Turns out I’m not crazy…almost!

Within hours of the assassination, how did Jack Ruby know to correct D.A. Henry Wade on Oswald’s connection to the Fair Play for Cuba Committee? 

I’ve been a victim of ‘assassination fascination’ since 1972, when, through a magnifying glass, I first saw the dent in the chrome on the interior windshield trim of JFK’s death car, the Lincoln Continental, GG 300. So much so that I authored the 2023 novel, Ask Not!, and have appeared on scores of podcasts and many broadcast hits on the subject.  But for years, I have been looking for a specific clip from Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade’s news conference on 11/22/1963 in the basement of the Dallas Police Department. The smoking gun in this clip, as I remembered, was when one of the horde of clamoring newsmen, jammed into the basement, asked Wade, “Was Oswald a member of any extremist groups?” Hoping for a damning right wing, John Birch, type association answer, their hopes were dashed when Wade went the other way. He announced that Oswald was a member of a group that supported communist dictator Fidel Castro. Then Wade bobbled the name of the organization. He stumbled through a few versions of “Fairness for Cuba” or “The Cuban Fairness Committee.” 

Now, here’s the incredible part that has made me doubt my sanity for the last 10 years. Again, as I remembered it, a voice from the gaggle calls out to correct him, “Fair Play for Cuba!” Wade turns towards the voice and says, “Thanks, Jack.” The camera then quickly pans over to Jack Ruby, pen and pad in his hand, amongst the newsmen.  Yes, the same Jack Ruby who would kill Oswald in that building a day and a half later!

In forums and internet searches, I was constantly directed to another video on the internet from the “Midnight Press Conference.” Unfortunately, that was not the Kinescope clip that I had been searching for. However, in that clip, Wade does refer to being corrected earlier. That “Earlier” (press conference) is exactly what I have been searching for.  So, as with so many things about the Gordian knot that is the Kennedy Assassination, I gave up, chiding myself that it must have been a figment of my imagination. 

But as with everything JFK, eventually, some other shoe drops. I just watched, for the third time in 50 years, Mark Lane’s 1966 film, “Rush to Judgment.” And lo and behold, at 1 hour 25 minutes in, the following exchange happens on the kinescope they inserted into that motion picture.

You can view the actual clip here: https://youtu.be/ZjKd7JHhuoA

Okay, so even while this is not the clip I thought I imagined, it is possibly a clue pointing to the one I seek’s existence. 

Why am I so doggedly trying to track down this clip where Jack Ruby is correcting District Attorney Henry Wade on the name of Oswald’s affiliation with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee? 

Because within hours of the assassination, Jack Ruby, who would later kill Oswald in the very same jailhouse, fed the correct “cover story” to Wade. How did Jack Ruby, the Dallas Night Club owner, have knowledge of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, or remember that it had anything to do with Oswald? It was only mentioned on New Orleans local TV news during a single story on Oswald that only aired locally months before.

I tell ya, this assassination fascination keeps coming back at ya!

61 Years of JFK: What If? and Maybe?

Shocking Statement follows: There are only two things we will ever know for sure about the Kennedy assassination, one, the president is dead, and two, Ruby shot Oswald – Period!

Furthermore, crucial evidence that could have put an end to the longest-running open-case crime story in American history was eradicated before JFK was laid to rest. My next installment will feature videos on many of these “lost forever” evidentiary clues. But the rumors, conspiracies, alternate realities, and “experts” never rested. I call this Assassination Fascination. To some, an unspeakable crime, to others an impossibility that one little man could rob history of a great man, and still others are fascinated by all the possibilities and dangling threads like all the things you can make out of a few Legos.

With the release last year of my Historically Based Thriller, “Ask Not!,” I created a companion piece to satisfy the cravings of people who just love to delve into and parse every millisecond of those 8 seconds in Dallas on November 22nd, 1963, and dissect every minute before and after, looking for the elusive smoking gun, or evil cabal that had to be behind such a monumental change in the flow of history.

So to feed the unabated Assassination Fascination that has endured for 61 years now and created a multi-million dollar cottage industry, I have made a short, easy-to-read, 14-page FREE mini book, Tom’s Top Ten JFK Conspiracy Theories. It’s chock full of things that make you go, “Hmmm” or “Nah”

Just email me, (or click on this link) and I’ll send you your own copy. Tom@Author.nyc

To take a deep dive into Ask Not! click here: ASKNOT!

Not Growing Up…Just Getting Older

This is an homage to Nelson DeMille (1943-2024). A while back, I had the extreme pleasure of spending a few cherished moments with Nelson. As a writer, it doesn’t get any better than that! I wrote this blog to memorialize that wonderful moment when I chatted with greatness, albeit as humble and down-to-earth as the guy you went to school with. Now, I repost it in memoriam.

The Mick

When I was 10, the New York Yankees were the “best-est” thing ever in the whole world. The world at that time was the entire Bronx. Yogi Berra (8), Joe Pepitone (25), Roger Maris (9) and Mickey Mantle (7) were the bubble gum cards that got you respect and honor in any schoolyard. The Yankees were so cool, that the candy at Ida’s Sweet Shop on Burke Avenue was named after them. Baby Ruth bars and the M&M boys. And Yogi sold Yoo-hoo Chocolate drink on TV. To be fair, Gil Hodges from the Brooklyn Dodgers, also sold Maypo on TV. But Maypo was a hot, maple flavored oatmeal cereal, not peanuts and nougat wrapped in chocolate. The Yankees were, as was candy, the biggest thing to that point in my decade long life.

I remember that on long hot summer days, you licked the salty sweat that dribbled down your face from your lips as the sun bounced off the concrete of the schoolyard’s ball field and blasted you from below and above. Squinting, you watched Joey Mangione wind up to pitch a black electrical tape wrapped, “clincher” softball at you. At that second you fantasized that you would step into the bucket, explode your rear hip and extend perfectly through the swing, connecting on the fat part of the bat and send that ball right over the 12-foot chain link fence into the traffic on Bronxwood Avenue – just like Mantle or Maris! Extra points if you hit Mr. Deputo’s old salmon and dingy white, colored Studebaker that never moved from the spot outside his house.

In all that time, the thought of actually meeting Roger Maris or Mickey Mantle was the same fat chance as going to the moon. We’d hang out on River Avenue at 161st street outside the Stadium after the game. And sure, maybe we’d catch a glimpse of Tresh, Richardson, Boyer, Whitey Ford even Mantle, but they were out of there like a shot. Piling onto the team bus or beyond reach on the other side of a blue, police stanchion line. A couple of dorky lawyer’s kid’s from the suburbs usually got up front to get an autograph or shake a hand. But not us, we was nobody’s kids. We was just Bronx guys.

Now I am considerably older than I was back in the 60’s and hero worship has gone the way of the Studebaker – free agented and drug tested out of existence. But we did eventually go to the moon. And so did I, last week, in fact.

Now that I am an author, my heroes have changed. The new “Yankees” in my life are the literary team that plays at the top of the New York Times standings. Guys and gals who can hit the long ball out 20 to 30 million books. Men and women who keep their percentages up by coming to bat and connecting… connecting with their fans. At Thrillerfest, the International Thriller Writer’s convention that I attended last week, I met the Mickey Mantles and Roger Maris’ of the game I play in now.

My hero worship, adjusted for age and decorum, returned. The same awe and esteem by which I held The Mick and the rest of the pinstripe company was back and at full gush. So that’s how me, a kid from the Bronx, wound up just shooting the breeze for twenty minutes with Nelson DeMille, a kid from Queens. We didn’t talk baseball much, but I did get his autograph… on his latest book, Radiant Angel.

Here’s the thing. In my life, as a Director – Writer – Producer – Author, I have met and worked with some of the biggest stars, names, celebrities and musicians ever and never asked for a picture… but here’s me and Nelson from Jamaica.

Tom and Nelson Cropped

Rest in peace Nelson and thanks for all the good words. 

Beyond the Grassy Knoll

What lies beyond the grassy knoll? If any part of that sentence resonates with you then you are aware of the controversies surrounding the Kennedy assassination. So, I will skip the obligatory, remedial recitation of the facts and suspicions in, or not, in evidence. 

In my research for a 1993 screenplay, and more recently for my new blockbuster thriller, “Ask Not,” I refreshed my files on the “alternate theories” of what happened that day, November 22nd 1963, in Dealey Plaza.  

As always, a good way to start is a deep dive into the 1600 pages that comprise the 26 volumes of the Warren Commission Report. A painstakingly assembled collection of documents, photos, and testimony that was ordered by LBJ shortly after the assassination. The “shorthand” report was itself, a hefty 888 pages. 

If you can’t sleep at night because you don’t believe the Warren Commission, then you are like a huge percentage of Americans who express doubt to this day about who killed Kennedy. Which is why it is the “setting” for my latest novel.  But parts of the very report that claims there was only one lone gunman, three shots, and no conspiracy, can lead you to suspect that there was possibly another shooter.

Here’s one example of what can be extrapolated from the Warren Report. The Police radio logs reprinted within the 1600 pages that contain quirky little nagging facts like this: At the time of the shooting of the president at 12:30 in the afternoon, the police dispatchers were sending cops to the railroad track area. That order was logged in at 12:30 p.m. and 40 seconds. 

The railroad track area? But…but the president was just shot! Why are you sending every cop you have to the the railroad track area?

What lies beyond the grassy knoll? The railroad track area. 

Right behind the wooden fence. The fence just to the front and right of the spot where Kennedy’s limo was when he was fatally shot. The exact spot the “Grassy Knoll Types” maintain the fatal bullet came from.

Interestingly enough, the transcripts show us that it wasn’t until 12:49 or so, almost 20 minutes from the moments the shots rang out, that the first mention of the Texas School Book Depository was broadcast over police radios.

What followed immediately was a description of a man, said to still be in the building, was dispatched. (Later we learned that at that moment, Oswald was on a city bus and then took a cab back to his rooming house.) But they gave a description! If Oswald wasn’t there, then who were they describing? 

Of course, none of this is proof of anything, first reports of traumatic events are often inaccurate, and chaos and confusion reign supreme over witnesses and even some police.  But if you are looking for a way out of the morass of randomness and senselessness that the lone nut theory has created in people for the last 60 years, then there is some great fertilizer here in which to plant your conspiracy theory. 

Coming in at slightly less than the 1600 hundred pages of the Warren Commission Report, is my new thriller, Ask Not! Which lands on the desk at a very digestible 275 pages.

Most novels are set in a place, a location. The setting for my murder mystery is the entire universe of conspiracy theories and public doubt over JFK’s murder. The Kennedy assassination still engages, enthralls, and endures 60 years later, in most part because of these conspiracy theories that keep it alive. I call that, America’s Assassination Fascination.

My main character, airline pilot Hank Larson, could care less about who killed Kennedy and was perfectly happy with the Warren Commission’s conclusions, and then never thought of it again. Until his brother is murdered, and he is set on a path. One which brings him right in front of the Grassy Knoll. With a target on his head. Right in the crosshairs of nefarious, powerful, and ruthless men who wish to keep secret whatever the hell did happen that day. 

I’m sitting in P.J. Clarke’s

A neighborhood bar in midtown Manhattan that is known worldwide.  It was a favorite watering hole for the Madison Avenue crowd, back when they constituted a crowd. Lawyers and their clients discussed strategy over oysters. Agents and their artists bickered over percentages.  P.J.’s opened in 1884 and is a time capsule of a bygone New York.  I moved out of the city two decades ago, but just walking through the saloon’s doors on the corner of 55th and 3rd makes this “Old Yorker” feel like a New Yorker.  Today I am here to meet with a former U.S. ambassador. A diplomat, who has dined all over the world and I are about to convene over two BBQ BLUE burgers – with crispy onions! 

My soft spot for this enduring NYC iconic saloon is why I made it a location in my new thriller, Ask Not! 

It was the perfect setting for a 1993 meeting between a free-lance magazine writer and his agent to discuss the biggest break of his career.  Uncharacteristically, the 10 percenter turns down the opportunity to represent him in this “bombshell” article that the writer wants to auction off to the highest bidder.  The writer protests, “But this is history-changing stuff!” Adamant, the agent wants no part of it. In fact, the agent, obviously terrified, tells him to drop it.  

Of the two men seated at actor Peter Falk’s regular table, across from what Nat King Cole dubbed, ‘the Cadillac of burgers,’ one man’s wise decision to opt out is why he lived to enjoy his grandkids. The other not so much…

Do you know who your pilot is?

Well, no. That’s me. But I love planes and think pilots are an incredible lot. Many have served in the military and bring a cool calm and professionalism to a very serious business which is also…Fun!

I doubt very few pilots just decided one day to answer an ad for “pilot wanted.” I suspect for many of them, it started with, “Varoom, Eaaahhh, Schooo.” The noises they made when they were six with a model plane or balsa wood glider in their hand. I have known many great men and woman pilots and each one has a subtle swagger and ‘Air’ of confidence that slicing through the air, in a “heavier than air” craft imbues.

So naturally when I wrote my new book, Ask Not, the only choice for my main character was an airline pilot. Captain Hank Larson suffers a family tragedy that is compounded by suspicions of murder. Not just the shock that his younger brother was a murder victim, but allegations that his brother, was himself, a murderer. His love and natural protection instincts for his sibling catapult him into a dark and nefarious world of conspiracy, assassinations, and shadow governments. Ruthless and powerful men that are out to take him out.  They aren’t sure if he is now in possession of the kompromat that got his brother killed, but they aren’t taking any chances. After all, they killed JFK to keep all this secret. 30 years later, some bumbling, and bereaved, airline pilot isn’t going to threaten their power.  But do they underestimate him at their own peril? Order now!

The Great JFK Conspiracy Giveaway for My Loyal Subscribers

I’m offering a chance for the world to get all their JFK Conspiracy theories in one entertaining and engaging place; my new book, Ask Not! But I don’t want you, my loyal subscribers, to be left out.

In case you are not familiar with my new JFK Thriller, I weave a murder mystery thriller in and out of all the controversy and contradictions of the crime of the (last) century – which is still a conundrum to this day. We’re giving away 10 SIGNED COPIES of this intriguing, ‘can’t put it down,’ breathless chase across the country, and the years, as an airline pilot, Hank Larson, sets out to clear his brother’s name only to end up in the crosshairs of the powerful men who killed Kennedy.

Just type “Pick Me” in the comments and
you’ll be enrolled in the giveaway contest, but
best of all, you’ll receive a free copy of, “Tom’s
Top Ten JFK Conspiracy Theories,” an illustrated mini eBook that will make you go “Hmmm?” (or “Nah.”)

You can also receive an additional entry for each of the following (yes, an your name goes in for EACH):

  • Follow me on Instagram @TomAvitabile
  • Like my Facebook page /TomAvitabile
  • Comment on any of my giveaway social media posts using #AskNotGiveaway

Contest winners will be notified by email, and
their personalized signed edition of Ask Not!
will be shipped in time for Xmas.

If you would like to help me get the word out, I’d appreciate it if you shared the giveaway with thriller enthusiasts you know. You can share this post or one of the giveaway posts on my social media pages. People who share will also get the eBook!

I can be found on: Facebook, X (Twitter), Instagram, and LinkedIn – @tomavitabile

Good luck to all of you and thank you for following me on my literary journey!