Mel Ayton

November 25, 2005

Ruby shooting Oswald (Sunday, November 24)
– Warren Commission Exhibit #2636

by Mel Ayton

In March of 1964, 52-year-old Jack Ruby was found guilty of the murder of John F. Kennedy's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, and sentenced to die.

For 32 months, since the time he shot Oswald, Ruby had been locked in a windowless cell on the Dallas County Jail's corridor 6-M. A ''suicide watch'' guard looked in on him around the clock – a single exposed light bulb glared over his bed. Several times Ruby would make attempts on his own life.

Ruby could not tell night from day. He read every newspaper he could lay his hands on, eagerly sifting them for his name. He read dozens of books, including Perry Mason novels and the Warren Report, played cards with his guards, did physical exercises – and seemed out of his mind most of the time, according to jail staff.

October 1, 2008 Left to Right: cover of Richard Condon's 1959 novel (1960 Signet edtion); poster from the original film (1962); poster from film remake (2004).

by Mel Ayton

To coincide with the 40th anniversary of Senator Robert F. Kennedy's assassination this year, conspiracists have once again raised the possibility that RFK's assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, had been hypnotized to murder Senator Kennedy. And other writers have used the RFK assassination anniversary as a vehicle to promote their Lee Harvey Oswald "Mind Control" theories.

September 6, 2005

Sirhan Sirhan in a 1998 mug shot
from the California Department of Corrections at Corcoran Prison.

by Mel Ayton

For nearly 40 years conspiracy advocates have built their arguments not only around the controversies surrounding the ballistics evidence and the scene of the crime but the oft-repeated cry that the assassin had no real motive for his act. Yet there is a mountain of evidence to prove the contrary.

May 8, 2005

by Mel Ayton

For most Americans over 45 the images are still vivid – Robert Kennedy shaking hands with kitchen staff of the Los Angeles Ambassador Hotel; Kennedy lying in a pool of his own blood; Kennedy's unofficial bodyguards and friends grabbing the young Palestinian, Sirhan Sirhan, as he rapidly fired off his pistol shots before he could be subdued; the prostrate bodies of the other victims, wounded by Sirhan's obsessive intent in hitting Kennedy; the nation once again mourning the loss of another American hero dead before his time.

What Robert Kennedy might have done as president is one of history's great-unanswered questions. His death also prompted many to ask – why was he murdered?

June 12, 2005

by Mel Ayton

More than 35 years after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. polls continue to indicate that the truth about the murder is still unclear for the majority of Americans. Despite government investigations and extensive research by writers who have concluded that no evidence is available to support the claims made by the conspiracy advocates, the case remains one of America's great whodunits.

Doubts about James Earl Ray, Dr. King's lone assassin, arose almost immediately after the civil rights leader was fatally shot on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis on April 4, 1968. From the start, during King's funeral, his aides voiced suspicions that a conspiracy was responsible for their leader's death.

July 24, 2005

by Mel Ayton

The purported affair between Marilyn Monroe and Robert Kennedy as well as claims he may have had the actress murdered have once again been resurrected with the publication of Matthew Smith's book Victim (2004) and the 2005 broadcast of the BBC's television series "Secret Map Of Hollywood." Their stories follow on from Donald Wolfe's startling allegations in his 1998 book The Assassination of Marilyn Monroe.