Murder Tales: The JFK Conspiracies Read online

  Other titles available in the Murder Tales series:

  Murder Tales: Unsolved

  Murder Tales: Unsolved, The Christmas Companion

  Murder Tales: The Granny Killers

  Murder Tales: The Valentine Companion

  Murder Tales: They Got Away With Murder

  Murder Tales: The Mummy’s Boys

  Murder Tales: The Bounders

  Murder Tales: The Child Killers

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  Murder Tales:

  The JFK Conspiracies

  By

  H. N. Lloyd

  Content

  1. Introduction

  2. Those Who Do Nothing Are Inviting Shame: The Victims

  3. An Evitable Circumstance: The Events

  4. Commensurate With The Dignity of Their Lives: The Investigations

  5. Absolutely Corrupt: The Theories

  6. Conclusion

  7. Bibliography

  Introduction

  Friday the 22nd of November 1963 is a nexus point in history; a day where the momentous events lurched in a singular direction; one that was much different to that which it might otherwise have taken. It has been speculated that if on that fateful day in Dallas three gunshots had not rung out; and three bullets not found their mark; then history would have been much different. The Cold War may have ended sooner; the disastrous and soul destroying war in Vietnam would have been avoided; as a result a drugs pandemic could have been averted, and a nation could have kept its hopes and dreams and innocence that little while longer.

  That is why the murder of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy still matters to this day. His death still impacts on the world we live in right now, so the very fact that suspicion still lingers that there was more to the tragic events than a lone nutter; is an affront to everyone who cares about the type of world we care to live in, a world of peace; or a world of war mongering for profit and ideological folly.

  In this volume of Murder Tales; I shall pose the key questions that matter to so many. Why do doubts persist that there was more to President Kennedy's death than a lone disaffected gunman? Why are so many willing to believe their own government played a part in their leaders slaying? Who benefitted from the killing? What could have motivated such a high risk; high profile action? Ultimately what is the truth; and who should be held to account for such a terrible turning point in world history?

  Those Who Do Nothing Are Inviting Shame: The Victims

  President John Fitzgerald Kennedy

  John Fitzgerald Kennedy, known as Jack to his friends, was born on Tuesday the 29th of May 1917, at number 83 Beal Street in Boston, Massachusetts. He was born into a family used to opulence and privilege, his maternal grandfather, John Fitzgerald, whom Jack was named after, had been a popular mayor of Boston. His father Joseph Patrick Kennedy; was the son of Irish-American Catholic immigrants. Joseph Kennedy had made a fortune on the stock market, investing the money he’d made wisely into lucrative real estate deals, and then the fledgling movie studios of the early twentieth-century, owning a large stake in RKO. Joe then invested in several distilleries, having exclusive rights to distribute Gordon's Gin in America, an investment that eventually brought him into the shadowy world of bootlegging, and which helped him to garner useful contacts in the Italian Mafia. In 1914 ‘Big Joe’ Kennedy married the woman who would give birth to the future President of the United States of America, Rose Elizabeth Fitzgerald. The union suited Joe, as it formalised an alliance between two of the most powerful political and financial families in Boston, his own Kennedy clan and the Fitzgerald family. Joe Kennedy had strong political views, and had ideations of one day making it all the way to the Whitehouse, and with this keenly in mind he began to move in political circles, and become a major donor to the Democratic Party; soon becoming a major mover and shaker amongst the political classes. Only Joe just couldn't keep his mouth shut, and he ruined any political future he may have had for himself by voicing his dodgy dim-witted views on world affairs. In 1938 Joe Kennedy had been appointed as the American ambassador to Great Britain, a honour bestowed upon him by his friend; President Roosevelt. At first things went swimmingly in England, Joe’s daughter, Kathleen Agnes Kennedy, married Edward William Spencer Cavendish, the 10th Duke of Devonshire. This pleased Joe greatly, it showed how far his family had come, in just three generations the Kennedy's had gone from penniless Irish peasants, who had nearly starved to death in the Irish potato famine, to having descendants who would be true British aristocracy. Enjoying the ambassadorial life and making important friends, Joe began to think he was invincible, and was better informed on the world political situation than anyone else, and so he started to shout his mouth off about appeasing Hitler. Joe Kennedy even met with Herr Hitler; and he foolishly attempted to arrange peace talks between England and Germany. Once war had been declared and blitzkrieg was about to rain down like literal fire upon England, Joe Kennedy sought an audience with Hitler again, this time to try and strong arm assurances that America wouldn't be attacked. At the same time he started to loudly and publically advise his American political and business friends that no military or financial assistance should be given to England; whilst they attempted to fight the Nazi menace. To add insult to injury Big Joe then began to give great propaganda to the Nazis'; by declaring that Churchill’s government meant democracy in England was 'finished'. This was too much, pressure was put on Joe Kennedy, and he was forced to resign his Ambassadorial Commission and return to America with his tail firmly between his legs, his dreams of being America's first Catholic President in tatters.

  With his own hopes and aspirations shattered, Joe Kennedy decided to pin them all upon his son. John Fitzgerald Kennedy wasn't Joe Kennedy's first choice to be modelled into a future President, not by a long chalk. No, it was Joseph Patrick Kennedy junior who had been picked to one day make it all the way to the Whitehouse, by fair means or foul. Jack had escaped his father’s political dreams; as he had been a rather sickly child, constantly blighted by regular bouts of whooping cough, or chicken-pox or measles, even catching the life threatening disease scarlet fever. Indeed during the course of his lifetime Jack Kennedy was administered the last rites by a priest on no less than four separate occasions; before he finally died such horrible circumstances in 1963. Little Jack was also incredibly clumsy, being hospitalised through bike accidents and easily hurt in the games of touch football, which Joe Kennedy encouraged his sons to play in order to toughen them up. It was playing such a game of football that led to Jack rupturing a disc in his spine, an accident that left him in chronic pain from that day on, with a near addiction to painkillers, and forced him to wear a painful back-brace hidden under his clothes; to mask the perceivable slouch which he found was the only position he was comfortable in. Despite his ill health; Jack was sent away to Choate Boarding School in Connecticut. Here he stood out as a studious if academically unremarkable child. Unlike the other children; who might want to read the adventures of their favourite superhero in a comic; Jack had a daily subscription to The New York Times. At this time Joe Kennedy stated categorically in a letter to his son that he was 'not expecting too much' out of his sickly son, but Jack excelled enough in his studies to gain entrance into the Ivy League Harvard University, although he was seen as at best an average student, and there was no indication of the greatness he would one day achieve, and subsequently inspire in other people.

  Jack graduated from Harvard just as World War II was getting into full swing, and he followed his older brother Joe into the armed services, joining the American Navy. Jack was given an officers
Commission, the rank of Lieutenant, and command of twelve men and a patrol boat, PT-109, based in the South Pacific. His mission was simple, to do whatever he could to stop the Japanese from shifting vital supplies around the South Pacific. The young and dashing Lieutenant soon made a name for himself as a hero, when on Monday the 2nd of August 1943; whilst attempting to engage a Japanese Destroyer, his little patrol boat was rammed at full speed by the escaping battleship. Two of Kennedy's men were killed instantly, and the remaining ten flailed in the waters surrounded by the burning wreckage of their vessel. Jack had seriously injured his weak back in the collision, but despite the agonising pain that near crippled him, he managed to save one of his seriously burnt men from drowning in the shark infested waters, and led the survivors to a small deserted island; where they had to wait six days to be rescued. He returned to a hero’s welcome and a Marine Corp Medal for Leadership and Courage. This exploit was seen as so dramatic Joe Kennedy Senior used his movie connections to have the story turned into a propaganda coo, turning his young sons exploits into a Saturday morning matinee smash-hit, and his son into a hero for young children who were sat at home desperately fearing for the safety of their own loved ones who were off fighting the war.

  Joseph Kennedy Junior had been commissioned as a Naval Aviator, and with the dawn of a new age on the horizon free of war, Joseph Kennedy Senior had begun to lay the groundwork for Joseph Junior to run for congress in 1946. Meanwhile Jack Kennedy had considered becoming a teacher upon his demobbing from the navy, but his destiny was changed forever when Joseph Junior volunteered to take part in Operation Aphrodite. It should have been a simple mission, all Joseph Kennedy had to do in principle was pilot a B-17 off the runway, set her on a course for Germany, before radio control would take over from the ground, and Joseph Junior would bale out of the plane before it was even over enemy territory. The plane would be loaded with explosives, and would be flown remotely into an enemy target. Something went drastically wrong with Joseph Juniors payload, and his explosives detonated whilst they were still over the village of Blytheburg in Suffolk, England. Joseph Kennedy Junior was killed instantly. Now suddenly all of Joseph Kennedy Seniors hopes and dreams were thrust onto the spare wheel of the family, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was suddenly and unexpectedly destined for greatness.

  Jack took his brothers place running for the 11th Massachusetts Congressional District in 1946, and won. Jack excelled in politics, he'd found his calling in life, he served six years in the House of Representatives, before becoming a Senator in 1952. It was shortly after being elected to the senate that Jack met a young journalist for the Washington Times-Herald by the name of Jacqueline Bouvier. She was twenty-four, vivacious, fiercely intelligent and stunningly attractive. They were introduced in May 1952 by a mutual friend, journalist Charles L. Bartlett. Jack fell head over heels in love with Jackie, and within a year they were engaged to be married. They married on Saturday the 12th of September 1953. Given that both the Kennedy and Bouvier families were extremely rich, the matrimonial ceremony was naturally a lavish affair, conducted by no lesser grand personage than the Arch Bishop of Boston. The early years of the marriage were tough, Jack was diagnosed with suffering from Addison's Disease, a chronic adrenal gland complaint, wherein the sufferer does not produce enough steroid hormones, this in turn causes fatigue, light-headedness, fever, profuse perspiration, weight-loss, vomiting, diarrhoea, headaches, confusion and bafflement, slurred speech, chronic abdominal pain, joint and muscle pain, mood swings, convulsions, a craving for salt, low blood pressure which can lead to comas and death, and if the sufferer is severely injured the lack of steroids in the body can cause the unfortunate victim to go into anaphylactic shock. In late 1954 Jack also had to undergo two belated and extremely delicate spinal operations, to repair the damage caused during the war. During the second operation; Jack's blood pressure suddenly plummeted, and he almost didn’t make it. In fact many expected him to die in the wake of the surgery. Whilst recovering from his near fatal experience; he put his mind to writing about his political heroes, men who had nearly destroyed their careers for unpopular beliefs that were in the greater good, the subsequent book 'Profile In Courage' earned Jack a Pulitzer Prize. Despite this triumph, the Kennedy's were secretly plagued by tragedy, in 1955 Jackie suffered a miscarriage, and in 1956 she tragically gave birth to a daughter named Arabella, who did not survive the traumatic delivery. The following year the wind of change seemed to blow more positively; when Jackie gave birth to a fit and healthy daughter named Caroline, she would be the first of two children for the couple, as Jackie gave birth to a son called Jack in 1960. In 1956; Jack Senior was given the honour of being asked to run for the office of Vice President; alongside Adlai Stevenson, Jack gave serious thought to the matter, but ever the astute political mastermind he decided that Stevenson’s chances weren’t good enough, and he didn’t want to be tarred with the brush of failure, so he stepped aside and let Estes Kefauver be Stevenson’s Vice-Presidential running mate. Privately he told his friends that he had decided he would wait until the 1960 election; where he would secure the Democratic nomination and run for President in his own right.

  Before he could run for President, Jack had to persuade his own party that he was the right man for the job. From a short list of nine high-profile democrats, the candidates were eventually whittled down to just two, John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Senate Majority Leader, the senator for Texas, Lyndon B. Johnson. You see Johnson assumed he was a shoe in for the Presidential nomination, he was a long standing; well established career politician, not a Johnny-Come-Lately flash in the pan like Kennedy, so Johnson arrogantly assumed that he didn't have to campaign all that much for his party’s nomination. So whilst Johnson sat in his office in Washington ‘seeing to business’, Kennedy was out pressing the flesh, making personal appearances and assurances, getting his face and his name out there, winning people over. Eventually the race came down to one thing, back room deals. Kennedy was aware that he was the populist choice, that he had the better chance of winning a national election than the grumpy and dour Johnson, but he had no chance of becoming the nominee if he didn't have the support of Southern State Democrats; who instinctively supported their old friend Lyndon B. Johnson, and who felt that Kennedy was just too liberal in some of his views. Johnson challenged Kennedy to a televised debate for the Texas and Massachusetts democratic delegates who would be voting in the primary. Kennedy roundly won the debates, and it became obvious that Johnson would find it difficult to win wider support outside of the Southern conservative bible-belt regions. Kennedy won the first primary ballot by nearly double the vote Johnson managed to gain. Despite this setback; Johnson was determined that he would win a second primary ballot; and attempted to cajole, threaten and scare Kennedy’s supporters to turning their support to him. Jack was furious with Johnson and his minion, the Texas governor John Connally, for the deliberate and vicious smear campaign they had been running against the Kennedy family, but Jack was shrewd enough to know that although he and his views were unacceptable to southern voters, they hated the fact Jack was pro-civil rights for black people, if Jack had a hard liner on his ticket, then he might just squeeze enough votes out of the southern states to win the national election and become President. So on Thursday the 14th of July 1960, the day after winning the first primary, Jack's younger brother, Robert Kennedy, went to Johnsons' hotel suite at the Los Angeles Baltimore Hotel, and Robert Kennedy offered Johnson a deal, let Jack Kennedy run for President, and Johnson could be his Vice-Presidential running mate. Johnson went for the deal. John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson would face off against Richard Milhouse Nixon and Henry Cabot Lodge junior; for the most powerful political position in the western world.

  The 1960 Presidential race became the tightest run in American history. Vice-President Richard Nixon, a hard hitting no nonsense popular Republican, ran on a platform of level headed experience, not wishy-washy liberal wishful thinking. Kennedy ran with the slogans ‘Kenn
edy Will Get America Moving Again’, ‘We Can Do Better’; and fittingly, ‘A Time For Greatness’; it was a positive campaign; that although it did pander to those still fearing the Ruskies under the bed of the 1950's, the central message was one of hope for a new age. Richard Nixon's dour campaign focused on Kennedy being too young and inexperienced to be President, Kennedy simply didn't have the balls to take it to the next level if the Cold War suddenly became hot. Nixon unfortunately was undermined by his own President, Nixon had been stating from the offset how experienced he was, and how essential he had been to President's Eisenhower's administration. Eisenhower didn't particularly like Nixon, Nixon had been a means to an end when picking a running mate back in 1956, much as Johnson had been for Jack, so when President Eisenhower was asked live on television by Charles Mohr what contributions Nixon had made to his administration, Eisenhower languidly replied, 'give me a week and I might think of one'. The remark hit Nixon's campaign like a torpedo, and the Democrats turned the sound-bite into an alternative slogan for the Nixon campaign. Then Nixon hit another setback, an infected knee meant he was unable to campaign for several weeks, he was unable to do what Jack was doing, travelling around the country pressing the flesh of those who mattered. The turning point in the election was the televised debates, seventy million people tuned in, Kennedy was media savvy, he was well rested, and received the full treatment from the hair and make-up ladies in the studio. Nixon by contrast refused any make-up, make-up was for girls; and he certainly wouldn't be wearing any to go on TV. Nixon was also tired from his recent illness and ill prepared for some of the questions. Under the hot and harsh unforgiving studio lights Kennedy came across as relaxed, youthful and confident, Nixon without make-up came across as looking old, ill and tired, perspiring profusely under the hot lamps of the TV studio. In the aftermath of their TV appearance there was a marked swing in favour of the Kennedy campaign. Jack also played a master-stroke when the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Junior was arrested on a peaceful civil rights march in Georgia. Nixon refused to get involved in the affair, worried that the white middle class voters his ideologies appealed to would be put off if he was seen meddling in black affairs. The Kennedy's had no such worries, Jack started to make phone calls, and within a matter of a few hours Dr. King was a free man, Jack's actions won him the ringing endorsement of the King family, and with it the vote of virtually every African American who was eligible to vote. Election Day came on Tuesday the 8th of November 1960, an election that many said was too close to call. Jack gained a large lead in the early hours claiming the Boston, New York and Philadelphia electoral colleges. Then as votes from the mid-west and south came in the tide began to turn in Nixon's favour. As midnight struck it looked like Nixon would be elected President, then two major results came in, Texas and Chicago, Kennedy won both, automatically giving him the two hundred and seventy electoral votes he needed to have a majority in the electoral college. A lot of Nixon's campaigners called foul, it had long been rumoured that Lyndon B. Johnson had been rigging the ballot boxes in Texas, and it was known that Joe Kennedy had connections to Chicago Mob boss Sam Giancana, who wasn't averse to helping swing elections for his friends, with his Lazarus like quality of helping the dead rise to cast their vote for his favoured candidate. Nixon was urged to call for a recount, but he decided to be magnanimous in defeat, rather than spend millions in asking for a recount, and risk upsetting stock markets with the uncertainty the recount would undoubtedly cause, Nixon admitted defeat. On Wednesday the 9th of November 1960, John Fitzgerald Kennedy became the President Elect of the United States of America, the 35th and youngest man to be elected to the highest office in the land. When all was said and done President Kennedy (as we shall now call Jack) had won the election by just an incredibly dodgy 2%, an investigation later concluded that the 1960 presidential election, ‘was characterized by such gross and palpable fraud as to justify the conclusion that Nixon was deprived of victory'.