Wanda and Hank Killam
Arch Stanton
the Report index), a long time acquaintance and former employee of Jack
Ruby. According to "Coincidence or Conspiracy?", p. 580, "In the early
morning hours of March 17, 1964, Hank Killam was found dead in Pensacola
Florida, where he had been visiting his mother. Mrs. Wanda Joyce Killam's
husband had been found lying on a sidewalk with a slashed jugular vein. A
store window beside Killam's body had been broken. Pensacola police -- and
subsequently the coroner -- concluded that Killam had probably been killed
by accidently falling into the window, being knocked unconscious by the
glass, and then bleeding to death."
So what, you say. These things happen.
Well, it seems that Wanda Killam was friends with a man named John Carter
who just happened to live at 1026 N. Beckley at the same time Oswald did.
The WR (Bantam paperback ed. p. 339) states, "Carter stated that he had not
heard of Ruby until Oswald was shot, HAD TALKED BRIEFLY WITH OSWALD ONLY
ONCE OR TWICE, and had never heard Oswald mention Ruby or the Carousel Club.
The Commission has no reason to disbelieve either Mrs. Killam or Mr.
Carter." [emphasis added - AS]
Leaving aside the Commission's standards for believing or disbelieving
people, and leaving aside the question of whether Carter knew Wanda's
husband Hank, and leaving aside the question of what Hank did for a living,
and leaving aside the question of who HE knew and hung around with, and
leaving aside the question of what John Carter did for a living and who HE
knew and hung around with, and leaving aside the question of how he came to
be living at that particular place at that particular time, and leaving
aside the question of how he came to be acquainted with Mrs. Killam in the
first place, since she stated that Carter had never visited the Carousel
Club and didn't know Jack Ruby.............[AAAARRRRRRRGH!!!!!!]
............the Report paraphrases Mrs. Killam's interview with "an agent of
the FBI" (unidentified!). It also quotes Carter DIRECTLY ("Carter stated").
So who did Carter talk directly to? Did the FBI interview him? If so, is
there a record of it? There is NO source citation in the Report either for
Killam's FBI interview (!!!!) or Carter's "statement". Where did this
information come from? What ever happened to these folks, John Carter and
Wanda Killam?
AS
CurtJester
Arch, while I don't have any answers to some of your desiring
questions, I do have some added info here from David Scheim's book,
'Contract on America'. He has a specific piece on Hank Killam and
will quote from his book from pgs. 33-34.
Hank Killam
The Warren Commission specuted that "one conceivable association"
between Ruby and Oswald
was through John Carter, a boarder at 1026
North Beckley Avenue while Oswald lived there.
Carter was friendly with Wanda Joyce Killam,
who had known Jack Ruby since shortly after
he moved to Dallas in 1947 and worked for him
from July 1963 to early November 1963.*
In the middle of this possible Ruby-Oswald link was Hank Killam,
Wanda's husband, who had worked as a house painter with John Carter.**
On March 17, 1964, Hank Killam was found dead, his throat cut amid
the shattered glass of a department store window in Pensacola,
Florida.*** His death became the subject of a nationally publicized
investigation in 1967 by County Solicitor Harper,**** during which
members of Killam's family were questioned. According to his brother
Earl, Hank said he had left Dallas because he was "constantly
questioned by 'agents' or 'plotters'."****** He had "moved to
Pensacola, then Tampa, then back to Pensacola to escape these agents'"
******* Earl Killam told reporters that two days before Hank's death,
Hank had told him, "I'm a dead man, I've run as far as I'm going to
run." ******** And Hank's mother related that at 4 a.m. on the day of
his death, Hank received a call at her home. ********* He dressed and
left the house after which she "heard a car drive off....although [he]
did not own a car." **********
The police ruled the death a suicide, "the local coroner an
accident". *********** But Hank's wife felt that suicide was
unlikely, ************ and his brother Earl remarked, "Did you ever of
a man committing suicide by jumping through a plate glass window?"
*************
*WR 363.
**New York Times, 2/23/67, p.22, CE 2882
***NY Times, 2/23/67, p.22, Jones, vol. 1, pg. 8: Jones vol. II, pg.
2
****NY Times. 2/23/67, p. 22
*****Ibid.
******Ibid.
*******Ibid.
********Ibid.
*********Ibid.
**********Ibid.
***********Jones, vol II. p. 2
************NY Times, 2/23/67, p. 22
************Ibid.
From Jim Marr's on 'Convenient Deaths' from Crossfire pg. 555.
In the three-year period which followed the murder of President
Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald, 18 material witnesses died--six by
gunfire, three in motor accidents, two by suicide, one from a cut
throat, one from a karate chop to the neck, five from natural causes.
An actuary, engaged by the London Sunday Times, concluded that on
November 22, 1963, the odds against these witnesses being dead by
February 1967, were one hundred thouand trillion to one.
CJ
Arch Stanton
friends" according to the FBI report of its interview with Wanda. Also that
Hank kept coming to the Carousel Club while Wanda was employed there. It
doesn't say that Hank therefore knew Ruby. It doesn't say he didn't, either.
AS
CurtJester <curtj...@webtv.net> wrote in message
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