Interview with Madeline Brown at the JFK Lancer Conference

INTERVIEW WITH MADELEINE BROWN AT THE JFK LANCER CONFERENCE, NOVEMBER 2001

An interview with Madeleine Brown (MB) took place over a two day period in Dallas, November 2001. On Saturday, 11/17/2002, Madeleine was interviewed, along with Dr. Miller (DM) at the JFK Lancer Conference at The Ramada Inn in Dallas by John Delane Williams (JDW) and Gary Severson (GS). The interview continued at Madeleine's and Dr. Miller's pool at their residence in Dallas. Madeleine has told her life story with Lyndon Baines Johnson in Texas in the Morning. (1999)  Dr. Miller is a retired physician. At the time of the JFK assassination, Dr. Miller was president of The Dallas Medical Society, and was waiting as a dignitary at The Dallas Trade Mart for the ill-fated arrival of President Kennedy for the luncheon reception in Presdent Kennedy's honor. Along with other dignitaries, he was waiting at the Trade Mart for the arrival of President Kennedy for the Presidential Luncheon.

         SATURDAY EVENING, NOVEMBER 17, 2001, AT THE

          JFK LANCER NOVEMBER IN DALLAS CONFERENCE

JDW: First, I know that there are lots of things people talk about, but I'd like to start with Maurice Jaffe.

MB: From San Antonio?

JDW: Yah.

DM: That's a good place. I was born there 88 years ago.

MB: So you want to talk about Maurice.

JDW: Let's start with that. Ah, the..You did mention him in your book, I know. 

MB: The little girl that my son was going with worked for Maurice Jaffe. I had been exposed to in that way.

JDW: Now, ah, did he have any businesses here in Dallas?

MB: If he did, I associated him with when I was in San Antonio. I never did see him with any of the social people here in Dallas.

JDW: I heard that he had a uranium business that was in the Dal-Tex Building. You'r not familiar with that, though?

MB: I'm not, really, I'm not.

JDW: He was supposed to be a friend of Lyndon's though.

MB: Oh, definitely. He was a friend of Lyndon's.

JDW: And he bought some of Estes's holdings, I believe.

MB: Yes. Billie Sol was supposed to be here, but he didn't make it, he's not well.

GS: He did call me two months ago. He said I have to be real smooth, and I guess I wasn't.

MB: Well, he's not well.

JDW: Maurice, I would guess died several years ago?

MB: Well I haven't kept up it, but the last I heard, he was still alive in San Antonio.

JDW: I think you mentioned in your book that he picked up the holdings of Estes and that he was well connected with Lyndon.

Is there other things that come to your mind about him, or did you just know him socially?

MB: Well, my contact with most of them was social, you know? I guess I learned to really care for Billie Sol, you know, we were called the jet set. He was such a fun person. He bank robbed I don't know how many banks, companies here in Texas. Every once in a while, I'd ask, 'Billie Sol, where is the money.' He'd say, 'I don't know what you are talking about.'

JDW: I'd like to know where the money is, too!

MB: But he has a genius mind, Billie Sol does.

JDW: You mentioned that...

GS: Numbers?

MB: Numbers. He was creative and like in Pecos Texas he brought irrigation, I mean he was really quite educated. His family

JDW: Did Lyndon ever talk about anything, for example you did mention on the night of the 21st, he said we won't have to put up with the Kennedy's anymore, or something to that effect.

MB: That's what he said.

JDW: I think he said it in somewhat more flamboyant language than I just said.

MB: He was kind of naughty, saying ugly words.

JDW: Did he ever talk about Maurice?

MB: Maurice Jaffe, did he ever talk about, other things, when we were in the San Antonio area. He never did make any comment  about how he was tied in with him.

JDW: So, I would imagine he could make off-hand remarks about anybody.

MB: Right.

JDW: I could see him saying things about Billie Sol, for example just as kind of..

MB: Billie Sol took the rap for a lot of this stuff. I was shocked that he has never, he has never ever turned against Lyndon. And I'm real shocked, cause a lot of people would have.

JDW: Now he did say that Mac Wallace killed several people essentially for Lyndon.

MB: Oh, yes. I think that has been established.

JDW: And one of the people  he claimed of course, one of the people was JFK.

MB: Who what?

JDW: JFK. Was JFK, that Wallace participated in, at least.

MB: See, I saw Malcolm out at the Dallas Gun Club. I used to shoot a lot of skeet and trap, and he was out there. And I thought what is he doing here? The guy was good. Boy, if he ever pulled his trigger, he hit his target. And then, course, knowing what was going on in Dallas, and then about the assassination, what, I think he did it.

JDW: Uh, huh.

MB: He made sure.

JDW: Now, in your book you said he was probably on the knoll shooting, is that right?

MB: I think he was behind,.., I sincerely believe he is the one who fired the fatal shot.

JDW: OK. Now...

MB: And that's based on personal knowledge.

GS: He was the shooter.

MB: Oh, the best!

JDW: Now, this may not be your favorite magazine. This The JFK/ Deep Politics Quarterly. But in their last issue, they did a 34 point match with Mac Wallace.

MB: Fingerprint?

JDW: Yeah.

MB: I haven't seen it.

JDW: I haven't read it, other than to see that. But, ah, it says Mac Wallace had to be on the sixth floor of the  School Book Depository at some point in time. What would he be doing there?

MB: On the sixth floor?

JDW: Yeah.

MB: A lot of people have placed him there, and I think one of the books placed Malcolm Wallace there. And I'm not saying he wasn't there. I think, probably he could have been there, maybe a little after, you know, I don't know. 

JDW: Specifically he was on the sixth floor some time.

MB: The original Malcolm Wallace fingerprint, I have been told they did find it on the sixth floor. That's been a long, long time.

JDW: Well they found it a long time ago, they identified for the first time in '98, I think. And, ah, most recently then they did a much more thorough match. Oh, on page 142 of your book you say that LBJ was said to be the father of a child of a secretary. And now,

MB: You know who it is?

JDW: Well, you could tell me and I  still wouldn't know who it is.

MB: Yeah, you'd know.

JDW: And I'm going to ask a question, did Jack Valenti marry the girl?

MB: He took the rap.

JDW: Yeah. Cause Jack did real well after that!

MB: Well I'll tell you what I guess Jack was the most intelligent and smartest of any of us. Cause Lyndon worked it out where he went with the motion picture people, like half a million a year that was good money what 40 years ago, 50 years ago, a long time ago.

JDW: Yes that's true, he is President of the motion Picture...

MB: He's maintained his position, too.

JDW: Now, is he still married to the mother?

MB: As far as I know.

JDW: And did they have more children themselves?

MB: They have two others. This one girl, you'll see her on television occassionally. She's a tall slender girl. And course Jack's a little short man.

JDW: Is she well known?

MB: Do what?

JDW: Is the daughter well known? If you said her name, would I know her name?

MB: I'm not sure, whether you know. The names are Linda Courtney, or Courtney Linda, one of the two. But you do see her occassionally with Jack Valenti on television. And she parts her hair, Lyndon had the ugliest ears you could ever see. She'll part her hair and the big ears, you know, and I think it's just her way, course I know the story, it's her way of telling people here I am. Cause it is unusual for a girl to part her hair and show the big ears.

JDW: I can't say that I've ever seen her, but that doesn't really say much.

GS: She would only be seen with him?

MB: Do what?

GS: She'd only be seen with him.

MB: Well, ah, I've seen her other times, but she appears with Jack Valenti often.

GS: But she's not in movies, or..

MB: No, but she's in the motion picture business.

JDW: She would be about 40 now, I would take it.

MB: Yeah, maybe a little older. '62,...

DM: What are you talking about now?

MB: Margaret Rawley (or Riley).

DM: I thought you were talking about Lady Bird.

JDW: Lady Bird's more than 40!

DM: She's something to tell you about Lady Bird. We were driving around here in West Dallas and we saw  Lady Bird Lane.

MB: He said 'Do you know what street your'e driving on.?' I said no, and he said you're driving on Lady Bird Lane. I said, 'Ah, come on. Get out of here'.

DM: What's wrong with that?

JDW: My fingers?

DM: No, your'e using your left hand.

JW: That's the one that works.

MB: He's left-handed.

DM: Your'e a southpaw, then.

JW: You bet.

DM: Where'd that expression come from?

JDW: It comes from something,..

DM: Baseball term. Back in the old days of television they played all the games in the afternoon. They made the pitcher pitch to the West because they didn't want the sun in the batter's eyes. One of the lefthander's got kicked out of the game. Next season he didn't do any better, so they put him back in, they said here comes that southpaw again. When you're facing West, got a southpaw.

JDW: Mary Margaret Rawley?

MB: Riley. R-I-L-E-Y. I think, Mary Margaret. This girl that wrote the Lady Bird biography, she's from San Antonio. Anyway, she confronted Mary Margaret, because I told her. But she'd heard the story, you know, from somewhere else. And Mary Margaret bitterly denied it. And she did have it in her book, but the publisher had to pull it. But there isn't any doubt in my mind.

JDW: Uh Huh.

MB: I was all a lot of talk.

JDW: My grandmother's maiden name was Riley, for whatever that is worth. Now, the Murchison party. One of the things, I don't know that you ever heard this, but, what is his name, Brown, Walt Brown.

Do you know Walt Brown?

MB: Oh, yeah, I know Walt.

 

JDW: One of things he's said is that everything we've heard about the Murchison party has come from you. And no one else  who was at the party has said anything.

MB: Gary Barker has come forth, I think. Galen Ross, are you familiar with his new book?

JDW: Galen Ross?

GS: You told me about it.

JDW: Oh, sure! Yah, right.

 [Note: This book is: Robert Galen Ross (2001). The Elite Serial    Killers of Lincoln, IFK, RFK & MLK. Spicewood, TX: RIE.]   

MB: Some of them I'm not familiar with. But George Owens that worked for Clint Murchison. He passed away not long ago, and I've known George, George went to, we didn't have the DFW airport back then. Dallas only had about 450,000 people. He went out to the Bluebird Airport and George was going on camera to tell the story of what happened. And do you know the day we had that all set up he died suddenly. I mean a bunch of this, sometimes I feel bad.

JDW: Things like that do happen.

MB: Peter O'Donnell, over at all the Republicans, drove Richard Nixon out there. I don't know if he ever gave an affidavit or not, but he definitely drove Richard Nixon to the party.

GS: Now, did Puterbaugh actually show up at that party?

MB: Jack Puterbaugh? I saw these people socially so much, I'm not sure really, if he were there. It seems he was. I was so light hearted, and everyone was there for a good time. And Jack Puterbaugh is still alive, and he was in the motorcade and, ah, ...,oh, well, he's the one that I was told that really changed the motorcade route. And when I found out that Jack Puterbaugh was in the Agricultural department, so  what's he doing in the motorcade. But that was at the time Billy Sol Estes, that mess was going on.

GS: Who told you about Puterbaugh?

MB: Well, I met him, of course, and it was the guy from KTBC in Austin.

GS: That he changed the motorcade.

MB: There is so much of the story that researchers don't know that they need to agree together. Things have been changed and distorted, it's just like with H.L. Hunt. I used to walk up the street with him and he parked in the same parking lot two or three days, I think that's in my book, prior to the asssassination they had this wanted for treason, on the back of this. And when he called me, here I  have something for you. And I was still really naive. I didn't really realize the bad parts of the government.

And I looked down and said 'Just a minute. You can't  do the president of the United States that way.' And his remark was, 'The Hell I can't. I'm the richest person in the world, and you can't do a thing about it'. And that was his attitude. And do you know what? They didn't touch him.

JDW: Well, that's true.

MB: He went on to Washington and stayed with Lyndon about three weeks and they worked out all that oil depletion and all that stuff. But see, a lot of people don't know that.

JDW: Ah, now you knew J. D. Tippit?

MB: Oh, yeah.

JDW: And, one of the stories I've heard, that, at a barbeque place...

MB: He had a barbeque.

JDW: He had a girlfriend, I guess...

MB: Sure did.

JDW: Was pregnant.

MB: I saw him there all the time. And he hung out there. And  the day of the assassination, we found out that J.D. had been shot. And you know what we did? We laughed. He didn't have a thing to do with the assassination. He used to meet his stripper friend that worked for Jack Ruby over on Tenth Street.  J. D. did. They'd eat here.

JDW: He had another girlfriend?

MB: He'd go there. We'd think he was on duty. We'd all just say he was coming out of his house, and a husband, lover, someone.., you know.

JDW: Was this girl also a stripper for Ruby?

MB: Not at that time, I don't think.

JDW; That was another one, then.

MB: This was just a girl who hung out at Austin's Barbeque.

JDW: OK.

MB: Someone identified the shooter of J. D. Tippet, and it sounded just like it was Jack Ruby.

GS: Didn't live far from there, did he?

MB: Oh, Jack Ruby lived real close.

JDW: I heard it was a real good chance it might be the girlfriend's husband.

MB: Husband.

GS: He was parked in front of the girl friend's house.

MB: Oh, yeah.

GS: Did people call Tippet Jack?

MB: We called him J. D. He could have been called Jack, I don't know.

GS: One story was he had a resemblance to Kennedy. His fellow policeman would call him Jack because of the resemblance to Kennedy.

MB: The state of Texas honored him today down in Houston.

DM: They sure did. On television they're putting up a statue somewhere. His wife wants a statue of him here in Dallas.

They said on the TV program at least seven people saw Lee Harvey Oswald shoot Tippet.

MB: This story is changed. I mean from the days it happened.

JDW: Did you know Bill Shelly at all?

MB: Bill who?

JDW: Shelly. The guy who worked at the School Book Depository, foreman.

MB: Truly? Are you talking about Truly?

JDW: No. Truly was I think, the head guy.

MB: I did know Truly.

JDW: But you didn't know Shelly, OK. Did you ever hear of "Tex" Brown or Ray Brown? He wrote a..

MB: Did he write a book?

JDW: He wrote a book, called Broken Silence. He said, for example, that  he was trying to train Oswald to shoot, and he didn't take to it very well. And he was also going with a stripper at Ruby's. But, other than you heard of him, you don't know anything, then.

MB: Well, I don't, I can't say I know him as a friend. See, through the years, I've met Marina. And I've talked to Marina over and over again. And I say ' Marina. Tell me you want to know. You couldn't speak English in those years.' And she told that the police came out and picked up the rifle the next day after the shooting. I said 'Are you sure?' She said, 'Yeah.' You know. And I'll tell you something else. Billie Sol, he'd call me, he'd drink a lot, and he'd call me all hours and we'd talk. He said he wanted to meet Jean Hill. And he wanted to meet Marina. So one night he called and said, 'I just got to talk to Marina.' And I said, 'Well, I'll give you her number, but don't you call her until tommorrow.' So Marina tells a story when Billie Sol calls her. And his opening words were, 'Marina, I am so sorry.' And why after all those years did Billy Sol call and say those words?

 [Note: Believe it or not, I (JDW) did not click on the importance   of this interchange until I was transcribing the tape. If the      police picked up Oswald's gun at the Paine household the next day,   the entire case against Lee Harvey Oswald is a fabrication. His    gun couldn't be at Dealy Plaza, and all the the supposed evidence   of Oswald shooting from the sixth floor is bogus. It also means    that a great deal of collusion would be involved in finding the    rifle in the garage and then claiming that it is the weapon that   killed JFK.

 I naturally wanted to call Madeleine and arrange a call to Marina   Oswald. I called Madeleine 4/3/2002. She said that Marina has had   a terrible experience wherein a researcher endeared himself to the   family, staying at the home, with the researcher promising he      would exonerate Oswald. Apparently the manuscript does the         absolute opposite. Marina vowed never to speak to a researcher     again, and thus my chances of talking to Marina at this point are   non-existent. We may later attempt an interview with Marina. This   is just too important to let it go.]

JDW: Well, what do you think?

MB: I've always said Sol knew every nasty detail of this, I've always said that.

JDW: Well, he's kind of intimated this as well.

MB: Huh?

JDW: He's kind of said this himself, that he knows quite a bit more than he has ever been said. I guess a couple of people,..Tower, was supposed to have known a lot.

MB: John Tower?

JDW: Yep. And ah, Doc, What, ah, just curious, Let's wake up Doc! Did you use to teach somewhere, or?

DM: Me?

JDW: Yes.

DM: Teach everywhere.

JDW: OK.

DM: What does the word doctor mean?

JDW: Well.

DM: It means teacher. I just taught you something, didn't I?

JDW: Right!

DM: I teach all the time. I was with Southwestern Medical School, and with Baylor, and with St. Paul training residents for about thirty years.

JDW: Uh hum.

GS: St. Paul?

DM: I was with St. Paul 11 1/2 years as chief radiologist.

JDW: Here in...

DM: St. Paul Hospital.

GS: OK. You said earlier you were in St. Paul, Minnesota.

DM: Oh, no. I was in St. Paul, Minnesota.

MB: We were in San Francisco at a medical convention for that September 11th deal.

DM: I was waiting for Kennedy at Mark Hall. I didn't get to see him.

MB: Market Hall. You were at Market Hall.

DM: Market Hall. Yes. I was President of the Dallas County Medical Society, and they gave me two little tickets to go to this. So  I did. Mayor Ed Johnson came out and said he's going to be a little late. Ten or fifteen minutes later, there's been some sort of trouble. Ten or fifteen minutes later, Kennedy's been shot.

MB: We didn't have all of the present day communication system, a telephone, it was just like Dr. Ronald Jones said they didn't even have a hot-line into the hospital until after the assassination of John Kennedy. And that's when the hospital put in a hot-line.

JDW: Well, I see it's 7:30, and everything's getting started now, so maybe we... is there some chance that we could talk more later, or tommorrow?

MB: Sure.

JDW: Maybe I could come over to your place tommorrow?

MB: Tommorrow, let's see.

JDW: Or tonight afterwords.

MB: I get tired.

DM: I know!

MB: Maria. Maria, the girl who works for us. Is she comming in the morning to clean the house?

DM: I don't know she didn't tell me. She didn't tell me.

NB: The weather, we could sit out by the swimming pool.

JDW: Sure.

GS: We do have a car.

JDW: Yeah, we can get there.

MB: Why don't you call?

JDW: What's your address?

MB: It's 6109 Avrill Way.

JDW: Avrill Way? A-V?

DM: R-I-L-L. Avrill Way. And it's half a block, we live half a block West of the big tall Preston Tower. Do you know where that is? There are two tall buildings there.

GS: Do you go 35-E?

MB: Go Regal Row over to Harry Hines. Turn left. Go to Northwest Highway. Turn right, and stay on Northwest Highway until you get to Preston. Turn left, one block, turn back right and it's the street Avrill Way and Dan Dera. They split, about half a block. Stay right and we're in the second complex. It's real easy.

DM: Yeah, you'll see the real tall building just there down the street.

GS: We got a good map.

JDW: Where he lives, this is easy.

GS: In Minneapolis we've got some strange places.

MB: Now, you live in California.

JDW: No, actually I live in North Dakota, Grand Forks.

GS: Remember the city that had the flood, and then the fire.

DM: Bismarck!

GS: Fires, city burning, flood in '97. Remember that? That's where I grew up...Grand Forks, North Dakota. But I live 300 miles away in Minneapolis now.

MB: Oh, OK.

JDW: And I teach at the university there.

MB: I don't know. We have one [an interview] with Jim Fetzer tommorrow at 1:15. If you could come earlier.

DM: 10 O'Clock.

JDW: 10 O'Clock. OK. That's fine. Let's plan on meeting you at your house then at 10:00. We'll start off early. 

MB: I'll tell you everything I know. Some of the stuff, some of it makes me real upset.

JDW: I think what I really would want to do tommorrow is to have you tell you're story.

MB: Well if you read my book, that pretty well tells it.

JDW: OK. Thank you very much and we'll see you tommorrow morning.

-----------------------------------

(After a short time, we realized the Awards Banquet was delayed; we decided to continue the interview on Saturday night.)

JDW: Now, we're back on again.

MB: OK.

JDW: First, I'd like to take a picture of you if I could.

Even got the flash working for a change.

MB: You know, Malcolm Summers, he was an eyewitness of all this.

And I said 'Malcolm, so much of this has been told.' Course he and Jean Hill and Mary Morman fell out over some things Jean said. 'Tell me what did you see. You saw the president's head blown off.'

JDW: Yeah, it's inter... what were you doing at the time?

MB: I was at the red Court House. I met some Democrats. And we were finalizing plans what was going on it Austin. I looked down at my watch. And I said, 'Well, I'm not going to the Market Place, I'll meet Y'all in Austin. You know, and I blew 'em a kiss, and I walked

over to you know where the Conpiracy Museum [is now], my car was parked there. And I got in my car, my car was packed to go to Austin. It was easier to drive in a car. And impulsively, I said well I better run by the beauty shop to get my hair [done], you know I might not have time in Austin. And I walked in the door they were already announcing, so I missed, just a matter of minutes. The cold chills still go through and through.

JDW: It was just so,... so unexpected.

MB: It was uncalled for. It was a turnover in our government, and people, lay people, I don't think realized what really happened. The oil people they had control of Washington, they lost a little control when Kennedy went in, and they couldn't handle it.

JDW: So you think that.. the oil people had a lot to do with it.

MB: Oh, there's no doubt in my mind.

JDW: Uh huh.

MB: See, Lyndon told me when I met him I said people are talking about you they said you are responsible, and I've got to know. He told me at the time it's this 8F group of the oil people.

JDW: Now, actually, I've got a couple of articles, I'll bring them

with me when I see you, that I've written, my sense of things, Lyndon's involvement, really, was pretty much, he may have known enough to tell you...

MB: Well, if you look at the last picture of John Kennedy over in Fort Worth...

JDW: When Lyndon's glaring at him...

MB: He's just angry with him.

JDW: Yes. I see that in the picture.

MB: Ralph [Yarbrough], he was such a fine person. And he was all happy about the president. John Connally, he had this far away look. John knew some things, but I don't know how much.

JDW: I would think obviously not too much, because he was shot. Yarborough was supposed to be in that chair,... well, it becomes a lot of conjecture after that point, but my sense is that Lyndon's major involvement is to kind of run the cover-up, and I don't know that he ever did know other than...

MB: Well, you know, Nellie Connally called on Jaqueline Kennedy after he [John] recuperated, and she refused to see her, she isolated herself from all those people.

JDW: Uh hum.

MB: And here not long ago, when she was young, she died of cancer, my son died of cancer.

JDW: Right.

MB: Do you remember Margaret Mitchell?

JDW: Yes.

MB: She died of cancer. In my mind, as naive as I am about still some things, all these people, and Jack Ruby died of cancer, you know?

JDW: Right. They all died much younger than you might think.

MB: Uh huh. You know, you just don't know.

JDW: You said you were going to say something about Lady Bird, and I don't know if you did say that or not.

MB: [Laughs] Well of course, I knew Lady Bird.

JDW: Yeah.

MB: And she's what, about 85 right now.

JDW: Yeah.

MB: You know the only thing she knew about me or anything, when they asked her, the only thing that came out in the newspaper, she knew that Lyndon loved women, and half of his associates were women. But he liked her the best.

JDW: OK.

MB: That's the only thing, she didn't...

JDW: Well, he was himself...

MB: Oh yeah!

JDW: And you know that far better than I do!

MB: He did whatever he wanted to. He made his own rules.

JDW: I guess it was probably a shock to you when you found out about the secretary.

MB: Say what?

JDW: This Mary Margaret Riley.

MB: Oh, I cried and I cried and I cried. Because I knew what I had gone through. And I was sure, you know... And that's why Jesse Kellam called me and told me direct.

JDW: Uh Hum.

MB: Where I wouldn't pick it up.

JDW: Yet, apparently, her life has been very different.

MB: Her life, of course, the monetary. money, you know, she hasn't had to want for anything.

JDW: Right.

MB: She's had all her privacy, certainly, she was secure in her money. Wherein mine, Jesse Kellam and Jeff Ragsdale. They took care of mine.

JDW: Now, you have an older son, too, I think?

MB: I have an older son.

JDW: He's still alive?

MB: He's still alive.

JDW: What's he doing?

MB: He's with a nuclear power plant. He's an engineer. I been trying to get him to quit, because you know, the terriorists there. They're after that.

JDW: That's true.

MB: Son, you don't need the money, please, you know?

JDW: Well, let's see. He would be...

MB: My son?

JDW: Yeah. He would be fift...

MB: 53.

JDW: I figured he'd be somewhere in there. Steven was born in '49?

MB: Steve was born in 1950.

JDW: 50. So he'd be 51 this year.

MB: He was such a fine person.

JDW: You had a difficult time particularly with the way the service treated him. They called him a deserter, or something? They called him a deserter?

MB: Yeah, they called him a deserter. That was the biggest shock we ever had. Because Steven had property, was an election judge, he lived an open life , and for them to say he's been a deserter. You know. And I don't know how many traffic tickets. He used to drive with a hot... had there been a warrant for his arrest, you know.

JDW: Right.

MB: Those two guys that.. so I said why don't you go to his house. He had an [unintelligible] house, and, but they knocked on my door. Those two guys, and they were so ugly. Were they ugly. When I got upstairs, it was early, you know, I said where is your search warrant. I had enough sense to ask for that. These guys held a piece of paper out like this and dangled it. He said it's over here.  Well of course i love fire-arms and I had a gun in the cabinet and said, well I don't have to take this crap, you know and I reached in and got my Charles Daly. And I cracked and I said you guys better leave go downstairs and get out of my home now. And they, I backed 'em out is what I did. And this black man, when he got outside, said we'll be back. And I said you better have legal papers when you come.

JDW: Hum.

MB: Oh, I was upset. Oh, they were pathe[tic].

JDW: After the assassination, did you get to see Lyndon much at all after that?

MB: Ah, I didn't see him until New Years, when he became president, and I went to the Driskill Hotel, on New Years, and that's when he told me, and...

JDW: And then you pretty much didn't see him?

MB: I did see him, I saw him pretty often if he came. Jesse'd call me and say Mr. President was gonna be here be on the OTTA, well at that time it was the TTA. Through the years, I'm said I'm not gonna do this anymore. But he had some kind of charm over me.

JDW: Uh Hum.

MB: I did it anyway.

JDW: Did he ever talk about the assassination with you?

MB: Other than, he got so upset, when I ask him he told me, but he never after that, we didn't talk a lot.

JDW: I know that was, he did an interview, in the interview said he didn't think Oswald did it and then...

MB: No, at the time he said he didn't do it. Alone you know. But our Chief, Jesse Curry, he had already written a book.

JDW: Yeah.

MB: Are you familiar with it?

JDW: I've seen, well particularly, there's a photograph that I've seen.

MB: Not any of the law officers really said that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Oh, Jim LaVelle, you know, some of them might do it. For the most part. Now Sheriff Bowles, our present Sheriff, wrote a manuscript way back in '67. I have a copy of it and when I called Jim, I called him Jim. You know all the details I want to know, You know. And he wrote sort of a novel, pretty much what actually happened.

JDW: Uh hum. Do you know the name of that was?

MB: Well, it hasn't been published yet.

JDW: Oh, it hasn't been published yet, OK.

MB: But I..., I have a copy. I'll send you a copy.

JDW: I'd love to have it. Thank you.

MB: Give me your address. Is it this card.

JDW: As a matter of fact, I do. 

MB: It's interesting.

JDW: I'm kinda almost two people. My business card, my wife and I are psychologists.

MB: You are?

JDW: I also teach at the university. And I'm John and my wife is

J-O-L-E. It's Jole [Joe-Lee]. And we have.. she she's a psychologist full-time and I work part time and I also teach at the university. That's kind of what I do. And, I think it was years later, I became interested in the assassination.

MB: Well, I'm glad you are. Keep it alive.

JDW: At the time, my only, of course I was shocked by it. I was teaching in a small college at the time. We had a lot of people camr over to my house. I thought the whole faculty came over to my house, there were so many people there. And it was Saturday night about two in the morning, and I wanted to get rid of everbody, because it was just going on and on, so I said, 'Lee Harvey Oswald will be dead in 24 hours.' And people looked at me, and then of course it was nine hours later he was killed. And they thought, and really, I kind of thought that, but I really was getting people out of the house. And I thought somebody might try to get him.

MB: But you know, a sad thing, Bill Alexander, the assistant district attorney. I heard his interview, way back, we're talking when it happened, and Bill was manning the shop because Henry was at the Market Place [Trade Mart]. And he tells the story, he walked over when he heard the commotion over in front of the Book Depository. And that's a possibility, you know, because his office...

JDW: Right.

MB: And, he, I think it was Captain,..., I  can't, I'm getting older in my mind .. names, you know.

JDW: I understand that one! Oh, yes!

MB: Well, anyway, Westbrook, I think. Westbrook. Anyway, when a call came in about Lee Harvey... ah, Tippet! Tippet being shot. He told the captain. He said ' I tote a gun, I'll go over. I'll investigate it. Well, here is a procedure a law procedure was totally not followed. That was a city affair and here he was a ...

 

JDW: Sheriff...

MB: It just, it wasn't followed at all. But he's still alive. But there's a real damaging tape about him, you know, that day, and his investigation.

JDW: Uh hum. Yeah, I think one of the doctors just died, Crenshaw just died Thursday. He was the fellow at Parkland...

MB: At Parkland?

JDW: He wrote a book, I think.

End Session.

SUNDAY MORNING NOVEMBER 18, 2001 BESIDE MADELEINE'S POOL

GS: When we were at the Adolphus yesterday, is that where they ate at the 19th floor?

MB: In the Adolphus? Yeah, they probably did. But the real headquarters was down at the Lamar Hotel and the Rice Hotel in Houston. Where you'd see them the most. Jesse Jones one of the big democrats. Actually, he's the one that wrote the program or whatever that went together...

GS: What's his name?

MB: Jesse Jones.

JDW: I was going to give you some things. These are things either I wrote or Gary wrote.

MB: I am so glad these people have worked so hard to keep this together and then you have that...

JDW: I suppose it's more than you ever wanted to know.

MB: Right. ... Fourth Decade,..  I thought they... 

JDW: Yes. Fourth Decade recently ceased publication.

MB: Oh.

JDW: We'll take your picture now.

JDW: Want to get over by her, sure.

GS: Good looking woman.

MB: Oh, thank you. You can always put has beens. [Laughter]. I don't know if I combed my hair or not.... Kent, I mean Hunt, I tell you what, in 1960, I was involved in all that stuff. And H. L. Hunt met Joe Kennedy out in LA. And they negotiated who would go on that ticket. This was in 1960. Up until that point, a lot of people may not know it, but the oil people controlled Washington and had. They hobnobbed with oil people and everything. So when they came back from LA, Hunt was telling us some of the things, you know they exchanged some money. And I said don't tell me. I'm sure, I'm sure of that, you know. Anyway, we lost the battle, but were going to win the war. And right after the assassination, a day or two, he was all happy. He said 'Well, we won the war.' And you know, in my mind, I know without a doubt what actually happened.

GS: Well, initially, I think, Kennedy got rid of the tax shelters for the international, well allowances.

MB: The oil depletion. Uh huh.

GS: Then he was going to get rid of the domestic internal 27 per cent.

MB: Well, he was making changes and too rapidly. Of course, I'm older, and in my opinion, and he was fixed to get rid of Hoover at all expense. Course it didn't happen.

GS: Did LBJ, I understood it, they lived across the street from each other in D.C. for about thirty years. Did he talk much about his relationship to Hoover?

MB: With Hoover? See, I met Hoover in Austin at the Driskill Hotel right after I met Lyndon. And I know we were dancing. And I was there, and he looked so familiar, you know. And I said, that guy overthere, I thought he was a g-man because he had been in the g-man movies. [Madeleine has an interchange with Maria, a housekeeper] Well anyway, that day, I was so young, you know, and all this glitter. I came from Oak Cliff [from] really Christian parents, and everything was low key, and my eyes was big, but at that time he told me I didn't see anything, I didn't hear anything, and I wouldn't repeat anything, Lyndon. 

JDW: Lyndon said that to you.

MB: Lyndon. Certainly, he told me that. And I thought, I still know those dudes. [Laughter] And they were with Clint Murchison. At the Driskill. And from time to time, at the socials, the closet Clint Murchison, to Hoover, 'Thank you darling, thank you very much'.

DM: Slipping up.

MB: You ask the questions.

GS: Does Magnolia Oil... ring a bell for you?

MB: Oh, yeah. Magnolia Oil. Yeah. That's where the with a flying red horse..on top of the building.

GS: Apparently they, people with them employees with them introduced Oswald to DeMorenschildt?

MB: Now I knew DeMorenschildt.

GS: Interesting.

MB: Oh, yeah. His office was, let's see. I was on the 17th floor of the Republic and he was either up or down. All those people were in the Republic Tower.

JDW: I'm going to come back with some more questions about Maurice Jaffe.

MB: You know. As I was saying my prayers, and of all these people, he's the only one to ask about old Maurice. [Laughter]

JDW: Go ahead with your questions.

GS: Well, actually, I'm .. John is..running the interview more today.

MB: Well , I'll tell you. DeMorenschildt, all these people, they intertwine. It's a circle, and these people just lap around and around.

GS: The elite of Dallas.

MB: Huh?

GS: The elite of Dallas.

MB: Oh, yeah. Again, I was young. And all these things. I've heard this stuff, and I think wow that can't be. You know because of my background, at socials and things and someone would say well where's so and so. And they were no more. They had expired. It didn't take me too terribly long to learn you don't see you don't hear and you don't repeat.

JDW: Uh huh.

GS: Do you think LBJ... we talk about Hubert Humphrey in Minnesota. He was the youngest mayor of a big American city. The youngest American mayor by the time he was 27. Well if you think about when we were 27... a mayor of a major city. You go into that and you've been handled. You've been engineered into that position. You don't know what the forces are.

MB: That's right.

GS: Do you think there is any of that with LBJ? By increments, he gets in deeper and deeper.

MB: Well, he did get deeper and deeper, even from the beginning. When he went to Washington on fraud on box 13. Are you all familiar with box 13?

GS: Oh, yeah.

MB: He actually went to Washington on fraud, but, he was already involved with Sam Rayburn and other people. He was getting his feet wet real fast, you know.

GS: Uh hum. And he was talented, and Hubert Humphry was talented, so it was a combination of, ..., they see you, they know your talented,...

MB; But he had some kind of charisma about, if he ever got what I'd "clutches on you" you couldn't let go, you just couldn't. He would,..., I don't know, strange after all these years.

GS: How much older was he than you?

MB: Eighteen years.

GS: You experienced the dynamic of that...

MB: Oh, yes. Well, it was really strange. My grandparents had this ranch, farm, whatever you want to call it. And Sam Rayburn used to come and visit. My grandmother was a beautiful lady, red head,  always had kind of an eye, cause after my grandfather passed away.  So I grew up in a family, politics, you know, I knew something about it. Of course, Lyndon, he just got his feet wet down in Austin. And Sam Rayburn thought he was the greatest thing this side of the Mississippi.

JDW: Well, he had a, obviously, a major career. One could argue that he did several good things. For civil rights, ...

MB: He left his mark on a lot of people.

JDW: What would you say the mark he left on you was?

MB: Well. Some times I go back. I think it's a hurt within ya? Just never...

JDW: In what way do you experience that as a hurt? Is it because you felt he that he used you in some ways, or? Just losing him, was that the hurt in itself?

LB: You mean my son, or Lyndon?

JDW: Lyndon.

MB: Lyndon. Well we were not close. I had been in that awful accident. The last two or three years, I wasn't as close to him. If you care for someone, I'm one of those people, if you love them, you know, you can overlook some things.

JDW: None of us are perfect.... I'm going to jump into some of the things. This is really stuff that I'm taking out of your book.

MB: Oh, OK.

JDW: "Talking about Sam Park. It sure looks like ol' Lyndon's carpetbagger, Morris Jaffe, has done in Steve's pretty little girlfriend, Beth Horstmann, and her sister, Alex Short." [p. 222]

Well, there's a lot in that sentence. To start with, he refers to Maurice as a carpetbagger, why did he do that?

MB: Well, he was in a a way, you know. He ended up with...

JDW: Billie Sol's...

MB: Billie Sol's stuff. He was one of Lyndon's, I guess, close associates you know?

JDW: He was originally from San Antonio, wasn't he?

MB: Oh, he was from San Antonio.

JDW; Well, carpetbaggers are people who usually come from the North, arn't they?

MB: Well these people, they got their feet wet.

JDW: Ah, and ah...

MB: That was a shock. That was a prettiest little girl, and my son's first date. St. Mary's in San Antonio, is an exclusive school.

JDW: Now which was the girl? Which did he go out with?

MB: With, did I call her name in there?

JDW: A Beth. Beth Horstmann.

MB: Ya Beth. Her father was, adjutant general in San Antonio.

So when Beth was having this big party at St. Marys, and Dr. Miller is a graduate of St. Marys. They called and asked if I could bring Steven to the party, you know. There is always a status too, at the time, Steven was shooting skeet at Lackland Air Force. He was good with a shotgun. So we made it to San Antonio. So when Beth and her sister, they burned to death in the airplane. It is still, I don't know.

JDW: How old were they at the time?

MB: Beth was the older of the two. Gosh, my mind is getting older, and I have to stop and think. But that party I had reference to, he was about 16 or 18, somewhere along there.

JDW: Steven was?

MB: Ya.

JDW: Was Beth older than him, then?

MB: No, no, she was about the same age.

JDW: So she was only 16 when she was killed.

MB: Yes, probably.

JDW: Wow.

MB: I've called St. Marys, they have a photograph of  Steven and Beth. I'd like to have it if I could get it. 

JDW: How did, ah, did you ever hear how the airplane accident occurred?

MB: Well, I've talked to Ellie's sister.. I mean Beth's sister's husband, because she went down on the plane, too. These people, when things happen in Texas, boy they got their mouth closed, they said, well didn't you read the paper, and I said yes, and they said, well they burned, period. That's all that they said.

JDW: They said also, that there was $500,000 missing from the bank.

MB: They took off with the cash from the bank.

JDW: Huh. Any idea where they might be going?

MB: Well, they crashed on H. L. Hunt's ranch out in Mexico. Mexico's where the plane crash was. Well, they were confiscating that money. They were going to leave, get out of that bank.

JDW: OK. Who was the pilot?

MB: It was one of a family friend of some kind.

JDW: That is probably an interesting story all by itself.

MB: Oh, it is an interesting story. Sure is.

JDWE: Was Steven going with Beth at that time?

MB: No, she had married when the plane crashed.

JDW: Oh, she had married by then?  

MB: He had not. But I think Beth had married.

JDW: Well her name was still Beth Horstmann. So I don't know if she'd married.

MB: Well, I called Beth Horstmann, so I could identify her, I didn't know.

JDW: OK, OK, Ah...

MB: I do have newspaper clippings. I could easily, I guess, adjust it. 

JDW: Ah... you said also that when Speaker of the House, Jim Wright of Ft. Worth stepped down in disgrace, I guess that was probably...

Did he fall in the water, or something, it had something to do with some...

MB: Well, Jim, you know, graduated from the same high school I did, he was a little older. But he quietly resigned, without any, any, investigation or anything. I said then, boy either some one has paid some money, or they gonna stir up a hornet's nest.

JDW: The thing, I guess, that is relevant here is that when he stepped out in disgrace, Maurice Jaffe's name became nationally known again, all was quietly quashed. How did Jaffe figure into Jim Wright's resignation?

MB: I think it was a money, negotiation of monies, or something of that sort.

JDW: So, you feel that Jaffe maybe made a payoff or?  

MB: It was something in that realm of money. But Jim's still alive, I haven't seen him in a long time. I've been intending to go over to Ft. Worth and talk to him there.

JDW: This says Maurice Jaffe's name became nationally known again. What was that?

MB: It was just in the newspaper. I ealier told you, these people your gonna find, they intertwine.

JDW: Then you continue on about the plane crash-- was there any sense that was not an accident, but caused?

MB: We all thought it was perfectly caused. They say the plane ran out of gas, but it burned 75 feet all the way around, if it didn't have any fuel-- I think it's strange. That I know.

JDW: One could conjecture maybe the $500,000 wasn't on the plane.

MB: Well they took off from San Antonio. There is a chance the money wasn't on the plane.

JDW: Was it known that they took the money out?

MB: Do what.

JDW: Was it known that those two girls took the money out of the bank?

JDW: Ah, they knew that the bank was going to be locked or foreclosed. So, someone, the girls probably are the ones that took the money out. See, Sammy Davis, a lot of your entertainers, have loans out of this little bank out here in Texas. You wonder why they had loans here in Texas.

JDW; Well, there are strange things. And they took the money out, expecting a foreclosure of the bank, then.

MB: Oh, yeah.

JDW: Back in those days, and even in these days, $500,000 would not be federally insured. Well, at least at that time about $10,000. So they would have lost almost all of that if it had of foreclosed.

MB: Now this Sam Parks that I was telling you all of this, he passed away. And I got a lot of information from him because he was hobnobbing with those people. As a matter of fact, all my old contacts are leaving.

JDW: Well, you're outliving them!

MB: Not very well! you'll find Sheriff Bowles manuscript very interesting because I think it's something he wanted to get off of his chest. You know, to put it on paper. And I will block in the names as I know them.

JDW: How do you spell his last name?

NB: B-O-W-L-E-S.

JDw: Ok. Sure.

GS: You mentioned yesterday the radio station in Austin.

MB: KTBC.

GS: Is that..

MB: Lady Bird owned it. See, it was a 500 Watt station when she bought it. Prior to her advertising, it was sunrise to sunset. How the politics, Bell Helicopter and the old Fairmont, they were all in the thing together. These ah, our budgets would come in in the advertising agency and when they called me in, they'd always include KTBC- Austin, and I said were our clients not in KTBC-Austin. There not in that area. And he said, I didn't ask you where they was, I said buy it. So they had, I always love to tell the story, they had this pattern, that KTBC-Austin covered Texas, when in fact they hardly got out of the city limits. If you were in New York and saw this pattern, why you'd buy KTBC-Austin. Again, it was dirty politics, and we had Sipple Life Insurance was running a schedule there. They were on the one-time rate. I went in and said, Randle, he was my boss, they're paying far far too much, you know, money. He said, 'Hell I said leave it alone.' Again, Lyndon, and Bell Hellicopter, and all those people.

GS: Now, who was the man at KTBC?

MB: It was Jesse Kellam. He's deceased, now. But he was Lyndon's hatchet man here in Texas.

GS: How do you spell that, K-E-L-L-U-M?  

MB: It's A-M, I think, but it's been so long.

GS: So he was a hatchet man.

MB: Oh, yeah.

GS: Now did he say more about Jack Puterbaugh's involvement?

MB: He just, we were talking about it. He used to come to Dallas, they'd want me to ride to Austin. And he just said that Puterbaugh had changed the motorcade. I said how do you know all this good stuff? He said, trust me, he changed it. And again, if you analyze that motorcade, Jack Puterbaugh, being in Washington in the Agricultural Department, what was he doing here in Dallas?

JDW: What was he doing with the motorcade?

MB: The motorcade, yeah. He changed it.

GS: It makes sense, the conservation tour, two months before. Because the Agricultural Department would plan a tour from that standpoint, but...

MB: Well, isn't he living in Minnesota, now?

GS: Yeah, he lives about 15 minutes from me. When I asked him about the...

MB: They say he gets really riled up.

GS: I wasn't on the phone with him long enough. He was headed out, this was a year ago. He was headed out the door for the Winter. Could be here for all I know.

MB: Could be.

GS: And I said, could I ask you just one question? Were you the advance man for the Conservation Tour that came through Minnesota and North Dakota in September, 1963? Five seconds..at least five seconds of silence, and he said, 'Yes. I was.' You see the reason that is important is that some people have identified that time frame as the third plot to assassinate JFK, and it was derailed, and that night, on the 25th of September, they added Dallas, so the Texas trip, now maybe you can correct this, but as I understand it, one researcher discovered that it was going to end at Ft. Worth, they weren't going to come on to Dallas. The White House on September 25th agreed to extend it to Dallas. It could be, that the third plot didn't happen the way that they thought in September. I don't know if the timing is right or not, but it sounds interesting.

MB: Sounds right.

GS: It's an interesting possibilty, especially when you find Puterbaugh in both places.

MB: Right.

GS: And he reacts to me the way he does. So we'll see.

MB: Now see, Malcolm Wallace was in the Agricultural Department, too. I know he was in California, Ling Temco, he was identified as being in the Agricultural Department.

JDW: He actually worked in it, didn't he?

MB: Huh?

JDW; Worked in the Agricultural Department, which is interesting, 'cause that was after his conviction for murder.

MB: Sure was.

JDW: Didn't slow things down.

MB: No it didn't, you're right.

GS: Did you know of any family background of Mac Wallace?

MB: Well, I told him, one of our neighbors is Carl Wallace, and Carl and George Owens, who said he picked up Hoover out here at the airport, were close friends, and if George would have lived long enoug, I might have got more information, you know, but this Carl Wallace's father owned the Wallace Plumbing Company here in Dallas, and the Wallace Plumbing Company was in Dealey Plaza that day, I don't know if John had..

GS: That was my next question.

MB:  Well anyway, not too long ago, I talked to Carl. He comes by once in a while with his little dog. And I said 'Carl, what happened to your mother and father?' And he said, 'My dad killed himself.' and I wanted to say, when did he kill himself? and eventually, I want to know, why did he kill himself? Knowing what I know about the story, and the background, Big Time.

GS: Could the plumbing company be Wallace-Beard?

MB: I couldn't tell you.

GS: There is some evidence the truck in Dealey Plaza that day was Wallace & Beard.

MB: I ask Carl. He'll tell me. ... I know right at first I said something about Malcolm Wallace, he was fast, and he said 'were not related', I mean immediately.

JDW: Uh huh.

MB: I mean, no problem. [Laughter] Well, I'm glad to see you all investigating, looking into it. It really pleases me to know there is still interest and people trying to find the real facts on it.

GS: Well, it's been inter.. John's been at, he quite a bit older than me [Laughter], but he's been at it maybe longer, I've, when I was 16 years old, I saw Kennedy give a speech in North Dakota, and a, you have that experience, and it doesn't mean you immediately start doing research, I was 16 years old.

MB: It planted a seed, yeah.

GS: So then, ah, so one thing leads to another, and here I am sitting with you, and it's kind of strange. ... To be gaining information that it didn't seem possible to discover. So it's...

MB: Well, you stay on it. You keep looking. Did you all meet Mark Taylor last night, who brought the kids from Kansas? He's nice to know.

 [Note: Mark Taylor is a teacher from Kansas City who has           interested many of his students to research the JFK assassination;   his students have made presentations at national conferences,      including the November in Dallas Conference sponsered by JFK       Lancer] 

GS: Yes we were talking to him in Dealey Plaza for a few minutes. And he had his kids down there. Yeah, the material we're doing. When those kids are 40 years old, and have a memory of being here, one of them is going to start digging.

MB: Oh, sure, sure they will.

JDW: In a sense, I think, it is our job to create a legacy for those future people, and for them to have a source... we're not going to be around 40 years from now.

MB: That's right. I've resolved to live one day at a time.

JDW: So we create a record for them to address.

GS: It's the idea that if democracy were diminished by this event, then it is our duty as citizens...

MB: To do something about it.

GS; To understand that and make a difference, and if other people understand, they can be more conscious of their responsibilities as citizens. So it's not that we're special people, I mean, you know, you end up in the right place at the right time...

MB: You have to be at the right place at the right time. It always seemed like I was at the right place at the wrong time.

JDW: Which turns out to be the right place at the right time in other ways.

GS: Go ahead.

MB: I was just going to say, the day of the assassination, I think I told you that I was at the red Court House?

JDW: Uh Hum.

MB: And I'm sure it had already happened by the time I got to Oak Cliff, because it only takes seven or eight minutes, and it was already on the air that he had been shot.

GS: What were some of the scenes like, if I remember correctly from the book, at the Adolphus Hotel, the parties. Was it the 19th floor?

MB: No, it was actually on the Mezzanine, they met upstairs for something, but they've really remodeled it since all this happened, you know. And I could close my eyes, and when I was going, see Lyndon with this red thing on his white coat. And even then, before I was actually introduced to him, it is amazing, you know, the very Las Vegas complex. And I was a little naive girl. [Laughter] It didn't take me long to wise up.

GS: So you would see these events with Hunt in the a room, LBJ in the room, Hutchinson, Murchison, ...

MB: They were all there. They were always there. They hobnobed together. And of course, I knew Hunt better than any of them,  because I parked in the same parking lot, you know. And there was this coffee shop, and he'd always come in, and talk. He was, again, I didn't know he was the richest person at that time. It was close to Christmas, I think I documented in my book, and he strove in, he had patches on his arms, he looked like he came from the Salvation Army, and he looked really pitiful. And all these old people that worked, and I knew them all because they were in the building, right across the street. Ah, they were drinking coffee, diamond stick pins. It was rich, it was different, I mean just totally different. So why don't you make up some money, it's Christmas time, and get that old man something nice, a new suit or something. They almost fell off their seats. And they said, 'Well don't you know who he is?' And I said, 'He needs help.' [Laughter]

JDW: He may need help with dressing, that's all, eh?

MB: But he alway's, he did, he acted that way almost to the end of life, I guess. Dr. Miller used to call him, I mean he was the family personal physician.

GS: Really?

MB: And every time he wanted to do something, he'd call Dr. Miller. And Dr. Miller, he'd drop what he was doing and go talk to him. And they had this boy, I don't know when they did it, he had a lobotomy, and he was trying to get help for his son, answered. And Dr. Miller said, 'The damage is done. There's nothing you can do.'

He said, 'Doc, you come up with some answers, I want some answers.'

GS: I think I remember that in some biographical material about Hunt, you know.'

MB: Well his last widow, Ruth, passed away, maybe a year ago, I think.

GS: Did you ever run across a, last name Currington.

MB: Oh, yeah, John Currington? Sure. Knew him well. He was Hunt's big...

GS: Didn't he buy the film the night of the assassination?

MB: Well, ah, Currington said that Hunt has the first copy of the Zapruder film and I would think that Currington probably would know this.

GS: What about Paul Rothemel.

MB: He's still alive; I talk to him every once in a while.

GS: I talked to him about a year and a half ago, and at one point, I asked did you know General McArthur, ah, did you ever know General Willoughby, who was McArthur's Chief of Intelligence in The Phillipines. And he said, 'Oh, yeah. I briefed him every morning when I was 21 years old in The Phillipines. I'd stick a pin in the map wherever one of his officers was, and ah, I don't like the way this conversation is going.'

MB: Well, he was an FBI man, Paul Rothemel was.

GS: 'I don't like the way this conversation is going. I'm not going to tell you what you need to know. There all dead, and I'm taking it to the grave.

MB: Yes. That's Paul!

GS; He's still a municipal judge around here?

MB: As far as I know. He had a triple bypass, or something.

GS: So where would you run into them, Currington and Rothemel at the same kind of parties?

MB: They worked right across the street from me and I'd see them in coffee shops.

GS: 'Cause they were in Hunt's office.

MB: Yeah, they were in his office. And ah, what's this guy Pepper who has written a book on Martin Luther King.

GS: Claude Pepper.

 [Note: Actually, it is William F. Pepper (1995). Orders to Kill.

 New York: Carroll & Graff.]

MB: I don't recall his first name. Anyway, John gave him a lot of information, and they actually have the, and I put them in Dallas Did It. Copies of the checks that came from a Hunt's trust fund, one of Hunt's trust funds that paid for Martin Luther King's assassination.

GS: Currington had the cancelled checks that paid for Martin Luther King's assassination, and John Currington's mistress gave me a copy of it. So that's it.

GS: Do you still have those?

MB; Well I copied them, we published a little book.

GS: Dallas Did It.

MB: Dallas Did It. Yeah.

 [Note: The reference to this book is  Madeleine Brown & Constance   Kritzberg (undated). Dallas Did It! Dallas: Authors.]

JDW: That's where I saw it. Yah.

GS: Well.

MB: So Paul told you he was going to take it to the grave?

GS: I'm surprised he even told me that much. Over the phone.

MB: They was something else. It looks like when I talk to Billie Sol. 'Billie Sol. We're older. Let's tell it. Get it out, tell it like it is.' And a lot of it is in Galen Ross's book. I know where the information came from. But Galen took my name as the source of information. Well you all keep going, I'm gonna get killed yet.

 [Note: the reference to Ross's book is : Ross, Robert Gaylon, Jr.   (2001). The Elite Serial Killers of Lincoln, JFK, RFK & MLK.       Spicewood, Texas: RIE.]

GS: Now it's funny. Hunt has a connection to North Dakota beyond oil. He shows up in '51 at the oil strike. He's there in the 1920's. He's there in the Red River Valley where we're from. Grand Forks, Fargo, that area. And he describes being in a poker game. He's working in the harvest fields. He just cleans the table, and says to a guy who picked the pocket of, he says to him, 'Son, why don't you do something useful in life and go to college.' And Hunt says, he took his advice and went back to Indiana and enrolled. Lasted a semester, and then decided to go to Texas and join the oil strikes in Texarkana or South Texas or Arkansas area. But he was off into oil. But it was funny, there was a North Dakota connection in there.

MB: Well, Hunt got around, there is no doubt about that. There was a Roevinger, an attorney  by the name of Harry Roevinger. And his father worked for Al Capone. He was down here in Tower, Texas. So we learned a lot, you know, first hand information about some of this.

GS: So did you ever see Jack Ruby?

MB: Jack Ruby? We used to go to the Carousel Club almost every afternoon. We'd set there and we'd,.. anyway we need this setup in Dallas. We need a batch of people that ran and controlled Dallas, and again, we'd say so and so 

GS: Did he tell you much about Chicago's relationship?

MB: Something funny about the gangsters.

GS: When I talked to you on the phone a few months ago, I asked if you anything about a woman named Jean Aase. A-A-S-E. She was peripheral that Thursday night. She and a guy named Lawrence Myers, Chicago, checked into the Cabana.

MB: That's Cabana, I heard that was a wild place. Oh, yeah.

GS: A description, all night Ruby was running back and forth to The Carousel and Cabana. And she lives in Minneapolis. And I talked to her and she says 'Just forget about it.'

MB: Yeah. That's what they do. I probably never would have said anything or be quiet, but, ah, my son was so hurt, so damaged by it, that I said I owe it to him.

GS: He passed away in 1992?

MB: '90.

GS: He was 40.

MB: He was a fine young man, fine. But when he filed his lawsuit. I said, 'Steven, honey, you don't want to do that in Dallas County.' Well he was an attorney, young, you know, he said 'Mother, I'm going to walk into that courtroom and I'm going to win that.' Course he was tall, and good looking. I said, "If we ever get there.' I made that comment to him. Tragedy did hit us.

GS: What kind of cancer was it?

MB: It was a type of cancer that Lyndon's mother, we tried to get the records. Even Jaqueline Kennedy, all these people that are close to these things, they're young, and they died of cancer, I still ever once in a while, and the doctor here is helping with some medical issues.

GS: I lost my dad when he was 45 of cancer.

MB: Well, Steven had a bone marrow transplant, well it may have worked, but they picked him up, and they could have done something other.

GS: And the president never did acknowledge...

MB: Steve? Oh, sure he did. He took care of all our bills.. Oh, sure he did.

JDW: He just didn't make it public.

MB: He didn't make it.. no,..no.

JDW: When did Steven find out that he was his father?

MB: Actually, he knew before because of the timing of it. We sort of kept it a secret because of his lawsuit. But he was still pretty upset.

JDW: Did he know while LBJ was still alive?

MB: Yes, he did.

JDW: Did LBJ acknowledge to him that he was his father?

MB: Do what?

JDW: Did LBJ acknowledge that he was his father?

MB: To Steven? No, but he saw him at the LBJ opening. Steven said, 'Mother, he hit me on the back and said, son, you'll be in the White House one day.' Every time he would see Steven, he would say, you'll be in the White House someday.

JDW: Uh huh.

MB: Course I think I tell in my book, his sister Rebecca, Steven had begun really to favor Lyndon. We were at a democrat function at the Adolphus Hotel, so that Pearl Mesta was with him and Steve walked in, they were passing out buttons and all this literature, and they said my god that kid looks an awful like Lyndon to be his son. And my heart was.. Oh, you know.

GS: Did Steve, did you make him aware of some of the things were talking about here, the shady side?

MB: Ah, the shady side.. Occasionally, I didn't want to equate Lyndon to all the stuff that... he ran the political things enough to hear some of it, you know. He was pretty wise.

GS: But as far as...

MB: The real nasty stuff?

GS: Thinking about the involvement with the assassination, however

direct, it never came up?

MB: He, ah, Steven. He recognized it. Do you know, I hope their not here, friends that were coming at noon.

 Yes. There not coming for another hour yet. I talked to him just before we left the hotel. He said, 'You're meeting with her?' 'Ya. 10, and you're 12'. He said, 'She's a busy lady.'

MB: I have another one later on. Around five or six.

GS: With the New York Times, probably.

MB: No, this guy Killam, the one that Wanda the cigarette girl. Course I knew Wanda. Wanda choked to death in the hospital. She was so pretty. She was just beautiful.

 [Note: Thomas "Hank" Killam was married to Wanda, a stripper at    one time for Ruby. Killam was found with his throat cut by a plate   glass window in Pennsacola, Florida March 17, 1964. See Craig      Roberts & John Armstrong, (1995). The Dead Witnesses. Tulsa:       Consolidated Press]

GS: I'm not aware of that, is that something...

MB: This Killam is his cousin. He's assistant District Attorney in Pensacola, Florida. And, I guess it's an ongoing investigation.

JDW: Uh huh. Let me run several names by you.

MB: OK.

JDW: Do you know Barr McClellan at all?

MB: Barbara who?

JDW: Barr McClellan. He's a lawyer.

MB: Oh yeah. He's written a book, hasn't he?

GS: He's writing a book.

MB: Oh, is he?

JDW: I don't know that it has ever been published, but it's supposed to be the one that blows the top off of things.

MB: Yeah, I do know him.

JDW: Edward Clark.

MB: Edward Cark?

JDW: Yeah.

MB: The name registers.

JDW: He was supposed to be LBJ's personal attormey.

MB: Well, I knew the one, Bradley Kazah that talked last night. One of his men, cohorts was really Lyndon's attorney here in town. I didn't know if there would be a conflict of interest for Bradley or not. I was trying to think of his name.

JDW: I wonder about that sometimes.

MB: Well, I'll remember sometime. It's been so long, I talk to people like you, my mind, I get to thinking, you know.

GS: Barr McClellan. I've talked to him a couple of times. I haven't talked to him for abour a year. But he's pretty adamant that he's got the goods.

MB: I think maybe he did. You know Billie Sol, oh what was that Clark, not Clark Clifford, but his friend. Anyway, they found him dead in a hotel. Who am I trying to think of. Not Clark Clifford, he met with Billie Sol, and they went out to the lake, and a lot of this is on tape, I've heard some of it. And he actually was fearful for his life. It wasn't more than 3 or 4 days, when they pulled him out of a cheap hotel, deader than [unitelligible]. I'll think of his name...

JDW: Is it Clark Clifford, or Clifford Clark?

MB: I'm getting confused with that attorney.

JDW: I'm sure you make reference to it in your book, so I'll just look it up. I think it's a "C" name.

MB: Well, he's the one that introduced Billie Sol to Lyndon.

JDW: Clark Clifford.

MB: That's his name?

JDW: Uh huh.... Ah, persons like yourself, others who are survivors, who have gone through these things, I would guess, you, in some ways, see one another, these years later, as compatriots.

Do you think it was common, particularly the women, to be kept in the dark about things?

MB: I don't really know how to answer that, are you talking about the friends that I know?

JDW: Right. Yes.

MB: Well I'll say this- Shari Angel and Beverly Oliver knew nothing.

JDW: Uh huh.

MB: I promise you that.

JDW: OK.

MB: And they have been programmed by Gary Shaw, and Larry Howard, who is now deceased, about a lot of these facts. I'm talking about Beverly Oliver...

GS: They been programmed by those men?

MB: They sure have. See, Beverly was singing at Gary Shaw's church and he learned, that she, Beverly, she's a born-again Christian I guess, at that time. She had been an exotic dancer for Abe Weinstein, and she was a call girl for Jack Ruby.

GS: Abe Weinstein?

MB: Ah, she worked for Abe, but she was a call girl for Jack Ruby, we know that.

JDW: Did you know she was in a movie?

MB; Is she in a movie?

JDW: She was in a movie back then. I forget the name of it. I actually have a copy. It's not a very high class movie!

 [Note: The name of the movie is Hot Blooded Woman (1965). It has   most recently been disributed bt Something Weird Video of          Seatle.]

MB: Well, my thinking is, Gary Shaw, they tried desperately to solve the assassination. And they used everything they could. And when the bush- what are they called, bush- Beverly called--

JDW: Babushka.

MB: Yeah. Anyway, I said, 'I beg your pardon'. We think it was programmed.

JDW: Uh huh.

GS: Now, they were sincere in trying to solve it.

MB: They were. Yeah. They were. But I think they also think engineered some wrong information.

JDW: Now, wasn't Larry Harris, wasn't he...

MB: He got killed. Larry Harris did.

JDW: Oh, he was killed. I thought he died. Well, he died when he was killed. Didn't he spend a lot of his time on the Tippet killing?

MB: Your talking about Greg Lowry. He's the one who investigated

Tippet. Again, we old people, the people who lived here, didn't think Tippet had anything to do with... [Another interchange with Maria, the housekeeper]

GS: Now you said Larry Harris, but you said Larry Howard.

MB: Well Larry Howard, did you all meet him?

JDW: Gad! I missed the name even!

MB: Larry Harris wrote with Gary Shaw on Cover-up.

JDW: Right.

MB: He got killed about two or three weeks ago. He was writing another book. He was up North for something, and a car ran over him. When I heard it, I said 'Texas murder.'

JDW: There sure are a lot of people killed by cars in Texas!

MB: Yeah, they are. Clint Peoples, the U.S. marshall. I think I told you that. We were going.. Oliver Stone was going to use Clint and me and Billie Sol in the movie. When I told Clint, I said, 'Clint, I'll see you next Friday. I'll buy lunch, and you can be a kept man', I knew him real well, you know. Well, on Tuesday, they ran him off the road, but he lived long enough, to tell them some things.

JDW; Uh hum.

MB: But his family has been real quiet about it.

JDW: Uh hum. That was in 1990, right?

MB: Was it that long ago? It seems like some things...

JDW: The movie came out in '91.

MB: Well, there was another, a sequence [sequal] to it Oliver was working.

JDW: Oh, this was another one.

 [Note: Clint Peoples was killed in a car accident June 22, 1992 at   the age of 81.] 

MB: I understand Oliver is still messing with it some.

JDW: Uh Huh.

GS: Do you see the people have inherited whatever advantages come from the assassination in terms of power being still, in the people that run Dallas, that run Texas?

MB: They're pretty much gone, one by one, they're...

GS: But I mean, does the power transfer?

MB: I'm not that closely associated with it, so...

GS: Do you think Bushes are?

MB: Well, I've got some things about the Bush family. I know too much. It's just like over what they're finding now. The Bush family, and what's his name, a family negotiating a gas pipeline of crude over there.

GS: Afghanistan.

MB: Uh huh. Maybe it has been negotiated. I said there's war now that they're bombing all this stuff like it'll help in paying for this gasline.

GS: Yeah, I've heard that, too.

MB: Have you heard that?

GS: Yep. There's 10 billion barrels of oil, the equivalent in the ground in the republics just north of Afghanistan in the Caspian basin. To get it to market you have to go through Afghanistan to get it to the coast of India.

MB: Yeah, the Bush are in power. They're in power. I don't like to believe anything that ugly, but there sure is a strong possibility, with the bombing of it.

JDW: Well someone said the last president we had that was fairly clean was Carter, and nobody liked him.

MB: Well that's right. Well he left those poor hostages for so long. Now the Bushes got power.

GS: Do you think Jim Fetzer is upset because a book like his, Murder in Dealy Plaza, doesn't get any attention at the bookstore at Dealy Plaza, at least not in the Sixth Floor Museum? I ask the clerk there the other day, why no books, other than non-controversial? She said, 'Well there's a board.' Is it the local chamber of commerce, is it just simply bad for business if we dwell on the negative and we just do the positive, do the tourism thing, is that how you see it?

 Note: Jim Fetzer has edited two books on the assassination,        Assassination Science (1998); and Murder in Dealey Plaza (2000).   Chicago: Catfeet Press.

MB: Yes. I think so.

JDW: Yeah. I almost have the impression that we have the Sixth Floor Museum, which is the Warren Commission museum, then we have the Conspiracy Museum, which is the conspiracy museum. They're about two blocks apart, and they don't a...

MB: They don't see eye to eye.

JDW: They're millions of miles apart!

MB: Well this Gary Mack of the sixth floor, they fired him, he was over at Channel 5, over at Sunnyvale. He used to be real rabid that it was conspiracy. And I guess to get a job, some people sell out. We call Gary Mack a sell-out.

JDW: Uh hum.

GS: I've argued with him a few times. Various things at Dealey Plaza. Seems that way, he's...

MB: A sell out. He wrote me a real nasty letter. Lyndon had more savy than to associate with people like me. And I got the biggest drive out of this. My, my my. I admire you.

JDW: I read in a book, I think it was at this conference, even... Oh, no. It was at the sixth floor museum. And they were trying to dispell several various, as they called them, misbeliefs. One of them was that Sally Hemmings had no children by Jefferson, and he knew for sure. And, you know, it's very interesting that you're better than DNA evidence. But there are people who have belief systems that keep them from...

MB: Well, it's like I told  you, when Henry Wade went on the air and said the night club owner didn't do it, I said, 'I don't believe this.' Cause he was well known. Bowles said one day to me, 'Jim, I don't know where you're comming from, but I hobnob with these people. I know.'

JDW: Well, it's kind of interesting. They were able to say there was no conspiracy, and yet, on the Friday night of the assassination, Jack Ruby shows up at a press conference. And then he corrects them and gives the correct name for the group that Oswald was working with in New Orleans. And then to say they didn't know each other is an amazing stretch. 

MB: One of the Dallas policemen, I wish you could get him to tell you the story, because in those days, there literally wasn't any entertainment, no television and you know, it was a different world completely. And Old Joe will tell, they would walk from where the police department is now and on his beat down to the Carousel Club, which was right across the street from the Adolphus, I mean it's almost...

GS: We saw it yesterday. Where somebody pointed it out.

MB: Anyway, he's older now, you know, and he'll squint his eyes, we'd go down to old Jack's place, and the first drunk will be comming down the stairs. He tells those stories, it's the cutest thing. I said,'I've been there.' I know what you're talking about.

GS: Now in '63 was the Carousel Club fairly..., decent?

MB: Well, I guess we didn't have anything to compare it to. [unintelligible]

GS: It wasn't ...

MB: No, no, no. It was clean. Abe Weinstein's place was right next door. And there was a parking lot. We would go because Ruby was real good to us, and he'd pour drinks, you know.

JDW: Uh huh.

GS: Did you ever see Oswald in there?

MB: I saw him, but I didn't know who it was until I saw him on the screen.

JDW: Well, there are several different things, actually in the Warren Commission where they talk about people who saw Oswald at the Carousel Club, and they tried to to rebut them all. But there were several reports that were given, about him being there.

MB: Well, all the business was on Commerce Street, primarily, the offices, and things, you know. And time we leave Ervay Street, to go to the Adolphus, you know, old Jack Ruby'd be on the street passing out his business card. He'd jump out at people, when we heard that he jumped out in front of Lee Harvey Oswald, I said, 'Boy, he had a lot of experience at that.' He'd say, 'Hey. I'm Jack Ruby. Come down to The Carousel Club.' He had lots of experience.

GS: Somebody gave a presentation yesterday, Larry...

MB: Hancock?

GS: Yeah. He said to say 'Hi.'

MB: Oh, did he?

GS: Yeah. I saw him this morning. He's the who said to ask Madeleine if she knows anything about Wallace & Beck.

MB: His background?

GS: Wallace & Beard, like you know, we were talking about earlier. 

MB: The plumbing.

GS: But, Dallas Uranium & Oil Company, in the Dal-Tex Building is that...

MB: Well, I knew they existed. I knew about it.

GS: Do you know who owned them?

MB: Not really. Most of the oil people that I knew there in the mercantile were Cartwrights. They're gone.

GS: The mercantile is...

MB: It's closed now, or was.

GS: It was up Commerce?

MB: It was at Ervay and Commerce. It's got a clock up there now, I think.

GS: But that was across the street from your office?

MB: Yes.

GS: Well, you probably want to take a breather...

MB: Not really, my mind, of course I'm older and things are not really right with me, you might say. I get to thinking about all this and I start to thinking about some little nitty gritty things that comes to pass.

JDW: Well, if something comes to you...

MB: you can always call me.

JDW: And you can call me, too.

[An interchange on calling one another.]

MB: It's been so, so long, you know. It's just like here in Dallas. I told you about prostitution and abortions. People can't comprehend it. The researchers associate [Dallas] as a great big city. It wasn't. It just wasn't. I fact the only tall buildings we had were the Magnolia and the Republic Bank Tower where DeMorenschield and all our offices.

GS: It's kind of the same profile as Minneapolis ..in 1970 there was a 40 story building and that was it. Now there's three the size of the biggest one here plus twenty others.

JDW: Back even when they made the Mary Tyler Moore Show, the tallest [building] was the Foshay Tower. It's really interesting today. See that little building down there? That's the Foshay Tower.

MB: Where you're setting, in 1963, this was all farmland..This was from Park Woods highway..where Dr. Miller and the Murchison's lived. This was just farmland. It hadn't been built, all this stuff.

GS: How far was Hunt's mansion from here?

MB: Hunt's mansion's out at White Mount. You go down Northwest Highway and turn on Luther and wind around, it's no too far.

GS: Maybe five miles?

MB: Maybe longer. If you had time, I'd take you  all these places.

What time are you leaving?

JDW: We have to leave today.

GS: We got to get someone else to the airport, too. You've got lunch with Fetzer. Next year.

MB: If you come, I'll take you everywhere. Maybe you'll have a better vision.

GS: I took John to some places in Oak Cliff, you know, Oswald's addresses, and so on, even that is helpful to get the big picture. I'm sure you know places...

MB; I'm an Oak Cliffer, where I grew up.

GS: Is the Egyptian Lounge over there?

MB: Well, no, the Egyptian Lounge is up near Mockingbird. You mean the Campisi's Egyptian Lounge?

GS: Right.

MB: It's up here on Mockingbird. You know, the advertising people, my people, we used to hang out out there a lot, because of Joe Campisi. I mean these people were good to us because we were their press agents, you know. Anyway, I read a book, it's been, I don't know how long ago, and they said the FBI kept a cost of the Mafia connection, you know, on the door, we came upon it and said, 'Oh my God, they got miles and miles of pictures.'

JDW: Make sure your hair is done!

MB: Yeah! Its blown all over my head.

GS: So Campisi worked for Marcello.

MB: Yeah. And we knew this, see? I mean, there were no secrets.

GS: Who ran the show in Hot Springs, Arkansas?

MB: I'm not, I know just your Dallas people.

GS: Apparently, that was part of the Dixie Mafia.

MB: Probably. Oh, I haven't heard about the Dixie Mafia for a long time.

GS: When we talked on the phone six months ago, you gave me Billie Sol Estes' phone number, but we talked about something he was writ... he said there was something being published in France or Europe.

MB: There was something published in France. It's whatsisname, ...Williams, has been over here and negotiating with Oliver Stone to do a movie. They're all so secretive about stuff. We keep a lot of this stuff, like Jeff Lash that was there last night works for Oliver Stone, so he's kind of a sounding board, or something, and anyway, they're working on something on Billie Sol.

GS: That'd be a great title for a movie, "Billie Sol", kinda catchy, all you have to say is "Billie Sol". But you said the Billie Sol said that Puterbaugh said,'If you ever tie me to the assassination, I'll sue you for everything you got.'

MB: Puterbaugh will sue. Yes.

GS: And you heard that from Estes, obviously.

MB: That's true.

GS: And so...

MB: See, I was going to put Puterbaugh's name in my book. Harry Livingston, told me, I told him, 'I don't want any lawsuits.'

GS: What he did, he put Puterbaugh's rural address and box number in the book.

MB: Oh, did he?

GS: It was 60 miles North of the Twin Cities. So I drove up there on a Sunday afternoon, and ask, 'Does anyone here know Puterbaugh?' Two little old ladies were around. The first words out of their mouth was, 'I was on a committee with him. What a jerk.' But it seems after the Baker-Estes situation.

MB: 'Bobby Baker?'

GS: Yeah.  Orville Freeman, the U.S. Agricultural Commissioner, made it look like he was cleaning house, and Puterbaugh, after the assassination, ended up in the woods in Northern Minnesota for twenty years. And these two women that I walked in on said, 'Yeah. I think he's the county weed control agent.'

MB: Weed control. [Laughter]

GS: So he'd been demoted, or he had to go into hiding. Then he's been in Minneapolis for ten years. And he's in the phone book.

MB: Well, see researchers wouldn't think about looking that far away.

GS: Yeah. Yeah. I don't know.

MB: See, I've always had a listed telephone, people think I have an unlisted phone. I did have it disconnected, I was over here. I was paying $200 a month.

JDW: What is your phone number? I've got your phone number, I couldn't have called you if I didn't have it. That's right.

MB: You can always call me here.

GS: Estes said that Puterbaugh was from Massachusetts. I don't know. I don't know if he's from Massachusetts, or Minnesota or Texas.

MB: Well I identified him with for Texas for a long time. 

GS: As you say, if the Ag Department was really involved in covering up the anhydrous ammonia schemes here, that ties him to the scams in  going on in Minnesota, all over the Midwest.

                                                                   MB: Right.

GS: It's so mindboggling.

MB: You know, I told you about this neighbor, Carl Wallace. He told me enough that in my mind, I keep thinking, George Owens died instantly, you know. What is the connection, really. Why would a man, a prosperous businessman in Dallas, Texas kill himself? You can't help but wonder.

GS: Did they rule it a suicide? Or was he in a car accident.

MB: I don't recall what he said. He just said he killed himself. I know with Mac Wallace that's a real strange thing. Mac Wallace. About the car accident and all.

JDW: As I said, there's a lot of people who seem to be hit by cars.

MB: Here in Texas, yes.

JDW; At times, it just seems to be interesting.

MB: Well the people that I have been associated with, and they have died suddenly. I can't help but wonder about some of them.

JDW: Well, you said you were going to try to pursue the relationship with Maurice Jaffe.

MB: Oh, yeah. I'm going to find out about it.  Billie Sol would know first hand about it. I'm going to call him, 'Now it's time you come clean.'

JDW: Well that would be nice.

GS: Did you ever run across General Walker?

MB: Oh, Edwin Walker? Oh, sure.

DM: He knew more about the assassination than anybody.

MB: We lived here, we hobnobbed socially with them.

GS: So he was a contact person.

MB: Oh, yeah. If you knew Hunt, you knew Walker. As a matter of fact, I was at General Walker's home on Turtle Creek.

GS: We went by there. You were in there you say?

MB: Right. A long time ago I was in that house, yeah. When Jean Hill moved into 3883 Turtle Creek. She'd been real sick and I went over to spend the night with her, you know. And I looked out the window. Jean, I have arrived; I'm on Turtle Creek! [Laughter]

JDW: That's a nice area.

MB: Jean. I sure have missed her. She took a lot of criticism. Jean Hill.

JDW: She just died last year, isn't it?

MB: She's been gone a year November the 7th.

GS: I think I saw her speak in Minneapolis- out in a suburb, ten or fifteen years ago. Quite interesting, someone who had a lot of, you read books but...

MB: To see.

GS; To see somebody speak for the first time in person. You can decipher...

MB: Malcolm Summers. I've known him for 50 years. When I say that, I think, 'Oh, my goodness.'

DM: I'm not that old. I wish I was.

MB: Malcolm first saw the eyewitness. Did you meet Malcolm?

GS: Malcolm Summers. I saw him, but I haven't met him.

MB; He was an eyewitness. His wife, they are old, old friends.

GS: Was he standing along Elm?

MB: He was behind Jean Hill, I think that's where he really was. I forgot to really ask him.

 [Note: Malcolm Summer's story is told in Jim Garrison's (1999).    On the Trail of Assassins. New York: Sheridan Square Press.        Summers was near Jean Hill with a close view of the President when   the fatal shot struck. He ran up the grassy knoll, being stopped   by a well dressed man with a gun under his raincoat (the man       stopped others as well. He also saw three men enter a car and take   off toward Oak Cliff at a high rate of speed.]

MB: And then the other gentleman, from Oak Cliff, I knew him real well, he was my mother's neighbor. Filmed part of that...Orville, Orville...

JDW: Nix.

MB: Yeah, Orville Nix. He was my mother's neighbor. So again, you know, a lot of this, we've had first hand, I mean one to one information. I know Butch Burrows that was over at the Texas Theatre. I used to go dancing at the Texas Theatre every Saturday morning. That was talent, you know. After all this happened, I said 'Butch, what happened that day?' And he said he didn't know anything about it. He was the ticket taker. And I said, 'Where are all these stories?' He said,'The first thing he knew, they went in the back of the theater. They were bringing him in custody.'  'You mean you were setting out here and you didn't know all this activity was going on?' And of course, the story was changed, you know.

GS: We went by there..on Friday.

MB: The Texas Theater?

GS: Yeah. We parked, and walked up to the door, and the architects were inside.

MB: Did they let you in?

GS: They let us in.

MB: Good. That's good. You know, they put me on a, I'm a member of Oak Cliff Chamber, and we were trying to save the Texas, I know the people that owned it. They said, 'Well, if we can get $100,000 on this, this was a long time ago, we can get some grant money, and we can restore the Texas. I said, 'Well that won't be a problem. I know all these business people.' I was so deflated when I went down my ten people that I was to contact. Who wants to save the old Texas? I was, I was almost crying. No one wanted to save it. Then we came up with idea we'd sell chairs, maybe to researchers, put their name on brass, and that fell through. And these people, well, I offered to buy it from the people, and Lee Harvey Oswald, the house on Neeley Street, and you know, connect Oak Cliff, that is the story over there.

GS: Uh huh.

MB: But no one was interested, and now, I am older and have health problems.

GS: Well, now a foundation,... is...

MB: Pak Cliff, uh huh. They've just purchased it.

GS: Yeah. They're going to do a theater, so the focus isn't neccessarily Oswald, but it will be visible.

MB: Yeah.

GS: So that;s where it's at.

MB: Well, see, Mary Ferrell has the most complete research material of anyone. What I was going to do, because of Oak Cliff and the connection, was cause people go there anyway on the busses.

 [Note: Mary Ferrell's JFK Data Base is available on CD as Mary      Ferrell Legacy Project. (1999) Grand Prairie, TX: JFK Lancer.]

JDW: Uh hum.

GS: A photo gallery or something.

MB: Yeah,.. something. But I didn't get it off the ground at all. 

GS: Mary Ferrell is a good friend of yours?

MB: Well, I know her; she worked in the building. Mary, for years,

I don't know if she knew about my wildness, or what, but she didn't have much to say to me. And now she's ill.

JDW: She was there [November in Dallas Conference] last year. Her son was there to.

GS: Two years ago, too.

MB: He's ill, too. Her son. I remember Top of Cliff, it's a private club in Oak Cliff. I saw Mary Ferrell there a couple of years ago. She;s setting there and she's a former FBI informant. She carries a card, or did, you know, I don't know a thing today. I said, 'Here we are just giving our heart away, and your here just bringing it in.'

GS: Now, you say Mary Ferrell was...who was the FBI informant?

MB: She was. May still be. She carries a cars, or did. You know she pulls it out of her purse. I say, 'Oh, my goodness.'

GS: Somebody like Livingstone.

MB: Harry?

GS: Yeah. Takes that and develops it. I don't know what to believe, but it's like...There's one school of thought that says the Russians did it, and he accuses her of taking that position.

MB: Well he doesn't like her, I know that. Or Robert Groden, or you know. There's bad blood with some of those people. 

JDW: Now he is a... I was kind of really surprised when I saw he's down in Dealey Plaza every day. He was down there yesterday, selling his books.

MB: They say he makes two or three thousand dollars a week selling his stuff down there.

 [Note: Groden is a photographic expert; one of his books, The       Killing of a President (1993). New York: Penguin Books, is a       photographic record for the JFK assassination.]

JDW: It's hard to believe, but I guess...

MB: Well it was for me. And I thought, why would he want to be down there. There's money, I guess.

JDW: He had a fallout with Livingston, I guess.

MB: Oh, yeah they...

JDW: Major.

MB: Major. Yeah, yeah.

 Note: Groden and Livingston co-authored a book, High Treason       (1990). New York: Berkely Books. Livingston felt he should have    been the first author. Livingston has subsequently had published   a revised edition with himself as the only author.

GS: So you sound like you've read most of the stuff.

MB: I've really read very little. Once in a while, now, I buy a book at the Conspiracy Museum. Because of Abraham Zapruder. I do have a complete library. Every once in a while, someone'll tell me, and I'll pick up a book.

GS: But you lived 90% of it, so you only have to read 10% of it.

MB: Yep. I've lived it.

JDW: Well. I think we should probably give you some time. It's 11:30. To get ready for Jim when he shows up, and...

MB: Is it after 12:00?

GS: It's 11:30.

JDW: We really appreciate you taking the time.

MB: It's been my pleasure.

JDW: And we'll probably be asking for more time as we go on.

MB: I be happy to do it. Again, I'm delighted to see people... knowing what I know, and where I come from is to keep this alive and someday it'll be open.

GS: Is it unusual, it's hard for me to believe that unusual for people to be wanting to interview you, but are you saying it's fairly infrequent. that you wish more people were interested?

MB: I do, I really do. That's why I'm so proud of Mark and Randy in Minnesota, it's Minnesota somewhere, Montana, he brings his kids and we have a party for him here. Let them know, keep this alive.

JDW: In a real sense, it's living history. I remember when I was much younger, I went to Guadaljara, or some town in Mexico [actually, Chihuahua] where I met the widow of Pancho Villa.

                 [Tape Malfunction 45 seconds]

MB: [Bill Moyers]...And he's CIA, you know, You always think when they hit you on the [head], well, I knew that.

GS; So Lyndon told you.

MB: Yeah.

GS: About a year ago, I had a teacher, and we had a workshop. The speaker assigned to the workshop was Bill Moyer's son.

MB: Really?

GS: He was recovering from chemical dependency. Minnesota...Minneapolis, is famous, Hazledon is a big celebrity dry out place. Ao he'd been there, and he stayed. He set up a national speaking operation. And he was good. He just had the gift of gab of delivery. Some people were aware this was Moyers, but I wondered about that.

MB: Well, again, he was going through some religious school when I first met him. But he followed Lyndon's footsteps, you know. And now he's one of the richest men in the world. And he came into Marshall, Texas. We're talking about mediocre redneck people, And now, were talking about billionaires almost.

GS: So where did he make his money, just peripheral things he got connected to through LBJ?

MB: I think Jack Valenti, of all the old presidents men, probably, I don't know of he has made as much as Bill Moyers or not.

GS: Moyers mainly through the media?

MB: I think, I don't know.

GS; I mean it could be any place that he invests.

MB: But you all look for Jack Valenti's supposed daughter, towers over him, ears in her hair, when I saw her, my, my, my.

GS: So you could see the ears.

MB: Oh, yeah.

GS: So they were accentuated?

MB: Oh, yeah. There was so much talk. He idolised her. I think I have a photograph of them, you know. Together. Again, here in Texas, it was pretty well openly talked about.

GS: How tall was your son?

MB: He was 6'4 1/2". He and Lyndon could see eye to eye. Size 13 shoes. He was almost a copy of him. Course, I think he was better looking. And a good heart; the things he wanted to do, law, he wanted to rewrite legislation. He had a lot of ambition.

GS: Now what did he do for a living?

MB: He was a.. our family was in real estate and oil.

END OF INTERVIEW