As per the Education Forum : Jim Marr's comments on the James Files story: Has any of it been debunked ? and as told by Files , the killer of J.D. Tippit was a man who Files knew and was a good friend of , and that person was Gary Eugene Marlow " The Raven " . Files had never given out the name of Gary Eugene Marlow until Marlow passed away . David Atlee Phillips ( Maurice Bishop ) was the handler for Files and Marlow . Joe West was a lawyer who was working on getting JFK's body exhumed . Files used a Remington Fireball XP 100 and the round that he hit JFK in the temple with was a special round that contained mercury . The mercury round would have left traces of mercury in JFK's head and Files had told Joe West about the mercury in the one round he used on JFK . After Joe West had surgery a few weeks later which was a success , it was found that his medicine actually had been tampered with and West died and so did the possibility of exhuming JFK's body .