NYC Councilman Calls For Reopening Kilgallen Case

[Benjamin Cole]

From JFK Facts---

(PS Alvin Bragg does not seems like the right guy for the job. I think the key fact is Kilgallen's missing files and manuscript. That is not something a thug or murderer would take, quite the opposite. It would be incriminating evidence.)

NYC Councilman Calls For Reopening Kilgallen Case

He says journalist Dorothy Kilgallen, who died mysteriously, was "on the verge of perhaps revealing epochal truths"

PETER VOSKAMP MAR 7

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A New York City councilman has called upon Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to reopen the case of Dorothy Kilgallen, the celebrated columnist who was pursuing an investigation of John F. Kennedy’s assassination when she was found dead in her Manhattan apartment in 1965.

The death was ruled an accidental drug overdose at the time.

Robert F. Holden, D-Queens, said in his Jan. 31 letter to Bragg that:

“Dorothy’s investigative work, particularly concerning her friend John F. Kennedy’s assassination, was not only groundbreaking but also, as it tragically turned out, perilous. The reported scare tactics, surveillance, and threats she endured just prior to her death speak volumes about the potential gravity and sensitivity of the information she possessed. Her sudden and mysterious demise, under circumstances that many believe were meticulously staged, raises grave concerns about the integrity of the lackluster investigation that followed.”

Holden goes on to note how Kilgallen’s files and manuscript for her planned blockbuster book on the assassination went missing after her death. 

He said the “hastily” arrived at drug-overdose finding not only did not do Kilgallen justice, “but also conveniently silenced a voice that was on the verge of perhaps revealing epochal truths.”

In a statement to JFK Facts, Holden said:

"The mysterious and untimely death of Dorothy Kilgallen has never sat well with me, compelling me to advocate for its investigation. I am in touch with the Manhattan District Attorney's Office and the NYPD Chief of Detectives, urging them to revisit the case and bring clarity to this enduring mystery."

Holden, 72, was first elected in 2017.

In his letter he also credits author and lawyer Mark Shaw, who has written three books on Kilgallen. Shaw became interested in the case while working for Jack Ruby’s attorney Marvin Belli in the 1980s. He maintains a websitededicated to Kilgallen and her demise.

A household name in the 1950s and up to her death, Kilgallen was a syndicated columnist for the New York Journal-American and a regular on the CBS television show, “What’s My Line?” She played a role in the eventual acquittal of Dr. Sam Sheppard, who was initially convicted of killing his wife in a sensational trial in the 1950s.

An acquaintance of President Kennedy, Kilgallen was an early skeptic of the Warren Commission and its eventual report, and did not shy away from using her column to cast doubt upon official pronouncements regarding the assassination.  

‘Something Strange About How this Case was Handled’

Writing just one week after the assassination, Nov. 29, 1963, and a mere five days after Oswald’s murder, Kilgallen said that if President Johnson were to walk the streets of the nation and listen to its citizens:

“… he would realize that he must make sure that the mystery of Lee Harvey Oswald is solved and laid before the nation down to the smallest shred of evidence.

If Oswald was President Kennedy’s assassin, he was the most important prisoner the police of this country had in custody in 100 years, and no blithe announcement in Dallas is going to satisfy the American public that ‘the case is closed.…’

He must satisfy the public’s uneasy mind about this peculiar assassination of the assassin or he will start his term in office by making a dire political mistake that could cost him in the 1964 election….

When [the right to a trial] is taken away from any man by the incredible combination of a Jack Ruby and insufficient security, we feel chilled. That is why so many people are saying there is ‘something queer’ about the killing of Oswald, something strange about the way his case was handled, and a great deal missing in the official account of his crime.

The American people have just lost a beloved President.

It is a dark chapter in our history, but we have the right to read every word of it. It cannot be locked up in a file in Dallas.

Kilgallen attended the trial of Jack Ruby, the Dallas nightclub owner who shot alleged JFK assassin Oswald to death in the basement of the Dallas Police Department.

Kilgallen, left, and Jack Ruby’s attorney Marvin Belli, right, at Ruby’s trial in Dallas in February 1964.

She also held two private interviews with Ruby and published his Warren Commission testimony before it was officially released, infuriating the FBI.

According to Shaw, the person who passed along that information was Kentucky Senator John Sherman Cooper, a member of the Warren Commission, who, along with Georgia Senator Richard Russell, was never comfortable with the Oswald-did-it-alone narrative.

(Shaw’s information came from Cooper’s former aide, Morris Wolff, whom JFK Facts interviewed in December 2023.)

Kilgallen was reportedly saving the details of her private discussions with Ruby for her book. She said she had information that would “bust the whole thing open,” according to the Dallas Morning News. 

Kilgallen was found dead at age 52 in her Manhattan apartment, apparently expiring due a deadly cocktail of barbiturates and alcohol. Friends found it disturbing that she was in a room she didn’t sleep in, in clothes she wouldn’t have worn to bed, with a book she had already read being held upside down in her lap.

As Jerry Kuzmarov in Covert Action Magazine reports, many — including fellow columnist Liz Smith, attorney Belli, and Watergate burglar and CIA operative Frank Sturgis — believed Kilgallen was killed because she was getting too close to the truth.

Shaw points the finger at her younger lover, Ronald Pataky, who had fallen afoul of organized crime figures and may have had no choice but to play Ruby to Kilgallen’s Oswald.