Latest / The Lone Gunman Podcast : JFK Assassination / Ep. 242 ~ The Other Assassin

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Ep. 242 ~ The Other Assassin · The Lone Gunman Podcast : JFK Assassination

0:12
Everything is going to hail down here in Decta, And don't come and find
0:26
Dad who we take that Brock And don't come with my dad, hearsholside rod
0:36
me and don't come with find Dash. We take bad Brock. Then don't
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come and find that. Here is your ostide? Why oh hey, oh
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yeah, what's up? Folks? Welcome to episode number two four two of
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the Lone Coming Podcast. It's your boy, Big Bad Bob otherwise known as
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Rob Clark, here with you for another exciting episode. Now, I want
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to take you on a journey in your mind's eye today and try to imagine
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a world in which you never heard of Lee Harvey Oswald. Imagine that,
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just for a second, imagine if the assassination did occurred on November twenty secondeen
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sixty three, never happened. I know, it's a pretty crazy thing to
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try to ponder, because you know, like minded folks like us who are
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interested in the assassination can't really fathom a life without it happening. But it
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almost didn't happen. In fact, John F. Kennedy almost never even made
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it to get sworn in to be the president. It's a fascinating tale,
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and one that we're going to learn about today, but before we do,
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Peace. That's right. Get to sell some hot sauce people, all right.
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Back to the story of the day. We're gonna talk about a fella
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by the name of Richard Paul Pavlik. In November in nineteen sixty, JFK
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was elected President of the United States, and three years later he was assassinated
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by Lee Harvey Oswald while in a motor ka going through Dallas, Texas.
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Had Richard Paul Pavlick gotten his way, Oswald would have never gotten to pull
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the trigger because Pavlick wanted to kill j K first. On December eleventh,
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nineteen sixty, j f K was the president elect. He had not been
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sworn in yet. Richard Paul Pavlick was a seventy three year old retired postal
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worker, and both of them were in Palm Beach, Florida. D f
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K was there on a vacation of sorts, taking a trip to warmer climates
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as he prepared to assume the office of the president. Pavlick had followed Kennedy
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down there with the intention of blowing himself up and taking j F K with
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him. His plan was simple. He lanned his car with dynamite enough to
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blow up a small mountain and outfitted it with a detonascan switch. Then he
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parked outside Kennedy's Palm Beach compound and waited for Kennedy to leave his house to
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go to Sunday mass Pavlick's aim was to ram his car into JFK's limo as
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the President to be left his home, killing them both and blowing them up
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into smithereens. But JFK did not leave leave his house alone that morning,
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he made his way to his limousine with his wife, Jacqueline, and children,
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Caroline and John Junior, who was at that time less than a month
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old. While Pavlick was willing to kill John F. Kennedy, he did
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not want to kill Kennedy's family, nor his children and baby, so he
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resigned himself to trying again another day. But he would not get a second
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chance at murderous infamy when December the fifteenth, he was arrested by a Palm
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Beach police officer working off of a tip from the Secret Service. Pavlick's undoing
6:57
was result of deranged postcards that he said to Thomas Murphy, then the postmaster
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of Pablick's hometown of Belmont, New Hampshire. Murphy was put off by the
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strange tone of the postcards, and his curiosity led him to do what postmasters
7:14
do look at the postmarks. He noticed a pattern. Pablick happened to be
7:19
in the same general area as jfk not in the landscape as Kennedy traveled.
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Murphy called the local police department, who in turn called the Secret Service,
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and from there Pavlick's plan unraveled. The would be assassin was committed to a
7:36
mental institution, ending charges on January the twenty seven, nineteen sixty one,
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a week after Kennedy was inaugurated as the thirty fifth President of the United States.
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These charges were eventually dropped as it became increasingly clear that Pablic acted at
7:55
out of an inability it distinguished between right and wrong, I e. Legally
8:01
in the same. But nevertheless, Pablic remained institutionalized until December thirteenth, nineteen
8:07
sixty six, nearly six years after being apprehended and three years after Oswald pulled
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the trigger that ultimately killed John F. Kennedy amitedly. So, folks,
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there you have it. There is a very interesting tale to be told here,
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and we're gonna hear it better than I can tell it, So stay
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tuned and enjoy the show. On November twenty second, nineteen sixty three,
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a stunted world looked on as President John F. Kennedy was shot dead by
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Lee Harvey Oswald. But remarkably, JFK's death at the hands of a lone
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assassin almost happened three years earlier. Today, a derelict house in the backwoods
9:11
of New England is all that remains of a man who swore himself to the
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cause of killing Kennedy. He was a homicidal may Yet in the fall of
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nineteen sixty in the weeks before JFK was sworn into office, he would stalk
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the president elect across the country, looking for a suitable location to murder him.
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The weapon he would use would not be a marchman's rifle, but a
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car bomb. With never before heard witness testimony, he had told my husband
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Lea, you probably won't see me again, but you'll hear of me.
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This is the little known story of one man's audacious plot to assassinate a president
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in a bid to go down in history as Kennedy's suicide bomber. Had he
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detonated it, we would have had a dead president elect. Truth is stranger
10:11
than fiction. As America looked for a new president to succeed Eisenhower, few
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would have initially expected it would come from a candidate who opponents scorned as more
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of a playboy than a politician. But on July thirteenth, nineteen sixty,
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John F. Kennedy won the Democratic nomination and began his bid for the presidency.
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Who will carried the fight to the people in the fat and the Democrats,
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hitting the fresh faced Kennedy against the Republicans veteran Nixon signaled a new era
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for American politics. Jeffk symbolized youth, He symbolized new direction. He was
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glamorous, he was articulate, and the country, you know, just fell
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in love with him. But not everyone took the charismatic young leader to their
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hearts. John F. Kennedy's father, Joe, was a powerful and influential
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businessman, and there were rumblings in some quarters that he was attempting to buy
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the White House through backroom deals and brinksmanship. Joe Kennedy, the father had
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made his money bootlegging with the mafia. He really sided with the Nazis and
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with Hitler. Admired. Hitler said democracy was finished and that came out.
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So that didn't help Jeff Kay's image. Across the country, pockets of Kennedy
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dissenters watched his campaign very closely, but maybe none more so than one resident
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of the tiny community of Belmont in New Hampshire. The town of balmonded us
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about less white people just couldn't afford anything about us. So it was very
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much a mixed neighborhood, but certainly a residential neighborhood. On the outskirts of
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town, reclaimed by Woodland is a crumbling house, a last remnant of the
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life of one of Kennedy's greatest and perhaps one of his most dangerous detractors.
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Earl Sweeney was a young police sergeant back in nineteen sixty and remembers the occupant
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of the house very well. He lived alone, by himself. I don't
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know if he was a widower or if he ever was married, but he
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didn't, you know, take great care of the house or anything. He
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was a medium height gentleman. He had a very dour expression on his face.
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I never saw him smile. He always looked like he was frowning or
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unhappy about something. He had a big shock of white hair. The possessions
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that haunt the remains of the decaying home give little away. They offer no
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real clues as to why, in the fall of nineteen sixty the occupant packed
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up and left. Can we come in? Neighbors are still able to recall
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a secretive man who wanted prying eyes kept away. He kept to himself pretty
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much. He planted them all in that old stop that's going around a lot
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over there, all black bushes to keep us from going, people from going
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through. The reclusive figure who lived in the house was seventy three year old
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Richard Pavlik, a retired postal worker. Pavlick was a familiar face around town
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to Earl Sweeney, and he was known as a troublemaker with a bad temper.
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When I came on the police for us, I became to know him
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as a rabble rouser. I guess you might call it someone who was not
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happy with local government. He would go to town meeting. He would always
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speak generally against something. It was almost like a self winding watch. The
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more he spoke, the more passionate he became. Havlick Strong views on what
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he deemed to be rogue politics and politicians saw him turn his attention to John
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F. Kennedy in the spring of nineteen sixty. I would not run hard
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if in any way I didn't feel that I could do the job. I
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come here today saying that I think. Pavlick was by now being very vocal
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around town about his contempt for Kennedy, and his violent temper was increasingly coming
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to the four in daily life, giving the authorities cause for concern. On
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one occasion, he became angry at the Vocal Power Company because they were going
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to shut off his electricity. He felt that the power company was sending something
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through the wires was harmful to people, would affect their brains. He was
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very upset and shouting and red in the face, and he was threatening he
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was going to shoot the man from the Paul company. These kind of run
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ins with the locals led to Pablic's increased isolation from the community and society itself.
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By late August of nineteen sixty, Kennedy was still lagging behind Nixon in
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the polls, but all that was to change little more than a month later.
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On the twenty sixth of September, the two men went head to head
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in their first televised debates of issues in the current political campaign by the two
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major candidates for the presidency. Pablock watched on as the young pretender outplayed Nixon
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in a confident and coherent display that overnight would see Kennedy turn the tables on
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his rival. If we are moving ahead, then I think freedom will be
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secure around the world. If we fail, then freedom fail. During the
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coming weeks, as Kennedy and Nixon continued to slug it out on television,
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Pavlick began venting his increasingly vitriolic views. Pope John twenty third formerly announces the
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convocation of an Ecumenical Council. His concerns about any corruption stoked by Joe Kennedy
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were worsened by a hatred for Kennedy's Catholic faith and the church itself. He
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felt that if Kennedy was elected president, that the Pope would be actually running
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the country from Rome instead of the White House running it. Pavlick began to
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obsess over the election campaign, gathering press clippings that he displayed on the wall
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of his home. Kennedy evoked a certain kind of deep hatred by a certain
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segment of the population who didn't just opposed his policies, but really kind of
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demonized him. Pavlick now believed he was duty bound to do something to stop
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Kennedy from taking control of the country. But few could ever have anticipated his
18:12
plot, or that he would use a symbol of the American dream, his
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beloved Buick, to create the ultimate nightmare, the death of a president.
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In the fall of nineteen sixty, John F. Kennedy was deep into his
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campaign against Nixon to win the race for the White House and we go.
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But as Kennedy traveled the length and breadth of the country bidding to win support
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in the backwoods of New England, there was one man who would not be
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voting for him. Richard Pavlick had formed a personal vendetta against Kennedy, one
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that was about to take a very deadly turn. A reclusive man by nature,
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Pablock had no friends, but, perhaps because he had been a postal
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worker himself, once he made an unlikely, if unwilling confidante for his darkest
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thoughts in the form of the town's postmaster, mister Thomas Murphy. He came
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into the post office quite often, and he always had something crazy to say
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or what he was going to do. Nobody could have predicted what was to
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come next, But as Kennedy's popularity grew, Havlick began turning his heartfelt hatred
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for the man into a hard cooked plan to prevent him from ever being sworn
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into office. Mister Thomas Murphy, the postmaster, asked if he could speak
19:51
to me privately, and he told me that when John F. Kennedy first
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ran for president that mister Pavlick became very upset. He had made apparently a
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couple of comments that if he gets elected, somebody should shoot the bastard.
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A hotly contested election campaign. Oh, that's what Senator John F. Kennedy,
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in the choice of his government as a party poor president about the United
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State. On November eighth, nineteen sixty Kennedy clinched a hard fought victory,
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and enraged Pavlick was about to turn empty threats into something more deadly. Well.
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The last time he went into the post office, he said, you
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probably won't see me again, but you'll hear of me. But despite owning
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a firearm, Pavlick wasn't intending to shoot Kennedy. He had more explosive plans.
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Pablic went to a hardware store and purchased dynamite, detonation cord, a
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trigger switch, a battery, and exploding caps. Was building a bomb,
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but it was his beloved Buick that formed the centerpiece of his master plan.
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Havlick was a First World War Army veteran and had experimented with dynamite both in
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his backyard and on an empty lot in Florida. Havlick rigged the trunk of
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the buick with a handful of sticks of grade two dynamite used in the construction
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and mining industry. Public very much meets the prototype of what we consider as
21:40
a suicide bomber. The dynamite had blasting caps attached to them that were fused
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with copper wire and attached to a battery. It's try to clear us and
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from the outset he wanted to kill himself. He then drilled holes in the
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rear wheel wells of the buick. The intent of the bombing itself is to
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evoke some sort of political change. Through these, he threaded the detonating chord,
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which was attached via the blasting gaps to the dynamite. The wire was
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long enough to reach the passenger seat, where it was attached to a detonation
22:22
switch. With the car now a mobile bomb, all Pablic had to do
22:27
was find the right moment to drive at Kennedy, detonate the device, and
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send himself down in history as the man who murdered a president For an individual
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he typically hasn't engaged in terrorist attacks before. That takes a great deal of
22:48
rationality to be able to plan, strategize, and ultimately take part in a
22:53
solo terrorist attime. With his car bomb built, Ablick was now ready to
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hit the road and hunt Kennedy down. He left town rather abruptly in his
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old Bulick. That would be the last time many of the residents of Belmont
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would ever see him. Hordes of people turned out to celebrate wherever Kennedy went,
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but hidden among the crowds on many occasions was the shambling figure of Pavlik,
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who watched every move the President elect made. News reports kept him informed
23:37
of Kennedy's movements and Over the next ten days, he clocked up over fifteen
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hundred miles in his car, keeping up with him with the Buick packed with
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dynamite. Pavlick was looking for a suitable place to attack Kennedy, who at
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times made himself an easy target running into crowds and running in an open top
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car. Maybe Kennedy fairly vulnerable when you're out on a campaign trail. They
24:11
have to get out and shake hands and hug babies, and we were always
24:17
concerned. It was just something that we had to adapt to. At this
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stage, Pavlic was still not on the radar of the authorities as posing a
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lethal threat to Kennedy, but that was to change, and all because he
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couldn't resist maintaining contact with his old friend Thomas Murphy. Pavlic sent the postmaster
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a postcard from every pit stop he made. On reading them, Murphy began
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fearing the worst. I have the inner irope here I die someplace in Florida.
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You will read about it, perhaps within three weeks. I came down
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to die. You will see it on TV. The quiet and unassuming mister
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Murphy could not have realized just how he chose to react now to Pavlick's rambling
25:07
postcards could mean the difference between life and death for John F. Kennedy,
25:25
With his buick primed as a car bomb. In the ten days since leaving
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his hometown of Belmont, Pavlick had been looking for an opportunity to launch his
25:33
suicide attack against Kennedy, but stalking the president elect on his celebration trail was
25:41
proving to be a frustrating experience. Kennedy was constantly on the move and never
25:52
in the same place twice, meaning Pavlick couldn't lock his target down. But
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all that changed when JFK arrived in the wealthy enclave of Palm Beach, Florida
26:07
for a vacation. Joe Kennedy, the father and Rose Kennedy, had had
26:11
a home on Palm Beach, and JFK would visit and during his presidency that
26:18
was considered the Florida White House. But what Pablic had in mind would turn
26:23
this playground of the rich and famous into a graveyard. Pablic had made his
26:38
base at a motel a few miles from where the Kennedy's lived. On the
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morning of December eleventh, he awoke early to write one final farewell postcard to
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Thomas Murphy. Getting into his car, he headed straight to the Kennedy's home
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on No Ocean Boulevard. Parking outside, he waited and watched Kennedy was readying
27:08
the family for church. For the first time Pavlick's quarry was in his range.
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All JFK had to do now was stepped outside the door, but the
27:22
battered buick drew the unwanted attention of Special Agent Ed Tucker. He had parked
27:29
his car up about two or three hundred yards from the main entrance into the
27:33
Kennedy property in Palm Beach. I mentioned it to another agent. I said
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that car has been up there for quite a while. So we advised the
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Florida State Police Detail and the Palm Beach Police Department that we were suspicious of
27:59
its car. Previously classified documents suggests Pablick had a change of heart when he
28:11
saw Jackie and the baby Caroline. Allegedly, he decided not to do it
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there. Jerry Blaine, who was part of the Secret Service detail at the
28:22
time, is certain that pablic could have succeeded, that he'd not had a
28:29
change of heart and denated it. There was a little we could have done.
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We would have had a dead president elect, either because he was spooked
28:41
or changed his mind. Pablic fled the scene, returning to his motel,
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he waited for a few hours. At ten am, he once again left.
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His destination, this time was the Church of Saint Edward on North County
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Road, where he knew Kennedy would be attending mass. The Secret Service files
29:15
from the period revealed that Pablick surveyed the street and the building. He thought
29:21
Kennedy was vulnerable to a strike the moment he entered or exited the church.
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The buick pulled up outside the church just before the start of midday mass.
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The car was still primed with explosives, but there was no sign of Kennedy,
29:37
who was already inside taking his seat. Pablick now found himself unable to
29:44
just sit in the car and wait. In a chilling turn of events,
29:48
he decided to go inside the church to get a good look at the president
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elect. This elderly gentleman came in disheveled, and it was clear they wanted
30:03
to be nearer the president. It was a matter of me going up and
30:08
grabbing him by the elball and I said I think you'll find seats in the
30:14
back, and he turned around and walked to the exit. So I took
30:19
down a license plate and he drove away with his cover blown. Again,
30:26
Pavlick fled the scene. He retired to his motel room for the next few
30:37
days, where once again he put pen to paper. It wasn't long before
30:45
fifteen hundred miles away in Belmont, Thomas Murphy received a new flurry of postcards
30:51
from Pavlick. The tone was even more violent and volatile than usual. The
30:56
sole source of his vitriol, John f Entity watched the papers and radio for
31:02
what would have been done to you? You should change your moronic attitude.
31:07
Someone take you over, some mock calls and do a job on you.
31:11
But it won't be me, for I would have done it and should.
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He didn't know whether to tournement or not, but he decided maybe he better.
31:22
The postmaster said, I think he's following the president around, that he
31:26
may intend some harm. He's said on several occasions, said watch the news
31:30
because you're going to be hearing from me in a big way. So he
31:33
and I decided that I would report it to my chief, and then the
31:37
sheriff and I, because we're all working together on it, that we would
31:41
also report it to the Secret Service. Robert Rust was an assistant District attorney
31:47
in Palm Beach at the time, and along with his colleague John Marshall,
31:51
was alerted to the situation by a cable that was sent to all justice departments
31:56
in the region. John took the steps of notifying every police department to be
32:01
on the lookout for Richard Paul Pavlick. Havlick was now a marked man and
32:09
his Buick the most sought after car in the state. The FBI office decided
32:17
that the met the standard to submit a so called stop and hold out on
32:24
him. When Pablock ventured out of the motel the next day, he had
32:34
no idea that every cop in town was on the lookout for his Buick with
32:37
New Hampshire license plates. Leaving his motel, he drove over the bridge into
32:45
Palm Beach, once again, heading to the area where Kennedy was vacationing.
32:50
Having crossed the bridge, however, he was forced to slow to a halt.
32:57
A motorcycle cop was on his tail and lagged him down. Lester Free
33:04
arrests at Pavlick on one of the bridges from West Palm Beach to Palm Beach.
33:12
Pavlick's rambling written threats and speculation that this elderly man was in town to
33:16
kill JFK were not enough to throw the book at him. Robert Rust was
33:22
now responsible for finding a charge to detain pablic under so the alleged threat could
33:28
be investigated further. Pavlick had mentioned during an interview a vague comment about dynamite,
33:37
which he subsequently withdrew. Rust. Knew the threats to Kennedy's life already
33:42
made to the postmaster. Could it be that Pavlick planned to blow the president
33:45
up? Rust and his colleague John Marshall now set out to discover whether Pavlick
33:55
had bought explosives back in Belmont. We were both asking these hardware stores and
34:05
lumberyards if they'd sold any dynamite to Richard Paul Pavlock. On the thirty seventh
34:12
call, somebody says, oh, yeah, he was in here two three
34:15
weeks ago. We sold him ten sticks of dynamite, copper wire, a
34:20
battery, a switch, and electronic debtonators. I turned to John and I
34:30
said this son of a bitch is the real deal. But despite coming up
34:37
with this information, Rust still faced a major problem. Unbelievably, at the
34:44
time, there was no law in place against threatening the life of the president
34:47
elect. This meant Rust had to use every ounce of his legal ingenuity to
34:52
cook up a charge that would stick, and it came from an unlikely source.
35:00
When there were the Ku Klux planned bombings of black churches in the South,
35:06
and they created a misdemeanor that said that it was a criminal offense to
35:10
blow up a church, Rust's legal legwork meant that Pablic was charged with intent
35:16
to destroy the Church of Saint Edward. This paved the way for a warrant
35:22
to search Pablic's car and motel. Rust was convinced he would find incriminating evidence
35:28
that would force Pablic into a confession. We searched the car. The dynamites
35:37
in the trunk, the copper wire goes to the front seat. There's this
35:46
witch in the front seat. All he's got to do is push the switch
35:52
down and the dynamite blows up over the gas tank. So now we have
36:00
not just ten sticks of dynamite, we have nap palm. This is the
36:16
dynamite, the battery, the copper wire. This is certainly one of the
36:27
original world's car bombs, which would be enough to wipe out not only the
36:35
people in the church, but the church itself. The discovery of the dynamite
36:42
and the way it was rigged meant that Pavlick was now charged with being in
36:45
possession of a deadly weapon, but he still refused to confess to anything.
36:52
Rust now had to look for further incriminating evidence. With a search warrant in
36:57
hand, he took Pavlick back to his motiroom. As the search of the
37:01
room began, Russ could sense they might be onto something, although even the
37:07
smart young assistant Da didn't see what was coming. Next. I get down
37:13
on my hands and knees, pull a suitcase out from underneath the bed,
37:19
and I'll be damned. I opened it up, and here is the last
37:24
will and testament of Richard Paul Pavlock, describing exactly how he was going to
37:34
kill Kennedy. Wow, dynamite, there it is the whole nine yards.
37:44
I turned to Pavlock, I said, you really did come down here to
37:50
kill John F. Kennedy, didn't you? Eddie says yes, I did,
37:55
very proudly. This startling discovery was the compelling piece of evidence that Russ
38:01
needed to charge Pavlick to the citizens of the United States of America. I
38:07
am not the vicious person, as my actions may have indicated. There should
38:13
be only one law for all, not a religion made by the Catholic Church.
38:19
Now that the presidency was sold to the Kennedys, they must be stopped
38:23
by any and all means possible. If my actions have caused the decease of
38:30
the president elect, that a better qualified and experienced man will have to take
38:36
over. It's a functional madman committed to a cause. Pavlick may have written
38:45
what he believed to be a deathbed confession, but over fifty years later,
38:51
one big question remains. If he had pressed the trigger, would Richard Pavlick
38:55
and not Lee Harvey Oswald have gone down in history as the man who killed
39:01
JFK. The discovery that Pavlik's buick was rigged as a bomb, as well
39:16
as his written confession, saw him placed under lock and key. The judge
39:22
orders the prisoners sent to the Federal Prison Hospital in Springfield, Missouri. At
39:32
the time, speculation circulated that had he detonated the bomb, he would have
39:37
gone down in history as the man who killed JFK. Since his plot was
39:43
foiled before he could strike, it remained pure speculation. But today, over
39:51
fifty years later, a remarkable experiment is about to take place that may shed
39:57
new light on this dark chapter of his tree. At the Center for Ordnance
40:09
Science and Technology Testing ground in Wiltshire, England, explosive experts are hard at
40:15
work. A buick identical to Pabolics is about to be turned into a car
40:25
bomb. Explosives expert Trevor Lawrence, a veteran of conflicts in Serbia, Iraq
40:32
and Afghanistan, knows firsthand the damage suicide bombers can cause. The advantage of
40:38
a car over a person carrying a bomb. Obviously you can much much larger
40:43
charge, and you can hide the charge a lot easier, and the damage
40:45
they can cause absolutely massive. You can get it exactly to the optimum point,
40:51
huge structural damage and mass casualties. While the type of dynamite Pabolic purchased
40:55
is no longer manufactured, Trevor has sourced a modern day equivalent. They actually
41:01
explosive he used was a dynamite a commercially available blasting explosive. What we're going
41:06
to do is use a very very similar explosive to that. It's not to
41:09
listening, based the same as the explosive that he used, and again it's
41:14
a blasting explosive. Trevor places the primed explosives in the trunk. The experiment
41:22
will attempt to simulate what would have happened if Pavlick had put his plan into
41:27
play outside the Church of Saint Edward, driving toward the church when Kennedy was
41:31
leaving and walking down the steps. Pavlick would have driven straight at him.
41:37
When he was as close as he possibly could be. He would have detonated
41:40
the device, grave ranged people very right, Everything was in place. All
42:09
it took was the movement of his hand from the stirring wheel to the sweat.
42:43
As the smoke and debris clears, the experiment delivers a surprising result.
42:49
The mannequins are still standing. But why. Suicide bombers usually drive straight at
42:55
their targets. But the Buick engine block was so odd that it would have
43:00
absorbed the majority of the energy from the blast. So you can clearly see
43:07
here that's where the explosives were positioned, and that's the actual seat of the
43:10
explosion, and it's torn away. All this light superstructure has been thrown enormous
43:15
distances, but if you look at the fun the actual engine block is all
43:22
still in one piece, and that's not only defected the blast, but it
43:25
stopped anything forward from being torn off, so no major fragmentation has gone forward.
43:30
This could have meant that JFK and any Secret Service personnel around him would
43:36
have only had to protect themselves from relatively small pieces of debris. Watch the
43:42
explosion again. You can clearly see that because the explosives were in the trunk
43:47
of the car, heavy duty shrapnels such as the doors and the side panels,
43:52
are only thrown upward or outward, but significantly not in front of the
43:58
engine block. This meant the mannequins were left standing, and the President,
44:04
if he'd been in their place, may well have survived if he'd positioned it
44:09
a bit further forward, so the charge had been more adjacent to where they
44:13
were. Obscene no chance for them when they were purely by luck stood in
44:17
exactly the right place. But all is not quite as it seems. Even
44:22
without being hit by shrapnel. JFK could have faced mortal jeopardy from the blast.
44:28
Watched the explosion again. This rippling effect on the image is a shockwave
44:34
from the blast. This is known as blast over pressure, and depending on
44:38
how close you were standing to the point of detonation, it can prove to
44:43
be fatal. It don't appear to have been struck by any of the fragments,
44:46
but there's going to be an enormous amount of overpressure that does a lot
44:50
of damage to the human body. The power of the shock wave diminishes the
44:53
further you are away from the car, but scientific calculations carried out by Trevor
44:59
suggest there was a fifty percent chance that JFK would have sustained lethal blaust damage.
45:06
It's going to enter the body orifices, it's going to blow out their
45:08
ear drums, may have suffered internal damage, lung damage, internal bleeding,
45:13
and you also have this phenomenon called blast lung where the blast over pressure enters
45:17
the body and damages the alveola in the lung and what happens over time they
45:22
start to produce fluid and you basically turned the round and quite often people have
45:28
walked away from exposions seemed to be okay, and hours later have died,
45:31
and simply from fluid collecting in the lungs. But the only person certain to
45:37
have perished would have been Powerblic himself. Not such a happy tale for him.
45:43
He was right in the force, and there are various bits of him
45:46
scattered around here, which is kind of what would have happened in real life.
45:53
Kennedy was sworn into office on January twentieth, nineteen sixty one. If
46:00
Pablick had succeeded with his bomb plot, it would have been his name,
46:04
not Lee Harvey Oswald, that would have gone down in history as Kennedy's killer.
46:09
So why isn't Pablick's story better known? I've been waiting years for somebody
46:14
to come ask me. I've never been interviewed by anybody. Back in nineteen
46:20
sixty Robert Rush was the assistant district attorney who brought the original charges against Pablic.
46:25
He thinks he knows why the story isn't more widely known. John F.
46:30
Kennedy and the Secret Service were very worried about a copycat, so they
46:37
wanted a soft peddle any publicity about this that they don't want to describe the
46:46
effort in pull for fear that copycats will weeks or months later commit the same
46:53
crime. Successfully. Added to this, the New York air disaster, where
47:00
two planes collided over the city, took place on the day of Pavlick's arrest,
47:04
keeping him off most of the front pages. Two airliners collided and pel
47:08
a New York city in the worst air disaster of all time. It took
47:13
the greatest disaster force ever assembled in New York to conquer the blade. Even
47:17
with his bomb plot foiled and all but lost to history, the story of
47:22
Richard Pavlick was far from over, and in the years to follow it would
47:25
bring strange and surprising turns. Pavlick's audacious plot to kill Kennedy with a car
47:44
bomb may have been covered up by the White House, but the man himself
47:47
remained troublesome for the administration, in no small part because he was constantly proclaiming
47:54
his innocence despite the evidence stacked against him. With his metal competency in question,
48:01
a series of court hearing saw Pavlick shifted between metal hospitals and jailhouses.
48:07
At times, was declared insane at times, he was declared competent witnesses to
48:14
his supposed statements were not cross examined. That's a kind of torture. I
48:19
mean, he seems to have entered this kind of purgatorial limbo where no one
48:23
would take responsibility for any definitive judgment. For the next few years, Pavlick
48:30
became lost in the system. But in yet another strange twist to his story,
48:40
it was the actual assassination of jfk on November twenty second, nineteen sixty
48:45
three that set him on the path to freedom. At the request of the
48:52
Secret Service, Pavlick was interviewed by a doctor to gauge his response to the
48:57
news. He didn't infer any note reaction, and certainly nothing to suggest that
49:02
he was glad the president was dead. This proved to be a turning point.
49:07
Havlick was no longer deemed to be such a danger, and he was
49:10
moved to the new Hampshire Metal Hospital in his home state. Perhaps buoyed by
49:19
being back on home turf, Havlick became a prolific man of words, writing
49:23
letters to everyone and anyone who might be able to make him a freeman.
49:28
He wrote eighteen twenty eight thousand letters over this period. This is my last
49:35
letter asking for you all to fight to get me on a lawyer. I
49:38
did not threaten Kennedy. If I had wanted to kill Kennedy, why did
49:44
I let a good jazz go by? You now have my life in your
49:47
hands. It wasn't long before he got the ear of William Loebe, the
49:52
publisher of the Manchester Union Leader. Loebe was a close friend of Jimmy Hoffa.
49:58
Hoffa was boss of the powerful Teamster Union. A divisive character, he
50:02
was no lover of the Kennedy cause, and he saw taking on Pavlick's case
50:07
as well as paying his legal fees, as a way of smearing the Kennedy
50:12
name. John Marshall tells me that Jimmy Hoffe has arranged to hire the lawyers
50:20
to try and get Pavlick out of the New Hampshire Insane Asylum that published a
50:25
series of articles that made Pavlock look like a choir boy. And after a
50:30
series of news articles and legal proceedings, on December thirteenth, nineteen sixty six,
50:37
Pavlick was let go from the Concord Insane Asylum as a freeman. Mister
50:44
Pavlick was eventually released took an apartment in the city of Manchester. During his
50:51
years of incarceration, Pavlick's hatred of JFK may well have quelled, but it
50:55
was to be replaced by a new figure of contempt, his one time friend
51:01
Thomas Murphy, the postmaster, whom he discovered had been responsible for alerting the
51:07
Secret Service to the bomb plot. Mister Murphy had a number of children,
51:13
and he was very concerned. Mister Pavlick was saying, you know, I
51:19
understand you've got an award from a postal service for turning me in, and
51:22
one of these days I'll come and see you. And this really concerned the
51:29
postmaster. The drive to Belmont and park from the Murphy residence and be staring
51:38
at the house. He'd sit for hours on end parked outside the Murphy household,
51:45
just watching the family come and go. There was no law at the
51:47
time against stalking or harassment, so Pavlick's intimidating behavior was perfectly legal. Was
51:55
very very terrifying to them. My husband felt his family was threatened, and
52:04
I think that's probably why we didn't tell the girls too much about it.
52:07
We didn't want to scale them. I recall when I was growing up,
52:14
anytime I heard Pavlick's name, I would I would be very afraid. I
52:17
just thought he was really bad and he would. It would scare me when
52:21
I'd hear his name. Richard Pavlick died on November eleventh, nineteen seventy five,
52:30
aged eighty eight. He may now just be a curious footnote in history,
52:34
the man who could have killed JFK. But if he had succeeded,
52:39
history may have taken a very different path. If TFK had been assassinated earlier
52:47
by public I think we would see some different decisions. I don't know how
52:53
Johnson would have handled the Cuban missile crisis, whether he would have been even
52:59
more blog rhymes, but there's no question that history would have been changed if
53:07
the assassination had taken place. But to those who knew Pablic, both the
53:12
man and his actions continue to leave a lasting mark on their lives. Well.
53:17
I think he was an unfortunate soul, a very touched soul, and
53:22
I will remember as such, and just very thankful that the postmaster did do
53:30
what he'd do and observed what he observed I considered Dad a hero because he
53:35
definitely could have saved President's life. Definitely proud of my father. And if
53:42
anyone is in any doubt that President Kennedy was grateful, they only need ask
53:46
former State Attorney Robert Rust, who has a very special memento. I got
53:57
this within several months after the arrest of Pavlic Mister Robert Rost with very best
54:06
wishous John F. Kennedy plus is heard from Dallas, Texas. The flash
54:22
apparently official. President Kennedy died at one pm Central Standard time two o'clock Eastern
54:30
Standard Time, some thirty eight minutes ago. When that street don't fors the
55:19
three the leader of the free world, it's to pro se a being the
55:30
window that he was playing all chill, that everyone was do ground. She's
55:43
a man ad. Don't believe for one that I tell you he s the
56:04
be the life and to tell you the biggest that you takin Yet they do
56:19
by waiting. All was so war the trumper rup and be gone the trouper
56:40
the pa I do with all and they got simple song. Don't be one
56:52
tell you hep be down the that you champain wait t WAITI situation of my
57:34
rain from me A boy can of him. We caught him head and he
57:39
felt me down and back head of his card one was on his head,
57:44
and the canny cried, hold on down the the biggest matt can ye ain't
58:19
the rim alway? I'm aware always I get a CAPTI