Episode 48: JFK - The Men Who Killed Kennedy - "The Truth Shall Set You Free"

Episode 6: "The Truth Shall Set You Free"

Was Badge Man really there? What about the odd story of Jack Lawrence showing up for work covered in mud and throwing up? Was he (or someone else) in the sewer drain at Dealey Plaza? Does the photographic analysis reveal mortician's wax in JFK's autopsy?

Links:

All eps can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0XNiu-yutk

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Men_Who_Killed_Kennedy

https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKlawrence.htm

https://www.jfk-assassination.net/marvin.htm

Need more? You can visit the website at: https://consaracytheories.com/ or my own site at: https://saracausey.com/. Don't forget to check out the blog at: https://consaracytheories.com/blog.

I am the author of the forthcoming book, Decoding the Unicorn: A New Look at Dag Hammarskjöld, where I explore Dag's leadership style and his personal journey in greater depth. For updates, please visit: https://decodingtheunicorn.com/. To follow my journey as an author, please visit: https://www.facebook.com/saracauseyauthor. 

Transcript

Transcription by Otter.ai.  Please forgive any typos!

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

conspiracy theories, JFK assassination, Marina Oswald, Robert Tannenbaum, House Select Committee, Tom Wilson, photographic analysis, badge man, Dealey Plaza, storm drain, Jack Lawrence, morticians wax, Dan Marvin, Project Freedom, skepticism 

Welcome to con-sara-cy theories. Are you ready to ask questions you shouldn't and find information you're not supposed to know? Well, you're in the right place. Here is your host, Sara Causey. 

Hello, hello, and thanks for tuning in. In tonight's episode, I will be talking about episode six of the docuseries the men who killed Kennedy. This one is titled The truth shall set you free. And it was released on November 18, 1995 now we're jumping ahead in time because the first two episodes were released in the UK in 1988 and then episodes three, four and five were released in the US back in 1991 so we're making a leap now to this sixth episode not being released until 1995 as I always say, if you have not watched This Docuseries for yourself. Please do so watch it. Formulate your own conclusions. So if you need to download this and come back to it, or bookmark it and come back to it, please do so. I don't want to taint your opinion at all. I want you to watch this for yourself and then come back and listen to my commentary on that note. Pour yourself up a beverage of choice, and we will saddle up and take this ride. For me, there's an interesting line of demarcation between the first five episodes and then the final six episodes. So like episodes 1234, and five are a little bit more tame, I guess, as Kennedy murder theories go. But as we start getting into episodes 6, 7, 8 and 9, we we're taking more of a walk on the wild side here. I think. In this episode they interview Marina Oswald, who's Lee Harvey Oswald's widow, and at the beginning of this episode, she says that she knows that Oswald was innocent and that there needs to be evidence presented, like if he really was guilty, show us the evidence, but then also allow exculpatory evidence to be presented to when you start to deny people the full picture, then you put the nation in danger. They also interview Robert Tannenbaum. And one of the things that's interesting about that is that Tannenbaum served as the Deputy Chief Counsel for the House Select Committee on pop pops to investigate the murders of JFK and Martin Luther King, Jr, but he resigned from his post shortly after he was named to it. He also later became, I think, the mayor of Beverly Hills for a period of time. So it's cool that we have somebody who started out on the committee and then resigned from it. He believes that the intelligence agencies had a negative view of the House Select Committee, viewed them as the enemy, did not want to help them, and would just give them, like redacted documents, where so much was blacked out that it was basically nonsense. I mean, you couldn't even really get a line on what you were dealing with. He says that critical witnesses were not subpoenaed, but then witnesses who were friendly to the government and who were probably just going to lie under oath were subpoenaed. They interview a man named Tom Wilson, who's a retired R and D engineer for US Steel, and he would be responsible for doing photographic analysis, like to find defects and things. They also say that he's done analysis for like, gunshot murders, for example, that have been upheld in a court of law. So they're they're given this guy's background, and it sounds like he's got some bona fides. He has this capability of being able to strip out certain layers of the photograph so that you can see elements that with the naked eye you would not be able to see. Now, his equipment studio here, if you watch the episode, which I hope that you do hope you already have by the time you're listening to me, it's a primitive setup by modern standards, the late 80s, early 90s computer equipment that he's got in there is laughable to us. Now we just have to remember that at the time, that's what people had to work with. Now, Tom says that through his analysis, he was able to confirm the presence of this entity that's called the badge man in Mary Mormons photograph. I've already weighed in on that before, in a previous episode where they talked about badge man. To me, there are, there are certain photographs where it looks like a silhouette of somebody or something. I don't know about the badge man photo, to be honest with you, because when you have somebody come through and they do like a color restoration, and they say, All right, this blob, I believe, is a man wearing a uniform with a badge, and I believe this blob is a man in a soldier's uniform. And then they go through and they add that color to it. I mean, that's a very strong power of suggestion, and I think we have to be careful with that kind of material. Because the more far flung and far fetched and speculative that we get, it starts to damage, the more hardcore evidence of a conspiracy. People go, oh, well, this idiot just thinks a blotch, a weird defect in film, or a blob that could have even just been tree leaves as a badge. Man, okay, and then they discount everything else, which I think is a real disservice. He creates some really weird looking 3d models. And as he says in the interview, they're not to scale, but based on the photographic assessments he makes these 3d models of the head wound again, I know we're into some super morbid territory. It is what it is. And he comes to the conclusion. So he goes back looking at his photographic analysis and his 3d models of what the head wound looked like. He goes back to Dealey Plaza, and he's trying to figure out, well, okay, this doesn't work with Lee Harvey Oswald being or anybody else being in the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. But then it also doesn't match the idea of this badge man, or whoever being on the grassy knoll. He comes to the conclusion, which some other people have to by the way, in fairness to the argument that the fatal shot actually came from like this manhole area. It's like a, like a drainage area in the street. So if you imagine somebody being down there with a boom stick in this like drainage, rectangular space drainage area where, like rain water goes off into the sewer system. That's where he believes that it came from in Dealey Plaza. Another researcher named Jack Brazil says that he has researched this storm drain. I guess there was a drain over there by the grassy knoll, but then there's also the drain that's there on the curb, and they did experiments. So he says, to figure out, could somebody, if a pop Popper, was down there, could they get down there and squeeze off around? They could and then they would also be able to escape unseen, because it would take them, if they followed that drain, it would take them to another area away from the scene of the crime, where they'd be able to escape pretty easily. Now, I know that that sounds crazy. I get it.

Jim Mars talks about this weird incident that happened in his book, crossfire. I actually would like to do an entire episode about this one particular thing, because I think it is so crazy. But there was this man named Jack Lawrence who worked for a car dealership in Dallas, and on November 21 he borrowed one of the company's cars, and then the next day the 22nd when the murder took place, he failed to turn up for work, and according to the account were given by Jim Mars about 30 minutes later, 30 minutes after JFK has been murdered, he showed up at work and he was pale and he was sweaty and he had mud all over his clothes, and he goes into the men's bathroom and throws up, and he just tells his co workers that he had been sick that morning and he had tried to drive the car back the one that he borrowed. He tried to drive that car back to the dealership, but he had to park it because of heavy traffic. But then later, employees of the dealership found or employees of some kind, I don't know if they were employees in the area, or employees of the dealership. They find the car and it's parked behind the wooden picket fence on top of the grassy knoll overlooking Dealey Plaza. So that is a very weird situation. Now, whether he'd actually did anything or not, I don't know. Put this as yet another if we're if we're just continuing to get one thing after another after another. It's weird. It's fishy. That doesn't make sense in all this. We can add that to it as well. Tom the photographic analysis guy, he says that he's able to detect these areas of like morticians wax in the autopsy photos. So like, there are areas that, he says would be organic, normal material, but then there are also areas of inorganic material, like or like, I guess not human body material. I should say that's probably the right way to put it, wax, morticians wax. And he says he can see it on the face, as well as in the wound in the head. And as he says in this episode, yes, you expect restorative procedures to be done you after the autopsy, after everything's been settled, and you're preparing the body for burial or preparing for somebody to have their wake. But why would that have already been present at the autopsy? He says that the autopsy photo, you know, the one where it's like President Kennedy's head is completely intact, or there's just like one little, small wound in the back that you can barely even see. He says that the photograph itself is a forgery, that whenever he does his photographic analysis on it, you can act. Actually tell this area of like, where it was painted, I guess, like primitive Photoshop, right? Like where it was painted to make it look like it's actually his head, but it's been done to disguise the massive head wound that was actually present. From there, they interview a man named Dan Marvin, who was a member of the Green Berets. He talks about how a few weeks after the murder of JFK, he had volunteered for like, guerrilla warfare training at Fort Bragg. He alleges that while he's there, the murder of JFK is pointed out as, like, the way to do it, if you have to get rid of a nation's leader and you want to be able to point the finger at a patsy. This is textbook example of how you do it. He claims that they were shown charts of where the pop poppers were, as well as routes to the nearest hospital. Of course, in this documentary, he tells us that he can't remember now where those people were. He says that they also had a wide variety of movies and still photographs that they were shown. He claims that officials told the room that Oswald was just a patsy and he wasn't involved at all in the actual murder. He also claims that he and one of the other men that were in the training on a lunch break or coffee break or something. They hear one of the Charlie India Alpha officers that were that was there say something like, boy, things really went well in Dealey Plaza, didn't they? He says that, you know, maybe this is just how soldiers of fortune are. But he had to convince himself there must have been some reason for the greater good. If the government really was involved in it, then there had to be some legitimate, firm reason why JFK needed to be gotten out of the way. He says that about 15 months later, he summoned back to Fort Bragg, and that allegedly a man from the Charlie India Alpha asks him if he would be willing to kill somebody. He says he asks for the name of the person, assuming that it will be somebody overseas. But it's not allegedly, he's asked if he would murder William Bruce Pitzer. Now, William Bruce Pitzer was an officer with the United States Navy, and so upon hearing that, he's taken aback. So Dan declines to take the job, since it's not some overseas foreign enemy. It's not only domestic, but it's a man that's at Bethesda. He says no. Now he goes on to elaborate in this interview, in the men who killed Kennedy, that supposedly the these soldiers were supposed to be used for foreign engagements, whereas mafia were supposed to be used for domestic engagements. He claims that there was another man named David Vanek who was approached by that same officer. Now he says I didn't hear their conversation. I can't say for sure what they were talking about, but I never saw Vanek again at this point, the Docu series interviews Dennis David he was also interviewed by David Lifton for best evidence he was the person that was chief of the day at Bethesda whenever Kennedy's body was brought in, according to Dennis David Pitzer had like a 16 millimeter film, as well as some still photographs that were taken during the autopsy. When we fast forward in time in 1966 Pitzer is found dead. The weapon was found by his right hand, and and Dennis David immediately thinks of that That's odd, not only the suicide thing, because that's the official verdict is that he was he committed suicide. So Dennis David is like when we never saw any suicidal tendencies from him. And then also he was left handed. So if he did that, why? Why would a weapon be by his right hand? David says that Pitzer was planning to retire, and he says that Pitzer had told him he had some lucrative offers from television companies. And David's theory is that they who, and he says in the documentary, whoever they are, were concerned that with him retiring and going into some kind of private broadcasting arena, he might share some information that didn't need to get out. Dan Marvin says that once he finds out that Pitzer was killed, he wants to try to track down this van at guy. Now, what he intended to do if he had found him, I don't know, but he starts writing letters, and even threatens to get a senator involved, and at that point, he receives a letter saying that there, there never was any such David Van ik in the military. However, this is kind of like point counterpoint. Dan has documents. I don't know the veracity of them, to be clear, I'm just. Telling you what was reported in this Docu series, he has documents showing that both he and Vanek were in in the military at the same time. He gets teary eyed and says that he hopes that what he's revealing will not damage his relationship with his children and grandchildren. We're told by several different researchers about this thing called Project freedom. That allegedly was a project that was run primarily by Bobby Kennedy against Castro, the idea that they didn't want Cuba and Castro and communism to become this major sticking point issue in the 1964 election. So the idea was, if we can figure out some way without official wink wink, without official US involvement, or the US being blamed in any way, we'll just get rid of him. He won't be in the picture anymore, and then we won't have to deal with him in the 1964 election. And then, according to these researchers, like according to the researchers, at some point this plan is actually turned against Kennedy like, again, we're in the realm of supposedly, there were agents who were being paid much more by the mafia than they were the government, and so they were their their loyalties were more so to whatever the mob wanted them to do, and not what the government wanted them to do. Also, according to these researchers, Bobby Kennedy recognized Oswald, or at least, recognized his position, and then magically, this explains why the body was taken, why we have all of this weird chicanery that happens and the body is altered, some type of surgery is performed on the body before it ever even makes it to the official autopsy in Bethesda. These researchers also say that Bobby Kennedy directed much of the autopsy and then JFKs body after this autopsy was turned over to Alexander Haig. According to them, Alexander Haig had been one of the authors of Cuba contingency plans. In other words, if the poop hit the fan and we had to go after Castro, or we had to invade Cuba, we had to really get into some type of hot situation with Cuba, these contingency plans would already be made. So they're using all of this as proof that this was all part of Project freedom gone wrong, turned inward on Kennedy, rather than outward on Castro. The episode closes out with Marina talking about how these governments shouldn't have the right or the power to play God over somebody else's life, and Dan Marvin talking about, you know, kind of we don't really live in the country that we thought we did, if, if, if we did, then there'd be more transparency. There's a lot to unpack here. As I said, this for me, is where the series starts to make a bit of a U turn. The first few episodes are fairly down to earth, not not too crazy, not too kooky, but from here, we start to get into more fringe elements, or what I would call fringe elements, even within the conspiracy theory community, I have a copy of Lamar Waldron and Tom Hartman's book, Legacy of secrecy, and that is Lamar and Tom are two of the individuals that get interviewed in relation to this supposed project freedom thing where allegedly Bobby Kennedy was coordinating this effort, and it was at some point turned inward on JFK instead. I haven't read it yet. I intend to, and that might change my opinion in listening to it, if we're, if we're just evaluating the interview here in this the men who killed Kennedy Docu series, I'm kind of like, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, the idea of rogue elements within the Charlie India alpha in collusion with mobsters. That's been a conspiracy theory for a long time. I don't think that there's anything really controversial or avant garde about that. Now, I think a lot of people would be like, Yeah, I've heard that before. And was there this project freedom that Bobby was running, and it got turned inward, and it was used to murder JFK instead of Castro, I don't know, and I just want to be honest about that i don't know I'm my gut instinct is one of skepticism, but I think it should be with any of these theories that we get. There should be a gut instinct of skepticism until I read more about it and from more sources. I want to just say I'm not sure what to think about that yet. Now, on the on one of the JFK Pop Pop websites, there's this story about Daniel Marvin, because like with so many of these witnesses, there are point counterpoint. There are people that say, I don't believe this person is telling the truth, and so I. I want to talk about this article. I'll drop a link to it so you can check it out for yourself. And it says the Okay, hold on, because this is some kind of letter to the editor. A major thrust of these articles is Colonel Marvin's description of his being solicited by a Charlie India Alpha agent in August 1965 to terminate Lieutenant Commander William B Pitzer, who was then on an active service at Bethesda Naval Hospital. Commander Pitzer may have been in possession of a 16 millimeter movie film of President Kennedy's autopsy in October 66 Pitzer was found dead at the Naval Hospital of a gunshot wound to the head officially ruled a suicide. In the article, Colonel Marvin states that he was instructed to meet the Charlie India Alpha agent in an area adjacent to the sixth command, sixth Special Forces Group headquarters at Fort Bragg, North Carolina Green Beret, Captain David Vanek, according to Marvin's account, met with the company man immediately after Marvin declined the mission to terminate. Pitzer, quoting from the article, whether or not that agent offered Vanek the same mission, or whether or not he accepted the mission, is only for him to say, I have neither seen nor heard from him these past 29 years, Colonel Marvin was featured prominently in the most recent episode of the men who killed Kennedy, produced for television by Nigel Turner and shown numerous times on the History Channel since November 1995 on camera, Colonel Marvin was similarly definite as to the identity of the man who he claims also spoke to the Charlie India Alpha agent, and who may have been asked to murder Lieutenant Commander Pitzer, Captain D Vanek. A copy of the TFD article was sent to Mr. Timothy Ray, chief analyst for military records for the pop pop records review board, by Colonel Marvin. Mr. Ray Traced and contacted ex captain now Dr van ik who produced an affidavit denying acquaintance with Marvin and denying knowledge of the meeting with the Charlie India Alpha agent. After receiving a copy of the affidavit, Colonel Marvin wrote to Mr. Ray as follows, I have gone back over what I recall of that day, and I can tell you that I still believe no matter what David Vanek says, He recalls that I saw who I thought to be, David Vanek in jungle fatigues, approached by the same Charlie India Alpha agent immediately after I refused the mission. I do not know what the agent and the man who I thought was Vanek discussed this represented a significant retreat from certainty of identification to who I thought to be, David Vanek, the colonel, sent us copies of the February 17 letter to Mr. Ray. We met with him and took him to task on how clear was his memory of Captain Vanek, although he maintained that his recall was a 10 on a scale of one to 10. He was otherwise evasive and left us unconvinced. He now told us that the closest he had been to Captain Vanek was a distance of 40 feet. As vanack stood in the shade of the trees dressed in fatigues, this new version amazed us. His account of this meeting has always been that he and Vanek had approached the agent together on re checking the wording of the TFD article, we found another Green Beret Captain named David H Vanek, with whom I had taken Pop Pop training, joined me outside the building, and we walked together, asking each of the other what this was about. Neither of us had an inkling, except that it must be a covert mission of some kind. Three days later, we discussed the matter again with him by telephone, encouraging him to call Dr van ik in our presence, he was evasive again, denied the need to call Dr van IK and brought the conversation rapidly to an end. Soon thereafter, one of us went to Europe for work. Eaglesham wrote immediately, please be frank with us about the strength of your recollections of the events of that hot afternoon in August 65 Colonel Marvin's response was 1000 word letter in which he failed to accommodate this simple request for clarification. Instead, perhaps we should remember that from the beginning, the primary value of reaching vaneck was to obtain corroboration of Pop Pop training. We do not share this view and never have Dr Vanek. Value lays in the possibility of his confirming that the Charlie India Alpha wanted to terminate Pitzer, there was the further possibility that Captain Vanek was responsible for a mysterious death on February 24 Palmer called Dr van ik at his home and spoke with him for approximately half an hour, as in his three page affidavit to Mr. Ray, Dr Vanek stated that he did not recognize Daniel Marvin from the videotape and had no recollection of him from Special Forces duty at Fort Bragg. He categorically denied all of Marvin's charges concerning him characterizing them as ludicrous. We do not know whether or not Dr van Ike is telling the truth, but we are now certain that Colonel Marvin has been lying in crucial elements of his story. We know also that Colonel Marvin continues to insist that his contradictory versions of key events are not mutually exclusive. We have come full circle from working closely with Daniel Marvin. We see him regularly and talking frequently on the telephone, planning to write a book together. Now we are convinced that he has been dishonest with us. Where lies the limits of this deceit? It is pointless to speculate, but the implications of what he wrote in his TI. D article, and when he said on the men who killed Kennedy are so important that we feel obliged to alert the research community of his duplicity. Hence this letter. End quote, wow. Again, as I always say with this stuff, you have to judge for yourself. There have been, you know, I would say, a variety of professional skeptics that just look to poke holes in people's stories. And there's nothing wrong with that, because if somebody is going to put themselves forward and say I was a witness, or somebody pulled me aside and and asked me, Hey, do you want to kill this guy? And then we can't, we can't prove it. Mean, how are you supposed to know that the person is telling the truth if there's no proof there? And as we get further into this Docu series, you'll see more and more instances of people disputing what's being reported. This Docu series is not without controversy. I mean, there are people that really knock the whole entire thing and think the entire thing is crazy, as we shall see, the episodes get weirder as time goes on, stay a little crazy, and I will see you in the next episode.

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