Tag: Tom Avitabile

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. 

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!

Where were you 60 years ago today?

The day President Kennedy was assassinated. The day when many say America lost its innocence. The day Camelot and the New Frontier vanished along with the promise of new, youthful energy replacing the old stogey establishment generation. “The Torch has been passed to a new generation…” Kennedy proclaimed. He was against those things that held us back from being a more perfect union. His agenda was in part, no intervention in regional wars, like Vietnam. No invasion of countries we didn’t agree with, like Cuba. No racial segregation in our society, like in Alabama. No coddling of wealthy industries like oil and military contractors for political support. No mob control of culture and vice.  

He stood for much. He was cut down for most of it. Anyone who was above the age of 8 remembers where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news. I was in 4th grade. I remember the hollow feeling – a chill. Many teachers, who understood the gravity of the moment, were seen with moist eyes as we were let out of school early. We all shook with nerves as we waited for the dreadful Air Raid sirens to start wailing out their warning of instant, immolated death. A flash of light that would leave all of us as shadows of ash to mark where we died. It was the Cold War. The threat of nuclear annihilation was ever present as we routinely “ducked and covered” under our school desk, facing away from the windows, as if that made any difference to a supersonic nuclear fireball disintegrating everything in its path with the heat of a thousand suns. Kennedy was out to stop all that… ’til he was stopped. 

For nearly 40 years I have shared the national “Assassination Fascination” that grips America. Today is the birthday of the founding of that cottage industry of conspiracy theorists and their hundreds of books, movies, TV shows, and articles all trying to make sense of the senseless killing of a man trying to be sensible about our world and America’s place in it. 

My new thriller, Ask Not, is in many ways an homage to the national obsession with those 6 seconds in Dallas – six seconds whose devastating effects have lasted 60 years. My hero must sift through the world of conspiracy and fact to try to avenge his brother’s death – a brother who was deep into the assassination craziness.  

Recently, during a coast-to-coast radio interview, I was asked where I was when the shots rang out in Dealey Plaza on that day. Here is a short video of my response. 

60 Years in the Making…

and now it’s here at Amazon!

It’s a great read, a smart thriller and also a quick refresher course on JFK’s assassination and the controversy that has followed to this day. – Anonymous

In 1993, 8 out of 10 Americans didn’t believe the official account of the Kennedy assassination, namely that it was carried out solely by Lee Harvey Oswald, that only 3 shots were fired and there was no conspiracy, 80%! 

One of the other 20% is airline pilot, Hank Larson. He never thought about it and couldn’t care less. That is until a family tragedy catapulted him into a living nightmare. Soon conspiracy theorists, researchers, wingnuts, and shady operatives will threaten his life and the life of the innocent woman who just wanted to help him. 

Does he unwittingly hold the key to solving the biggest crime of all time? Or will he be just another suspicious death in what some say are over 200 witnesses and dissenters who have met an untimely demise? 

Hank Larson is thrown into the deep end of a history-changing event, 30 years after it shocked the world. Now, he must think fast and act faster lest he himself becomes…history.

The Hero I Took to Vote Yesterday

Every Election Day, I bring the name of someone who fought to preserve our freedom with me as I vote. I say their name and then thank them for preserving our liberties, among which is the right to vote. The cornerstone of our democracy.  

This election day the hero I brought to vote with me was Robert Crater von Egloffstein.  His daughter, Elyse Migliaccio, tells me that he was drafted into the U.S. Army at age 33 and assigned to the T/O (Texas/ Oklahoma infantry- K Company.) K Co hit the beach at Normandy on D-day plus 5 and he and his unit fought valiantly through the hedgerows -Malmedy- St Vith – the Arden’s and finally onto liberate a concentration camp.  Pops, as they called him, was a poor shot but he carried a French schoolbag filled with hand grenades. He had a great arm and could throw far more accurately than shoot. Lastly, for his actions at Malmedy, after the massacre, he was awarded the bronze star. God Bless him and all who served and those who gave their last full measure of devotion to maintain our freedom. 

This video explains my “Take a Hero to Vote” ritual. Maybe you can take one next year!