NYC Councilman Formally Requests DA Reopen Dorothy Kilgallen Case (Early WC Critic)

[Michael Griffith]

Thanks to the efforts of Mark Shaw, a prominent member of the NYC council, Robert Holden, has formally requested that the NYC DA reopen the case of Dorothy Kilgallen, an early critic of the Warren Commission who died under highly suspicious circumstances soon after telling friends that she believed she was about to break the JFK assassination case wide open.

Dorothy was one of the first critics of the lone-gunman theory. She used her widely read newspaper column to raise questions about the single-assassin scenario and about Jack Ruby. She interviewed Acquilla Clemons and noted that Clemons said the man with the gun did not look like Oswald but was short and chunky/heavy, and she said there was another man nearby who was waved off by the man with the gun. She was the only journalist to obtain a private interview with Jack Ruby. 

Councilman Holden sent his formal request last week, on January 31. Mark Shaw published an announcement about the request today:

The official Mark Shaw Books Website

Here is the letter that Councilman Holden sent to the NYC DA:

CM-Holden-Letter-to-DA-Bragg-on-Dorothy-Kilgallen-January-31-2024.pdf (markshawbooks.com)

 

Edited February 6 by Michael Griffith

[Bill Brown]

 

Acquilla Clemons never said that two men were involved in the shooting of Tippit.

 

In addition to that, if two men really were involved (they weren't), how did REAL witnesses who were outdoors and pretty much watched the thing go down (Burt, Smith, Benavides, Markham and Scoggins) manage to completely miss this supposed second man?

 

[Michael Griffith]

15 hours ago, Bill Brown said:

Acquilla Clemons never said that two men were involved in the shooting of Tippit.

In addition to that, if two men really were involved (they weren't), how did REAL witnesses who were outdoors and pretty much watched the thing go down (Burt, Smith, Benavides, Markham and Scoggins) manage to completely miss this supposed second man?

She said she saw two men, that the man with the gun waved off the other man, that the two men headed in different directions, and her descriptions of the two men do not resemble Oswald (LINK, LINK).

Frank Wright saw an assailant jump into a car and speed off, while other witnesses saw an assailant leave the scene on foot. 

Do you believe that Dorothy Kilgallen accidentally overdosed on sleeping meds?

 

 

[Greg Doudna]

19 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

She interviewed Acquilla Clemons 

Are you sure of that? What is the evidence Dorothy Kilgallen interviewed Acquilla Clemons?

[Michael Griffith]

2 minutes ago, Greg Doudna said:

Are you sure of that? What is the evidence Dorothy Kilgallen interviewed Acquilla Clemons?

She talked about it in one of her columns, her 9/25/1964 column (LINK). 

[Greg Doudna]

1 minute ago, Michael Griffith said:

She talked about it in one of her columns, her 9/25/1964 column (LINK). 

The link does say Dorothy Kilgallen in 1964 reported an interview with Acquilla Clemons, true enough. I wonder if Kilgallen’s original column would clarify whether that was Mark Lane’s interview (in which case nothing new), or an interview of her own. I have never heard of a Kilgallen Clemons interview transcript. 

[Greg Doudna]

With thanks to Greg Parker for the information, Dorothy Kilgallen reported on the Shirley Martin interview of Acquilla Clemons, giving it wider currency. It was not a previously-unknown interview of Acquilla Clemons conducted by Dorothy Kilgallen personally (https://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/msg12239.html).

Sara Jordan-Heintz's new book, The Incredible Life & Mysterious Death of Dorothy Kilgallen (2023). 

I have just received this book, have not read most of the book but what I have seen is interesting. Naturally she focuses some attention on Ron Pataky--who died in 2022--the man who entered her life and with whom Dorothy was enamored at the time of her death. According to Jordan-Heintz, Pataky actively worked with Dorothy on her JFK assassination research, a book. As part of that Pataky said he met with two leading figures in the JFK assassination case, evidently on his own complementary to but not at the behest of Dorothy: Mark Lane and Jim Garrison.

Jordan-Heintz says Pataky went to Guatemala in 1954 at the time the CIA sponsored the coup overthrowing the Arbenz government, and Jordan-Heintz sees an intelligence agency connection to Pataky:

"[Quoting Pataky] 'I did go to Guatemala when in a small military thing. There was a communist uprising in Guatemala. I did go, but nothing to do with assassins for God's sake ... I was in the military then, and they sent a detachment of us down there because of this communist uprising. They sent many, not just me" ... Pataky was never formally in the U.S. military, but as was previously mentioned in this book, he did attend Stanford for a while on a Navy ROTC scholarship, but was kicked out ... 'Several hundred of us went. We were highly trained'...

"The U.S. officially had no military troops in Guatemala during the timeframe in which Pataky admitted to being there ... Though he [Pataky] had denied ever attending a CIA run assassin's school in Panama, he later contradicted himself. Larry Jordan recalls, 'Pataky told me, in one of our last conversations, "I always denied it, but I really was there."' At the very least we know Ron Pataky was in Guatemala in 1954 when the CIA staged a coup d'etat and got President Jacobo Arbenz removed from office. The covert operation to overthrow Arbenz was code-named Operation PBSuccess ... The CIA armed, funded and trained a force of at least 490 men who invaded Guatemala on June 18, 1954, backed by a heavy campaign of psychological warfare. The democratically elected Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz was deposed on June 27 in order to protect the profits of the United Fruit Company, which had vast land holdings there, and shipped a lot of bananas. What ensued was decades of brutal U.S.-backed regimes that committed widespread torture and genocide... 

"The invasion force of which Ron Pataky was apparently a part, was called a 'liberation army' and headquartered at Copan, Honduras, about four miles from the Guatemalan border ... According to the Central Intelligence Agency's own in-house historian, Gerald Haines, the agency compiled lists of individuals in Arbenz's government 'to eliminate immediately in event of [a] successful anti-Communist coup.' Planning for assassination included budgeting, training programs, creation of hit teams, drafting of target lists of persons and transfer of armaments. ... Vans of CIA-trained thugs would kidnap people on the hit list, and in some cases their mutilated bodies would be thrown out of a helicopter in front of a stadium during a sporting event to terrorize the local populace. 

"Since Ron Pataky finally confessed that he had, indeed, attended a Panamanian assassin school (after acknowledging he had denied it for years), one can only conclude the role he assumed in Guatemala fell within the scope of some of the CIA's most egregious terrorist activities... The coup was widely denounced internationally, dealt a death blow to democracy in Guatemala, and engendered long-lasting anti-U.S. sentiment across Latin America which continues to this day...

"Given Ron Pataky's experience in Guatemala as a paid participant in a paramilitary operation, it is not unreasonable to suspect that he further lent himself to other CIA-sponsored activities in the years ahead. Could one of those have been to befriend Dorothy Kilgallen, keep tabs on her progress in investigating the assassination of John Kennedy, and then eliminate her by methods he had learned from the CIA at Stanford? [reference to earlier discussion of CIA MK-ULTRA drug- and poisoning research carried out at Stanford starting in 1953 at the time Pataky was there]" 

Steve Rossi, a famous entertainer (comedian), friend of Dorothy: 

"To this day, the files are open in the New York police department on how she died. They never solved the case. They alleged that she died from an overdose of barbiturates, but I know for a fact that she wasn't taking anything at the time. She felt like she was being poisoned. And I think that's what happened. Once she started writing the book on the Kennedy assassination, I think somebody came in there and poisoned her. She was turning yellow, you know. I saw her two weeks before she died. She looked really bad. And she thought she was being poisoned, but they couldn't detect it." 

Ron Pataky was a poet. One of his poems:

"While I'm spilling my guts/ She is driving me nuts/ Please fetch us two drinks/ On the run/ Just skip all the noise'n/ Make one of 'em poison/ And don't even tell me/ Which one!"

[Michael Griffith]

5 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

The link does say Dorothy Kilgallen in 1964 reported an interview with Acquilla Clemons, true enough. I wonder if Kilgallen’s original column would clarify whether that was Mark Lane’s interview (in which case nothing new), or an interview of her own. I have never heard of a Kilgallen Clemons interview transcript. 

With thanks to Greg Parker for the information, Dorothy Kilgallen reported on the Shirley Martin interview of Acquilla Clemons, giving it wider currency. It was not a previously-unknown interview of Acquilla Clemons conducted by Dorothy Kilgallen personally (https://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/msg12239.html).

Many sources say that Kilgallen interviewed Clemons, not just the link I cited. John Simkin's Spartacus site says she interviewed Clemons (LINK, LINK). Simkin repeated this assertion in a post in this forum (LINK). Kilgallen biographer Sara Jordan says Kilgallen interviewed Clemons (LINK). So does James Chipman (LINK). Dorothy was in Dallas for several weeks in 1964 and had ample opportunity to speak with Clemons.

However, I suspect Parker may be correct. Parker's source is an excerpt from Lee Israel's 1979 book Kilgallen. Israel said that Martin interviewed Clemons on tape, then sent Dorothy a copy of the tape, and that Dorothy transcribed the tape and then used the transcript in her column. 

I can understand how this got morphed into Dorothy doing the interview herself. Until I can find a copy of Dorothy's 9/26/64 column, I'm inclined to accept Israel's account of the interview.

Anyway, the stuff you posted on Sara Jordan-Heintz's new book The Incredible Life & Mysterious Death of Dorothy Kilgallen (2023) is very interesting. 

Edited February 7 by Michael Griffith

[Robert Morrow]

On 2/5/2024 at 9:24 PM, Bill Brown said:

 

Acquilla Clemons never said that two men were involved in the shooting of Tippit.

 

In addition to that, if two men really were involved (they weren't), how did REAL witnesses who were outdoors and pretty much watched the thing go down (Burt, Smith, Benavides, Markham and Scoggins) manage to completely miss this supposed second man?

 

In 2010 I went up to 10th and Patten with a good friend. We parked in my car at the exact site of the Tippit patrol car. An old Hispanic man, maybe in his 70s came walking by. My friend and I flagged him down and got him to come over to my car while we sat inside. I asked him about the Tippit shooting. This old Hispanic man said I LIVED IN THIS NEIGHBORHOOD AT THE TIME OF THE TIPPIT KILLING in 1963. I asked him what do you know about it. He said THERE WERE TWO MEN INVOLVED IN THE SHOOTING OF TIPPIT. He did not say that he witnessed the killing of Tippit, just merely that he lived in this neighborhood then and two men were involved in the Tippit killing.

My personal belief - however little it counts - is that ONE PERSON killed Officer J.D. Tippit and it was most definitely NOT Lee Harvey Oswald because the Tippit killing occurred at 1:06 to 1:07PM and we have a very good witness on that: Helen Markham.

I wrote down the name of that Hispanic man and then I lost that piece of paper! (Sorry, the dog ate my homework!)

I think the rumor in the neighborhood was, fed by Aquila Clemens who was probably wrong, was that TWO men killed Officer Tippit.

Just an anecdote I wanted to share.

[Michael Griffith]

I think this development regarding Dorothy Kilgallen's death, though modest, is important. It shows that a government official has become convinced that Dorothy was murdered, and now that official is publicly asking the DA to reopen the case.

One of the most vulnerable aspects of the lone-gunman myth is the pattern/number of suspicious deaths. In many instances, a crime is revealed by the efforts of the criminals to cover up the crime. 

Dorothy was clearly murdered, and her murder was clumsily staged to look like an accidental overdose or suicide. Mark Shaw's crucial discovery that Nembutal powder was discovered on a glass in the bedroom where her body was found constitutes strong evidence of murder. Nembutal was always provided in capsule form. The only way Nembutal powder could have gotten on the glass would have been if someone had taken apart the capsule and poured the powder into the glass. 

 

[Joe Bauer]

Thank goodness.

Maybe some day Dorothy Kilgallen's murder will receive the just investigation it deserves, if the case is indeed re-opened. 

We all know she was murdered.

There is no debate.

There is no way a guy like Pataky gets close to DK except for nefarious reasons.

He was never attracted to her physically.

[Michael Griffith]

16 hours ago, Joe Bauer said:

Thank goodness.

Maybe some day Dorothy Kilgallen's murder will receive the just investigation it deserves, if the case is indeed re-opened. 

We all know she was murdered.

There is no debate.

There is no way a guy like Pataky gets close to DK except for nefarious reasons.

He was never attracted to her physically.

Joe, I agree. And I think we should keep in mind that Councilman Holden has called on the DA to reopen the case and has released his letter to the DA thanks to the dogged work of Mark Shaw. 

When readers see the existing evidence that Dorothy was murdered, they also recognize that the only people who would have had any conceivable motive to murder her would have been people who did not want her to publish her findings on JFK's assassination. 

This is why the case of William Bruce Pitzer is also revealing and important. The case for suicide in Pitzer's death is highly implausible, to say the least, especially given the information revealed in the FBI and Navy files on the incident. Pitzer was just about to retire from the Navy and start a great new job that he had lined up for himself. He had already accepted the job offer and was just waiting to retire from the Navy. His family reported that he was happy, upbeat, and looking forward to this next phase of his life. They never bought the suicide finding. They also said that he told them that he knew things about JFK's wounds that disproved the official account of the assassination.

And add to this the fact that a former Army Special Forces officer revealed that a CIA officer asked him to kill Pitzer because Pitzer was supposedly about to hand over classified information to the enemy. Here, too, the only plausible suspects in Pitzer's murder would be people who feared he would reveal suppressed information about JFK's wounds.

Edited February 8 by Michael Griffith