Oh, OK, if the topic is the broader one of coincidences, I would agree that the JFKA is full of weird twists and turns and "seven degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon"-type coincidences. It sometimes almost seems like a Cosmic Whodunnit written by the Great Mystery Writer in the Sky - as though all of this surely couldn't have "just happened."
I like to use myself as an example. Before becoming involved in the JFKA, I attached no significance whatsoever to the fact that my grandmother knew the Dulles family or that one of my relatives - whose last name is my middle name (which was my parents' nod to my grandmother) - was Lorenzo Dow Baker, one of the founders of the the United Fruit Company. I also have in my study a completely innocent photo of me with William Webster, former director of both the CIA and FBI (FBI when the photo was taken). My wife "just happens" to be from Minsk, and her sister and late brother-in-law worked at the radio and TV factory at the same time as Oswald. Holy cow, how suspicious is all THAT? And yet, the reality is that it has pretty much nothing to do with anything.
This seems to be part of the conspiracy mentality - put everything under a microscope until nothing looks real anymore and poor old Ruth Paine becomes a major player in the JFKA.
I've had so many startling incidents of synchronicity - "meaningful coincidence" - that I started writing them down many years ago. I shared this one on Duncan's new weirdness forum. I happen to believe it was more than mere coincidence - but even if someone wants to argue it was "just a coincidence," it's still exceedingly weird and unlikely. Unlike the homicide cops, I definitely do believe in coincidences because I've lived them.
-Snip-
Lance, for 23 years I have felt like I was plucked, like a chess piece, out of a life and a relationship I was content to continue, and set down on the board I'm playing the game of
life on since then. I ended up where I came to recognize I was critically needed in the future. Maybe the feeling is just an internal coping mechanism, maybe not. I've experienced a sense of purpose that has filled a void I had not really sensed during my other life. I'll visit the weird events area of this forum and fill in the blanks.
You listed "Legend" by Edward Jay Epstein as one of the six books you felt, I assume, was a reliable source, or at least a decent starting off point for the uninitiated.
Epstein was the last known person, the year before the 1978 publication of "Legend", to interview George DeMohrenschildt, including on the day of George's alleged suicide.
The local detective investigating what was then classified as a suspicious death, requested Epstein's interview notes and or recordings. Despite paying Demorenschildt
$1000 per day and his car rental expenses, Epstein told the investigator he had not taken any.
I thought it was newsworthy, especially in 2013, with the 50th anniversary of the JFKA approaching, that the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, a Gannett chain newspaper since
1928, be made aware that a hometown boy, Tom Devine, is described in HSCA records as meeting, on behalf of CIA, with DeMohrenschildt and Clemard Charles in NYC less than four weeks after what would be the final time the DeMohrenschildt couple ever visited with the Oswald couple, on Easter Sunday, 1963. DeMohrenschildt later wrote that he had asked, "Lee, how did you miss," referring to the attempt on Edwin Walker. George Dem's wife, Jean was on record as seeing the rifle that day.
I emailed that newspaper's investigative reporter. I soon received an email reply from that reporter's editor. He shared that his late father, a Chinese language linguist, had held
a high position in the early days of the JFK library. The editor's father had persuaded his son that DeMohrenschildt had a very minor role and was therefore, not newsworthy.
Unlike humans, horses are not born with blinders on. Local newspapers, as Upton Sinclair pointed out in his self published, "The Brass Check" do not report on otherwise newsworthy details of local department stores or car dealers, the largest contributors to keeping the lights on in the news room. Mr. Devine was still too influential at that point
to risk ruffling the feathers of.
