‘One-man truth squad’ still debunking JFK conspiracy theories

By HUGH AYNESWORTH

Special Correspondent, Dallas Morning News

Published: 17 November 2012 10:31 PM

He has challenged and derailed the wildest of JFK-assassination conspiracy theories — a “one-man truth squad,” some call him.

There was the West Texas man who claimed his father, a Dallas police officer, killed the president; the federal prisoner who confessed he shot JFK from the so-called grassy knoll; and the Louisiana woman who revealed she was assassin Lee Harvey Oswald’s lover in New Orleans and knew of the plot in advance.

Dave Perry has slapped them all down.

As the 49th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination nears, Perry finds himself revered by many and reviled by others — those who come up with more and more allegations of deceit and official cover-up.

“It irritates me when, for nothing more than self-promotion or monetary gain, individuals modify and damage the historic record,” Perry said. “It proves a disservice to those who wish to get to the truth of this tragic event.”

At 69, Perry, who lives in Grapevine, hasn’t slowed his assault on conspiracy theorists. His website, davesjfk.com, is chock-full of old and new stories and page upon page of assassination talk.

But perhaps the most titillating of the conspiracy stories, at least for Dallas residents, is the one published in The Dallas Morning News on Nov. 6, 1982, under the headline: “Dallas Woman Claims She Was LBJ’s Lover.”

Perry disproved the allegation years ago but only this year found new evidence he says bolsters his conclusions.

The story told of a Dallas woman who alleged she had been a longtime lover of former President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Madeleine Duncan Brown told a packed news conference that for many years, before Johnson died in 1973, she had met LBJ in various places for love trysts. She said the affair lasted from 1949, the year Johnson became a senator, until the late 1960s.

Obviously enjoying the attention, Brown spun quite a tale that day about an alleged party held at the Preston Road home of the late multimillionaire Clint Murchison Sr. the night before Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.

It was a party, she said, attended not only by LBJ, but FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, former Vice President Richard Nixon, the late oil tycoons H.L. Hunt and Sid Richardson, and a handful of other rich and famous men.

Brown said several of the men met in a private room at the Murchison home on the evening of Nov. 21, 1963. Afterward, she said, LBJ took her hand and growled into her ear: “After tomorrow, those [expletive] Kennedys will never embarrass me again. That’s no threat. That’s a promise.”

Hours later, on Nov. 22, Kennedy was dead.

Brown’s allegations, denied by several close LBJ associates, still reverberated amid the Kennedy conspiracy crowd. “See,” chortled several who had written conspiracy-tinged books about the case, “we told you Oswald didn’t act alone.”

Over the years, her story drew national attention and became part of a dozen or more conspiracy theories.

As Brown became more and more famous, some noted that she often embellished the tale. She even outlined an alleged meeting she said she witnessed at Jack Ruby’s Carousel Club between Oswald and Ruby, who later would gun down Oswald.

Finding the scent

Perry, a former insurance investigator who moved to the Dallas area from Glens Falls, N.Y., in 1986, originally volunteered at the JFK Assassination Information Center in downtown Dallas.

It was there that several leading conspiracy believers promoted and exchanged theories.

As the different theories came and went — often becoming more and more bizarre — Perry began to realize that many of his friends’ presumptions often weren’t bolstered by facts.

“In some cases, I saw authors and self-professed researchers reaching absurd conclusions and then providing historically inaccurate ‘proofs’ to prop up their theories,” Perry said.

After that original news conference, Brown, basking in the light of those willing to believe her “love story” with LBJ and her allegations that he was involved with Kennedy’s death, decided to add a bit more spice to the story.

Four years later, she claimed LBJ was the father of her son, Steven Mark Brown, who was born in 1951.

Perry and his wife, Nikki, met Madeleine Brown at a social function a few years after she first crafted the LBJ stories. Though they thought she was “a nice woman,” neither believed her ever-growing tales. Perry decided to investigate the party story first.

Rather quickly, he determined that LBJ could not have been at a Dallas party the night of Nov. 21, 1963.

The vice president was seen at a political rally in Houston with JFK until about 10 that night. He then flew to Carswell Air Force Base near Fort Worth. After touching down at 11:07 p.m., he was driven to the Texas Hotel in Fort Worth, where he and Lady Bird were photographed at 11:50 p.m. on their arrival.

Further investigation proved to Perry that Murchison had moved from his Dallas home four years earlier after a stroke and declining health. On Nov. 21, he was living in East Texas at his Glad Oaks Ranch between Athens and Palestine. Murchison died in June 1969.

With the help of another area researcher, Greg Jaynes, Perry soon found two longtime Murchison employees who recalled being with their boss when a friend telephoned him Nov. 22 — at the ranch — to tell him the president had been shot.

Warren and Eula Tilley — he had been Murchison’s longtime chauffeur, she his housekeeper — said they recalled the day distinctly.

Checking further on the alleged Murchison party list, Perry determined that Hoover had been in Washington on Nov. 21 and 22.

And Tony Zoppi, the longtime entertainment columnist for The News, said he had seen Nixon introduced at a bottlers convention at a downtown Dallas hotel about 11 p.m. on Nov. 21. That sighting made it virtually impossible that Nixon could have attended the alleged Murchison party.

Still digging

Perry, in October 2002, reported the entire investigation on his website in a lengthy piece called “Texas in the Imagination,” a takeoff of a Brown book. But his pursuit of evidence did not stop there.

In June 1987, Steven Mark Brown filed a $10.5 million lawsuit against Lady Bird Johnson, claiming as LBJ’s son he had been deprived of much of the Johnson estate.

Already in possession of evidence that Madeleine Brown, who died in June 2002, had lied about various aspects of her early life, Perry at that time began digging around on the paternity claim.

Based on articles in The News dated Oct. 3, 1990, he soon determined that the son’s suit had been tossed out of court because the plaintiff had not appeared at a scheduled hearing.

While meandering through old legal files that same year, Perry found that Madeleine Brown had been convicted of forging the will of Guy Duncan, an elderly relative, three months after his death in 1988.

She was sentenced to 10 years in prison, but the conviction was later reversed on a technicality. She had not personally signed the original will but had induced a lawyer friend to do so.

The real shocker came this summer.

In July, Perry came across a lawsuit that Steven Mark Brown filed in 1980 that ended up in Bastrop County. Brown claimed that a Dallas lawyer, Jerome Ragsdale, was his real father and that he should share his estate.

The case would later be dismissed by an appeals court for lack of evidence.

One of the most downloaded features from Perry’s website is a list he calls “Rashomon to the Extreme” — a reference to Oliver Stone’s largely inaccurate movie, JFK.

Perry compares the list to the 1950 Japanese film classic Rashomon, in which the same event is seen differently by several witnesses.

In Perry’s offering, he lists 68 individuals who have claimed to have shot the president, been accused of shooting him or been recognized as part of an assassination plot.

“I did not pick these names at random,” Perry said. “All are footnoted to a specific conspiracy author, researcher, research group, tabloid newspaper or self-proclaimed witness.

“It shows the level of absurdity some theorists have reached while claiming they only want to get to the real truth about the assassination.”

‘What really happened’

Like the conspiracy within a conspiracy theory, some Perry foes claim the CIA sent him to Dallas to “turn” Gary Mack, who at the time was a serious conspiracy believer.

Mack is now curator of The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, and many conspiracy folks consider him an abomination.

“Some conspiracy theorists just want confirmation of their version of truth,” Mack said.

“It is satisfying when folks like Dave Perry step forward with documented evidence and information that sheds additional light on what really happened.”

Hugh Aynesworth, a veteran of more than 60 years as a reporter, editor and author, covered the JFK assassination and much of its aftermath for The Dallas Morning News. He lives in Dallas with his wife, Paula.