www.mattkprovideo.com/2025/09/09/delusion-episode-23-adam-gorightly/
Fred Litwin’s website: www.onthetrailofdelusion.com
Adam Gorightly’s website: http://www.historiadiscordia.com
TRANSCRIPT:
Welcome to another edition of On the Trail of Delusion, where we try to separate the wheat from the chaff and try to give you something interesting on the JFK assassination as opposed to some of the ridiculous slop you’ll see on the internet and on YouTube.
So today my special guest is Adam Gorightley who is an author who has written many many books
but also has a terrific website http://www.historiadiscordia.com which you’ll see a link to in the bottom and his articles have appeared in all sorts of publications on the internet underground magazines countercultural publications.
But what’s of real interest to us here on this podcast is that Adam has done some absolutely fundamental amazing work on people like Kerrie Thornley, Fred Chrisman, Thomas Beckham, and Raymond Brochures.
These are all names that sort of came out of or were associated with the Garrison investigation. And so I’m very happy to have Adam with me today.
And Adam, tell us how you got into, looking at some of these characters.
Yeah, thanks for having me on, Fred. Well, let’s start with Kerrie Thornley. Back in the early 90s or so I became aware of him probably even earlier than that.
I was during that period uh like I start had started writing for Z and I was really interested in conspiracy theories and UFOs and paranormal and all this kind of far out stuff. Thornley came into my awareness.
First of all, I saw some articles he had written for a Zine called FACT SHEET FIVE, which was really an important Zine during that period.
FACT SHEET FIVE was basically a catalog this guy named Mark Zunder put out listing all the Zines available.
2:42
He did this month after month, put a lot of work into it.
And there was I saw a column called Conspiracy Corner by this Kerrie Thornley guy and it’s like I actually couldn’t make a lot of sense out of it but uh I became more aware of
3:01
him and as uh time went on uh I came across a book called Conspiracies Coverups and Crimes by an author named Jonathan Vankin you might be familiar with.
3:13
Yeah. and uh he was covering some of the more far out conspiracy theories in that
3:20
book becoming prevalent at the time and some of the characters one of whom was Kerrie Thornley
3:27
and just a thumbnail sketch Thornley had known Oswald and the Marines for a
3:34
short period of time then got sent over to Japan where uh Oswald had been
3:40
previously stationed at Atsugi and he was working on a book at during that
3:45
period called the IDLE WARRIORS which was like being a Marine during peace time, the cold war and kind of the
3:53
malaise and things going on with that period. And he based them uh the main
4:00
character in the book was Johnny Shelburn which Thornley based on
4:06
himself and other Marines he had known in that period including Lee Harvey Oswald. And so Thornley got over to uh
4:13
Japan and that’s when he around the time that Oswald defected and he went
“whoa I’m going to change the focus of this book to be entirely on Oswald “you know.
So that was kind of the first curiosity that he had known Oswald in that period and was writing a book about
4:32
Oswald uh prior to the Kennedy assassination. And so Venin covered that in his article
4:40
about Thornley. And he also got into some of the more far out theories
4:46
surrounding Thornley who was investigated and uh indicted by I’m not
4:52
sure if he was ever indicted.
Fred Litwin:
Yeah. No, he was.
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. By Jim Garrison. And Garrison had these
5:01
smattering of theories. one that Thornley was the second Oswald that he
5:06
was connected to the military and the aerospace industry and they were somehow
5:11
involved and he also claimed that Thornley was CIA and uh on and on and on
5:18
and so Thornley denied all those accusations initially but then later like in the ‘7s
5:25
after the Garrison investigations he started thinking about that and he was also some would say suffering from uh
5:33
paranoid schizophrenia, which might have been uh helped along by, you know, the
5:40
prosecution of Jim Garrison causing that paranoia. But he started he
5:45
was looking back and he now by this time he was thinking, well, maybe Garrison got some things right. There was a lot
5:51
of odd stuff going on during that period. And how did I happen to run a,
5:57
you know, my paths and Oswald come together? Was there some other sinister force there? You know, was the
6:04
conspiracy setting him up as an alternative pepsi? So he started
6:09
believing all these things or entertaining these uh notions and uh
6:15
ultimately at one point he started to believe he was a part of the MK Ultra
6:21
project and that he he and Oswald were part of a Nazi breeding experiment to
6:27
create, you know, these future assassins of America. his life kind of spiraled
6:32
out of control during that period. But and so that was kind of a nutshell of uh
6:37
Thornley in that book uh Venin put out. It was just one chapter and I I was
6:43
fascinated by the guy started collecting materials and
6:48
uh Ven said it one point he was uh considering um writing a biography of
6:56
Thornley. I go, “Oh man, I’ll love it when that came out.” But he never got around to that and I had this material
7:03
and eventually I had enough content I felt to pursue writing a book on
7:09
Thornley and that turned out to be the prankster and the conspiracy which was published in u 2003. So I guess you’re
7:18
asking how I became interested in these characters. that was one of the characters and how they became
7:23
and and and you also published uh this book Caught in the Crossfire um which I have to say is an absolutely fantastic
7:30
book and anybody anybody interested in Carrie Thornly this is the book to get.
7:36
It’s chalk full of primary sources, documents, photographs, stories. I mean
7:42
it’s it’s absolute essential reading and you’ll find links to it in in the comments below.
7:47
Came into contact. How did this happen? It was kind of odd how I came into contact. We were never quite clear how
7:53
our paths crossed, but I met up with a guy named Bob Newport. And uh this was
7:59
after I wrote the Thornly book. I think I might have Yeah, I interviewed him for the Thornly book actually. He was
8:05
friends with Thornley uh growing up and he uh mentioned he had some Discordian
8:12
archives and I didn’t even mention that uh Thornley and a buddy of his named
8:17
Greg Hill started this spoof religion back in the late 1950s called
8:23
Discordianism which is the worship of the Greek goddess and of chaos and discord. It was kind of started as a
8:30
spoofed religion but became a kind of collective for different artists where they shared ideas and it was kind of a
8:38
platform to u kind of riff on uh
8:45
different religions and philosophy and politics. And it was a circle of different writers and artists that
8:53
exchanged uh sometimes humorous stuff, collages. They had these things called
8:59
groovy packs where they’d send a bunch of things in a uh envelope with a joint
9:04
usually and you take the joint out and take a hit and put put your own spin on
9:09
this uh collection of materials sent to you and send it on to the next guy. And
9:14
a lot of this material became like these projects ended up in a book called the
9:19
Principia Discordia which you could say was uh kind of the Bible of Discordianism. So
9:26
anyway, where I was going with all this and here’s a here’s a book that that you know another very important book uh uh
9:34
the sort of the origins of uh the Discordian Society which you were you were part of writing this book
9:40
right and that’s where I was going. um Newport told me at one point uh he had
9:48
some uh what he called the Discordian archives and I actually met him at at
9:54
Robert Anton Wilson’s house in like 2001 and he brought an armload of this material and I thought, “Oh, this is
10:00
some great uh stuff.” You know, I’d like to maybe use it for a book at uh some
10:06
point. He said, “Well, you’re welcome to do that. I’ll let you I’ll let you take some of this along. There’s more I
10:12
have.” But so I borrowed that and scanned it and started working on this book. And later on, we’re like in 2009
10:19
or so, he said, I was in LA where he lived and he said, “Well, come on over and you can have everything.” And it
10:24
turned out to be oh, a dozen of boxes, which was all the material that Greg Hill had put together
10:32
for these uh archives over the years. And a lot of them were I mean, he just saved everything. He’s all his
10:40
correspondents and he’s saved, you know, the carbons of what he sent out to
10:45
people and there was just a wealth of material and some of that stuff in there was uh files on the garrison
10:53
investigations and a lot of uh communications Thornley was having with different people during that period. saw
11:01
that the material that kind of fell in my lap uh has been used for these
11:07
different projects. Is that is that material in in some sort of physical archive somewhere?
11:13
I’m actually uh working on that right now. The archive is at my house here.
11:19
Okay. And u it should be going into a uh library archive. Uh it’s probably going
11:27
to happen at the end of this uh year or early uh next year. Uh more news
11:34
to follow on that. But uh yeah, I’ve been working it placing it at a library
11:40
for quite some time and uh university library.
11:46
That’s good. I um I’m struck with with Thornley in the fact that you know Garrison went so far as to think that he
11:53
was the body in the in the Oswald photograph in the backyard you know and
11:59
I mean it’s just and and and what’s amazing is you know bro people like brochers were sort of into selling that
12:07
as well you know you know oh I know I recognize those hips you know I mean it’s it’s so ridiculous
12:14
I guess we Oswald is the one who started that rumor cuz I think he’s
12:20
Was it he or someone and said that Well, that’s not me. My head’s been super imposed on uh that uh photo of me. Where
12:29
was it? In Fort Worth or wherever he Yeah, it was in his backyard in down in Dallas on Ne holding the communist
12:37
literature in one hand and I guess the rifle. I’ve been there. I’ve been to that house. Oh, backyard.
12:43
And so anyway, that kind of rumor got started and uh Garrison heard about it
12:50
and uh he just pick up on these things. Um Thornley’s dad was a photo engraver
12:57
of some sort. So he thought that his father or Thornley would have had
13:03
the skills to do that and that. But then brochures testified. I guess it was
13:10
brochures who really said, “Yeah, that was uh Thorn Lee in the backyard posing
13:16
as Oswald.” And that started a lot of the second Oswald stuff. And there was
13:22
witnesses uh Garrison said he had several witnesss who saw Thornley with
13:28
Marina Oswald, but that never really panned out when I was looking at there was one witness who came forward, but
13:35
you know, it all seemed sketchy. was Yeah. And and I mean he he he told I
13:41
mean he even wrote a memo to the HSCA about the backyard photograph and you know how lucky we might be because the
13:48
father was a photo engraver. And then you know he he was just so insistent. Garrison so believed that Thornley was
13:55
in New Orleans um when Oswald was there and they must
14:00
have crossed paths because Barbara Reed you know said that you know they had been together.
14:06
another character write about. Yeah. And there was some overlap as I
14:11
recall because there was a few weeks. Yeah. Uh them being at the same who knows.
14:18
Well, yeah. You would have thought uh Thornley would have recognized Oswald
14:24
quite obviously, but and if he had seen Oswald, he would have been really interested in talking to him
14:29
and really uh there’s no reason to hide that. I mean, he would have been really interested.
14:34
Barbara Reed claims she saw them together in a coffee house or a
14:40
restaurant. And uh then if you look through some of that materials, there
14:45
supposedly was a second witness and there was an affidavit uh produced by this fellow. I forget his
14:52
name, but it was never signed. So it seemed like one of those things where Reed or Garrison put it together and
14:59
say, “Here, sign this so we can have another witness.” and whoever it was didn’t sign it. That kind of tells you
15:05
something. Um, yeah, Reed was a character herself. We talked about the Discordian society,
15:12
this kind of prank religion of these uh it was a real mix of like libertarians, bohemians, uh,
15:21
pranksters. And really when it started in the Southern California, it was just
15:28
three guys. uh Hill Thornley and Bob Newport. But when they went to New
15:34
Orleans, they uh kind of started in New Orleans branch of the Discordian Society
15:40
there with a another character called Roger Leven who kind of got sucked into
15:46
the Garrison Investigation at one point. And Barbara Reed was involved and Reed claimed that she was the goddess Iris
15:53
herself. She was involved in all kinds of stuff. I mean, she was uh pretty
15:59
fundamental to the uh resurrection of the old style jazz scene being uh
16:07
reinvigorated there in New Orleans. That’s something certainly positive you can say about her. And uh
16:13
but she was also one some people described her as she was somebody who
16:19
always put herself in the middle of these different situations whether she
16:25
whether she actually had any uh connection to them and you know there’s rumors that her and Garrison had some
16:33
type of relationship and and she was basically
16:38
kind of like Jack Martin uh initially a witness but Then they become part of the
16:44
investigation team. So you can see how this whole thing was so conflicted, you
16:50
know. Yeah. And Weisberg would spend a lot of time at Barbara Reed’s house and and trying to sort of get information from
16:58
her or bounce ideas off of her and they’d all meet at her house, all these people together and and it was like a
17:05
cauldron of rumors. I mean I mean New Orleans, everybody was talking in New Orleans.
17:11
I think Thornley made the mistake. At some point he met uh Reed uh he’d
17:18
returned to New Orleans for a little bit of time like in ‘ 64 after the assassination and the topic came up and
17:27
I think she confronted him at that time saying well yeah I saw you uh with
17:33
Oswald don’t you remember that? He’s going, “Well, no, you know, I think I guess it
17:40
could have been possible and I didn’t recognize him.” And that kind this opened up the
17:46
the whole thing to spin out of control.
17:52
Yeah. And I, you know, I feel I feel for for Thornley. I mean, he was dragged to New Orleans and indicted and he didn’t
17:58
have a lawyer and and uh you know, these gar, you know, the garrison’s men are trying to convince him of whole variety
18:05
of things and cross-examining him and and uh you know, I mean, my god, he was
18:10
put through the ringer and then you had the ridiculous Harold Weisberg actually asking I think Fred Nukem to can you
18:18
draw some some whiskers on a picture of Thornley to make him look like Oswald.
18:23
Yeah, I was looking at some of that uh material today and somehow
18:29
Thornley did have a lawyer at one point named Lavine and somehow they came
18:34
across this correspondence with the DA’s office with uh Fred Nukem and they sent
18:41
Weisberg was involved. They sent a photo of Thornley out of the Tampa Times and
18:46
they asked uh N uh Nukem if he could retouch it. a lot of basically the
18:52
hairline to uh make him look more like Oswald. I guess they’re pursuing this uh
18:59
theory. So once again, uh who I don’t know exactly what they did with that
19:04
photo, but it wouldn’t be surprised me if his investigators had the touched up photo and taken around. Do you recognize
19:13
this uh fellow, you know, and and then Weisberg wrote the letter on DA stationery and then
19:19
Yeah. Yeah. To make it look all official. And it was just a bizarre bizarre incident.
19:26
And then I mean and then David Lifton got involved because he became friends with Carrie Thornley and realized this
19:33
is all silly. Yeah. And so he started writing about that out in Los Angeles. It was just um an
19:40
interesting Sylvia Maher was a friend of Carrie Thornley’s. Mhm. Yeah. She wrote a letter uh kind of
19:47
defending him. Uh and uh yeah, they exchanged several letters and
19:52
and he sent her a lot of Discordia stuff and and they exchanged letters and and I
19:58
think she contributed to his defense fund and you know she she early on realized this is all so ridiculous.
20:06
But he was Thornly was uh poking the bear we might say when it came to uh
20:11
Garrison. Uh he was he wrote a few different things saying how Garrison was
20:18
an out of control authoritarian and things like this and they even became
20:25
part of a Discordian prank called called Operation Mindfuck
20:30
right where uh and it had to do part of that came out of um there was that dude
20:37
Howland Chapman who I guess was supposedly an investigator. He’s a Gilly
20:42
Plaza regular as they called him. And uh he was a John Burch Society guy who
20:49
believed that the Illuminati was involved in the assassination which was a pretty common kind of John Burchian
20:57
thing at that time that was being spread. But he was the one who came up with, as I understand it, he got a hold
21:04
of those uh three [ _ ] photos and got those to uh Garrison. 21:09 Anyway, Thornley heard about Chapman and Chapman was the one who really convinced Garrison that there was a shot from the 21:15 sewer, right? That Yeah, that too. You know, so you have this you have this 21:20 thing Chapman goes to see Garrison, convince him there’s a shot in the from the sewer and like one day later Garrison is issuing press releases, you 21:27 know, there’s a shot from the sewer. I mean, it’s we’ve we’ve solved it. There was whatever 21:33 two men, three men men, six men, men on the triple overpass. It was 21:39 constantly changing, you know, but he denounced it like we’ve solved it. It’s over. 21:44 Yeah. It’s a done deal. Um I was going to say this. So this Illuminate Illuminati 21:51 thing tickled Thornley and Robert Anton Wilson, these other guys and they got interested in uh 21:58 researching the Illuminati and they tied it into the Discordian society and some of the prank letters they sent I mean 22:05 they’d send stuff to like Welch with the John Burch Society and other people but 22:10 apparently they sent some to Garrison claiming yeah that the Illuminati was behind the assassination. 22:17 And I found one in Weisberg’s files. It was Robert Anne Ton Wilson wrote a spoof 22:24 letter along those lines to uh Weisberg. And Weisberg was one of the ser of this 22:30 bunch too, you know. 22:36 Well, yeah, in in a certain sense, but yeah. 22:42 So, so yeah, Thornley, you know, a fascinating character. Um uh but that 22:47 you know led you to write about you know people like uh Beckham Chrisman and Brochers. I don’t know if you want to 22:53 talk about one of those characters. Um, yeah, with brochures. Um, 23:01 I’ve been a reading Kennedy assassination books for a long time like you as a young man and u 23:10 you know I came came across uh oh different pro garrison stuff back in 23:18 the mid 80s or so you know and I go wow that’s a lot of his theories and the 23:26 people he claimed were perpetrators involved in the conspiracy. They show up 23:31 in other books. People were repeating this. So, it was and of course Oliver Stone ended up running with it. But, you 23:38 know, you see that stuff as a young guy and it’s like, wow, this is the district attorney of New Orleans. He’s got a lot 23:45 of power and you hear him talk, you know, charismatic guy and all that. It’s like, yeah, he start repeating this 23:52 stuff as fact. it, you know, later on you dig into it, it’s like, huh, maybe 23:58 not so much. Yeah. Um, so, uh, but I remember seeing brochers 24:04 mentioning a book, uh, by Bernard Festerald. Yeah. Coincidence or Conspiracy, I think it 24:11 was called. Yeah, it was a paperback book. Yeah. Which I have. Yeah. Bernard Festerwald. Yeah. And it’s like a who’s who and good 24:17 resource at the time. Um, and brochures was in there. And once again, it’s one of those characters. It’s like what? 24:23 This guy, they said he knew Ferry knew that Ferry was part of the assassination team, but 24:31 then brochures had also threatened the LBJ at one point. He was also involved 24:38 in UFOs. It’s like what is that this guy, you know? Then um 24:44 as I was writing the first Thornley book um 24:49 started coming across you know in the National Archive files of Garrison brochure statements and yeah he’s making 24:57 all these claims that uh Thornley was part of this group of 25:02 assassins that were also homosexuals and uh that somehow that was part of the 25:10 motive and he connected seemingly connected did Clay Shaw and Ferry and 25:15 Thornley to the assassination. And yeah, he had these crazier ideas like the 25:21 superimposed uh photo and I in uh in the Discordian archives I came across uh 25:29 other materials in the correspondence and I think you mentioned this in your book where a friend of uh Thorn Lee’s 25:37 named Luis Lacy had some interactions with brochures in the around 1970 you 25:42 know so I kind of incorporated that into the book and showed what a kind of she 25:49 she thought he was nuts. Um, it had to do with uh I don’t know if I need to go 25:55 into the all all the details, but uh but he he was another one of these characters kind of like Barbara Reed 26:02 involved in a lot of different stuff. Some of it seemed uh pretty positive, 26:07 you know, like he was helping homeless people in his mission there in San 26:12 Francisco. And he was he had a hand in uh what do he what was it the first uh 26:19 gay liberation day in San Francisco, but then he was somebody who’d always have a 26:24 falling out with people and got into a big row with lesbians in San Francisco. 26:30 So they kind of kicked him out in following years of being involved in the 26:36 gay liberation. So he kind of started his own. He he had this group called the Lavender 26:42 Panther which were like gay vigilantes that were take going to take on uh 26:49 people who were beating up gays and he was just always showing up in uh papers. 26:55 But he’s also kind of a unhinged guy who’s always getting into confrontations 27:00 with uh people and had mental issues. And here we go. This is one of your uh 27:06 you were you were a priest caller. He was sort of a supposed reverend, a man of the cloth, but uh but who knows how 27:14 real that is. And well, he got some credentials through the Universal Life Church, right? Yes. 27:19 Which anybody could get get at that time. And so you and so did uh the likes 27:25 of Fred Chrisman, uh Carrie Thornley. I mean, a lot of people were becoming universal life ministers for a lot of 27:32 different reasons. Tom Beckham as well. Uh part of it was to run scams. 27:39 You know, I think some people during the Vietnam War era thought they could avoid 27:44 the draft be becoming a minister. And so there’s a lot of different motivations, 27:49 but uh Garrison be came across that these guys were all ministers and stuff 27:56 that led to another one of his theories that they were these so-called somebody 28:01 later called these wandering bishops that were using these fringe or obscure 28:07 religious uh churches organizations as fronts to hide their activities as 28:15 political assassins. I mean, and part of that I think was based on 28:23 Jack Martin was feeding that them that information, but he was also involved in these groups as well, you know, uh, with 28:30 David Ferry. So, it’s like you’re involving all these other people’s, but your main witness witness 28:38 uh, you’re letting slide because he’s feeding you the information he want you 28:43 want to hear. you know, uh, Jack Martin. Jack Martin, another 28:49 crazy, unreliable narrator, just like Barbara Reed and, uh, Reverend Braymond 28:56 Raymond Brochures. And these were some of uh Garrison’s uh Yeah. I mean, I love the fact that that 29:01 brochures would went on went on uh a TV show and basically claimed that he had 29:07 channeled Lee RB Oswald at a seance, you know, and Oswald said, “Well, I’m 29:13 innocent.” You know, and and and that’s when the Garrison’s men really got interested. Oh, you know, well, he also 29:19 said he knew fairies, so they got interested. They they brought him to New Orleans. Of course, that was a great 29:24 holiday for brochures. He was off with the boys for a week, you know, having a great time. 29:31 Chrisman too got a vacation with he and his lawyer and he there was a big uh 29:36 Chrisman was trying to get more squeeze more money out of uh Garrison at the time. He was uh given $500 29:44 for he and his lawyer to go to New Orleans. And Gresman said, “Well, that 29:50 that’s not enough, you know, to pay our time.” But you look at $500 and 29:56 When was that? 19 68. 68. It’s more like uh I don’t know three 30:03 or $4,000. So was plenty. And he spent that weekend there and had a uh good 30:08 time apparently. Yeah. En enjoyed it. Uh 30:14 talking to I uh interviewed his son Fred Chrisman Jr. 30:20 who’s uh around. Oh wow. And uh he said that Yeah. He said that 30:25 uh Chrisman was uh absolutely thrilled, almost giddy to get the attention and go 30:32 to uh New Orleans. Uh Thornley’s wife or ex-wife that by that time wasn’t 30:38 thrilled at all. She was pissed and kind of upset by the whole thing. They were separated at the time. And so Fred 30:45 Chrisman Jr. had those memories. Do you think uh do you think I mean I mean Garrison learned about Chrisman through 30:52 uh and Beckham through an anonymous letter. Do you think Chrisman wrote that letter first? Yeah. First let me say Chrisman 30:59 had an extensive uh history of writing fake letters. So under uh assumed names. 31:07 Um some other insights from uh Fred Chrisman Jr. 31:14 But uh he lived with his his Chrisman and his wife were separated, 31:20 but uh Fred Jr. would visit like in the summer there in Tacoma. And Chrisman had 31:28 a uh office uh underground office, underground lair where he’d uh do what 31:36 uh Chrisman Jr. called uh his father would do his disinformation work. And 31:43 what he the setup he had uh he had there was a large desk there with three 31:48 different typewriters. So he he’d use different typewriters to produce letters, you know, that’d be harder to 31:54 trace. And he he’d collect uh different uh stuff like letter heads from 32:01 wherever, government agencies. if there was an estate sale or like a law firm 32:07 that went out of business, he’d collect different things that he could emboss to make it look official. So, there’s a lot 32:14 of evidence that he concocted a lot of letters and I have a few of those just 32:21 to show them in the book I’m working on on Chrisman. But unfortunately, a lot of 32:26 his files got his home files got tossed out. Chrisman Jr. has a few examples of 32:33 stuff and uh photos that he shared with me. So yeah, Chrisman had a history of 32:39 doing that. There’s two anonymous u letters. Uh the first one was uh 32:49 named five uh people who were involved who had information. So two of the 32:55 people named were Chrisman and Beckham. There was uh also uh Sergio Aracha and Lewis Rebel. 33:04 They were part of that friends of Democratic Cuba 33:11 anti-Castro uh group. Somehow they got lumped into this letter. And also somebody called 33:16 Martin Graci. There’s no Martin Graci. There was a Julio Graci. Uh so 33:24 and there was Bob Bob Lavender as well. Well, Bob came later. I guess he came 33:30 later. I think uh at least uh Garrison suspected 33:35 and Boxley, his investigator, they suspected he wrote this uh letter. It 33:41 wasn’t signed, but he’s connected to that letter. And that’s why Boxley went 33:46 to interview him about that. and he had some of the same information that appeared in that 33:52 letter. So, it’s hard to say exactly if uh 33:58 uh Lavender what his role was. Was he just repeating that information he had heard overheard 34:07 from Beckham and Chrisman or was he a collaborator in this uh farce? So, there 34:14 was that letter. Then there was the uh second anonymous letter 34:20 that that first anonymous letter was like 67 and early 68 uh was the one that 34:28 is just a one-page letter anonymous not signed to anybody. There’s this guy you 34:33 need to check on in Tacoma Chrisman. Uh he travels around the 34:40 country and he’s involved in this thing. Jim, you need to look at this guy. 34:46 Whatever. And that that seems more like a uh Chrisman letter. You just don’t 34:52 know for sure, you know. Yep. But Chrisman had this habit of or 34:59 he was trying to build this mystique around himself. I mean, it goes back to the UFO days and 35:07 uh I believe hoaxing the Mory Island UFO incidents in his letters about 35:14 battling the underground creatures, the daros in Burma during World War II. it 35:20 he was just creating this uh mystique around himself as this action 35:27 man who was involved in paranormal events and was a deep cover secret 35:34 agent. There is the famous uh document called the easy papers. Are you familiar with that? 35:40 Yeah. And I’m pretty sure Chrisman concocted that. It’s like a six-page 35:48 document allegedly written by an analyst at CIA who pulled Chrisman’s uh file to 35:57 lay out this information about him. And it’s obviously a hoax, but yeah, it 36:03 reads just like uh other Chrisman um 36:08 hoax letters. I shared that with Fred uh Chrisman Jr., Right. And 36:15 I’m not I’m not a big fan of AI or any of that, but he said we got a my son and 36:21 wife uh want to run this through chat GPT to compare it to uh his book Murder 36:28 of the City Tacoma, right? Which is right here. Yep. And according to Chatch GPT, 36:37 uh it’s the same author. Huh. Okay. What that means, I don’t know. There’s a 36:43 lot of slop that’s comes with AI, but it it was an interesting analysis. 36:50 Yeah. So, yeah. And and of course, you know, Garrison receives these anonymous 36:55 letters and he then has to bring Chrisman in to testify and Chrisman said nothing. I mean, really nothing. And 37:02 then Garrison went on to tell the HSCA, “You got to look at this guy Chrisman. He’s he’s a he’s a real suspect uh in 37:10 the assassination.” And lo and behold, he’s not even in Garrison’s book. Yeah, he had a bee in his bonnet about 37:17 uh Chrisman for sure. Um well, he was as you know, he was in the original version 37:25 of uh Chrisman’s book. Yeah, he was he was in the original version of Garrison, 37:31 excuse me. Yeah, Garrison’s book, but was removed later. I talked to Larry Hapen about that um 37:40 when uh Garrison was uh writing that called his assassination memoir whatever 37:47 on the trail of the assassins. Yeah, you’re familiar with that title. Um he intended yeah to have a chapter on 37:54 Chrisman. I think the first publisher looked at I forget who this was now, but 38:00 they said, “You promised us a connection with the CIA and it’s just not here with 38:06 Chrisman. You know, it’s not working at all.” There you go. Yeah. And so Garrison 38:12 regrouped and he contacted Fred Nukem who was involved in that touchup photo 38:18 and said at that time the U House select committee assassinations had ended and 38:25 Garrison wasn’t happy with the work they did on Chrisman. He he it was his opinion he gave them a bunch of leads to 38:32 follow where they could have proved it but nothing uh they you know determined 38:37 that Chrisman had an alibi and I mean comparing him to the photos, I guess, of 38:43 the three tramps, I guess, of the million different people claimed were 38:49 the three tramps. I guess Chrisman maybe vaguely looked like the old man [ _ ]
38:54
but uh whatever the case, uh Nukem
39:00
suggested Larry Happen is the guy who really looked into Chrisman during that uh period in 6970.
39:07
and happened and got a hold of Garrison and said so many words you know you’re barking up
39:15
a tree there it’s going to undermine your book by using this information about Chrisman
39:22
because like I saidan had determined he’s the one who found out that Chrisman had an alibi he’s a uh
39:30
he was a teacher I forget he was might have been teaching high school at that time and was at some conference or
39:37
something and met up with uh one of the persons who worked with
39:44
Chrisman at where was he at? That might have been I think it was Reneer High School in Reneer, Oregon
39:53
who uh saw Chrisman there on the day of the assassination and they provided
39:59
written uh records to the House Select Committee on Assassination. So I mean
40:05
that so that was kind of a important piece of uh information
40:12
witnesses that Hannan brought uh forward that basically threw a wet towel over at
40:18
least Chrisman being in Daily Plaza on the day of the assassination. Of course that didn’t stop any of these theories
40:26
from growing since Chrisman died after the House Select Committee on Assassination. Man,
40:32
you can get online and punch in Chrisman and uh a lot of people are sold on the
40:37
theory that he was one of the three tramps.
40:43
Yeah. No, and you know, and it’s and it’s it’s it’s and I mean even Garrison was like, “Well, isn’t it amazing that
40:49
Chrisman was uh you know, living uh in Oregon and and and Fred Clay Shaw went
40:55
to uh Portland after San Francisco after the assassination. He must have they
41:00
must have crossed paths. That’s why he was going to Oregon to see Chrisman. And he’s writing this to the HSCA. I mean,
41:08
it’s just incredible. Hey, I’ve been to Portland many times, too. Yeah. I’ve been to Tacoma, Seattle. So,
41:17
yep. As I could be connected. So, yeah. No, a fascinating character. Looking forward to your book. I think
41:23
it’s going to be a really really uh really good book. And uh we’ll go into uh Chrisman in more detail when that
41:29
book comes out. Uh Beckham sure Beckham is another you know character who is associated with Chrisman who went on to
41:37
become not only a garrison suspect but Joan Melon’s key suspect in her book
41:42
Farewell to Justice. What can you say? Um boy where to start with Beckham. I mean he was a lifelong
41:48
conman. you’d done some good work on him as well. I have an extensive write up in
41:54
the book, but he was involved in one scam over another over the years. He was
42:00
like a lot of people associated with Chrisman. He had it used different aliases. Mark Evans was one as a uh
42:08
rockabilly and southern singer or sometimes a uh preacher of some sort. He
42:14
had all these different scams and like Chrisman and uh some of these other
42:20
folks they were uh connected to were involved in diploma mills of one type or
42:28
another. And somehow the two uh and Beckham was pretty young. He was in his
42:34
early 20s at the time he met Chrisman in 1966. Was a pretty accomplished conman
42:40
by that time. And uh during the fall, I
42:46
guess he got there supposedly in the spring of ‘ 66 through the fall, they started a bunch of dummy companies. One
42:53
of them was a course to teach law enforcement that cost uh $500,
43:01
you know, and the FBI got involved in breaking that up. They’re also involved
43:06
in a kind of a scam charity called the Northwest Relief Society that uh would
43:13
leave uh donation cans in different bars and stuff and the Olympia PD I think got
43:18
in and broke that up. And I think there might have been more serious stuff going on. There’s definitely allegations that
43:26
there was a stolen car ring and just a lot of shady stuff. But uh Beckham
43:33
basically split. This was his mo in the end of ‘ 66 and went to uh Omaha where
43:40
he started the same kind of shenanigans again. A lot he’d go and uh he’d start
43:46
like a uh thrift store which he’d also set up as a universal life church where
43:53
he could be a minister like in the basement and it would like a fly by night. He’d
44:00
be there for a uh few m few months or a few weeks uh allegations that he was
44:07
fencing stolen material. Then he’d move on to the next scam. My
44:15
my favorite Beckham scam is in the early 60s when he he promoted a Ricky Nelson
44:20
concert and and of course lo and behold he brings in a Ricky not the Ricky Nelson
44:26
but somebody else with the same name and well it might have been him it might have been him posing as ran off with the
44:33
money and he did the thing on a more serious level the same like I said the same mo in 76 where and this was in Alabama he
44:42
started collecting money for for a benefit for a couple of police officers that were killed for a country and music
44:49
show. He claimed that initially Ernest Tubs was going to be there with his group and but he got indicted for wire
44:58
fraud and whatever and he ended up u federal indictment being prosecuted by
45:06
uh Jeff Sessions, a future attorney general of these United States. But he
45:12
used he got off. who was acquitted and he used the claim that he was working for the CIA and so he was like doing a
45:21
lot of this stuff in the interest of national security. I don’t know but it was there was enough
45:28
reasonable doubts in the juror’s minds to uh get him uh acquitted.
45:34
He had started another things he was starting were these fake detective
45:40
agencies and once one he named this the central
45:46
intelligence alliance or something he used the initial CIA so he was kind of being
45:53
truthful that he had started he he’d worked for the CIA
45:59
but yeah quite a uh character but it was that time. Yeah. And so came out of that
46:07
uh trial that uh once again these rumors were surfacing again that he’d worked
46:14
for the CIA somehow involved with the Kennedy assassination. That’s
46:20
when the House Select Committee got started uh talking to him again during
46:25
that period when he was being uh prosecuted for that Alabama scam. He was
46:32
in jail in Pineluff and that the HSCA started talking to him there and
46:38
interviewed him a couple more times. Uh, and he told and and from what I
46:44
understand, he got immunity to talk to them. So he could say any damn thing he wanted to and and he was
46:52
always kind of working the scam seemed like over the years to create a this
46:59
false story that he could uh profit on about him being involved in the uh
47:05
Kennedy uh assassination as an unwitting kind of dupe who got sucked into the
47:11
thing and he was during the uh time he was being uh He was talking to the HSCA.
47:20
He was also shopping around a book which was I guess some version of which was
47:25
later published in the 2000s called the remnants of truth. Yeah, it’s definitely remnants of uh
47:33
truth. So yeah, it was something he’s always trying to uh I mean my my favorite is when he was
47:38
testifying before the HSCA, he was listing off all his degrees, a degree in
47:44
this, degree in that, all the universities, and he said, “I have more degrees than a thermometer.”
47:50
He actually he stole that from uh one of his earlier uh trials when he was uh in
47:59
I think it was when he was in Omaha. He got busted for a diploma mill
48:05
and the judge chastised him and that the district attorney there said, “Uh, yeah,
48:10
this man has more degrees than a thermometer.” And so Beckham loved that and he
48:17
started using it himself. And that’s what’s funny about that book of his remnants of truth.
48:23
And not a really a whole lot in there about the Kennedy assassination. I mean, there’s a few pages. There’s like a
48:31
dozen or more pages of all his diplomas. Yep. There’s personal testimonies from his
48:38
family members. It’s like, okay, it’s it’s a bizarre book. And and uh I I
48:44
mean, it’s just what a what a bizarre story. And I can’t believe that Joan Melon bought it. I mean I mean he
48:50
actually she was convinced that he had converted to Judaism. She has a picture picture of him in his
48:56
in in these re rabbitical robes, you know, in her book. And then she has some claims that he had some sort of military
49:03
document that he gave her that convinced her that he was, you know, involved in all this. And of course, you never see
49:08
the document. Yeah. That was similar in that same book. Um I believe it’s in the
49:14
introduction of the book. She also goes after Thornley claiming he was CIA and
49:19
that she saw a document that proved that. And I later I asked her at the
49:26
time and that was when did that book come out? 2005 or something or
49:32
emailed her asking if I could get a copy of that. So at the time I read that I go whoa that’s you know I took it kind of
49:39
half seriously. I’d like to see that document that proves I finally she never sent me the
49:46
document at the time. She said she was sick or something. and when she got better, she’d get it to me. And but I
49:53
pursued I emailed her a couple times, never heard back. I finally figured out what the document was. And you can see
50:00
it in a post that the story of Discordia uh called was Carrie Thornley, CIA.
50:08
And so, no, that document did not prove Thornley was CIA. You can go people want
50:15
more information, they can go read that. But yeah, there’s and so there’s also the document where she claims the
50:23
document was from Chrisman claiming that Beckham was part of this operation at a
50:30
place called the farm. I think secret military kind of clockwork orange place
50:36
where they were creating these military assassins. And so yeah, I never bothered
50:42
asking her. I’d like to see what the document sounds like. another phony thing that maybe who knows Chrisman
50:48
cooked up or who knows we’ve never seen it. Why don’t you show it, you know?
50:54
Yeah. Um, now he does uh Beckham uh he does uh have a
51:04
ministry there in uh where is that Kentucky or at least did 10 15 years ago
51:10
and an actual uh church chapel that was a former u synagogue I think
51:18
right and so he’s kind of a self-styled uh
51:23
dude [Laughter] Uh yeah. So I guess he can say whatever
51:30
he wants to say. He’s a minister of after some fashion, I guess.
51:36
Yeah. You know, I strongly recommend people go read his uh his testimony
51:41
before the Garrison Grand Jury. It is abs it’s absolutely hysterically funny
51:46
when you read because it just the way he lists off his degrees and and the way he
51:52
answers questions and and uh you know and he he actually was accusing Garrison
51:57
of homosexuality in his grand testimony. That was the big bombshell he dropped at
52:03
the end just Yeah. Um what I think he was uh doing
52:10
it’s uh that he was he was nervous of obviously of going back to New Orleans,
52:17
but I don’t think he was nervous about Kennedy assassination stuff. He still had some charges hanging over his head
52:25
for a number of uh things. There was that uh store that he and his brother
52:32
ripped off. They both worked in this uh clothing store and they stole a huge amount of uh the uh
52:40
merchandise there and were going to start their own stores. Once again, you look at the numbers, it was like $12,000
52:46
of merchandise. So, you’re talking in today’s numbers $100,000 worth of
52:52
stuff. So, that charge was still hanging over his head. his brother had uh
52:59
already uh served his time, but uh Beckham, as he was want to do, had been
53:06
able to skip out on I think uh it looked like he faked uh a suicide at that time,
53:12
went into a mental facility, then got out of there before he could face those
53:18
charges. So that those were still going on. And uh there was also the uh
53:23
statutory rape charge that had never really been adjudicated either. So he
53:29
had had these things going on. And if you look at his testimony, he kind of touches on on all that stuff and
53:36
provides alternative facts of what you actually happened that he wasn’t. So, I
53:43
think he was just trying to spin and cover for his past criminal
53:49
activities. If if you kind of read between the lines and a lot of that stuff and he never
53:55
he never really addresses questions. He just goes off on and then of course he he he ends up
54:03
telling the HSCA about his involvement in the assassination. They they realize it’s all ridiculous. But then years
54:09
later, Garrison believes, “Oh, there’s a confession tape, right?” Yeah. It’s it’s it’s Beckham. And Garrison’s all
54:16
excited. I’m I’ve been vindicated. There’s a confession tape, you know, and I was right all along.
54:22
And it was just was just it was just Beckham, you know. Well, Guy Russo has a uh good story
54:29
about the confession tape. Yeah. Gus Gus Russo. Yeah. You interview You interviewed him. Did
54:36
he talk about that? Okay. Yeah. Well, he basically he went to see Beckham in his office in uh I don’t know, Kentucky or
54:43
Omaha and Beckham is all these fake diplomas on the wall and and at some point uh he sort of says, “Yeah, it’s
54:49
all ridiculous. Let’s just play guitar and they end up guitar the the afternoon rather than talk about anything
54:55
serious.” Well, Russo has this story where he uh
55:01
he was working with Bernard Festerwald and uh going to the National Archives
55:08
looking for stuff. And this was like uh kind of after
55:13
during and after the House Select Committee on Assassinations. And at that time, all that was available
55:22
were like old FBI files and other stuff. the House Select Committee stuff had
55:28
been embargoed and um and part of that embargo came
55:35
from the Black Congressional Caucus really started the force that started those
55:42
hearings on the different assassinations and they uh were trying to keep a lid on
55:48
the U MLK materials just because of the hijinks of the FBI all
55:55
that they thought it would tarnish his image. You know, there’s all the wire taps of his
56:02
affairs, alleged affairs, and that type of stuff. So, that’s kind of the reason there was the embargo on those
56:07
materials. But, and has Gus told you this story before? No. No. Go ahead. No.
56:12
Okay. And so, he was going in there and u
56:19
looking for stuff. And one day he went into a little al cove where he found a
56:25
uh like a uh sheet that listed a bunch of uh stuff and he looked at the
56:31
numbers and it was related to the embargoed material. So he took he
56:37
grabbed whatever this was a uh sheet of paper that was somewhere in this alco
56:42
took it back to his desk and started writing down all these he rec it didn’t say the house select committee and
56:49
assassinations he just recognized the series of numbers he goes whoa that’s
56:54
interesting that’s all the embargoed material
56:59
and there’s a a list of everything one of the stuff on there was confession tape da da Huh? So what he did, he
57:08
thought maybe I can do something with this list. Um he thought
57:16
during certain times like during lunch uh breaks and uh maybe on weekends there
57:23
was more inexperienced staff there uh students uh and people maybe not quite
57:31
uh as swift on the uptake as the regular archivist who manages. I’ll take some of
57:38
those numbers to them and see what they bring back to me. And sure enough, they brought back to him some of these
57:44
embargoed materials. Uh, a lot of them were these cassette tapes,
57:50
right? Yeah. And so he So he’s kind of freaking out here. Whoa.
57:56
He goes back and one of them, I’m not sure if he ever actually listened to the
58:01
uh Beckham tape, but he started listening to these tapes on the
58:07
equipment there. And the archives would uh supply you
58:12
with a tape player and a duplicate thing where you could make copies. So that was the plan. he was going to come in there
58:19
during lunchtime, start getting these embargoed classified materials basically
58:27
and uh but he it it was going to take a long time and so uh Fster said, “Well,
58:35
maybe we can get some machine where you can high do a high-speed dubbing.” and they got a hold of this big clanky
58:43
huge machine that he was somehow able to get into the archives and started uh
58:49
burning multiple copies at high speed and got busted by somebody caught him
58:56
there. They would first they caught him with you can’t use that high-speed machines. You’re going to break the damn
59:01
tapes. Oh, okay. Well, they and he got clearance from the people at who are
59:07
working during lunchtime. But this is one of the regular archists and he so you got to stop that right now. You
59:13
can’t use them. The archives started walking away. He turned back and saw it was the embargoed material and he just
59:19
flipped out, you know, and took all the material and u re so hight tailed it out of there
59:26
and went back home to Maryland or where it was that weekend uh expecting the FBI
59:31
to raid him, but nothing ever came of it. Uh, and you could, you should ask
59:37
Gus. He has a write up of this. It’s like a dozen pages of this whole uh,
59:43
experience. But that’s when he first heard about that uh, confession confession tape which led him to doing
59:51
some research on Beckham and like you said uh, going to his storefront and
59:57
guess he was in Kentucky at that time and figuring out Yeah. that he was just a uh good humored kind of con man. And
1:00:06
they ended up jamming on guitars and singing uh that night.
1:00:12
Yeah. It’s it’s it’s I mean it’s just I mean I could I could I could just sense how excited Garrison was to believe that
1:00:20
he was finally being vindicated, you know, by by Thomas Beckham. I mean it’s just so funny. Well, there
1:00:28
yeah, there had been these rumors about the uh confession tape and Garrison heard about it. Different stappers was
1:00:35
saying there’s a con uh confession and so that was spreading through the you
1:00:42
know JFK research community at that time. It was the hot hot thing.
1:00:47
Beckham’s confession tape which confessed to all number of things. Yeah. and
1:00:54
implicated dozens of different people, you know, that had uh materialized
1:01:01
during the Garrison investigation. I mean, Beckham connected them all or
1:01:08
claimed that, you know, they were all connected. Oswald, Ruby,
1:01:13
uh, Banister, etc., etc. Yeah, he loved to drop names. I mean,
1:01:19
he’s just absolutely incredible. And uh what a what a character. I mean just
1:01:24
really funny. I mean if I if you again if you read his testimony either the HSCA or Garrison’s grand jury, you can’t
1:01:30
help but laugh when you read it. I mean it’s actually quite funny when you read it. I don’t know. I just don’t know how Garrison
1:01:36
could have taken him seriously um after that. But he did. Of course another name is not in Garrison’s book.
1:01:43
He left Beckham out of his book as well. That is true. Yeah.
1:01:48
I wonder why. Yeah. But like I said, Joan Millan ran with it and gave him his story and other
1:01:56
shot in the arm. Yep. And and yeah, and she she bought a hook, line, and sinker, including the
1:02:01
fact that he even converted to Judaism, which was absolutely hysterical. And it was his own branch of Judaism,
1:02:08
right? It was his own special branch, you know. I don’t know. I don’t know what the heck it is, but he wears a yarmaka. And uh I
1:02:14
think I think uh he might have some uh
1:02:19
family ties are Jewish to Judaism, but it’s Yeah, it’s pretty
1:02:25
Well, he changed he sort of changed his name for a while. So it was like B apostrophe E C E sound like it was a a
1:02:33
Jewish name. Yeah. Yep. You can’t make this stuff up.
1:02:40
Okay. So tell me what’s next? You’re writing a book on Chrisman. Tell us about your your upcoming book and where you’re going to go from there.
1:02:47
Yeah, it’s about it’s almost done. Like I mentioned, I uh interviewed Fred
1:02:52
Chrisman Jr. which was interesting getting uh hold of him and he’s been really uh
1:02:59
helpful in the endeavor and other people I mentioned like Larry Hapan and uh
1:03:04
Hannon, that’s how you say it. Yeah. Larry happening and uh number of other people. It it’s
1:03:12
been going on for numbers years. It was kind of like the uh Thornley book where just out of an
1:03:19
interest I’d gathered material on Thornley and you know after a while you
1:03:24
just have so much stuff and written articles related to Charisman. It got to
1:03:30
a point, well, maybe this is a book. And yeah, I’ve learned
1:03:35
quite a bit over time to really expand on, you know, what’s out there already.
1:03:42
Well, I can’t wait till it comes out and we’ll have you back on to uh discuss the book when the book is published. Uh it’s
1:03:49
it’s definitely a needed book and uh your stuff is absolutely magnificent. So, uh, u, we’ll put links into your
1:03:56
books in the description of the of the podcast and, uh, I strongly recommend everybody go and buy Adam Goritley’s
1:04:02
books. They’re just terrific. Yeah. And check out Historia Discordia that has some of JFK assassination
1:04:09
stuff, but lot of good stuff. A lot of stuff on these characters are are on online on
1:04:15
your website. Very important stuff with documents, photographs, um, etc. A lot of good primary material. Yeah, I got
1:04:22
pretty obsessive for a while with some of those posts there. I look back at them now, it’s like, good lord, 10,000
1:04:30
words in a blog post. The hell’s wrong with you? Yeah, it’s too much.
1:04:37
Okay. Well, thank you very much and uh we’ll be back in touch uh sometime next year.
1:04:42
Okay, sounds good. Thanks,
Technical Notes:
This was originally shot as a 1280 by 720 ZOOM Call. I edited the first few shots using Adobe After Effects (“detail Preserving Upscale” with the rest edited with Adobe Premiere and it’s basic scaling feature. ( I think I over did the extreme close up on the guests face.)
I downloaded several book covers from AMAZON and other websites. Then I cut them up and layered them in Adobe Photoshop. Then I animated them into motion graphics pieces in Adobe After Effects.
One of the animated book covers has some 2d animation made with Adobe Animate (formerly Flash. The Masonic “33” and the spinning Atomic symbol were made with Animate:
mattkprovideo 