Buzz
One of the most infamous mysteries tied to Kennedy's assassination is the disappearance of his brain. Less widely discussed are the suspicious deaths of numerous individuals connected to the event, which led the House Select Committee on Assassinations to investigate potential foul play. However, their preliminary inquiry found no evidence of wrongdoing.
While not all mysterious deaths imply foul play, the following are stories of 10 individuals who either witnessed Kennedy's assassination or possessed relevant knowledge about those involved. Their deaths are often considered untimely, at least by some accounts.
10. Jack Ruby
We start with Ruby, the most well-known figure on this list, who famously killed Lee Harvey Oswald on live television just two days after Oswald was arrested for assassinating Kennedy. At the time of the shooting, Ruby was five blocks from the Texas School Book Depository, handing out advertisements. He initially stated that he shot Oswald to “redeem” Dallas and spare Jackie Kennedy the pain of a trial. However, these motives—and nearly every other aspect of Ruby’s life—are filled with inconsistencies.
Ruby later asserted that his first lawyer had instructed him to testify about the aforementioned motives, while Vegas mobster Johnny Roselli alleged that Ruby had been tasked with silencing Oswald. In 1965, long after his conviction, Ruby made this statement about the murder: “The full truth about what happened has never been revealed. The world will never know my true motives. Those who had so much to gain and such hidden reasons for putting me in this position will never allow the real facts to come to light.”
On January 3, 1967, Ruby died from a pulmonary embolism, a complication of lung cancer. Before his death, he claimed that a man had visited him and injected him with what he was told were antibiotics for a persistent cold, but which he believed were actually cancer cells. He had recently been granted a new trial, as it was determined that his initial trial in Dallas could not have been impartial. In his final days, Ruby told a psychiatrist that the assassination was a coup d’etat and that he knew who was behind Kennedy’s murder.
9. James Richard Worrell Jr.
Worrell was among the most reliable eyewitnesses to Kennedy’s assassination, offering exceptionally detailed responses to the standard questions about that day (his complete congressional testimony is accessible here). In 1963, Worrell, a 20-year-old high school student, lived in Dallas with his mother and sister. When Kennedy visited, Worrell chose to skip school to catch a glimpse of the President, leaving home early and hitchhiking to Love Field. Realizing he was too late for a good view, he headed to Dealey Plaza and positioned himself just a few feet in front of the Book Depository, at the corner of Elm and Houston.
He observed the motorcade as it traveled down Houston Street and turned onto Elm. Worrell testified that he heard “four shots.” After the first shot, which he recognized as too loud to be a firecracker, he glanced up and noticed a rifle barrel sticking out from the 5th or 6th-floor corner window of the building. He turned back to Kennedy’s car, heard the second shot, and saw the President collapse. Looking up again, he saw the muzzle flash of the third shot, then panicked and ran around the Depository onto Houston Street, where he heard a fourth shot. Pausing to catch his breath, he turned just in time to see a man fleeing from the Depository’s rear exit and later provided a general description matching Oswald’s height, build, and attire.
Three years later, on November 6, 1966, Worrell was riding his motorcycle on Gus Thomasson Street in Dallas with a passenger named Lee Hudgins when he seemingly lost control of the bike, crossed the median curb, and overturned into the opposite lane. Worrell, not wearing a helmet, struck his head on the curb, while Hudgins was thrown into the path of an oncoming car. Both were pronounced dead at the hospital.
8. Thomas Hale Boggs Sr.
Boggs was arguably the most prominent figure linked to the assassination to die under mysterious conditions. A veteran Louisiana Congressman, he served as House Majority Whip at the time of Kennedy’s death and rose to House Majority Leader in 1971. In 1963, he was named to the President’s Commission on the Assassination, commonly known as the Warren Commission after its head, Chief Justice Earl Warren. While the Commission ultimately determined that Oswald acted alone, three members dissented—Boggs, along with Senators Richard Russell and Sherman Cooper. Russell, who passed away from natural causes in 1971, expressed his “ongoing dissatisfaction” with the inquiry, while Boggs accused FBI director J. Edgar Hoover of “lying outright” during the proceedings.
Boggs was a vocal opponent of the single bullet theory. This theory posits that Oswald fired three shots, with the second bullet striking Kennedy in the upper back, exiting through his throat, and then hitting Texas Governor John Connally in the back. The bullet allegedly exited Connally’s chest, shattered his wrist, and lodged in his thigh, causing seven wounds across both men. Critics argue this would require the bullet to defy physics by rising mid-flight, but Connally was seated in a specially installed “jump seat” slightly lower than Kennedy, making the trajectory plausible.
The height of Connally’s seat was unknown at the time, but Boggs also vehemently rejected the idea that Oswald acted alone, as well as the notion that Ruby acted independently in killing Oswald. As House Majority Whip and later Leader, his opinions held significant influence.
On October 16, 1972, Boggs was aboard a flight from Anchorage to Juneau with Alaskan Congressman Nick Begich and two others. The plane never reached its destination. The cause of the crash remains unknown, and neither the wreckage nor the bodies were ever recovered. Many aircraft at the time lacked emergency transmitters to signal their location in a crash (a requirement implemented as a direct result of this tragedy). The four men were declared dead the following year.
7. John M. Crawford
John Crawford’s link to Lee Harvey Oswald is indirect but fascinating. In the months before the assassination, Oswald stayed as a weekend guest at Ruth Paine’s home, where he allegedly stored the Carcano rifle used to kill Kennedy in her garage without her knowledge. Paine informed Oswald about a job opening at the Depository, where he became friends with a coworker named Wesley Frazier, who often gave him rides to work.
On November 22, 1963, Frazier stated that he drove Oswald to work as usual, observing that Oswald was carrying a large package under his arm, which Oswald claimed contained curtain rods. Frazier testified that the package seemed too small to hold a disassembled rifle. Another witness, Jack Dougherty, reported seeing Oswald enter the Depository empty-handed that morning.
Frazier was a neighbor and close friend of John Crawford, who was also a good friend of Jack Ruby. While Frazier’s testimony doesn’t mention Crawford, it’s possible he shared details about his new coworker, Oswald, with Crawford, who might have relayed this information to Ruby. There’s no concrete evidence to support this, nor the claim that Ruby always carried Crawford’s phone number in his pocket. Crawford, a licensed pilot, died on April 15, 1969, when his plane went down shortly after takeoff near Huntsville, Texas. He had five passengers, including George Clark, Charles Green, and their family members. All three men had left their car keys in their vehicle door locks at the airport.
6. Lieutenant William Pitzer
Pitzer was a naval officer whose presence at Kennedy’s autopsy at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, remains uncertain. Doctors at Parkland Hospital in Dallas had insisted on conducting the autopsy themselves, but the Secret Service overruled them and transported the body to Air Force One. In the iconic photograph of Johnson being sworn in beside Jackie Kennedy on the plane, JFK’s body lies unseen in the room behind them.
The autopsy at Bethesda was conducted with three Secret Service agents and two FBI agents in attendance. Notably, Pitzer’s name is absent from the official list of those present, a detail supported by three sources: the report from the House Select Committee on Assassinations, Vincent Bugliosi’s book “Reclaiming History,” and the FBI report by agents Francis O’Neill and James Silbert, who were present.
However, some claim that Pitzer, who managed the hospital’s closed-circuit television system, secretly recorded the entire autopsy and hid a copy of the footage at his Bethesda home. This story reportedly stems from a coworker named Dennis David, who testified that he once saw Pitzer editing a 16mm film of the autopsy.
On October 29, 1966, Pitzer was discovered dead in his office from what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the right temple. Dennis David later expressed skepticism about the suicide, citing the wound’s location and Pitzer’s left-handedness. However, Pitzer’s wife stated that he was right-handed. David also claimed to have visited Pitzer’s home to view the smuggled footage, asserting that it contradicted the official conclusions drawn from the autopsy report.
5. Rose Cherami
Cherami, whose real name was Melba Christine Marcades, has the most bizarre connection to the assassination—she allegedly knew it would occur. On November 20, 1963, Cherami was hit by a car near Eunice, Louisiana. She sustained only minor injuries and was taken to a local hospital. Due to her erratic behavior, though not seriously injured, she was moved to the town jail by Lieutenant Francis Fruge. Cherami appeared to be in a drug-induced haze and was only semi-coherent. After an hour, she began experiencing withdrawal symptoms and was sent back to the hospital. There, she told Fruge that she had been traveling with two drug dealers, whom she believed were Cuban or Italian, heading to Dallas to kill the President.
Cherami claimed she was hired by a group of traffickers to deliver money for a drug deal in Galveston in exchange for heroin. She said the dealer would hold her child as collateral, after which she could take the child and heroin to Mexico. However, things went wrong when the two men accompanying her got into a fight at a bar called the Silver Slipper. Cherami stated she was thrown out and had to hitchhike, eventually being hit by a driver named Frank Odom.
Two days later, as the story goes, nurses in her hospital room were watching TV when Cherami declared, “This is when it’s going to happen.” Moments later, the shots were fired. This detail is likely inaccurate, as the motorcade wasn’t broadcast live, but the nurses might have been listening to breaking news updates shortly after. WFAA Dallas was the first station to air coverage at 12:45 PM. It’s possible the nurses didn’t hear the news until around 1:00 PM when a scheduled program was interrupted. If so, Cherami might have heard “Dallas” and made her infamous statement. Regardless, she had repeatedly warned the nurses and Lt. Fruge about the impending assassination during her hospital stay.
This account may seem highly fabricated, but Dr. Victor Weiss, her attending physician, testified to Jim Garrison in 1967 that he heard Cherami’s warnings about the assassination, though he couldn’t recall if she mentioned it before or after the event. Cherami died on September 4, 1965, during the buildup to Garrison’s widely publicized trial. She was once again hit by a car, this time near Big Sandy, Texas. At 3:00 AM, an unidentified driver found her lying face down in the road and accidentally ran over her head before stopping. The driver was identified, but their name remains unrecorded, and foul play was dismissed as no connection between the driver and Cherami could be established.
4. Dorothy Mae Kilgallen
A well-known figure in the 1960s, Dorothy Mae Kilgallen was a journalist for various magazines and newspapers and a regular on the popular game show What’s My Line?. In 1962, she published an article hinting at a sexual relationship between Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe. Two days later, Monroe died from an apparent overdose. In 1964, Kilgallen claimed to have interviewed Jack Ruby during his trial for Oswald’s murder. While this claim may be false, it is confirmed that she obtained, through an unnamed source, a copy of Ruby’s testimony to the Warren Commission. She published this testimony in the Journal American and other newspapers two months before the Commission released its official report.
Her ability to obtain the testimony alarmed the FBI, prompting agents to visit her home twice that year to question her about her source, but she refused to disclose it. In 1965, she wrote an article drawing parallels between the 1962 film The Manchurian Candidate and the assassination the following year. By then, conspiracy theories about the President’s death were widespread, and Kilgallen remained a vocal critic of J. Edgar Hoover and the Warren Commission. She stayed in the public eye, a former friend of Frank Sinatra, writing about films and Broadway shows, and appearing on What’s My Line?
On November 8, 1965, just 12 hours after her final live appearance on the show, Kilgallen was discovered dead on the third floor of her Manhattan Brownstone. The apparent cause was an overdose of barbiturates combined with alcohol, which may have been accidental or intentional.
3. John Garret Underhill Jr.
Underhill attracted far too much attention. It’s often mistakenly claimed that he was a CIA agent—in reality, he worked sporadically for the CIA in the 1940s and 1950s as a freelance consultant, primarily advising on Soviet armaments. A Harvard graduate and photographer, he earned a living by writing for military publications and served as the military affairs editor for Life Magazine.
After the assassination, Underhill began telling friends that a small faction within the CIA was responsible and that Oswald was a scapegoat: “They framed him. It’s too much. They’ve done something unthinkable. They’ve killed the President! I’ve been listening and hearing things. I couldn’t believe they’d pull it off, but they did!...But I know who they are. That’s the problem. They know I know.”
These remarks caught the attention of Louisiana attorney Jim Garrison, who was preparing to prosecute businessman Clay Shaw in an attempt to expose what he believed was a government conspiracy surrounding Kennedy’s death. Garrison planned to meet with Underhill, mentioning in an interview with Playboy Magazine that he had identified a credible witness named “Gary Underhill” with valuable information.
On May 8, 1964, before Garrison could meet him, Underhill was discovered dead in his home. The official ruling was suicide, but skeptics have pointed out that the bullet wound was behind his left ear, an unusual placement for a self-inflicted gunshot (most people tend to aim at the temple or mouth). Some sources also allege that Underhill’s gun was found in his right hand.
2. Lee Edward Bowers Jr.
On the day of the assassination, Bowers was stationed in the second floor of a railyard control tower, providing him with a clear, elevated view of Dealey Plaza and the grassy knoll. At 12:30 PM, he reported hearing three shots, which he believed originated either from the Depository on his left or from the area near an underpass to his right. The echoing sounds made it difficult for him to pinpoint the exact direction.
He firmly stated that no one was standing directly behind the fence at the front of the knoll when the shots were fired, but he noted that four men were in the vicinity. One of them, Bowers recognized as a parking lot attendant, and he assumed another was also an attendant. The remaining two were a middle-aged, heavyset man and a young man in his twenties wearing a plaid shirt or jacket. They stood a short distance apart under the shade of some trees. At the moment the shots were fired, Bowers claimed to see a flash of light or a puff of smoke near the two men.
Three years later, on August 9, 1966, Bowers was driving at approximately 50 miles per hour in rural Midlothian, Texas, when his car veered off the road and hit a concrete bridge abutment. Bowers died four hours later, alleging that someone had drugged his coffee at a diner shortly before the crash.
1. Joseph Adams Milteer
Joseph Milteer was a notorious figure, serving as the president of the Georgia chapter of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. His hatred for Kennedy was no secret, as he frequently proclaimed, often using a bullhorn, that the country would benefit from having a “n____r hater” in office rather than a “n____r lover.” While he was careful not to openly threaten Kennedy, 13 days before the assassination, Milteer was in Miami speaking with Willie Augustus Somersett, whom he believed to be a fellow racist but who was actually an undercover police officer recording their conversation. This exchange was revealed in February 1967 by the Miami News.
The House Select Committee on Assassinations was fully aware of Milteer, labeling him as “a militant conservative.” In its report, the committee referenced parts of his conversation with Somersett, including Milteer’s statement that Kennedy’s assassination “was in the works,” and his prediction that the President would be shot “from an office building with a high-powered rifle.” Milteer also remarked, “they will pick up somebody within hours, if anything like that would happen, just to throw people off.”
This does not necessarily mean Milteer was involved in planning the assassination or even aware of any plot, as a president known for riding in an open-top convertible was an obvious target. Milteer also hinted that a man named Jack Brown would carry out the assassination, though no evidence has linked Brown to the events in Dallas. However, the latter part of his statement about apprehending someone within hours proved eerily accurate—Oswald was arrested around 1:45 PM, just over an hour after the shooting. A photograph by James Altgens shows a man resembling Milteer in the crowd, arms folded, watching as Kennedy’s car approaches, though experts have determined it likely wasn’t him. Milteer died in 1974 when a portable heating stove exploded at his home, killing him in the fire. He was 72.
