Hit List: An In-Depth Investigation Into the Mysterious Deaths of Witnesses to the JFK Assassination

by Richard Belzer

  Victim

  Karyn Kupcinet, actress

  Cause of Death

  Broken Neck

  Official Verdict

  Murder

  Actual Circumstances

  The Medical Examiner in the case had a sick habit of breaking the necks of corpses in his care, making the initial assumptions suspect.

  Inconsistencies

  1. Rumored to have made a phone call predicting JFK’s murder (didn’t happen);

  2. Various inconsistencies concerning death; see below

  6

  Karyn Kupcinet,

  November 28, 1963

  Overview

  Karyn Kupcinet

  Karyn was the daughter of famous Chicagoan, Irv Kupcinet, one of the most popular newspaper columnists in the country and a huge celebrity in his own right. She moved to Hollywood to establish an acting career and was fairly successful in that pursuit, making appearances on popular TV shows and, to a lesser extent, movies.

  • Found dead in her Hollywood apartment on November 30, 1963.

  • It was medically approximated by the advanced state of decomposition that she had been dead for two-to-three days and, therefore, died on November 28, 1963.

  • In addition to a large amount of drugs in her body, it was determined that her neck had been broken by manual strangulation, therefore it was presumed she’d been murdered.

  • Key suspect was popular Hollywood actor, Andrew Prine, who was Karyn’s boyfriend. The two had been having problems, mainly insofar as Karyn had wanted a very serious relationship with him and he was not obliging. There were, apparently, no fingerprints of either Andrew Prine or David Lange (a neighbor who was also a suspect) found at her apartment. Two sets of fingerprints that went unidentified were found at the crime scene, however.1 Karyn had spoken to Andrew Prine at midnight and was dead thirty minutes later.2

  • The evidence was considered insufficient to indict Mr. Prine, or anyone else.

  • Still listed as an unsolved murder.

  Linkage to JFK assassination:

  It was initially reported by author Penn Jones, Jr. that Karyn had screamed into a telephone to an operator that President Kennedy was going to be killed; prior to his assassination:

  “The woman, who dialed her local operator approximately 20 minutes before the shooting in Dallas, stated that he was going to be shot. Jones alleged that the caller was Kupcinet, attempting to warn someone of the impending assassination. Jones claimed that Kupcinet was told of the assassination by her father (who was allegedly told by Jack Ruby, whom he met in Chicago in the 1940s). Jones speculated that her death was a result of a mob hit to silence her and to send a message to Irv Kupcinet to remain silent about his knowledge.”3

  1 Kathleen Collins, email to author, 6 August 2012.

  2 Kathleen Collins, email to author, 15 December 2011.

  3 Wikipedia, “Karyn Kupcinet,” accessed 14 Oct 2012:

  Karyn was an actress in Hollywood and the daughter of one of the most popular newspaper columnists in the country: Irv Kupcinet, who was based in Chicago. “Kup”, as he was fondly called, also had a nationally televised talk show. It was initially reported that Karyn “was overheard telling of JFK’s death prior to 11/22/63.”1 Apparently, that is not correct.

  Karyn had been dead for at least two-to-three days before she was found, thereby making the autopsy somewhat difficult to determine what had actually happened due to the advanced state of decomposition of her body. She was found totally nude and face down on the couch in the living room of her Hollywood apartment. The television was on and her front door was unlocked. There were specks of blood on her face and also blood that had exuded from her mouth.

  The fact that it was later medically determined that Karyn had a broken hyoid bone due to manual strangulation initially made it appear that she had been murdered. The first suspect was her boyfriend and fellow actor, Andrew Prine. A neighbor of Karyn’s later became the prime suspect and the Kupcinet family in Chicago was convinced of his guilt.

  However, bizarre facts unfolding over the years have revealed that the medical examiner charged with Karyn’s autopsy clearly suffered from a serious mental malady—it was determined that he “enjoyed” doing strange deeds to the recently deceased. Apparently, other corpses recently in his “care” that were not strangled were later found to have the exact same broken neck bone found in Karyn. To posit that it smells of foul play is a dramatic understatement—apparently he criminally assaulted the dead.

  It has also since been learned that Karyn was suicidal, was obsessively “over-the-top” regarding her relationship with Mr. Prine—she actually cut out words from magazines and composed threatening letters that she apparently mailed to him (sounds like scenes from a scary movie), was anorexic and a regular user of (or addicted to) amphetamines as a dietary method. Her own mother reportedly condoned the use of amphetamines for her for the purpose of keeping her weight down—a topic which unfortunately seems to have become yet another problem for Karyn to suffer through, i.e., dealing with a mother who was obsessively belittling and controlling her life.

  No one has investigated the death of Karyn Kupcinet harder than veteran researcher and writer Kathleen Collins. So rather than “re-inventing the wheel,” we went straight to Kathleen, who reconstructed the crime scene.

  Crime Scene

  Let’s look over the facts.

  On the crime scene, here it is, point-by-point:

  • Karyn’s body was found in her Hollywood apartment, in an advanced state of decomposition. She had obviously been dead for a few days.

  • She was found in the living room.

  • She was totally nude.

  • She was laying “stomach down” on the couch with her face on a pillow.

  • The television set was on.

  • There was no vomit present.

  1 Penn Jones, Jr.

  • There was a lamp and other household items that had been knocked over, many cigarette butts on the floor in the living room.

  • There were a lot of disturbances throughout the house; the whole home had been ransacked and was a mess, except for the bathroom where Karyn had apparently showered.

  • There was a towel on the floor of her bathroom that was determined to have been recently wet.

  • There was a bathrobe on a chair in the living room.

  • A hairbrush and her nightgown had been neatly placed on her bed.

  But basically, her apartment had been thoroughly trashed:

  Her apartment was messed up: cigarettes on the floor, clothes falling from drawers, closets open (showing a mink stole), the bed clothes torn from the bed revealing two twin beds shoved together.1

  Bear that in mind as it relates to the topic of suicide:

  Was she such a bad housekeeper that she left closet doors open, drawers with their contents trailing on the floor, bed clothes pulled halfway off the bed, revealing two twin beds pushed together; and 100 methamphetamines missing?2

  Then there’s the point about the perversions of the sicko medical examiner with the fondness for broken necks. But, upon examination of the circumstances, he knew this was a high-profile murder case. Karyn was an actress from a big celebrity family, her boyfriend (the key suspect) was an extremely popular actor and her friends were actors as well. It was an extremely high-profile case, followed nationally, especially by everyone in Chicago and Hollywood. It’s highly doubtful—whatever his perversions were with lesser known corpses—that the medical examiner would actually risk his entire career in molesting the corpse in such a high-profile case that was very much the talk of the town and the epicenter of a huge and very public police investigation.

  And if the case was so high-profile that our depraved medical examiner didn’t dare molest the corpse, then one would have to say that the broken hyoid bone effectively eliminates suicide.

  But burglary would not appear to be a motive either really; because they left the mink stole furs, which were very e
xpensive, hanging from the open closet (so they were visible to an intruder). It was determined that all that was apparently missing were about 100 pills from a container in the bathroom—the container had been left and was apparently a fresh prescription.

  You sure can’t swallow 100 pills without one heck of a lot of liquid. So we investigated what liquids were available. And get a load of this:

  1 Kathleen Collins, 19 Oct. 2010, Spartacus Educational: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=16754

  2 Kathleen Collins, 13 May 2007, Spartacus Educational: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=603&st=45

  The only thing in the room that was liquid was a sour cup of coffee on the other side of the room.1

  As far as what was “possible”; a person could conceivably have just taken water directly from the faucet in the bathroom or kitchen. But it is certainly not likely; especially with 100 pills.

  It’s also an acknowledged fact that female suicides are rarely found naked; Most suicide victims actually make a dramatic point of looking “presentable”—former soldiers, for example, even put on their “dress blues” or the dress uniform of their particular service. So that presents a strong reason that Karyn did not commit suicide.

  Therefore, the failure to put on her robe and laying down nude on the couch does not add up as far as suicide.

  There are other factors as well: The note she left was officially misinterpreted as a “suicide note.” She was actually listing the things she felt were wrong in her life—it was not a suicide note—she was not saying goodbye.

  Nor does the evidence at the scene conform with the possibility of accidental death.

  In light of the above facts and combined with the fact that a high-profile would keep our depraved medical examiner from any funny business, leads us logically to the point that suicide can be ruled out, and natural causes can be ruled out as well, which means that she was murdered.

  So let’s walk through the apparent last moments of Karyn’s life.

  She apparently laid out her red bathrobe on a chair prior to taking a shower. She then apparently showered and dried herself off—the way we know is because a “once-wet” towel was found on the bathroom floor, which is indicative that she had dried after showering. But she never put on her waiting bathrobe, which certainly would have been the next logical step. That is the precise point where there is a break in the logical progression of events. Something, therefore, apparently happened to break that chain of logic and distracted her attention between the time that she dried herself off with the towel and would have put on her bathrobe.

  Let’s look at what that “something” could have been:

  • A phone call?

  No, because had she answered the phone, she could have just pulled the bathrobe on while conversing.

  • A knock at the door?

  No, because had there been a knock at the door, she certainly would have put on her robe on the way to answering the door.

  • Dancing?

  Some have speculated that she may have been dancing nude, fallen, and broken her neck; there was a book in her home that reportedly included the topic of nude dancing and led to that speculation. But the book wasn’t found in the same room as Karyn’s body, and with all the difficulties she was quite apparently experiencing, it’s highly dubious that she would have been in a mood for naked joyful dancing. Above and beyond that, the television was on—and was still on days later when her body was finally discovered—and that wouldn’t seem conducive to some ritual type nude dancing.

  1 Kathleen Collins, 12/20/11, email to author

  There was also no vomiting, but 100 pills were missing—so it would appear that her killer emptied the pill bottle perhaps to stage it as a suicide, which—accompanied with the note that many have mistakenly termed a suicide note, effectively does look like one. To most, a suicide note and an empty pill bottle are sufficient in their minds to term it suicide. And the room was so messed up, with clothes scattered around, yet the bathroom was neat. That seems like staging with something amiss, as well.

  If she laid out her robe but did not put it on, that alerts us to the potential of an intruder in apartment.

  The only thing that does easily explain those actions is if there was someone in the apartment—if she realized that there was an intruder in the home, which would then explain why and how:

  1. She did not take the time to put on her bathrobe;

  2. Her neck was broken in a struggle with the intruder. That scenario is about the only one that adequately accounts for her totally nude body on the couch in her living room. Granted, it could be something else—but that’s the scenario of events that fits the evidence at the crime scene.

  Kathleen Collins, a specialist on the Kupcinet case, posits the following scenario:

  There was a once-dampened towel on the floor beside the bed. Her hairbrush was on the bed and a nightgown. She possibly went to the door or the living room. Someone came in, killed her, and then ransacked the house. The only room the cops found orderly was the bathroom. Inside the medicine chest the guy stole 100 Desoxyn methamphetamine pills and left the bottle. I believe he turned on the TV for light, in case someone thought KK was still awake. The state of her bedroom was different before than after. Before the murder she had neatly put her nightgown on the bed and a hairbrush. Would she ransack the bed while she was trying to go to bed? After her death, I believe, the house was ransacked, including the bed.1

  As Ms. Collins observed, both the manner of her broken neck and the blood evidence are consistent with the above scenario:

  There’s a way of killing people by grabbing them from behind, getting them in a choke hold in which they die in a few moments, as the brain is denied oxygen. She had flecks of blood on her face and a pillow—to me it sounds like she suffered some injury to her throat.2

  So, in all likelihood, Karyn was murdered. Then the question is: By whom? And the answer: We do not know. The next question: Is it connected to the JFK assassination? The answer to that one: We know the story about the mystery phone call having been made by Karyn is bogus. “Researcher Greg Parker figured out about the Oxnard call. It was not Karyn Kupcinet but a Rosicrucian ritual performed using the phone, called

  1 Kathleen Collins, 16 Sept. 2012, email to author.

  2 Ibid.

  radionics.”1 But—other very valid points remain. Her father was a very famous columnist who had very strong links to the Chicago Mob.

  Kathleen Collins also established that Karyn’s father knew Jack Ruby:

  Irv Kupcinet knew Ruby and worked closely with Jimmy Colitz, one of Ruby’s oldest and closest Chicago friends.2

  And, shortly after Ruby killed Oswald, Irv Kupcinet telephoned Mob-connected Paul “Red” Dorfman in Palm Springs:

  “Kupcinet was acquainted with Ruby and called up a mutual friend, Paul Dorfman (Mob connected), asking him questions about Ruby.3

  Irv Kupcinet was not just Chicago’s biggest newspaper columnist; he was an institution, an icon, Chicago’s most popular person; he knew everyone there was to know. He was also as tough a customer as there ever was; he grew up on the same tough streets that Jack Ruby did, running with gangs, getting into trouble, and using his fists. He was great at football, making it all the way to the NFL, where he starred for the Philadelphia Eagles until a serious injury abruptly ended his career.

  Then he went into his next love, which was journalism. . . . And he was just as tough as a reporter. He developed a reputation for getting to the facts and getting them to the people, come what may. And Chicago loved him for it. They loved him so much that the city built him a monument: A huge bronze statue of Irv Kupcinet welcomes everyone to Chicago.

  So he was very clearly not one to back off of a story. In fact, that was sort of a part of his legend: That Kup was afraid of no story. So that professional toughness was part of his reputation, a component of his popularity. But that changed after Jack Ruby shot Oswald and then his daughte
r, Karyn, was killed shortly afterwards:

  . . . Irv’s behavior after Karyn’s death and for the rest of his life seems that of a prominent yet incurious newspaper gossip and society columnist behaving as if he was under control by intimidation or other coercive influence.4

  Karyn was in Palm Springs the same weekend that Paul “Red” Dorfman was there. Karyn had gone with friends to sort of escape the madness following the death of President Kennedy. Dorfman was a big-time mobster with national connections and someone that Irv Kupcinet knew well:

  Recently, I found out that on the Assassination weekend, Karyn Kupcinet with friends and mobster Paul “Red” Dorfman were both in Palm Springs.

  1 Kathleen Collins, “Was Irv Kupcinet’s Role Obscured As A Consequence of Penn Jones’s Writing?,” 13 Oct. 2010, The Education Forum: http://educationforum.iphost.com/index.php?showtopic=16754

  2 Kathleen Collins, “Deaths of Witnesses,” The Education Forum: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=603&st=135

  3 Kathleen Collins, “Deaths of Witnesses,” 11 Dec 2005, The Education Forum: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=603&st=120

  4 Collins, “Deaths of Witnesses,” http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=603&st=135

  While there, Dorfman was tracked down by Irv Kupcinet who asked about Ruby shooting Oswald.1

  Irv Kupcinet had called Dorfman so quickly after Ruby shot Oswald that Dorfman was not even aware yet that it had happened and even questioned Kup’s information:

  This call came so quick, Dorfman didn’t even know Oswald had been shot. “‘Sparky’ would never do that,” he said.2