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Check out the very cool Criminal Element Website to read an  excerpt from my upcoming Clare Carlson mystery BROADCAST CLUES. The book will be out Jan. 2 in hardcover and Kindle, audible to follow. Available for pre-sale now...

I wrote this piece nine years ago when I published my novel THE KENNEDY CONNECTION, about a reporter trying to solve the mysteries of the the JFK assassination on Nov. 22, 1963.  I asked 10 questions about what really happened that day. None of them have ever been answered. And so the the assassination of President John F. Kennedy remains the biggest unsolved murder in history....
WHY DID OSWALD HAVE ONLY FOUR BULLETS?
Everyone knows there were three spent cartridges found next to the rifle on the sixth floor of the Texas Book Depository. Another bullet was in the chamber of the rifle. But no other ammunition was ever found. Not at the scene, not on Oswald, not in his belongings, not at his home or anywhere else. There was only one or two stores in the Dallas area that sold ammunition for that particular rifle, and no evidence Oswald had ever bought any. So why would Oswald go off to shoot the President with only four bullets for his weapon?
WHY DID SLAIN POLICE OFFICER J.D. TIPPIT STOP OSWALD?
The Warren Commission theorized that it was because Oswald fit the description of a suspect seen fleeing the JFK assassination scene. Okay, that sort of makes sense when you first hear it. Except – upon examination of the facts – it makes no sense at all. The police description broadcast that day was for an: “Unknown white male, approximately 30, 165 pounds, slender build…no further information or description at this time.” That general description clearly matched much of the male population of Dallas. (and didn’t exactly match Oswald). So why did Tippit – seeing a man simply walking down a street in the middle of the day miles from the assassination site – decide to stop him as a possible suspect prior to their deadly encounter?
WHERE DID THE POLICE DESCRIPTION OF A JFK SUSPECT COME FROM?
No one really knows how the police description – vague as it was – ever originated. Many believe it was based on a witness, Howard Brennan, who claimed to have seen a man in the sixth floor window at the time of the assassination. But other accounts say the description came from an unidentified source who said he saw an unidentified man running from the Book Depository after the shots were fired. No official basis for the police broadcast of that early description was ever confirmed.
WAS OSWALD EVEN ON THE 6TH FLOOR AT THE TIME OF THE SHOOTING?
There are no confirmed sightings of Oswald on the 6th floor when JFK was shot. There are, however, a number of people who reported seeing Oswald in other parts of the building, including eating n the lunchroom, shortly before the assassination. Some of these Oswald sightings were as late as 12:25 p.m. , just five minutes before the shots rang out. Making it even more mysterious was that the presidential motorcade was running at least five minutes behind schedule. All of this raises real questions about why Oswald wouldn’t have been in the 6th floor sniper’s perch with the rifle waiting for the motorcade to pass by.
 
WHAT WAS OSWALD’S MOTIVE?
Why would Lee Harvey Oswald want to kill President Kennedy? If he was indeed a Marxist sympathizer as he proclaimed, Kennedy was an unlikely target. JFK was a liberal president who had been working – against the advice of many hardliners in the government – to end the cold war with the Soviet Union.  People who knew Oswald said he had expressed admiration for the young President. The most likely scenario for a motive has always been that Oswald was just an angry little man who wanted to become famous – and thought killing the President was the way to do it. But, if that were true, why did he flee, why did he deny it when he was arrested? If it was all about his ego, wouldn’t he have proclaimed it loudly to the world? To this day, no one has ever come up with a plausible motive why Oswald might have wanted President Kennedy dead.
WHY DID OSWALD GO HOME TO GET A GUN?
After the assassination, Oswald took a taxi and bus back to the rooming house where he was staying. When he got there, he took a handgun from his room and then left for what would be his encounter with Police Officer J.D. Tippit and subsequent arrest in a movie theater. But, if he had really planned to shoot the President that day, why wouldn’t he have taken the handgun with him when he left for work? Instead, it seems as if something unexpected had happened that made Oswald think he needed to go back to where he was living for the gun.
DID A POLICE CAR STOP IN FRONT OF OSWALD’S HOUSE?
Oswald’s landlady made a troublesome claim – which some people give credit to and others are more skeptical of – that a Dallas police car stopped in front of Oswald’s rooming house, honked several times and then pulled away just after 1 p.m. This was about an hour before Oswald’s name would even emerge in the JFK assassination. The Dallas police department said there were no reports of police cars in the area at that time.
 
HOW DID JACK RUBY GET INTO THE POLICE STATION TO KILL OSWALD?
Sure, Ruby was a friend of cops and had been in the stationhouse earlier in the weekend while Oswald was in custody. But on the morning of November 24, Ruby was running errands with his dogs in the car at the time Oswald was originally scheduled to be transferred. And then somehow he wound up in the basement at exactly the right time to pull the trigger. Many have theories about Ruby’s movements and motives on that day, but no real answers.
DID OSWALD KNOW RUBY?
Some people who worked at Jack Ruby’s strip club made claims – none substantiated – that they saw Oswald there as a patron. There was also speculation that both men had known the same underworld figures. And some have even speculated that there seemed to be a look of recognition on Oswald’s face in the basement of the Dallas police station seconds before Ruby lunged out of the crowd and shot him. But no actual relationship has ever been established between the two men until Ruby silenced Oswald forever with a single gunshot to the stomach.
WHY DIDN’T EARL WARREN TAKE RUBY BACK TO WASHINGTON TO TESTIFY?
When Chief Justice Earl Warren and other members of the Warren Commission went To Dallas to interview Jack Ruby in prison, Ruby pleaded with Warren to take him back to Washington to testify, saying his life was in danger in Dallas and “I want to tell the truth, and I can’t tell it here.” Warren refused and Ruby died a few years later, taking his secrets to the grave with him. And leaving us with so many unanswered questions….


 

My publisher just launched a big Goodreads giveaway event today for my upcoming Clare Carlson book. You can enter for a chance to win one of 100 digital copies of BROADCAST BLUES being given away. The giveaway runs through December 3. https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/377034-broadcast-blues?fbclid=IwAR3QlYDY1wAxJwTu9rz8-l_SxTYXeBTYtrhXoaYObuw4dPxaysuhLlQ6iRM

Just a few days left in my Goodreads giveaway - ends Oct. 24.
I'm giving away 10 paperback copies of IT'S NEWS TO ME - my latest Clare Carlson mystery.
The paperback version just came out this month.
Enter for a chance to win...
https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/375947-it-s-news-to-me