JFK’s motorcade, moments before the assassination.

According to the AP-GfK survey, conducted in mid-April, 59% of Americans think multiple people were involved in a conspiracy to kill the president, while 24% think Oswald acted alone, and 16% are unsure. A 2003 Gallup poll found that 75% of Americans felt there was a conspiracy.

As the 50th anniversary of Kennedy‘s death approaches, the number of Americans who believe Oswald acted alone is at its highest since the period three years after the Nov. 22, 1963 assassination, when 36% said one man was responsible.

Lee Harvey Oswald’s Mug Shot.

Those who were adults in 1963 were almost as likely as younger Americans to say that Kennedy‘s killing was a conspiracy involving multiple people — 55%, compared to 61%.

The Associated Press-GfK Poll was conducted April 11-15, 2013 by GfK Roper Public Affairs and Corporate Communications. It involved landline and cellphone interviews with 1,004 adults nationwide. Results for the full sample have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.9 percentage points; it is larger for subgroups.

Jack Ruby fatally shooting Oswald during a prisoner transfer, feeding speculation of a conspiracy.

What if John Kennedy had lived and Jackie Kennedy had succumbed to the conspiracy plot? Read SAVING JACKIE K, a thrilling adventure to rescue the First Lady.

Lee Harvey Oswald’s Mug Shot.

The residence at 1026 North Beckley Ave. in Dallas should attract some interest, as it has for half a century.

Oswald rented an elfin room there for a few months in 1963. That is, until he was arrested and charged with killing President John F. Kennedy and Dallas Police Officer J.D. Tippit.

Oswald’s rooming house at 1026 North Beckley Avenue.

With the 50th anniversary of those events drawing near, Owner Pat Hall plans to list the property for sale on June first. No word yet on an asking price. But she has a minimum in mind.

“It’s not going to be too low,” she said during a recent tour of the house. “I’m selling history here.”

Her grandmother Gladys Johnson bought the house in 1943 and lived there with her husband for years, renting rooms to single men.

Oswald’s landlady Gladys Johnson (left), and housekeeper Earlene Roberts (right).

On Oct. 14, 1963, a man identifying himself as O.H. Lee took her only available room, paying $8 a week including refrigerator and living room privileges.

“She must have really liked him,” said Hall, for most renters didn’t have refrigerator access.

And Oswald apparently liked children, she said, recalling how he would play ball with her brothers in front of the house.

In testimony for the Warren Commission investigating the Kennedy assassination, Johnson said the quiet and tidy tenant spent most weekends with his wife, Marina, and two daughters in the Irving home of Mrs. Ruth Paine. The landlady said he would keep “a half gallon of sweet milk – and lunch meat” in the refrigerator and occasionally watch television with other renters in the living room.

Oswald’s wife Marina lived in Irving, Texas, with friend Ruth Paine.

She also told of learning on Nov. 22 that her Mr. Lee was really Lee Harvey Oswald after seeing his picture “flash on the television” and talking with police officers who swarmed his room after his arrest at the Texas Theater in the fatal shooting of Tippit.

Slain Police Officer JD Tippit.

Oswald had returned to the house briefly after shooting Kennedy — hurriedly, the landlady later said — apparently to retrieve a pistol. Officers found an empty holster in his room, Johnson testified.

“She was ashamed and humiliated that this house was associated with him,” Hall said.

The kitchen stove dates to Oswald days. The living room’s reupholstered couch, rocking chair, coffee table, book shelves and fireplace heater remain from the times Oswald sat there watching television.

Above a donation box near the front door, a sign still solicits support: Help Restore the Lee Harvey Oswald Room & Beckley Rooming House.

“This is it,” said Hall, chuckling as she walked into the Oswald quarters near the dining room, minus the French doors Oswald used for privacy.

Pat Hall stands in the same spot in Lee Harvey Oswald’s old room where her grandmother Gladys Johnson was photographed by Life magazine.

But Hall is restoring it for the sale. She has repaired walls and hopes to paint them the green of 1963. She plans to refinish the wooden floor, measuring 5½ feet by 14 feet, and return blinds to the four windows. Oswald’s metal twin bed is back in place. A drawered closet will be returned from storage.

The property, the 2,078-square-foot house and rear building, is valued on the tax rolls at $65,830. No telling what offers the 78-year-old, red-roofed house with its window air-conditioning, trellised porch and often-told story will attract.

Hall hopes a buyer will preserve the house, particularly the interior areas where Oswald spent time. “I’d like them to maintain it as it is so young people can come, history buffs can come and see what it was like to live in 1963.”

JFK and Jackie Kennedy, minutes before the assassination in Dallas.

But first to find that buyer.

Real estate agent Vo Singhal will represent Hall. He will screen inquiries, he said, and try to protect Hall’s privacy.

“When this goes public, I don’t want to spend my time batting off lookie-loos,” Hall said.

Hall and Singhal would just as soon see a bidding war break out. And if she doesn’t get that bottom dollar?

“There’s a Plan B. Definitely.”

Oswald was in turn murdered two days after the assassination, by nightclub owner Jack Ruby.

Nightclub owner Jack Ruby fatally shoots Lee Oswald during a police transfer.

What if John Kennedy had lived and Jackie Kennedy had succumbed to the conspiracy plot? Read SAVING JACKIE K, a thrilling adventure to rescue the First Lady.

Marina Oswald

New Historical Thriller Saving Jackie K contains many scenes with accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. But the novel also takes a look at his young bride, a woman whom he married in Russia and brought to the United States.

Marina Prusakova was born in Molotovsk, Russia in 1941. When she turned sixteen, she to moved Minsk to live with her uncle, and gained employment as a hospital pharmacy worker.

In March of 1961, nineteen-year-old Marina met twenty-one-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald at a dance hall. Oswald had defected from the US to Russia, and was living and working in Minsk. Six weeks later in April 1961, the two were wed. Little is known about Marina’s motivation to marry Lee; however, he indicated in his Historic Diary that he married Marina to make another girlfriend jealous.

Ten months later, Marina gave birth to daughter, June, in February of 1962. But Lee Oswald had become bored and disillusioned with life in the USSR. Despite the fact that his wife barely spoke English, Oswald returned to the US with his family by the summer of 1962.

The Oswalds moved several times between Texas and Louisiana as Lee tried unsuccessfully to hold down a job. They eventually landed in the Dallas area, where they had a unique living arrangement. While Oswald rented a room in a boarding house in Oak Cliff, Marina lived in Irving with her friend, Mrs. Ruth Paine. Since Mrs. Paine had been studying and speaking Russian for several years, the situation benefited Marina, who spoke little English.

In October of 1963, Oswald eventually gained employment at the Texas School Book Depository in Dealey Plaza, and Marina gave birth to a second daughter, Rachel.

Marina was with Mrs. Paine on November 22, 1963 when they heard the news that the president had been assassinated. In an interview some time later, Marina described her reaction to the news: She groaned and bit her lip before admitting in halting English, “Ruth Paine told me that somebody from Lee work, from the School Book Depository shot, mm, uh, president, and you know, my heart go down because I think . . . because maybe this was Lee.”

According to Mrs. Paine, Marina also remarked on the tragedy for the Kennedy family, “What a terrible thing this is for Mrs. Kennedy and for the two children. Now the two children will have to grow up without the father.”

Two days later, Lee Harvey Oswald was murdered on live television by nightclub owner Jack Ruby. Marina’s children, too, were left to grow up without their father.

Enter Saving Jackie K, an upside-down world where Soviet henchmen botched their mission to eliminate John F. Kennedy fifty years ago, slaying his wife Jackie instead. The unthinkable crime incites Americans and triggers an unending war with Russia . . .

JFK Assassination Suspects – Ruth Paine

In 1963, Mrs. Ruth Paine was living in Irving, Texas in a tiny white ranch house dwarfed by a sprawling live oak tree on the front lawn. The mini-kitchen inside contained not only a stove and refrigerator, but also a washing machine and ironing board. Separated from her husband, the Quaker woman lived with her two toddlers, Lynn and Christopher.

Through a desire to improve East-West relations in the world community, Mrs. Paine studied the Russian language for several years, and participated in a Soviet pen-pal program sponsored by the Quakers. Because of her interest in speaking Russian, Mrs. Paine was invited to a party in February of 1963, where she met Lee Harvey Oswald and his wife, Marina. Oswald had learned the foreign language on his own, and married Marina, a Russian girl, during the time when he defected to the USSR.

New Conspiracy novel Saving Jackie K includes information about real-life suspects and witnesses. But what about people who were involved on the sidelines?

Mrs. Paine and Marina, another young mother, became fast friends. When it became clear that Marina needed a place to stay, Mrs. Paine invited her and her two infant children to live in the Paine home, despite the cramped quarters in the two-bedroom house. Although Marina barely spoke English, Mrs. Paine favored the arrangement as way to practice her Russian skills. Meanwhile, Lee Oswald rented an elfin room in Dallas under an assumed name—Mr. O.H. Lee—a fact he kept hidden from his wife.

On the Sunday before the presidential assassination, Mrs. Paine dialed Oswald’s rooming house at 1026 North Beckley Avenue, at the request of Marina. “Is Lee Oswald there?” A man answered the phone and reported that there was no such person living there. The next day, Oswald called his wife, furious that she might have revealed his true identity. He didn’t want his landlady to know his real name because she might read in the newspapers that he had lived in the Soviet Union and had been questioned by the FBI.

On the night before the assassination, Mrs. Paine spent time sitting in her garage, painting alphabet blocks for her children. She was unaware that Lee Harvey Oswald’s bolt-action Mannlicher-Carcano rifle lay rolled up in a blanket on the floor.

On November 22, when Mrs. Paine learned that the president had been shot, she lit several candles. Marina asked her if it was a way of praying. Mrs. Paine said it was, in her own way.

In an interview after the assassination, Mrs. Paine described Lee Harvey Oswald: “I thought of him as a dissenter, a pamphlet passer, a person not contented with society as it was nor with himself . . . He certainly had very little training, so that he was not able to get jobs that interested him . . . He was not a particularly capable person.”

Enter Saving Jackie K, an upside-down world where Soviet henchmen botched their mission to eliminate John F. Kennedy fifty years ago, slaying his wife Jackie instead. The unthinkable crime incites Americans and triggers an unending war with Russia . . .

Dallas Police Officer

J.D. Tippit

Born in Clarksville, Texas in 1924, Police Officer J.D. Tippit was a devoted family man, a husband, and a father of three. At the age of twenty, as World War II battled on, Tippit enlisted in the army and earned a Bronze Star for combat duty. Upon his honorable discharge, he returned home and married his high school sweetheart, Marie Gasway. The veteran and his bride had three children: Allan, Brenda, and Curtis.

After working at farming and other jobs, J.D. Tippit moved his family to Dallas and joined the police force. In one memorable incident in 1956, he and his partner encountered a crazed man at a downtown club. When the visibly drunk patron drew a semi-automatic pistol, they were forced to shoot the man to protect innocent bystanders. Officer Tippit received a Certificate of Merit Award for outstanding judgment and quick thinking.

J.D. Tippit didn’t shirk his responsibilities as a provider, either. By 1963, in addition to working full-time on the police force, he was moonlighting as a bouncer at Austin’s Barbecue on weekends. He also provided security services at the Stevens Theater on Sunday afternoons.

Historical Thriller Saving Jackie K blends fact and fiction to chronicle the tragic assassination of President John F. Kennedy. But the novel also examines the story of another innocent man who was shot to death in Dallas on November 22, 1963.

When JFK was shot, all the downtown patrol squads were ordered to report to the Texas School Book Depository at Elm and Houston. The dispatcher then instructed Tippit—in the residential area—to cover central Oak Cliff and remain at large for any emergencies.

At approximately 1:15 pm, as Officer Tippit cruised down Tenth Street just past Patton Avenue, he spied a man who resembled the suspect in the president’s assassination. The description: a white male, weighing 165 pounds, five-foot-ten, in his early thirties; had been broadcast to all on-duty officers. J.D. stopped the car and had a short conversation through the passenger window. Officer Tippit exited the squad car and headed toward the front of the vehicle. According to several eyewitnesses, Lee Harvey Oswald shot him four times at point blank range, killing the thirty-nine-year-old dedicated law enforcement professional.

The sudden and heinous violence left a widowed wife and fatherless children to grieve as they tried to imagine life without their devoted J.D.—husband, father, and hero.

Enter Saving Jackie K, an upside-down world where Soviet henchmen botched their mission to eliminate John F. Kennedy fifty years ago, slaying his wife Jackie instead. The unthinkable crime incites Americans and triggers an unending war with Russia . . .

• When Kennedy entered the Oval Office, he acquired and renamed the presidential yacht, previously used by Eisenhower. He called her Honey Fitz—the nickname of his beloved maternal grandfather, John Francis Fitzgerald, a two-time mayor of Boston. And as Kennedy enjoyed the yacht on the Potomac and in Newport and Palm Beach, Honey Fitz became part of the lore of Camelot.

, ,

What if John Kennedy had lived and Jackie Kennedy had succumbed to the conspiracy plot? Read SAVING JACKIE K, a thrilling adventure to rescue the First Lady.

Fashion Icon

Saving Jackie K is an action-adventure novel that springs from a dark premise – what if the political assassins killed Jacqueline Kennedy instead of her husband?

In the real world, Jacqueline Kennedy was renowned as a fashion icon for women all over the world. She retained French-born American fashion designer and Kennedy family friend Oleg Cassini in the fall of 1960 to create an original wardrobe for her as First Lady.

From 1961 to late 1963, Cassini dressed her in many of her most iconic ensembles, including her Inauguration Day fawn coat and Inaugural gala gown as well as many outfits for her visits to foreign countries. Her clean suits with a skirt hem down to middle of the knee, three-quarter sleeves on notch-collar jackets, sleeveless A-line dresses, above-the-elbow gloves, low-heel pumps, and famous pillbox hats were an overnight success around the world. Although Cassini was her primary designer, she also wore ensembles by French fashion legends such as Chanel, Givenchy, and Dior.

Ann Lowe designed Jackie’s wedding dress – a dramatic portrait-neck gown with an exaggerated hourglass shape, and pleating details fashioned into flowers and a tiered hemline.

Jackie wore her grandmother’s bridal veil at her wedding to Jack Kennedy.

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JFK with Jacqueline Kennedy in a white silk gown and cape for the inaugural ball. Ethel Frankau of Bergdorf Custom Salon designed and made the dress based on sketches and suggestions from Mrs. Kennedy.

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Jacqueline Kennedy in a gown by Oleg Cassini en route to an inaugural concert in 1961.

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Jackie wearing a pink and white straw lace dress designed by Oleg Cassini at an Elysee Palace reception during their official visit in Paris, France.

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The President and First Lady attend the premiere of the play “Mr. President” at the National Theatre in DC.

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Jackie Kennedy at the Palace of the Maharajah in Udaipur, India during a state visit, wearing a fitted silk apricot dress by designer Oleg Cassini.

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First Lady Jackie Kennedy in blue dress and hat walking with Indian Prime Minister Jawarhalal Nehru in the garden of his residence in New Delhi.

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President and Mrs. Kennedy with the 1961 White House Christmas tree.

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Attending a dinner for the president of the Ivory Coast.

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The pink Chanel suit Jackie wore on the day her husband was assassinated in 1963 became a lasting image of the decade.

• Jackie K Home
  
• Jackie K Fashion
  
• Jackie K White House Tour
  

Enter Saving Jackie K, an upside-down world where Soviet henchmen botched their mission to eliminate John F. Kennedy fifty years ago, slaying his wife Jackie instead. The unthinkable crime incites Americans and triggers an unending war with Russia . . .

]]> http://www.ldcfitzgerald.com/jackie-kennedy-fashion-icon/feed/ 0 http://www.ldcfitzgerald.com/jfk-assassination-suspects-lee-harvey-oswald/ http://www.ldcfitzgerald.com/jfk-assassination-suspects-lee-harvey-oswald/#comments Thu, 02 May 2013 13:54:23 +0000 author http://www.ldcfitzgerald.com/?p=2152 JFK Assassination Suspects – Lee Harvey Oswald

JFK Assassination Suspects

- Lee Harvey Oswald

On October 18, 1939, a boy who would become infamous was born in New Orleans to a recent widow. Lee Harvey Oswald’s father had died two months before his birth, forsaking him to a virtually unsupervised childhood as the youngest of three brothers. Oswald’s oblivious mother, Marguerite Oswald, later boasted of her truant son, “I consider that normal . . . playing hooky from school. Many, many boys do this.”

Days after his seventeenth birthday, Oswald enlisted in the US Marine Corps, following in the footsteps of his idolized brother, Robert. The young military enlistee was deployed in Japan and various locations in the South Pacific. Like all marines, he learned to shoot, and earned the distinction of Marksman, a level below that of Sharpshooter.

Oswald had already declared himself to be a Marxist by the age of fifteen, and while in military service he dedicated his free time to the unusual hobby of learning to speak and read Russian. In September 1959 he received a hardship discharge from active service, claiming his ailing mother needed his assistance.

His self-taught rudimentary Russian skills proved to be part of a longer-term plan when in October 1959, the twenty-year-old defected to the USSR. After an apparent suicide attempt, he was granted a menial job at the Gorizont Electronics plant in Minsk. He received a stipend and an apartment. He married a Russian girl he had known for six weeks, Marina Prusakova, in an effort to make another girlfriend jealous. In Oswald’s Historic Diary penned in the Soviet Union, he wrote, “In spite of (the) fact I married Marina to hurt Ella, I found myself in love with Marina.”

After two and a half years, Oswald grew bored with the Spartan life in Russia, writing, “I am starting to reconsider my desire about staying. The work is drab, the money I get has nowhere to be spent. No nightclubs or bowling alleys, no places of recreation except the trade union dances. I have had enough.” Together with his wife and infant daughter, he returned to the US.

Oswald bounced around, living in various locations in Texas and Louisiana. After gaining some notoriety by passing out leaflets in New Orleans for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, he was interviewed by local press. He announced his political affiliations: “I will very definitely say that I am a Marxist, that is correct. But that does not mean, however, that I am a communist.”

The Oswalds wound up in the Dallas area, where Lee found work at the Texas School Book Depository in Dealey Plaza. Another daughter was born to the young couple, but Lee did not live with his family. He rented an elfin room in Oak Cliff, while Marina resided in Irving with her friend, Mrs. Ruth Paine.

According to the Warren Commission Report, Lee Harvey Oswald brought his bolt-action Mannlicher-Carcano rifle to work on the morning of November 22, 1963. As the president’s motorcade passed in front of the Book Depository, Oswald fired three shots out of the sixth floor window, injuring Texas Governor John Connally, and mortally wounding President John F. Kennedy. The alleged assassin then engaged in an ill-conceived escape plan where in quick succession, he rode a bus, then a taxi, to the vicinity of his boarding house. After retrieving a pistol, he gunned down a police officer JD Tippit in cold blood, and retreated to a movie theater where he was arrested.

While being transferred to the county jail two days later, Oswald himself was fatally shot by nightclub owner, Jack Ruby. After his funeral, Oswald’s mother Marguerite inexplicably announced, “Lee Harvey Oswald, my son, even after his death, has done more for his country than any other living human being.”

Cinematic new thriller, Saving Jackie K exposes the secrets of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In real life, the Warren Commission accused social misfit and loner Lee Harvey Oswald of committing the atrocity.

Enter Saving Jackie K, an upside-down world where Soviet henchmen botched their mission to eliminate John F. Kennedy fifty years ago, slaying his wife Jackie instead. The unthinkable crime incites Americans and triggers an unending war with Russia . . .

]]> http://www.ldcfitzgerald.com/jfk-assassination-suspects-lee-harvey-oswald/feed/ 0 http://www.ldcfitzgerald.com/jfk-assassination-suspects-jack-ruby/ http://www.ldcfitzgerald.com/jfk-assassination-suspects-jack-ruby/#comments Wed, 01 May 2013 05:53:38 +0000 author http://www.ldcfitzgerald.com/?p=2148 Jack Ruby

New novel Saving Jackie K discusses the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Lee Harvey Oswald was accused of murdering JFK, but didn’t live to stand trial. Jack Ruby gunned him down two days after his arrest. Who was Ruby? Was he involved in a conspiracy? Why did he kill Oswald?

Born in Chicago of Polish immigrant parents, Jacob Rubenstein legally changed his name to Jack Ruby in 1947, the same year he moved to Texas. A lifelong bachelor, Ruby owned and operated two Dallas nightspots—the Carousel Club, a downtown nightclub featuring striptease dancers, and the Vegas Club, a rock-and-roll establishment in the Oaklawn section of Dallas. Although a friend to local law enforcement, the hot-tempered Ruby allegedly had ties to organized crime.

On the day of the Kennedy assassination, Jack Ruby went about his customary business. While visiting the advertising offices of the Dallas Morning News to submit his regular weekend ad, he heard the gut-wrenching news that his president had been shot.

Two days later, on November 24, 1963, Jack Ruby entered the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters, where Lee Harvey Oswald was being escorted to an armored car for the journey to a county lock-up. Bypassing a cordon of police officers, Ruby shot Oswald in the abdomen, an act inadvertently captured on live television by reporters filming the prisoner transfer.

Ruby was convicted of Oswald’s murder and spent his remaining days in prison. He disavowed any participation in a conspiracy plot: “I am as innocent regarding any conspiracy as any of you gentlemen in the room.” His lawyers appealed his death-sentence conviction on grounds of lack of a fair trial in Dallas, but Ruby expired from lung cancer while waiting for a new court date.

Conspiracy theorists allege that the Mafia ordered Ruby to kill Oswald in order to ‘silence’ him. Ruby himself claimed he wanted to spare JFK’s widow, Jackie Kennedy from the trauma of testifying at Oswald’s trial: “I felt somehow in my little bit of a way I could save Mrs. Kennedy the ordeal of coming back for trial here.”

]]> http://www.ldcfitzgerald.com/jfk-assassination-suspects-jack-ruby/feed/ 0 http://www.ldcfitzgerald.com/jfk-assassination-suspects-richard-m-nixon/ http://www.ldcfitzgerald.com/jfk-assassination-suspects-richard-m-nixon/#comments Tue, 30 Apr 2013 13:51:40 +0000 author http://www.ldcfitzgerald.com/?p=2143 JFK Assassination Suspects – Richard M Nixon

JFK Assassination Suspect Richard Milhous Nixon

Born in 1916 in Yorba Linda, California, Richard Nixon grew up in a poor Quaker family, the second youngest of five boys. He survived the hardship of his youth to earn acceptance at prestigious Ivy League, Harvard—where JFK ultimately was schooled. But with both poverty and illness plaguing his siblings, Nixon ended up relegated to Whittier, the local California Quaker college instead. He went on to achieve a Law Degree from Duke University.

In his early political career, Nixon was elected first a US Representative, then a US Senator, from his home state of California. In 1952, presidential candidate Dwight Eisenhower chose Nixon as his running mate. A young Republican staunchly opposed to communism, Nixon also hailed from one of the most populous states, thus positioning him as a potential vote-winner.

After eight years of serving as VP alongside Ike, Nixon threw his hat into the 1960 presidential election. During the first-ever televised candidates’ debate, Nixon appeared tired and pale after recovering from a two-week hospital stay. He also refused to wear make-up. In contrast, JFK looked healthy and tan. Subsequent polls revealed that listeners on the radio tended to declare Nixon the victor, while those who watched on TV favored Kennedy. Nixon ultimately lost the election by one of the narrowest margins in history.

Then, in 1962, Nixon suffered another political defeat. Democrat Pat Brown won the governorship of California over a humiliated Nixon. Angered by the perceived liberal bias of the media, Nixon lashed out during his concession speech, “You won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.”

The beaten politician subsequently joined the New York law firm of Nixon, Mudge, Rose, Guthrie & Alexander, located in Manhattan. His clients from Pepsi-Cola invited him to a reception in Dallas, on the eve before what would become JFK’s fatal motorcade. After attending the party, the next day Nixon boarded a plane at Love Field Airport in Dallas, around the same time Kennedy was landing in Air Force One. Nixon flew home to New York, to Idlewild Airport in Queens. The airport would later be renamed JFK in Kennedy’s honor.

Nixon remarked that he learned of the president’s death while riding home in a cab from Idlewild Airport.

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Saving Jackie K chronicles the bitter rivalry between JFK and Richard Nixon. Was losing the presidential election to Kennedy by a small margin enough to warrant an assassination plot?

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