Jim Braden

[Ron Bulman]

Mark I don't think Mr. Kelly has posted here in quite some time.  Thanks for the link though.  I thought I knew a good bit about Braden/Brading but this goes much deeper.  I'd read about him having a partner and them fleecing rich widows, that he had a long arrest record and some about La  Costa.  But I didn't know about his affiliation with Frattiani or about him becoming a courier for Mo Dalitz Vegas money being taken of the country with two Howard Hughes planes available to do so.  The bit about a possible Ruby connection is a stretch bit it is there  and should have been investigated.

The tread looks interesting, worth a read as well.  Thanks for bumping it in the process.

[Ron Bulman]

On 1/30/2006 at 1:09 AM, William Kelly said:

Jim Braden was taken into custody as a suspicous person at Dealey Plaza shortly after the assassination.

A suspicious elevator operator in the Dal Tex building called him to the attention of Sheriff Deputy Lummie Lewis, who took Braden in and took a statement from him before releasing him.

Years later, California TV producer Peter Noyes read Braden's statement in the Warren Commission records, and tried to locate him through the California motor vehicle records. Noyes discovered that Eugene Hale Brading had officially changed his name to Jim Braden and obtained a new drivers license under that name a few weeks before the assassination, and was known as a money courier for the mob. He had served time, had been accused of bilking rich widows and was once thrown out of Dallas by Sheriff Bill Decker for being a vagrant while living at the Turtle Creek home of the widow of the President of Magnolia Oil Company.

Braden said he was in the oil business, and while registered at the Cabana Hotel with two other oil men who had visited the Hunt Oil offices on the day of the assassination, he was in the federal parole office at the same time, and after leaving there, saw the motorcade from the federal office steps. He then walked to the Dal Tex building where he tried to phone his mother from a pay phone on an upper floor, and took the elevator down. The elevator operator, thought him suspicious.

From Dallas, Braden went to New Orleans where he lived the previous summer, operating out of the offices of Vernon Main, Jr., on the 17th floor of the Pierre Marquette building, just down the hall from attorney G. Ray Gill.

Jim Braden testified for two days in executive sesssion, behind closed doors before the House Select Committee on Assassinations, but the testimony was sealed until the JFK Act released the transcript of his tesimony.

Does anyone know if Braden's HSCA testimony is available on line?

Does anyone know if Jim Braden is still alive - he would be in his 80s - and if so, where he is today?

Bill Kelly

I feel so ignorant.  I think I've probably read this before but I guess it went right over my head.   Braden/Brading, taken into custody in Dealy Plaza on 11/22/63, a man with a long criminal record, on probation, spent the summer before in New Orleans.  Down the hall from G. Ray Gill, employer of investigator for him David Ferrie?  Am I right on that from memory?  This seems potentially important.  Any chance he knew Banister or others?