by Mark Shaw
Kilgallen reluctantly accepted Ray’s advice while promising Richard she would not see the singer again. The loss of Ray as her true love affected Kilgallen’s health and she did not appear on the couple’s radio program. When Richard, whose mental state was shaky at best, appeared drunk, the show was cancelled.
Despite Kilgallen’s promise to Richard, she continued to see Johnnie Ray. His biographer Jonny Whiteside wrote, “Johnnie and Dorothy began to meet out of New York City as much as possible.” Whiteside then quoted Jimmy Campbell, Ray’s musical director, regarding the specifics of a rendezvous in Washington D. C., writing, “We all went out that night and then came back to our hotel. John said, ‘I’ll call you when I’m finished....’ So about four hours later, I get a call [and he said], ‘I’m down in the bar, come on down and help me out of here, Jesus Christ, am I worn out.’” Campbell then added, “[Dorothy] loved him.”
At the time, or since, no one considered the full significance of the Kilgallen/Ray love affair other than how it had inflamed Richard to the point of threatening physical violence against Ray, the threat to kill him. Yes, Richard was drunk at the time but the reaction to seeing Ray fondling his wife and her reciprocating sent him into a rage. His jealousy must have exacerbated beyond comprehension indicating he could act violently if pushed to the limit, if somehow threatened by Kilgallen’s actions.
A clarification may be possible as to why Richard acted so violently toward Johnnie Ray. During his videotaped interview, Marc Sinclaire was asked why Kilgallen did not leave her husband. Sinclaire answered, “[She told me] she would never divorce Richard because he had been too kind to her.”
What did Kilgallen mean by this statement? A clue appears through Sinclaire’s further disclosures. Asked if Kilgallen was worried about youngest son Kerry within a month before she died, Sinclaire replied, “Yes, after a picture of Kerry appeared in the paper, a large picture of him alone in the middle of Central Park, she was very worried that Kerry would be kidnapped. Obviously, she didn’t allow that kind of picture to be taken and be put in the paper of him all alone playing baseball but he wasn’t even playing baseball, he was just running across a field means that someone was following him.” Sinclaire added, “[Kerry’s] name did not appear with it…[it was] frightening [to her] because he was alone.”
Confirmation of Sinclaire’s mention of Kilgallen’s concern for Kerry after the Central Park incident comes from the October 31, Halloween night 1965 What’s My Line? episode Guest panelist Steve Allen introduces Kilgallen by saying, “Her little boy is out trick or treating by limousine. How do you like that for class?” Sinclaire confirmed Kilgallen protected Kerry due the “threats and surveillance.” (www.youtube.com/watch?v=_T6XLJU
phyA&feature=youtu.be)
During the same conversation, Sinclaire said Kilgallen was concerned about people “spying on her.” Asked to explain, he said, “Yes, she knew that [was happening]. She wasn’t worried about the phones in the Cloop; she was worried about phones in the rest of the house. And she was carrying around a big packet of papers with her that she said pertained to the JFK assassination.”
Alarmingly, Kilgallen had other fears at the time. Sinclaire acknowledged that while he readied her for the What’s My Line? program, they often simulated the game. “I played it all the time [with her],” he said. “We would play the game, Donnell (Simpson) was there and we’d play the game around her.” Asked if Kilgallen mentioned threats on her life, Sinclaire answered, “Yes, she told me, this is a couple of weeks before she died, or maybe three or four weeks, I’m not sure of the time anymore. But she told me she was going to get a gun because her life was being threatened and she was scared for her life and for her family.”
Regarding a lengthy conversation two days before Kilgallen died, Sinclaire said, “I was at her house almost every night that week, the week before she died. She was worried about her life.… She said, ‘I have to get a gun because someone’s going to kill me.’ And I jokingly said, ‘Oh Dorothy, who would want to kill you?’ So that started a conversation. And then time elapsed over us talking about this and she said, ‘Well, I had to draw a new will.’”
Continuing, Sinclaire said, “It was embarrassing to talk about her death. But we were talking about it and she said, ‘I don’t know if Richard would take care of Kerry. He wouldn’t take care of Kerry, keep Kerry close to him, and so he was going to need money.’ She didn’t mention Jill and she didn’t mention Richard Jr. She didn’t mention any of those people. She just mentioned Kerry. She said she drew up a new will and that Kerry would have a different inheritance. The will was drawn up by her lawyer but I don’t know what happened to it or who knew about it.”
Sinclaire, with some hesitation, revealed a secret focused on who was Kerry’s real father. Asked again if Kilgallen would have divorced Richard, Sinclaire stated, “[the marriage] had been over for years. They would have stayed married. She would have never divorced him.” Asked why Kilgallen would not divorce Richard, Sinclaire elaborated by repeating, “I asked her why she didn’t divorce Richard and she said she could never do that to Richard, that Richard had been too kind to her. And I think that had something to do with Kerry.” Asked if Kilgallen ever told him that the dark-haired Richard was not Kerry’s father, Sinclaire said, “Yes, she did. She said that Johnnie Ray was the father of her youngest child.”
Regarding any resemblance between Ray and Kerry, Sinclaire stated, “Yes, I saw a strong resemblance, coloring, freckles, things like that.” This similarity in appearance coincides with Kilgallen describing Kerry in her TV Radio Mirror interview as a “husky, six-year-old with freckles across his nose who loves Dennis the Menace.” Also, in a September 1954 Good Housekeeping magazine article Kilgallen wrote about Kerry’s birth, her first sentence reads: “My baby has red-gold hair...”49
Sinclaire, arguably Kilgallen’s best friend and confidant regarding her innermost secrets, the friend she trusted the most, did not believe people in New York City knew the truth. He said, “And I think that [Ray being Kerry’s father] is what she was referring to when she said she couldn’t divorce Richard because Richard had done too much for her.” Asked if “Richard had to pretend to be Kerry’s father,” Sinclaire replied, “No, she never said that. And this was at the very end of her life that she told me this” while admitting later Kilgallen told him Richard had performed a “fatherly acting job.” Asked if she would have wanted him to repeat the story about Kerry being Ray’s son at the time, Sinclaire said, “Oh, no, I would never have repeated it and I’m very long in repeating it now. I’m not really sure why she told me that.”
If what Kilgallen told Sinclaire about Kerry being Johnnie Ray’s birth son, is true, this apparently meant Richard had raised Kerry—born when Kilgallen was 41 and when the couple was, as author Lee Israel explained, “going in separate directions on several levels” after 14 years of marriage—as his own son. He did so despite apparently knowing the truth or at least suspecting it to be the truth.
Kilgallen, whom friend Marlon Swing said was “smitten, overwhelmed by the electricity of [Ray’s] new [musical] style” as early as 195250, appeared to have no reason for birthing Richard’s child based on the marital discord and her lack of respect for her alcoholic husband with several accounts suggesting they no longer had sexual relations. Marc Sinclaire, in an audiotaped interview, alluded to this by stating, “I would imagine that anyone coming [into the home] would think Richard and Dorothy led a married life which they had ceased to do long before [the 1960s].” Sinclaire, asked when he learned Kilgallen and Ray had begun an affair, stated it happened when Sinclaire first moved to New York City at the “end of 1952.” Since Ray was gay and Sinclaire’s gay friends on Fire Island were proud of Ray’s accomplishment, they were quick to tell Sinclaire the couple was “meeting in hotels” while keeping the affair secret.
In Cry, author Johnny Whiteside, wrote, “Dick had shied away from performing his husband
ly duties for years resulting in a pent-up yearning which Dorothy released with stupendous, and increasingly careless, ardor.” Whiteside added that Ray told him, “God, she was starved for affection. Sometimes I didn’t know how to handle it.”
Another clue to recall is that “Dickie” and Jill had been born two years apart (1941 and 1943) and Kerry in 1954, eleven years later. It is thus logical to ask whether Kilgallen had intended to become pregnant, at least with Richard, at the advanced age of 41. If Sinclaire was right that her affair with Ray had begun as early as the latter part of 1952, it is possible that Kerry, born on March 19, 1954, was in fact Ray’s son.
Despite Richard ignoring his not being Kerry’s birth father, and instead helping raise Kerry, at some point, for whatever reason, Kilgallen became concerned Richard would not continue to “take care” of Kerry if she died. Whether Richard made this clear or not, is unknown. However, it appears some action on his part must have caused Kilgallen—at the time concerned enough that someone might kill her that she discussed buying a gun—to make sure Kerry was financially stable if she died, triggering her to tell Sinclaire she was drawing up a new will.
Those believing Ray was not Kerry’s father include Alan Eichler, Ray’s manager before he died. He told this author Ray never acknowledged Kerry as his son. There is also no specific mention of the matter in Jonny Whiteside’s biography, Cry (apparently written with Ray’s approval), or in Lee Israel’s Kilgallen biography. Israel does refer at one point to Kerry being “redheaded.” Johnnie Ray, fair-skinned, had light brown hair. A 1994 letter from Ray’s sister Elma to researcher Kathryn Fauble’s assistant denied Ray had fathered Kerry. 51
However, if what Sinclaire said Kilgallen told him is true and Kerry’s father was Johnnie Ray, and Richard knew it, this may explain the near-violent confrontation between Richard, Kilgallen and Ray resulting in Richard threatening to kill the singer. And it may be possible Ray never knew Kerry, six-years-old at the time the quarrel happened in 1960, was his son. Of interest is his saying, “And I thought about Kerry” during the confrontation. Why Ray only mentioned thinking about Kerry and not “Dickie” or Jill is unknown.
Most importantly, Kilgallen’s worry Richard would not care for Kerry and her love for her son makes her committing suicide unlikely. If anything, she would have wanted to remain alive to protect Kerry.
Regarding Kilgallen’s having a new will prepared, after the interviewer told Sinclaire that the NY Times reported Richard inherited everything, the hairdresser said, “Yes, I read that.” Asked if this meant the new will never surfaced, Sinclaire said, “Yes, that’s correct.” In a separate audiotaped interview, Sinclaire added, “[There’s] another will somewhere. Richard must have destroyed it.”
Sinclaire also divulged that two or three months before Kilgallen died, she visited Switzerland, a trip confirmed by family tutor Ibne Hassan. Sinclaire said, “[Before leaving] she set out some books and diaries and tapes and papers. And some jewelry. I think she had a safe deposit box in Switzerland.” He added, “The way I know about it is that the things were spread out on the bed. They were going into a suitcase.” Speculating on why she may have taken the items abroad with her, Sinclaire said, “She didn’t trust Richard financially. I don’t think she would have told him that she was going to do something financially in Europe.”
Research by this author regarding any new will, why Kilgallen took various personal items to Switzerland, and whether she had a safe deposit box there has not been fruitful. By a will signed in 1941, Richard inherited virtually everything. In 1966, Richard sold the townhouse for $290,000 [$2,100,000 in today’s dollars]. Dorothy’s various insurance policies provided Richard with another $90,000 and the three children shared $85,000 from a Goodson-Todman (production company for What’s My Line? ) profit-sharing dividend. No mention of any of Kigallen’s cash savings is included although Marc Sinclaire stated in a videotaped interview, “The money was there. Dorothy made a lot of money. We’re not talking about money in today’s terms; if it was put into today’s terms, it would be millions.”
Additional benefits to Richard after Kilgallen’s death (“benefits from the crime” if he was involved in her death) included royalties from Murder One! when it was published two years later. On the downside, when Kilgallen died, Richard was the one who lost the family wage earner since it was Kilgallen’s salary from What’s My Line? the Journal-American and other means that were paying the family bills. Still, even though Richard had no income, Sinclaire was surprised when Richard ended up marrying Anne Fogarty, Kilgallen’s acclaimed clothes designer. Sinclaire said in his videotaped interview, “I found that very strange. Certainly Dorothy didn’t know that Richard had any inklings toward Anne or Dorothy would have told me. And Anne wouldn’t have remained her friend although I don’t think Dorothy would have cared what Richard did.”
When asked why Richard, who knew his marriage was a failure by this time, seemed overly distraught when Kilgallen died, Sinclaire said bluntly, “He needed the income [she provided].” Regarding his reason for marrying Fogarty, Sinclaire said, “More income.”
The question is, was Kilgallen worth more to Richard dead or alive? In lieu of Richard’s shaky mental state, could his learning Kilgallen planned to change her will to protect Kerry have infuriated Richard enough that he might cause her harm? Did he realize he might be destitute if he was left out of the will causing him to consider evil actions towards his wife?
Perhaps Kilgallen had a premonition of some sort regarding Kerry’s well-being since on Kerry’s internet blog entitled “Testing the Waters” (kerryslifeblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/sweet-jane.html, viewed November 2015), he admitted being “thrown out of my house at age sixteen.” This would have happened around 1970 when Kerry was sent away, as he admitted to author Lee Israel in 1975, to a foster home, a cruel act that would have broken Kilgallen’s heart. Why Richard, who committed suicide a year later, kicked Kerry out of the house is unknown.
According to the same blog entries, relations between Richard and Kerry deteriorated on the day Kilgallen died. Kerry wrote that he returned home and, “as I entered the black room on the third floor, I sensed, even from behind him, my father’s misery. He sat as he always did, perched on the right side of one of the pair of black, silk-covered loveseats, his shoulders stooped and rounded, elbows leaning on his knees…hovering over a beer. He sipped one after the other.”
When Kerry reached out to his father, Kerry wrote, there was no contact. Kerry said he went upstairs and “sat on the edge of my bed thinking. I wondered what my father was thinking about. I wondered why he wouldn’t talk to me, particularly in this time of death and sadness. Didn’t one comfort their child when times were hard? Did he not even care about me? Or was it, perhaps, that he hurt so deeply, that he couldn’t find the words or even a gratuitous gesture. Could he not come out of himself long enough to offer a hug to his eleven-year-old son who had, after all, just lost his mother?” Summing up, Kerry had written, “This day would mark the beginning of the end of my respect for my father.” This may mean Kerry never knew what his mother told Marc Sinclaire, that Kerry’s father was really Johnnie Ray.
If so, Kerry learning of his mother’s intention to protect him if she died should warm his heart indicating a deep love for her youngest son. Her confiding in Sinclaire may have been the only divulging of the secret, one she shared with Richard but no one else.
Richard’s unsteady state of affairs apparently had extended through the days when he was married to Fogarty. Sinclaire, when asked whether Richard should have been more stable but instead continued to haunt NYC bars including the Madison Avenue Café, the hairdresser said, “It sounds like someone who is very unhappy about something.” When asked whether Richard’s shaky state of mind was indicative of a man who possessed “the secrets to the JFK assassination” through Kilgallen’s files (insinuating the information she had gathered could be valuable), Sinclaire said that
made little sense.
If Richard never confiscated the assassination file, then that “something” Richard was “unhappy about” could have been complicity in Kilgallen’s death. If it was, how involved was he?
Clues appear in author Lee Israel’s book and when considered with other evidence from both primary and secondary sources, there appears to be a plausible means by which Richard could have ended his wife’s life based on jealousy and greed, two common homicide motives. Certainly Richard had the opportunity to kill Kilgallen since not only was he in the townhouse at the time of her death but the servants had Sunday off and did not return until after 6:00 a.m. Monday morning. That meant, other than Kerry, and tutor and family companion Ibne Hassan—their rooms were on the 4th floor where noise from the third would have been difficult to hear—no one was present who could have witnessed Richard’s evil actions.
One may only speculate as to how Richard could have been complicit in Kilgallen’s death. However, the circumstances surrounding his drug use point to a plausible explanation since he was known to have ingested various barbiturates while continuing his alcoholic ways during the years prior to Kilgallen’s death.
The question then to be asked is what specific drugs were part of Richard’s daily ingestion? Clarity is provided by none other than Kerry Kollmar who told author Israel his father “had vats of pills around, containers of Tuinal large enough to pickle mice.” This suggests Richard certainly had the means by which to spike Kilgallen’s drink or trick her into taking more pills than her heart could stand since Tuinal was one of the drugs discerned in her blood stream. To this point, during March 1965 when Kilgallen was hospitalized for a fractured left shoulder, Pearl Bauer, an assistant to Kilgallen’s secretary Myrtle Verne, said “[Richard brought Kilgallen] pills and liquor that damn near killed her.”