The Reporter Who May Have Learned the Truth Behind JFK’s Assassination
Few historical events have sparked as many conspiracy theories as the JFK assassination, but when one looks at the evidence regarding the Kennedys’ history with the country’s organized crime families, it’s hard not to see the mob’s culpability. At least that’s what best-selling author, researcher, and former criminal defense attorney Mark Shaw has detailed over the course of several books, including his most recent titled, “The Reporter Who Knew Too Much.”
The reporter Shaw is referring to is Dorothy Kilgallen, arguably the most famous female journalist of her era, known for a syndicated column in the New York Journal-American, a nationally broadcast CBS radio show listened to by millions, and her role as star panelist of the celebrity game show “What’s My Line?”
Kilgallen met an untimely death in 1965 while investigating a strong suspicion that members of the New Orleans mafia may have been behind JFK’s assassination. Fanning the flames of conspiracy further, Kilgallen’s reported cause of death — acute ethanol and barbiturate intoxication — was uncannily similar to that of Marilyn Monroe, whose alleged suicide has been questioned interminably.
According to Shaw’s research, Kilgallen was one of few people who connected Jack Ruby — the Dallas nightclub owner who murdered Lee Harvey Oswald — to Carlos Marcello, the “Godfather” of the New Orleans mafia. Knowing the Kennedy family’s complicated ties to various mob syndicates, Oswald’s history of living in New Orleans, and Ruby’s affiliations with the mob, Kilgallen followed her instinct. She also happened to be the sole reporter to interview Ruby at his trial, out of hundreds who were present.
In 1965, Kilgallen embarked on an investigative trip to Louisiana to test her hypothesis, bringing only a hairstylist along with her. However, she quickly told him to return to New York and not mention to anyone she was down there. Shaw says he believes she uncovered some damning evidence implicating Marcello’s involvement in the Kennedy assassination, which she quickly realized could cost her her life. Kilgallen returned to New York and planned a return trip to New Orleans to meet a confidential informant, but was found dead just weeks before she was supposed to leave. She described her plans to meet the informant on her second trip as “cloak and daggerish.”
The idea that the mafia was behind Kennedy’s assassination isn’t a new one. It was well known that the family’s patriarch, Joe P. Kennedy Sr. had a convoluted history with a number of well-known figures in organized crime. Kennedy Sr.’s business dealings in Chicago led to his acquaintance with famous mob boss Frank Costello, who claimed the two were involved in bootlegging operations during prohibition. Though Kennedy Sr. denied this connection, he continued to build his vast fortune through exclusive distribution rights for world-renowned brands of scotch and other imported liquors when prohibition ended.
Another Chicago mafioso tied to Kennedy Sr. was the infamous Sam Giancana who in collusion with Mayor Daley, were famously rumored to have rigged the presidential election in favor of JFK. They did this, allegedly at the behest of Kennedy Sr., by forcing the wards they controlled to vote Democrat through violent intimidation and payoffs.
So when JFK was elected president and his brother, Robert “Bobby” Kennedy, was appointed attorney general, the mob expected some favors or at least some leniency. Instead, they were shocked when the two began cracking down on organized crime.
Further adding to the confusion, many of these mafiosi were recruited by the CIA in a plot to assassinate Cuban dictator Fidel Castro; a task JFK was unable to accomplish during the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. The mob’s complicity in this conspiracy was in hopes they could build a casino empire in Cuba that would rival Las Vegas, with Marcello being a leading figure in the venture.
When the long arm of Bobby’s law enforcement efforts set its sights on the leaders of the country’s crime syndicates, it landed on Marcello and deported him to Guatemala. According to Shaw, this was the beginning of the end for the Kennedy brothers. But Marcello knew if he went after Bobby, JFK’s administration would exercise all its power to enact retribution. So instead, it’s believed he went after JFK himself.
To learn more watch Collateral Damage of the JFK Assassination with Mark Shaw on Beyond Belief.
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Mysterious Object Falls from Sky, Drains 100-Year-Old Pond
A woman living in a rural Tennessee town claims she saw something fall from the sky into a pond in her backyard, finding the pond was suddenly drained of its water. That resident, Patsy Wright, dismissed the idea that the drainage might be due to a sinkhole, as she says she saw something coming from the sky into the water, creating large waves, before the pond disappeared entirely.
Wright reported the story to her local Nashville NBC affiliate, which ran a report that included drone footage of the depleted pond she says had been there for over a century.
“When I seen them waves go up like it did (sic) and then they come back down. And I heard the splash. I mean it was a big splash,” Wright said. “I walked down here with my dog and sure as the world, no water. It was gone.”
According to reports, it was difficult to tell what the object was, due to the depth of the hole. It’s also unclear what happened to the water, though it’s assumed it was absorbed into the water table below, after the pond was struck.
“I know something hit it, because I heard it. I thought, I’m not imagining nothing. It’s there.”
Some online were quick to connect the drainage of Wright’s pond with a similar account from the CIA-employed remote viewer Ingo Swann, who in his autobiography recounts being taken to see a triangular UFO, which subsequently drained a lake of its water.
His account describes being flown to an undisclosed location in the north (possibly Alaska or northern Canada) where he says, “That was my last sight of the triangular thing, but in that last moment I could see the water of the lake surging upward – like a waterfall going upward, as if being sucked in to the “machine!”
This might seem farfetched, however there have been other bizarre accounts of lakes, ponds, and other small bodies of water experiencing sudden drainage unable to be explained by geologists or other professionals. An instance like this occurred on a farm in Utah in 2014, where a bizarre crater appeared in a reservoir.
When interviewed about the strange cavity the farmer described it by saying, “My heck, I guess that’s Martian art!”
Experts from the Utah Geological Survey were unable to explain the phenomenon.
Often unexpected holes like these are attributed to sinkholes – a sudden collapse of the ground caused by the erosion of underlying rock layers typically consisting of limestone. It’s unclear whether a sinkhole could have been the culprit in the latest incident, but if Wright actually witnessed and heard something fall from the sky, a sinkhole could be easily ruled out.
For more anomalies falling from the sky check out Out of the Blue from Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World:
