Dead Wrong: Straight Facts on the Country's Most Controversial Cover-Ups (7 page)

Henry Marshall — June 3, 1961 Inspector, U.S. Department of Agriculture

Spartacus Educational,
www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKmarshallH.htm

VICTIM:

HENRY MARSHALL

Cause of Death:

Five gunshots from a bolt action rifle.

Official Verdict:

“SUICIDE” (ruling by County Sheriff Howard Stegall and Justice of the Peace Lee Farmer, who ordered the body to be buried without an autopsy)

Actual Circumstances:

Investigator for U.S. Department of Agriculture, who uncovered vast financial scam being run by Billie Sol Estes and linked to Lyndon Johnson in Texas. Estes later testified that Johnson had ordered Marshall killed, using hit man Mac Wallace.

Inconsistencies:

1. Initial death ruling never even addressed the impossibility of a person shooting himself five separate times with a bolt-action rifle.

2. The rifle was never checked for fingerprints; nor was Marshall’s pickup truck, which his corpse was found laying beside.

3. No samples were taken of the blood stains on the truck and it was washed and waxed the following day.

4. No photographs were taken of the crime scene.

5. A Grand Jury later ruled that Marshall’s body be exhumed and an autopsy revealed that he had suffered a severe blow to the head prior to his death and that his body contained a carbon monoxide concentration of fifteen percent. The doctor performing the autopsy estimated that the carbon monoxide concentration at the time of death was as high as thirty percent.

It may shock some to learn that Lyndon B. Johnson, the thirty-sixth President of the United States, was also apparently a mass murderer … but he was. Henry Marshall was one of several victims whom Johnson reportedly ordered his henchman, Mac Wallace, to murder.

Incredibly, the fact that Henry Marshall was shot five times with a bolt-action rifle did not preclude an official death verdict of “suicide.” Think about that one for awhile. ...

President Lyndon B. Johnson was, by many accounts, one of our most ruthless politicians, and his path to the presidency was littered with dead bodies and highly questionable circumstances. None was more obvious than Agricultural Inspector Henry Marshall, who had uncovered a huge financial scandal leading directly to LBJ’s doorstep.

Marshall, in his capacity as a U.S. Department of Agriculture Investigator, saw through a false paper trail and uncovered the fact that Billie Sol Estes was receiving millions of dollars in federal agricultural subsidies for crops of cotton that were non-existent. The profits raked in from the scheme represented a major source of Lyndon Johnson’s political funding.

One thing that can, however, be said of Lyndon Johnson, is that he attempted simpler solutions prior to employing the use of murder. When Marshall got too close to the big financial scam that Johnson’s associate Billie Sol Estes was running, Johnson apparently arranged for a fat promotion for Marshall to the Washington, D.C. office of the Department of Agriculture. Perceiving it as a bribe, Marshall refused the promotion and continued his efforts to prosecute the corruption he had discovered. That refusal was apparently tantamount to signing his death warrant.

Billie Sol Estes has testified that he had a meeting with Lyndon Johnson and his closest associates, Cliff Carter and Ed Clark, on January 17, 1961, and the purpose was to discuss what to do about Marshall, since he refused the promotion to Washington. Lyndon Johnson reportedly made the decision: “It looks like we’ll just have to get rid of him.”
²³
It was also decided at that meeting that the assignment was to be given to Mac Wallace, who was a hit man used by Johnson.

On June 3, 1961, Marshall was found dead next to his pickup truck on a remote portion of his farm.

Early in 1962, several months after Henry Marshall’s death, Billie Sol Estes was arrested by the FBI and officially charged with fraud and conspiracy. That arrest inspired the Robertson County Grand Jury to order that the body of Marshall be exhumed and autopsied. The autopsy revealed that Marshall had suffered a severe blow to the head prior to his death and had an extremely high level of carbon monoxide in his body prior to the gunshots. The suicide ruling was overturned.

It should be noted that even morally-challenged FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover took pause on the impossibility of the initial death ruling, writing that:

“I just can’t understand how one can fire five shots at himself.”
²⁴

Senator John McClellan also later concluded:

“It doesn’t take many deductions to come to the irrevocable conclusion that no man committed suicide by placing the rifle in that awkward position and then cocking it four times more.”
²⁵

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Texas Connection:
The Assassination of John F. Kennedy, Craig I. Zirbel, 1991
Captain People, Texas Ranger:
Fifty Years a Lawman, James M. Day, 1980

A Texan Looks at Lyndon,
J. Evetts Haley, 1964

Captain People, Texas Ranger:
Fifty Years a Lawman, James M. Day, 1980

JFK and Sam, Antoinette Giancana, John R. Hughes, DM OXON, MD, PHD & Thomas H. Jobe, MD, 2005

“Henry Marshall,” John Simkin,
Spartacus Educational.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKmarshallH.htm

“Did LBJ Order the Killing of Henry Marshall?,” John Simkin,
Education Forum,
January 30, 2006,
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index
.php?showtopic=5988

“Letter to Stephen S. Trott, U.S. Department of Justice”, Douglas Caddy, August 9, 1984

“Interview with Douglas Caddy,” John Simkin, January 20, 2006

“The Killing of Henry Marshall”, Bill Adler, November 7, 1986,
The Texas Observer

“Convicted Swindler Billie Sol Estes,” David Hanners & George Kuempel, March 24, 1984, Dallas Morning News,
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKmarshallH.htm

²³
John Simkin, “Clifton C. Carter: Biography,” Spartacus Educational,
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKcarter.htm
(accessed 14 Mar. 2011)

²⁴
John Simkin, “Billie Sol Estes: Biography,” Spartacus Educational,
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKestes.htm
(accessed 2 May 2011)

²⁵
John Simkin, “Henry Marshall: Biography,” Spartacus Educational,
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKmarshallH.htm
(accessed 4 May 2011)

George Krutilek — April 4, 1962 Accountant

VICTIM:

GEORGE KRUTILEK

Cause of Death:

Carbon Monoxide poisoning

Official Verdict:

SUICIDE

Actual Circumstances:

Krutilek was the accountant for the financial scam being run by Billie Sol Estes and linked to Lyndon Johnson in Texas. Estes later testified that Johnson had personally ordered that Krutilek be killed, using hit man Mac Wallace.

Inconsistencies:

A large bruise on Krutilek’s head indicated that he had been bludgeoned unconscious prior to inhaling the carbon monoxide. Carbon monoxide poisoning was the modus operandi of hit man, Mac Wallace.

Like Henry Marshall, the death of George Krutilek was directly linked to the financial scandal involving Billie Sol Estes and Lyndon Johnson.

Krutilek was the accountant for Billy Sol Estes and had close knowledge of the gigantic scam of subsidies for nonexistent crops that was fleecing taxpayers, claiming government credits for cotton that was never actually grown, but listed as grown and in storage. The “invisible cotton” was then also used as collateral to secure large fraudulent loans that weren’t repaid.

A day after being questioned by the FBI, April 3, 1962, Krutilek was found dead from carbon monoxide poisoning. The following day, Billy Sol Estes was indicted by a Federal Grand Jury on fifty-seven counts of fraud and conspiracy. Three men were arrested with Estes and two of them died under suspicious circumstances.

LBJ did whatever it took to win. His political history was laced with blatant corruption. Johnson had failed in his bid for U.S. senator in a Texas election, losing by a margin of very few votes. Six days
after
the election, 203 “extra” votes turned up from a tiny town in Alice, Texas and, in an amazing anomaly in the laws of probability, 202 of those 203 votes were for Lyndon Johnson. He was declared the winner by 87 votes and that was why LBJ was mockingly referred to as “Landslide Lyndon”

“ ̾ the election judge in Alice (Texas) admitted that he had helped rig the election.”
²⁶

But that didn’t stop LBJ from blazing a path of corruption across the state of Texas and into the halls of the United States Senate. As veteran CIA operative (and Texas native) John Stockwell put it, everyone in Texas knew that:

“ ̾ Lyndon Johnson was corrupt to the core, with mob ties, with
murders sometimes associated with his political campaigns.”
²⁷

To convey an idea of the extent of pervasive corruption wreaked by Lyndon Johnson’s political organization in Texas, one need look no further than the trial of his henchman, Mac Wallace. Described as Johnson’s hit man, Wallace was found guilty of First Degree Murder with eleven jurors recommending the death penalty and the twelfth juror recommending life imprisonment. But in an incredibly obvious example of a corrupt system known at the time as “Texas Justice,” the judge over-ruled the jury, technically sentencing Wallace to five years imprisonment, which was “suspended” by the judge, and Wallace was immediately freed.