Mel Ayton, R.I.P.

[Michael T. Griffith]

Those are surprisingly strong words, coming from someone who meekly bowed out of the thread that John Mytton started on the subject.

Mytton is a total quack who is immune to reason and persuasion. I have devoted countless replies to answering his nonsense, and after a while I stop responding because in his threads because I know I'm wasting my time.

You might want to check out my ongoing exchanges with Mytton in my thread about his blunders on the backyard rifle photos, in which, among other things, he claims that the differences in the background distances are "very visible" to the naked eye--yeah, never mind that the HSCA PEP could only detect them with computer-aided, high-magnification/microscope-aided photogrammetric measurements. As you'll see in the thread, I've asked him repeatedly to address this fact and to acknowledge his error, but he has gone silent on the issue, as he usually does when he's caught in a bald-faced blunder.

In one of his threads on the backyard photos, he actually said that once you adjust the PEP's parallax measurements for scale, they prove there is "massive parallax" in the photos, not realizing that the PEP's parallax measurements were already adjusted for scale. I responded by pointing out that the PEP's measurements were adjusted for the scaling distances to account for magnification differences, that this is plainly stated in the PEP's report, and that the scaling distances are even mentioned by name and given in the calculations. He has yet to acknowledge his blunder, as usual.

[Bill Brown]

I know nothing about Mel Ayton as a person, but I can say that his research was badly flawed.

I'll give just two examples:

1. In his 2022 book The Kennedy Assassinations, he defends the WC's thoroughly debunked claim that Jack Ruby entered the police basement to kill Oswald via the Main Street ramp. This would have been a reasonable position until January 1979, when the HSCA volumes were published. The HSCA destroyed the myth that Ruby walked down the Main Street ramp to enter the basement. Ayton simply ignored the HSCA's powerful case against the Main Street ramp myth (9 HSCA 132-146), probably because he realized that admitting that Ruby lied about how he entered the basement would cast serious doubt on the rest of Ruby's "spontaneous rage" story.

In his 2024 book Death to Justice: The Shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald, Paul Abott, arguably the world's leading authority on the subject, destroys the Main Street ramp myth even more thoroughly than did the HSCA.

2. Ayton committed an even more inexcusable blunder by accepting and defending the motive that Jack Ruby initially gave for shooting Oswald, i.e., that Ruby was emotionally distraught over Jackie and her kids and wanted to spare Jackie from the ordeal of having to testify at Oswald's trial. How did Ayton not know that this myth was exploded in 1967 with the disclosure of a note that Ruby himself wrote to his second attorney, Joe Tonahill? In the note, Ruby revealed that his first excuse for shooting Oswald was a fabricated legal ploy fed to him by his first attorney. The HSCA discussed the note in its report:

The committee also questioned Ruby's self-professed motive for killing Oswald, his story to the Warren Commission and other authorities that he did it out of sorrow over the assassination and sympathy for the President's widow and children. Ruby consistently claimed there had been no other motive and that no one had influenced his act. A handwritten note by Ruby, disclosed in 1967, however, exposed Ruby's explanation for the Oswald slaying as a fabricated legal ploy. Addressed to his attorney. Joseph Tonahill, it told of advice Rubv had received from his first lawyer, Tom Howard, in 1963: "Joe, you should know this. Tom Howard told me to say that I shot Oswald so that Caroline and Mrs. Kennedy wouldn't have to come to Dallas to testify. OK?" (p. 158).

The damning note was also discussed in numerous books published before 2022, some of which Ayton quoted (such as the books by Dr. David Scheim and John H. Davis). It was inexcusable for Ayton to be accepting and defending Ruby's first self-professed motive in 2022.

Show some class.  Reserve these comments for an entirely different thread.  No?

[Michael T. Griffith]

Show some class. Reserve these comments for an entirely different thread. No?

Sorry, but Mel Ayton's research was error-filled and substandard. If it's okay for his supporters to praise his research in this thread, it's okay for me to point out a few of the problems with his research. And, I have been careful not to criticize him as a person.

[John Mytton]

Show some class.  Reserve these comments for an entirely different thread.  No?

Devoted sick CT's simply can't help themselves, every time a prominent LNer dies they are all too willing to immediately stick the knives in.
But LNers generally always show respect, over at the ED forum two prolific CT moderators recently passed and I didn't see one LNer say even one disparaging word about the men or their research.
The CT mindset has warped these individuals so much that they lack even the most basic qualities of human compassion. Sad!

JohnM

[Tommy Shanks]

Devoted sick CT's simply can't help themselves, every time a prominent LNer dies they are all too willing to immediately stick the knives in.
But LNers generally always show respect, over at the ED forum two prolific CT moderators recently passed and I didn't see one LNer say even one disparaging word about the men or their research.
The CT mindset has warped these individuals so much that they lack even the most basic qualities of human compassion. Sad!

You're absolutely correct, John. The two deceased moderators did very little to distinguish themselves during their reigns of terror, and it would have been very easy for forum members to unload on both of them - but nobody did.

[Bill Brown]

Devoted sick CT's simply can't help themselves, every time a prominent LNer dies they are all too willing to immediately stick the knives in.
But LNers generally always show respect, over at the ED forum two prolific CT moderators recently passed and I didn't see one LNer say even one disparaging word about the men or their research.
The CT mindset has warped these individuals so much that they lack even the most basic qualities of human compassion. Sad!

JohnM

Agreed, 100%