I encountered this fascinating factoid while doing some non-JFKA reading. It’s the sort of thing that, if true, would be a conspiratorial bombshell.
The Gerharts
Rev. Elmer G. Gerhart and his wife Marietta were real people. (The G is sometimes shown as Gottshall, but his death certificate says Godshall.) He was an evangelistic minister in Houston for at least 55 years. He died in 1972 at age 90. Marietta Collins was his second wife. He married her in 1945. She died in Houston in 1990 at age 83. At the time of the JFKA they would have been 81 and 56 respectively.
Apart from these facts, the Gerharts are completely obscure. You can find absolutely nothing meaningful. On the surface, they scarcely sound like the tellers of tall JFKA tales.
Charles Frederick Rogers
He likewise was very real. He was the prime suspect in the hideous 1965 murders of his parents, Fred and Edwina Rogers. He disappeared forever right after the murders and was declared legally dead in 1975. The murders are well-known as the “Texas Icebox” murders.
Charles was extremely intelligent but bizarre. He had a degree in nuclear physics and is reported to have spoken seven languages. He was a Navy pilot and in Naval Intelligence in WW2. At the time of the murders, he was 43 and living with his parents. They reportedly didn’t speak at all; his mother would pass notes under his bedroom door. Close neighbors didn’t even know he existed.
Charles spent nine years as an extremely talented seismologist with Shell Oil but quit abruptly without explanation in 1957. It is rumored that he thereafter was a CIA operative, possibly on contract.
The intersection of the Gerharts and Charles Frederick Rogers
In 1992, two private investigators named James R. Craig and Phillip A. Rogers published a “fictionalized account” of the JFKA called The Man on the Grassy Knoll. The basic thrust is that the Three Tramps were Charles Frederick Rogers, Charles Harrleson and Chauncey Holt, with Rogers and Harrelson firing shots. Craig and Phillips seem to be just about as obscure as the Gerharts. I don’t have the book and could find nothing about them.
Oddly for a fictionalized account, the authors feature the Gerharts prominently in the book. Marietta Gerhart would have died only two years before it was published.
The account attributed to the Gerharts is that, on September 25, 1963 two tired men who gave the names Lee and Charles appeared at their church. They said they had traveled from New Orleans and were on their way to Mexico. They were supposed to meet a contact named “Carlos” at a bus stop down the street but he had failed to show.
The Gerharts invited them in and fed them. Lee used the phone and said he had reached Carlos. The Gerharts watched from a window as the men made their rendezvous at the bus stop. They recognized “Carlos” as Charles Frederick Rogers, with whom they were familiar because his mother attended their church.
After the JFKA, they recognized Lee as Oswald. Elmer called the Houston office of the FBI, which showed little interest. He called again a short time later and was told his report had been sent to the Dallas office. Hearing nothing further, he confided in a friend who was a retired CIA guy. The guy told Elmer he had done his civic duty and should back off.
The speculation [?] in The Man on the Grassy Knoll is that Charles Frederick Rogers obtained Oswald’s visa and identification at the bus stop and impersonated him in Mexico City on a mission in which Ferrie and Bannister were connected. (It appears that Charles Frederick Rogers had been with the Civil Air Patrol in the 1950’s and had known Ferrie well. At least this is reported elsewhere as though it were fact.)
So what is this really all about?
The Oswald encounter by the Gerharts as reported in The Man on the Grassy Knoll has received no attention in the conspiracy literature. Literally none. It apparently was and is regarded as complete fiction.
And yet: The Gerharts were very real people. Marietta would have been alive while the authors were doing their research. The Gerhart tale, and much of the discussion of Charles Frederick Rogers, is highly factual-sounding. It gives the strong impression of having some basis in reality.
Would the authors have simply invented the Gerhart tale using the names of a longtime Houston evangelist and his wife? This seems highly unlikely. Even the connection between them and the mysterious Charles Frederick Rogers, the ostensible Texas Icebox murderer (two years after the JFKA), seems an unlikely invention.
Alas, I don’t have the book and used copies are hundreds of dollars. If anyone has it or knows the genesis of the Gerharts’ supposed Oswald encounter, I’d be curious to know what you can add. If the authors claim to have interviewed Marietta, that would certainly be interesting. If nothing in The Man on the Grassy Knoll but the Gerharts’ encounter has a basis in fact, that would still be quite a conspiratorial bombshell.
(BTW, The Man on the Grassy Knoll by James Crawley is a completely different 2010 book. No connection.)
