Erasing the Past to Protect a Fairytale

126 Dorothy Kilgallen's folder of JFK-assassination files



See also:
72 Clint Peoples manuscript
75 A Pennsylvanian piece of paper
116 Gary Underhill's JFK Assassination notes
177 Military files of Thomas Eli Davis III

“This story isn't going to die as long as there's a real reporter alive – and there are a lot of them”
(Dorothy Kilgallen, September 3, 1965.)

Erasing the Past...Discussions


Dorothy Kilgallen (1913-1965)

On the eve of Ruby’s trial, Kilgallen wrote an important story about an arrangement that the court had
made which allowed the defense to get documents from Washington about Ruby, as long as they asked
for nothing about Oswald.

Kilgallen deserves credit for writing this story, but I think Shaw underplays its importance. After all, the
reporter wrote, “It appears that Washington knows or suspects something about Lee Harvey Oswald
that it does not want Dallas and the rest of the world to know or suspect.” She then added that it
looked like Oswald had passed on to the status of a “classified” person, about whom only a few
government agents know the whole truth. In and of itself it would appear that Washington had more on
Oswald that it wanted to conceal than it had on Ruby. But the second reason this is important is that it
appears that the goal was to prevent any connection between the two. Yet even the Warren Commission
had suspicions that Ruby and Oswald could be connected. The two lawyers who worked on the Ruby
angle—Burt Griffin and Leon Hubert—wrote memos in March and May of 1964 saying that if there was a
connection between the pair it was through the anti-Castro netherworld of arms dealings. (James
DiEugenio, The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today, pp. 350-51) The exposure of that netherworld
was something that Washington wanted to avoid. The Commission certainly did.

(James DiEugenio, review of Mark Shaw, Denial of Justice, 22 May 2019)


Journalist and tv-personality Dorothy Kilgallen managed to convince Ruby's lawyer and the judge to
allow her to see Ruby in private during a recess in the trial.

She talked to Ruby privately for about eight minutes. Kilgallen mentioned the interview to friends, but
never the substance. She intended to include the information in a book.

She published portions of Jack Ruby's then secret testimony before the Warren Commission, which got
her in trouble with the FBI. The FBI wanted to know her source and launched a full scale investigation.

She had a folder of files containing documents and notes from her own personal investigation into the
assassination. She did not trust the FBI and refused to cooperate with Hoover and his men. She carried
the folder around but never let anybody see its contents.

She was found dead in her bedroom on November 8, 1965.

Dorothy Kilgallen and her husband, actor and writer Richard Kollmar, at the Stork Club, circa mid-1950s

Her husband Richard Kollmar most likely destroyed all of her files. Kollmar, an actor who had played a
crime-fighter on a radio series for years, died in his sleep, aged 59, in 1971. 

The FBI kept bothering the family after that, trying to locate any assassination papers that might have
survived.

(according to Lee Israel, Kilgallen, 1979)


The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office is looking into the mysterious death 51 years ago of newspaper
writer and “What’s My Line?” star Dorothy Kilgallen, who was investigating the JFK assassination, The Post
has learned.

The stunning development comes after a new book, “The Reporter Who Knew Too Much,” suggests Kilgallen
was murdered to shut down her relentless pursuit of a Mafia don linked to JFK and Lee Harvey Oswald.



Kilgallen, who wrote a widely syndicated column for the New York Journal-American, was the only reporter
ever to interview Jack Ruby, who shot Oswald, and published Ruby’s closed-door testimony to the Warren
Commission before its official release. 

The morning after Kilgallen appeared on the hit TV game show, she was found dead in her Manhattan
apartment, naked under a robe and still in make-up. The medical examiner ruled it an accidental mix of
booze and sleeping pills.

(Susan Edelman, Manhattan DA’s Office probing death of reporter with possible JFK ties, New York Post, January 29, 2017)


A little more than two years ago Mark Shaw published his book about the life and mysterious death of
reporter Dorothy Kilgallen. I wrote a review of The Reporter Who Knew too Much which—with
reservations—considered it creditable, and worth reading.

Shaw has now produced a sequel to that volume called Denial of Justice. From the minute I removed the
book from its package I had trepidations. Why? Because this follow-up volume is actually about a hundred
pages longer than the original. Yet, from the title, and from what I had read about Shaw’s attempt to get
the Kilgallen case reopened and reviewed—which was unsuccessful—I thought this book would be much
shorter.

(...)

Concerning the Ruby trial, Kilgallen was granted a five-minute interview with the defendant by co-counsel
Joe Tonahill. Shaw labels this discussion as “secret information”. The reader has to ask: How does he know
what the information is? Shaw writes that Kilgallen had pages of notes and she went into a nearby
anteroom to check and recheck what she had written down. (pp. 112-13) Again, he gives no references
for these actions. And since in The Reporter Who Knew Too Much he says her files disappeared, how can
he call this “secret information” or know how many pages of notes she wrote about it?

(...)

He writes that her upcoming book, Murder One, would be “the dagger that would expose the conspirators.”
(p. 115) Again, if Kilgallen’s files on the JFK case disappeared after her death, then how on earth does Shaw
know what she thought about who killed Kennedy? 

(James DiEugenio, review of Mark Shaw, Denial of Justice, 22 May 2019)



In 1965 Dorothy Kilgallen managed to obtain a private interview with Jack Ruby. She told friends that she had
information that would "break the case wide open". Aware of what had happened to Bill Hunter and Jim Koethe,
Kilgallen handed her interview notes to Florence Smith. She told friends that she had obtained information that
Ruby and J. D. Tippit were friends and that David Ferrie was involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

On 8th November, 1965, Dorothy Kilgallen, was found dead in her New York apartment. She was fully dressed
and sitting upright in her bed. The police reported that she had died from taking a cocktail of alcohol and
barbiturates. The notes of her interview with Jack Ruby and the article she was writing on the case had
disappeared. Florence Smith, died two days later of a cerebral hemorrhage. Her son, Earl Smith III, said that
she had been suffering from leukemia

(Spartacus Educational: Florence Pritchett)

128   Two "Previously unreleased photographs"


Which photographs? Groden can't mean the Dillard and Powell photographs, those had
been released already.

130  FBI report with Seymore Weitzman's detailed description of the rifle found


related:
59 Arnold Rowland's signed statements of November 26th , 29th , December 1st and 3rd or 4th
63 7.65 shell found in Dealey Plaza on 12/02/63
64 Nearly whole bullet removed from JFK
66 The original and complete Alyea Film

The Commission itself heard testimony from Curry, Fritz, Boone, Day, and
Wade on the "Mauser." The only witness blamed for the erroneous identification
in the Report is the only witness who did not appear before the Commission; he
was deposed by Counsel Ball.

In that deposition, Ball and Weitzman discuss an FBI interview with Weitzman,
on an unknown date, apparently on the basis of an FBI report on that interview.
This report is not found anywhere in the Exhibits.

However, from the deposition alone it is clear that Weitzman described
the rifle found in the Book Depository in considerable detail to the FBI. The
metal was blue; the wood was dark oak brown. The description of the rifle in the
Report (WR 81 and 553-555) does not include the color of the metal or the
wood.

(Sylvia Meagher, Accesories after the fact, 1976 edition, p. 99)


Seymore Weitzman (right) in (what remained of the) the Alyea film

This item appears to be no longer lost or withheld:

Erasing the Past...Discussions

132  One 7.65 Mauser


See also:
63 7.65 shell found in Dealey Plaza on 12/02/63
66 The original and complete Alyea Film
91 Record of Ellsworth questioning Oswald

Further reading:
Is that a Mauser?
Erasing the past discussions #130


Speculation: The rifle found on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book
Depository was identified as a 7.65 Mauser by the man who found it,
Deputy Constable Seymour Weitzman.'

Commission finding: Weitzman, the original source of the speculation that
the rifle was a Mauser, and Deputy Sheriff Eugene Boone found the
weapon. Weitzman did not handle the rifle and did not examine it at close
range. He had little more than a glimpse of it and thought it was a Mauser,
a German bolt-action rifle similar in appearance to the Mannlicher-
Carcano. Police laboratory technicians subsequently arrived and correctly
identified the weapon as a 6.5 Italian rifle.

(WR 645-646)



This so-called "speculation" is, of course, a mere statement of known fact, accepted as
fact by the Commission itself. The real speculation---that there was a substitution of rifles to
incriminate Oswald—was not confronted explicitly by the Report.

(Sylvia Meagher, Accessories after the fact, p.95)

It is the Commission's peculiar misfortune that several witnesses whom it chose to regard
as "mistaken" were particularly qualified by training or experience to make the particular
judgments in question. Frazier had handled shipments of curtain rods; and Seymour Weitzman,
whom the Commission holds responsible for the erroneous identification of the rifle
as a Mauser, ironically enough had acquired familiarity with rifles because he was "in the
sporting goods business awhile.

(Sylvia Meagher, Accessories after the fact, p.55)

The Vanished Mauser
On the afternoon of November 22, 1963 Dallas television station KBOX broadcast
the following news item:

A rifle [has been] found in a staircase on the fifth floor of the building on
which the assassin is believed to have shot the President of the United States.
Sheriff's deputies identify the weapon as a 7.65 Mauser, a German-made
Army rifle with a telescopic sight. It had one shell in the chamber. Three
spent shells were found nearby. (CE 3048)

Shortly after midnight, Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade replied to a
reporter who asked the make of the rifle: "It's a Mauser, I believe." (CE 2169)
On Saturday, November 23, 1963, Deputy Constable Seymour Weitzman
signed an affidavit for the Dallas police in which he said that he and Deputy
Sheriff Boone had discovered the rifle during a search of the sixth floor of the
Book Depository, and that, "This rifle was a 7.65 Mauser bolt action equipped
with a 4/18 scope, a thick leather brownish-black sling on it."

(Sylvia Meagher, Accessories after the fact, p.95)


"Mr. WEITZMAN described the rifle which was found as a 7.65 caliber Mauser bolt-action rifle, 
which loads from a five shot clip which is locked on the underside of the receiver forward of 
the trigger guard. The metal parts of this rifle were of a gun metal color, gray or blue, and the 
rear portion of the bolt was visibly worn. The wooden portions of this rifle were a dark brown 
in color and of rough wood, apparently having been used or damaged to considerable extent. 
This rifle was equipped with a four-power 18 scope of apparent Japanese manufacture. It was 
also equipped with a thick brown-black leather bandolier type sling."

After he had observed this rifle to the extent described above, Captain FRITZ appeared and
took the rifle from him. He did not make note of any serial number on the rifle. He observed
Captain FRITZ eject one rifle round of ammunition from this rifle.

(From the Weitzman FBI report, page 2)


George Lumpkin and Will Fritz