Hit List: An In-Depth Investigation Into the Mysterious Deaths of Witnesses to the JFK Assassination
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3 “The ‘Sinister’ Stack of Leaflets Found in Guy Banister’s Files” and other articles at the website of John McAdams are obvious attempts to minimize the impact of strong conspiratorial evidence in the JFK assassination: Accessed 12 Oct 2012: http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/jimlie8.htm
4 Simkin, “Guy Banister: Biography”
5 William W. Turner, Rearview Mirror: Looking Back at the FBI, the CIA and Other Tails (Penmarin Books: 2001).
After Banister, Ward, and Gatlin, Turner then went on to note the extremely convenient death of David Ferrie, two months earlier. Ferrie was considered a key piece of the whole JFK assassination puzzle by District Attorney Garrison.
So Banister was already dead by the time that Garrison figured out the Oswald-Banister connections, but it’s very interesting to note that right after Banister died, his office was ransacked after his death and that his files were also missing.
After Banister’s death, Jack Martin, who had been one of Banister’s private investigators, was visibly nervous when District Attorney Jim Garrison asked about the connections to the assassination.
The following is straight from Garrison himself, regarding his interview of Jack
Martin about the goings-on at Banister’s office in the period prior to the JFK assassination:
Martin: There was Dave Ferrie—you know about him by now.
Garrison: Was he there very often?
Martin: Often? He practically lived there.
Garrison: And Lee Harvey Oswald?
Martin: Yeah, he was there too. Sometimes he’d be meeting with Guy Banister with the door shut. Other times he’d be shooting the bull with Dave Ferrie. But he was there all right.
Garrison: What was Guy Banister doing while all this was going on?
Martin: Hell, he was the one running the circus.
Garrison: What about his private detective work?
Martin: Not much of that came in, but when it did, I handled it. That’s why I was there.
Garrison: So, Jack. Just what was going on at Banister’s office?
Martin: I can’t answer that. I can’t go into that stuff at all. I think I’d better go.
Garrison: Hold on, Jack. What’s the problem with our going into what was happening at Banister’s office?
Martin: What’s the problem? What’s the problem? The problem is that we’re going to bring the goddamned federal government down on our backs. Do I need to spell it out? I could get killed—and so could you.1
1 Jim Garrison, On the Trail of the Assassins: My Investigation and Prosecution of the Murder of President Kennedy (Sheridan Square: 1988)
In yet another incredibly convenient coincidence, the sudden deaths of everyone linked to Guy Banister—as well as Guy Banister himself—made it impossible for investigators to determine the extent of his obvious involvement in matters pertaining to the assassination of President Kennedy, especially the process of setting up Lee Harvey Oswald.
According to some investigators:
Banister’s office was ransacked and some files went missing after his death.1
Not only was Banister dead but, as Garrison quickly learned—and as the next entries in this book will show—everyone who was sought in relation to Banister and his affiliations were also the victims of recent sudden death: Hugh Ward, who was Banister’s private investigator; Deslesseps Morrison, who was the Mayor of New Orleans; and Maurice Gatlin, an attorney who was Legal Counsel to the far right-wing “Minutemen” group with which Banister was closely associated.
As we shall soon see, yet another key witness, David Ferrie, died suddenly at the exact same time that he was being sought as an extremely important witness by the Jim Garrison investigation. So at the very first serious post-Warren Commission look at the circumstances surrounding the JFK assassination, all the key witnesses died very suddenly.
1 John Beckam, “Unusual Deaths,” 2 Jan. 2009, JFK Murder Solved Forum: http://forum.jfkmurdersolved.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=983
Victims
Deslesseps Morrison, Mayor of New Orleans and Hugh Ward, Private Investigator
Cause of Death
Plane crash
Official Verdict
Accident
Inconsistencies
None apparent, except for the virtually impossible coincidence that every witness connected to the same aspect of the case had suddenly died just prior to their being sought in the investigation by District Attorney Jim Garrison; see text below.
Hugh Ward was a private investigator who worked directly with two people at the main nucleus of the JFK assassination: Guy Banister and David Ferrie. Banister and Ferrie were at the nexus of events that set up the assassination of President Kennedy and the set-up of Lee Harvey Oswald as the “apparent” assassin.
Deslesseps Morrison was the Mayor of New Orleans who was—as one would expect—involved in a large number of dealings. However, it’s interesting to note that New Orleans was in many ways the center-staging location for the assassination in Dallas. New Orleans was home base to Mafia boss Carlos Marcello, David Ferrie, Dr. Mary Sherman, and Lee Harvey Oswald.
Although there is not much known about the deaths of New Orleans Mayor Deslesseps Morrison and Hugh Ward, it is known that the incredibly uncanny deaths of several key witnesses certainly stretches incredulity to a fair-minded investigator. The significance of
18–19
Hugh Ward,
May 22, 1964
Deslesseps Morrison,
May 22, 1964
those conveniently disappearing witnesses was not lost on District Attorney Garrison, or former FBI agent William Turner, who was on Garrison’s investigative staff.
As William Turner noted in his book, Rearview Mirror, all roads investigating Lee Harvey Oswald seemed to lead to Guy Banister—and everyone connected to the two of them seemed to have died a recent and untimely death:
I walked over to 531 Lafayette Place. There was no inscription on the door denoting it as Banister’s business, only a realtor’s shingle and a sticker of the then-nascent Republican Party of Louisiana. The door opened to stairs leading to a second-floor space that was unoccupied. Diagonally across the space was a second set of stairs, which led down to a door on Camp Street. The number over the door read “594.” 594 Camp Street was the return address Lee Harvey Oswald had stamped on the first batch of pro-Castro literature he handed out on the streets of the Crescent City in August 1963—Subsequent batches bore a post office box number, suggesting that the use of the street address had been a lapse. What was
Oswald’s connection to Banister?1
Experience as an FBI agent helped William Turner focus the key players when he became an investigator for District Attorney Garrison:
When I reported the Camp Street discovery to Garrison, I recommended that we assign priority to interviewing Banister. Too late, he said, Banister had been found dead in bed in June 1964, his pearl handled, monogrammed .357 Magnum revolver at his side. Although there was no autopsy, his demise was attributed to a heart attack. But Jerry Milton Brooks, who had done some clipping and filing for Banister in 1962, had identified his deputy, Hugh F. Ward, as also belonging to the Minutemen as well as an outfit called the Anti-Communism League of the Caribbean, which was headed by Banister after he came to New Orleans in 1955. Brooks credited the ACLC with helping the CIA overthrow the leftist Arbenz government in Guatemala, opening the way for a succession of rightist strongmen. The ACLC continued to act as an intermediary between the CIA and right-wing insurgency movements in the Caribbean, including Cuba after Castro gained power.2
Turner noted with concern that every witness he sought in connection to Banister had already been eliminated from the investigatory landscape:
There was a chance that Ward would be willing to talk, but it turned out he was gone as well. On May 23, 1965, he was at the controls of a Piper Aztec chartered by former New Orleans mayor Deslesseps Morrison when the craft, engines sputtering, crashed on a fog-shrouded hill near Ciu
dad Victoria, Mexico, killing all on board. That left Maurice Brooks Gatlin, Sr.,
1 Turner, Rearview Mirror.
2 Ibid.
Hugh Ward, May 22, 1964; | Hugh Ward, May 22, 1964 |
an attorney associated with Banister, on Brooks’s list of key Minutemen in Louisiana. According to Jerry Milton Brooks, Gatlin served as legal counsel to the ACLC. In fact, Brooks had been a kind of protégé of Gatlin. The attorney’s passport was stamped with visas of countries around the world. In Brooks’s estimation, he was a “transporter” for the CIA. On one occasion Gatlin bodaciously told Brooks, “I have pretty good connections. Stick with me—I’ll give you a license to kill.” Brooks became a firm believer in 1962 when Gatlin displayed a thick wad of bills, saying he had $100,000 of CIA money earmarked for a French reactionary clique planning to assassinate General de Gaulle. Shortly thereafter Gatlin flew to Paris, and shortly after that came the Secret Army Organization’s abortive ambush of the French president. But Gatlin as well was beyond Garrison’s reach. In 1964 he fell or was pushed from the sixth floor of the Panama Hotel in Panama, dying instantly.1
Below, the crash of their Aztec model airplane is described in detail:
As the aircraft headed south, the weather worsened. By 6:00 p.m., pockets of rain storms dotted the area, and Ward had to detour his course slightly to avoid building thunderheads. Still, Ward was a capable pilot and there was plenty of fuel on board to divert his route of flight as needed.2
The important point above is that Craig Roberts, an extremely capable pilot who is very qualified to make that determination, just noted that Ward was a “capable pilot.”
But something went wrong. The Aztec, flying south on instruments along the Gulf coast, was heard flying somewhere above by ranch hands at La Guajolote Ranch east of Ciudad Victoria—then change engine sounds as it flew overhead. According to the caballeros, the engines began to sputter and cough as the plane circled, apparently looking for a way down through the clouds. Fifteen minutes later, at approximately 6:15 p.m., the Aztec broke out through the low overcast and slammed into the ground, skipped, then skidded 200 feet to the edge of a small gorge. By the time rescuers could reach the wreckage, there was no one left alive to rescue.
The unusual factor to this “accident” is that both engines failed at the same time, with over three hours of useable fuel still on board.3
1 Ibid.
2 Roberts & Armstrong, The Dead Witnesses
3 Roberts & Armstrong, The Dead Witnesses, emphasis in original.
Victim
Maurice Brooks Gatlin, Attorney: Legal Counsel to “Minutemen”; also associated with Guy Banister.
Cause of Death
Heart attack and fall from sixth-story balcony.
Official Verdict
Natural Causes
Inconsistencies
1. While attending a meeting of the Inter-American Bar Association in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Mr. Gatlin reportedly suffered a heart attack and then fell over the ledge of a 6th floor balcony. No one is sure how exactly that happened and there is no other information available.318
2. Gatlin was another key witness sought by the investigation of District Attorney, Jim Garrison; see text below.
Maurice Brooks Gatlin was a well-connected attorney who was a fervent anti-Communist in league with private investigator Guy Banister and many others strongly associated with anti-Castro efforts.
Gatlin was legal counsel to the “Minutemen”—an extremely conservative group that was being investigated by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, because it was also suspected of being linked to the JFK assassination.
318 New Orleans Times-Picayune, May 31, 1965, Page One: http://www.jfk-online.com/jpsgatobit.html
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Maurice Gatlin,
Esq.,
May 28, 1965
Another item of note we located was that—in addition to his association with Guy Banister, a man linked by many to the plotting of the JFK assassination, as well as the set-up of Lee Harvey Oswald as the patsy—Gatlin was also linked to others who have been mentioned as playing roles in the murder of JFK. Gatlin was also involved with the covert dealings of longtime CIA agent, E. Howard Hunt, and Mafia boss, Carlos Marcello:
Hunt had extensive connections to organized crime, especially the national syndicate said to have been run by Seymour Weiss of the Standard Fruit Company (the sponsor of the Guatemalan coup) and Mafia kingpin Carlos Marcello. In 1958, Hunt organized an “anti-communist” conference in Guatemala. The conference chairman was Antonio Valladores, Marcello’s attorney in New Orleans. Also present at the meeting was Maurice Gatlin, whose office at 544 Camp Street was, in the CIA shell-game investigated by Jim Garrison, a base of operations for the Kennedy assassination.1
It was Gatlin who served as bag man for Banister, Clay Shaw—and the CIA—when the “transporter” carried a suitcase full of $100,000 in cash to Paris for the OAS. The money was to be used by the Organization to assassinate Charles de Gaulle on one of the many attempts the right-wing group of former French army and foreign legion officers made against the French president’s life.
Jerry Milton Brooks, a former Minuteman who worked for Banister, said that Maurice Gatlin often bragged about his dual life. “I have pretty good connections,” Gatlin told Brooks, “Stick with me—and I’ll give you a license to kill.” Brooks later stated that he had seen Gatlin’s passport, and that it “was filled with stamps of airports all over the world.”
Gatlin, due to his movements as a “transporter” for the CIA, and his intimate knowledge of the goings-on at 544 Camp Street, must have become a liability. For in May of 1964, before he could be located by the Warren Commission, he was pushed or jumped from the sixth floor of the El Panama Hotel in Panama City.2
When looked at in its full perspective, those pregnant words of that former FBI agent, William Turner, seem somewhat haunting:
But the untimely deaths of Banister, Ward, and Gatlin gave me pause that there might in fact have been systematic elimination of people who knew too much.3
1 Alex Constantine, Psychic Dictatorship in the U.S.A., (Feral House: 1995): http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKcaddyD.htm
2 Roberts & Armstrong, The Dead Witnesses
3 Turner, Rearview Mirror
Victim
Earlene Roberts, landlady at the rooming house in Dallas where Lee Harvey Oswald lived.
Cause of Death
Heart Attack
Official Verdict
Natural Causes
Inconsistencies
1. As we report below, Mrs. Roberts was so harassed by the authorities that her relatives believed her health was ruined by it. So even if her heart attack was from natural causes, one might say it was still caused by her relationship to the JFK assassination.
Earlene Roberts was a nurse, but when she became diabetic, gave up her nursing career and began renting out rooms at her home in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas. She was an intelligent and confident woman, and a very good witness.
On October 14, 1963, she rented one of the rooms in her home to Lee Harvey Oswald; however, it was under a different name. Oswald rented the room under the name “O. H. Lee,” a composite of his name.
Earlene Roberts was a very important witness, and the authorities were not happy about what she had to say. She testified that a friend called her at about 1:00 p.m. and informed her of the assassination of President Kennedy. She immediately turned on her television set in the downstairs room and then Oswald came through the door and rushed by her, going to his room in quite a hurry.
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Earlene Roberts,
January 9, 1966
Earlene Roberts was sure she saw and heard a police car stop and honk outside Oswald’s room, right after the assassination.
While Oswald was in his room, a police car from the Dallas Police Department pulled up outside the house and stopped in front of it. Mrs. Roberts was no “namby-pamby”—she was a confident witness w
hose testimony reveals with certainty exactly what she saw:
Mr. Ball: Did a police car pass the house there and honked?
Mrs. Roberts: Yes.
Mr. Ball: When was that?
Mrs. Roberts: He came in the house.
Mr. Ball: When he came in the house?
Mrs. Roberts: When he came in the house and went to his room, you know how the sidewalk runs?
Mr. Ball: Yes.
Mrs. Roberts: Right direct in front of that door—there was a police car stopped and honked. I had worked for some policemen and sometimes they come by and tell me something that maybe their wives would want me to know, and I thought it was them, and I just glanced out and saw the number, and I said, “Oh, that’s not their car,” for I knew their car.
Mr. Ball: You mean, it was not the car of the policemen you knew?
Mrs. Roberts: It wasn’t the police car I knew, because their number was 170 and it wasn’t 170 and I ignored it.
Mr. Ball: And who was in the car?
Mrs. Roberts: I don’t know—I didn’t pay any attention to it after I noticed it wasn’t them—I didn’t.
Mr. Ball: Where was it parked?
Mrs. Roberts: It was parked in front of the house.1
Mrs. Roberts went on to testify that the number she saw on the police car was “106” and that shortly after the police car honked, Oswald then left the house. That posed a serious problem for authorities to explain, because the Dallas Police Department denied that they had any cars in that area, anywhere near the time of 1:00 p.m. on November 22, 1963.2