by H. N. Lloyd
As evidence of this post-mortem pretence, Morningstar quotes the official timings of the day as stated by the Warren Commission; and the fact that it took an hour for Tippet’s body to travel from the scene of the crime to the city morgue. It was in this hour that Tippet’s body was swapped for the President’s, and it explains why the Secret Service were so eager to stop the local coroner from performing their own post-mortem. Such a post-mortem carried about by someone who was not controlled by those in on the conspiracy would easily have detected and published findings which would have proved the President had been shot by at least two gunmen.
Over the years the ‘Badge-Man’ photograph, that is so much the crux of this theory, has come under close scrutiny by experts. Photographic experts, George Pearl and Joe Cook, used the exact same model and make of camera and Polaroid film as Mary Moorman to try and recreate her photograph. They placed an actor where it looked like ‘Badge-Man’ would have been standing to take his shot, and they came to a startling conclusion. If ‘Badge-Man’ had been standing where the photograph appears to show he was standing, then he would have had a perfect view of the President as the cavalcade moved up Elm Street. It appeared to be one-nil to the buffs, but then the photograph was examined using image enhancing software by Dr. Lenny Rudin, of Cognitech Inc. Using all his skill, de-blurring the photograph, altering the contrast and vanquishing the shadows, he was able to make the smudges of light appear exactly like, well, smudges of light. All the computer trickery at his disposal and he was able to discern absolutely nothing from the indistinct blur that could not be described as even remotely human. Dr. Rudin then took new photographs of the same spot himself, photographs of the same wall Badge-Man was said to be standing behind. Knowing that the wall was five foot tall, and applying this calculation to what people said they could discern in the photograph, he calculated that if the smudges were really a person, then ‘Badge-Man’ would have to have only been 2.88 Ft tall. Of course Dr. Rudin’s findings weren’t universally liked by some theorists, and they counter claimed that no one ever said that ‘Badge-Man’ was standing directly behind the wall. He could in actual fact have been standing several feet away, which would have altered his perspectives in the photograph, and therefore made Dr. Rudin’s calculations wrong. Dr. Rudin was thorough in his research, and he was able to counter the dismissal of his work, by stating that ‘Badge-Man’ would have to have been standing forty-feet away from the wall for him to have been of at least average height, and from this distance ‘Badge-Man’ would have had to have been elevated at least sixteen to twenty foot off the ground; to get a clear shot at the President. Dr Rudin concluded that ‘Badge-Man’ was, ‘either a person stood very far away, on a very tall ladder, or it is not a person at all’
With the ‘Badge-Man’ photographs credibility finally destroyed beyond any reasonable doubt, there is no other solid evidence to prove the Morningstar theory. What is left is dodgy eye-witness testimony and a belief that it is not Kennedy in the post-mortem pictures. Anyone who looks at the photos of President Kennedy’s autopsy; can quite clearly see for themselves that it is indeed the murdered President lying on the slab. Those who say he looks different from when he was alive, are invariably those who have been fortunate enough not to have seen death for themselves close up, and witnessed with their own eyes how different someone can look once that flicker of indefinable humanity has left a body.
Natural Born Gay Thrill Killers
The trial of New Orleans businessman Clay Shaw for Conspiring to Murder President Kennedy can either be seen as one lone mans determined fight to try and find justice for both the Kennedy family and the American people, or reversely, as one lone mans campaign to ruin and harass a perfectly innocent man, possibly due to his sexual orientation. New Orleans District Attorney ‘Big’ Jim Garrison led the investigation into the activities of Clay Shaw, which became the bases of the blockbusting Olive Stone movie JFK, a cinematic endeavour that did more than anything else to turn the small gaggle of conspiracy buffs discontented mumblings into a multi-million dollar cottage industry that demanded wider and more serious attention.
It all began with a drinking session and a pistol whipping. Guy Bannister, a former head of the New Orleans branch of the FBI, but by 1963 a shadowy private investigator with offices based in the centre of the New Orleans intelligence community, had been drinking with his buddy, fellow private investigator Jack Martin. They had allegedly been drowning their sorrows in the wake of President Kennedy’s assassination. Upon returning to their offices a drunken argument broke out between the two men over the offices’ telephone bill. Martin was heard to yell, ‘What are you going to do? Murder me like you all did Kennedy!’ At which point Bannister really lost his temper, un-holstered his .357 Magnum; and pistol whipped Martin so badly he required hospital attention. Martin was said to be really scared in the wake of the incident, as if saying those words had let the genie out of the bottle, and the genie was particularly pissed-off and vindictive. So to protect himself; over the next few days Martin gave interviews to the local authorities and the local newspapers, wherein he stated that Guy Bannister along with a man named David Ferrie had plotted to murder President Kennedy. Ferrie had been hired to fly Oswald out of Dallas in the wake of the assassination, only Oswald had messed up and gotten himself caught. The FBI interviewed David Ferrie, a rather peculiar looking man who suffered from the unfortunate affliction of alopecia-totalise; a complete lack of bodily hair. In the absence of any facial hair he wore an awful wig, and painted eyebrows on his face which gave him the appearance of a man in constant startled surprise. Ferrie was also a bit of a crank, he fancied himself as a chemist and expert oncologist, and kept dozens of pet mice which he experimented on in his home-spun search for a cure for cancer. Ferrie admitted that he had been in Dallas the night before the assassination; with two young male friends, but it had only been a boring business trip; for him to scout out possible locations for an ice-rink he proposed to open in the city. Jack Martin was also interviewed by the FBI, and he immediately showed the Feds the unreliability of his testimony; by informing them that the peculiar David Ferrie had hypnotised Lee Harvey Oswald, and had instructed him whilst under the hypnotic trance to commit the assassination. Realising that Jack Martin was a drunken lush with a head filled with alcohol induce paranoia, the FBI left the enquiry there, releasing Ferrie with its most profuse apologies.
It wasn’t until 1966 that Big Jim Garrison became interested in the Kennedy assassination, and reopened the whole ridiculous can of worms once more. Garrison had been investigating an alleged arms smuggling ring, possibly related to anti-Castro Cubans. The investigation brought Garrison into contact with the still drunken private investigator Jack Martin, and with the receptive ear of the DA all to himself, Martin began telling Garrison all about the Kennedy conspiracy all over again. The assassination had started out life as a ‘homosexual thrill killing’, a group of rich and powerful and bored closeted homosexuals deciding to murder the President simply because they could. This group of deadly decadent gays, who allegedly held the type of bawdy sex parties that even the renowned Emperor Caligula would think were a bit excessive, included David Ferrie, Guy Bannister and an up to that point unidentified man known as Clay Bertrand. This mysterious and unknown Clay Bertrand allegedly had links to the CIA, and so the intelligence organisation decided to jump on the gay bandwagon and help the rainbow empowered plotters along, seeing as they seemed to offer the beleaguered intelligence organisation a way back from the brink of Presidential destruction. It all seemed ludicrous, but Garrison, despite opposition from his own department, persisted with the harassment of David Ferrie (the accused Guy Bannister was out of Garrisons vindictive reach; seeing as he had died of a heart attack back in 1964). A year into the investigation David Ferrie died also, it was an aneurysm, but Garrison treated the quite clearly natural death as a murder, allegedly carried out at the behest of the CIA. Garrison treated Ferrie’s death as suspicious not because of an
y solid medical evidence, no, but because during one of the conversations Ferrie had held with Garrison’s office, Ferrie had told one of the Assistant District Attorney’s that the Garrison investigation meant he was ‘a dead man’.
With the death of Ferrie the investigation came to a virtual standstill, there were no further avenues of investigation, seeing as they couldn’t track down the mysterious Clay Bertrand. Then pot smoking, jive talking, jazz loving, sunglasses wearing disreputable lawyer Dean Andrews stepped into the fray. You see whilst leafing through the monumental twenty-six volumes of supporting evidence to the Warren Commission, Garrison came across a reference to the elusive Clay Bertrand. In the days after the assassination, New Orleans based attorney Dean Andrews had contacted the FBI; and told them that a man named Clay Bertrand had contacted him and asked him to travel to Dallas to represent the legal interests of Lee Harvey Oswald. When questioned by the Warren Commission about this phone call; Andrews recanted his statement, and informed the Commission that the conversation with Bertrand had probably been a figment of his drugged up imagination. Despite Andrews’ predisposition for smoking copious amounts of wacky-baccy in-between his legal depositions, Garrison jumped upon Andrews’ statement, and began to pester the beleaguered lawyer for the real identity of Clay Bertrand. Andrews told Garrison that he had no idea, he had made it all up, there was no Clay Bertrand, but Garrison just wouldn’t let it go. Eventually it wasn’t Andrews who put another name to Clay Bertrand, but a lowly waiter from ‘The Cosimo’, a grubby backstreet bar in the French Quarter of New Orleans. This waiter told the District Attorney that anyone who was anyone knew that when people said the name Clay Bertrand, they were really referring to the multi-millionaire owner of the New Orleans Trade Mart, Clay Shaw. Clay Bertrand was the name Shaw went by to protect his real identity and business interests when he secretly went cruising the less than reputable bars for a gay pickup. So, on the word of a backstreet boozer’s barkeep; respectable businessman Clay Shaw unbelievably found himself being tried for his part in a Conspiracy to Murder President John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
The trial commenced at New Orleans Parish Court on Tuesday the 29th of January 1969. Garrison was careful what he said during the trial; and revealed only enough of his theory to incriminate Shaw, because when revealed as a whole the conspiracy sounded ludicrous. Over the years that followed more and more of the details came out, and it became clear that Garrison’s version of the assassination ran thusly. Clay Shaw and David Ferrie were gay lovers who had decided to murder President Kennedy simply for the fun of it. They roped in Guy Bannister because he had the perfect patsy in his employ, a low level CIA operative by the name of Lee Harvey Oswald, who had been ‘sheep dipped’ to look like a communist, so that he could infiltrate leftwing organisations and spy upon them for the CIA. On the day of the assassination, three assassins organised and working from a plan devised by Clay Shaw and David Ferrie, but who were possibly active agents of the CIA, caught President Kennedy in a triangular crossfire; executing him in cold blood. After the assassination had been carried out, Oswald was fitted up with the murder, and Clay Shaw used his links to the CIA to have officialdom cover up the gay thrill killing. Officialdom willing complied because they were all secretly glad that President Kennedy was dead due to his friendliness towards Communism, his desire to end the Vietnam War, and his attempts to shut down the CIA. Now, by the time of the trial; Garrison had made little progress in the tying any of this together; or in tying Clay Bertrand to Clay Shaw. Garrison had a single fingerprint card from the New Orleans police, and on this card it had been noted that Clay Shaw had told the booking officer that one of his aliases was Clay Bertrand. It was argued by Shaw’s lawyer that these fingerprint cards had been filled in by the custody sergeant, that Shaw had not been told what was written on them, and had been so shocked at being arrested that he had not bothered to read the information the police had written on the card for him when he signed it. To back this assertion up it was pointed out that Shaw’s place of birth was noted as New Orleans on the card, when in fact he had been born in the small town of Kentwood near the Mississippi boarder. On top of this Clay Shaw hadn’t properly been informed of his rights, Officer Habighorst had not told Shaw that he had the right to remain silent when being booked into the police station, and did not have to volunteer any information for the booking form if he did not so wish. In light of these facts Judge Edward Haggerty tended to believe that this fingerprint card was an obvious attempt set up Clay Shaw, put in place by either the police or the DA’s office, and so ruled the evidence as inadmissible. In fact Judge Haggerty was scathing of Office Habighorst and the fingerprint card evidence, point blank calling Habighorst a liar. Without the fingerprint card there was virtually no case to answer, but Garrison battled vainly on with his public-money-wasting prosecution.
A succession of invariably flaky and disreputable witnesses paraded through the court to try and help what was left of Garrison’s case along. Perry Raymond Russo was a twenty-five year old insurance salesman for the Equitable Life Company, based in Baton Rouge. He had come into the investigations sphere of interest after he had written to Jim Garrison and told him that he had important information on the deceased David Ferrie. Russo claimed that in September 1963 he had attended a party at David Ferrie’s apartment, which in itself must have been uncomfortable given the alleged stink of the place from all the caged animals he regularly experimented on. The small apartment was allegedly choked full to the gills with suspicious characters, including Clay Shaw; who Russo positively identified as being introduced to him as Clay Bertrand, and one Leon Oswald, who Russo stated he later realised was Presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. During the course of this party Russo sat and listened as in front of all the revellers, the indiscreet conspirators openly discussed their plot to kill President Kennedy, outlined the manner in which three gunmen would catch the President in a triangular crossfire in Dealey Plaza, and how each man involved would be given a cast iron alibi; and the blame shifted onto Fidel Castro. Just how we are supposed to believe a group of men who were so indiscreet as to discuss their plans for high treason in front of a relative stranger like Russo, and then went on to get away with the conspiracy for so long; went unasked in court. Of course Russo hadn’t remembered all these details so clearly at first when speaking to Garrison, and it came out that Garrison had been forced to aid Russo in his recall by giving him a session of hypnosis and a dose of sodium pentathol. Another witness was Vernon William Bundy, an habitual criminal and heroin addict who at that time was in prison for parole violations. Oh, he had also been arrested for an armed robbery, but in return for his testimony against Clay Shaw this charge was quietly and kindly dropped by Garrison. Bundy testified that he had gone out to a quiet spot off of Lake Pontchartrain in the middle of Camp Leroy Johnson, where he could shoot-up in relative peace without being hassled by the cops. As he sat hidden by the lakeside; two men he positively identified as Clay Shaw and Lee Harvey Oswald came within twenty feet of him, and had a brief and slightly heated conversation, before Clay Shaw eventually gave Oswald a bundle of money and they both departed the scene in separate directions. What Garrison failed to tell the court was that Bundy had been questioned under polygraph about his evidence, what this polygraph discovered shook his testimony to its foundations; Bundy’s story was a complete pack of lies, through desperation however Garrison had chosen to use the drugged up and unreliable witness in court. Charles Spiesel was another witness, added to the list of testifiers at the last minute, who turned out to be a complete space cadet who did more harm to Garrison’s prosecution than anyone else. Spiesel on the face of it seemed like a reputable former accountant from New York. He claimed that he had met David Ferrie in Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop in the French Quarter of New Orleans, whereupon Ferrie had invited him to one of his seemingly regular parties in his pokey and stinking flat. Here Ferrie had introduced Spiesel to a man Spiesel identified as Clay Shaw, and as the party went on and people got
drunker and drunker the topic of conversation turned to President Kennedy. Once again both men were allegedly unable to hold their water, and told Spiesel exactly how they planned to murder the President. Unfortunately defence attorney Irvin Dymand had done his research on Mr Spiesel, and discovered that Jim Garrison had took a pure gamble on using the seemingly reputable individual. You see Garrison had known all along that Spiesel was completely loopy, and had just kept his fingers crossed and hoped that Irvin Dymand wouldn’t discover the terrible truth, unfortunately Dymand did. During cross-examination Dymand happily moved the conversation away from President Kennedy, and onto how Spiesel believed he had been experimented on by the American government as part of a hypnotic mind control program. He then testified how the government regularly tried to ‘implant’ thoughts into his mind. He then gave chapter and verse on how the New York police had regularly tortured him, and how the experience had caused his accountancy firm to collapse. The revelation also came out that Spiesel regularly fingerprinted his daughter when she returned home from college, to make sure that the government hadn’t replaced her with an undercover spy who just looked like his daughter. Spiesel’s credibility and testimony was completely destroyed, even if what he had been saying was the truth, no one was going to believe the word of a complete fruitcake.