LBJ

by Phillip F. Nelson

  Furthermore, Hancock established that the naval investigators found some other strange aspects to the case concerning what they referred to as potential political ramifications. They concluded that someone had gotten to District Attorney Long and convinced (or bribed) him to keep information out of the trial and away from the media. Prosecutor Long obviously knew all along that Doug Kinser had been conducting simultaneous affairs with Andre Wallace and Josefa Johnson—literally, simultaneously (a la ménage à trois)—and that Wallace had dated Josefa himself while living in Washington DC, which revealed that Mac Wallace’s jealousy had a dual basis. Long even had an investigator interview Josefa and confirm the association. Long made it very clear that he understood the potential political impact on Johnson and implied he took great care to keep the information from coming out in order to protect Lyndon Johnson. Long said, “And of course, the anti-Johnson people here. Boy, in twenty-four hours it’d have been everywhere.”

  Josefa apparently thought that Kinser was only seeing her because he wanted to use her influence with Lyndon to get a small business loan for his pitch and putt. She told the investigator she broke off with Kinser and that “Lyndon wouldn’t listen to me anyway.” District Attorney Long had all the evidence he needed, but he failed to introduce any of it in court; he presented only the basic facts used to charge Wallace in the first place and made only a perfunctory effort to prosecute the case. In the process, he allowed a violent and brutal murderer to walk out of the courtroom with only a five-year suspended sentence for “murder with malice.” He did it because Lyndon Johnson insisted on it and had the political muscle to force him to cooperate. Johnson admitted to his longtime mistress, Madeleine Brown, that he helped get Wallace off the hook, saying, “Hell, I’ve got friends in Austin who owe me favors. I’m going to call in my markers for Wallace’s trial. Madeleine, I can’t have this bullshit embarrassing my family.”92 Clearly, there was more behind his actions than the embarrassment that Josefa’s involvement with him might have caused.

  In addition to DA Long’s belated acknowledgment of holding back evidence that might reveal Lyndon Johnson’s involvement, the naval investigators found that both of Wallace’s lawyers had a long legal association with LBJ himself. Lead counsel Cofer had represented Johnson during his election fraud in the 1948 senatorial vote during the Box 13 election scandal and would later represent Johnson’s crime partner Billie Sol Estes; in that future trial a decade later, Cofer also did a good job of limiting testimony—including keeping Estes himself off the stand—but that time, he bent rules to ensure his client was convicted so that he would not embarrass the boss, Lyndon Johnson.

  Even more importantly, the investigators interviewed Detective Lee, formerly with the Austin Police Department, who reported that when Wallace was arrested, he told the investigators that “he was working for Mr. Johnson and (that’s why) he had to get back to Washington.”93 Wallace’s ex-wife Virginia Ledgerwood also described Wallace talking about knowing both Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson. Moreover, it was found that Horace Busby, a longtime aide and speechwriter to Lyndon Johnson, not only knew Wallace but was a friend, a “fellow traveler,” and fellow student leader at the University of Texas.

  The Last Christmas Present for Josefa Johnson

  The objective of shutting down the Austin imbroglio to eliminate the threat presented by the trio of lovers was accomplished with the murder of Doug Kinser. It had the dual advantage of getting the attention of Josefa sufficiently to make her a more cooperative, obedient, and restrained sister for Lyndon. It didn’t require an interpreter to understand the consequences of not complying with Lyndon’s demand for her to fade into the background and stop embarrassing him, for a while, at least; it bought her another decade of life. However, the mortal days of Josefa Johnson were numbered. After she divorced her husband Willard White, she had adopted a son, Rodney, in 1948 during the time before she married Jim Moss of Fredericksburg, Texas. According to some reports, the boy was actually the son of Josefa and Lyndon’s brother, Sam Houston Johnson. She had gained ten more years of life after the 1951 “Kinser incident,” but her inability to completely reform herself, and stop embarrassing Lyndon, may have cut her life short. The Fredericksburg, Texas, newspaper carried the story a few days after Christmas 1961, under the headline, “Sister of LBJ, Mrs. Moss, Dies.” The article stated that she “died Sunday night of a cerebral hemorrhage. She was forty-nine. Mrs. Moss died in her sleep after spending the evening with the entire Johnson clan around the Christmas tree at the LBJ ranch east of Fredericksburg.”

  The article was short on substantive information about the Christmas party and who the other guests might have been, although rumors suggested that Malcolm Wallace was one of the other guests. Shortly after leaving the party and returning to her home, Josefa died mysteriously in the early-morning hours of December 25, 1961. In a final deference to the wishes of her brother, the vice president of the United States, it was decided that—in direct contradiction of the laws of the State of Texas—no autopsy or inquest or other investigation was necessary. Moreover, stunningly, the death certificate was executed by a doctor who never even examined the body. Josefa Johnson was embalmed the same day, apparently her last Christmas present; she was quickly buried the following morning.94 Like most Johnson operations, the story was wiped clean and quickly put to bed with very few traces remaining of her life. There is scarcely a word about her in the more than thirty-five million records stored in Lyndon’s own library-museum (though it looks more like the mausoleum of a giant) in Austin, Texas. In her case, the mystery of her sudden death, on what is normally a joyous day, deepens; it is unlikely that anyone will ever understand what really happened to her and why her own brother—evidently, since no one else there would have had the power—decided that her death needed no investigation, contrary to Texas law and ordinary standards of decency. But “decency” had no meaning or place at the LBJ Ranch, other than what might have been left of it with his long-suffering wife, Lady Bird; her doubts and conflicts about Lyndon’s methods were quietly suppressed by her for many years. By December 1961, Johnson was clearly very frustrated by what had been happening all year with his criminal partner Estes but decided that he couldn’t have him killed because that would certainly have been traced back to himself.

  In December 1961, Johnson and Estes were still buddies in crime, acting in concert to prevent any investigation of their collusion. But Johnson had spent a lot of time browbeating Estes on the need to keep quiet, lest he end up like the others; at that time the reference would only have been to Henry Marshall, but Josefa’s mysterious death—regardless of how and why she died—might have been useful as a timely reminder by Lyndon to Billie Sol to wise up. Within four or five months of that, he would have a few other names to add to the list. Whether Johnson gave the final order to Mac Wallace that evening, of course, will never be known for sure, but it would conform to a criminal pattern already put into place by Johnson in his quest for more power as well as his long-term concerns about his fear that his sister posed too great a risk to his own political career. But for some reason, known only to himself and a friend of his named Kyle Brown, Billie Sol Estes in 1984 included her name on his list of eight people who he personally knew died on the orders of Lyndon B. Johnson. By the time Estes made his startling assertions, he had served his time and had little to gain by divulging this information.

  Mac Wallace’s “Other Employment”

  With Clark and Johnson’s help, Mac Wallace was soon employed with one of the Texas-based military suppliers, Luscombe Aircraft Corporation, which was soon absorbed by the conglomerate known as Ling-Temco-Vaught, or LTV, a company in which Johnson had financial as well as political interests. This company would subsequently become a beneficiary of the federal government’s largesse through military contracts after Johnson became president. In this capacity, Wallace worked directly for D. H. Byrd, an executive and later chief executive of LTV as well as the owner of the Texas School Boo
k Depository building, where Wallace would leave a fingerprint on November 22, 1963.95

  Wallace still managed to secure top secret clearances, thanks again to Lyndon Johnson, despite his conviction for first-degree murder (“murder with malice aforethought”) and his numerous contacts with Marxists. His new wife had a greater moralistic view of life and personal conduct, which caused her to later complain to authorities about an incestuous affair Wallace was having with their nine-year-old daughter at her divorce proceeding. Neither did his arrests on public drunkenness charges jeopardize his ability to keep his security clearances. In an internal memorandum of the Screening Board of the Office of Naval Intelligence dated September 27, 1962, these facts, together with a summary of his guilty verdict in the murder of Doug Kinser, the incident of his having “incestuous relations with his nine year old daughter in 1959,” and his public drunkenness conviction in February 1961 when “he found difficulty, extreme difficulty in walking—his breath was strong of alcohol—his speech slow and uneven,” were all spelled out as the basis for the panel’s decision.96 The panel of naval officers who reviewed his application unanimously denied it, stating the following:

  This case needs little rationalizing. Applicant’s conviction of murder with malice; his abnormal sexual behavior and his omissions on his current Personnel Security Questionnaire indicate that the granting of access authorization is not in the national interest.97

  Yet in another astonishing turnaround concerning Lyndon Johnson’s protégé, Malcolm “Mac” Wallace had been given the security clearances as requested, despite the unanimous objections by the military officers at the Office of Naval Intelligence, which must have produced a few surprised and quizzical looks on the faces of those officers the morning that the news broke. Texas Ranger Clint Peoples had also opposed the security clearances, saying he “considered applicant a bad security risk and would not trust him in any capacity. He characterized applicant as a pervert.”98 But the word was out that “higher-ups” in Washington were behind it, and he therefore understood why his objection was ignored.99 Ranger Captain Peoples obviously understood exactly what was happening by this time, but he had insufficient proof, or the required political clout, to do anything about it.

  It was not the first time Ranger Peoples had run into Wallace; as noted earlier, he had worked on the Kinser case in 1952 and knew that some very strong strings were pulled all the way from Washington DC in behalf of Wallace to effectively set him free after having been convicted of first-degree murder. According to his biographer James M. Day, Ranger Clint Peoples was aware “that Wallace had friendly connections with Lyndon B. Johnson’s family and several high-ranking state officials. As Peoples expressed it, ‘I knew that I had to put every bit that I had into the investigation because the smell of politics was all around there.’”100 It is obviously a tremendous understatement to say that Wallace “had friendly connections with LBJ’s family.” The connection was (aside from his having sex with Lyndon’s sister Josefa and being a welcome guest for Lady Bird) directly to Lyndon himself. It goes without saying, but being someone’s hit man is about as “close and personal” as one can get.

  Sam Smithwick: Another “Texas Suicide?”

  The Duke of Duval, George Parr, who was mentioned in chapter 1, had delivered the necessary 201 votes Johnson had requested to secure the 1948 senatorial election. There were a number of oddities noted about these votes, delivered in Box 13: They were delivered seventy-two hours after the election was over; the polling list, before it was destroyed, showed that many of the people on it had been dead for some time; the voters nevertheless obediently got into line in alphabetical order; and all signed their names in the same pen and handwriting, a stunning display of obedience—or corruption.

  In 1952, Sam Smithwick, a deputy sheriff working for George Parr, the political boss of Alice, Texas, was in the state prison in Huntsville, convicted of the murder of a local radio announcer who had criticized the Parr regime. He had grown weary of the situation he found himself in, after having been pressed to murder Bill Mason, the radio commentator who had begun attacking George Parr. Until then, Parr had been pretty much invincible in Duval, Nueces, and Jim Wells counties; his influence was felt in fifteen other counties, through alliances with other political bosses. It was in Parr’s territory that the famous Box 13 voter fraud occurred, the result of which was the illegitimate election of Lyndon Johnson to the U.S. Senate. According to author Day, the biographer of Ranger Clint Peoples, “During the 1950’s, national magazine and news media articles accused him of ruling by threats, economic boycotts, and maintaining a private army of pistoleros who posed as deputy sheriffs.”101 Moreover, Ranger Peoples learned additional details about just how deep George Parr’s hold on the area was, including the fact that he got a share of the profits not only from gambling and prostitution, but even from the sales of alcohol in Duval County, receiving a nickel from every bottle of beer sold.102 By now, Smithwick was unhappy with his fate because he had assumed that Parr would have intervened somehow and saved him from prison for the murder of the radio announcer. He figured that if he “came clean” about his involvement and knowledge of the Box 13 voter fraud affair engineered by Lyndon Johnson and executed by George Parr, he might qualify for an early parole. He was ready to talk, and he wrote to the man Johnson had “defeated,” Coke Stevenson, offering to testify about the election fraud.

  Unfortunately, word got out of this astounding news that threatened Lyndon Johnson’s career, and before long, Ed Clark got wind of it. Barr McClellan, who long worked in Clark’s Austin law firm and knew him and the other key men there, traced the tentacles of Johnson and Clark to their man on the Texas Board of Prisons, one Hubert Hardison “Pete” Coffield, who “had the access needed to get rid of Smithwick for good.”103 The method involved a Texas tradition, involving a few well-compensated key guards. The “tradition” simply involved the direction to these “death rangers” to eliminate a specific inmate, usually by methods disguised as those of a “suicide,” with the understanding that they would be protected from any recriminations. In this case, it was Smithwick who got the tag and, shortly thereafter, was found hanging from the steel bars of the jail cell. Although it was routinely handled as a suicide by the prison officials, few people actually believed that, including Governor Allan Shivers, who was convinced that Lyndon B. Johnson was behind it.104 As reported by Robert Dallek, Governor Shivers actually accused Johnson of having Smithwick murdered.105

  In those days, however, the guards were well protected. There were no attorneys jumping into the fray, and the public just did not care too much about justice for a convicted prisoner. Ed Clark anticipated that it would quickly wind down, and he was correct. Since the action was so well “executed,” there was no proof of a crime; therefore, there was no crime to investigate.106 Given the totality of the evidence—including specifically that Texas Governor Allan Shivers had been convinced of Johnson’s involvement—the inescapable conclusion was that Lyndon B. Johnson had been behind the murder of Sam Smithwick.

  Dale Disappears, or Dies … Because She Saw “the Hug”?

  Sam Smithwick’s name was not on the list eventually supplied by Billie Sol Estes of eight people who he knew were victims of Lyndon Johnson; Estes knew there had been possibly ten others but did not know the circumstances of the other murders and therefore omitted them from his list. Yet, according to the credible Madeleine Brown and others, there were indeed more victims of Johnson’s malevolent devices. For example, there is the case of the missing maid. Dale Turner had been employed for over a decade by Madeleine Brown and had become what she referred to as a “surrogate mother” for Lyndon’s own son, Steven Mark, born to Madeleine in December 1950. Months after becoming vice president in 1961, in a visit to San Antonio where he had planned to meet Madeleine at the posh Menger Hotel, they exchanged an affectionate hug as his eyes caught son Steven with Dale inside the suite. Unfortunately for her, there was a very brief but meaningful eye c
ontact between them. He had always been paranoid about their affair becoming public; now he told Madeline that he would need to have Jerome Ragsdale (one of his lawyers and business managers) replace her immediately. Madeleine objected strongly to this, explaining to him that Dale was more than just an employee, that she had become part of their family. He told her that he would think about it but then decided, after a long quarrel with her, that the maid would have to go and that Madeleine should “tell Dale goodbye.”107 A few days later, Dale requested a little time off for personal business. That was the last time Madeleine or anyone else ever saw Dale Turner, except of course for whoever was responsible for her disappearance and certain death.108 The disappearance of Dale Turner occurred shortly before the 1961 Christmas death of Lyndon’s sister. Clearly, 1961 and 1962 were watershed years of Lyndon Johnson’s crime sprees; Apparently, once started, it became easier to rationalize to himself and therefore easier to give the orders to fellow sociopath Mac Wallace to execute. It is more than likely that, among the reasons that Johnson decided Dale Turner was expendable, a secondary consideration was that it would reinforce with clarity his admonitions to Madeleine to “keep her mouth shut” in the same way that the same lesson—during the same time period—would also be applied to Billie Sol Estes, as will be considered below.

  The Murder of an Uncooperative Department of

  Agriculture Agent, Henry Marshall