Jim Braden was taken into custody as a material witness in a gambling case in 1948, a
Raymond
Camden, New Jersey
Camden, New Jersey
Camden, N.J. My hometown, the place where I was born and raized, the
son of Camden police officer, World War II combat hero and detective
in on the capture of Howard Unruh, one of the first, if not the first
contemporary, post-war spree killer.
Besides being my hometown Camden NJ was also the home of Walt Whitman,
Jersey Joe Walcott, Angelo Erracatti and Marco Reginelli, the
Philadelphia mob boss before Angelo Bruno.
Camden is also where Jim Braden was taken into custody as a material
witness in a gambling case in 1948, an arrest report that was withheld
from TV journalist Peter Noyes when he requested it while working on a
book on the assassination of JFK.
Braden it seems, was also taken into custody as a suspicious person at
the scene of President Kennedy's murder in Dallas in 1963, and his
1948 arrest in Camden came to the attention of Noyes and is mentioned
in his book, A Legacy of Doubt (1976). Because they didn't respond to
his request, Noyes claimed that the Camden police department were
controlled by the mob.
Through the efforts of my father I obtained Braden's 1948 Camden
arrest report and shared it with other researchers, including Noyes,
who mentioned it to G. Robert Blakey, the second chief counsel to the
House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA).
"Legacy of Doubt" by Peter Noyes was published in 1973 (Pinnacle
Books, Oct. 1973) in a pulp paperback with a cover that screamed “A
JOURNALISTIC BOMBSHELL! – Startling new evidence about the JFK and RFK
deaths!”
Noyes, a veteran CBS TV producer and journalist wrote, “The
assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy in Dallas, Texas,
left a legacy of doubt in the minds of every American who lived
through those horrifying moments in Dealey Plaza. For a time, the very
structure of the Republic seemed threatened…”
Noyes book reads like an old fashioned Sam Spade detective novel,
complete with gangsters, dames and cops on the take, as he describes
meeting former FBI agent Bill Turner, who unsuccessfully tries to get
Noyes and CBS to air his bootleg copy of the Zapruder film. On his way
out the door, Turner throws Noyes a bone – check out this guy – Jim
Braden, who reportedly lived in Beverly Hills and was taken into
custody at Dealey Plaza.
Noyes went to the official records and discovered that on September
10, 1963, Eugene Hale Brading notified the motor vehicle department
that he changed his name to Jim Braden and requested new
identification under that name.
When Noyes asked then LAPD Chief of Detectives Bob Houghton about
Eugene Hale Brading, and he asked the FBI (File #799431), they learned
that EH Brading was a member of the La Costa Country Club and was in
the vicinity of the Ambassador Hotel when RFK was murdered, besides
being at Dealey Plaza.
As Noyes reports in his book, “Houghton,…eventually satisfied himself
after several thousand man-hours of investigation that Eugene Hale
Brading was not connected with the assassination of Senator Robert
Kennedy. Shortly after Houghton began working on the RFK case, he
signed a contract with Random House to write a book about the
assassination called ‘Special Unit Senator.’ That was the name
Houghton had given the investigating task force looking into Robert
Kennedy’s murder. In the police department, the task force was better
known as the SUS detail…”
“The SUS task force compiled a comprehensive report on Gene Brading,”
wrote Noyes, “then turned it over to the FBI. The investigators who
made the report stressed to me that they regarded it as a matter of
great importance and fully anticipated it would be turned over to U.S.
Attorney Matt Byrne. Their paramount interest, or so they told me, was
in the possible role organized crime might have played in the JFK
assassination. By coincidence, at that time Matt Byrne’s office was
conducting an extensive investigation of the Mafia. And I was quite
interested in Byrne’s decision to subpoena one of the most powerful
figures in the Cosa Nostra, the tough and vicious Carlos Marcello, of
New Orleans, who had made no secret of his contempt and hatred for
both John and Robert Kennedy.”
“But Byrne always insisted to me that he was never given the SUS
report on Brading by the FBI…..” note Noyes. “Despite the official
roadblocks set up by the FBI there was a great body of information
available.”
From various sources, Noyes pieced together some basic background:
“Eugene Hale Brading was one of three sons born to Charles and Millie
Brading, a relatively poor but hard-working couple from the plains of
Kansas. It was a closely knit family, and many years later, when
Brading acquired a degree of affluence, he purchased a retirement home
for his parents in the coastal cit of Santa Barbara, California.”
“Brading was only nineteen when hew as first sentenced to prison in
Kansas for burglary in 1934…paroled…in 1938, (he) proceeded to moved
to a much faster paced environment in Miami, Florida, where he quickly
became associated with the hoodlum element. On February 24, 1941 he
was arrested in Miami for running a gambling house. He was fined $200
after being convicted of bookmaking, and was given a suspended six-
month jail sentence. On three different occasions he was arrested in
Florida for selling World War II gasoline-ration coupons on the black
market. The third time he was sentenced to one year in jail.”
“Intelligence information indicted that Brading was slowly weaving his
way into the mob’s hierarchy and that he was a man who was going
places. In 1948 while using the alias of Harry Eugene Bradley, he was
arrested in Camden, New Jersey, as a material witness in a criminal
case. (Camden police have since refused to divulge any details
concerning that arrest, but it must be noted that there was
considerable organized crime in the Camden area at the time, and
Brading’s sudden appearance there came as no surprise to investigators
who have studied his background.)…” [Legacy of Doubt, p. 40]
On reading that last passage, I gave Noyes’ book to my father, then a
Lieutenant in the Camden, N.J. Police Department. While today Camden
is recognized as America’s “most dangerous” city, it was not so then –
in 1948, though organized crime and the Syndicate were getting
organized. The Philadelphia “family,” later to be led by Angelo Bruno,
was in 1948 headed by Marco Riginelli, who lived in the Walt Whitman
Hotel in Camden. Then a close-knit operation, gambling, booze,
prostitution and drugs were the main interests in a geographic area
that encompassed Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey, from Trenton to
Atlantic City.
The next day my father handed me the 1948 Camden PD arrest file on
“Harry Eugene Bradley” also known as Eugene Hale Brading, including a
front and side mug shot, details of the arrest and a three page rap
sheet of previous arrests, and an attachment from the FBI requesting
they be notified of any information about this individual.
Like he would be at Dealey Plaza as Jim Braden, Brading was taken into
custody as a material witness, though in the Camden incident, he
wouldn’t be asked to just make a statement and be released on his own
recognizance, but would be mug shot, fingerprinted and held as a
witness in a gambling operation of Dominic Mattia. I recognized the
name of the arresting officer – Mr. Bobiac, who also ran a TV repair
shop, but he had since past away.
Curious, I looked up Dominic Mattia in the phone book and found he
lived in a new development in nearby Cherry Hill. Unabashed, I drover
over and knocked on his door. When Mattia answered, and I asked him if
he recalled the 1948 arrest in Camden, he did. Mattia explained that
there was a card game going, a high stakes card game that was raided,
and Mattia and Brading were just two of the guys in the room at the
time. “It was a coincidence we were together,” Mattia said.
I was in my early 20s at the time and it was one of my first forays
into the investigation of the assassination of President Kennedy.
Making copies of Jim Braden’s Camden arrest file, I sent one to Peter
Noyes, another to the Assassination Archives and Research Center in DC
and others to a few independent researchers who I knew were
interested. Later, in 1977, I hand delivered a copy to the
Philadelphia law office of Richard Sprague, when he was appointed the
first chief counsel to the HSCA, and I learned that he had his staff
read Noyes’ book.
I knew Jim Braden’s testimony before the HSCA would be important,
mainly because of his movements, residency at the Cabana Hotel and
sharing an office in New Orleans on the same floor in the same
building (Pere Marquette) as G. Ray Gill. Since Jim Garrison obtained
the phone records of Gill’s office, and knew about some phone calls
that established a pattern of evidence, I mistakenly believed that it
would be properly investigated.
After Richard Sprague was forced out of the HSCA and G. Robert Blakely
was appointed chief counsel, I thought Blakely’s academic background
in the study of organized crime at Cornell, and his development of the
RICO Act as a prosecution tool, that the Braden angle would be
investigated.
When Braden was finally called to testify before the HSCA, he did so
in executive session, for two days, even though, as a reading of his
testimony shows, he wanted his story to be told so he could be
publicly exonerated. Instead, when the HSCA concluded its business, it
published a series of reports and exhibits, like the Warren
Commission, but then sealed the rest of its records for 50 years as
Congressional Records.
According to House Rule 36, all Congressional Records are sealed for
50 years, and Congress, unlike the CIA and every other branch of
government, exempted itself from the Freedom of Information Act
(FOIA).
After the HSCA folded up its tent and sealed its records, I got a
phone call from Michael Ewing, who worked with Blakely at the HSCA and
was co-authoring a book with Blakely on how JFK was killed by the mob.
I respected Ewing from his previous book, “Coincidence Or Conspiracy,”
profiles of the major players in the JFK assassination, including one
on Jim Braden, a book that he co-authored with Bernie Festerwald,
Esq., founder of the Assassination Archives and Research Center.
Ewing had been talking with Peter Noyes and learned that I had
obtained Jim Braden’s 1948 arrest report from the Camden, NJ PD, and
wanted a copy.
I explained I had given a copy to Sprague and the HSCA, but Ewing said
that Sprague didn’t turn over all his files to Blakely when he left,
and I said I was glad he didn’t because they would now be locked away
for 50 years. I did send him a copy, but made him aware of my anger at
the records being sealed.
Although Blakley said that he was content to “Rest on the judgment of
historians in 50 years,” others were not, and the JFK Act was passed
in 1992 that ordered the release to the public of all government
records related to the assassination of President Kennedy. The HSCA
records of their investigation of the assassination of Martin Luther
King, Jr., which included evidence of conspiracy, continues to be
withheld from the public.
In his testimony before the HSCA, Braden made it quite clear that he
wanted his story to be told in public, but his DC attorney at the time
does not know what became of him.
When I was in California, I checked in at La Costa Country Club, which
was open to the public, and the golf pro recalled Braden but didn’t
know where he went after being booted from the club. The address in
Atlanta where he was living when he testified before the HSCA was no
longer valid. The “Jim Braden” whose name and phone number are listed
in the LA phone book, is a black guy who is not the Jim Braden from
Dealey Plaza.
If Jim Braden is still alive, he would be in his upper 80s, probably
living near a golf course, possibly near Atlanta, or close to Santa
Barbara, California, where his mother was last known to be living.
It would be greatly appreciated if anyone could put me in contact with
Jim Braden, aka Edgar Eugene Brading, aka Harry Eugene, as I believe
he is still alive today.
http://www.jfkresearch.com/Gallery_4/pages/Jim_Braden_Mug_Shot.htm
JFKresearch Photo Gallery 4 / Jim_Braden_Mug_Shot
Posted by Bill Kelly at 7:28 PM
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