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The "Bledsoe
Document" Resurfaces!
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| Five years ago a triumvirate of Kennedy assassination
researchers claimed discovery of a document of such great importance
it required a press release. The found object was a photocopy of a
Dallas Police report in which a Mary E. Bledsoe charged J.R. Rubenstein
and Mr. O.H. Lee, a.k.a. Alek Hidel, with disturbing the peace. If
the aforementioned names do not ring a bell, then you may not be aware
of some of the marginal episodes of assassination lore. For those,
the event is probably meaningless. Of significance, however, was the
fact that the document was "discovered" among the personal papers
of Lee Oswald's mother, Marguerite. The Marguerite Oswald collection
is housed in the library on the campus of Texas Christian University
in Fort Worth.
A cursory reading of the press release showed it to be packed with suppositions, innuendoes and false claims. As a result, some researchers immediately dismissed the document as a hoax. Basically, the feeling was that if the report was accurate and known to Lee Oswald's very supportive mother, she would have made much of the inherent implications (i.e., Oswald and Ruby knew each other before the assassination.) Before reaching a personal conclusion, I decided to dig deeper and see if I could compare the document with others produced by the Dallas Police Department within the same time period. I felt there might be something of importance contained in the document. In the end I found the police report rife with errors and detailed my findings in A CTKA Story. I concluded my 1994 article with the following request, "It is my hope the authors will reply publicly, showing where my details or logic are inaccurate." Not one of the three chose to respond. I felt their lack of answers would result in rebukes from within the research community, but it was not to be. Instead, some individuals, who offered no evidentiary support for their claims, weighed in with their opinions. At any rate, while some members of the "discovery" party had moved on to chasing multiple Oswalds over the windswept plains of North Dakota, I worked on. Finally, in late September 1999, I got a break. A Kennedy assassination web surfer notified some friends, currently living in the Dallas area, about the controversy surrounding what has become known as the Bledsoe document. He did so because he understood they were the source of the police report. As a result, I was contacted by one of the gentlemen who created the document. You have read that last sentence correctly - a group of individuals put the police report together. It is a hoax. And now, as Paul Harvey would intone, "Here is the rest of the story." (1) Two people were involved in the creation of the police report. It was produced sometime in 1966. (2) They had little difficulty obtaining police report forms. Many people had access to the police department main floor, including other law enforcement representatives, average citizens, reporters and attorneys, to name but a few. The reports were NOT sequentially numbered, so none would be missed, and they consisted of a carbonized, multi-page, "snap out" set. The perpetrators of the hoax filled out the form using a manual typewriter. The keys had to be struck forcefully so the type would be legible on all copies. (3) The people responsible were fed up with the way the Dallas Police Department and some Dallas citizenry were being portrayed and pestered by what they considered self-appointed assassination "researchers." In particular, they were disturbed by some allegations made by attorney Mark Lane. (4) The men decided to play a trick on Lane. The planned to produce a bogus police report, send the original to Lane and wait for him to call a press conference. At the conference, they would produce their portions of the carbon set and embarrass Lane in front of the media. (5) They ultimately mailed the "report" to Lane, but it was returned with the envelope stamped "addressee unknown." (6) The men next discussed whom else they could "sucker" into believing the document to be genuine. They sent the report to Texas Warren Commission critic Penn Jones Jr. As far as the participants know, Jones received the report but did nothing with it. (7) Since the paper trail shows the original had been diverted from Lane to Penn Jones Jr., Penn or an associate must be responsible for someone turning the "report" over to Jim Garrison's staff. Garrison had a copy in 1967, although Mary Ferrell, who assisted Garrison for a time, has indicated neither Garrison nor any member of his staff believed the report was authentic. There this story would have ended had it not been for a group of researchers who decided to issue a press release 27 years later. They attempted to manipulate the media without offering any substantive proof of the legitimacy of their find. So now you may want to know why I believe the perpetrators of the hoax are not hoaxing me. · If you look at all copies of the document just below the heading GENERAL OFFENSE REPORT, you will find a series of numbers. They are 21-18-1-6-9-14-11. Convert these to their alphabetic counterparts and the message becomes U-R-A-FINK. The people who created the document insisted to me that this was a direct result of their attitude toward Mark Lane. · Of greater importance, those responsible for the hoax presented me with the snap out, yellow carbon copy that would normally be destined for the police property room. They retained all other parts of the set except the white original, which was sent to Penn Jones Jr. For all I know, it may still be among his papers. Dave Perry ~ November 8, 1999 |
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