November 22, 1963 marked one of the most tragic days in American history. John F. Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald in his motorcade in Dallas, Texas. The nation mourned the loss of its youngest president and a week later the Warren Commission was formed to investigate the assassination. [Source 1]
Innumerable conspiracy theories have come out of Kennedy’s assassination, some boarding on the plausible and some way out in left field. The case of witnesses and those connected with the JFK assassination dying “convenient deaths” within a 3 year period after the assassination does give a person a reason to pause and ponder the possibility that there many have been more to this assassination than we have been led to believe. [Source 2]
Poison in the Food
Captain of the military honor guard, Michael D. Groves is believed to have had limited foreknowledge of the assassination of J.F.K. For three days before the assassination, he was given orders to have his men practice for a president funeral. It is unclear who gave these orders.
After Kennedy’s death, on December 3, 1963, [Source 3] Captain Groves sat down for dinner, took a bite of his food, passed out, and then instantly died. [Source 4] A few days later, on December 12th, a fire of “mysterious origins” burned down his home containing all of his possessions. Captain Groves father and sister felt that his death was not accidental and were very outspoken about their beliefs. His sister, Darbea, made claims that Groves was murdered and stated that she was threatened to be committed to a mental institute if she did not keep quiet. Darbea died in 1978 at the age of 37. [Source 5]
Floating in the Lake
There were many whisperings about mob connections during the time of J.F.K.’s presidency. While it is not known how Jack Zangretti, a member of the Mafia and the owner of “The Red Lobster” on Lake Lugert in Oklahoma, had ties to J.F.K., he is believed to have had some foreknowledge about what was going to happen after the assassination. According to people close to Zangretti, he told his friends right after J.F.K.’s assassination that Jack Ruby was going to kill Lee Harvey Oswald and, to distract the American people, a member of the Sinatra would be kidnapped. [Source 4] Sure enough, Ruby did shoot and kill Oswald on November 24th [Source 6] and Sinatra’s son was kidnapped on December 10th of that year. [Source 7]
Jack Zangretti was found dead on December 3, 1963. [Source 3] He had multiple gunshot wounds to his chest and was floating in Lake Lugert. [Source 4]
Mistaken Identity
In the official story, about 45 minutes after J.F.K. was shot, Oswald was stopped by Officer Tippit as a possible suspect. As Officer Tippit got out of his car and began walking to the front of his vehicle, Oswald shot him three times. After Tippit fell, Oswald shot him a fourth time in the head. [Source 8]
One witness to this event, Domingo Benavides, gave a description of the man who shot the police officer. Oddly enough, that description did not resemble Oswald. In February of 1964, a few short months after J.F.K. was assassinated, Domingo’s look-alike brother, Edward Benavides, was fatally shot in the back of the head inside a bar. The shooter was never found.
A second witness to the death of Officer Tippit also gave a description of the shooter. His first description did not resemble Oswald, but after this witness was shot in the head in January 1964 (a month before Edward Benavides was shot and killed) and survived the head wound, he changed his mind and decided that the officer’s shooter was Oswald. It is unknown who shot this second witness. [Source 9]
He Slit His Own Throat
Hank Killam was the husband of Wanda Joyce Killam. Wanda had known and later worked as a stripper for Jack Ruby, the man who shot Oswald. Hank worked as a painter for a man named John Carter. Incidentally, John Carter had lived with Oswald at a boarding house prior to J.F.K.’s assassination.
What exactly Hank knew about the assassination is not known. After it happened, he moved from Dallas to Pensacola, Florida, and then to Tampa before moving back again to Pensacola. Two days before Hank died, he told his brother, “I’m a dead man. I’ve run as far as I’m going to run.”
On March 17, 1964, Hank is reported to have received a phone call at 4 a.m. He left the house and got into a car being driven by an unknown person or persons. Hank was found dead inside a department store window. His throat had been slashed and he was thrown through the window. His death was ruled a suicide by the Pensacola police. [Source 10]
Wrong Handed Suicide
A few hours after J.F.K.’s assassination, John “Gary” Underhill, a CIA agent, drove off from Washington D.C. to visit friends in Long Island, NY. Once there, he is reported as telling his friends that Oswald was just a patsy and that he had heard things about the assassination. He believed “they” (the Agency) were going to kill him next. He left his friends shortly thereafter [Source 11] and headed back to Washington DC where he began his own investigation into the assassination.
Gary was found dead on May 8, 1964. He had a bullet wound behind his left ear and his death was ruled a suicide. Gary was right handed. [Source 12]
Karate Chop to the Neck
On the evening that Jack Ruby shot and killed Lee Harvey Oswald, there was a meeting between two journalists, two lawyers, and Ruby’s roommate, George Senator, in Ruby’s apartment. One of these journalists was James F. Koethe, a reporter for the Dallas Times Herald. [Source 13] Koethe was doing research into J.F.K.’s assassination for a book.
Koethe was found dead in his apartment on September 21, 1964. It was reported that he was killed by a karate chop to the throat after he got out of the shower. [Source 14] The other journalist at that meeting, Bill Hunter, was killed in a shooting at a police station in April 1964, and one of the lawyers, Tom Howard, died of a heart attack in March 1965. [Source 13]
Run Over
Rose Cheramie was, like Hank Killam’s wife, another stripper for Jack Ruby. On November 19, 1963, Rose was thrown out of a vehicle in Louisiana. [Source 3] She was taken to the emergency ward and the police were called in. On the 20th, she told Lt. Francis Fruge her strange story. She was on her way to Dallas with two men who she believed were either Italian or Cuban. The men told her of a plan to kill President Kennedy as they drove her to drop off drug money in exchange for heroine and her daughter. The plans were disrupted by a third man they picked up. An argument began and Rose was pushed out of the car only to be hit by an oncoming car.
Rose was still in the hospital on the day of J.F.K.’s assassination. It’s reported that as she and the nurses were watching the motorcade, Rose said, “This is when it is going to happen.” To everyone’s shock, Kennedy was shot immediately after Rose’s statement. [Source 15]
Rose made many other statements that would thicken the plots surrounding the assassination, including that Jack Ruby and Oswald were lovers. It is no surprise that Rose was found dead on September 4, 1965. It appears that she was knocked unconscious and left on the road to be run over by a car. [Source 3]
A Marilyn Monroe Death
A friend of Frank Sinatra and a journalist [Source 16], Dorothy Kilgallen was the only reporter to interview Jack Ruby after he killed Oswald. Because of her unrelenting research into the Kennedy assassination, both the FBI and the CIA tapped her phones and followed her and her friends to try and uncover her sources. [Source 17]
On November 8, 1965, [Source 3] Kilgallen died in a similar way to Marilyn Monroe: suicide by alcohol and barbiturates. Interestingly enough, Kilgallen openly questioned the manner of Monroe’s death and her connection to J.F. Kennedy. [Source 17]
Carbon Monoxide Poisoning
On November 9, 1963, before the Kennedy assassination, a man walked into the Downtown Lincoln-Mercury car dealership in Dallas, and introduced himself to a salesman as Lee Oswald. The salesman, Albert G. Bogard, wrote the name down on the back of a business card as a future car buyer because Oswald told him he had just gotten a new job and expected some money in the next 2 to 3 weeks. On November 22nd, after Bogard learned that Oswald had shot a policeman, he tore up the card.
What is strange about this account is that Oswald did not know how to drive. There were also other accounts placing Oswald in different locations during that time.
Bogard was given a lie detector test by the FBI and passed it. After Bogard had given his testimony, he was beaten by a group of men and put into the hospital. He was found dead inside his car on February 14, 1966. A hose was connected to the exhaust and brought into the car through the passenger compartment. His death was ruled a suicide. [Source 18]
Shot Through the Head
Lieutenant Commander William Pitzer had film and photographs showing the autopsy of J.F.K. It is unclear if he had taken the film and photographs himself, but it is known that he had shown this material his friend, Petty Officer First Class Dennis D. David. [Source 19] Pitzer believed that the evidence in his collection contradicted the official version of Kennedy’s assassination.
Four days before Pitzer died, he told a friend that he was retiring from the Navy because he had some good offers from national tv networks, such as ABC and CBS. It was assumed that it was to do with his autopsy film. [Source 20]
Pitzer was found dead on October 29, 1966 inside his workplace at the Bethesda Naval Medical School (where Kennedy was autopsied). [Source 21] He died of a gunshot wound to his right temple. The gun was found beside Pitzer’s left knee. Pitzer’s fingerprints were not found on the gun nor were his fingerprints found on the two chairs and three beer cans at the scene. His death was ruled a suicide and the film and photographs were never found. [Source 22]
