Hit List-- The Systematic Murders of JFK Witnesses

[W. Niederhut]

Well, thanks to Denny and Mark for posting the info about High Treason.

I went back and checked the footnote in Hit List, and the quote (above) was attributed to High Treason.

Then, I noticed that Belzer & Wayne had also referenced our own John Simkin in their Lee Bowers chapter.

When I went to Spartacus.edu, lo and behold, Simkin, himself, had attributed the quote (above) to High Treason.*

It looks like Belzer & Wayne may have copied the alleged High Treason quote from Spartacus.

So, where did John Simkin find this quote?  Is there a footnote in High Treason?

*  Lee E. Bowers (spartacus-educational.com)

(5) Robert J. Groden, High Treason (1989)

Lee Bowers was heading west here on highway sixty-seven heading from Midlothian down to Cleburne and according to an eyewitness he was driven off the road by a black car. Drove him into this bridge abutment. He didn't die immediately, he held on for four hours and during that time he was talking to the ambulance people and told them that he felt he had been drugged when he stopped for coffee back there a few miles in Midlothian.

Edited July 24 by W. Niederhut

[Denny Zartman]

The footnote in High Treason sourced Forgive My Grief Vol 2. I can try to check that later. I think I have a PDF of all those books. I can't imagine where Simkin got that quote, unless it was from the earlier edition of High Treason.

[Mark Ulrik]

2 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

Well, thanks to Denny and Mark for posting the info about High Treason.

I went back and checked the footnote in Hit List, and the quote (above) was attributed to High Treason.

Then, I noticed that Belzer & Wayne had also referenced our own John Simkin in their Lee Bowers chapter.

When I went to Spartacus.edu, lo and behold, Simkin, himself, had attributed the quote (above) to High Treason.*

It looks like Belzer & Wayne may have copied the alleged High Treason quote from Spartacus.

So, where did John Simkin find this quote?  Is there a footnote in High Treason?

*  Lee E. Bowers (spartacus-educational.com)

(5) Robert J. Groden, High Treason (1989)

Lee Bowers was heading west here on highway sixty-seven heading from Midlothian down to Cleburne and according to an eyewitness he was driven off the road by a black car. Drove him into this bridge abutment. He didn't die immediately, he held on for four hours and during that time he was talking to the ambulance people and told them that he felt he had been drugged when he stopped for coffee back there a few miles in Midlothian.

It's from the 1992 documentary Now It Can Be Told: The Curse of JFK hosted by Geraldo Rivera. If you're up for a potentially horizon-expanding experience, these and other claims are examined in David Perry's piece.

[Kevin Balch]

On 7/23/2024 at 11:04 AM, W. Niederhut said:

Not true, Kevin.

Study the 16 pages of detailed references in the Index of Hit List.

I was referring to the discussion of Killam, specifically not to the other cases as a whole.

[W. Niederhut]

1 hour ago, Denny Zartman said:

The footnote in High Treason sourced Forgive My Grief Vol 2. I can try to check that later. I think I have a PDF of all those books. I can't imagine where Simkin got that quote, unless it was from the earlier edition of High Treason.

       When I went back to check Belzer & Wayne's chapter on Lee Bowers today, I noticed that they mentioned incidents where Lee Bowers had been repeatedly threatened prior to his death and, allegedly, had one of his fingers cut off, in a mysterious "accident" that he refused to talk about.  (I'm picturing William DaFoe in The English Patient.)

      Meanwhile, it looks like the CIA propaganda guys-- Posner and Perry-- worked hard to deny that there was anything suspicious about Bowers' untimely death, and the death threats.  Nothing to see here.  Move along now.

      I can get a Cafe Americano at Starbucks with $2.60 and a copy of Case Closed.  🙄

Edited July 24 by W. Niederhut

[Joe Bauer]

On 3/6/2024 at 10:16 AM, W. Niederhut said:

In any case, I was somewhat surprised recently to hear a JFK researcher deny that there was anything suspicious about all of these untimely deaths-- including those of Dorothy Killgallen, Rose Cheramie, Lee Bowers, Mary Pinchot Meyer, William Sullivan, Sam Giancana, George De Mohrenschildt, et.al.

      One of the most obvious was the "Omerta" murder of Giancana on the night before his scheduled meeting with members of Congress, almost simultaneous with DeMohrenschildt's "suicide" before his Congressional testimony.

All of those deaths above so illogically explained versus each person's personal health condition and age its ridiculous to dismiss even a third of them as simple natural event flukes.

David Ferrie's morbid suicide shouts suspicion and /or in the least reveals a man driven to kill himself versus dealing with the consequences of his being forced to tell the truth of his CIA life.

Testifying to the senate select committee was the "Black Hand " "Kiss of Death" for too many who all died during this.

Giancana, Johnny Roselli, De Mohrenschildts, etc. Wild Bill Harvey died just two months before his great friend Johnny Roselli. Hoffa met his maker around that time period also.

Edited July 27 by Joe Bauer

[Mark Ulrik]

18 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

Meanwhile, it looks like the CIA propaganda guys-- Posner and Perry-- worked hard to deny that there was anything suspicious about Bowers' untimely death, and the death threats.  Nothing to see here.  Move along now.

Did you even read Perry's article? What did you find objectionable about it? Apart from not speaking to your biases, that is.

[W. Niederhut]

1 minute ago, Mark Ulrik said:

Did you even read Perry's article? What did you find objectionable about it? Apart from not speaking to your biases, that is.

Mark,

    First tell us if you have a confirmation bias against Newton's Laws of Motion.

    Personally, I trust Newtonian physics more than Mockingbird-funded pundits.

    If some pundit is promoting a theory contradicted by Newtonian physics, I'm not likely to waste time reading his dreck.

[Mark Ulrik]

7 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

Mark,

    First tell us if you have a confirmation bias against Newton's Laws of Motion.

    Personally, I trust Newtonian physics more than Mockingbird-funded pundits.

    If some pundit is promoting a theory contradicted by Newtonian physics, I'm not likely to waste time reading his dreck.

I rest my case.

[W. Niederhut]

26 minutes ago, Mark Ulrik said:

I rest my case.

What case?

[Kevin Balch]

I’ve finished Reading Hit List, looked over Chernen’s analysis and checked other references. I find several problems with the JFK Assassination “Clean Up Squad” theory.

First, it’s indisputable that the Deaths of Oswald and Tippit are both suspicious to say the least.

Second, I focused on the year between the assassination and the issuance of the Warren Report. This is the period when the conspirators would be in greatest danger of having the plot unravelled by troublesome witnesses, when the most dangerous witnesses would need to be silenced and when the original plotters most motivated to squelch the investigation were likely still alive.

According to Social Security data (Table 1 from the reference below), the age-adjusted central death rate for adults in 1964 was 1,209.7 deaths per 100,000 or 1.21% or 0.0121. This figure is for all deaths including natural causes, accidents, homicides and suicides. While the latter 3 groups can show volatility from year to year, in aggregate, they are typically about 5-10% the total death rate.

https://www-origin.ssa.gov/oact/NOTES/pdf_studies/study116.pdf

 

Accordingly, from the population of 1400 JFK assassination witnesses, the expected total number of deaths in 1964 is

1400 witnesses * 0.0121 death rate = 17 total deaths.

Approximately 5-10% of these deaths should be from other than natural causes resulting in about 15 deaths from natural causes and 1 or 2 from accidents, homicide or suicide.

From the Appendix of Hit List, there are a total of 21 (omitting Eddy Benevides who died in 1965) deaths listed in 1963-64, only one of which (Bill Chesher) is explicitly cited as from natural causes.

My question is, where are the 15 deaths from natural causes which should be present? I am assuming that all deaths from the period are listed since Bill Chesher is included. If they were not listed, it precludes a verification that the population of witnesses is representative of the general population with the exception of presumed knowledge of the JFK assassination. Both the expected deaths from natural causes and the 21 suspicious deaths are sufficiently small fractions of the 1400 witnesses that there is negligible probability of overlap. Did the clean up squad manage to find all those on death’s door and speed up the process and throw in another 6 to get 21? Or were there actually 36 deaths of witnesses during the period?
 

Consulting Who’s Who in the JFK Assassination, I see that it does not give date of death of each of the witnesses so it is doubtful that that they were ever identified.

The 0.0121 annual death rate can be converted to an annual survival probability (1-0.0121 = 0.9879) which can estimate (while the general death rate was declining during this period, the surviving witnesses were also growing significantly older) the number of expected deaths over the 15 years between the assassination and the HSCA investigation as follows:

1400 * (1 - 0.9879^15) = 234 which is suspiciously close to the 240 or so suspicious deaths claimed for the period in Chernen’s anslysis.

I found it curious that the one witness who might have actually known something important about the JFK assassination that died during 1964-64 was Guy Banister who died of a heart attack (which is actually a natural cause) but is considered suspicious. Maybe the hit squad used their heart attack-inducing agent to kill him. But then why not use it in the other cases as well?

Most of the other witnesses have some extremely tenuous connections. A good example is Hank Killam who was acquainted with John Carter who resided at Oswald’s rooming house and who’s wife worked for Ruby and were apparently not significant enough themselves to be eliminated.

The final note I’ll make is that several of the dead witnesses were in occupations that had to have death rates significantly higher than the population in general including organized crime figures, strippers, paramilitary mercenaries and drug runners, cops.

I can offer several more criticisms but that’s enough for now. Needless to say, I found no probative value in Hit List.

[W. Niederhut]

Kevin,

     I'm responding to your deeply flawed analysis of Hit List in red (below.)

Kevin Balch wrote:

I’ve finished Reading Hit List, looked over Chernen’s analysis and checked other references. I find several problems with the JFK Assassination “Clean Up Squad” theory.

First, it’s indisputable that the Deaths of Oswald and Tippit are both suspicious to say the least.

Not to mention dozens of other murder cases that are described in detail in Hit List.

Second, I focused on the year between the assassination and the issuance of the Warren Report. This is the period when the conspirators would be in greatest danger of having the plot unravelled by troublesome witnesses, when the most dangerous witnesses would need to be silenced and when the original plotters most motivated to squelch the investigation were likely still alive.

Really?  Strange approach to a sample selection.  Why not also include the obvious murders of multiple witnesses during later JFKA investigations-- by Jim Garrison and Congress?

According to Social Security data (Table 1 from the reference below), the age-adjusted central death rate for adults in 1964 was 1,209.7 deaths per 100,000 or 1.21% or 0.0121. This figure is for all deaths including natural causes, accidents, homicides and suicides. While the latter 3 groups can show volatility from year to year, in aggregate, they are typically about 5-10% the total death rate.

https://www-origin.ssa.gov/oact/NOTES/pdf_studies/study116.pdf

The death rate due to homicide was roughly 5 per 100,000 in the U.S. 1964.

Accordingly, from the population of 1400 JFK assassination witnesses, the expected total number of deaths in 1964 is

1400 witnesses * 0.0121 death rate = 17 total deaths.

Where are you getting the 1,400 number of key witnesses, Kevin?

If we look at this from the perspective of the putative "Clean Up Squad," I would suggest that they were highly selective in choosing their targets for assassinations-- key witnesses who knew too much and were also at risk of publicly exposing the JFK murder plot (e.g., journalists and indiscreet loud mouths, like Jack Zangretti.)

They also needed to be selective to prevent obvious public evidence of their assassination ops.  For example, if they had murdered every doctor and nurse who had seen JFK in the Parkland ER, the public would have known something was up.

Approximately 5-10% of these deaths should be from other than natural causes resulting in about 15 deaths from natural causes and 1 or 2 from accidents, homicide or suicide.

From the Appendix of Hit List, there are a total of 21 (omitting Eddy Benevides who died in 1965) deaths listed in 1963-64, only one of which (Bill Chesher) is explicitly cited as from natural causes.

My question is, where are the 15 deaths from natural causes which should be present?

A more salient question is, what happened to the statistically expected homicides in your sample?

Instead of the statistically expected 1 death by homicide, (at most) we have 20-- even based on your inflated 1,400 figure for the population sample!  Highly improbable, to say the least.

 

I found it curious that the one witness who might have actually known something important about the JFK assassination that died during 1964-64 was Guy Banister who died of a heart attack (which is actually a natural cause) but is considered suspicious. Maybe the hit squad used their heart attack-inducing agent to kill him. But then why not use it in the other cases as well?

What about C.D. Jackson and Mary Pinchot Meyer?

Meanwhile, as the data indicates, the murders of key JFKA witnesses clustered around three major investigations--

1) the immediate aftermath of JFK's murder/WC investigation, 2) the Garrison investigation of Clay Shaw, and 3) the HSCA investigation.

Most of the other witnesses have some extremely tenuous connections. A good example is Hank Killam who was acquainted with John Carter who resided at Oswald’s rooming house and who’s wife worked for Ruby and were apparently not significant enough themselves to be eliminated.

Not all key witnesses were at risk of going public with their evidence debunking the Warren Commission Report narrative.  That variable contributed to the selectivity of assassination targets-- as I mentioned in the case of the Parkland ER staff.

As examples, many witnesses were threatened and cowed into silence.

And you're conveniently ignoring the evidence of confiscated manuscripts during the murders of Jim Koethe, Dorothy Kilgallen, Florence Pritchard Smith, and Mary Pinchot Meyer.

The final note I’ll make is that several of the dead witnesses were in occupations that had to have death rates significantly higher than the population in general including organized crime figures, strippers, paramilitary mercenaries and drug runners, cops.

You're ignoring too many damning details about these statistically improbable murders to review in this brief critique of your flawed analysis.

I can offer several more criticisms but that’s enough for now. Needless to say, I found no probative value in Hit List.

Yes, that's, certainly, enough for now.

I find no probative value in your deeply flawed critique of the damning Hit List data.

My advice to the forum is that people should read the book and judge for themselves.

Edited July 27 by W. Niederhut

[Bill Brown]

 

Regarding the death of Lee Bowers, many of you are (for whatever reason) ignoring the words of ambulance driver Noel Coward, who said Bowers was unresponsive and unable to talk and was dead at the scene.

The death certificate stated that Bowers died from "multiple head and internal injuries" and that the time of death in relation to these injuries was "instant". 

Dr. Roy Bohl was the attending physician at Waxahachie Hospital when Bowers arrived in an ambulance.  Dr. Bohl refuted any notion that Bowers was in a "strange state of shock", per Penn Jones' allegation.

It seems many of you would prefer a nice juicy conspiracy at every turn instead of simply taking in the facts and forming the only reasonable conclusion.

 

[Bill Brown]

 

Does anyone reading through this thread really believe Lee Bowers was missing a finger?  As in Bowers was kidnapped, threatened and had a finger cut off before being released by his kidnappers?

 

 

[Ron Bulman]

No one knows for sure, no autopsy, quicky cremated.