James DiEugenio Posted June 17 Share Posted June 17 Oh and BTW, one of the people promoting the whole Liggett mess for Nigel Turner, you know body alteration in Texas, was Billy Sol Estes. I mean what a witness. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matthew Koch Posted June 17 Share Posted June 17 1 hour ago, James DiEugenio said: 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. A Texan Looks at Lyndon is why Jack Ruby said the stuff about LBJ "The man in office now" he read that book. The book only surmises that LBJ killed JFK because all the other dirty LBJ deeds were listed before that which was like the last chapter. Most of the book is a bout he Box 13 scandal and LBJ getting a planed crashed for ordering it to land in foggy conditions. To be fair their mistakes are about the same as saying there were missing E.T. initials on CE399 when they are there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Morrow Posted June 17 Share Posted June 17 (edited) I remember one time DiEugenio said that the book A Texan Looks at Lyndon by J. Evetts Haley, was the first time people started saying Lyndon Johnson was a murderer (which he, in fact, was). No, the first time people started saying Lyndon Johnson was a murderer was in 1952 after LBJ had a man named Sam Smithwick murdered in prison because he was a threat to talk about all the massive ballot stuffing LBJ and George Parr did in Jim Wells County to steal the 1948 Democratic Senate run-off from idiot Coke Stevenson who refused to campaign while LBJ was hitting Coke with all he had. The LBJ-orchestrated prison murder of Sam Smithwick occurred in 1952, not too long after LBJ and Ed Clark made sure that LBJ henchman MAC WALLACE GOT 5 YEARS PROBATION AFTER HIS FIRST DEGREE MURDER CONVICTION OF GOLF PRO SHOP OWNER JOHN KINSER. At that time, in 1952, before LBJ was even the Senate Majority Leader, people in Texas were saying Lyndon Johnson was getting away with murder in Texas because of the Sam Smithwick prison murder and LBJ aide Mac Wallace getting ZERO JAIL TIME for a first degree murder conviction (Wallace's murder of Kinser had occurred on 10/22/1963 and he was convicted of that murder in February, 1952). Texas Governor Allan Shivers accused Lyndon Johnson of the 1952 prison murder of Sam Smithwick [Randall Woods, LBJ: Architect of American Ambition, p. 250] In 1948, a deputy sheriff in Alice named Sam Smithwick had become involved in a dispute with a local radio commentator who was then denouncing him for operating a string of beer joints. Hearing that the clean government crusader was going to mention one of his children in a disparaging way, Smithwick sought out his nemesis, pulled his .45, and shot him dead, a deed for which he was sentenced to life in prison. In 1952, Smithwick wrote Coke Stevenson from prison, insisting that five days before the shooting, two Mexican Americans had delivered into his hands the contents of Box 13 from the famous 1948 senatorial campaign. In return for leniency from the state, he was willing to produce them. Stevenson set out immediately for Huntsville and the state prison. “I had left the ranch and got as far as Junction,” Calculatin’ Coke recounted, “ when I got the information that he was dead.” Indeed, the former deputy sheriff was found hanging from the bars of his cell. Shivers’s friends began spreading the word that Johnson together with South Texas political boss Archie Parr had had Smithwick murdered to cover up their theft of the 1948 senatorial election. LBJ went so far as to confront Shivers over the matter, but he, of course, denied it. “I think it was a psychopathic case - an old, ignorant man about to die trying to get himself out of the pen, and getting no answer, committed suicide.” From Washington LBJ sought to put the matter in perspective. “I don’t know what a convicted murderer might have done prior to committing suicide in an attempt to get release from prison,” but Stevenson’s (and Shiver’s) release of the letter was “a continuation of a fight by a group of disgruntled, disappointed people.” Nevertheless, Johnson was shocked. “Shivers charged me with murder,” he later told Ronnie Dugger with incredulity. “Shivers said I was a murderer!” [Randall Woods, LBJ: Architect of American Ambition, p. 250] Lyndon Johnson to journalist Ronnie Dugger: “Shivers said I was a murderer!” (1956) Ronnie Dugger (who used to work at LBJ's radio station): QUOTE In 1956, when Shivers and Johnson were fighting each other for political control, “Shivers charged me with murder,” Johnson, with great incredulity, told me. Speaking from his four-poster bed late one night in the White House, Johnson said that Shivers had made a speech accusing him of Smithwick’s murder, and in San Antonio “the reporters came running up to me saying Shivers had charged me with murder, and what did I want to say about it?” Obviously Johnson had dismissed the charge, but he did not say so, rather repeating indignantly, “Shivers said I was a murderer!” Shivers, shown this account of what Johnson said, told me, “I don’t care to discuss it.” UNQUOTE [Ronnie Dugger, The Life and Times of Lyndon Johnson, pp. 340-341] Sam Smithwick at Find-a-grave – imho Lyndon Johnson had Sam Smithwick murdered in prison because Smithwick was a threat to tell Coke Stevenson about all the ballot stuffing that went on in Jim Wells County in summer 1948 and which delivered the Democratic senatorial nomination to Lyndon Johnson https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/32387444/sam-e_-smithwick QUOTE His parents were Sam Smithwick (Born in Missouri); & Novair Benevides (Born in Texas). Occupation: Deputy Sheriff Died in the Texas Prison System, where he was held for murder. He was found dead in his cell a few days after he offered to talk about the "Ballot Box 13" election fraud in 1948, which put Lyndon Baines Johnson into the U.S. Senate. Ruled suicide by strangulation. Source of much of the information: Death Certificate UNQUOTE Edited June 17 by Robert Morrow Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Benjamin Cole Posted June 18 Author Share Posted June 18 8 hours ago, James DiEugenio said: Oh and BTW, one of the people promoting the whole Liggett mess for Nigel Turner, you know body alteration in Texas, was Billy Sol Estes. I mean what a witness. Thanks to Jim DiEugenio for his illumination on this topic and all aspects of the JFKA/RFK1A. We have a titan among us. IMHO, the JFKA/RFK1A are the same play, Act I and Act II, with subplots extending all the way to the disappearing Scott Enyart photos in 1996, and now to the Biden Administration snuff job on the JFK Records Act. No LBJ cohort could have done that, or Mossad, or the Mob, or some French assassins etc. No high national elected official will cross the intel-state, aka shadow government or Deep State. The only comfort is, there are nations that are far worse than the US. The Butcher of Tehran murdered 8,000 political opponents, for example. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Morrow Posted June 18 Share Posted June 18 (edited) 12 hours ago, James DiEugenio said: Oh and BTW, one of the people promoting the whole Liggett mess for Nigel Turner, you know body alteration in Texas, was Billy Sol Estes. I mean what a witness. Billie Sol Estes was a close personal friend of Lyndon Johnson and LBJ's #1 cash cow for his entire career, surpassing even George and Hermann Brown of Brown and Root and later Kellogg Brown and Root of Halliburton. Billie Sol Estes used to sit outside Texas gun shows, as he sold his book around 2005, and say stuff like "I had enough information on LBJ to send him to jail seven times over." Yes, he was very bitter towards LBJ because Estes was the one who went to jail while the Master Perp LBJ never came close to going to jail. Estes was assigned a longtime LBJ-lawyer named John Cofer who in 1948 had helped LBJ cheat his way to a win in the Democratic Senate Runoff vs. Coke Stevenson. John Cofer also represented LBJ henchman Malcolm Wallace, and with LBJ and Ed Clark rigging the judicial system, he helped Malcolm Wallace get NO JAIL TIME for a the first degree murder conviction for killing John Kinser on 10/22/1951. Francoise Carlier email to Robert Morrow: QUOTE As to Billie Sol Estes, I met him in Paris in 2003 and sat at a table with him and a journalist. I had some time to ask him a few questions. I asked him why Johnson had Kennedy killed (according to him). I will always remember what he answered. One word: "immunity". UNQUOTE That is correct. LBJ murdered JFK because if the Kennedys had their way Lyndon Johnson was at the very least being dropped from the 1964 Democratic ticket and at the most he would be going to jail. Edited June 18 by Robert Morrow Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Morrow Posted June 18 Share Posted June 18 (edited) Key point folks: ROBERT KENNEDY AND THE KENNEDY JUSTICE DEPARTMENT HELPED TO COVER UP LBJ'S MURDER OF AGRICULTURAL OFFICIAL HENRY MARSHALL WHICH OCCURRED ON JUNE 3, 1961. LBJ, the Kennedys and Hoover's FBI all worked hang in glove to cover up the Henry Marshall murder. Each party did it for different reasons and you can believe the Kennedys were going to absolutely get rid of LBJ for the 1964 presidential election. A big part of the cover up of the Marshall murder was having BAREFOOT SANDERS, a longtime LBJ lackey and later a federal judge, come into East Texas from his his district at U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas (Dallas area). U.S. Attorney Barefoot Sanders made sure that a grand jury that had been called did not come back with a verdict to change the Henry Marshall death from "suicide" to 'homicide." Robert Kennedy’s Justice Department would not cooperate with the state of Texas in solving the murder of U.S. agricultural official Henry Marshall [“Ex-Texas official says U.S. wouldn’t aid ’62 death probe,” David Hanners, Dallas Morning News, April 4, 1984] QUOTE By David Hanners Staff Writer of The News Former Texas Atty. Gen. Will Wilson said Tuesday that federal authorities refused to cooperate with the state in a 1962 investigation of the death of an Agricultural Department official who was looking into the business dealings of Billie Sol Estes. Estes, a convicted swindler, told a Robertson County grand jury last month that the agricultural official, Henry Harvey Marshall, was killed because Marshall had uncovered information that could link then Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson to Estes’ illegal activities, sources close to the grand jury said. Marshall died June 3, 1961, after being shot five times. Robertson County authorities ruled his death a suicide. When it became known a year later that Marshall had been investigating Estes’ illegal cotton allotments at the time of his death, Wilson, who was attorney general from 1956-1962, reopened the investigation. “It became quite evident to us early in the investigation that Marshall’s death was not a suicide, and secondly, we had a great deal of opposition from the federal government in cooperating with us at all,” said Wilson, 70, who is now retired and living in Austin. The 1962 grand jury upheld the suicide ruling. But last month’s Robertson County grand jury, after hearing testimony from Estes, U.S. Marshall Clint Peoples, forensic pathologist Josephy Jachimczyk and others, ruled that Marshall was murdered. Estes, who was granted immunity from prosecution in return for his testimony, said he, Johnson and two Johnson associates, Clifton Carter and Malcolm Everett Wallace, conspired to kill Marshall, sources said. The sources said Estes identified Wallace as the one who actually killed Marshall. Wilson said federal officials refused to turn over various reports and records that might have … Please see U.S. on Page 6A – Dallas Morning News UNQUOTE Henry Marshall grave: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/29408139/henry-harvey-marshall Check the newsclips on here: 1985 AP article on Henry Marshall murder https://apnews.com/article/a749b07f7055002e8adbedfab2b78e0e AUSTIN, Texas (AP) _ A judge ruled today that the evidence is ″clear and convincing″ that the 1961 death of a U.S. Department of Agriculture official who was shot five times was homicide, not suicide. The verdict by state District Judge Peter Lowry in the death of Henry Marshall followed a day-long trial on a request by Marshall’s son Don to change the cause of his father’s death. At the time of his death, Marshall was investigating Billie Sol Estes, a flamboyant West Texan who eventually was convicted of fraud over a non- existent fertilizer business. Estes gained more attention last year when he told a Robertson County grand jury that Marshall was killed on orders from then-Vice President Lyndon Johnson. Estes testified that he and Johnson discussed a need to stop Marshall from disclosing Estes’ fraudulent business dealings and his ties with Johnson, the Austin American-Statesman has reported. Relatives and associates of Johnson have denied Estes’ accusations and say the ties Estes claims he had to the late president were exaggerated. Marshall’s body was found June 3, 1961, on the family farm in Robertson County, north of Bryan. He had been shot five times and also had inhaled carbon monoxide. A 1962 grand jury ruled the death a suicide. But the grand jury that heard Estes’ testimony ruled it a homicide. It issued no indictment or comment on the claim that Johnson was involved, saying only that those involved with the slaying were dead. In state District Court on Monday, Don Marshall and his mother, Sybil, asked that the cause listed on Henry Marshall’s death certificate be changed from ″gun shot wounds - self-inflicted″ to ″gun shot wounds - homicide.″ Marshall said he only recently learned that the listed cause of death could be changed. Assistant Attorney General Lou Bright said a judge can order such a change if there is a satisfactory showing that the information listed is wrong. Clint Peoples, a Texas Ranger who investigated Marshall’s death, testified Monday that he believed there was no question that Marshall was murdered. ″My opinion from the investigation prior and after is that someone went out there to make it look like a suicide,″ he said. Peoples said he believes evidence shows that Marshall had ″a terrific struggle″ with someone and received several cuts on his head. He then inhaled carbon monoxide, possibly from the exhaust of his pickup. ″After that came the finishing off part with the rifle,″ Peoples said. The shots came from a single-shot, bolt-action, .22-caliber rifle. Peoples demonstrated that Marshall, who had a partially crippled right hand, would have had to reach a full arm’s length away to pull the trigger while the barrel was aimed at his abdomen. That action would have had to have been repeated five times if the suicide theory is correct. No autopsy was done until a year after Marshall’s death. Dr. Joseph Jachimczyk, chief medical examiner of Harris County, ruled the death a ″possible homicide and possible suicide.″ Estes refused to testify before the grand jury that declared the death a suicide. But Peoples said that when he escorted Estes to federal prison in 1965 they talked of Marshall’s death. Peoples quoted Estes as saying, ″You can bet your life it wasn’t suicide. It was murder.″ He told Peoples to look ″towards Washington″ for the killer. When Estes was released from prison late in 1983, he contacted Peoples and gave him new information about Marshall’s death. Estes said he ″wanted to get right with the Lord,″ Peoples said. Estes identified the late Malcolm Wallace, a former U.S. Agriculture Department economist, as the trigger man. Relatives and associates of Wallace denied Estes’ accusations. Texas Attorney General Will Wilson was an enemy of Lyndon Johnson: 1) https://www.justice.gov/criminal/history/assistant-attorneys-general/will-r-wilson Will R. Wilson, Sr. (1969-1971) Early History: Will Reid Wilson, Sr. was born in 1912 in Dallas, Texas. He earned a degree in geology at the University of Oklahoma and graduated first in his class from Southern Methodist University law school. Mr. Wilson then served as an aide to the Mayor of Dallas and as an Assistant Attorney General for the State of Texas. During World War II, Mr. Wilson was a Major in the U.S. Army, accepting the surrender of Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita’s staff in the Philippines, and was awarded the Bronze Star for heroism in combat. In 1946, Mr. Wilson was elected District Attorney of Dallas County. In 1950, he was elected to serve on the Texas Supreme Court as one of its youngest justices in history. He resigned from the bench in 1956 to run for Attorney General of Texas, a post in which he served until 1963 when he co-founded a law firm. In 1959, he received the Wyman Memorial Award, the highest honor of the National Association of Attorneys General. Tenure: In 1969, President Richard Nixon appointed Mr. Wilson as Assistant Attorney General of the U.S. Department of Justice, Criminal Division. As Assistant Attorney General, he directed the Organized Crime Strike force. He served for two years before returning to Texas. Later Career: Mr. Wilson later ran two ranches in Texas and served as director of the local water control and improvement districts. He wrote a book (A Fool for a Client) about the fall of President Nixon. Mr. Wilson died in 2005 in Austin, Texas. 2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Wilson_(Texas_politician)#:~:text=Will%20Reid%20Wilson%2C%20Sr.,of%20Texas%20from%201957%2D1963 . 3) https://tarltonapps.law.utexas.edu/justices/profile/view/118 4) https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki/Will_Wilson Wilson did not seek a fourth two-year term as attorney general in 1962; instead he entered the Democratic gubernatorial primary against several prominent opponents, including incumbent Governor Marion Price Daniel, Sr. of Liberty, highway commissioner Marshall Formby of Plainview, General Edwin A. Walker, who made anticommunism the centerpiece of his campaign, and the leading candidates, former U.S. Secretary of the Navy John Connally of Floresville, and liberal attorney Don Yarborough of Houston (no relation to his fellow liberal U.S. Senator Ralph W. Yarborough of Austin). In the campaign, Wilson was particularly critical of a politician not on the ballot: Lyndon Johnson. Wilson declared that Johnson had engineered Connally's candidacy because the vice president feared a Republican victory in Texas in 1962. According to Wilson, Johnson was engaged in "a move . . . to oust Price Daniel, oust me, oust Senator Ralph Yarborough and gain complete control of the state government."[7] Ultimately, Connally narrowly won the nomination in a runoff against Yarborough and then defeated the strong Republican gubernatorial candidate in Texas since 1924, Jack Cox of Houston in the general election. Cox had lost the Democratic nomination to Governor Daniel in the 1960 party primary.[8] In 1964, Cox, a part of the conservative wing of his new party, lost the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate to George Herbert Walker Bush, also of Houston, and the future vice president and U.S. president. On April 3, 1962 Billie Sol Estes bragged to a lawyer Frank Cain, telling him that he (Estes) could stop any federal investigation into him by telephoning Vice President Lyndon Johnson Billie Sol Estes https://library.cqpress.com/cqalmanac/document.php?id=cqal62-878-28129-1324475 QUOTE April 20 – The Estes case was sent to a Texas state grand jury following conclusion of hearings before a Dallas court of inquiry conducted by State Attorney General Wilson. Frank Cain, a lawyer representing the Pacific Finance Corporation of Los Angeles, which was then suing Estes, April 20 testified before the Dallas court that Estes had once told him that he could stop a federal investigation of his financial operations by telephoning Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson. Cain said “I don't know whether he did or not, but the FBI went right ahead and he was arrested and in jail two days later.” Cain said Estes told him that “pay-offs” cost him from $100,000 to $200,000 a year to keep up his contacts for his agricultural dealings. Cain said Estes made this comment after receiving a telephone call from a man identified as “Jamie Whitten.” Cain said Estes told him Whitten “really gets the job done on appropriations and agricultural programs.” Rep. Jamie L. Whitten (D Miss.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee's Agriculture Subcommittee, April 20 in an interview for the Dallas Times-Herald said “I never heard of this fellow (Estes) before I met him last January through some of my Texas colleagues…. What his business was I never knew. He never solicited any favors from me…and I never did anything for Estes.” Wilson April 20 before the court read an unsigned letter to Estes which referred to Rep. H. Carl Andersen (R Minn.) as “a good Republican contact in Congress” for Estes. Wilson indicated the letter was written by William E. Morris. The letter, asking whether Estes would be interested in purchasing coal mine stock from Andersen, said: “He is really in a bind. He is really good about standing by his friends.” James T. Ralph, a former Assistant Secretary of Agriculture, April 20 testified that Estes had urged him to accept gifts of clothing while on a Dallas shopping trip to the point where “it became embarrassing”, but said he had neither accepted the clothes as gifts nor bought them with his own money. Clerks from the Dallas Neiman-Marcus store testified that Ralph had tried on suits which were altered to fit him, that they were charged to Estes and sent to Estes at a Washington hotel. Emery E. Jacobs declined to appear before the Dallas court on April 20 due to a “conflict in schedule.” He said he did intend to testify and would deny “any wrong-doing, either morally, legally or ethically.” April 25 – Wilson called for a Congressional investigation of “widespread evidence” that “Washington political influence” was used in behalf of Estes. Wilson said the courts of inquiry he had conducted had produced evidence that Estes received “substantial favors” from the Agriculture Department. April 25 – Estes was indicted on state charges of theft. UNQUOTE Lyndon Johnson used to call Billie Sol Estes at 3AM in the morning and tell him that he needed $500,000 by 9AM. Also, he said that the Kennedys were having him followed in 1962 JFK assassination researcher post on JFK Facts.org on October 30, 2014 by someone posting as “RLC” https://jfkfacts.org/billy-sol-estes-leaves-the-stage-claimed-lbj-killed-jfk-and-others/ QUOTE In the late 1990’s I was invited to a private (by invitation only) dinner. Billy Sol Estes was also a guest. I got to know Billy quite well and had a long conversation, about 4 hours, where we talked about everything from his childhood, how he made his first million. We discussed his relationship with LBJ and LBJ calling him at 3:00 am telling him he needed $500,000 by 9:00 am. I had not talked with for at least 4 years and just found out he passed away in May of 2013. He asked me not to mention anything about what he was telling me because people were after him and being followed again. What I mean by again is he said JFK and Robert Kennedy both were having him followed in 1962. He told me he could not leave his house without someone following him. He told me about Malcomb Wallace being LBJ’s hit man. I must admit he was very interesting but also must admit that he was scaring me. He told me more than I wanted to know. I cooked chili for everyone and Billy Sol spent the entire time outside with me. He also told me about his three different prison sentences and how he could have gotten a chance at early release if he returned the money he and LBJ embezzled with their non-existent grain silos and expose LBJ. He was more worried about Wallace than early release. He gave me a book and wrote me a note with his personal phone number. He also told me that LBJ had Wallace kill his daughters lover. He was always looking over his shoulder. He was a great business man UNQUOTE Edited June 18 by Robert Morrow Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Morrow Posted June 18 Share Posted June 18 (edited) I doubt Jim DiEugenio has ever read the 1984 oral history that then U.S. Marshal and former legendary Texas Ranger Clint Peoples' gave to the Dallas Public Library on November 21, 1984 - which was 21 years after the JFK assassination and 23 1/3 years after the murder and cover up of the murder of U.S. Agricultural official Henry Marshall on June 3, 1961. U.S. Marshal Clint Peoples insisted that the most explosive parts of his oral history be kept secret until the deaths of his two daughters, which is why it took so many decades for the full testimony of Peoples to be released. 1984 Clint Peoples' oral history which he gave to the Dallas Public Library on my blog: Robert Morrow Political Research Blog: U.S. Marshal Clint Peoples had some harsh things to say in 1984 about LBJ stooge Barefoot Sanders who covered up the 1961 LBJ-directed murder of U.S. Agricultural official Henry Marshall The key part is Barefoot Sanders covering up the murder of Henry Marshall while he was a U.S. Attorney and also Judge Barefoot Sanders fear and rage in 1984 when Marshal Clint Peoples was resurrecting the case. The most important thing to know is BOTH the Kennedy Justice Dept. and Lyndon Johnson personally were covering up LBJ's murder of U.S. Agricultural official Henry Marshal in June of 1961. Henry Marshall was investing Billie Sol Estes which is another way of saying he as investigating super crooked LBJ. Clint Peoples’ Oral History with the Dallas Public Library – Date November 21, 1984. Peoples' had some harsh things to say about LBJ lackey Barefoot Sanders who helped to cover up the Henry Marshall murder in 1961 and 1962. In 1961 Barefoot Sanders was the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas and later Sanders became a federal judge. Barefoot Sanders tried to use another judge to intimidate Marshal Peoples in to not resurrecting the Henry Marshall case in 1984. Dallas Public Library Interview VII November 21, 1984 GERALD SAXON: Good morning Marshal Peoples. It’s a pleasure to be here this morning. Let’s go back and backtrack and pick up some material that we haven’t picked up before in our interviews. You were just talking briefly before the tape was on about your involvement in Kingsville during World War II and the German subs off the coast of Texas. Tell us something about that. CLINTON PEOPLES: My partner and I were stationed there at Kingsville, and, of course, the war was on. Germany was really causing everyone a tremendous amount of problem in every country. They were so powerful, and such a little nation as Germany is--not any larger than Texas--darn near whipped the world. And so they had, I guess, they had submarines that were all over the country. And I just couldn’t help but think about how a submarine could venture off that far. But we got a call one night, and we were constantly on alert. We prepared for all of these things in the highway patrol and other law enforcement agencies, but it was our duty, our jurisdiction, in the event we had an alert of a submarine being in that country anywhere, to get everyone to cut the lights out. The military authorities notified everybody to cut the lights out in every place. So in that country one night we got a call that a German submarine had surfaced. So we had to get in our patrol car, we drove all night long without lights up in that area--not in the metropolitan areas--in the farming area around Kingsville and Corpus and through that country. If the light was shining any place, we would work our way to this farm house or whatever it may be. They were calling people by telephone, “Cut your lights off, cut your lights off,” in those areas. Many times that particular night, we worked our way into the country and had people knock on the doors and tell them to cut the lights out because a German submarine had surfaced to charge the batteries. And, of course, from time to time we’d get reports about debris that had floated to the coastlines from ships that the submarines had sunk. And, of course, the military authorities knew that they were in that particular area. So it was most interesting to know, and I thought about that many times, just how German submarines could come that far, you know, and nearly cause lots of trouble. SAXON: What do you think they were doing out there? Did you have reports as to what they may be there for? PEOPLES: Well, I don’t know. We don’t know. The military authorities didn’t, except the fact that they were probably getting ready to blow up some of those oil tankers maybe or some of those refineries or something of that nature. But what they were doing, you know, they had to come up every so often and surface to charge their batteries. That’s what they were doing on this particular day, or whatever time they came up. We didn’t know exactly the hour. I think we did at the time that they were sighted, but that particular hour--I can’t recall exactly what hour it was--but I can recall having to drive all night long without lights to try to notify the people, my partner and I, to cut their lights out. SAXON: Well, who would have ordered you to have done that? PEOPLES: Well, it came out of my headquarters out in Corpus Christi. The captain of the patrol notified us by telephone. SAXON: And what would they fear for the lights, that the Germans would identify where houses were? PEOPLES: Maybe shoot at that particular location; they didn’t know. That was in the National Alert Plan, that all the lights had to go out once they suspected submarines were in the area, because all up and down that coastline, you know, was a very important coastline as far as Germany was concerned. If they could destroy a lot of those refineries, you know, they’d paralyzed many parts of the country, because of the oil and gas and everything that they were manufacturing down there. And so they were really on the alert, continuously on the alert. And so that was one of the functions that we had to do. SAXON: That’s interesting. PEOPLES: Well, I thought about that many times. SAXON: Texas has a fairly large German population; at least in Central Texas we have a fairly large population. Was there ever any fear that this population might not go with the United States in World War II like there was with the Japanese on the West Coast? PEOPLES: Let me tell you something, Gerry. You brought up a very interesting point there, and I’ve even thought about that but I have forgotten about it. Would you believe we had a concentration camp at Camp Swift at Bastrop, when I was stationed with the highway patrol in Austin? These German boys that we had captured over the country were placed there. We had a concentration camp at Fort Hood where the German POW’s were there. We used to run those people days and days and days and nights with bloodhounds to try to catch them and bring them back. Those German boys were trying to escape. Real nice looking German boys, trying to escape to get out. They didn’t no more know where they were going than anything on earth. The minute they left that particular area, they- were more or less helpless. They were afraid. We had to make a lot of searches in the area like Fredericksburg and all that country. Up in that country it was predominantly German people. SAXON: Right. PEOPLES: Gosh, along about that time, people were so down on Hitler that it was difficult to find anyone up in that country who was a German. They didn’t even want to admit that they were German people. So a lot of times the poor German people in there were really penalized because of the fact that they were afraid to admit they were Germans because we had to make searches on homes and things to see whether or not they had contraband of some kind in there, or radios, or things like that. There was constantly talk about radio transmissions going out, and this happens all the time when you have a war like this, getting messages back and forth. So we’d hunt those things. We’d sometimes have to go into the German homes and search them to see whether or not they had some of these POW’s in there. And so it really did, it posed a problem for the German people that were in our country, real fine German citizens. And I felt sorry for them. Really, I felt sorry for them, but I had to do my job right off. And so I did it. I did a lot of this when I was in the Ranger service, running these prisoners who had escaped, you know. Later on, we had some of the people up in there come back to this country. They were army officials--German Army officials--we had picked up as escaped POW’s. They came back into this country later on and made talks and commended the way Texas authorities had treated them. There were some interesting periods in there that, gosh, I’m glad I went through. SAXON: When you say the POW’s, these were German POW’s located in Texas. Were they captured in Europe and Africa and then brought over here? PEOPLES: Captured over in that country and brought overseas in here to be in concentration camps. And they treated those people good, the German boys that were in the prison. They treated them good, they fed them good, and everything like that, and they didn’t mistreat them in these POW camps like Fort Hood and Camp Swift. But the people were just so down on Hitler that they’d help you catch them. SAXON: Anything else you’d like to add before we go on today? PEOPLES: I don’t think so on that. I don’t think so on that. I just happened to think about it, and I thought that that was a good point you brought up about the POW’s, about the German population. They just didn’t know what they were doing. I mean the people who were residing in this state, or shall I say in this country, they weren’t trying to help Hitler. Oh, maybe a few of them were sympathetic, but we couldn’t . . . I mean the German population diminished considerably until the war was over, and then they started back again. It was for their own protection. Of course, you can probably remember a little about the fact that Hitler was so terribly hated. He’s killing our boys over there. A fanatical rascal. Killing our boys over there, and then our country naturally had to be against Germany. The German citizens in your own country, they’re not all like him, or were not all like him. SAXON: But there was no wholesale gathering up of Germans like there was the Japanese on the West Coast. And these were American citizens that they moved from their homes and moved inland so there wouldn’t be any threat. PEOPLES: Well, it was a surveillance situation, an observation situation, as far as we were concerned in law enforcement, pursuant to the instruction of the leaders. We had to keep them under constant surveillance, and if anything cropped up that looked like they sympathized with Hitler then, of course, we had to get in there and find out something about it. SAXON: Did you ever find any? PEOPLES: Oh, we found a few radios and things like that. Small ham radio transmitters around, maybe a few little things like that, but not anything major really. I think those people . . . I’ll tell you, all through that country it was German population, you know, and they were in a real precarious situation. SAXON: Today I’d like to bring up a particularly difficult case that you had to work on, that you actually came into contact with while you were a Ranger captain. That’s why I’m bringing it up today rather than when we talk about your role as a U.S. Marshal, and that’s the Henry Marshall case. It’s very complicated. It involves political people, it involves Billy Sol Estes, it involves a lot of names that people will identify. And if we can, let’s take it very carefully so we can get it down in as much detail as you can provide. Let’s talk about the Henry Marshall case first. Tell us about the case originally as you came into contact with it. PEOPLES: All right, of course that is, or has been, one of the most interesting cases, I guess, I have ever worked because of the political ramifications. I was in my home in Waco--I had been moved from Austin’s Headquarters Company--when one morning about seven o’clock, Colonel Garrison called me from his home to my home and he said, “What do you know about this Henry Marshall case down there, where he was supposed to have committed suicide or was killed or something.” I said, “Colonel, very frankly, I don’t know anything about it, not a thing in the world. I just don’t know. His case may have come across my desk if we worked on it, but right now I can’t remember anything about it.” “Well,” he says, “You had better get your teeth in it because it has really hit the McClellan Committee fan. “ That’s a national committee. And he says, “You better get into it.” So I said, “All right.” And then, of course, I started out as he told me, and those reports are in my files at the Dallas Public Library. I went to Franklin as soon as I could get arrangements made, and contacted the sheriff, as I always did, contacted the district attorney, and I guess that’s about it. And I couldn’t get any cooperation whatsoever. I ran into a brick wall right away there. That had happened one year before, and the more I looked into it, the more it looked like something had gone awry, something misleading or something. So I couldn’t get any cooperation out of the justice of the peace because the justice of the peace had called it suicide as a result of what the sheriff told him to do. So I went and sought out Judge John M. Barron, the district judge. He used to be former district attorney, and so I prevailed upon Judge Barron to order an autopsy, I mean an exhumation of the body, and then an autopsy. So we did that, and we exhumed the body. I’ll tell you for sure, there was nothing on that body then. I have photographs of it. There was nothing on that body because there had been a preliminary investigation made of it by my Ranger down there at Bryan when the body went to the funeral home in Bryan. The undertaker in Bryan called attention to the justice of the peace and sheriff at Franklin and told them, “This man is not a suicide case. This man has been murdered.” Told him his eye was split open, flesh was out of his arms, his hands, his leg, and different things that way. But they still maintained it was suicide. So the deeper I got into it, the more I knew it wasn’t suicide. And then the sheriff, he got a call from Henry Marshall’s brother-in-law, L. M. Owens, who is a kind of simple-like fellow, and he says, “I found Henry.” Mrs. Marshall had asked him to go hunt Henry, because he hadn’t come back like he always did. And he had taken his little eleven year-old boy with him that morning, dropped him off in Franklin at some friend’s house and went on to the ranch. And so he didn’t show up. So L. M. Owens got out there and got to hunting him along with another fellow, and walked up on him lying on the ground out on his ranch there under a clump of trees, dead. And so L. M. Owens went back and told the sheriff that he was out there, and they had found him dead. He made some mention of the fact that he said, “Well, Henry might have committed suicide because he had a little heart trouble prior to that.” The sheriff got the undertaker and the justice of the peace and went out there. L. M. Owens and them met them back out there. And the sheriff, his comment was, “If he committed suicide, he was a glutton for punishment because of all of these severe wounds on him.” He told the undertaker, “Load him up.” So that was extent of the investigation he made. Then the chief deputy went out, looked around a little bit later, and found an empty shell or-two. But they stuck with the thing that it was suicide, but then after I got into it, of course, I found it definitely wasn’t suicide. I ran into a lot of obstacles on it. I asked the district judge to call a grand jury. Of course, the district attorney was supposed to ask for that, but he wouldn’t do it. So I called a grand jury, and submitted a tremendous amount of evidence to this grand jury. They had some relatives on the grand jury of the sheriff, and so they never could reach an agreement on account of this grand jury influence that they could change that verdict from suicide to homicide. So they just stuck with it, more or less didn’t clear it up anyway. SAXON: And this was after the body had been exhumed and an autopsy had been made? Now what was the physical evidence on the body that convinced you that foul play had been in order. PEOPLES: Well, the physical evidence on the body was that it was the use of a bolt action .22 rifle. And in order for Henry Marshall to have killed himself, he had to rebolt that gun every time. SAXON: He was shot five times: PEOPLES: Shot five times in an area about the size of a four inch circle. Shot five times. Also he had a lethal dose of carbon monoxide in his body. I got the pathology report out of Houston’s Dr. Jachimczyk. At least we did, the judge and I did, and he concluded that he had a lethal dose of carbon monoxide, that this wound over his eye was incapacitating and also that these bullet holes in him, were made under suspicious circumstances. And, of course, he didn’t call it either way, because of the fact there’s so much political pressure in the grand jury and in that sheriff and in that district attorney. All of them were fighting me because they didn’t want this case to be reopened. I could see why. But I could see after a while they summoned Billie Sol Estes down before the grand jury. Billie Sol promptly took the fifth amendment, and that was the end of the day with him. He had his high-powered lawyer with him, John Cofer, or Hugh) Cofer, I believe it was Hugh Cofer at the time, that was John Cofer’s boy, the most powerful lawyer in Austin, had them with him. He just promptly went down and said, “Good afternoon gentlemen,” and just left. And that’s about the end of that. Everything in the world. I’ve got all kinds of evidence; I got a composite drawing of a fellow who had seen a guy going in there a few days before that asked him the direction to Henry Marshall’s place. He came back later in that afternoon and told this fellow, he said, “The Henry Marshall that you sent me to wasn’t the one that I was hunting, but I got a place to shoot deer anyway.” Of course, throughout this investigation none of this was known, and no one was ever contacted about this fellow hunting the place to shoot deer. This was nothing in the world except to throw the service station man off. And that was maybe a week before. And so we got a composite drawing of him on this fellow. And come to find out later, he met the same description of the fellow named Mack Wallace that I had investigated in Austin for murder ten years before. And so, of course, I just recently in the last few months found out that this description of the composite was identical to the Mack Wallace composite. So the thing went on, and I did a tremendous amount of work on that thing. I sifted the sand out there, and when I was finishing all my investigation, I couldn’t figure where in the world that carbon monoxide could have gone into the body of Henry Marshall. And so I went into the woods to the north of this place, like a couple of hundred yards, and I found a plastic bag. It was stuffed up under some bushes. It had to be put there by somebody. It could not have blown there. After a year or so later, we couldn’t do any chemical analysis on the bag to determine whether or not it was used, but I determined, though, that it had to be something there then like this that was used. So since this other thing came up on Estes, I later found out that Estes told me that they had tried to put it over his head. SAXON: Okay, this is so complicated that it’s hard to talk about it without getting a lot of detail. You said Estes came to appear before a grand jury, and this would be in Robertson County. This would be a year after Henry Marshall was murdered. It was declared a suicide. Who suggested that Estes be called? Do you recall that and why? PEOPLES: I think the district judge did. SAXON: Did you have evidence at that point that Billie Sol Estes was involved some way? PEOPLES: I didn’t have evidence as such, but I had everything that I could find out. The first thing on a murder case, you have to establish your motive, and I finally definitely determined that the motive was that Henry Marshall was killed as a result of possibly this cotton allotment program, because Henry Marshall was going everywhere blowing the whistle on Billie Sol Estes. And when he blew the whistle on Billie Sol Estes, he blew the whistle on some big politicos, because they’re the ones that didn’t need to be talked about. So that was the reason. I didn’t think Estes ever had anything to do with the killing. I never even suspected that then and I sure don’t now, but I suspected that he knew something about why it came about because I had some more mysterious killings in West Texas under similar situations that never have been cleared up yet. And so I was suspicious of the fact that it had to be murder. Henry Marshall had to have been murdered as a result of his strong opposition to Billie Sol Estes in the cotton allotment program. That was a millions and millions of dollars program, you know. So that was the thing I continuously worked on, and I knew I never could get any of the information out of Billie Sol Estes with what he knew about it. SAXON: He never would talk until this year. PEOPLES: No, he never talked to anybody before. No. Until he talked to me. SAXON: Let’s talk a little bit about the cotton allotment scheme and how Henry Marshall would have been involved in that. PEOPLES: Henry Marshall had to approve the cotton allotment program in Texas, you know. That was the case where they’d have these acres of land, and they could raise cotton on them provided he gave his approval for it. What they were trying to do was to cut out so much growth of cotton. So that cotton allotment program and the political influence that Billie Sol Estes had was posing Henry Marshall a problem, because he was wanting to stop it and Estes was getting approval from the Agriculture Department in Washington to go ahead with it over his objection. That was the thing that was causing the problem in the cotton allotment program. That’s where all the money was coming from. SAXON: Billie Sol was collecting cotton so that this land would be more valuable in the long run. And Marshall was opposed, but was being forced by other people to approve them. PEOPLES: That was the problem. SAXON: Did you ever find out who was forcing him to approve them or who was strongly urging that he approve them? PEOPLES: I don’t think there was much doubt that it was high people in the Agriculture Department in Washington. I can’t say for sure because I don’t know, but really that wasn’t my jurisdiction to make that particular investigation on the cotton allotment program. Mine was, of course, confined to the murder case, but I certainly couldn’t get any help out of that because when they brought the grand jury report down to Franklin, the Agriculture report took a good while to get there, and they played “ring around the rose? all these years with that report. They censored it every way in the world. They did then, and they didn’t bring the names out and so forth, and the present federal judge, Barefoot Sanders, was a United States Attorney in the northern district of Texas. I didn’t know he was down there until a couple of months after, I mean a couple of days, it came out in the newspaper. He went down there with an FBI agent out of Waco to find out something about it. I understand he appeared before the grand jury in Franklin; as I say, I didn’t know that until just a few months back. SAXON: Now when would he have done that? PEOPLES: He did that during this investigation. SAXON: That would have been in 1962 probably. PEOPLES: Yeah, 1961. During this grand jury investigation. And I didn’t know this until recently, but I have real concern as to why he was down there, and I don’t think he should have been. He shouldn’t have been down there. Of course, he is the United States Attorney in the northern district of Texas, and he was down there as the U.S. Attorney in the western district of Texas. He was sent down there by Bobby Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson to look into this thing, and to try to get this thing cooled. And they flat did get it cooled because the district judge down there right away after that excused the grand jury. So you see, I had considerable problems trying to make an investigation on a murder case with opposition to it, including that little FBI agent down there trying to say it was suicide. He never even investigated a murder case in his life. And he knows it; he never investigated one. He had no jurisdiction there. That was simply my jurisdiction. SAXON: After the grand jury was retired and they had ruled again that it was suicide, you were convinced that it was murder, but you didn’t know at that point who had pulled the trigger. Was that right? PEOPLES: That’s right! SAXON: Now tell us how, since the early 1960s, all of a sudden in 1984 this story has resurfaced again and it is pointing fingers now toward the top political officers that you were talking about. PEOPLES: In 1979 I was carrying Billie Sol Estes to the penitentiary in El Paso the last time. SAXON: Had you known him before then? PEOPLES: No, I had not known before then, except through the prison system here. I’d seen him here in the federal building. I had arrested him in the courtroom here because of another case and put the handcuffs on him in the courtroom right here. TAPE 1, SIDE 2 SAXON: You mentioned that you arrested Billie Sol Estes while he was in court in Dallas. PEOPLES: Yeah: Because he was on another case here, and I arrested him on a parole violation. That’s when he went back to the penitentiary. And I was taking him back to El Paso on the plane, and on the way out there I was talking to him, and I asked him, “Billie Sol, you’ve got some information on the case that I’ve been very interested in for years.” And I said, “I think you could help clear this case up.” And I said, “I’d appreciate anything that you could tell me that would help me in this case.” He said, “Marshal, I know you’ve been interested in the case all these years and it’s concerned me, and I thought several times about calling you and telling you.” And I said, “Well, tell me,” and I said, “I’ve been looking at you Billie Sol.” And he says, “Marshal, you’re looking in the wrong direction.” Here is his direct comment. And I said, “Why and who?” He said, “You need to be looking in the direction of the people that had the most to lose.” And I said, “Are you talking about Washington?” He said, “That’s right. They’re the people who have the most to lose. I didn’t have all that to lose. They were the ones getting the money, the big money, and they were the ones that were going to lose plenty if this thing surfaced.” But he said, “I cannot tell you anything. I will not tell you anything until I get out of the federal penitentiary. When I do, I will call you and tell you about it.” So when he got out of the penitentiary, he got back into Abilene, and he called me. He says, “Say, I’m ready to talk to you.” I talked to my U.S. Attorney and told him that Estes called, and I said, “I’m a federal marshal and I don’t make any investigations, but this is a murder case and it’s one I investigated as a Ranger captain. I feel like I need to go and listen to him.” He says, “You most certainly do.” He said, “If you didn’t, and thinking back years later, you know more about the case than anybody else. You investigated it, you are obligated to go and talk to him.” Well, all right. I went out there, and Billie Sol Estes told me at the time, he said, “I’m going to talk to my lawyer, and I’m going to clean up everything that I can possibly clean up.” He said, “There’s more involved in this case, besides the Henry Marshall case, and a big involvement. It takes in lots of big politicians, it takes all that in. I’m gonna get my attorney and clean it all up.” So when I got all through talking to him though, I told him, “There’s one thing I want you to tell me, who murdered Henry Marshall?” He said, “Mack Wallace.” Now, before I left, I made a tape recording, and I have a copy of that tape recording. Before I left I made it, and Billie Sol Estes put it on tape as to why I was out there. And I think I gave you a copy of this tape. So I started from there and somehow or another the press got ahold of it, they had a press release. The district attorney in Franklin called me and said that he wanted to talk to me. I said, “Come on in.” And I told him, “I’ll tell you anything in the world I know about that. If you want to call a grand jury, you call it, and I’ll come down there and testify about how it started years ago and how it is right now.” So he called a grand jury, and Billie Sol went down there too, and he did his testifying, and I can’t say what he testified to on this tape recorder because that’s a grand jury proceedings. But he testified, and that’s where we were. We were working right along, and he has since then had a tremendous amount of pressure put on him to keep his mouth shut. SAXON: Has he told you that? PEOPLES: Sure: You bet he had. And not only that, Billie Sol Estes didn’t even know when he told me that Mack Wallace was the one, he didn’t know that Mack Wallace was dead. Neither did I. Mack Wallace was killed in 1971 in a car wreck under suspicious circumstances in Pittsburgh, Texas. I don’t know, I didn’t investigate this thing, but I’ve heard that since then. Mack Wallace fits the composite absolutely right. And since this has gone on, I tried every way in the world, and I finally got the reports, the FBI reports and the Naval Intelligence reports, trying to tie Mack Wallace in there. This is a tremendous file that I have, where they made the investigation on Mack Wallace. He had secret clearance and a very classified job for LTV, and so he got this secret clearance by big political help. I can’t say positively how, except the fact that when a Naval Intelligence officer by the name of A. C. Sullivan came and talked to me at Waco when I was a Ranger there, about Mack Wallace, asking me what I knew about it. I said, “I know that he’s a murderer, I know that he’s a homosexual according to all the evidence. It came out in this investigation in Austin ten years ago. I know that all the evidence shows that he was a communist.” I said, “With all these things, and he was also accused of incest with his own daughter,” and I said, “All these thing coming about, how in the world can this fellow ever get a security clearance to work in a classified position. This man is a convict.” “Well,” he said, “He got it, and we’re trying to take it away from him.” And he said, “That’s the situation.” I said, “Well, how can he do it?” And he said, “Politics:” I said, “Who in world was ever so politically powerful that could get him a secret clearance.” He said, “The Vice-President.” Of course, that was Lyndon Johnson at the time. Then, at that time, things were just beginning to come together on this case because when I investigated Mack Wallace in Austin for killing Doug Kinser, all investigations showed that Doug Kinser was a homosexual. Mack Wallace’s wife, I’ve got a statement in my files (you’ve got them now) showing that she was a homosexual. Mack Wallace was, and also all the evidence pointed that Lyndon Johnson’s sister was a homo. Kinser liked her, Mack Wallace liked her, and all the evidence at that time pointed that the big problem was the jealousy between her and Kinser . . . between this gal. All of the evidence pointed that way in my investigation. All of the evidence pointed that he was a communist because Homer P. Rainey, president of the UT student body, got run off out there on account of some implications of some type along those lines. And Mack Wallace led a march on the capitol when he was president of the student body to try to keep the governor--to try to keep him. And then, of course, he ran for governor--Homer P. Rainey did--ran for governor after they had put him out of his presidency of the UT student body, and, of course, he was soundly defeated. Mack Wallace more or less handled his campaign for him. So all of those people were together. All of this investigation led back. And when Mack Wallace was tried in there, and never in all of my time have I known this to happen, he was given a five year suspended sentence for murder with malice. Never in all my tenure in law enforcement have I heard of this happening, and I have not since. Five year suspended for murder with malice: Of course, all of it went right back to the fact that there was high influence with grand jury. Now here’s something else we must remember: Mack Wallace was represented by John Cofer, big powerful attorney, and Polk Shelton, two of the biggest, powerful criminal attorneys in Texas. These same people represented Billie Sol Estes. See the point. SAXON: And the same people represented Lyndon Johnson in 1948. PEOPLES: That’s right. The same represented him in that Duval County election down there. These same people. This thing is so big politically that it is a problem to get anything done. It’s still a problem. They’re still trying to cover it up, trying to keep anything from going. SAXON: You brought up the Mack Wallace case and the Kinser murder. Let’s deal with that in some detail and then follow through with Billie Sol Estes. PEOPLES: What happened on that was that Mack Wallace was with the Agriculture Department, and all the evidence pointed there that Lyndon got him the job with the Agriculture Department. All of these newspaper articles are trying to say that they didn’t know each other, which is a bunch of mess. Mack Wallace came down from Virginia, and the car when we arrested him had a Virginia license. He came down from Virginia and drove straight to that golf course and he killed him. He just walked in there and started shooting Doug Kinser. Then he had his route all planned out to try to escape. One of the big people who was on the jury was one of the people at the store where he made sure he recognized him as being out there. He had a time element in there of about fifteen minutes that he wanted to more or less lay his groundwork for showing that it wasn’t him who did the killing. And he disposed of this gun on the way, but this gun, this little German-made automatic--I think it’s a .625 automatic--we got the shells down there at the Pitch ‘n Putt Golf Course, and got some out of his car. He had a sweater on or something, and we found one in his sweater. I had a paraffin test done on it out there at the Department of Public Safety that night and it showed to be nitrates on that. But he made this round. He had it all mapped out ahead, time of how he was going to leave out of there. Had every bit of that mapped out. And this little old gun, when we got Mack Wallace, his right thumb had been cut across here. And we couldn’t figure out how it was cut. Of course, he wasn’t going to tell you the time of day. But we made a good case on him, and we didn’t find the gun, but we found some shells identical to it in his pocket. See. And then I found out later that this little .625 pistol he got from an FBI agent by the name of Joe Shots. Joe had given him this gun because he knew him at the university. He roomed with him at the university. He had given him this gun. Joe, of course, had nothing to do with it, but I understand Hoover raised a lot of fuss about him even being connected with it in any manner. SAXON: Hoover? J. Edgar? PEOPLES: Yes. With Shots. But Joe didn’t do anything. He just gave him this pistol. He didn’t know he was going to kill him, and he fell out with Mack Wallace because of the fact that he got off down there and got in trouble. But that little gun, if he shot it, that ejector in there, if you had your thumb a certain way, it would have cut your thumb. And that’s where the blood came from, when he shot Kinser. That thing going back and forth cut his thumb. We didn’t know until late that that’s where that blood came from. So we made a fine case on him. There wasn’t any doubt that the big influence came down somewhere through the circles, either through the jury through some of the people who were on the jury, or what have you. The district attorney handled it pretty good. He kept himself pretty well aloof from it the best he could. I don’t know. I just don’t know. SAXON: Well, the motive that you read about in the paper was that Kinser was supposedly having an affair with Mack Wallace’s wife. PEOPLES: That’s right. SAXON: But you just said that you all have evidence that Kinser and Mack Wallace were having a lovers’ quarrel with Johnson’s sister. PEOPLES: Yeah, all of our evidence pointed towards that. Every bit of it. Every bit of the people you talked to. You see, there’s so many homosexuals involved when we were making this investigation. So many people were involved in it. You see, homosexuality then was really frowned on. As far as I’m concerned, it ought to be frowned on now. I frown on it. But anyway, they talked pretty freely with you after you really got down with them and talked with them about it. So they all knew this plan together. They all knew them together. Just like Homer Rainey and Mack Wallace were communistic friends. But, you see, all of those things when they came out, I mean when the investigation came out, pointed right in that direction on everything. SAXON: I have to ask. . . PEOPLES: Andre Wallace told me herself, she’s dead now too, you know. SAXON: That’s his wife. His first wife. PEOPLES: She told me herself that Mack Wallace was madder at Kinser because he was fooling with this Johnson gal, whoever she was. I can’t remember her name. SAXON: It’s Josepha I think. Okay, so he was jealous of her. . . PEOPLES: Kinser was going with Mack’s wife too. SAXON: So he had ample motive to kill Kinser, and that was proven in the court anyway. PEOPLES: Yeah, you will find in these files that I gave you the statement in there about what Andre Wallace had to say about Mack having incest with his daughter. You are not dealing with Sunday school and church people at all. SAXON: And he only got a five year suspended sentence for murder with malice. And you feel that Johnson’s connections helped to certainly to hold that sentence a great deal. PEOPLES: Well, every indication points in that direction. Of course, that all was handled through his lawyers, you know. For instance, like his lawyers, when they came up for Billie Sol Estes’s trial, you know, his lawyers didn’t even put Billie Sol on the stand or put one bit of evidence in. They just rested their case, and Billie Sol was convicted. Government conviction, and they just arrested him. No evidence and you know why: Billie Sol told me that the reason why they didn’t want to put any evidence in was because it would open up Pandora’s box. He told me that a few months back. SAXON: Ina lot of ways, the Mack Wallace-Kinser case was the same. Well, the DA never came up with a motive. He never introduced a motive in the whole murder case according to the newspapers. Some people suspect they didn’t even want to talk about motive. And then John Cofer only introduced character witnesses for Mack Wallace. PEOPLES: That’s right. That’s right. I always suspected that the grand jury read something into this too. You see, they must have thought they were dealing with a bunch of clowns here, why give him a sentence. The other is as bad as he was. To me as a professional officer, I read that in there myself. I bet that’s the reason because of the lack of evidence presented to the grand jury on the part of the district attorney. Of course, he talked to me out of both sides and mouth. I don’t know whether he’s right or wrong. I don’t know what. . .I just can’t say that he had any involvement in it. I can’t say it. I just didn’t feel like the proper information was put in there to the jury. SAXON: When you say he had any involvement, are you talking about the DA? PEOPLES: I’m talking about the DA. I can’t say that he did or he didn’t. I don’t know. That’s not for me to judge. SAXON: Do you recall his name? PEOPLES: Bob Long. SAXON: Bob Long. So after Mack Wallace was convicted and given a five year suspended sentence, he more or less continued life as usual. Is that right? PEOPLES: Yeah’. Yeah, he went right on back on his job in the Agriculture Department, and he left there and came down here and went into this classified job at LTV. Then he shifted around here. And even since this other came up, these people in LTV hadn’t cooperated at all in trying to establish time, dates, and everything like that. They closed that file. I got such thick files that I finally got the freedom of information from the Naval Intelligence and from the FBI file. I got such a thick file. It took months. It cost thousands upon thousands of dollars for the FBI, Naval Intelligence, and several months’ work. Naval Intelligence just trying to keep him from keeping that secret clearance. And that points right back to what Sullivan said, the political influence. SAXON: You had no idea until Billie Sol Estes pointed the finger at Mack Wallace that Wallace was involved with the Henry Marshall case. PEOPLES: I had no idea. Then he laughed at me about this--Estes did. He said, “Well, it looks to me like as good an investigator as you are,” he says, “that you would have suspected that.” He said, “I just can’t figure out yet why you didn’t suspect it.” He said, “It’s all put right together.” I said, “Yeah, it is now.” SAXON: It makes sense now. PEOPLES: Makes sense now. And it all fits right in. Every bit fits right in. Well, he told me, when I was talking to him about this case, Estes told me things that. . .and that’s the reason the grand jury down there--I wouldn’t say what he said in the grand jury proceeding--but that’s the reason why they came back and ruled this a homicide. They got a grand jury then that wasn’t biased or anything. But he told me things about this, about some letters that were written by some people in the Agriculture Department, he told me about this use of a plastic bag and how it was used and he told me all of the things. I mean things about this thing that he had had to have known something about it in order to tell. SAXON: You say you can’t reveal what he said to the grand jury? PEOPLES: No. SAXON: But you can reveal what he said to you in Abilene. PEOPLES: I can reveal what he spoke to me. SAXON: What did he say to you? Be as specific as possible. PEOPLES: He just said that it was arranged by Cliff Carter and Lyndon Johnson to dispose of Henry Marshall. Cliff Carter’s dead now too, you know. SAXON: Sure, they’re all dead except Billie Sol. PEOPLES: All except Billie Sol. SAXON: When that hit the papers, that was like dynamite. PEOPLES: Sure it was. That’s why there’s one particular judge that’s mad at me, you know, because of the fact that this got out in the papers about Estes. If he hadn’t been so worried about his own situation it doesn’t seem to me like. . .two days later was whenever I heard about him being down there. I don’t like it now, because he’s down there messing around with a murder case. SAXON: Does other evidence seem to corroborate what Billie Sol Estes told you, because what has been played in the paper is “convicted swindler Billie Sol Estes levels charges at a president and Mack Wallace and at Clifton Carter, who were very close to the president.” They are all dead now. So now he’s talking and they say here’s a convicted swindler telling more lies. Now is there physical and other evidence that would corroborate what he said? PEOPLES: Oh yeah, because it all fits together. You see, the Mack Wallace involvement in Austin, the Mack Wallace composite down here, and the justification for the murder and the extreme suspicious circumstances, and then the people that were trying their best to cover the situation up. It all points up to what he said was right. I mean all evidence points that way. I’m not saying it was or wasn’t, but it all points in that direction, you see? Because it’s logical. It’s absolutely logical that. Estes could never have gotten all of the money out of the federal government that he got out of there without having help. It had to be big help. See? There’s no way in the world. . . I sign government checks here all the time, but there’s no way in the world he could have gotten all that unless he had big help in the Agriculture Department. SAXON: You’re talking millions of dollars. PEOPLES: We’re talking millions of dollars. You also got your burning situation where millions was involved. You got your hydroammonia tanks where he made millions out of that. But these politicians also. . . Of course, you read in the paper where he said Ralph Yarborough was involved in it. And it all points up pretty good to what he said. And it can be absolutely brought to a pinpoint head if the Justice Department would go ahead and do it. I wish they would. SAXON: Did he ever say to you, “Marshal Peoples, Johnson told me this in these several meetings that we had,” or “Johnson was there.” I know it came out in the papers that there were at least four meetings that he attended. PEOPLES: Yeah, he told me that. SAXON: Did he say why Johnson would actually consider encouraging that somebody be terminated? PEOPLES: He told me that he had a meeting with Cliff Carter, Lyndon Johnson, and Mack Wallace. Now this is what he told me. He said that they had that meeting together and they discussed the facts that there wasn’t any way that they could hush Henry Marshall up. Henry Marshall was blowing the whistle to the degree that it was going to involve every one of them, and they all were going to the penitentiary. That’s what Estes told me. I’m not saying what he told the grand jury, I’m saying what he told me in this investigation. They knew that Henry Marshall had arrangements made, and the two days before Henry Marshall was killed, I found a letter saying that he was going to Washington. He had a meeting of his people down there in Bryan or somewhere, and he was going to Washington. He now had the goods. He was going to Washington to straighten it out the following Monday, but he never made it to Washington. He didn’t make it any further than that ranch. And they tried to put out through this press release and everything, that Henry Marshall tried to . . . Estes told me that Johnson said, “Get him promoted. Give him a big job in the Agriculture Department. Get him out of there. They tried it. They wrote him letters, but he turned them down. He wouldn’t accept it. It’s in my files. He wouldn’t accept this promotion, you see. And so then, when this meeting came about, they all decided that the “fat’s in the fire.” Then Estes said that Johnson’s statement was, the paper said that Estes said that Johnson called for the assassination or something to that effect of Henry Marshall. But he said Johnson didn’t say that. He told me this, that Johnson didn’t say that. He said this, “He has got to go.” That was a statement of attitude to me. “He has got to go.” And I even made a release to the press that that’s the way he told me. He didn’t say that Johnson said, “Kill him, assassinate him, or anything.” He said, “He’s got to go.” He tried to transfer him. I got the evidence that they did. They tried to transfer him, but he wouldn’t accept it. Offered him a big job in the Agriculture Department; he wouldn’t accept it. That’s physical evidence. So this concludes, pretty well, that all of this stuff is right. And then he told me how the thing came about, about a mysterious car being in the area. And they got excited, and Cliff Carter came in and told him, he says, “Was that you down there?” SAXON: Talking to Mack Wallace? PEOPLES: Estes. SAXON: Oh, Estes. PEOPLES: “Was that you that came in that mysterious car?” A car showed up in that area? “No, it wasn’t me.” “Okay.” So it’s a big case. It’s a case right now that has just surfaced. SAXON: Now I don’t understand about the mysterious car. Can you be a little more specific? PEOPLES: No, because . . . Yeah: I can be more specific. During the time that Henry Marshall was being murdered, Estes said that they told him--that Wallace told him and that Cliff Carter told him--said, “We are concerned because a mysterious car showed up in the area. We hope they didn’t get any long-range photograph of the situation.” Now that’s what Estes told me. SAXON: And what did Estes tell you about the bag? About the bag you had found? PEOPLES: He told me ahead of time that they had used a plastic bag. SAXON: Was Estes actually involved in. . • PEOPLES: No, not in that. He wasn’t involved in that. I think there’s one other person that was involved, and I think Estes knows who he is. But he didn’t tell me. SAXON: You mean he actually participated in the killing. There are two people? PEOPLES: Mack Wallace and somebody else. He hadn’t divulged that to me, but I think there were. TAPE 2, SIDE 1 SAXON: I was asking why you felt there were two people involved in the actual murder of Henry Marshall. PEOPLES: Some innuendos, hints of things that happened to me, you know. He never told me for sure, and he never did tell me . . . whenever I got to the details on it, he clammed up on who this other person might have been. And I think I know; I think I know now. I’m not even going to put that on this tape. SAXON: Like I say, don’t tease us that way. PEOPLES: No, I think I know. I think I’m eventually going to find out about it too. SAXON: Then you are pursuing this? PEOPLES: Every avenue I know how. And I’ll tell you another thing, if the Justice Department would go ahead and finish this investigation up, I’d say on this tape right now, I think I got some information that might be of some importance to them. And I would tell them too. SAXON: Well, you’re an employee of the Justice Department. Aren’t you? PEOPLES: That’s right. That’s right. SAXON: Have you attempted to follow up this case? PEOPLES: They are very familiar with it. SAXON: I’m sure. They must be. But so far they’ve been stonewalling on you? PEOPLES: They. . .well, let me say this. I think the Justice Department, I’m talking about the Attorney General’s Department now, I think they’re a little bit reluctant to believe what Estes is saying. But if they knew how to put it together, they could believe it. And I think the thing could be brought down to where Estes would have to tell who this other man. SAXON: Well, Estes has been granted immunity for prosecution for . . . PEOPLES: He has on his part. SAXON: And you are the one who arranged that immunity. Is that correct? PEOPLES: Well, I talked to the district attorney down there. He offered, I didn’t have to talk to him, and Henry Wade offered immunity here. The Justice Department offered him immunity, but for some reason or other he’s held up on them for some reason or another. SAXON: Who? Estes? PEOPLES: Estes. He held up on them for some reason or another, and I don’t know. There is a possibility that after this election it may open up. I don’t know. SAXON: What election are we talking about? PEOPLES: I’m talking about this last presidential election. I don’t know, you see, it may be that the Justice Department is so snowed under that it may, during this election period, it may be that they want to take a look at it. I don’t know. I can’t speak for them. And I’m not investigating this case now. I can’t investigate, it’s out of my jurisdiction. I was only interested in that murder case, but this man here, the federal judge here, he got awfully mad at me because I was working on it you know. SAXON: Let’s talk about the repercussions that you had to endure as a result of the Estes thing hitting the paper. That is, you going out, talking to Billie Sol Estes, and then he testifies to the grand jury, and the grand jury in that county says that it wasn’t suicide, it was murder. They can’t pursue it any further because all the people are dead. What happened to you personally after that? PEOPLES: Well, I didn’t get any heat. The only heat I got, and I didn’t give a damn anyway, was from a couple of federal judges who wanted to criticize me for “running around” with Billie Sol Estes. Of course, they went beyond the call of duty. And I had not talked about this with anybody. And I think this particular part of it should be closed until a later date--on the federal judges. But I do want it in the record. I want it to be right. They called me down to the office of Judge Robert Hill, who is now on the Fifth Circuit, and started criticizing me for the fact that I was working on this case, which I was working on the murder case, nothing else. I was working on it as a result of the instruction of the U.S. Attorney, who is my attorney, and also the fact that it was a murder case, and I was the only one who had any involvement in it. I was duty bound. And so the chief judge made a statement to the effect that he didn’t want me to embarrass his judiciary, and also the fact that I was getting a lot of publicity. Also he wondered if I wasn’t trying to sell books. I let him go ahead and talk. SAXON: That was. . PEOPLES: Judge Hal Woodward, the chief judge, federal judge, which was way beyond the call of duty. Judge Hill did not open his mouth. Judge Hill sat behind his desk when they asked me these questions and shook his head. Judge Hill knew they weren’t right. But, anyway, when I got through I answered all of his questions very pointedly. Oh yeah, he asked me, he said, “If the newspapers are bringing out stuff that somebody leaked something to the grand jury, I just wondered if it was you?” Of course, that made me pretty furious. And I answered his questions in a very firm manner. I told him, first of all, I didn’t appreciate the questions he asked me. They were beyond the call of duty. And also he asked me, “When I got here, and I found out everybody here knew I was coming. Did you tell them?” “In the first place, I didn’t know if you were coming or not, and didn’t care if you were coming or not. It had nothing to do with that.” I talked right back to him about it because I don’t owe him anything. I was going to investigate a murder case, and they’re involving themselves in something here that’s more or less obstruction of justice. They’re the ones that should be taken to task for it. But I haven’t said anything to the press or anybody else, on account that I work here, and I want to make the rest of my time here if I can. But every dog will eventually have a chance to wag his tail. On this one, I’m going to wag my tail because’ this wasn’t right. But again, I do want this portion of it closed until after my tenure here. And so it came to this fellow, Judge Barefoot Sanders, and he came out with some very pointed things. He says to me, he says, “Running around with of Billie Sol Estes, you opened this whole case up. You opened this murder case up. You are believing what he said. You did this and you did that.” And he says, “I’m ashamed of you.” And he said, “You’re not fit to be United States Marshal of the Northern District of Texas. I think you ought to resign.” When he got through I said, “Are you through?” He said, “Yes:” I pointed my finger in his face and pointed over to Judge Woodward too, and I said, “I want to tell both of you something, if you weren’t” hiding behind these black robes you got, I’m seventy-three years of age, and I’ve never been talked to this way in my life. If you weren’t hiding behind these black robes, you wouldn’t get by with it. And I’m not too sure you’re going to get by with it anyway.” And I turned to Sanders and I said, “Let me tell you something, I’ll put my credibility up against yours any day in the week.” And I said, “Another thing, don’t you ever again call me in like this and start reprimanding me over something because you all are wrong as you can be about this and you know it. And don’t you ever do it again. Now you’re a federal judge and all this, but you went beyond the call of duty here.” And they wouldn’t even let me. . . I had my attaché case with a Billie Sol Estes tape in it, and I had the records, and I was going to show them why I was working on this case. They wouldn’t even let me take my attaché case inside the judge’s chambers because they thought that maybe I’d be recording what we were saying. And I guess one of the biggest blunders I ever did was not putting a body microphone on when I went in there and talked to them. I wish and pray to God now I had. But, anyway, I caught a lot of heat. Then the press comes out and says that three judges chastised me. Well that’s a reflection upon my integrity right then and there, and I thought I suffered mental anguish over that thing. I really had anguish over that thing because I’d never been criticized publicly or criticized other than what I was doing was right. And I told him, “The next time that you ever want to talk to me about anything like this, you go and open your courtroom up there, and let’s call them all in so everybody could hear what I’ve got to say to you.” And so it got hot, and he didn’t open his mouth after that. And like I told him, I said, “I’m not too sure you are going to get by with it. You are mistreating me for no reason on Earth. I was investigating a murder case, and you haven’t done right a bit about it. And someday my time will come.” And so Judge Woodward, all of a sudden, starts smiling and says, “I’ve got to go. I’ve got to catch an airplane, gentlemen. I’ve got to catch an airplane. I got to get out of here, I’ve got to get an airplane.” And he jumped up from there and shook hands with me and said, smiled to me and said, “Marshal, thank you for coming. I appreciate very much your frankness in this.” Judge Hill got up, and bless his heart, came around the desk, put his arm around me and thanked me, and he told me, “I appreciate you Marshal.” I told this judge too, I said, “I’ll tell you one thing, I’ll never resign. I’ll tell you that: And I’ll tell you something else, I told you I’d put my credibility up against yours any day in the week, and I’m going to tell you something else, there’s a lot of people in this building who don’t like a bone in your body.” That’s the very words I said to him. It’s pretty pointed to a federal judge. SAXON: It sure is. PEOPLES: And if this movie comes out, I mean this television series comes out, it’s going to be pointed out in this series. And so every dog has a chance to wag his tail sometime, and I hope I do because I am right! SAXON: Somebody must have leaked that to the press, that they had done that? PEOPLES: Why it was leaked by that grand jury down there. They leaked that to the press out of that grand jury. SAXON: No, I mean the chastisement that you received from these judges. PEOPLES: Sure. His people did. SAXON: Were they in the session too. PEOPLES: They weren’t in the session. Nobody was in there but us. But his people leaked it to the press that they had me down there. They did it purposely. I’ve never said anything. I’m going to get a chance to say something some of these days. But I never said anything about it, but the next morning I went down to see Judge Hill. [PAUSE] SAXON: Okay, go ahead. We were talking about- the session you had with the judge. PEOPLES: Yeah, I went down to see Judge Hill because I knew he didn’t particularly like this situation. They could see him shaking his head just like “what in the world are you all doing this to this person for? Why are you doing it?” I know it’s wrong, but you could see the expression on his face. And so the judge was awful busy that morning, but he told me, “Listen, I’m going to shut down everything. You come down. I want to see you and talk to you.” I went down there and he and I had a private conversation in his office. He said, “Marshal, I’m really sorry about this. You’ve done a good job as Marshal here. And I’m really sorry about this.” And here are the words that he used, he said, “Hal and Barefoot both are wrong.” And he said, “I’m going to talk to both of them about it.” Judge Hill is on the Fifth Circuit. And, of course, they were wrong. Judge Woodward, I think, was brought into this situation because of the influence Sanders has over him. He was brought into it. Judge Woodward, I give him the benefit of the doubt. I didn’t like what he did, I don’t like it now. Sanders was the one that caused him to get into it, and I didn’t figure out at the time why he was. . .except for the fact that I knew he and Lyndon Johnson were real close. Lyndon helped him on every turn he made. But, anyway, I couldn’t figure out why he’d been so damn interested in this thing. Two days later, the press comes out and says that •he went before that grand jury, and then this brought it to my mind. Here you are, this is the reason you have stuck your ugly head up isn’t it. SAXON: Have you. . . PEOPLES: And whenever I leave here, you all can use this any way you want to because this is the true facts in there. SAXON: Have you come into contact with Judge Sanders since then? PEOPLES: I see him once in a while. I don’t fool with him. SAXON: So it’s a pretty cool relationship? PEOPLES: As far as I’m concerned, I’m going to serve his courts with my people. I’m going to handle it in a judicial manner. I’m going to handle it in a diplomatic manner the best I can, but he’s a difficult person to deal with. If he speaks to me, I’ll speak to him. If he doesn’t speak to me, I won’t even speak to him. I’m not a two-faced person, and I don’t disillusion these people, but I damn sure won’t sacrifice principle. I’d rather walk out of this thing right now. SAXON: I read in one newspaper account, not of that, but going back to Billie Sol Estes’ story, the Wallace family--some of his brothers live in Dallas--and they were very critical of you. I don’t know if you read the same stories as I did, and one of them accused you of planting these ideas in Billie Sol Estes’ head. Why don’t you for the tape give your reaction to that. PEOPLES: I didn’t read that, but it doesn’t make any difference. It’s like some of Lyndon Johnson’s people, like Walter Jenkins, came up and started doing a lot of big talk and everything, and Walter Jenkins was some of that same crew, you know. But after the evidence began to show up good, Walter Jenkins was either told to shut his mouth or he decided that he better be careful because his involvement could be deeper. As far as Mack Wallace’s brother, I could care less about what Mack Wallace’s brother said. I don’t even worry about those kind of things, because Mack Wallace’s brother, he didn’t know one thing in the world about what all happened there. If he did, he should have come forward and told about it. But he wouldn’t do it, he wouldn’t tell it. Of course, he wouldn’t. Naturally, he’d be trying to defend his brother, but he had no reason, if he said that--and I didn’t see it--he had no reason to say it because it’s a cockeyed lie. SAXON: You never dealt with his brother? PEOPLES: No. I don’t know him, don’t even care anything about him. If he is like Mack Wallace, I don’t care- to deal with people like that. SAXON: Have you heard or been in contact with Billie Sol Estes since all of this? PEOPLES: Yeah I have, several times. He’s called me and I’ve called him. As time permits and as occasions arise, I’m going to be in contact with him because I know that, sometime or another, he’s going to have one of the most jarring statements to make that the nation’s ever been confronted with. SAXON: So you think it’s actually deeper than what we’ve been told? PEOPLES: I don’t think, I know it. I know it. SAXON: You think Estes would eventually come forward? PEOPLES: I think he will. SAXON: All he needs is more immunity. PEOPLES: I think so. SAXON: You’re being very evasive today, right at this point in the interview. Do you feel sometimes that you’re the lone voice in this thing because the press has come down pretty hard, not necessarily on you, but on Billie Sol Estes. PEOPLES: Oh sure. The press came down hard because of people like Walter Jenkins and the “big wheels.” A lot of Lyndon Johnson’s old friends like Barefoot Sanders, this federal judge here. They’ve come down pretty hard. You see the press has got to be careful about what they say. Unless they can prove what they say, they’re in bad shape. Well, anybody has to and anybody should. If I’m going to tell you anything as a matter of fact, I will be able to tell you where I’ve got the evidence. I’ll tell you something came out in the investigation. See, as an investigator I can say it came out in the investigation. I couldn’t say, and wouldn’t say, as a matter of fact, unless I absolutely have it just like some of the papers on Marshall. Some of the letters on Marshall. SAXON: The evidence points to this, right? PEOPLES: The evidence points toward this, yeah. Just like the evidence points. I’m going to say something on this tape, I predict before I die that there will be one of the most jarring international scandals that’s ever been as a result of this investigation. Of this one SAXON: I say go on. You can’t say any more than that at this point? PEOPLES: That’s about all I can say at this point. If I didn’t have a real good reason to say it, I wouldn’t say it. SAXON: Heaven forbid, if anything happened to you before this happens, is there other ways this story will eventually come out? PEOPLES: I think so. Yeah, I think so. SAXON: Is there somebody pursuing it like you are? PEOPLES: You see, I’m not pursuing this. I’m not pursuing this. I’ve only pursued the murder investigation, but I’ve held steadfastly to the fact that my jurisdiction was a murder case as a Ranger captain of Company F. My situation is--I don’t care who they are, a federal judge or anybody else--anybody that comes in here and tries to impede a murder investigation is wrong. Mrs. Marshall and her little eleven year old boy that had to live under a situation where his father was accused of committing suicide, which actually wasn’t true, and the cheap politicians and these cheap people that will get in and try to cover it up in order to protect a low-life politician, I don’t like it. I don’t like it now. This is not protecting society. What’s happened otherwise--these people that might have stolen millions of dollars and other things, that’s not my investigation. What’s happened about the cotton allotment, about all that government money they got. They took my tax money when they went along with this. Like I told Estes, I said, “Let me tell you something Billie Sol, you couldn’t have done what you did as far as getting all this money out of the federal government unless you had help in the high ups.” And I said, “As result of it, you’re getting it and you know it,” and he said, “That’s right.” “And as a result of you getting it, you wouldn’t have been in trouble if those politicians had been honest rather than a bunch of thieves.” I don’t care if it was Lyndon Johnson or anybody else . . . if they did that, they stole my tax money, they’re a bunch of thieves and they’re guiltier than Estes was, because he could not have done it. If you come in here and asked me to do something that’s wrong and illegal, then I’m guiltier than you are. See the point. It’s out and out bribery, and they led him into all of this trouble. Let me tell you, the press says he is a pathological liar, but I’m not going to defend his integrity, that’s up to him to be able to establish that. But I am going to say this, if he’s a pathological liar then I’m not going to vouch for his credibility. But if he’s a pathological liar, I’d like to see where he’s ever said anything. And a person has got to say something to lie. Does that make sense? I have never seen where he ever made a statement until he told me what he has about this case. That’s the way I see that, and I still see it. I hope and pray to God that this whole thing someday will unravel, and these people that don’t go ahead and try to get it unraveled are missing the boat. A lot of people take the position, oh well, he’s already dead, or well they are already out of the office. The hell with that. Those people that got by with that need to be . . . if they’re dead now, they still need to be exposed as a deterrent against future things like this. SAXON: In a word then, do you believe Billie Sol Estes? PEOPLES: I believe lots of the things he says. Now I’m not establishing, trying to establish, his credibility. The reason I believe a lot of the things is because the evidence will point in that direction. SAXON: Is there anything you would like to add to today’s tape? It’s been a fascinating tape. And you left a lot of clues, but. . . PEOPLES: I can’t add a great deal to this tape at the moment, but I can add if the United States Justice Department, if they ever want to talk to me about this--as I say, I’m not making an investigation on it--if they ever want to talk to me about it, I know that I have got some real good evidence that can really, really pinpoint a lot of things which would be very, very beneficial to a national investigation. I can do that. I’m saying this as a matter of fact. I’ve got information, I’ve got knowledge, I’ve got evidence and things that I can point them to the right direction. SAXON: They just have to show some interest. PEOPLES: And I’ll tell you something else on this tape, if they ever Just want to show the initiative to do something about it, I can get Estes to talk to anybody. SAXON: Well, he said the only reason he was talking was because of you. PEOPLES: That’s right. I’ve never done anything for him in my life, except treat him nice. And convicts like honest officers, they like people with integrity. I would never double-cross Billie Sol Estes, no more than I would ever double cross anybody else. I hate a cheap double-crossing officer. I don’t do that. I’ve got many death penalty statements from people who got the death penalty. But I never double-crossed them. I’ve got people I sent to the penitentiary for years, and hell, I don’t pay attention to whether or not they are going to shoot me in the back. I don’t do it. I handle my business on a high plane--my investigation on a high plane. I handle them by being truthful. Just like this phone conversation you heard a minute ago with that reporter in San Angelo in regard to this court deal. I handle it on a high plane. I like to be professional, but if I get out of here and lead somebody into a situation that double-crosses them, I’m a bigger, low-life crook than he is himself. That’s not my business. I started out in this business fifty-four years ago as being fair, and I never did like to put my work into personal things. I want it in an official capacity. I want it to be where I can live with it. I want it to be where I don’t have to look back, or I don’t have to apologize to somebody for my official actions. And that’s my life, that’s my life. And when I leave this earth, the people are going to be able to say that because they have never caught me double-crossing anybody. SAXON: Marshal Peoples, I appreciate your candor and openness today, and I’ll be back again next Wednesday. Thank you. Edited June 18 by Robert Morrow Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Morrow Posted June 18 Share Posted June 18 11 hours ago, Matthew Koch said: A Texan Looks at Lyndon is why Jack Ruby said the stuff about LBJ "The man in office now" he read that book. The book only surmises that LBJ killed JFK because all the other dirty LBJ deeds were listed before that which was like the last chapter. Most of the book is a bout he Box 13 scandal and LBJ getting a planed crashed for ordering it to land in foggy conditions. To be fair their mistakes are about the same as saying there were missing E.T. initials on CE399 when they are there. That is certainly possible. In any event Jack Ruby made it clear on multiple occasions, both public and private, that he thought Lyndon Johnson orchestrated the JFK assassination. Key point: any public comments that Ruby made about LBJ would be immediately noticed by Lyndon Johnson and I think it was at that point that the powers that be made sure CIA mind control doctor Jolyon West would be assigned to "care for" Jack Ruby! Jack Ruby on the role of Lyndon Johnson in the JFK assassination: Jack: Everything pertaining to what's happening has never come to the surface. The world will never know the true facts, of what occurred, my motives. The people had, that had so much to gain and had such an ulterior motive for putting me in the position I'm in, will never let the true facts come above board to the world. Reporter : Are these people in very high positions Jack?! Jack : Yes. . . . Jack: When I mentioned about Adlai Stevenson--"if he was vice president there would never have been an assassination of our beloved President Kennedy"--[and was] asked if he would explain it again, Ruby continued, Well, the answer is the man in office now. Jack Ruby to Al Maddox while he was in jail: "In order to understand the assassination, you have to read the book 'A Texas Looks at Lyndon.'" Jack Ruby to his jailer: “Now they're going to find out about Cuba.....the guns.....New Orleans and everything" Jack Ruby Handwritten Letter from Jail Identifying LBJ as the Kennedy Assassination Mastermind Web link: http://www.icollector.com/Jack-Ruby-Handwritten-Letter-from-Jail-Identifying-LBJ-as-the-Kennedy-Assassination-Mastermind_i17516311 Unsigned autograph letter in pencil, five pages both sides, 6 x 4, no date but circa 1965. Letter to Thomas E. Miller, a fellow inmate in Dallas County Jail. In part: "I hope you remember these names you have. There is one person you must warn, because Johnson hates his guts…his name is Bruce Alger, he was a former congressman, and no one knows how he was beaten in the last election but I’m sure Johnson had something to do with his losing. He was a republican. I believe he is presently working around Colorado Springs managing some kind of building project for H. L. Hunt. You probably can find out from my ex girl friend Alice…Be careful how and what you stay [sic] on the phone to him or anyone, because they may have a lot of phones tapped. Tell him that his life is in danger, and the most horrible death imaginable. Tell him he better find a way out of the country…Remember—you can't be seen with Alger, he is too well known. Maybe you can [locate him] through Lamar Hunt… Oh the way I xxxxed up this world who would ever dream that the mother xxxxer was a Nazi, and found me as the perfect setup for a frame. It was perfect for them. Remember they had the president killed, and now with me in the picture, they'll make it look as though Castro or the Russians had it done. Anyone in their right mind would know that the Russians or Castro would never do something like that…it would only create worse hostilities. After it was done they would only put another man in office to take Kennedy’s place. Remember the only one who had all to gain was Johnson himself. Figure that out. Remember all points. Also about Oswald who has been a drifter all of his life, suddenly decided to go to work in the book-binding building weeks before Kennedy himself knew he was coming to Dallas…where did Oswald get the information that far in advance…It had to be someone pretty high in Washington who had made up Kennedy's mind about the trip. All that was planned by Johnson, no one would question the president about a conspiracy…Johnson could commit any crime he cared to because he knew he was going to be the president and have all the power he needed. The shooting at the ex-general's [Edwin Walker] home was to make believe…what a crackpot he [Oswald] is. That to fool the people into thinking that there wasn't any motive in killing the president, and it was done by a crazy person…I still don't believe that a man would deliberately go out and kill the president, it doesn’t sound right to me. Some one had put him [Oswald] up to it, and they no doubt promised him some pretty prize, that is why he made such a desperate effort to get away, to go so far as killing the policeman [J .D. Tippett]. I have [at] the most one or two days left to live…If you hear a lot of horn-blowing it will be for me, they will want my blood!…take my advice and leave the US." In fine condition, with a central vertical fold to each page and a couple tiny stains to one page. Accompanied by a letter of provenance from the original recipient, as well as two letters related to the piece from Charles Hamilton, who initially sold it in 1966. Smuggled out of a Dallas Jail cell in 1965, this famous letter from Oswald’s killer—pointing to President Johnson as the brains behind the assassination, implying that he set the scene and put Oswald into position on that fateful day in November—immediately sparked interest when it went up for auction by New York dealer Charles Hamilton in 1966. Bought by Penn Jones, editor of a small newspaper in East Texas, it was excerpted and published in the May 1966 book, Forgive My Grief, a compilation of his editorials on the assassination. Coinciding with an erosion of public confidence in the Warren Report and concern over the drastic changes in US policy (especially in regard to Vietnam) under the new president, Ruby’s rambling conspiracy claims held a ring of truth for some: “Also about Oswald who…suddenly decided to go to work in the book-binding building…where did Oswald get the information that far in advance…It had to be someone pretty high in Washington who had made up Kennedy's mind about the trip. All that was planned by Johnson, no one would question the president about a conspiracy.” A remarkable piece, capturing the fears and beliefs of the alleged assassin’s assassin. ALS - Autograph Letter Signed ANS - Autograph Note Signed AQS - Autograph Quotation Signed AMQS - Autograph Musical Quotation Signed DS - Document Signed FDC - First Day Cover Inscribed - “Personalized” ISP - Inscribed Signed Photograph LS - Letter Signed SP - Signed Photograph TLS - Typed Letter Signed Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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