| In
this excerpt from a 1981 interview with Joe Franklin, Johnnie Ray
(well known singer at the time and close friend of Kilgallen's)
comments upon Lee Israel's biography of Dorothy Kilgallen.
YouTube
- Johnnie Ray 1981 TV Clip (1)
The
mystery of Dorothy Kilgallen's death is commented upon somewhat
intriguingly by Johnnie Ray in this fourth and final consecutive
clip from the interview with Joe Franklin
YouTube
- Johnnie Ray 1981 TV Clip (4)
The
Death of Dorothy Kilgallen
“The Carl Sandburgs of the
future will spend whole lifetimes trying to analyze the drama of
this week and this scene. What it all comes down to—after the
assassination of a president, the wounding of a governor, the
slaying of a policeman, and the killing of a man nobody really knew—is
little Jack Ruby.”—Syndicated columnist Dorothy Kilgallen,
February 1964
The Jack Ruby Trial Revisited The Diary of Jury
Foreman Max Causey
One
of the early victims of the JFK conspiracy of silence, better yet
"silencing" in the aftermath of JFK'S murder, was the
noted reporter, columnist and television celebrity, Dorothy
Kilgallen. I had watched her for years on "What's My
Line?", not realizing that she had any involvement with
the JFK story. Years later, I learned that she had broken the
convention of silence in the press and written openly in her column
about discrepancies in the official story. Suddenly she was dead.
On November 8, 1965, Dorothy Kilgallen, was found dead in her
apartment shortly after returning from Dallas where she had
interviewed Jack Ruby and had conducted her own investigation of the
JFK murder during several trips to cover the Ruby trial.
She had revealed secret transcripts of Ruby's testimony in her
column. Kilgallen had met with Ruby. She had learned of a meeting
three weeks before the assassination at Ruby's "Carousel",
the Dallas underworld's merry-go-round where the "Big D"
mobsters wheeled around.
Present at the meeting were Ruby, Officer J.D. Tippit, Bernard
Weismann and, she would later learn, a fourth party [Lamar Hunt-editor.].
Lee Israel, author of "Kilgallen", reports
that that Ruby, himself a TV fan of Dorothy Kilgallen, had taken a
liking to her during the trial. According to Israel, he respected
her more than any other reporter. She had gained his confidence and
had several conversations with him in the courtroom. She was given a
five minute session alone with Ruby. Some writers have stretched
this to a half-hour, others deny it.
Regardless, it is a fact that when Dorothy returned to New York,
she told friends that she had discovered that Ruby and the slain
Officer J.D. Tippit had been friends. They had been seen together in
Ruby's Carousel Club at a meeting 2 weeks before the assassination
in the company of Bernard Weissman, who had placed the "JFK-Wanted
for Treason" newspaper ad in Dallas newspapers on November
22nd, 1963. Studying the Warren Commission Report, Killgallen
deduced that the meeting had also been reported to Chief Justice
Warren AND that the identity of "the fourth man", which
she had been unable to ascertain, had been reported to Warren as
"a rich Texas oil man", as Earl Warren described him in
the official transcript. [This man was Lamar Hunt, the Texas oil
baron. Yet another man involved in both the assassination
foreknowledge and in the oil business, but not at the meeting, was
George H. W. Bush - future CIA director and future president.]
She told Israel that she had discovered something that was going
to break the whole JFK assassination mystery wide open. She told the
same story to her next door neighbor, her hairdresser, her agent,
her publisher, and the producer and host of "Nightlife".
Kilgallen had told Israel about a very mysterious and sinister
player in the JFK assassination to whom she gave the code name
"ferret man". From the description of the individual, it
is clear that "ferret man" was none other than David
Ferrie, another known associate of Jack Ruby involved in gun
running, the Marcello mob and other anti-Castro operations from
Florida to Texas. At one time, Ruby and Ferrie were co-owners of an
airplane.
Nightlife's producer, Nick Vanoff, pleaded with her not to broach
the subject on the air. She had arrived at the studio with a folder
full of pertinent and explosive notes documents. She kept the folder
closed throughout the interview. Vanoff, asked her agent, Bob Bach,
to send her "a dozen long-stemmed roses."
On
Sunday November 8, Dorothy Kilgallen was found dead in this
building, sitting fully dressed, upright in bed, early in the
morning. The New York City Police investigated and the coroner found
that Dorothy Kilgallen had died from ingestion of a lethal
combination of alchohol and barbituates. All her notes and the
article on which she had been working to "blow the JFK
assassination wide open" also disappeared.
What did Kilgallen know? The convention of silence continued. The
New York Times noted the coroner's report. The Daily News noted it
as well. Of course, the Journal American took note but nowhere did
you read any reference to her Dallas trips nor her investigation
into the murder of JFK at the high point of her own career. Every
nostalgic memory of her in the Press was a fond one of "What's
My Line?".
They all abandoned her, no one asked a question publicly. Not
John Daly, not Bennett Cerf. No one in the press could be bothered
about someone, even someone famous, who had died nearly by her own
hand. Indeterminate causes can mean many things and
"causes" is plural.

Marilyn Monroe and Dorothy Kilgallen
It was only the year before the murder of JFK that
no one had questioned the death of Marilyn
Monroe on the other side of the continent, who had also died of a
barbiturate overdose, by her own hand.
Neither her diary, nor her notes for her press conference, nor
her "suicide note" were ever found. Only Joe D. cared,
courageous enough to say, "Those bastards, they killed
her."
Recent reports indicate that whoever sent "those
bastards" apparently killed Marilyn by mistake. Many believe
she was going to reveal the government's Castro assassination
attempts (divulged to her by RFK) or the Kennedy mob connections or
her love affair with JFK, when, according to recent reports (Cosmopolitan
Magazine, 1996), she was actually going to announce her
remarriage to Joe DiMaggio.
The press continued its pseudo-patriotic posture, in today's
parlance, "politically correct" posture, benign neglect by
design. Things were getting eerie for the Fourth Estate. The Fourth
Estate had been transported to "The Twilight Zone".
Both reporters and witnesses were dying. The Press hardly noticed.
Things were getting bad. Penn Jones wrote "Forgive My
Grief" to chronicle the continuing string of strange
deaths which followed the freight train of the Warren Commission
Report, which railroaded Oswald, with its strong box of secrets
sealed till the year 2039.
We could still watch "What's My Line?" but
there was something strange about the show. John Daly was stiff,
Bennett Cerf, Arlene Francis and others were just as wooden and
flat. Forced mirth is not worth watching.
It's painful living in fear, says Leon to Deckker in "Blade
Runner."
A dark cloud, a shadow, if you will, hung over the show.There was
a Void: hollow, empty, voiceless. TV fans missed her. Things got yet
worse! Penn Jones had to write "Forgive My Grief II".
Witnesses were still dropping like flies as Jones recorded No. 5,
No. 56...No.67, No. 68. Some of us didn't believe The Official
Story, even without knowing of her trips to Dallas for another 20
years. It was too incongruous to believe that the person I had seen
just the night before and again that very afternoon, so alive, so
intelligent, so bright with life, could have died so pitifully, so
quickly.
I beg to differ with the disinformed current opinion of those
today who never saw her, but to my TV eyes, Dorothy Kilgallen was
not some stupified, alcoholic lush addicted to barbiturates. In all
those years on television, I never saw her manifest any signs of
slurred speech, sluggishness, lethargy, or uncoordinated speech or
movement, though others may differ on this. She always spoke with
the utmost courtesy, composure and graciousness. She had a way
of asking one question which could extract three pieces of
information.

The cast of What's My Line?'
Dorothy is in the back row, centered.
The Media's Convention of Silence
"On a need to know basis" came into our vocabulary and
an apparently craven press was caving in to "higher
powers". The press now written with a little "p",
neutered and rechristined "The Media", really didn't
"need" to know, it was learning how not to ask the right
questions.
Broad and broader flowed a whole brook of Warren Commission
"white lies" and unanswered questions, which soon wound
its way to another bend, then a twist of the facts, finally,
widening into a whole river allowed to flow unimpeded and
unquestioned.
Things got still worse! Penn Jones had to write "Forgive
My Grief - Part III."...No.77, No. 78... As more and more
people died or disappeared, a bridge of silence was erected over the
river of questions which proceeded from the brook of the Warren
Commision's "white lies". The press, politically correct
as always, developed a polite disinclination to know. The press
preferred to take the long way around.
The press, under duress after Dorothy's death, had learned
("been taught" may be more apt) to avoid even approaching
The Bridge of Silence for, as Dorothy Kilgallen had shown, the toll
for crossing it was very high.
And so, ...my fellow Americans...Ask not......For whom the bell
tolls...it tolls for us.
Not a murmur was heard much less a dissenting word from the
myrmidons of political correctness. They had all abandoned Dorothy.
In 1964, CBS had televised "The Wizard of Oz."
"Ignore the man behind the curtain! The Great and Powerful
Oz has spoken" screamed the Wizard of Oz, and the press obeyed.
The Great and Powerful Oz and his henchmen had hoodwinked the
whole country. Viet Nam was hard core reality. The Viet Cong had a
tete-a-tete with the Johnson Administration. If things were bad
before, consider the consternation of the nation when Penn Jones
published "Forgive My Grief IV." People finally
started to notice but the press continued to ignore "the man
behind the curtain".
However, a few hundred scarecrows with hay for brains that said
the "magic bullet" was "magic BS", tinmen with
no hearts to give up JFK or the Truth so easily, and scores of
cowardly lions who would give their lives, like Dorothy Kilgallen,
in order to bring the truth about the heinous murders to the
American people continued the arduous work of "reverse
engineering" the Warren Commission Report in order to find the
Truth about "Who struck John?". They were the progenitors
of Posner's "buffs", who, even then, would have preferred
to be called "JFK Buffs" than Warren Commission buffoons.
The people, God bless 'em, God forgive 'em, led along like sheep,
just poor dumb mouths and extremely naive, were kept frightened,
quickly forgetting Rober Kennedy's warnings of "The Enemy
Within", like children in the dark, confused, unsure,
malaised.
The "higher authorities", intelligence agencies decided
the people "needed not to know" that there were real
"spooks", real phantoms of a national opera lurking under
their hoods and sheets. C.D. Jackson, upon seeing the uncut Zapruder
film stated: "The American people must never see this
film." They still haven't.
A benign-appearing but socially malignant step-father had taken
over the reigns of government by the Longhorns. He sent the sons he
never had to Viet Nam without a moment's hesitation. He only had
daughters. "Everything's going to be alright, isn't it?"
the "Volunteer" president-unelect asked Nellie Connally
from Air Force One, shortly after the take-off on the day of the
murder.
The silenced press of the Johnson-Nixon Era, promulgating the
propaganda of the falsified statistics of Viet Nam War and the real
statistics of the Moon Program, itself eventually evolved a
"need not to know", a persistent "Company
Policy" throughout the networks and the popular pulp news. The
press asserted itself briefly during the Watergate Era. But one must
admit that throughout the history of the JFK deception, with very
few exceptions, Kilgallen being one of them, Penn Jones another, the
remaining American press has remained patriotically chic and
politically "apparatchik".
Through their collusion with the whitewash in the Kennedy murder
and cover-up, "the Media" had been promoted and
unwittingly became "an instrument of state". It became an
information funnel and filter to the point today where it flaunts
itself as "almost part of the government", words spoken by
a White House reporter on CNN recently. The problem is that it was
not made clear to this viewer which government he meant, the
political government or the religious government now persecuting
President Clinton, pursuing him and nibbling like voracious
piranhas.
Presently, the net of nepotism in media and the press, screens
out any insinuations of a myopic, monoscopic, or mendacious point of
view in their predecessors. Television, in particular, keeps its
present tunnel vision intact behind a large array of chromaque-blue
contact lensed "poupees", focus locked on the
Teleprompter.
The Teleprompter knows all. The intelligence of a teletype
machine, required of every politically correct-apparatchik anchor,
weighs heavily in our value system, as they daily sink
"reality" in a quagmire of "miniviews" and
"sound bites."
THE COURAGE AND CUNNING OF DOROTHY KILGALLEN
Dorothy Kilgallen, as you will see, did not die for nothing. She
was just too bold, she dared to go where no one had dared to go: she
crossed the Bridge of Silence. Her mind had cut through all the
disinformation gone to the horse's mouth, Jack Ruby. She had
discovered the crux of the matter, a cross within a circle. Ruby and
Tippit were pals. Both of them, members of an underworldly police
athletic league and a right-wing organization which on November
22nd, 1963 had really flexed its muscles and exercised to kill a
President of a particular persuasion.
Why was Dorothy Kilgallen killed? Or was she driven to her death
by the Horror she had discovered. As in de Maupassant's "Le
Horla", it was as if, an invisible being from an invisible
empire had clutched the nation by the throat and people were dying,
strangely, mysteriously. The Press was scared. Always in the past,
anytime a reporter was killed, all branches of Justice had coalesced
in a unified effort to capture the criminal because it was taken for
granted that if anyone could coerce the Press, then Democracy was
threatened and all of us were in danger. The death of a reporter
also testified to the discovery of something very significant,
something "critical", important to us all.
Why was Dorothy Kilgallen killed? Why did "the little
'p'" take the long way around, refusing to cross the Bridge of
Silence over the Potomac of unanswered questions, which proceeded
from the babbling brook of the lily "white lies" of the
Warren Commission Report?
Was Dorothy Kilgallen Killed?
Years later, the unrelenting efforts of Lee Israel brought to
light the fact that Dr. Charles Umber of the New York Medical
Examiner's Office had discovered the drugs - three types of
barbiturates - in Dorothy's glass but had kept his findings secret
due to the politics and internecine rivalry in the NYMEO. No vial
was ever found or recorded by the NYPD. Seconal had been the only
barbiturate prescribed for her according to the NYPD report.
Why was Dorothy Kilgallen killed?
Twenty-nine years later, I would learn why, just in time for the
end of the Third Decade of deception and the "Case
Closed" sham, the last gasp of the dying lie of the WCR .
Hopefully, I look forward in the Fourth Decade for Justice for JFK,
Oswald, Kilgallen, Monroe, King, RFK, and the countless others who
came home in bags from Viet Nam.
My Fellow Americans, Ask not for whom the bells toll...they toll
for thee and me and JFK and what might have been.
However, there still remains some hope for Justice but first we
must destroy the current state of Media, my motto: "Not back to
the future but back to reality".
(©1994, R. D. Morningstar)
SOURCE: The
Death of Dorothy Kilgallen
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