JFK Assassination - What They Told Me

By William Holiday

"JFK Assassination - What They Told Me" unveils a treasury of knowledge crafted by William Holiday, a dedicated educator with a passion for unraveling the truths behind the JFK assassination. Within these pages lie an extensive compendium of photographs, film segments, interviews, recordings, and documents, offering readers a journey through the event's multifaceted dimensions.

A career educator, not a traditional researcher, William Holiday spent over five decades sharing his profound insights with students. From his years at Dummerston Elementary School to Brattleboro Union High School, and through his tenure at Keene State College and Castleton University, he fostered intellectual growth. His teachings on the JFK assassination, which spanned more than 50 years, extended most recently to the CALL Program at Keene State, where his classes often involved field studies in Dallas, Texas.

Notably, Holiday refrains from adopting the labels of "conspiracy theorist" or a staunch advocate of the "lone nut assassin" theory endorsed by the Warren Commission. Instead, he serves as a conduit for the firsthand accounts he has accumulated over time. The witnesses he introduces, ranging from researchers to doctors, provide unique perspectives that challenge conventional narratives. The book echoes the voices of those who were on the scene, including a young lady, an ambulance driver, an automobile salesman, and a deaf observer—all of whom recount their experiences in Dealey Plaza on November 22.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jan 1, 1900
• ISBN: 9798350919868

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JFK Assassination - What They Told Me

©2023 William Holiday

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

print ISBN: 979-8-35091-985-1

ebook ISBN: 979-8-35091-986-8

Also by William Holiday

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This book is written with three objectives.

For those who have an interest in historical events.

For educators to think beyond the daily activities within the four walls of the classroom. Opportunities can be arranged for students to experience history first-hand rather than through textbooks.

This book could also be considered by homeschool teachers. These teachers are not constricted by the walls of a classroom or the constraints of a traditional school calendar. This book can be used as a guide for some controversial events.

Gratitude

I am indebted for this book as I was for my first book to my long-time colleague and former English teacher, Nancy Olson, and my wife, Lyle, for their prodigious help with suggestions and editing.

The design and digital work for several things in this book have been superbly done by my nephew, Reggie Martell.

I am indebted to Robert Groden for his assistance as we worked through edits to the chapter about Robert. It was enjoyable to work with this extraordinary researcher.

I wanted Beverly Oliver’s feedback about the chapter I had written about her. She was critical at first but aided my corrections despite being ill. Thank you, Beverly.

If you are interested in pursuing more information about the people in this book, these are written by the witnesses themselves:

James T. Tague – Truth Withheld - A Survivor’s Story

Beverly Oliver – Nightmare in Dallas

Judyth Vary Baker – Me & Lee

Ed Hoffman – Eyewitness by Ed Hoffman and Ron Friedrich

Madeleine Duncan Brown — Texas in the Morning: The Love Story of Madeleine Brown and President Lyndon Baines Johnson

Robert Groden – Mr. Groden has written many books on the assassination. These are the two I recommend for information about Lee Harvey Oswald and the assassination research Mr. Groden has done in past decades – The Search for Lee Harvey Oswald and JFK: Absolute Proof

All photos in this book are the author’s unless otherwise noted.

Contents

Chapter 1. A Complicated Case

Chapter 2. Bill Holiday on the Grassy Knoll

Chapter 3. Linda Willis

Chapter 4. Abraham Bolden

Chapter 5. Aubrey Rike

Chapter 6. Dennis David

Chapter 7. Paul O’Connor

Chapter 8. Dr. Cyril Wecht and the Autopsy

Chapter 9. Dr. Ronald Jones

Chapter 10. Dallas Police Detective Jim Leavelle

Chapter 11. John Brewer Interviewed at the Sixth Floor Museum

Chapter 12. Beverly Oliver

Chapter 13. Ed Hoffman

Chapter 14. James T. Tague

Chapter 15. Madeleine Duncan Brown

Chapter 16. Judyth Vary Baker

Chapter 17. Adele Edisen

Chapter 18. Pat Hall, Granddaughter of Rooming House Owner

Chapter 19. Robert Groden

Chapter 20. The Suitcases

Chapter 1

A Complicated Case

It’s a complicated case, and this book makes no effort to solve it or suggest the mountain of theories as to who was involved. The book is a collection of what eyewitnesses and researchers told me and my students. – Bill Holiday

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The Scene of the Crime

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Robert Groden’s composite photo shows witnesses on the opposite side of Elm Street from the Grassy Knoll

There could be no predicting the consequences of a 13-year-old junior high school student’s hearing a public address announcement stating that President John F. Kennedy had been shot and killed in Dallas, Texas. All students and staff were sent home. I and many others were captivated by the images on television from Friday afternoon, November 22, 1963, through the President’s burial on November 25. The haunting cadence of the funeral dirge is still with me now, 60 years later.

My classroom instruction of this event began my first year as an educator in 1972. Two events would change my involvement with this case. In 1979 my lifelong friend, Larry Cassidy, was employed at the Putney School as its activities director. He informed me that the school’s project week would involve presentations about the assassination by the Assassination Information Bureau. The AIB was located at 63 Inman Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The AIB disseminated the following:

"Dear Friend,

The AIB is happy to announce the availability of copies of the Zapruder film and a selection of slides from our audio visual presentation on the John Kennedy assassination. We hope that this material will enable interested parties to present the basic facts of the case to as wide an audience as possible, reaching groups and individuals that we cannot.

All slides and films have been supplied to the AIB by Mr. Robert Groden and include the following:

Super 8 mm copy of the Zapruder film

Slides of:

Dealey Plaza.

Motorcade on N. Main & Houston Streets.

Motorcade turning onto Elm St, with TSBD (Texas Schoolbook Depository Building).

6th floor window moments after the shooting.

View from alleged gunman perch, taken during re-enactment.

Motorcade moving down Elm Street 2-3 seconds into the assassination.

Blowups of the background (TSBD) of above.

Umbrella man, standing on Elm St.

Grassy knoll area during the shooting.

CE 399 and comparison with test bullet.

Fake Oswald photo and comparison shot.

Autopsy-related drawing.

Oswald in New Orleans.

Approximately 10 individual Zapruder frames.

The slides are accompanied by an index, which will briefly describe the features in each that make the case for conspiracy and/or show up the contradictions and inadequacies of the Warren report."

My attention turned in depth to this topic. I was able to use these resources and the information to balance my presentations to groups and students. On one hand was the Warren Commission Report. The Commission was chaired by the former Governor of California and, at the time, the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, Earl Warren. Warren had reluctantly taken the job as head of a committee that was to investigate the assassination of President Kennedy.

The Committee presented its final report on September 24, 1964. The 888-page final report was presented to President Johnson and made public three days later. The Warren Report concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone and shot and killed President Kennedy. It also concluded that Jack Ruby acted alone when he killed Oswald two days later.

On the other hand, was the information I began to acquire from researchers, critics, and witnesses. My collection has grown to hundreds of photographs, film segments, slide shows, interviews, recordings, and documents.

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Holiday’s Zapruder Film

The second discovery I made was via the internet–new to me in the 1990s. Using our first computer with dial-up service, I stumbled upon the JFK Lancer organization in Dallas. It was organizing conferences annually to encourage research and education about the assassination.

Debra Conway, along with Thomas A. Jones, is co-founder and president of JFK Lancer Productions & Publications. It was founded in 1995. JFK Lancer works with the largest, most active group of JFK historical researchers.

If it wasn’t for JFK Lancer and its conferences that I first attended back in the late 1990s, and Debra Conway’s facilitation of meetings between my students and witnesses to various aspects of the case, this book would likely not have happened.

Debra has dedicated hours and hours and years to this. She credits a relationship that developed between her, and a woman named Mary Ferrell. Mary passed a research torch to Debra. They were close geographically–Mary lived in Dallas; Debra was in Fort Worth.

Debra remembers, It didn’t take me any time at all to get to her house. I could talk for two days just telling you crazy stories. We talked on the phone a lot. And she was so happy to see another woman interested in the same thing she was interested in. We got along very, very well.

Debra remembers in the early years there was a great deal of ‘in-fighting’ among researchers and research groups, and getting the research community together could be difficult. Sometimes rival researchers would not attend the Lancer conferences because somebody else was there. Robert Groden would sometimes not come because ____ was coming. And John Judge wouldn’t do this because ____ was there.

Debra explains, "Between David Lifton and the COPA (Coalition on Political Assassinations) people, it was very hard. David and I had been friends for years. And he was the first person I ever reached out to. I wrote him a letter and we just started talking on the phone. David Lifton was like family. That’s how I felt about him. And I think he felt the same way. But the bigger Lancer got, the more he withdrew, because he was so afraid that I was going to tell somebody something he told me. I kept saying, ‘David, I am a grown woman. I am not going to tell somebody. What would that show about me as a human being?’

"David Lifton and Mary Ferrell were really the ones I would say helped the most in the early years of Lancer. I would be closer to them as I helped them with a project.

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Mary Ferrell - 1999

"Mary had a saying. She was wonderful about things like that. She would say, ‘When you meet somebody that’s interested, put them to work.’ I’d say– ‘Like you did me?’ and she said, ‘Yes.’ She said, ‘Put other people in charge, and don’t do everything.’ And she was absolutely right. In the beginning, when Tom Jones and I did everything, he was fantastic. Tom was a perfect person to stand at the table and talk about something. He was very enthusiastic about the books and the researchers, and I caught that bug. We both made it okay.

COPA immediately thought I was a spy or something because I was blonde and a girl. And, you know, ‘What is she doing here?’

Debra was trying to be helpful. She wanted to know, like Mary. People would ask Mary stuff all the time. And she’d say, ‘I just want to know what (happened).’

The people in Debra’s life were interested.

I wondered how Debra began to concentrate on facilitating students’ educational opportunities with the assassination. She says, Two guys, Casey Quinlan and Brian Edwards started bringing a group of kids. They were best friends. If they brought the students to Dallas, we usually took them to Dealey Plaza and the Sixth Floor Museum.

Tom Jones and Debra said, We’ll get some of the witnesses that we know and ask them if they would come answer a few questions. So that’s how it got started. We did it for the students. Word would get out that we were going to do something. It got bigger and we needed bigger rooms. That’s why we turned it into a conference. We could just put on a conference and that way we got to invite who comes and speaks. We could group people together that would tie into each other. You wouldn’t get to do that any other way.

Aubrey ‘Al’ Rike is a good example of how this process could work. Rike was working for the O’Neill Funeral Home in Dallas. O’Neill’s vehicles served as ambulances and hearses, depending upon the need. Al was on duty and responded to a seizure in Dealey Plaza a short time before the President’s motorcade moved through Dealey Plaza. He was called to Parkland Hospital after the President died, and he transported the President’s body to Love Field for transport to Washington, D.C.

Debra arranged for my students, and students from other schools, to meet with Al at the Holiday Inn Express in Dallas in 2007. We made a connection and on future occasions, I would contact Al to see if he would meet with my group. One of my students, Michelle Aleck, made a transcription of Al’s remarks. She told me that he was often using the southern dialectic phrase ‘y’all’ and wanted to know if she should put all of those into the transcript. I replied in the affirmative believing that, if he said it, it ought to be in there. Michelle dutifully made the transcription.

Michelle’s work with the assassination led to her being selected as JFK Lancer’s 2000 Student of the Year. Debra invited Michelle to Debra’s home to experience the research environment. Part of the visit included a lunch with Al Rike. Debra contacted me to say that Rike was furious over Michelle’s transcript and was balking at attending the lunch! He was offended by the ‘y’alls’ in the transcription. I apologized, we took out the ‘y’alls’ and Al was satisfied. Michelle went to lunch with Debra and Al. Whew!

Debra speaks about Al Rike. Aubrey was wonderful. He wanted particularly young people to understand how young he was (24 years old) on the day of the assassination and having the absolute worst thing in the world happen. You’re on duty, and you gotta do this. There’s nothing you can do. You can’t help anybody. You can’t revive anybody. You can’t do anything. They’re gone. It was hardest to step over the line and get over it. You do the best you can.

I was teaching ‘The JFK Assassination in Your Classroom’ for Keene State College in 2005. I arranged for Aubrey to come to the Hotel Lawrence (near Dealey Plaza) to a room with me and my students. He was more relaxed than I had seen him when speaking before groups. He talked with us for over an hour.

Debra describes Al as, very warm and sharing.

JFK Lancer’s goals: to make research materials concerning President Kennedy available to everyone, to actively support the continued investigation of the JFK assassination, and to sponsor special events both for the research community and for young people and educators, have been met continually.

I have written this book to share my experiences with President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. I am a career educator–12 years at Dummerston Elementary School in Dummerston, Vermont; 36 years at Brattleboro Union High School in Brattleboro, Vermont, and 25 years as an adjunct faculty member at both Keene State College (New Hampshire) and Castleton University (Vermont). I have taught the JFK assassination for over 50 years, most recently for the CALL Program (Cheshire Academy for Lifelong Learning) at Keene State. In the public school system this could be for two or three days as close to the date of the assassination as possible. In one case in 2006, for an entire semester (August to January) the assassination was the only topic. With Keene State College I taught ‘The JFK Assassination in Your Classroom.’ It included several days of field study in Dallas, Texas. I taught the same course virtually with Castleton University.

I have made numerous presentations about the assassination to historical societies, libraries, service organizations, a humanities council, conferences and two in Dallas–one titled ‘The Suitcase’ (featured in