Kennedy Death List
Kennedy Death List
Those who remain convinced that the JFK assassination was part of a much larger conspiracy also remain convinced that as many as 120 individuals have suffered “highly coincidental” or “convenient” deaths for knowing too much about that dark day in Dallas when the president was murdered.
Some conspiracy theorists enumerate some 120 individual deaths associated with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy that they label as “convenient” or “highly coincidental.” As with all of the body counts or death lists that we include in this encyclopedia of conspiracies and secret societies, we add our disclaimer that many of the individuals that we find on such lists may have been elderly, suffered from long-term illnesses, killed in the line of duty, met their demise in accidents totally devoid of nefarious circumstances, or committed suicide of their own free, albeit troubled, will. Conspiracy researchers remind us that the CIA and other secret government agencies have developed means of making murders appear to be deaths due to natural causes or accident. Some of these methods are designed to be able to avoid detection in autopsies and postmortem examinations. Various insidious techniques involve the injection of cancer cells, heart attack inducements, and absorption of deadly, untraceable poison. There are some deaths on these lists that do seem quite suspicious, and that is why we include them for your own assessment.
Karyn Kupcinet, November 1963: The murder of popular Chicago television personality Irv Kupcinet’s daughter Karyn is firmly established in Kennedy assassination lore. According to reports, Karyn, twenty-three, was trying to make a long-distance call from Los Angeles when the operator heard her scream that the president was going to be assassinated. She was found murdered in her apartment two days after Kennedy’s death.
Jack Zangretti, November 1963: Zangretti died of a gunshot wound after he claimed a foreknowledge of Jack Ruby’s plan to kill Lee Harvey Oswald.
Eddy Benavides, February 1964: Benavides died of a gunshot to the head. He closely resembled his brother, Domingo, who was a witness to Oswald’s shooting of Dallas police officer J. D. Tippit.
Betty McDonald, February 1964: McDonald, a former employee of Jack Ruby, allegedly committed suicide by hanging in the Dallas jail.
Bill Chesher, March 1964: Chesher was suspected of having information linking Oswald and Ruby prior to the assassination of JFK and had reportedly said that he had seen them driving together. Chesher, twenty-nine, died of a heart attack while in the hospital.
Bill Hunter, April 1964: Hunter, a reporter for the Long Beach (California) Press Telegram, who had been in Ruby’s apartment on November 24, 1963, was accidentally shot and killed by a Dallas policeman.
Gary Underhill, May 1964: Underhill, a CIA agent who claimed the Agency was involved in the assassination, died of a gunshot wound to the head that was ruled a suicide.
Guy Banister, June 1964: Former FBI agent Banister, who had New Orleans connections to the CIA, David Ferrie, Oswald, and local mob boss Carlos Marcello, died of a sudden heart attack.
Jim Koethe, September 1964: Koethe, a reporter for the Dallas Times Herald, was killed by a karate chop to the back of the neck while stepping out of the shower in his apartment.
Mary Pinchot, October 1964: Pinchot, a “special friend” of JFK, was killed in a mugging. Her diary was confiscated by CIA chief James Angleton.
Tom Howard, March 1965: Attorney Howard spoke to Ruby shortly after he killed Oswald. On March 27, 1965, he suddenly became ill and was driven to a hospital by an unidentified individual. Within hours, Howard was dead, allegedly of a heart attack. No autopsy was performed.
Mona B. Saenz, August 1965: Saenz, a Texas employment clerk who had interviewed Oswald, was struck and killed by a Dallas city bus.
Dorothy Kilgallen, November 1965: Kilgallen was a well-known newspaper columnist and television panelist who privately interviewed Ruby before and during his trial. Ruby told her that he and Officer J. D. Tippit were friends and that Tippit often frequented Ruby’s Carousel Club. Two weeks before the assassination, Tippit and Ruby were in the company of Texas oil man Bernard Weissman, the person responsible for the “JFK Wanted for Treason” ads in the Dallas newspapers on November 22, 1963. Kilgallen told friends that she had enough information to break the whole story of the Kennedy assassination wide open, and she began to leak hints of her scoop in her syndicated column. On November 8, 1965, she was found dead, fully clothed, sitting upright on her bed. The autopsy report, which took eight days to complete, ruled death from alcohol and barbiturates.
Mrs. Earl T. Smith, November 1965: Two days after Dorothy Kilgallen’s death, Smith, one of her closest friends and one in whom she was likely to have confided her findings about the JFK murder, was found dead of “undetermined causes.”
Karen “Little Lynn” Carlin, January 1966: According to witnesses, Carlin was the last person to speak with Ruby before he killed Oswald. She was killed with gunshot wounds to the head.
Earlene Roberts, January 1966: Roberts, Oswald’s landlady in Dallas, was said by friends and other witnesses to have been subjected to hours of police interrogation and harassment. She was found dead of a heart attack in her home. No autopsy was performed.
Albert Bogard, February 1966: Bogard, a salesman for Downtown Lincoln Mercury in Dallas, showed a new Mercury to a man using the name “Lee Oswald.” Shortly after giving his testimony to Warren Commission investigators, he was hospitalized after being badly beaten. Released from the hospital, Bogard returned to his hometown of Hallsville, Texas. He was found dead in a local cemetery in an automobile with a hose attached to the exhaust. The autopsy ruling was suicide.
Lee Bowers Jr., August 1966: Bowers witnessed a suspicious man standing behind the picket fence on the grassy knoll at the time of the JFK assassination. He was killed in an automobile accident.
James Worrell Jr., November 1966: Worrell saw a man run from the rear of the Texas School Book Depository after Kennedy was murdered. Worrell was killed in an automobile accident.
Jack Ruby, January 1967: Ruby told family members that he had been injected with cancer cells, giving him the lung cancer that killed him.
David Ferrie, February 1967: Ferrie, a friend of Oswald’s, was struck by a blow to the neck and died of a brain hemorrhage.
Eladio Cerefine Del Valle, February 1967: Del Valle, an anti-Castro Cuban associate of David Ferrie, was killed on the same day as Ferrie by an axe blow and gunshot wound to the skull.
Hale Boggs, October 1972: Boggs, the House majority leader, was the only Warren Commission member who publicly expressed doubt about their findings that Oswald and Ruby were not part of any conspiracy. Boggs accused FBI director J. Edgar Hoover of lying about Oswald, Ruby, and their associates. Boggs disappeared on a flight from Anchorage to Juneau, Alaska, on October 16, 1972. Neither the plane nor any bodies were ever found.
Clay Shaw, August 1974: Shaw, reportedly a CIA contact with David Ferrie for Oswald, was the prime suspect in the case that New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison was building for a conspiracy in the Kennedy assassination. He died of cancer.
William Pawley, January 1977: Pawley, a former ambassador to Brazil who was connected to anti-Castro Cubans, was found dead of a gunshot wound, ruled a suicide.
George DeMohrenschildt, March 1977: Allegedly a CIA contract agent who was a close friend of the Bouvier family (Jackie Kennedy’s parents) and a contact of Oswald’s, DeMohrenschildt was found dead of a gunshot would, ruled a suicide.
Lou Staples, May 1977: A popular Dallas radio talk show host, Staples swore that he would break the JFK assassination case. He was found with a gunshot wound to the head, ruled a suicide.