60's Thursday - Death by a Thousand Conspiracies

Jim Marrs is one of the leading investigators into the Kennedy Assassination. In his book Crossfire, The Plot That Kill Kennedy, he lists 103 people who have died in strange, mysterious, or convenient ways.

Whether you believe in a conspiracy theory (multiple gunmen, Castro, the CIA etc.) around the murder of John Kennedy, there is no doubt the assassination of the 35th president of the United States remains the crime of the century one of the most controversial events in American history. (Personally I believe there is some sort of conspiracy and definitely a government cover-up, but there is enough written and published on this topic, another diatribe from this amateur sleuth would add nothing).

Marrs has been called nut, whack-o and liar. People have gone through his list and have allegedly debunked a lot of it. No matter how you slice it, a lot of people connected directly or indirectly to the case, seemed to have met strange, if not untimely deaths. Coincidence? Just the odds? A grand plan? Who knows – as important as this event is, reading about all the theories is a lot more fascination or interesting than listening to the constant bombardment of Sarah Palin and Michael Jackson shit…

46 years later, the case still fascinates and brings out intense emotion in many people. Here are three of the more interesting deaths on Marrs list….

Karyn Kupcinet was a young actress in LA just getting started in show business. A few days after the assassination of Kennedy, Kupcinet was found dead. Kupcinet’s connection to the events in Dallas is through a bizarre phone call.

Shortly before the shots rang out in Dallas, a telephone operator reported that an agitated female told her the President would be killed. The call came from fifty miles north of Los Angeles. Conspiracy theorists suggest that Karyn had learned of the impending assassination from her father. She made this phone call in a desperate attempt to save the President. Days later, friends found Karyn Kupcinet dead. The coroner ruled she was strangled. Conspiracy theory says the mob had silenced her.

Who was Kupcinet’s father? Karyn Kupcinet was the daughter of Irv Kupcinet, a very prominent personality in Chicago. He wrote “Kup’s Column” for the Chicago Sun Times, hosted a talk show on local TV, and was announcer for the Bears games. Kupcinet knew everyone in the city, included prominent members of the Chicago mob. Irv Kupcinet also knew Jack Ruby very well.

Other conspiracy theorists do not think she made the phone call, but wonder if the actress was murdered to send a message to her father to keep silent. Another coincidence in the Kupcinet case was (it is alleged) that Karyn was somehow tied to Mary Jo Kopechne. They both went to college in Wellesley, Mass (not the same one). There is no proof she ever met Kopechne. But it sure makes for a good game of Six Degrees of Separation.

The Kupcinet case makes for great mystery.

On October 12, 1964, a 43-year-old Washington, DC area artist was shot to death on a path in Georgetown. While the murder of Mary Pinchot Meyer brought much criticism towards Washington's Police Department, it was the shadowy events of Meyer’s life that have kept this mystery alive. Marrs lists Mary Pinchot Meyer's death as one of the mysterious deaths associated with the assassination.

Mary Pinchot Meyer's death was nothing more than a tragedy until the National Enquirer printed a story in 1976 about a two-year affair she had with President Kennedy. The article’s source was James Truitt, the ex-husband of Ann Truitt, who was one of Mary's best friends. In the article, he claimed Mary had confided with him and his wife about her relationship with John Kennedy. He also stated she kept a dairy. Most people used to laugh off the Enquirer (with the state of news today, they are as credible – if not more - as many other organizations, including Fox) but content has since been confirmed by those involved.

Two phone calls the night of Meyer’s death added new dimensions. One came from Pierre Salinger, Kennedy’s Press Secretary, who was in Paris. It was not known that Salinger had been a friend of Mary's. The second was from Anne Truitt in Tokyo. She was Mary's closest friend. Mary had asked Anne to take her private diary 'if anything ever happened to me.' In another quirk of coincidence, Meyer’s ex-husband, Cord Meyer, worked at the CIA.

The diary contains a short section that discussed an affair between Mary and an unnamed person. Despite the anonymity, those who read it knew she meant the President of the United States.

The police investigation of Mary Meyer's murder concluded it was a botched rape or robbery attempt, in which, as she tried to escape, or get help, the assailant then gunned her down. Again – who knows, even her death was a coincidence and unrelated, the fact there is another well-connected person to Kennedy dying under mysterious circumstances just adds to the aura of mystery.

The most famous death connected to the Kennedy assassination is that of journalist and television personality Dorothy Kilgallen. It seems Dorothy had some sort of black shadow following her around.

In 1950, producers Mark Goodman and Bill Todman asked Dorothy (who was a very successful journalist and radio host) to be one of the panelists on their new television game show, What’s My Line. She emerged as the natural star of the show. When Arlene Francis, Bennet Cerf and Fred Allen were added to the panel, the show became one of the biggest hits of the 50’s. The game show made Dorothy nationally-known personality and the most famous female journalist of the 50’s. She would remain a panelist on the show for the rest of her life.

For a long time, Dorothy stayed away from covering politics in her column. When McCarthy was making news about communists in the government and Hollywood, Kilgallen stayed quiet. In the mid 50s, she covered the trial of Dr. Sam Sheppard (which later become the premise for The Fugitive). Sheppard was accused of murdering his wife and the trial captured national attention. Kilgallen, who had already written about the Lindbergh trial and rode in the doomed Hindeburgh, produced some of the best work of her career with this case and became even more famous.

In early 1964, Jack Ruby was about to stand trial for the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald. Dorothy was not assigned to cover the trial, but she took it on herself to go to Dallas and report on the proceedings.

Using her years of experience, Dorothy met with Ruby's lawyers. They were impressed enough with Dorothy's work and credentials that they showed her some correspondence with the the Department of Justice. What they showed her was the fact the Government refused to make any material related to Oswald available. Dorothy found this highly unusual and suspicious and she wrote about this in her column. For the first time, someone talked about the Kennedy assassination openly in the press.

During a recess in the trial, the attorneys introduced Dorothy to Ruby himself. They chatted briefly, and then she left him as the trial resumed. She requested another meeting with Ruby, this time a private one, saying she had some information for him from a mutual friend. Ruby's lawyers granted the request. No one knows what they talked about or who the mutual friend was, or what exactlyDorothy learned from Ruby. The amount of time she met with Ruvy is claimed to be anywhere from 5 minutes to a half hour. She never mentioned the meetings in her column, nor did she leak any details of what may have transpired. The trial ended with Ruby's conviction, and Dorothy returned home to New York.

Back in New York, Dorothy was a surprise witness for the defense in comedian Lenny Bruce’s well-publicized obscenity trial. Bruce was ultimately acquitted, thanks in part to Dorothy's testimony.

They've killed the President, the government is not prepared to tell us the truth, and I'm going to do everything in my power to find out what happened.

-- Dorothy, to fellow investigator and New York assemblyman Mark Lane.

The mystery surrounding the Kennedy assassination haunted Kilgallen. She hadn't forgotten the Justice Department's refusal to release the Oswald material. Dorothy wanted to know why, and began to believe the government knew more than it was willing to say. She managed to obtain a copy of the yet-unreleased Warren Commission's final report and began publishing parts of it in her columns. Furious, the Commission requested that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover find out how Dorothy Kilgallen got the report. Dorothy never revealed her source, nor did anyone else discover it.

Dorothy returned to Dallas to check out discrepancies she found in the Dallas statements and the official police logs relating to the assassination. Again, she published what she discovered. She continued to break all the rules about keeping quiet and published revelation after revelation: a mysterious 'oil man' who met with Ruby, witnesses allegedly threatened by the Dallas police or the FBI; clandestine meetings between people involved in the crime, people that weren't ever supposed to have met. Dorothy told a few friends that she was going to get the real facts between what she called "the biggest story of the century.”

Dorothy believed that the famous photograph of Oswald with gun that was featured on the cover of Life magazine was altered. She planned a return trip to Dallas, and a trip to New Orleans to meet someone who would give her information. Kilgallen taped an episode of What's My Line on Sunday, November 7, 1965. The next day - Monday, November 8, Dorothy Kilgallen was found dead in her New York aparment, sitting up in bed. All her notes regarding the Kennedy assassination had vanished. It is said Kilgallen had told many of her friends she was going to “blow the whole Kennedy case wide open.” Here is the real conspiracy theory - the next day - Tuesday November 9th, the entire Northeast, including New York City was plunged into darkness under a massive blackout.

The official cause of Kilgallen's death was given as "acute ethanol and barbiturate intoxication – circumstances undetermined". Years before, Kilgallen had developed problems with both barbiturates and alcohol. The "undetermined" was whether her death was accidental or suicidal. In his 1977 biography of Kilgallen, Lee Israel concluded that some sort of coverup had been staged.

Was Dorothy Kilgallen "silenced"? We will never know. She was said to have returned from one of her trips and left behind a package of documents, "to be made public if anything ever happens to me", but there is no evidence that this ever happened nor has any such package surfaced. Though it was ultimately ruled accidental, the exact circumstances of Dorothy Kilgallen's death, like Kupcinet, Meyer and John Kennedy remain unresolved.