Assassinations:
Miami link, Part I
JFK, KING: Dade
County links
Go
to Part II
[Reference: Miami Magazine, Volume
27, Number 11 September 1976. Posted here with permission
of the author]
Assassinations:
Miami link, Part I
JFK,
KING:
The
Dade County links
Is
it mere coincidence that a
Miami police informer was able to predict with astonishing
accuracy the
assassinations of both John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther
King?
Apparently, the FBI thought so
By
Dan Christensen
Nov. 9, 1963 – Miami Police tape-record a conversation in
which an
extreme right-wing political organizer accurately predicts
the
assassination of President John F. Kennedy just as it was
to happen 13
days later. The man said the President would be
killed by shots
fired "from an office building with a high-powered rifle."
Jan. 13, 1964 – The same man, using an alias, withdrawn
$12,000 from a
savings account at a now defunct bank in Provo,
Utah. The man,
who lived in Georgia, had opened the account the previous
July.
Nov. 1, 1963 – A Cuban exile walks into the Parrot Jungle
gift shop and
tells a female employee he hates the President and he
could "shoot
Kennedy between the eyes." He has a "friend named
Lee," he says,
"who is also a sharp-shooter," and that Lee spoke Russian
and German
and was living in either Texas or Mexico. (Lee
Harvey Oswald
spoke Russian, lived in Texas, and earlier in the fall had
been
traveling in Mexico.)
These intriguing incidents suggest the surreal atmosphere
permeating
Miami in 1963. Not only were many newly arrived
Cuban refugees
making raids on their homeland in attempts to overthrow
the regime of
Fidel Castro, but America's home-grown right-wing fanatics
were
conducting a last-gasp effort to head off the drive for
equal rights by
blacks. For both, the prospects seemed bleak, and
for both,
hatred focused on John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
To Cubans, Kennedy was the ultimate betrayer. He had
backed out
of supportive air strikes when a Cuban exile brigade
landed at the Bay
of Pigs, and he had knuckled under to Nikita Khrushchev in
1962 when he
pledged not to invade Cuba in return for removal of Soviet
missiles
from the island. Kennedy had committed himself and,
as long as he
lived, a return to Cuba would be impossible.
On the right-wing fringe, Kennedy was hated for other
reasons, mainly
his stand on integration. He was feared also as a
leader who was
setting the United States up for some nebulous takeover
conspiracy by
the United Nations and the despised Jews, extremist
documents show.
Miami Magazine's inquiry into the assassination began with
the Miami
Police tape-recording. Scattered references have
been made to the
recording since it was uncovered in 1967, most notably by
assassination
researcher Harold Weisberg who published the transcript in
his 1970
book "Frame-Up." Investigation of this incident led
to discovery
of the Parrot Jungle threat.
Circuit Judge Seymour Gelber, then an assistant to State
Attorney
Richard Gerstein, provided nearly all the initial
information about the
tape-recording. Not only did he save records and
memoranda from
the investigation, he kept a diary. The diary was
invaluable in
our research. Gerstein too has been totally
cooperative.
Their investigation, which culminated in the
tape-recording of Nov. 9,
1963, began in February 1962 after a series of local
bombings,
including an attack upon the home of Miami Herald editor
Don
Shoemaker. A few days after that bombing, Willie
Somersett, a
union organizer with extensive right-wing political ties
(he was a
Klansman), showed up at the Herald building to offer his
services as an
informer. Quickly, he began working for the Miami
police and the
Federal Bureau of Investigation. The police were
never advised of
his ties to the FBI. (Actually, he had worked for
the FBI, off
and on, for about a decade, it is now known). Over
the next
several months, Somersett imparted enough information to
state
investigators to enable them to arrest and convict several
of the
bombers.
After the bombing investigation, Somersett remained on the
payrolls of
both the city and the FBI, revealing extremist
activities. In
April 1963 he traveled to New Orleans for a meeting of the
Congress of
Freedom party. The COF, a confederation of
right-wing political
groups, still exists, acting, its leader Mary Cain of
Summit, Miss,
says, "to get patriot organizations together to discuss
the
issues." It was in New Orleans that Somersett hooked
up with an
old friend, Joseph A. Milteer, now deceased, the man who
later made the
tape-recorded threats against JFK.
Willie Agustus Somersett, at age 61 in 1963, was a
mountainous figure
who was beginning to feel the agony of afflictions that
eventually
would kill him. Dubbed agent ‘88' by Miami police,
if was said he
reminded one of an Oldsmobile 88. Gerstein described
him as "a
real Sidney Greenstreet type."
Somersett had lived in Miami for about four years by 1963,
sharing a
room in a semi-flophouse with his wife Peggy. He
managed his
union affairs out of the old Dolphin Hotel, headquarters
for his
pretentiously titled National Federation of Labor.
He died May 7,
1970, in Goldsboro, N.C., just a few miles from where he
had been born.
In an interesting sidelight to Somersett's death, his
closest friend in
Miami, George Brackett, received a mysterious call at 3
a.m. from a man
who claimed to be at Washington's Walter Reed
Hospital. The man,
who wouldn't identify himself, told Brackett of Willie's
death and said
he was calling because Brackett's name was on an emergency
card in
Somersett's wallet. Relatives say Somersett died in
North
Carolina.
Through the years Somersett had been associated with
right-wing
politics, but he disliked groups pressing for violence.
Why he became
an informer is uncertain. Money? Honor?
Patriotism? It could just have been his job.
Joseph A. Milteer, a wealthy rabble-rousing racist from
Quitman, Ga.,
devoted his life to right-wing causes, belonging to at
least four
ultra-conservative organizations: the National State's
Rights Party,
The White Citizen's Council, The Dixie Klan, and the
Constitution
Party. He rarely stayed at home, choosing instead to
traverse the
country attending meetings and calling on other true
believers.
At least once in 1963, he visited Dallas.
When Milteer was at home, he churned out reams of what he
and fellow
Georgians called "yellow sheets" in which he blasted
Kennedy, Jews,
Communists, the Un, local politicians and the federal
government.
He also sold tape-recorded speeches of notorious patriotic
zealots.
When he wasn't busy with politics, Milteer tried his hand
as a
mail-order salesman for various novelty items. And
he bootlegged
wine from a still in a shed in his backyard.
Milteer died Feb. 28, 1974, two days after his 72nd
birthday –
reportedly from burns inflicted when a gas heater in his
home
exploded. Several days later, a small cache of arms
and
ammunition was uncovered in his car.
Because of mysterious circumstances shrouding his death, I
went to
Quitman to explore Milteer's life in detail. Since
he had no
known relatives, his estate has remained in probate, his
dilapidated
Victorian home unexplored for two and half years.
Milteer lived like a packrat. Besides saving junk
mail and
trivial belongings of his dead parents, he kept carbon
copies of
letters he sent during his prolific career. Some
were
cryptic. Most were mild. All belied the
deadliness with
which he had spoken in Miami.
Since Milteer's death, the house has been ransacked
several
times. What was taken is unknown. A neighbor
told probate
Judge James R. Knight that she saw men in a truck with
Texas license
plates carting boxes of Milteer's belongings away.
The most fascinating evidence found at Milteer's home was
in a bankbook
tucked away amid piles of letters in his closet. The
savings
account, No. 115376 from the now-defunct Utah savings and
Loan
Association of Provo, Utah, was made out to one Samuel
Steven Story and
Mrs. C. C. Cofield. The address given was 212 South
Troupe St,
Valdosta, Ga., Mrs. Cofield's home. (Cofield had
been Milteer's
common-law wife for many years and lived with him until
her death in
1971). When the account was opened on July 31, 1963,
an initial
deposit of $5,000 was made. There followed bot two
others, one of
$5,000 and another of $2,000 on Aug. 20 and Sept. 24,
respectively. On Jan. 31, 1964, (52 days after the
assassination,) all $12,000 was withdrawn abruptly and the
account was
closed.
There is no doubt that Story was an alias for
Milteer. A letter
to the bank was found, typed on Milteer's "yellow sheets"
with Story's
signature which matched Milteer's'; along with it was
another letter to
the same bank, dated the same day, with Milteer's
signature.
Apparently he had an account under his own name as
well. There is
no evidence to indicate Milteer ever used an alias except
during that
brief, crucial period.
It is significant that with exception of a series of
invitations to
notables (George Wallace and Klan leader Robert Shelton)
to attend a
Constitution Party meeting in mid October, 1963, no
letters found
dealing with 1963 were found, despite detailed
correspondence for the
years before and after.
Unearthed amid the rubble of his decaying house was part
of a diary,
ostensibly by him, that briefly recounts events from July
8, 1963
through October 1, 1963. It mentions the trip to
Dallas and a
meeting with arch-conservative commentator Dan Smoot.
Unanswered questions about Milteer's death abound.
Apparently, he
was fatally burned Feb. 9, 1974 when a Coleman stove he
was using for
heat in his antiquated bathroom exploded. He died
two weeks later.
According to the death certificate, Milteer died of
"severe third
degree burns on both lower extremities." Marion
Maxwell the local
mortician, says, however, the burns he saw on Milteer's
body weren't
severe enough to have caused death. In fact, he said
they were
already partially healed. No autopsy was ever
performed.
Milteer himself mentions receiving burns similar to those
that
allegedly caused his death in an unfinished letter dated
Jan. 27, 1964:
"I had an accident wherein I knocked over a sauce pan of
hot water on
the floor into which I fell and the hot water burned the
small of my
back."
Milteer had attended the April 1963 meeting in New Orleans
as a
representative of the Dixie Klan, a notoriously violent
faction of the
KKK based in Chattanooga, Tenn. And advocated a
coordinated
assassination program that would eliminate a long list of
prominent
government officials and businessmen. He felt that
the "patriot"
organizations should act swiftly because Kennedy was on
the verge of
turning the U.S. government over to the United Nations.
Somersett, in recounting the meeting, said that the
visible leaders
didn't discuss violence but he said, "Not only Milteer,
but others said
they would start as soon as it was deemed necessary to
prevent the UN
from taking over the U.S. . . .They felt that the
President of the U.S.
or the Congress was handling over the United States to the
UN, that
these people were the conspirators, and (that) they should
be killed
immediately. I am satisfied Milteer is one of the
high command in
the policy group."
Earlier Somersett had said of Milteer. "He is one of
the most violent-minded men in the country."
Several times during his debriefing, Somersett
referred to "the
national hidden hand of this organization." He
theorized that it
included Milteer, several admirals and ex-generals and
assorted
right-wing big shots.
As he gave the testimony about New Orleans, Somersett was
earning
respect and credibility with Miami authorities. The
FBI, in its
documents about the incidents, called Somersett "a source
who has
furnished reliable information in the past." Gelber
characterized
his informant in even more respectful terms: "Somersett
frequently uses
the expression ‘the most violent man I know' in describing
a particular
person (Milteer) . . . I am beginning to suspect he is
intuitively
separating the talkers from the doers. Whereas we
can only guess,
Somersett obviously senses who among them spells danger."
Somersett smelled danger at the COF meeting. Toward
the end of
the questioning about his New Orleans trip, he said, "If
the Congress
of the U.S. doesn't cut the UN out, if it continues that
way for twelve
months, there has got to be some violence. You could
tell if you
had been there and stood around and seen the people, the
expression on
their faces, heard the way they talked. Those people
are people
of means, financially, and educationally. They are
not there just
for an ice cream party. This can't continue on, with
the people
financing these things, something must happen. I
will bet my head
on a chopping block there will be some people killed by
this time next
year and it will be in high places."
Somersett encountered Milteer again in early October at a
meeting in
Vero Beach. At that meeting, Milteer again proposed
violence and
announced that "the National States Rights Party is going
to move in
Miami fast."
At Vero Beach, Milteer promoted an impending convention of
the
Constitution Party the following week in
Indianapolis. As a
member of that group's board of directors, Milteer helped
formulate
"plans to put an end to the Kennedy, King (Martin Luther),
Khrushchev
dictatorship over our nation."
Gelber's diary reveals that "before they parted, Milteer
confided to
Somersett he was certain that Dixie Klan Imperial Wizard
Jack Brown. .
. . either placed the bomb, or engineered the act, which
caused the
death of four children in the Birmingham church
bombing." (The
case remains unsolved today.)
In Indianapolis, Milteer persisted in calling for violent
action.
Jack Brown, the man Milteer had blamed for the Birmingham
bombing, was
there. According to Somersett and another informant,
Stanley
Pospisil, Brown implicated himself in the Birmingham
bombing, and was
"virtually bragging about this role there." Brown,
according to
Harold Weisberg, was a gas station operator extremely
active in the
Klan. "He was reported to be a ‘contact man' for the
United White
Party; to have been an NSRP presidential elector, to have
died of a
heart attack in 1965."
After the Indianapolis meeting, Gelber suggested Milteer
be tape-recorded during his upcoming visit to Miami.
Milteer arrived in town the weekend of Nov. 9 and
scheduled breakfast
with Sommersett at his apartment. Detective Everett
Kay,
Somersett's police contact, set up a tape-recorder in a
broom closet
off the kitchen early, then left. Somersett was to
plug the
recorder in when Milteer knocked on the door.
The well laid plans of the Miami PD almost went awry when
Milteer
showed up unexpectedly and caught Somersett outside the
apartment. Willie kept his cool, however, and
plugged the
tape-recorder in as he looked at the nearby refrigerator,
saying.
"This damn box gets all frosted up if I let is run
overnight. I
just pull the plug at night and put it back in the
morning." With
that, he and Milteer began their notorious talk.
As Somersett led his duped friend through a series of
loaded questions,
startling revelations emerged. Not only did Milteer
implicate
Brown in the church bombing again, he also told how Brown
had tried to
kill Martin Luther King. "He followed him for miles
and miles,
and couldn't get close enough to hit him."
Then he dropped his tape-recorded bombshell.
Somersett: . . . I think Kennedy is coming here on the
18th . . . to make some kind of speech. . . I imagine it
will be on TV.
Milteer: You can bet your bottom dollar he is going to
have a lot to say about the Cubans. There are so
many of them here.
Somersett: Yeah, well, he will have a thousand
bodyguards. Don't worry about that.
Milteer: The more bodyguards he has the easier it is to
get him.
Somersett: What?
Milteer: The more bodyguards he has the more easier it is
to get him.
Somersett: Well, how in the hell do you figure would be
the best way to get him?
Milteer: From an office building with a high-powered
rifle. How
many people does he have going around who look just like
him? Do you know about that?
Somersett: No, I never heard he had anybody.
Milteer: He has about fifteen. Whenever he goes
anyplace, he knows he is a marked man?
Somersett: You think he knows he is a marked man?
Milteer: Sure he does.
Somersett: They are really going to try to kill him?
Milteer: Oh, yeah, it is in the working. Brown
himself, Brown is
just as likely to get him as anybody in the world.
He hasn't said
so, but he tried to get Martin Luther King.
After a few more minutes of conversation, Somersett again
spoke of assassination.
Somersett: . . . Hitting this Kennedy is going to be a
hard
proposition, I tell you. I believe you may have
figured out a way
to get him, the office building and all that. I
don't know how
the Secret Service agents cover all them office buildings
everywhere he
is going. Do you know whether they do that or not?
Milteer: Well, if they have any suspicion they do that, of
course. But without suspicion, chances are that they
wouldn't. You take there in Washington. This
is the wrong
time of the year, but in pleasant whether, he comes out on
the veranda
and somebody could be in a hotel room across the way and
pick him off
just like that.
Somersett: Is that right?
Milteer: Sure, disassemble a gun. You don't have to
take a gun up
there, you can take it up in pieces. All those guns
come knock
down. You can take them apart.
Before the end of the tape, the conversation returns to
Kennedy.
Milteer: Well, we are going to have to get nasty. . .
Somersett: Yeah, get nasty.
Milteer: We have got to be ready, we have got to be
sitting on go, too.
Somersett: Yeah, that is right.
Milteer: There ain't any countdown to it, we have just got
to be
sitting on go. Countdown, they can move in on you,
and go they
can't. Countdown is all right for a slow prepared
operation. But in an emergency operation, you have
got to be
sitting on go.
Somersett: Boy, if that Kennedy get shot, we have go to
know where we
are at. Because you know that will be a real shake.
. .
Milteer: They wouldn't leave any stone unturned
there. No
way. They will pick up somebody within hours
afterwards, if
anything like that would happen, just to throw the public
off.
Somersett: Oh, somebody is going to have to go to jail, if
he gets killed.
Milteer: Just like Bruno Hauptmann in the Lindbergh case,
you know.
The entire tape-recording lasts roughly a half-hour and
much of it is
either garbled or irrelevant. Each voice is
distinctly
unique. Somersett spoke his words quickly, infusing
each syllable
with a thick Southern accent. Milteer's high
pitched, effeminate
voice dilutes the deadliness of his words.
Kennedy came to Miami Nov. 18, 1963 for the Inter-American
Press
Association convention at the Americans. The Secret
Service,
alerted about the tape by Miami authorities (and certainly
by the FBI
who received the information directly from Somersett),
abandoned a
planned motorcade. Instead, the President
helicoptered to Miami
Beach.
In his diary, Gelber says a police detective assigned to
the case
assured him the Secret Service knew where Brown and
Milteer were.
Bob Newbrand, a local Secret Service spokesman, says that
he doesn't
understand Gelber's statement: "I know for sure we didn't
put him
(Milteer) under surveillance. We were never that
much involved
with that. If anybody made a threat we wouldn't put
him under
surveillance, we'd lock him up!" (What really
happened?)
The contradictions of Newbrand's statement and Gelber's
diary are
staggering. If Milteer and Brown weren't under
observation , why
weren't they? Was this simply considered a frivolous
threat? Miami PD took it seriously.
Milteer and Somersett were to meet once more, On Nov 23,
the day after
the assassination, Somersett traveled to Jacksonville
Where he
rendezvoused with Milteer before making a quick trip to
Columbia, S. C.
for a session with KKK members. When he returned to
Miami, he
reported to the police what he had learned: "During the
journey to had
learned: "During the journey to S.C. he (Milteer)
told me that he
was connected with an international underground
He said there would be a propaganda campaign put on how to
prove to the
Christian people of the world that the Jews, the Zionist
Jews, had
murdered Kennedy.
"He was very happy over it and shook hands with me.
He said:
‘Well, I told you so. It happened like I told you,
didn't
it? It happened from a window with a high-powered
rifle.' I
said, "That's right. I don't know whether you were
guessing or
not, but you hit it on the head pretty good.' He
said, ‘Well,
that is the way it was supposed to be done, and that is
the way it was
done.'
"From the impression he gave me, and what he told me, the
Oswald group
was pro-Castro. This group was infiltrated by the
patriot
underground who arranged from there to have the execution
carried out
and drop the responsibility right into the laps of the
Communists. I don't think there was any agreement
with this
little flimflam organization that Oswald belonged to . . .
I don't
believe Milteer did it, but it might be a possibility that
he knows who
engineered it. The impression I get from him, I
think the thing
was set up to kill Mr. Kennedy in the South, in some
southern state . .
. Milteer is too much enthused about it, before hand and
after, not to
know something about it."
Later, Miami authorities tried to get Milteer and Brown to
come to
Miami where they again could make tape-recordings.
On Dec. 4,
Somersett got a shock when he called Milteer and
discovered the FBI had
questioned Milteer and Brown as part of a mess roundup of
extremists. From Gelber's diary: "Somersett is
extremely
concerned about this turn of events. Milteer did not
accuse him
of being an FBI informer, but inasmuch as the questioning
appeared to
be based on the statements made to Somersett, suspicion
would
inevitably rest on him . . . There is no chance of getting
Milteer and
Brown to Miami now and there is a possibility they will
show
considerable caution in future conversations in
Somersett's presence. .
. I wonder why the FBI picked these people up after the
President's
assassination rather than before the act? All this
manages to do
is jeopardize the safety of our undercover agent.
Based on the
Milteer tape, I had anticipated such government action
prior to the
President's visit to Miami . . . I did not expect it as an
afterthought
. . . There is nothing of substantial value to be gained
by this
dramatic move except to scare hell out of Milteer, Brown
and a few
others . . . It ruins our investigation and further
weakens the
effectiveness of the undercover agent, not only for us,
but also for
the FBI."
Declassified FBI documents, obtained by Harold Weisberg
under the
Freedom of Information Act, prove the Bureau was doing
just what
Gelber's diary suggests. Without naming him, they
identify
Somersett as the informant.
Perhaps the most fascinating document the FBI released
deals with its
interview of Joseph Milteer by agents from the Atlanta
office.
Milteer, in that report, "emphatically denies ever making
threats to
assassinate President Kennedy or participating in any such
assassination." He said he didn't know Lee Oswald or
Jack Ruby.
A 1968 Miami police memo on Somersett relates how he
traveled to New
Orleans and spoke with some of then-District Attorney Jim
Garrison's
agents. Garrison was conducting his JFK
assassination probe and
requested Somersett's help. Somersett told his story
and
mentioned a letter he had received from Milteer, dated
Nov. 18, 1963
and postmarked Valdosta, Ga. Garrison's men wanted the
letter, but the
memo never indicated whether Somersett gave it to
them. He never
revealed its contents, but Detective Kay confirms the
existence of the
letter. Neither he nor anyone else knows where it is
today.
Other unusual disappearances of information have hampered
our
investigation. The state attorney's office, which
keeps all its
records of old cases on file in a North Miami warehouse,
says the
records on this case, and all others pertaining to the JFK
assassination are missing, despite a thorough
search. No one can
account for their absence.
The Miami police intelligence unit, now called the Special
Investigations Section, says there are no files on the
assassination. Kay, however, says he looked at such
files only
six months ago, before his retirement. We have no
reason to doubt
his word. Do the files exist or don't they? In
a quote that
sounds as if it could have come from "Catch 22," former
special section
chief Major Herbert Breslow said: "If I found out where it
(the file)
was, I wouldn't tell you anyway. I'd just say
nothing. You
must believe me when I tell you we don't have any files,
even though I
wouldn't tell you if I did." The FBI added a strict
"no comment"
on all questions.
The Parrot Jungle incident involved different
characters. Initial
information in this case came from former Dade Circuit
Judge Alfonso
Sepe, whom I contacted about the Milteer tape.
During our discussion, Sepe revealed a "super-secret
investigation" he
had directed as assistant state attorney in 1967. He
had
initiated it because of exciting information he received
from a friend.
What he discovered was disturbing. In sworn
testimony taken by
Sepe, Mrs. Lillian Spingler, an employee of the Parrot
Jungle gift shop
in 1963, told how a Cuban man had entered the shop in late
autumn and
"initiated a conversation with her in which he stated that
he could
write with both hands simultaneously and that he was a
sharpshooter. This Cuban male allegedly told Mrs.
Spingler that
he had a friend named Lee who could speak Russian and
German and was
living in Texas or Mexico, and that Lee was also a
sharpshooter.
Mrs. Spingler told some friends, but the conversation she
had with the
Cuban male was passed off until the night of President
Kennedy's
assassination (22 days later) when Mrs. Spingler was
riding in a car
with her husband, a close friend and a relative from New
Jersey, on
their way back from Key West to Miami. Mrs. Spingler
said that
before she heard the name of the President's
assassination, she
remarked that she knew who the assassin was. Because
she had told
several friends, the incident was reported to the FBI.
"I interrogated Mrs. (Ruth) Bastholm, Mr. (William) Vander
Wyden (Mrs.
Spingler's boss at Parrot Jungle), and Mrs. (Aliese)
Trigg. Mrs.
Trigg remembered learning of Spingler's conversation from
Mrs. Spingler
prior to the assassination, and corroborated to some
degree Mrs.
Spingler's version."
He also said he hated the President and "could shoot
Kennedy between the eyes."
Sepe said the incident was relayed to the FBI in late
December 1963
when Mrs. Spingler called them. After a quick
investigation, FBI
agent in charge, James O'Connor told her to "just drop it
and not
mention it." Mrs. Spingler is still taking
O'Connor's advice and
has refused to comment, saying only, "They told me not to
talk about
it. Goodby." The FBI would say nothing.
The investigation the FBI conducted bears examining.
Several
months after the threat relayed by Mrs. Spingler, the man
who made the
threat was identified when he returned to the Parrot
Jungle and was
spotted. Alertly, Parrot Jungle employees wrote down
the license
number of his car. They informed the FBI.
Several weeks passed before Special Agent O'Connor called
Mrs. Spingler
to tell her that he had in custody Jorge Soto
Martinez. O'Connor
told her that Martinez, at the time of the threat, had
been employed as
a Fontainebleau Hotel bellhop.
Martinez didn't deny having a conversation with Mrs.
Spingler. He
did deny making threats against the President or saying he
knew Lee
Oswald.
From Sepe's report: "Agent O'Connor asked Mrs. Spingler if
she wanted
to come to the FBI office and identify the man.
Agent O'Connor
and Mrs. Spingler both state that Mrs. Spingler refused to
go to the
FBI office to identify Martinez because she was afraid of
personal
harm." Still, O'Connor was satisfied the Mr.
Martinez was not
involved in an attempt to assassinate President Kennedy
and did not
know Oswald. So the FBI closed its investigation.
In 1967, Sepe threw some light on the FBI's earlier
report. He
called O'Connor and received the opinion that Martinez had
nothing to
do with the assassination. O'Connor offered the
theory that Mrs.
Spingler had "exaggerated the conversation she had with
Martinez and
that in all probability (had) misunderstood Martinez when
he said that
he would like to kill Castro." O'Connor also
obligingly pointed
out that because of Martinez' heavy accent, Mrs. Spingler
thought
Martinez said "Lee," when he had said "he."
"Lee" could certainly be mistaken for "he," but "Kennedy"
doesn't rhyme
with "Castro," even when spoken with an accent. Or
by an FBI man.
In her statement to Sepe, Mrs. Spingler reasserted her
belief that she
had heard Martinez correctly. "I know – was sure he
said Lee
because I associated General Lee with it . . . That's my
way of
remembering, like ‘He's a sharpshooter, General Lee,' you
know."
Mrs. Spingler told Sepe she had never been contacted by
anyone
representing the Warren Commission. "Mr. Conley
(sic) told me to
forget it all and I figured, well, I told what I knew to
the FBI.
If they want to further investigate it, then do it.
I was just
following his instructions."
Curiously, the FBI never even had her identify the man she
saw.
She was shown some pictures of possible suspects, but
never one the
could identify. Sepe asked her if she was certain
the FBI had
picked up the man she had talked to.
"I really don't know for sure," she replied. "It
didn't even dawn
on me until now that you are questioning me. I just
had the
license number and I never met him again or saw his
picture."
Sepe probed, trying to learn how the FBI had identified
the man they
had picked up. He asked Mrs. Spingler why she hadn't
gone to the
FBI office and identified him through a one-way
mirror. She
answered that the agent-in-charge had never suggested it.
Mrs. Spingler finally identified Martinez as the man she
had talked to,
in 1967, when Sepe located Martinez and obtained a photo.
Martinez was totally cooperative during Sepe's
investigation, even
submitting to a lie detector examination. During the
test, he
denied all Mrs. Spingler's allegations. Warren
Holmes, nationally
recognized polygraph expert, determined that Martinez
probably was
telling the truth "with the exception that in a
temperamental outburst
to Mrs. Spingler, (he) might have said some unkind things
about
President Kennedy which he had originally denied to
(Sepe).
Specifically, he showed deception in his denial to the
question: "Did
you tell the woman at the Parrot Jungle that you were
going to
Washington and shoot the President between the
eyes?" He later
admitted to Holmes, following the examination, that he
recalled making
some stupid statement like that . . . He stated he had a
habit of
shooting his mouth off, but vehemently denied mentioning
the name of
Lee."
Sepe still thinks Mrs. Spingler was truthful in her
statements concerning Martinez.
If the FBI had chosen to check into Martinez' life more
thoroughly, his alleged remarks might have been taken more
seriously.
Martinez had gotten his job at the Fontainebleau because
of a plug
given him by a Mike McLaney. McLaney had been
Martinez' employer
in Havana. He had hired Martinez to clean out slot
machines at
the casino he operated at the Nacional Hotel. When
Castro banned
gambling, both McLaney and Martinez fled to Miami.
McLaney lived
in a houseboat docked across Collins Avenue from the
Fontainebleau and
prevailed on them to help get Martinez a job. Both
McLaney and
Ken Humphreys, Martinez' boss at the Fontainbleau,
confirmed McLaney's
role in the hiring.
Told of the allegations against Martinez, McLaney said
that he knew
nothing about any assassination plot and offered his
impression of
Martinez. "George (Jorge) wouldn't harm Mickey
Mouse. He
has the courage of a little less than a mouse. It's
startling to
me to hear this." He said he doesn't know where
Martinez is
now. I made repeated efforts to locate Martinez to
no avail.
Do the tangled facts that surround both the Milteer and
Martinez
incidents mean anything? Perhaps not, but the fact
that they were
never sufficiently explained is unsettling.
There are numerous implications that have been raised by
this
investigation. Ponder this list of questions that
still need
answers.
-Why were Milteer and Brown picked up after Kennedy's
assassination and not before?
-If, as Gelber says, Milteer and Brown were under
surveillance during
the President's Nov. 18 trip to Miami, were they also
being watched on
Nov. 22? If they were, why doesn't the FBI say so?
-Why did the FBI round up the two extremists for
questioning on Nov. 27, ruining a Miami police plan to spy
on them?
-Why did the FBI take Milteer's denial that he threatened
the President when they had him on tape saying the
opposite?
-Why did it also take him at his word when he denied
knowledge of the Birmingham bombing?
-Why didn't they investigate the threats he made in New
Orleans and Indianapolis?
-What was the significance Milteer's Utah bank account?
-Why did he use an alias?
-Why are there still unanswered questions about his death?
-Why does the FBI continue withhold evidence concerning
the tape?
-Why did the Warren Commission report fail to mention this
Miami connection?
-Why did the FBI tell Mrs. Spingler to forget about the
Parrot Jungle incident and not to mention it to anyone?
-Why do Warren Commission files fail to make mention of
it?
Sepe thinks the Martinez incident is important. "It is far
more
significant in hindsight than it was at the time," he
believes.
"So man facts have surfaced, and so much intrigue has been
suggested,
that gives rise to challenges to the authenticity and
thoroughness of
the Warren Commission investigation. I believe a new
investigation is fully warranted, and all record should be
unsealed and
everybody who has any relevant information should be
questioned
exhaustively.
Judge Gelber thinks the information about this case bears
further
examination by the federal government. "I think an
oversight
committee should be established which would re-evaluate
all the new
evidence that has come to light recently. If for no
other reason
than to satisfy the general public. This data about
Milteer is
raw intelligence and should be treated as such, but I it
is
important. It cannot be ignored. This
information has never
had an priority consideration. The authorities
didn't consider it
serious enough when it was first available. I think
that when
Oswald was arrested activity in other areas diminished
particularly in
this one."
State Attorney Gerstein was more subdued in his comment
about the
Milteer incident but said. "The overwhelming
majority of the
people of the United States do not believe that Oswald
acted alone and
are not satisfied with the conclusions of the Warren
Commission.
As to whether or not it will be fruitful (to reopen the
case) or not,
leave to someone else's judgment."
Next month: Miami Magazine inquiry into apparent Dade
County links to
the assassination of John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr.
leads to more reasons to believe that King's killer wasn't
alone.
go to Part II
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