Walter "Zaney" Blaney's JFK Assassination Conspiracy Theory

[Scott Wells]

Many years ago, Walter "Zaney" Blaney told me that he believes Lee Harvey Oswald may not have been shot by Jack Ruby if Tom Palmer (aka Tony Andruzzi) had responded to an early morning, urgent phone call from Al Sharpe.

Also, Walter saw a first generation copy of the well known Zapruder film that showed details of the assassination not seen in subsequent copies of the film. We also briefly talk about Dallas magician Johnny Sissom who owned and operated a Kennedy museum on Dealy Plaza.

This short podcast is available at http://themagicwordpodcast.com/scottwel ... acy-theory

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[Brad Henderson]

the ruby story was told by Tom Palmer / he apparently knew the people involved with Ruby and a night club with which he was associated.

Tom shared the story with Eugene burger who published it somewhere - perhaps in Genii?

[Scott Wells]

Old story, new legs...and a few new eyes and ears, too.

[Scott Wells]

BTW, Brad's memory serves him well. I was told that there a couple paragraphs about this story in the October 2000 Genii on page 16. Also, the complete details (along with Tom Palmer's testimony to the Warren Commission) is in the book, "Unspeakable Acts - Palmer/Andruzzi" http://www.stevensmagic.com/shop/unspea ... -magus-bk/

[Bill Mullins]

If you are a Genii subscriber and have access to the back issues at AskAlexander, you'll want to look up Feb 2005 p 25 for Richard Hatch's article "Tell Jack Ruby not to send the letter . . . ", which covers much of the same ground as the article mentioned above about Palmer from the Oct 2000 issue.

Palmer/Andruzzi's Warren Commission testimony.

Another magic connection: To help pay his legal bills, Jack Ruby ran a series of syndicated "my story" articles nationally in newspapers in Jan 1964. These articles were co-written by (probably ghosted by) William Read Woodfield.
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Some background on Woodfield and Ruby:

[Richard Kaufman]

How bizarre that both Tom Palmer and Woodfield knew and worked with Jack Ruby. And Alton Sharpe, too: another guy who left Texas after the assassination with the bejesus scared out of him.

[Richard Hatch]

In fact, Al Sharpe left Dallas well before the assassination when he was transferred to run the AGVA office in St Louis and then to Chicago. I believe this was in 1962. He arranged for Tom Palmer to run the Dallas AGVA office when he got transferred. He did not leave as a result of the assassination.

That first Ruby/Woodfield link posted by Bill Mullins has Jack Ruby mentioning Bill DeMarr [sic] being MC of the Carousel Club at the time of the JFK assignation and claiming to have seen Oswald in the club earlier that week and Ruby being surprised that his memory would play tricks with him since he had such a good memory. In fact, Bill DeMar, who is still active as a magician and vent, turned 32 that week at the club and was doing the giant memory act that he had learned from a book by Thornton Poole. Which is why people thought he had such a good memory. The Sunday after the Friday assassination, when Ruby shot Oswald, DeMar spent quite a bit of time on the phone with his longtime friend from Evansville, Indiana (where both grew up), David Hoy. Hoy, a genius at garnering publicity, apparently came up with the idea for DeMar to tell the press he had seen Oswald at the club earlier in the week. This did get lots of press attention for DeMar, but also unwanted attention from the FBI and he later retracted his claims, and soft peddled his memory skills as just a trick. DeMar turned 82 this week and I congratulated him on Facebook but added the line: "I'll bet you remember where you were 50 years ago!" Not surprisingly, he seems to have deleted my message. I'm surprised he didn't unfriend me!
The Tom Palmer/Alton Sharpe/Ruby story strikes me very much like the "Umbrella Man" theory, which is the subject of a fascinating short film you can watch here:
http://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/10 ... a-man.html
Ruby seemed to have liked having magicians at his strip club. Harry Blackstone, Jr. was apparently one of his favorites and got his professional start at the Carousel Club, thanks to a recommendation from Al Sharpe, then AGVA head in Dallas, before being transferred.

[Bill Mullins]

Robert Lund, writing in Abra in 1964, says that the David Hoy that DeMar spoke with is not the David Hoy we know of in magic, but another one, a journalist.

DeMar's real name is William Crowe. His Warren Commission testimony is here.

By the late 1960's, one of the conspiracy ideas going around was that of many people connected with the assassination dying of unnatural causes. I've read that the reason that Palmer changed his name to Andruzzi was that he wanted to hide from whoever was causing these unnatural deaths. (I don't particularly believe that, and like Crash Davis, I believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.)

Gerald Posner's book Case Closed does a good job of debunking this particular conspiracy theory, along with most of the other prominent ones.

[Richard Hatch]

Hmmmm... That Lund claim (that David Hoy the "journalist" is not the same as David Hoy the magician) is very interesting! I wonder what the odds are of their being two David Hoy's from Evansville, Indiana who were on friendly terms with magician/vent/mentalist Bill DeMar at the time? I have always assume the David Hoy he spoke with was the magician. DeMar is still alive and could be asked, but when I called to speak with him on this topic about ten years ago when I was actively researching it, he had no real interest in speaking with me and contradicted parts of his Warren Commission testimony, denying that he had been at Tom Palmer's on Saturday night. I see from the Warren Commission testimony that I misstated his memory act as from Thornton Poole, when he says it was Spencer Thornton. Show how bad my memory is!
I never questioned whether the Evansville David Hoy was anyone other than the mentalist. I wonder if Lund was mistaken, or trying to protect Hoy? I'd appreciate any information that might shed any light on this!

[Bill Mullins]

FBI interview with Alton Sharpe.

John Moehring's obituary on Sharpe has more background on his days in Dallas with Ruby.

And this thread, from what appears to be a conspiracy theorist perspective, reviews a lot of the connections between Dallas magicians and Jack Ruby. Do you think John Mulholland, who was connected with the CIA, taught magicians to hypnotize people involved in the JFK assassination to keep the truth hushed up?

And Richard H., after further study, I've come to believe that Robert Lund was wrong, and it is the same David Hoy. Everyone else on the internet seems to think so.

[Bill Mullins]

It's the same David Hoy -- sorry to have mislead anyone.

The FBI subpoena of the records of the Hoy phone calls is here, and lists his address at 1400 Adams in Evansville. The Linking Ring for Sept 1964 p 76 shows the magician's address to be that as well.

So, magicians David Hoy, Alton Sharpe, Tom Palmer and Bill DeMar were caught up in the Warren commission investigation at some level. John Mulholland was pulled into conspiracy theories. Harry Blackstone Jr and Mark Wilson worked in Jack Ruby's clubs. And here's a third-hand report that Bill Neff was asked to look at the ballistics evidence from the assassination (I don't put much stock in that one.)

[Richard Hatch]

Bill, thanks for clearing up the Hoy identity issue. If you go a bit further in the link you gave with the Hoy phone records you find Hoy's FBI interview where he is described as doing a "mind reading act" in Massachusetts at the time of the interview (p. 5) so no question it was the same Hoy. I'm pretty sure Hoy put the idea in DeMar's head to report seeing Oswald at Ruby's to grab some headlines and it did get some press attention, but not clear that it helped DeMar or Hoy's careers much! The TAOM gets a mention in his FBI interview, by the way! (See page 5 of that phone record link mss....)
I wonder why Lund would say the two David Hoys were not the same person?

[Scott Wells]

I was told by a reliable source that the published Warren Report did not reflect Tom Palmer's "true" testimony. At least that was a first hand report from my source as told to him by Tom himself. Moreover, he was afraid for his life (others were dying under "mysterious" circumstances) which is why he moved to Chicago, gave up the comedy magic in pursuit of Bizarre Magik as well as changing his name. His last name was taken as an aberration of Heba Haba Al's last name, Andrucci). And that's why (I'm told) that Brown changed his name to Al Sharpe, too.

Of course, my source also told me that it was hard to believe most anything Tom/Tony said.

[Bill Mullins]

I was told by a reliable source that the published Warren Report did not reflect Tom Palmer's "true" testimony.

The Warren Commission did a lot of stuff poorly. But if you start believing that they "edited" testimony for publication, you end up at ground zero of conspiracy world. And that way lies madness.

[Scott Wells]

But if you start believing that they "edited" testimony for publication, you end up at ground zero of conspiracy world. And that way lies madness.

Agreed.

[Richard Hatch]

I was told by a reliable source that the published Warren Report did not reflect Tom Palmer's "true" testimony. At least that was a first hand report from my source as told to him by Tom himself. Moreover, he was afraid for his life (others were dying under "mysterious" circumstances) which is why he moved to Chicago, gave up the comedy magic in pursuit of Bizarre Magik as well as changing his name. His last name was taken as an aberration of Heba Haba Al's last name, Andrucci). And that's why (I'm told) that Brown changed his name to Al Sharpe, too.

Well, that last part, about Brown changing his name to Al Sharpe because of fears of the JFK assassination conspiracy is definitely not true and easily debunked: Sharpe had a professional career under that name in the 1940s and 1950s. In fact the Al Sharpe Genii cover on your own website dates from January 1948, when Kennedy was still just an unmarried congressman.

Tom Palmer's subsequent testimony for the House Subcommittee on Assassinations in the late 1970s is also public information, likely available online, and unlikely to have been redacted, though it could suffer from his own memory revisions over the ensuing years.

[IrishMagicNews]

This is a fascinating read.

[Bill Mullins]

Tom Palmer's subsequent testimony for the House Subcommittee on Assassinations in the late 1970s is also public information, likely available online, and unlikely to have been redacted, though it could suffer from his own memory revisions over the ensuing years.

The Final Report of the House Select Committee on Assassinations is available online, as are many supporting documents, including much of the public testimony given before the Committee. However, Palmer's statements for the Committee were given as depositions, and I don't think they've been placed online anywhere.