIH?

Please explain.

 

Let me put it this way: I don't think Hugh Aynesworth can RIP where he's going.

 

[James DiEugenio]

It means burn in Hades.

[James DiEugenio]

Hugh Aynesworth was probably the worst journalist in America on the JFK case.

Because he was so well connected he had a wide and long lasting influence on the case.

By that I mean from the inception, that is in the aftermath of the assassination, all the way to when Oliver Stone's film was released, a span of three decades.

From the start, and he admitted it, he took his function as upholding the lone assassin theory as advanced by the Dallas Police and Henry Wade. And it did not matter how he did it.  I will be preparing a none too flattering obituary about this direct example of how a fruitcake was allowed to essentially run wild over the media about JFK for 30 years.

Edited December 26, 2023 by James DiEugenio

[Joe Bauer]

52 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

It means burn in Hades.

Oh...wow!

 

[Sandy Larsen]

8 minutes ago, Joe Bauer said:

Oh...wow!

 

You should read what Aynesworth did to Garrison. He accused him of bribing a witness to lie for him. Among other things.

 

[François Carlier]

I had great respect for Hugh Aynesworth, with whom I exchanged messages around the fiftieth anniversary. He was essentially a very honest man. He was right about the Kennedy assassination. He knew the truth, ultimately. May he rest in peace ! God bless him !

[Donald Willis]

3 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

Hugh Aynesworth BIH.

 

I see one reason why CT-leaning folks (like myself) might scorn Aynesworth.  Here, he tries to wriggle out of writing that Mrs. Markham used the phrase "bushy haired" in describing a Tippit suspect:   "Hugh Aynesworth... stated that the word, 'bushy-haired', was his interpretation of what she had said.  'She might have said something like, "His hair was messed up", or "He was running and his hair was blown about", Aynesworth recalled.  'But I know that the word "bushy-haired" was not hers exactly.'"  Oh, but it apparently was.  The 11/22/63  Poe-Jez report to Chief Curry also states that Markham used the phrase "bushy hair" (With Malice p487).  Aynesworth's hapless protest re that one word, or phrase, suggests that the other two words which Mark Lane used for her description of the suspect were spot-on, too: "short, stocky".  

Further, one of Dale Myers' updated sections in his revised "With Malice" suggests that the man she thought was the killer was either WW Scoggins or Ted Callaway, who were in the taxi which (the update says) an hysterical woman was pointing out and screaming at as it left the Tippit scene, with, she reportedly said, the killer on board.  A photo in WM on page 227 shows a relatively short and stocky Scoggins.  (Short compared to William Whaley, seen in the same photo.)  

Finally (Aynesworth is so inspiring), DPD Sgt. Croy testified, "There was a report that a cab driver had picked up Tippit's gun and had left, presumably.  They don't know whether he was the one that had shot Tippit..." (v12 p202 WC hearings)  There's a frame grab of Croy with Markham (WM p110) at the Tippit scene.

Apparent consilience between a DPD report, a Dallas security agent (the original source for the Myers update), and a police sergeant.  Hardly conspiracy buffs...

[James DiEugenio]

Aynesworth was expert at that.

Injecting himself directly into the facts of the case and spinning them.

Which is what a journalist should not do.

He also tried to bribe one of the Clinton/Jackson witnesses.

[Sandy Larsen]

1 minute ago, James DiEugenio said:

[Aynesworth] also tried to bribe one of the Clinton/Jackson witnesses.

 

Which not only makes him corrupt, but makes him a hypocrite as well.

This is the kind of guy WC apologists admire.

 

 

[Greg Doudna]

Speaking of Hugh Aynesworth, there was a report by a schoolkid who with his schoolkid friend was seated in the main level seating of the Texas Theatre on Nov 22, 1963, who witnessed Oswald's arrest, who told of seeing police officers searching the seating area in the area where Oswald had been sitting and then taken away under arrest, and finding a knife (pocket knife presumably) on the floor. The one officer picked it up and (according to the schoolkid witness) said to the other, "must be his". However that item was never registered or reported as found property.

Somewhere I read something written by Hugh Aynesworth in which as I recall he identified himself as having come into possession of a knife found at the Texas Theatre, or an Oswald knife, something like that, anyway when I read it I identified it as sounding like that unexplained police pocket knife find witnessed by the schoolkid. 

However I have searched through all I have from Aynesworth--books, articles--and have been unable to locate that reference. Does anyone else recognize this reference? I can only think it must be from some obscure newspaper article or something but I cannot find it.  

I do not see that any larger issue as to the case itself hinge on this (whether Oswald carried a pocket knife or not) but it is an item of trivia I would dearly love to nail down if possible. 

 

[Robert Morrow]

9 hours ago, Joe Bauer said:

So many questions about HA.

Where does one begin?

Did he really tell someone he bedded Marina Oswald?

 

JFK researcher Shirley Martin’s letter (5-20-1967) to Jim Garrison regarding Hugh Aynesworth who said he had sex with Marina Oswald

http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg Subject Index Files/A Disk/Aynesworth Hugh/Item 01.pdf

Here is the text of the Shirley Martin letter to Jim Garrison:

May 20, 1967

Dear Mr. Garrison:

I am so sorry that Newsweek chose Hugh Aynesworth to use in its rebuttal of you.

In the summer of ‘64 I had a long talk with Mr. Aynesworth, introducing myself to him as a friend of a relative to General Clyde Watts, ex-Major General Edwin A. Walker's close friend and attorney (Oxford). Mr. Aynesworth mistakenly assumed that I was a political conservative and immediately deluged me with disgusting anti-Kennedy stories. ("Kennedy needed a trip to Dallas like a hole in the head," etc.) At the same time Mr. Aynesworth heaped what seemed to me to be inordinate praise on the city of Dallas, the Dallas police (Lt. George Butler, Captain Fritz, Chief Curry, etc.), and the Dallas Morning News (for which newspaper Aynesworth was working at the time). He confided, too, that Tom Buchanan (Paris) was a "fairy" and detailed for me a number of extremely slanderous alleged incidents in the life of Mark Lane. In addition, Mr. Aynesworth definitively labeled Mr. Lane a "communist."

Aynesworth was extremely bitter that Merriman Smith had won the Pulitzer for his coverage of the assassination. Aynesworth sarcastically remarked that Smith "did nothing and saw less" on the day in question, whereas he, Aynesworth was "...the only reporter in America to make all four big scenes." (1) In addition, Aynesworth boasted that a Commission attorney had already confided to him (in July) what the Commission verdict was to be (in September). Oswald would be named, but according to Aynesworth it was in reality "...a communist plot. Warren will do a cover-up for Moscow."

Aynesworth insisted that Marina had had an affair with him after the assassination, and that during this period she had revealed to him that she and Ruth Paine had shared a Lesbian relationship prior to November 22, 1963. Aynesworth also declared that he had been on 10th Street "looking down on the Tippit murder scene at 1:05pm, not later than 1:10..." on November 22nd. (2) Needless to say, the "only reporter in America" to be in on all four "big scenes" was NOT called to testify before the Warren Commission, which did, however, call Thayer Waldo, Fort Worth reporter, because he had been in the police basement when Ruby shot Oswald. (3)

Finally, I have the statement by an employee of the Dallas Morning News that Aynesworth was deliberately and ILLEGALLY given the allegedly stolen Oswald diary story by a Commission attorney who was in Dallas on business at that time. Earl Warren later put the FBI on the trail of this illegal "leak", but as was to be expected no discoveries were made.

This, then, is the man chosen by Newsweek to rebut you. What a pity Newsweek's taste is so concentrated in its tail.

- Sincerely,

(Mrs.) Shirley Martin

Box 226

Owasso, Oklahoma                                 

cc: 10

1

Dealey Plaza, 10th Street, Texas Theatre, Dallas police basement.

2

Thus negating the Commission claim that Oswald. shot both Kennedy and Tippit.

3

Waldo's testimony is pertinent in regard to Lt. Butler (not called by Commission.)