THE ICON KILLERS
 Conspiracies continue to fascinate, and the murder of famous people have become iconic moments that provide a rich harvest for conspiracy theorists. Why is this the case? What is it about these deaths that provide such interest? The obvious answer is that they WERE famous people, but if this was the case alone, then why add sensationalism to the death. Or is it that the conspiracies are true? We need to analyse these daths and see if it is the case. JOHN F KENNEDY Typical was the assassination of President John F Kennedy on 23 November 1963 as his motorcade drove through Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas. Amid several shots, the killer bullet hit just below Kennedy’s Adam’s Apple, going on to split his skull. Accompanied by his wife, Jackie, and Texas Governor John Connally, the image of the event is one of THE iconic moments of the 20th century. Racing him off to the Parkland Memorial Hospital, Kennedy died just before one o’clock. Meanwhile, just after the event, loner Lee Harvey Oswald walked out of the Texas School Book Depository where he fired the shots from a sixth floor window. A sniper’s rifle was later found. Arrested shortly afterwards, Oswald was himself shot dead two days later by club owner Jack Ruby, a man with close Mafia connections. Despite the following Warren Commission which claimed no conspiracy was involved in the assassination, from that day to this, the idea that Kennedy was assassinated through conspiracy has remained. Organised by either Mafia or Right Wing elements in America itself, evidence of a conspiracy is thought to be in the amateur film footage taken of the assassination by Abraham Zapruder. For instance, Kennedy’s driver seems to turn round and point a gun at Kennedy. On a summer’s day, a man in the crowd holds an umbrella, lifts it and seems to pump it at the car - a poisoned flachette? Even eyewitnesses are sure there was more going on, such as those stood by a grassy knoll who heard a shot whizz past them. However, sufficient conspiracy theory exists to put the blame on Oswald himself, although not through his own actions, as we shall see shortly. MARTIN LUTHER KING A similar character to Oswald was responsible for the assassination of civil rights activist Martin Luther King, shot in the early morning of 4 April 1968 as he took a breath of fresh air on his balcony of the Lorraine Hotel, Memphis. He died 12 hours later in hospital. Within an hour of the murder the police began looking for petty crook, James Earl Ray, who had been seen with a rifle, found close by. Ray initially escaped, making it to Britain where he was arrested on 8 June. In his subsequent trial he was sentenced to 99 years, found guilty of murder.  Conspiracy theories soon arose that Ray was a patsy, and the man who was really behind the assassination was FBI director, J Edgar Hoover. Clearly, Hoover did not like King, to the point that he had tried to discredit him as a homosexual. Similarly, King was causing much trouble for the US government with his protest movement. And similar machinations were thought to be behind the assassination of JFK’s younger brother, Robert. ROBERT KENNEDY Senator Robert Kennedy was, like his brother and King, a moderate left politician, who particularly stalked the Mafia in his role as Attorney General. Going for president himself, he won an all important Californian primary on 5 June 1968. Holding a celebration party in the Los Angeles Ambassador Hotel, he was being escorted through the kitchens when Palestinian immigrant Sirhan Sirhan jumped in front of him, shouted Kennedy, you son of a bitch, pulled out a pistol and fired off a number of shots. Kennedy fell with a bullet in his head. He died a day later.  Sirhan Sirhan was, like Ray and Oswald, a relative non-entity. Were such killers working alone or were they part of a wider conspiracy? For instance, Sirhan’s pistol held eight rounds. How is it that thirteen rounds were fired? And taking into account the possibility of such murderers being part of such conspiracies, wouldn’t the conspirators have been better off hiring professional gunmen? Let us see if another high-profile assassination of notoriety can tell us anything of interest - the murder of John Lennon. JOHN LENNON Lennon was letting himself into his New York flat on 8 December 1980 when a young man called Mark Chapman casually walked up to the ex-Beatle and shot him dead. When the police arrived a short time later, Chapman was stood close by, reading a book. Making no attempt to escape, he claimed madness at his trial, but the jury decided he shot the star simply to gain notoriety. A loner throughout his short life, Chapman had an unusual defence.  In his own words, he said: ‘ (Lennon) walked past me and then I heard a voice in my head: ‘do it, do it,’ over and over again …’ ‘I don’t remember aiming. I must have done, but I don’t remember “drawing a bead” or whatever you call it. And I just pulled the trigger a steady five times.’ MK-ULTRA Conspiriologists blame the strange behaviour of inadequate loners such as Chapman and the above assassins on the mind control techniques of sinister US organisation MK-Ultra. The idea of such mind control became popular following Richard Condon’s book, ‘The Manchurian Candidate’, in which a US soldier was caught by the Chinese in Korea, brain-washed, and sent back to America hypnotically programmed to assassinate a Presidential candidate, even though he was not aware of this fact. An actual CIA backed MK-Ultra program is known to have been run from 1953-73, which included research on producing such assassins. However, the programme was shut down due to lack of success and over indulgence. Details of its activities were revealed by the Rockefeller Commission into CIA abuses in June 1975, and by the investigations of conspiriologist John Marks. 
Their many experiments included taking prostitutes to safe houses, giving them cocktails of LSD, and photographing the effects. In another test, a Dr Gottlieb, one of the researchers into hallucinogens, spiked the drinks of many of his co-workers with LSD. One of them, Dr Frank Olsen, became psychotic and, in 1953, threw himself out of a window.
Was it suicide, or had his mind been adapted? It is highly unlikely that such experiments could have been successful; and it certainly doesn’t answer the above assassinations. Indeed, what is often forgotten is that the above assassins fit neatly into a definite pattern of behaviour that also arose in the 1960s.
THE FRUSTRATED SIXTIES These assassinations came in line with a huge rise in the number of serial and spree killers. Rising particularly in America, a whole frustrated generation seemed to produce a large number of frustrated loners who were determined to hit back at society. Some took out their frustrations with a semi-automatic on a group of people, others chose certain weak members of society to kill one at a time on dark nights. It is therefore reasonable to assume that some of these loners would aim higher, and assassinate major figures. Blaming organisations such as MK-Ultra seems to be a cop-out. Blame some invisible enemy and maybe we don’t need to look too closely at ourselves and the society we create. © Anthony North, August 2007 Article Link Source : Beyond the Blog Return Home : For more articles ... |
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