Mark Groubert, Nelson Say LBJ Did It

[Benjamin Cole]

I disagree with the Groubert and Nelson assessment of the JFKA, but I do not agree with the peevishly small-minded hob-goblin mindset of censoring that with which I disagree. Why not post interesting views of the JFKA/RFK1A, even if they are not my views? 

Groubert and Nelson contend the Mac Wallace fingerprint in the TSBD6 is valid, and the Joan Mellon was up to no good in Austin Texas. They say something was fishy about the Mob-tight Jim Garrison. 

The weakness in the Groubert/Nelson versions are largely--

1. Most JFKA evidence seems to point back to JMWAVE, Miami, Cuban exiles, US mercs.  Read Larry Hancock's SWHT. 

2. There were previous assassination plots in Chicago and Miami...again pointing back the JMWAVE. LBJ in Chicago? 

3. The RFK1A was also a conspiracy followed by an investigation snuff job---I posit to keep RFK1A from office, where he would bring about an  intrepid investigation of the JFKA. I do not see how LBJ could have pulled off the RFK1A and snuff job. That was beyond his ken. 

But hey--Groubert and Nelson have a different view and here they are: 

 

[Tom Gram]

I am not a human lie detector, but when they showed a clip of the fingerprint expert who examined the Wallace print in Evidence of Revision, my impression was that he was not credible at all, and knew he was full of it. 

As far as I know, the Wallace print has been totally discredited. It also seems extremely far-fetched to believe that Joan Mellon, a conspiracy author, would actively conspire to conceal evidence of conspiracy in the JFK case. Can you provide a brief summary of why these guys think Mellon was “up to no good”? I don’t have time to watch the video right now. 

[James DiEugenio]

Tom is correct.

Part 1 of my review: So you get the whole story

In 1998,  the late JFK researcher Jay Harrison had a brainstorm. It was simple in concept.  He would secure a fingerprint impression left unidentified by the Warren Commission from one of the boxes on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. He would then secure the fingerprints of Malcolm Wallace, the man accused by ex-con Billy Sol Estes of being a hit man for Lyndon Johnson.  Estes had accused Wallace of killing John Kennedy.

Once Harrison had these two fingerprint samples, he would then enlist a fingerprint analyst to examine them.  If it was Wallace’s print on the box, then one could safely assume that he was on the sixth floor either during, or immediately after, the Kennedy assassination.  This would indicate that somehow Johnson was involved with the JFK hit; or else why would Wallace be there?

As many have noted, it was really Estes who had drawn the crime in this manner, i.e., with Johnson as the prime mover and Malcolm Wallace as the assassin, or chief of the hit team. He had done the first part—LBJ as the prime force behind the JFK hit—in an aside to a man named Clint Peoples, a Texas lawman who had escorted him off to jail.  (Joan Mellen, Faustian Bargains, p. 230) The second part—Wallace as assassin—was done years later, when Estes got out of jail and testified before a grand jury.  That grand jury had been called to reopen the 1961 murder of another Texas law man, Henry Marshall.  Marshall was investigating some of Billy Sol’s crimes in Texas.  Right before the case was about to explode, Marshall was murdered by rifle fire.  He had been shot multiple times.  Incredibly, the local sheriff ruled the death a suicide.  In 1984, Estes got out of prison, after his second stay there.  He appeared before the Marshall grand jury.  He implicated Malcolm Wallace as the killer of Henry Marshall. Wallace had done this at the behest of Vice President Lyndon Johnson. For whom he had also killed President Kennedy.

If Harrison’s concept turned out to be true, then it would give new credibility to the accusations of Billy Sol Estes, who many observers had severe doubts about. Estes had promised things like tape recordings and phone records to bolster his case, but he had never produced these exhibits, even when he was asked for them by Stephen Trott of the Justice Department. 

Harrison enlisted two fingerprint analysts to confirm or deny that the prints matched.  One was Nathan Darby; the other was Harold Hoffmeister.  Darby went first.  After examining the prints he decided they matched at 14 points of identification.  Which would be good enough for a criminal legal action.  Hoffmeister then said he agreed.  But a day later, he recanted.  He said that after doing a re-examination, he felt that since both men worked with photocopies, the identification points were not adduced in a reliable manner.  (Mellen, Faustian Bargains,  p. 256)  As we shall see, Hoffmeister’s complaint was a legitimate one. But Harrison felt that he had recanted out of fear, since he had now found out who the print examination involved.

So Harrison went ahead.  A press conference was called.  Darby’s work was submitted to the homicide division of the Dallas Police Department and to the FBI. (ibid)  The Bureau ended up disagreeing with Darby, but they did not submit any specific critique of his work. Harrison and his coterie therefore continued along in their mini campaign about Johnson and Wallace killing Kennedy.

[James DiEugenio]

Part 2 of the Examination:

 

But  the longer the parade marched on, the odder a certain aspect of this acceptance began to appear. First, no one had done an independent analysis of the print match.  After all, Hoffmeister had recanted based upon the quality of the materials he and Darby had to work with.  Apparently this did not mean much to the leaping exegetes ready to board the ”LBJ did it” train.  Second, no one worked on a real biography of Malcolm Wallace.  Was he known as a professional killer?  Did he have a close association with the people Estes said he did:  like LBJ’s factotum in Texas Cliff Carter, Estes himself, and Johnson? Was he politically committed to everything JFK was against?  If not, was there any way to see if he had monetarily profited from all the murders that Estes said he had performed for LBJ? And perhaps the most important evidentiary point of all: Was there any evidence that Wallace was elsewhere on the days that both Marshall and Kennedy were murdered?

Incredibly, no one seriously posed these questions for well over a decade.  Innocent outsiders who listened to the LBJ cacophony were, understandably, impressed:  with all that noise emanating from so many bongo drums, there had to be a real signal in there somewhere; it couldn’t all be much ado about nothing. Could it?

[James DiEugenio]

Part 3 of the examiantion

 

[From 1960 on] Wallace spent most of the rest of his life in California working as a control supervisor for Ling.  He married a young woman named Virginia  Ledgerwood.  (p. 169).

Later on, ONI lowered his clearance from SECRET to CONFIDENTIAL.  This may have been due to a DUI charge Wallace had gotten. It resulted in a demotion at work. Wallace reacted poorly to this.  He got depressed and began drinking even more.  In 1969 he and Virginia divorced and sold their house.  (p. 218)  He used the money to take out insurance policies on his three children—he had a third child with Virginia.  He decided to return to Texas.

Wallace was dealing with severe health problems at this time. On the ride back to Texas, he passed out in a diabetic coma and sustained a concussion.  A hitchhiker he picked up saved him from even worse injuries. (p. 219)  Because of this, Wallace made out a will in April of 1970.  In the last months of his life, he taught part-time at Texas A&M, and worked part-time at his brother’s insurance office.

On the evening of January 7, 1971 Wallace died in a single car accident.  He had driven off the road and into a concrete bridge abutment. The policeman who wrote out the accident report felt that Wallace was dead at the scene.  And, in fact, he was pronounced DOA at the hospital. (p. 221) Jay Harrison  questioned whether or not Wallace died that night. But Mellen documents the fact that several of his family members saw the body at the funeral parlor in an open casket.  It was Malcolm Wallace.  To further this idea, Harrison had also stated that Wallace visited his first wife in 1980. Also not true. This was their son Michael, who resembled his father.  (p. 251)

[James DiEugenio]

On top of Wallace being in California on the day of the JFK murder, there is this.

Neither man Harrison employed for fingerprint  analysis was currently certified.  Which means a lot, like they are not familiar with current techniques through taking classes.

An important matter that Garrett discovered was that neither Darby nor Hoffmeister was accredited by the IAI at the time they did their work for Jay Harrison in 1998.  One must renew one’s license every five years.  This is done by taking education credits, continued work experience, and by passing a test.  According to Garrett, who had been in charge of the IAI certification programs, Darby’s certification had expired in 1984, fourteen years before Harrison recruited him.  Hoffmeister’s expired in 1996.  (p. 261) Why Harrison did not check on this issue in advance is extremely puzzling, especially since Harrison had been a policeman for a number of years, and had to have known what the IAI was, and how its trademark—or lack of—impacted the credibility of the work done by Darby and Hoffmeister.

Another problem that Garrett had with the Harrison/Darby file was the same issue that Hoffmeister raised: the quality of the reproductions that Darby had worked with.  Garrett actually told Mellen that he would not have proceeded if this is what he had had to base his judgment on. (p. 258)  First, the quality of the copy of the unidentified box print from the Warren Commission was simply inferior, to the point that it was unreliable.  So Mellen got an actual first generation photograph of this print from the National Archives. And in her book she shows the difference between the two, which is quite considerable. (See the last photo in photo section.)

But further, Garrett did not want to utilize the Wallace print from the Kinser case, which Harrison had secured from the Texas authorities. These had been smudged since “the roller used to make the inked print had not been thoroughly cleaned off after its use with the previous subject.” (p. 259)  So Mellen attained Wallace’s Navy fingerprints.

Using high technology, including a 256 shade gray scale that Darby did not have, Garrett now went to work.  He concluded that the unidentified box print was not a match with the Wallace print.  First he noted eight points of discrepancy between the two—that is, specific mismatches.  And he described these in detail. (p. 259)  Beyond that, he brought up problems with all fourteen of the alleged matches that Darby had made.  Some of these were due to the poor copies he had to work with.  But also part of it was the black and white methodology employed.  Garrett indicated where the “plotting” was off due to incorrect alignments. (p. 260) Garrett therefore concluded that there was no doubt that the unidentified Warren Commission box print did not belong to Wallace.

[James DiEugenio]

Now, where did a lot of this baloney come from?

From a witness who very few people think has any credibility at all:  a conman and thief Billy Sol Estes

Then there was Billy Sol Estes.  Estes was a large contributor to Johnson’s Texas campaigns and the 1960 Kennedy/Johnson ticket.  To say that Estes was a con man and fraudster does not really describe the nature and scope of the man’s swindles.  He first specialized in cotton allotments.  He convinced farmers who had their land taken away by eminent domain to purchase land for cotton from him.  He would then lease it back.  Once, a year later, when the first payment was due, by pre-arrangement, the farmer would default.  In other words, Estes had purchased the allotment through lease fees.  But since the transaction was not a genuine sale, the deal was illegal.  He took the money from this fraud to build another fraud. This was in the anhydrous ammonia business—fertilizer.  He sold mortgages on nonexistent fertilizer tanks by convincing farmers to buy them sight unseen. He would then lease them from the buyer for the same amount as the mortgage payment.  He used these phony mortgages to get large bank loans.  The aim was to corner the anhydrous ammonia business.  As many have said, approximately 80% of the fertilizer warehouses were empty.

The problem with the schemes was that, in his attempt to corner the fertilizer market, Estes was underselling the product so low that he was losing millions in the process.  Not even his cotton allotment scam could bail him out.  (Mellen, p. 140)  The lending companies grew suspicious. They began to suspect the fertilizer warehouses were non-existent.  On top of that, in 1961, even though he said he was worth millions, Estes had paid no income tax in four years. (ibid, p. 141)  As with Baker, an unhappy business partner, Harold Orr, was the first to expose Estes.  He declared that there was no fertilizer in those warehouses.

[James DiEugenio]

The following is a summary of how this all really started:  it was through Billy Sol, then circulated through that pulp book by the John Birchers which sold million of copies, A Texas Looks at Lyndon and which every LBJ did it advocate uses without discrimination.

 

Estes was convicted in both state and federal courts. He exhausted his appeals in 1965. He then went to prison and was paroled in 1971.  In  1979, he was convicted of tax fraud and went to prison for four more years.  As many authors have noted, including Mellen, Estes always blamed Johnson for his legal problems.  He somehow expected LBJ to help save him, though it is difficult to see how that could have happened after the newspaper series was published and then sent to Washington. To put it mildly, Johnson had very little, if any, influence with Bobby Kennedy.  Once the publisher sent the article to Washington, Estes was doomed—and LBJ could not save him.  Yet, irrationally, Estes seemed to think that he could.  He became obsessed with this idea, and as Mellen shows in an interview, Estes became quite embittered toward Johnson.  It was a bitterness that never left him. (See pp. 242-43)

[James DiEugenio]

At about this point, Doug Caddy entered the arena and raised the Estes' accusations to nothing less than a Wagnerian Ring Cycle pitch of intensity.  Now, according to Estes and Caddy, there were more dead people due to the Estes/Johnson association than Capone had killed in Chicago.  Oh, and Estes had tapes too.

 

In 1979, as he was being carted off to prison the second time, Billy Sol Estes began to carve out the foundation for the LBJ/Wallace murder of Henry Marshall construct.  Estes told his escort, former Texas Ranger Clint Peoples, that Marshall had not killed himself.  The authorities  should be looking in another direction. Peoples assumed this to mean Washington DC.  When Estes got out of jail, he appeared before a grand jury called on the Marshall murder.  Estes would now be represented by attorney Douglas Caddy.  Caddy had been trying to get Estes’s story out even while he was in prison—through the auspices of Galveston rightwing millionaire Shearn Moody. (p. 232)  Estes now told Peoples that Mac Wallace killed Henry Marshall.   Peoples contacted  John Paschall, DA of Roberson County, where Marshall had been killed.  Peoples convinced Paschall to reopen the Marshall case by calling a grand jury.

On March 20, 1984, over 20 years after Marshall’s murder, Estes testified that Johnson had ordered the murder of Henry Marshall at a meeting in Washington with Carter, Estes and Wallace.  Caddy then brought these charges to the attention of the Justice Department.  But later, in addition to Marshall, Estes and Caddy now listed eight other people who had been killed by Wallace at the behest of LBJ.  This included Josefa Johnson, Kinser, and John Kennedy.  Like Joe McCarthy and communists in the State Department, the Caddy/Estes number was later raised up to 17.  (Ibid, p. 236)

[James DiEugenio]

To say the least, the list is overstated.

For instance, Mellen establishes a solid alibi for Wallace for the dates on and about the murder of Marshall.  Marshall was killed on Saturday June 3, 1961.  On that Friday, Wallace had filled out and signed a security clearance form at work. On that weekend, his brother had brought both his children, and Wallace’s son Michael, out to see Malcolm.  The party arrived Friday evening.  That weekend they went to the beach and then Disneyland. (pp. 235-36)  There are two other points to be made in this regard.  The inquiry into Henry Marshall’s death concluded that he was killed somewhere in the middle of his farm, meaning that the person or persons who killed him knew how to get to him after they came in the gate.  There is no evidence that Wallace knew Marshall. (ibid) Finally, when Estes began to broadcast his story, he described the scene where Johnson and his co-conspirators had made the decision to kill Marshall.  Unfortunately, Johnson had not moved into that home, called The Elms, at that time. (ibid)

Concerning the death of Josefa Johnson, she was married to a man named James Moss at the time of her death in 1961.  The evening before, she had been at a Christmas Eve gathering at Johnson’s ranch.  The only other guests were John and Nellie Connally.  The cause of death was first announced as a heart attack, but was changed to a cerebral hemorrhage, or stroke. (pp. 144-45)  Again, Wallace was living in California at the time.  And further, are we to assume that he took a quickie course in inducing cerebral hemorrhages and making them look like natural deaths?

As per the assassination of John F. Kennedy, again Wallace was in California at the time, working for Ling Electronics.  And in 1963, his son Michael had moved in with him.  Michael recalls his father being home for dinner and trying to console him about Kennedy’s murder, which occurred in his home state of Texas. (p. 257)

 

[Benjamin Cole]

55 minutes ago, Tom Gram said:

I am not a human lie detector, but when they showed a clip of the fingerprint expert who examined the Wallace print in Evidence of Revision, my impression was that he was not credible at all, and knew he was full of it. 

As far as I know, the Wallace print has been totally discredited. It also seems extremely far-fetched to believe that Joan Mellon, a conspiracy author, would actively conspire to conceal evidence of conspiracy in the JFK case. Can you provide a brief summary of why these guys think Mellon was “up to no good”? I don’t have time to watch the video right now. 

Well, they mostly make dark allusions, and said there were three fingerprint experts who looked at the Mac Wallace fingerprint, and concurred it was a bona fide Wallace print. And that everyone agreed when Mellon went  to Texas she had her mind already made up.

In truth, I am disappointed in Groubert on this one. He is a smart guy and interesting, and well read, but sometimes places too much faith in his powers divination. 

Serious scholars spend decades in this field and are less certain abut everything than Groubert. But he runs a good show. 

Edited June 17 by Benjamin Cole

[James DiEugenio]

Then there is the approach to the DOJ and Steve Trott: Just remember now, Estes now says he has tapes

 

Then there is Billy Sol’s and Caddy’s relationship with the Justice Department.  Caddy tried to get an interview with Stephen Trott, a prosecutor in the Justice Department, after Estes had testified before the grand jury in 1984. (p. 238)  According to Caddy, Estes now said that Wallace recruited Jack Ruby, and Ruby then recruited Oswald.  During the actual assassination, Wallace was on the grassy knoll.  Recall, even though the list kept on growing, Estes and Caddy could produce no real evidence for any of the killings.  And Caddy had never seemed to seek out what the exculpatory evidence was.  As New York City prosecutor Bob Tanenbaum said to this author, as a DA, this is something you always allow for since you do not want to be blindsided at trial.

Taking all this into account, its remarkable what Estes and Caddy wanted in return for a deposition.  Estes demanded a pardon for his past crimes, immunity from prosecution, relief from his parole restrictions, and his tax liens removed. (p. 240)  Very sensibly, Trott countered that he would agree to immunity if Estes would forward any evidence he had in advance, name his sources, and agree to a polygraph.  Trott actually sent three FBI agents to Texas for a preliminary interview.  When Estes saw them arrive in the lobby of the hotel, he walked out. (ibid)

[James DiEugenio]

One of the most humiliating experiences this whole community ever had was with Nigel Turner putting this on TV, as I recall PBS.

And Barr McClellan proclaiming he knew LBJ killed JFK.

And Walt Brown going into the DPD with the alleged Jay Harrison fingerprint match.

Neither man cross checked the work.  Or revealed that Darby and Hoffmeister were not professionally certified at the time.

And neither doing the research to locate Wallace in California on the day of the assassination.

I have always though that A Texan Looks at Lyndon was one of the worst influences ever on the JFK case.  I mean who can trust a book put out by the John Birch society in order to get people to vote for Goldwater. But they did.

And My God, a conman, and a thief like Billy Sol? Who once told a judge up on sentencing "I have a problem, I live in a dream world."

That is a lethal combination.

 

Edited June 17 by James DiEugenio

[Robert Morrow]

6 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

The following is a summary of how this all really started:  it was through Billy Sol, then circulated through that pulp book by the John Birchers which sold million of copies, A Texas Looks at Lyndon and which every LBJ did it advocate uses without discrimination.

 

Estes was convicted in both state and federal courts. He exhausted his appeals in 1965. He then went to prison and was paroled in 1971.  In  1979, he was convicted of tax fraud and went to prison for four more years.  As many authors have noted, including Mellen, Estes always blamed Johnson for his legal problems.  He somehow expected LBJ to help save him, though it is difficult to see how that could have happened after the newspaper series was published and then sent to Washington. To put it mildly, Johnson had very little, if any, influence with Bobby Kennedy.  Once the publisher sent the article to Washington, Estes was doomed—and LBJ could not save him.  Yet, irrationally, Estes seemed to think that he could.  He became obsessed with this idea, and as Mellen shows in an interview, Estes became quite embittered toward Johnson.  It was a bitterness that never left him. (See pp. 242-43)

Yes, of course, Billie Sol Estes in later years was very bitter towards Lyndon Johnson who used him like a roll of toilet paper.

Very key point here which I am not going to go into deep detail in this post: ROBERT KENNEDY AND THE KENNEDY ADMINISTRATION HELPED TO COVER UP THE MURDER OF U.S. AGRICULTURAL OFFICIAL HENRY MARSHALL WHICH WAS ORDERED BY LYNDON JOHNSON AND WHICH OCCURRED ON JUNE 3 1961. The reason the Kennedys did that was they did not want an LBJ-related scandal (the murder of Henry Marshall) tarnishing the new Kennedy Administration. https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKmarshallH.htm

LBJ's longtime neighbor and pal FBI director J. Edgar Hoover also covered up the 1961 murder of Henry Marshall.

LBJ's people in East Texas, the Kennedy Justice Dept. and the FBI all worked hand in hand to cover up Lyndon Johnson's murder of Billie Sol Estes. All had their reasons for doing so. 

I personally think Billie Sol Estes was personally involved in the murder of Henry Marshall. LBJ told Estes: "Get rid of him [Henry Marshall" as he ordered this murder.

Lyndon Johnson was highly agitated that U.S. Agricultural official Henry Marshall had been investigating Billie Sol Estes for Estes' abuse of the cotton allotment program. That is the same thing as investigating as investigating the extremely crooked Lyndon Johnson who was receiving MASSIVE amounts of kickbacks from Billie Sol Estes. In 2024 dollars, Lyndon Johnson received as much as $100 million dollars in kickbacks from Estes who was a pawn that LBJ controlled.

Usually, it is the rich guy outside of government who controls a politician, but in the case of LBJ-Estes it was Lyndon Johnson who controlled the much younger Estes who was LBJ's massive cash cow.

Billie Sol Estes told IRS investigator Walt Perry in 1963 that he had given $10 million in kickbacks to Lyndon Johnson

 [Gus Russo, Live By the Sword: The Secret War Against Castro and the Death of JFK, p. 283]:

QUOTE

          Walt Perry, an investigator for the Internal Revenue Service at the time, says that Bobby Kennedy was attempting to use Johnson’s legal problems as leverage, should Johnson not agree to leave the ticket voluntarily. Perry was brought in by Willam Webster (later to become the FBI director) to assist in the Billie Sol Estes investigation. He befriended Estes, who, in the course of things, told Perry that he had funneled $10 million in bribes to Johnson. He also related in an anecdote about Bobby Kennedy. Perry recalls, “Estes told me that in 1963, Bobby Kennedy contacted him in prison. Bobby made him an offer, saying, ‘If you testify against Johnson, you’re out [of prison].’ Billie declined the offer, saying, ‘If I testified against him, I’d be dead within twenty-four hours.’”

UNQUOTE

          [Gus Russo, Live By the Sword: The Secret War Against Castro and the Death of JFK, p.283]

          Gus Russo footnotes on p. 561 of his book that he interviewed Walt Perry on June 6, 1992.

          $10 million in 1960 dollars would equal $104 million in 2023 dollars: http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/

 In 1961 U.S. Agricultural official Henry Marshall was investigating Billie Sol Estes, which really means he was investigating Lyndon Johnson. LBJ, response, had Henry Marshall murdered on June 3, 1961.

 https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKmarshallH.htm

 J. Edgar Hoover on Henry Marshall killing: “I just can’t understand how one can fire five shots at himself.”

Did LBJ order the killing of Henry Marshall? - JFK Assassination Debate - The Education Forum (ipbhost.com)

   J. Raymond Carroll said:

  John Simkin said:

Even J. Edgar Hoover was not impressed with this theory. He wrote on 21st May, 1962: "I just can't understand how one can fire five shots at himself."

 John, can you please give the source for this quotation from Hoover? 

It appeared on a memo from Hoover to Tommy G. McWilliams. It was quoted on page 14 of an article entitled "The Killing of Henry Marshall" by Bill Adler that appeared in The Texas Observer (7th November, 1986).

[Robert Morrow]

What was Lyndon Johnson's actual NET WORTH in 1963 at the time of the JFK assassination? It was absolutely gargantuan and that is because LBJ was astronomically corrupt. LBJ by then was not just one of the richest people in Texas, he was one of the richest people in the United States because for decades Lyndon Johnson took garguantuan amounts of kickbacks and bribes since he was elected a congressman in spring, 1937 at the age of 28.

LBJ insider Ed Clark told author Robert Caro that LBJ’s net worth at the time of the JFK assassination was an astronomical $25 million (for 1963)! Which is equal to $252 million in 2024 dollars

QUOTE

The author asked Clark the worth of those interests at the time Lyndon Johnson became President. Several days later he replied, after apparently checking his firm’s records: “It would have been – you mean his net worth – about $25,000,000 at the time.”

UNQUOTE

[Robert Caro, The Path to Power, p. 788]  

Inflation calculator: https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/

$25 million in 1963 would equal an astounding $251,974,673 in 2024 dollars!!

In 2018, an ultra high-net-worth in individual is defined as someone worth at least $30 million in constant 2018 dollars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_high-net-worth_individual