Erasing the Past to Protect a Fairytale

207  Cecil Stoughton's Parkland series


See also:
3  Unidentified kid's pictures
73 Several Jim McCammon photographs and negatives
85 Henry Gonzáles' images of Kennedy's body at Parkland
118 Pics and negatives by Dallas Morning News photographer Walter Cisco
176 Art Uhlman's Dealey Plaza photos

Stoughton, C.: PC: Cecil Stoughton. Free-lance photographer whose series includes: Love
Field Airport (color), the motorcade prior to Dealey Plaza (color), Dealey Plaza (color),
Parkland Hospital (black and white) and the swearing in of President Johnson on Air Force 1
(black and white). Of importance would be the Parkland Hospital series which shows the
interior of the limousine before cleaning the car. An inquiry with the National Archives, the
John F. Kennedy Library and the Lyndon B. Johnson Library has failed to recover any of these
photographs. One such photograph was used in the November 1983 issue of Life magazine.

(Weisberg photographers)


One such photograph was used in the November 1983 issue of Life magazine.

Cecil Stoughton, the official White House photographer, was stuck that day riding several cars back in one
of the camera cars. In fact, Stoughton was not even scheduled to go on the Texas trip, but had to fill in
for Robert Knudsen, who had some slivers in his eye which needed to be removed. Supposedly, Stoughton
took only a couple of photos near Dealey Plaza, one just before the motorcade reached the plaza, and one
of the grassy knoll about 30 seconds after the shooting. But he did take photos of the limousine the day
before when the President visited Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio. We can see in this photo that he did
occupy the normal position in the Secret Service follow-up car (Figure 3). In the next photo we see that
the chrome topping was undented (Figure 4). The HSCA was seemingly unaware of, or ignored, the
Stoughton photos, and did not address the issue of the dent of the chrome topping. 

(Anthony Marsh, Best Witness: JFK's Limousine, he Assassination Chronicles Vol. 1. Issue 4 Winter '95)


A rare photo album of black and white photographs showing former President Lyndon B. Johnson taking the oath of office on Air Force One
following the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy is headed to auction, revealing 16 pictures never made public until 2018.
(16 unpublished photos of LBJ after JFK assassination made public, Washington Examiner)

209   Diary and related papers of Mary Meyers


Compare:
101 Forty pages of Priscilla MacMillan's HSCA interview
136 George de Mohrenschildt's CIA affiliate personnel file
153 Over 39,000 files from James Angleton's secret collection
189 Win Scott's copy of the Mexico City tape(s)
 
Before the news of Mary's murder even was made public, a small group of people gathered at her 
Georgetown home, apparently searching for her diary, in which she had made copious notes. Cord Meyer
and another ranking CIA official where there along with James J. Angleton, head of the CIA's counter-
intelligence division, and his wife, Cicely, a close friend of Mary's. Also present were Tony Bradlee, Mary's
sister and the wife of Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee. There were conflicting accounts as to whether
the group had broken into her home. Later it was revealed that Angleton admitted he had found the diary
and related papers, and burned them.

(Jim Marrs, Crossfire, p. 537)


Mary Pinchot Meyer, Half Light, 1964, synthetic polymer on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, gift
of Quentin and Mark Meyer

Mary Eno Pinchot Meyer (/ˈmaɪ.ər/; October 14, 1920 – October 12, 1964) was an American painter who
lived in Washington D.C. Her work is considered part of the Washington Color School and was selected
for the Pan American Union Art Exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in Buenos Aires.

She was married to Central Intelligence Agency official Cord Meyer from 1945–1958, and she became
involved romantically with President John F. Kennedy after her divorce from Meyer.





Meyer was shot to death on the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal towpath on October 12, 1964, three weeks
after the release of the Warren Commission Report, whose conclusions Meyer allegedly challenged.
Meyer's long history of criticism of the CIA, the timing of her killing, the CIA's wiretapping of her phone,
and the effort by CIA counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton to retrieve Meyer's diary
immediately after her death prompted investigation of possible CIA involvement in her murder. Additionally,
Army personnel records for prosecution witness Lt. William L. Mitchell, released in 2015 and 2016 under
the Freedom of Information Act, corroborate his ties to the intelligence community.

CIA involvement has also been suggested by the phone call that was placed by top Agency official Wistar
Janney to Ben Bradlee, hours before the police had identified Meyer's body. The man accused of the
murder, Ray Crump, Jr., was acquitted at trial in July, 1965. The murder remains officially unsolved.

(Wikipedia, retrieved 9-17-19)

Another one of these related areas I had written about was Mary Meyer. And I thought that because of
the essay I had done on her (The Assassinations. pgs 338-345), plus the work Nina Burleigh did on her
murder, that the controversy swirling around the deceased woman would finally quiet down. But then
David Talbot's book came out. When I read it, I noted that he had a few pages on the JFK/Mary Meyer
episode. And he used people who I thought I had discredited, like Timothy Leary. And also the notoriously
unreliable David Heymann (...)



Heymann likes to disguise fiction as non-fiction, down to quoting dubious interviews. But this one might be
genuine. Angleton died in 1987. The book was published in 1989, so the time frame is possible. Also, unlike
with Billings, Lawford, and O'Donnell, the stuff he says sounds like Angleton. (Even though Heymann gets
Angleton's CIA title wrong.)

Angleton (perhaps) says that Meyer told Leary that she and a number of Washington women had concocted
a plot to "turn on" political leaders to make them more peace loving and less militaristic. Leary helped her in
this mission. In July of 1962, Mary took Kennedy into one of the White House bedrooms and shared a box of
six joints with him. Kennedy told her laughingly that they were having a White House conference on narcotics
in a couple of weeks. Kennedy refused a fourth joint with, "Suppose the Russians drop a bomb." He admitted
to having done coke and hash thanks to Peter Lawford. Mary claimed they smoked pot two other times and
took an acid trip together, during which they had sex.

Angleton (perhaps) continues with Toni Bradlee finding the diary. But she gave it to Angleton who destroyed
it at Langley. He says, "In my opinion, there was nothing to be gained by keeping it around. It was in no way
meant to protect Kennedy. I had little sympathy for the president. The Bay of Pigs fiasco, which he tried to
hang on the CIA and which led to the resignation of CIA Director Allen Dulles, was his own doing. I think the
decision to withdraw air support of the invasion colored Kennedy's entire career and impacted on everything
that followed." (pgs 375-376)

Heymann says that Angleton garnered the details about the affair from Mary's "art diary". Yet the details are
quite personal in nature, and would seemingly be out of place in a sketchbook. And again, why, if Mary had
turned against the CIA, would she entrust these personal notations with Angleton, of all people? Nothing about
the diary story makes any sense.

(Jim DiEugenio, Beware: The Douglas/Janney/Simkin Silver Bullets, 2008)

211  Jim Koethe's notes for JFK assassination book



Compare:
11   Page 17 from Oswald's address book
116 Gary Underhill's JFK Assassination notes
126 Dorothy Kilgallen's folder of JFK-assassination files
127 JFK Chapter intended for Murder One

The body of the young Dallas reporter was found swathed in a blanket on the floor of his bachelor apartment
on September 21, 1964. Police said the cause of death was asphyxiation from a broken bone at the base of
the neck - apparently the result of a karate chop.

Robbery appeared to be the motive, although Koethe's parents believe he was killed for other reasons. Whoever
ransacked his apartment, they point out, was careful to remove his notes for a book he was preparing, in
collaboration with two other journalists, on the Kennedy assassination.

(David Welsh, Ramparts  November, 1966)




KOETHE, JAMES F., suspicious death; staff writer, Dallas Times
Herald. Along with two other reporters, Koethe attended a meeting in
Ruby's apartment with Ruby roommate George Senator during the evening
of November 24. All three of the journalists died soon after the meeting.
Koethe was murdered in his Dallas apartment on September 21, 1964,
reportedly just as he had stepped out of the shower. According to A. L.
Goodhart in the Law Quarterly Review (January 1967), " ... Koethe was a
beer-drinking bully who liked to hang out with thugs; he had been
strangled, not 'karate chopped,' (as some reports have said) and police
suggested that homosexuality may have been a motive."

(Who's who in the JFK assassination)

There is another strange coincidence. Ruby's roommate, George Senator, when he heard Ruby had shot Oswald,
immediately went to see an attorney friend, James Martin. Martin turns up again as Marina Oswald's manager,
chosen for her by the Secret Service. In a city of one million people, we are to believe that a friend of Ruby is
accidentally picked by the Secret Service to aid the wife of Ruby's victim*. Martin didn't act as Ruby's lawyer.
The first man who took that job was Constine Alfred Droby, President of the Criminal Bar Association of Dallas
who was interviewed by Jean Campbell for the London Evening Standard of October 7, 1964:

    "I said I would defend Jack," he told me . . . "but I had to
    give it up before I really started, as my wife's life was
    threatened by anonymous phone calls and we were told our
    house was to be blown up by dynamite." However Droby
    told me that as Ruby's attorney he had rushed around to
    Ruby's apartment soon after the shooting with Jim Koethe,
    a Dallas news reporter.

    "The place was in chaos. I think we were the first people
    to see it."

    "You remember anything especially?" I said.

    "No, just chaos and newspapers," Droby answered. "I wonder
    if Jim Koethe saw anything?" I asked.

    Mr. Droby folded his hands and leaned forward: "Koethe's
    murdered," he said. "He was choked to death the Monday
    before last."

(Joachim Joesten, Oswald, Assassin or Fall Guy, 1964)

* Joesten here mixes up two different James / Jim Martin's. 
The lawyer is Wilford James Martin. The Marina-manager is James Herbert Martin.
(Thank you Gerald Campeau for clearing this up.) Both of them are not to be confused
with Guy Banister-associate Jack Martin or General Walker-associate John 'Jack' Martin.
(More on John Martin: click HERE)

Waldo told the Warren Commission that he had an important informant in the Dallas Police. His name was
Lieutenant George Butler. According to Michael Benson, Butler was an associate of Haroldson L. Hunt. Butler
was also the man in charge of Oswald's transfer when he was killed by Jack Ruby.

(Spartacus Education)



Also since Vol. I, we have discovered that Jim Koethe, a Dallas Times Herald reporter, was working
on a book about the assassination in conjunction with two other writers. In view of what happened
to his two associates, we now feel that his specific assignment on the book was at the root of his
murder. Koethe's associates on the book were Thayer Waldo and Ed Johnson, both men working
for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram at that time. All three men covered the Presidential visit for their
papers, and all three covered the assassination and the Ruby trial.

Koethe's task for the book was an in depth study of the leaders in Dallas. This, in our opinion,
was what caused his murder. Thayer Waldo, a newsman o f 23 years experience, was the first of the three
to find himself in trouble. Although he was not fired by the StarTelegram, it was convenient for him to seek
employment elsewhere after his big scoop turned out to be false.

At the request of Mark Lane, Waldo had accompanied Mrs. Marguerite Oswald and two
officers, Pat and Mike Howard, to Love Field. Mrs. Oswald had requested of Lane that she have
someone in addition to the officers escort her to the airport. Mrs. Oswald was going to Washington
to testify before the Warren Commission, and of course, to say that her son was innocent.

Mike Howard was a Secret Service Agent, while his brother was a Tarrant County Deputy Sheriff.
After the trio saw Mrs. Oswald on her plane, the two officers and the reporter went for a cup of coffee.
Both officers told newsman Waldo that they felt pity for Mrs. Oswald, but said there was a
prisoner in jail who saw her son kill President Kennedy. If such was the case and the story was
printed, Mrs. Oswald's testimony w o u I d be completely buried by the new development.
At the conclusion of their story, however, the lawmen added: "But we are not supposed to talk
about the prisoner." On the way back to Fort Worth, the lawmen repeated their report of the
prisoner, but again added the information was top secret. Waldo begged to be allowed to use the
news without giving the source of the information.

This was agreed to by the brothers Howard. Why repeat such a tale to a newsman twice,
if you do not want him to use it?

Waldo reported the news to his editor and the circumstances surrounding it. The editors and the
top brass of the Star-Telegram had a conference and decided to run the news which became an 8
column banner on page one. Next day, however, things were different. The Dallas District Attorney
denied the story. The Sheriff and Police Chief and the FBI denied that there was such a prisoner.
Only the Secret Service remained quiet - of course they had not been involved. In print, anyway.

The pressure on Thayer Waldo for his false lead continued and he soon found a job with the
University of the Americas in Mexico City.

Ed Johnson also left the Fort Worth paper for a better position with the Carpenter News Agency
of Washington, D.C. which is owned by Leslie Carpenter of Texas-the husband of Elizabeth
Carpenter, who is Press Secretary to Mrs. Lyndon Johnson.

(Penn Jones, Forgive my Grief II)

Within a week a 22-year-old ex-con from Alabama named Larry Earl Reno was picked up selling Koethe's
personal effects and held on suspicion of murder.



Reno's lawyers were Mike Barclay and the ubiquitous Jim Martin, both friends of Ruby roomie George
Senator. Martin and Senator, one recalls, were with Koethe at that enigmatic meeting on November 24,
1963. When the Reno case came before the grand jury, District Attorney Henry Wade secretly
instructed the jurors not to indict - an extraordinary move for a chief prosecuting officer with as
strong a case as he had. The grand jury returned a no-bill.

Reno, however, remained in jail on a previous charge. When they finally sprang him, in January 1965, he was
re-arrested within a month for the robbery of a hotel. This time the prosecution, led by a one-time law
partner of Martin's had no qualms about getting an indictment, and a conviction. Reno was sentenced to life
for the hotel robbery. At the trial his lawyers called no witnesses in his defense.

(David Welsh, Ramparts, November, 1966)

213   FBI/CIA records re: Karyn Kupcinet


See also:
56   210 Dallas Police photos of Oswald's possessions
71   Jim Hood Photograph
72   Clint Peoples manuscript
75   A Pennsylvanian Piece of Paper
94   Fourteen page FBI document on Donnell Whitter
212 The identity of the mystery Oxnard area caller

Release all records re: Ms.Kupcinet, who died within a day or two after the assassination. Her father was
a well-known journalist in Chicago with indirect ties to Ruby.

(ARRB Record Tracking Chart )


    KUPCINET, KARYN, suspicious death; 22-year-old daughter of Chicago
    Sun-Times columnist lrv Kupcinet, who, according to Penn Jones Jr., was
    one of Ruby's childhood friends. She reportedly had foreknowledge of the
    assassination and was overheard talking about it by a telephone operator.

    She died on November 28, 1963, only six days after JFK died, and was
    found dead on the evening of November 30, on the living-room couch in her
    home. According to the New York Times (December 1, 1992):

    Her body was found on its side, with flecks of blood on her face and a
    pillow. There were no notes or any indications of suicide, officers
    said . . . She had apparently been dead two or three days, sheriffs
    investigators said. Friends discovered her body when they came to her
    apartment . .. When her body was found, the apartment door was
    unlocked and the television set was on but turned down, according to
    the friends, Mark Goddard, actor, and his wife, Marcia. A bowl of
    cigarettes and a coffeepot had been knocked to the floor and a lamp
    turned over, they said.

    On December 2, 1963, the New York Times reported that the cause of
    death was strangulation. There was no evidence of sexual assault. Karyn
    was a screen, stage, and television actress, best known for her appearance
    in the 1961 film The Ladies' Man.

    (Who's who in the JFK assassination)



Kupcinet's death was first mentioned in connection with the John F. Kennedy assassination in 1967 by
researcher Penn Jones, Jr. in the self-published book Forgive My Grief II. Jones cited an Associated Press 
wire service story about an unidentified woman who placed a phone call on November 22, 1963, from the
vicinity of Oxnard, California, about 50 miles northwest of Los Angeles, and Jones claimed this woman was
Kupcinet.

(Wikipedia, retrieved 9-23-19)


This writer did not put the death of Karyn Kupcinet on the list of strange deaths during the
first three years of our investigation. While a guest on a TV show--"The KUP Show" in Chicago--I did
not discuss her death with Irv Kupcinet, star of the show and father of Miss Kupcinet. Now for the first
time I we list her as one of the strange deaths.

A few days before the assassination/ Karyn Kupcinet (23) was trying to place a long distance
telephone call from the Los Angeles area. According to reports the long distance operator heard Miss
Kupcinet scream into the telephone that President Kennedy was going to be killed.
Two days after the assassination/ Miss Kupcinet was found murdered in her apartment. The case
has never been solved.

Yet another of those many strange coincidences Irv Kupcinet and Jack Ruby grew up and were
acquainted with eachother in the same neighborhood in Chicago.

There was an Associated Press dispatch printed in the Chicago Daily News of November 23, 1963
originating from Oxnard/ California, which told approximately the same story as we have on Miss
Kupcinet.

(Penn Jones, Forgive my grief II)


Irv 'Kup' Kupcinet and Richard 'Tricky Dick' Nixon ca 1965

Jones speculated Karyn Kupcinet had been murdered by representatives of the Italian-American Mafia who
silenced her and sent a message to her father to remain silent about why JFK and Oswald had been shot
and who was actually responsible.

Irv Kupcinet denied that he or his daughter had prior knowledge of the shootings of the president or Oswald.
This was supported by Karyn Kupcinet's friends, actor Earl Holliman, Holliman's then-girlfriend, and Karyn's
boyfriend Andrew Prine, all of whom traveled to Palm Springs with Karyn on November 22. Karyn Kupcinet
reportedly seemed upset and shocked about television and radio coverage of the shootings that she saw
and heard in Palm Springs. She did not reveal any foreknowledge of the events.

(...)

Regarding Irv Kupcinet's connection to Jack Ruby, one year his senior, the Warren Commission determined
that many men in their age bracket had interacted with Ruby in Chicago before 1947, when he moved from
Chicago to Dallas. The Commission questioned many Chicagoans who had interacted with Ruby. None of them
had prior knowledge that he was going to shoot Oswald.

(Wikipedia, retrieved 9-23-1963)