Unanswered
I have mentioned before my mild obsession (Can an obsession be mild? Is that an oxymoron?) with unsolved mysteries. (Eureka, Sort Of)
I’ve always wanted to solve some great mystery or cold case.
In part, because I always like to show how smart I am. I was one of those obnoxious kids in grade school whose hand was always waving frantically in the air. (Well, OK, that was high school too. And college. And grad school.)
But mostly, because I am one of those types that just NEEDS to know. I hate a mystery with no answer.
Just TELL me.
Why, for example, when suspected murderers are dying, why don’t they just TELL us? I felt that way with Dr. Sam Shepard, who I thought was almost certainly innocent. Of course, it would have been even more convincing had their REAL murderer given us a death-bed confession.
Or Lizzie Borden, who on the other hand, I think was probably guilty. She’d been acquitted. She was already pretty much a social pariah in Fall River, so she had no reputation to lose. So why didn’t she just tell us?
It’s unfair.
I have a couple of minor, trivial, mysteries I will share in my next post, but I am in a serious mood today, and so I want to share a few important mysteries.
I am a Conspiracy Nut.
Yes, that’s what people call people like me.
I’m not one of those true overachieving nuts who believes EVERYTHING is a big conspiracy.
No.
I have just a few very specific conspiracy beliefs.
Perhaps it stems from the fact that some momentous world events happened when I was at my most impressionable. Those experiences that made me question authority for the first time. And understand, for the first time, that Authority is not always admirable or honest.
I don’t want to be too preachy or morbid. And I am no expert. So I won’t go off on a huge rant about the numerous unanswered questions or inconsistencies. I won’t beat the drum for thousands of pages or millions of words.
Let me just pose three questions. One question on each awful puzzle that has haunted me for decades. That may be demonstration enough. A few simple questions to represent the hundreds that continue to plague me.
1.
President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. His murder was the most horrific thing most people had ever experienced. And I was only twelve. I watched events unfold, as I stood before our black-and-white TV, with my hands to my mouth. I saw Lee Harvey Oswald killed. I have only witnessed death once since… in 53 years. Two deaths. One a cousin, in her hospital room. One – an assassin on live TV.
There are many unanswered questions. I’ve read dozens of books, probably hundreds of articles. Most people who believe the lone gunman theory think that those of us who don’t are in denial. That we just cannot accept that one miserable unknown human being could have the power to change history.
But I am not naive. I am not an idealist. (Well, OK, perhaps somewhat of an idealist.) I do not think Oswald was a patsy in the true sense of the word. I believe he was involved. It’s the “lone” part of the “lone gunman” theory that worries me.
Here’s my one single JFK question. How does a young ex-marine who defects to the Soviet Union in the height of the Cold War– how is it that he was able to return so easily 2 1/2 years later? Why did the FBI or CIA appear to have no interest in him?
2.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered in 1968. I was 17. He had changed the world significantly in just a few years, and he was not yet 40 years old. He was shot on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. The convicted murdered was James Earl Ray, a petty criminal and avowed racist.He recanted his confession only a few days after pleading guilty.
Here’s my Dr. King question: Ray was captured in London, with a false passport. He had escaped through Canada to the UK and was attempting to travel to white-ruled Rhodesia. In 1968, air travel was still extremely expensive – out of the reach of most Americans. Where did a loser like Ray get the money for his escape?
3.
Only a few months after Dr. King was assassinated, Bobby Kennedy was shot as his entourage moved through the kitchen at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after the California Democratic Primary. The assassin was Sirhan Sirhan, a young Palestinian (whose family was Christian, by the way) who may have been truly deranged. He fired his 22 even as he was wrestled into submission by members of Kennedy’s group. He emptied the gun.
Here’s my RFK question. Sirhan’s gun held 8 bullets. Kennedy was hit three times, but only 2 bullets were recovered, with one supposedly lost in the ceiling. Five were recovered from other injured people. That’s seven bullets recovered. So there is just one bullet unaccounted for (the ceiling bullet). So why were there extra holes in the ceiling and the walls? One door-frame was photographed with 2 holes circled by investigators. By some accounts, bullets had been recovered from these or other holes. Sirhan was firing wildly as he was subdued. But that is one hell of a lot of ricochet.
****
I know this is a crazy atypical post for me. I wasn’t sure whether to even publish it. But I’ve been thinking so much about the passage of time. In the not-too-distant future, all the folks who were witness to these events will be dead. And perhaps no one will care much about unanswered questions.
I hope the interest in Truth will still matter.
- Posted in: Memories
- Tagged: conspiracy theories, Kennedy assassination, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy
notquiteold 
We’ll never know anything for sure, in this life, about those 3 murders. Anything is possible, except 9/11 being an inside job.
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And it was so much easier back then to hide things. People didn’t walk around with camera phones and videos, and we often had to “wait” for news. So much time to consider what to release and what to hide.
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The Warren Commission, the Ken Starr debacle, too, the entirely possible validity of birth-ers’ claims, 15-year multi-wars based on oil, I mean, imaginary WMD.. lately I wonder if we should’ve just stayed in England.
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Well, now I know that if you lived next door we would spend many hours and late nights discussing mysteries and trying to solve the countless unanswered questions pertaining to them that run rampant through my mind, my obsession. One of these days maybe we will raise our hands and scream wildly “I know, I know” !
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I am so glad there are more people like me out there!
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And I SO want to know.
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I, too, have had questions about unsolved mysteries, or at least those that were too poorly solved to satisfy me. In something of a response, I deduce a solution to each mystery and file it away for future (hopeful) celebration that I was mostly correct. Doing so seems to satisfy an internal itch, whether or not it accomplishes anything else. For the longest time I obsessed about extraterrestrials, until I discovered that astrophysics makes their visiting us an impossibility. So, I now am convinced that they are visitors from our distant future, a possibility that science, so far, cannot prohibit. Neat, eh?
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Can you see my hand raised? Ooh ooh, call on me!
I hadn’t ever thought of MLK and RFK conspiracies (thanks a lot).
The conspiracy theory I firmly believe is that Dubya stole the 2004 election. I left VA hq at 5 p.m. and Kerry was ahead by 5 or 6 points. I got home and by 7 pm when the polls closed he had lost VA by 5-6 points. Not to mention the shenanigans Rove was up to in OH….
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I agree. Florida was a fiasco, and I am convinced the GOP was up to no good in OH (voter machine manipulation is my guess). But not as bad as killing someone.
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True.
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I, too, saw Lee Harvey Oswald killed – live – on TV. My sister and I watched, but Mom was in another room, and came running when she heard us yelling. You bring up very interesting points. And you’re right: why don’t murderers just tell everything when they’re on their death bed? Guess they want to take the truth to the grave with them.
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Not knowing just haunts me. Taking a secret to the grave is an unfathomable concept to me.
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Correct me if I’m wrong, but there was a 75-year freeze on the documents relating to the Warren Commission. So somewhere about the year 2040 there should be major revelations occurring, and you should be young enough to see them!
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I’ll be 89 – and I’ll also be the first in line to read those documents.
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I have the same suspicions as you do, at least about the murders of JFK and RFK. Now I have them about the murder of MLK. (Weird how their initials all end in K.) I also think that Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana were murdered because they were, as Dominick Dunne would have called them, “inconvenient women.”
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Diana’s demise would have been hard to plan – how would one be sure whether she or anyone else would live or die? Marilyn…on the other hand… Have you by any change read “Goddess” by Anthony Summers? He speculates (with some evidence, but not a lot) that Bobby Kennedy was actually there that night. Not with murder in mind though – Summers seems to think that RFK had tried to save her, even though it would have meant the end of his career. But when she was beyond saving, he then left it to others to cover up.
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I didn’t read that book, but I’ve heard about the possible coverups. Dodi’s father said that Prince Philip had them killed. How hard would it be to get a driver drunk and then chase the car he was driving? They never did find the white car that smashed into them.
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I’m with YOU. I’m a Scorpio. Details rule and I don’t like to let go. These small / specific / important details have bugged me forever. I don’t understand why those ‘well-trained’ are no farther ahead with answers. Boggles the mind. ;-(
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One interesting book I read – “The Last Investigation” by Gaeton Fonzi. He was an investigator for the House Select Committee on Assassinations in the late 70s. He came to the conclusion that the investigation was only designed to appease the public, but was never supposed to really uncover anything.
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Why does this not surprise me. The powers that be work in mysterious ways,
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I’ve already been thinking about a very recent conspiracy possibility. But which side? The one that wants to end immigration or the one that wants to end the 2nd ammendment? Oh, wait, maybe they’re in it together!
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Yes, it seems both sides are using a horrible tragic event for their own ends. I hope some small good can come of it. But I doubt it.
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Yeah you and me I so get what you mean
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My biggest mystery right now is why don’t we all know and live close to each other…we could have the best time drinking a glass of wine and solving all of the other mysteries spoken of above.
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I used to have those late night conversations with a good friend, and really loved them… we tended to go with coffee instead of wine, but I think i could be flexible on that!
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TWA flight 800. And I just realized which President ordered the cover-up;-(
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