In another bizarre
twist to a mystery that has haunted Americans for more than
a quarter century, the son of a former Dallas police officer
plans to tell the world that his father was one of the assassins
of President John F. Kennedy. Ricky White, a 29-year-old,
unemployed oil equipment salesman in Midland, says he
"had no conception of ever, ever giving this story out" but
decided to do so after FBI agents began asking questions in
May 1988.
"I'm telling you a story that has touched me, not
only others, and I feel uncomfortable just telling it to
strangers," White said during a recent interview with the
Austin American-Statesman. Monday in Dallas, White is
scheduled to show reports material implicating his father,
Roscoe Anthony White, in the 1963 assassination. It
suggests that White, who died in 1971, was a member of an
assassination team of three shooters, that he fired two of the
three bullets that killed the president, and that he also killed
Dallas police officer J. D. Tippit during the manhunt for Lee
Harvey Oswald. Among the material: a rifle with telescopic
sight that uses the same kind of ammunition as Oswald's gun;
records showing that Oswald and White served together in
the Marines; three faded messages that appear to be
decoded orders to kill someone in Dallas in November
1963; and a son's recollections of his father's incriminating
diary - a document that is missing.
The press conference is
being sponsored by two private groups - the JFK
Assassination Information Centre of Dallas and the
Assassination Archives and Research Centre of Washington
- and some Midland Businessmen. The possibility of Ricky
White's story being a hoax - a falsehood concocted either by
Ricky or his father - has not been dismissed by the people
urging him to publicly talk about the matter. During the last
27 years, many private researchers have claimed to have
found evidence of a conspiracy, only to be proved wrong or
deceitful. Bernard Fensterwald, executive director of the
Assassination Archives and Research Centre, says if there
was a conspiracy, Ricky White may have the key.
"I think
it's our best shot," he says, "and we better take it." J. Gary
Shaw, co-director of the JFK Assassination Information
Centre, says he hopes White's story will result in an
investigation of the assassination by Texas authorities. Two
Washington-based probes - the Warren Commission in
1963-64 and the House Select Committee on
Assassinations in 1976-78 failed to resolve the enigma of the
Kennedy shooting, Shaw maintains. As with previous
conspiracy theories, White's story is tantalizing, the evidence
intriguing. Yet, as with other theories, it raises more
questions than it answers -- such as: Who issued the orders
to the so-called assassination team? Why was the
assassination ordered against Kennedy? And why is Ricky
White telling this story now? AN OSWALD
CONNECTION Using clues discovered in his father's
effects and relying on available government records, Ricky
White says he has determined that Roscoe White and Lee
Harvey Oswald probably met in 1957.
Ricky White's
mother, Geneva, is gravely ill and unable to be interviewed,
family members say. According to Military records, both
White and Oswald were among a contingent of U.S.Marines, who boarded the USS Bexar in San Diego that
year for the 22-day trip to Yokosuka, Japan.
In its final
report, the Warren Commission published a photo of
Oswald with other Marines in the Philippines. All but one of
the Marines was squatting on the ground. Ricky White says
his father claimed to have been the standing Marine and
claimed to have become acquainted with Oswald in Japan
and the Philippines. Military records show that Roscoe
White took frequent unexplained trips in the Pacific, and
Ricky White says that his father's diary described those as
secret intelligence assignments. It has been established in
previous investigations that Oswald was discharged in 1959
and defected to the Soviet Union.
He returned to the United
States in mid-1962, settling first in Fort Worth with his
Russian-born wife, then moving to Dallas a short time later.Military records show Roscoe White was discharged in late
1962, joining his wife and two young sons in Paris, Texas.Ricky White says that shortly thereafter, his father moved the
family to Dallas and took a job as an insurance salesman.MAN WITH TWO NAMES Ricky White says that two
months ago he found several faded messages in a military
weapons canister in the attic of Geneva White's parents
home in Paris.
Ricky believes the messages to be decoded
cables in which Mandarin, a name he says his father was
known by, was told his next assignment would be "to
eliminate a National Security threat to worldwide peace" in
Houston, Austin, or Dallas. Another message from the same
source - "C. Bowers" of "Navy Intelligence" - identified
Dallas as the destination and provided White with a list of
contacts. It stated White had a "place hidden within the
department.
" The message was dated September 1963 - the
same month that Geneva White began a brief stint as a
cocktail hostess at Jack Ruby's Carousel Club in Dallas.Ruby fatally shot Oswald two days after the Kennedy
assassination. Dallas police records show that on Oct. 7,
1963, Roscoe White joined the department as a
photographer and clerk. He did not become a patrol officer
until 1964.
A staff member in the police personnel
department said recently that White's file contains no job
references. Ricky White says his father's diary referred to
several trips made during this period to a remote area in the
foothills near Van Horn, Texas. There, Roscoe White and
several others practised shooting at moving targets, Ricky
White says. Although he was younger than 3 years old,
Ricky White says he has vague memories of being taken to
Van Horn. "My impression was they (others at the Van
Horn camp) had been working with my father in the
military," Ricky White says, "because they had known each
other well when this took place.
" A FOOTLOCKER AND
DIARY Ricky White says that, after his grandfather died in
1982, he was given his father's footlocker, which had been
stored in the grandfather's house in Paris. The locker
contained military memorabilia, a Marine uniform, a safe
deposit box key and a black leather-bound diary with gold
trim that detailed Roscoe White's life. As he and his mother
read the diary, Ricky White says they found passages that
implicated Roscoe White in the Kennedy assassination. "My
mother and I cried together," he says, "because it hurt very
deeply to learn what I know now. It hurt so much because
the man I had known couldn't have fired those shots. It took
this investigation to be able to learn it's true.
And my family's
given a part of themselves to tell the story." From the diary
he says he learned the significance of the hunting rifle his
father gave him: a 7.65mm Mauser with telescopic sight, an
Argentine rifle that shoots round-nose, elongated bullets -
projectiles that closely resemble those of a
Mannlicher-Carcano, an Italian rifle that Oswald was
accused of using. After reading the diary, White says he was
convinced his father was one of three assassins who fired six
shots from Mauser rifles into the president's open top
limousine in Dealey Plaza.
Roscoe White shot from behind a
fence atop a grassy knoll to the right and front of the
limousine, his son says. Two other marksmen were in the
Texas School Book Depository and Records buildings
behind the vehicle. Three shots struck Kennedy; a fourth
wounded Texas Gov. John Connally. Ricky White says the
two shots that his father fired both struck Kennedy: the first
in the throat; the second, and last of the shots fired, in the
head.
Oswald, Ricky White says, knew of the plot, but did
not fire a shot. He had been instructed to bring his rifle to the
Book Depository, where he worked, and to build a sniper's
nest of book boxes near the sixth floor window, from which
he was accused of firing all the fatal shots, Ricky White says.Ricky White says the diary referred to the other shooters
only by code names: Sol in the Records building; and
Lebanon in the Texas School Book Depository. The diary
indicated each of the three riflemen was accompanied by an
assistant who disassembled the rifles after the shooting and
carried them out of the area, Ricky White says. According
to the diary, Ricky White says, his father was to escape with
Oswald by riding to Red Bird Airport in South Dallas in a
city police car driven by a friend and fellow officer who did
not know what was happening. That officer, Ricky White
says, was J.
D. Tippit, who was shot to death at 10th Street
and Patton Avenue in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas about
45 minutes after Kennedy was shot. Oswald was seen
running from the scene of that shooting. Ricky White says his
father wrote that, as they drove south, the unsuspecting
officer began to realize what White and Oswald were
involved in. Oswald panicked and jumped from the car.When the officer insisted on "turning in" White, White got out
of the car and shot the officer, Ricky White says.
"I killed an
officer at 10th and Patton," Ricky White quotes the diary as
saying. Less than a half hour later, Oswald was arrested in
the Texas Theatre on West Jefferson Boulevard in Oak Cliff.He had a .38- calibre revolver police said was the murder
weapon. Murder charges against Oswald in connection with
Tippit's death were filed before he was charged with
Kennedy's death.
Whether the revolver found in Oswald's
possession was actually the weapon that killed Tippit has
been a matter of dispute in several government
investigations. Ricky White says that shortly after the
assassination, his father sent the family to Paris and that he
and other members of the assassination team used a
"hideaway house" in Dripping Springs. He says that, among
his father's effects, he found a third decoded message, dated
December 1963, that advised his father to "stay within
department, witnesses have eyes, ears and mouths....
The
men+will be in to cover up all misleading evidence soon."
That same month President Lyndon Johnson named Chief
Justice Earl Warren to head a commission to investigate the
assassination. The Warren Commission concluded in
September 1964 that Oswald acted alone in killing both
Kennedy and Tippit. Police records show that on Oct.
19,
1965, Roscoe White quit the Dallas Police Department and
became manager of a Dallas area drug store. During the next
six years, he switched jobs several times, finally working as a
foreman at M&M Equipment Co., in East Dallas. FAMILY
TROUBLE AND DEATH By early 1970, Roscoe and
Geneva White were a deeply troubled couple and sought
help, said the Rev. Jack Shaw, their Baptist minister in
Dallas. During a recent interview with the
American-Statesman, Shaw said Roscoe White told him at
the time that he and his family were "in danger.
" White
confessed to leading "a double life," the minister says, "and I
knew something was not right, something strange was going
on." Shaw says that within the last two years he tape
recorded a number of counselling sessions with Geneva
White about her recollection of what she believed to be her
former husband's role in assassinations. Shaw, who is very
guarded in talking about the case, says Ricky White has only
a small portion of the full story, which he says "will knock
your eyes out." Shaw says he met with the Whites several
times in 1970-71, but the Kennedy assassination was not
mentioned.
In 1971, Roscoe White was fatally injured in an
explosive fire at M&M Equipment. Before White died,
Shaw talked with him in the hospital. He recalls White saying
he didn't think the fire was an accident - that he had seen a
man running away just before the fire. After the funeral,
Geneva White moved her family back to Paris. There, about
four years later, the White home was burglarized and some
of Roscoe White's personal possessions were taken, Ricky
White says.
Police captured the two burglars and returned
the possessions which included some of Roscoe White's
photos - among them a shot taken by Marina Oswald of her
husband Lee Harvey Oswald holding a rifle in the back yard
of their Dallas home in 1963. For nearly 15 years after the
assassination only two such photos were known. Roscoe
White's became the third. In its final report, the House
Special Committee on Assassinations identified the photo as
coming from the family of a former Dallas policeman.According to Ricky White and an investigator for the House
committee, Geneva White had contacted the FBI after the
burglary. The FBI informed the committee of the existence
of the photo.
The matter was not pursued because
committee investigators didn't know about White's past
relationship with Oswald or Geneva White's brief
employment at Jack Ruby's Carousel Club. OTHERS FIND
OUT Until he discovered the footlocker, Ricky White says
he didn't think much about his father or the Kennedy
assassination. He grew up in Dallas and Paris, where he
went to school, got married and moved to Midland where he
and his wife have two children. There he took a job selling
oil field equipment.
As shocking as the diary was to Ricky
White and his mother, Ricky says it was the safe deposit box
key that was to draw others into the Roscoe White story.Thinking his father might have left money or valuables in a
deposit box, Ricky White tried to find a bank that would
recognize the key. By 1988 he was so frustrated in his
attempts that he turned to Midland District Attorney Al
Schorre for help. Schorre says he and his chief investigator,
J. D.
Lucky, failed to find the bank. Schorre and Lucky say
they repeatedly asked to see Roscoe White's diary after
Ricky White mentioned it, but that he told them a relative in
the Lubbock area had it. Ricky White says he may have told
Schorre the diary was somewhere else but that he had
always kept it in his possession. Finally, Schorre, who
lacked authority to demand the diary, called the FBI.
Ricky
White says three agents came to his house and asked him to
answer questions in their Midland office. He says he took his
father's effects with him and the FBI made copies of all the
items except the diary. He says after several hours of
questioning he returned home with all his father's effects.Later that same day, White says, FBI agent Tom Farris
came to his house to retrieve a notebook he had
inadvertently left in the box of Roscoe White's effects. White
says he became aware that the diary was missing three or
four days later. "I never said that the (FBI agents) took it,"
he says.
"I am just saying he was the last one to leave that
box." Agent Farris, who is in the Midland FBI office,
transferred inquiries about the diary to his supervisor, Tom
Kirspel. Kirspel would neither confirm nor deny that the
agents had seen a diary. White says he never asked the FBI
if it had the missing diary because he was "scared" of the
agents who called at his house. "I don't want to have
anything to do with the FBI," he says. Ricky White says FBI
agent Ron Butler told him in 1988 that the FBI had
determined that Roscoe White was at a crime scene in far
Northeast Dallas at the time Kennedy was shot.
Butler
declined to comment on any conversations with Ricky
White. QUESTION OF AUTHENTICITY Shaw, the
director of the JFK Assassination Information Centre in
Dallas, says Ricky White has passed both a polygraph test
and a voice stress analysis and passed both tests "with flying
colours." However, the authenticity of the messages Ricky
White says he found is undetermined. Office of Naval
Intelligence spokesman John Wanat says the agency cannot
determine whether the messages came from authentic ONI
cables without the coded cables. "What they have there is
really nothing that we can narrow down as far as who may
have generated it or if it's legitimate or whether it's something
that was fabricated," Wanat said after viewing texts of the
messages. John Stockwell, former chief of the Central
Intelligence Agency's Angola Task Force in Washington,
D.
C. has seen the messages and sees a "90 to 95 percent
probability" that they are genuine. However, he says he
cannot discount the possibility the messages are part of "an
elaborate hoax." "I've measured it against my own readings
and consultations with researchers of the Kennedy thing,"
says Stockwell, who ended a 12- year CIA career in 1976
after being accused of violating his secrecy agreement with
the agency. "I can't see anything in what they have found and
what the young man (Ricky White) is saying that is
implausible in terms of what our best knowledge of the
assassination is now.
It all could very well be true, and I
would put it at a high probability that it is true." Bob Inman
vehemently disagrees. After reading copies of the text,
Inman, former naval intelligence director (1974-76) and CIA
deputy director (1981-82), says the messages were not
ONI- generated. None of the three-digit code names in the
heading of the messages means anything, he says. "My
reaction is that it's a forgery of some kind or invalid," Inman
says.
"There is not anything about this format that I have ever
seen before. That's not the way messages were set up in
those days at all." Less is known about what Ricky White
says is a witness elimination list that he found in the canister.Ricky White says there were 28 witnesses on the list, news
clippings of each victim and accompanied in some cases by
his father's writing. "Ricky White's story is no less logical
than what we have been led to believe in 27 years.
" says
Fensterwald. "If just anyone came out of the woodwork and
said, 'I shot John Kennedy,' I would be exceedingly cautious
about it. But if someone who was in the Marine Corps with
Oswald, whose wife worked for Jack Ruby and who knew
the Tippit family, crawls out of the woodwork and says I
was involved in it, that doesn't stretch my credulity at all. "It
does, however, need a lot more investigation by some
official body with power to subpoena witnesses. I don't think
private citizens can carry it much further.
" PREVIOUS
INQUIRIES ON ASSASSINATION The assassination of
President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas was
investigated by two government bodies: The Warren
Commission, headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren,
concluded after a nine-month investigation in 1964 that Lee
Harvey Oswald, acting alone, fired two shots from the sixth
floor of the Texas School Book Depository, killing President
John F. Kennedy and wounding Texas Gov.
John Connally.The report conclusions left many skeptics. Since bullets
passed through the victims and shattered, investigators were
not able to match the rifling on the bullets to the marks that
would have been caused by Oswald's rifle. After a
three-year investigation, the House Select Committee on
Assassinations concluded in early 1979 that Oswald fired
two shots that killed Kennedy and wounded Connally.Scientific acoustical evidence indicated a "high probability"
that an unidentified second gunman was firing from the
grassy knoll to the front and right of the presidential
limousine, but missed.
TEXT OF NAVY CABLES
------------------------------------------------------------------
Navy Int. Code A MRC Remark data 1666106 NRC VDC
NAC Dec. 63 Remarks Mandarin: Code G: Stay within
department, witnesses have eyes, ears and mouths. You
(illegible) do of the mix up.
The men will be in to cover up all
misleading evidence soon. Stay as planned wait for further
orders. C. Bowers RE - rifle Code AAA destroy/on/
------------------------------------------------------------------
Navy Int. Code A MRC Remark data 1666106 NRC VDC
NAC (illegible). 63 Remarks Mandarin: Code A Foreign
affairs assignments have been cancelled.
The next assignment
is to eliminate a National Security threat to world wide
peace. Destination will be Houston, Austin or Dallas.Contacts are being arranged now. Orders are subject to
change at any time.
Reply back if not understood. C.Bowers OSHA RE - rifle Code AAA destroy/on/
------------------------------------------------------------------
Navy Int. Code A MRC Remark data 1666106 Sept. 63
Remarks Mandarin: Code A Dallas destination chosen.
Your place hidden within the department. Contacts are
within this letter. Continue on as planned. C.
Bowers OSHA
RE - rifle Code AAA destroy/on/
------------------------------------------------------------------
(Part 2 - The post-press conference follow-up story) August
7, 1990 DALLAS COP'S SON ROLLS OUT JFK
THEORY MATTOX, CIA, HOLLYWOOD ANSWER
CONSPIRACY CLAIM By Andrew Likakis The Texas
attorney general, a major Hollywood producer and the
Central Intelligence Agency are now being written into the
newest chapter in the never-ending mystery of who
assassinated President John F. Kennedy. A 29-year-old
unemployed oil equipment salesman from Midland stood
before scores of reporters in Dallas Monday and implicated
his dead father in the assassination. Soon after, Attorney
General Jim Mattox said he'd gladly review the evidence,
and the CIA issued an unheard of denial. At the same time,
the FBI, which had previously refused to comment on Ricky
White's story, issued a statement in Washington saying
agents had reviewed and dismissed White's story two years
ago.
And, finally, those who believe White's story is true
acknowledge that last weekend, several of them met in
Hollywood with producer/director Oliver Stone, presumably
to discuss movie rights to the White story. The latest chapter
in the Kennedy epic began at a two-hour press conference
in which White said his father, Roscoe Anthony White,
joined the Dallas Police Department in October 1963 with
the express intent of killing Kennedy. During the press
conference called by two assassination research groups and
several Midland businessmen, White and Baptist minister
Jack Shaw talked about incriminating entries in Roscoe
White's missing diary, decoded cables, and the relationship
that Roscoe White and his wife, Geneva, had with Lee
Harvey Oswald, Dallas Officer J. D.
Tippit and Jack Ruby.Based on his own memories, his father's diary and effects,
and the recollections of his mother, Ricky White told
reporters that his father had been one of three shooters on
the day Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. Although
Officer Tippit was a friend of his father's, Ricky White says
his father shot Tippit to death in the Oak Cliff section of
Dallas about 45 minutes after the assassination, as he and
Oswald were trying to get away. Oswald was later accused
of killing Tippit. During the press conference, White said his
father was following orders to kill Kennedy and that, while
he did not know who issued the orders, three messages
found among his father's effects have coding that might have
come from the Office of Naval Intelligence or, indirectly, the
CIA.
CIA RESPONSE: 'LUDICROUS' The suggestion of
CIA involvement brought a sharp response Monday from
agency spokesman Mark Mansfield in Washington: "These
allegations - that this was done on CIA orders, that this guy
worked for us and that CIA had any role in the assassination
of President Kennedy - are ludicrous." Roscoe White never
worked for the CIA, Mansfield said, adding: "normally, we
never confirm nor deny employment, but these allegations
are so outrageous that we felt it necessary and appropriate
to respond." Also Monday, the FBI issued a statement
saying its agents had considered the Ricky White story in
1988 and had "determined that this information is not
credible." Bernard Fensterwald, executive director of the
Assassination Archives and Research Centre in Washington,
said Monday that Mattox will be given all material that points
toward Roscoe White's involvement in the assassination.
RUBY, OSWALD MEETING In another curious twist to
the case, Mattox said late Monday he is interested in pursing
the White story because he was once told by his mother, a
waitress at Campisi's Egyptian Restaurant in Dallas, that
Ruby frequented the restaurant and that she thought she saw
Ruby and Oswald eating dinner there together once. The
restaurant owner, the late Joe Campisi, testified before the
House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978 that he
didn't see Oswald in his eatery, Mattox said. Mattox said he
believes he has jurisdiction in the case, and he would
interview White and his associates "to see what they've got
and let them explain it to me." "The key to the thing, of
course, is, if the FBI acknowledges seeing the diary,"
Mattox said. "The only thing to do is to get a look at the
diary or acknowledgement (by the FBI) that it existed.
" "This
is not a solution to the John Kennedy case," Fensterwald
said after Ricky White told his story. "It's information we
think is important, and we think it's true. Even if what is said
here today checks out, the case is not solved. We still don't
know who planned it and paid for it and basically what the
shooting was about.
The best we can hope for is to get out
of this an idea of who the actual assassins were." It may be
difficult for Mattox or anybody else to do much with the
case without the Roscoe White diary, which disappeared in
1988. The leather bound journal talked about the
assassination and the aftermath, said Ricky White, adding
that he and his mother read it. Roscoe White died of injuries
sustained in an explosive fire in 1971. His widow, Geneva, is
critically ill and, according to family members, unable to be
interviewed. A 'SILENCED' WIFE According to the Rev.
Shaw, Geneva White could help an investigation. Shaw says
Roscoe and Geneva White confided in him in 1970-71 when
they were having marital problems. And, he says, Geneva
White confided in him again during the last year, telling him
that she was working as a hostess in Ruby's Carousel Club
when she overheard her husband and Ruby discussing "the
entire plot of the assassination of the President two months
before the shooting. After the assassination, Shaw says,
Geneva White was given electric shock treatments and kept
sedated so she "would be silenced." Ruby had told her "in no
uncertain terms that if she opened her mouth she was dead
and her children were dead," Shaw says Geneva White told
him.
Shaw says Geneva White told him she confronted her
husband after an organized crime figure approached her in
New Orleans in 1971 and told her to deliver a warning to
her husband. According to Shaw, Geneva White was shown
nearly a dozen photographs and identified the man in New
Orleans as Charles Nicoletti, formerly the number one
hitman with the Sam Giancana Mafia family in Chicago.Nicoletti was executed gangland style in 1977, about a year
after Giancana also met the same fate. Shaw says that, when
she returned to Dallas and told her husband of the ominous
meeting in New Orleans, "he told her everything.
" Shaw says
that, as he lay in a hospital dying from burns in 1971 Roscoe
White told him that he had been marked for execution by
some of his underworld associates and that he believed the
fire had been deliberately started to kill him. A
HOLLYWOOD INTEREST Ricky White said Monday
that, since he found his father's diary, he has been consumed
full-time with trying to find out what role his father played in
the assassination. He said that for more than a year he has
received a "monthly salary" from the Matsu Corp., which
was formed by seven Midland oilmen solely to help finance
Ricky's investigation into his father's involvement in the
assassination. Matsu president Gary Baily said Ricky began
receiving financial help from Matsu on a "day-to-day basis"
about six weeks ago after getting just expense funds for
more than a year.
Baily also said Ricky White is negotiating
with Hollywood producer/director Oliver Stone for movie
rights to his story. Last weekend, Ricky White, his wife and
Larry Howard of the JFK Assassination Information Centre
in Dallas met in the Los Angeles area with Oliver Stone and
toured Universal Studios. "Oliver Stone is interested, but no
deal has been made," Baily said. Matsu so far has spent
more than $100,000 on the White project, Baily said. If any
money is generated by the White story, about 74 percent
will go to Ricky White's family. The rest would go to the
Matsu Corp., Baily said.History
