The Origins of the Raymond Broshears Story

Fred Litwin

3 hours ago

4 min read

One of the chapters in my new book, A Heritage of Nonsense: Jim Garrison's Tales of Mystery and Imagination, is about Raymond Broshears, a fabulist who came up with all sorts of crazy stories.

Here is the letter that started it all off:

Bill Turner then forwarded this letter to Steven Burton, chairman of the LA-based Citizens Committee of Inquiry.

And yes, Broshears had credentials from the Universal Life Church:

All you had to do was to mail in an application form and they would send you ordination papers.

Steve Burton then met with David Snelling, Managing Editor of The Forty-Niner:

Burton then spoke to Broshears by phone:

Burton then met with Broshears:

Broshears told him the following:

He was an intimate friend and roommate of David Ferrie’s from late August 1965 until late 1966. Ferrie told him a lot about the JFK assassination.
He said that he hated Jim Garrison because “Garrison murdered David [Ferrie].” Broshears claimed that Garrison’s men were harassing Ferrie in 1965–1966 “because they had him pegged in an assassination plot.” Garrison, he thought, drove Ferrie to suicide.
Broshears admitted that he had been arrested for threatening President Johnson but said that when Johnson came to New Orleans in November 1965, he put himself in a hospital so that he would have an alibi.
He eventually moved to San Francisco after New Orleans, and he was harassed by FBI agents. The local FBI office told him these men were Garrison’s agents.
Broshears claimed that Lee Harvey Oswald was a bisexual who had sex with David Ferrie. Ferrie told Broshears that Oswald was with the CIA.
He said that the Minutemen, the John Birch Society, the CIA, and Lyndon Johnson were behind the assassination. Right after JFK was killed, a light plane with the assassins took off from an airport in Arlington, Texas, for Mexico City. It crashed at Corpus Christi, killing the three people aboard. Another plane then took off from Austin.

Burton wrote that “Broshears did not provide much information that was not already known, or that could not be easily found out.” As Burton was leaving, Broshears said, “If you ever get serious about finding out who killed Kennedy, come back and see me. I can tell you who pulled the trigger.” Despite hearing some incredible fairy tales—for instance, that Lady Bird Johnson owned the Carousel Club (Jack Ruby’s club in Dallas)—Burton concluded that “the mere fact that he knew of so many of the principal figures lends credence to his story, in my opinion.”

In late April, Burton called Broshears and set up another interview:

Broshears said that he just had a spiritual meeting at his home and that Lee Harvey Oswald spoke to the group in Russian “through Broshears’ mouth.” Broshears also informed Burton that his phone was about to be disconnected for his failure to pay his bill.

The next day, Burton interviewed Broshears at his home.

Broshears told him more details about the plot:

Oswald did not fire a weapon on November 22. The gun with his palmprint was never used. Oswald was supposed to shoot JFK but chickened out. He was on the first floor of the TSBD when the shots were fired and ran out of the building. He met officer J. D. Tippit, who was supposed to kill Oswald but he killed Tippit instead. Then he went to the Texas Theater and phoned Jack Ruby.
Oswald asked Ruby for help, and Ruby called the police. Ruby, Tippit, and three other police officers were involved. There were twenty-five officers in front of Ruby in the basement of the police department, and the whole line opened for Ruby as he walked down the ramp. While in jail, he was injected with live cancer cells. Ruby was in on a second plot to kill JFK if the first one failed.
One hundred people were involved in the assassination. There were supposed to be three shooters, but Oswald chickened out. One shooter fired from the sewer opening, and the other from the grassy knoll.
Two of the gunmen were killed at Corpus Christi. They had planned to go to Houston, where David Ferrie would fly them to Mexico and end up in South Africa.

Burton asked Broshears about Oswald and his work for the CIA. He denied telling Burton any such thing and believed that he had already said too much. Burton concluded that Broshears “knows nothing and wants to feel important” and realized that a lot of things he told him were “inconsistent with what he knows to be true.” But Burton was still impressed enough with Broshears to want to move forward.

Then Burton sent these memos to Jim Garrison: