By George W.Bailey
Oswald's Mother
Essays on the Assassination of JFK
Oswald's Mother
Essays on the Assassination of JFK
December 1, 2014
When her hairdresser found her she was
propped up in bed, still wearing her make-up, false eyelashes, false hairpiece,
and earrings. And one more thing–dead to this world. Her hairdresser and friend
Marc Sinclaire, found this odd, as she would normally never go to bed in this
condition. But that was not the only strange thing her hairdresser noticed when
he found the body. Dorothy was not wearing her regular pajamas, but instead a
blue matching peignoir and robe. A book was on her bed, a book she had finished
reading two weeks earlier. Her reading glasses, which she needed, were nowhere
nearby. She was found in the third floor bedroom of the townhouse. She always
slept in the fifth floor bedroom.
Her husband, Richard Kollmar was asleep
in the fourth story of the townhouse. He gave inconsistent accounts of what
happened that night. He claimed that Dorothy arrived home at 11:30 p.m., in
good spirits, and went off to write her column. But those who saw her in the
Regency lounge reported her being there far past midnight 2 a.m. Later, when
asked by friends about Dorothy’s JFK investigation, he replied, “I’m afraid
that will have to go to the grave with me.” And it did when Kollmar died of a
drug overdose in 1971.
Later, it would be discovered that her
JFK file that she had been compiling for years would go missing.
Today, Dorothy Kilgallen’s name will go
unrecognized by the current generation but she was at one time one of the first
of a new bread of celebrity journalists. By the mid-50s, she was the most
famous journalist in America, made even more apparent by her 15-year stint as a
panelist on the popular CBS show, What’s My Line. The events surrounding her
untimely and mysterious death have become intertwined with the lore of the
Kennedy assassination. She would be one of many suspicious deaths in the case.
She started her career in journalism at
the age of 17 covering crime stories and earned a reputation of good, thorough
reporter–someone that left no stone unturned. By 1950 her column was running in
146 papers, and reaping 20 million readers. Kilgallen’s style was a mixture of
gossip, movie star news, and politics.
As time went on her reporting got
closer to heart of power in this country. She was one of the first reporters to
imply, which we now know to be true, that the CIA was working with the mob to
assassinate Fidel Castro. Declassified documents show that the FBI was
monitoring Kilgallen’s activities since the 1930s while the CIA closely watched
her travels overseas.
Devastated by the news of John
Kennedy’s death (of whom she met on a White House tour with her son), Kilgallen
increasingly turned her attention, and her impressive crime investigation
skills, to the assassination of the president. Dorothy Kilgallen quickly made a
name for herself as one of the first (and few) people in the mainstream press
to question the Warren Commission report. Kilgallen pulled no punches as she
wrote the first article on the FBI’s intimidation of witnesses, interviewed
Acquilla Clemons a witness to the shooting of Officer J. D. Tippit whom the
Warren Commission never questioned (Clemons claimed to see two men at the scene
of the murder—none matching Oswald’s description), and was successful in
interviewing key figures such as Jack Ruby.
Kilgallen’s death has many mysterious
elements to it. The autopsy showed her to be in overall good health, but tests
found her to be over the legal limit for alcohol consumption. The cause of
death would be ruled as “acute ethanol and barbiturate intoxication,
circumstances undetermined.” In an odd turn of events, Dr. James Luke, a New
York City medical examiner that did the autopsy, did not sign the death
certificate. It was signed by another physician, Dr. Dominick DiMaio, who when
questioned, did not know why his name was appeared on the certificate, nor was
he working out of Manhattan at the time.
In 1968 a test using a new process
determined from saved tissue samples, proved that Dorothy Kilgallen died of
fatal mix of three barbiturates: secobarbital, amobarbital, and pentobarbital.
Kilgallen was not known as a drug user. She was spotted at the Regency hotel,
chatting with a stranger in a booth. Perhaps a source? Did this man slip a
mickey in her drink? Her favorite drink included the ingredient, quinine, which
can be used to mask the taste of barbiturates. The Regency was seven blocks
from her home and it is unknown how she got to the townhouse or what transpired
during this time. She apparently was not among friends in her final hours.
In 1975, Dorothy’s son Dickie, was
contacted by the FBI concerning his mother’s JFK papers. He told them the notes
were still missing. Notice that the FBI was interested in the papers at this
late date, after they had long decided that Oswald was the murderer of the president.
Why would they be so interested now
When those who go to murder, and desire
to make the victim’s death appear as a suicide, they all have one thing working
against them. They can never know enough about the intended victim’s personal
habits. In this case, if Dorothy Kilgallen’s death was a murder, the killers
were not aware of her favorite bedroom, her sleep attire, her need for reading
glasses, or for that matter, the book by her side was one that she had already
read.
So was she murdered? Like so many
tragic happenings like this the evidence for a murder is circumstantial. If she
was murdered, we’ll never know the names of the people who did it. They are
forever outside of our knowledge and justice system. Sometimes the bad guys
win. But, to answer the question, yes I do believe she was murdered. She knew
too much and most likely ticked off too many powerful people. Of course, there
is no way to prove a thing.
However, her JFK file remains missing.
In closing, here is a quote from the
FBI’s FOIA section on Dorothy Kilgallen:
“Ms. Kilgallen and Director Hoover
corresponded with each other. Miss Kilgallen printed information in her column
several times about cases involving the FBI, none of which were true. Dorothy
Kilgallen died in November 1965, from alcohol and barbiturates.”
(http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/dorothykilgallen.htm)
Interesting the way the government
takes this self-serving shot at someone who can no longer shoot back.
Reprinted
from Oswald’s
Mother Blogspot.
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