There was another Brit also lurking around the scene in California in 1960, as well as later, named
Denis Kendall 34 of 1319 N Doheny Drive West Hollywood. This is not only in Hollywood; it's in Laurel Canyon!
http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=1319...1&ct=title
Quote:Oakland Tribune--October 1960
INGLEWOOD, Oct. 14-UP--Admiral Arthur W. Radford, USN, ret., former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has joined the board of directors of American Marc Inc., W. Denis Kendall, the company's president, announced.
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What was Kendall's connection to the Riconosciutos?
http://www.lycaeum.org/books/books/last_circle/11.htm
CHAPTER 11
Michael Riconosciuto had some, if not all, of the answers to the gene splicing technology that Zokosky and Wackenhut had attempted to sell to the Army weapons division in 1983, and later fronted to the Japanese, through Meridian International Logisitcs, in 1988.
I felt that time was of the essence in uncovering the nature of this technology, so I pushed Riconosciuto to talk about it. "It looks like Earl Brian,
Sir Denis Kendall,
...I had read about Sir Denis Kendall, the famous M16 British intelligence officer during World War II, in "Who's Who in America," 1989 issue. Kendall had worked with Michael in some, as yet, undefined capacity. Bobby Riconosciuto had noted to me that Kendall and Ted Gunderson had counseled Oliver North prior to his testimony to Congress. Kendall was also heavily involved in arms and biotechnology, according to Michael Riconosciuto. "Who's Who" described Denis William Kendall as a
"medical electronic equipment company executive," born in Halifax, Yorkshire, England on May 27, 1903.
Kendall came to the United States in 1923, was naturalized in 1957. His background included being a
consultant to the Pentagon on high velocity
small arms from 1940 to 1945. He was listed on Churchill's War Cabinet Gun Board from 1941-45. He was later executive vice president of
Brunswick Ordnance Plant in New Jersey from 1952 to 1956. From 1961 to 1973, became president of Dynapower Medonics in Los Angeles, and chief executive of Kendall Medical International, Inc. in Los Angeles in 1973.
Hercules Research, Wackenut, Zokosky and Bob Nichols were all involved in the same biotechnological agenda ..."
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http://www.lycaeum.org/books/books/last_circle/12.htm
The issue of Viedenieks' connection with Earl Brian or Terry Sanford, or even Nichols himself, had not been raised publicly yet. At the time, I didn't place any particular significance on Nichols' relationship with Earl Brian or Peter Viedenieks, I just took the information at face value and wrote it in my notes.
Nichols reacted violently when I asked him if he had any business dealings with Brunswick Corporation in New Jersey. He jumped up from his chair by the window and yelled, "Absolutely not!"
I quickly explained that I had looked up Sir Denis Kendall (the famous M16 World War II British officer) in "Who's Who in America" and learned that he had once been associated with Brunswick. Nichols said he did not know Sir Denis Kendall. His eyes told me otherwise.
I noted that was strange since Michael Riconosciuto seemed to know him well. Nichols and Zokosky exchanged glances. I further explained that Bobby Riconosciuto said she had been to Kendall's home on Doheny Drive in Beverly Hills with her children once. She had often called Kendall when she was trying to locate Michael, and within hours of calling Kendall, Michael always called her back. Nichols and Zokosky seemed disturbed by that statement.
I didn't mention that Riconoscituo had stated Kendall was Nichols' supervisor (CIA "handler"), or that J.M., Ted Gunderson's research partner, had found a brochure in Ted's files advertising for Swedish nurses at a medical research complex in Mexico. The brochure contained both Gunderson's picture and Sir Denis Kendall's.
You must read: Inside The LC: The Strange but Mostly True Story of Laurel Canyon and the Birth of the Hippie Generation
http://www.davesweb.cnchost.com/index.html
http://www.davesweb.cnchost.com/nwsltr102.html
Just to the west of Laurel Canyon, and slightly to the east of Coldwater Canyon, lies a large estate known as Greystone Park, home of the long-vacant Greystone Mansion. The home, and the grounds it sits on, is said to be, to this day, the most expensive private residence ever built in the city of Los Angeles. Constructed in the 1920s, the home and grounds carried the then-unfathomable price tag of $4,000,000 (by way of comparison, the Lookout Inn, built a decade-and-a-half earlier, was projected to cost from $86,000-$100,000; in other words, the single-family residence cost at least 40 times what the lavish 70-room inn cost – and the inn required bringing infrastructure and building materials to a remote mountaintop). The massive, 46,000 square-foot edifice sits amid 22 lavishly landscaped acres of prime Hollywood Hills real estate. This rather ostentatious home was built by uberwealthy oil tycoon Edward L. Doheny as a wedding present for his son, Edward “Ned” Doheny, Jr.. ...Upon the home’s completion, in September 1928, young Ned Doheny and his new bride moved into the humble abode. Within months, the home would be bloodstained; soon after, it would be permanently abandoned.
Poor Ned, you see, was found dead in the cavernous home on February 16, 1929. Near him lay the lifeless body of his assistant/personal secretary, [Theodore] Hugh Plunkett. Both men had been shot. Despite persistent rumors of an inordinately long delay in reporting the deaths, and of the bodies having been moved to re-stage the crime scene, no formal inquest was ever conducted and the case was written off as a murder/suicide arising from a gay lovers’ quarrel. Plunkett was said to be the triggerman and the media quickly went into a frenzy playing up the scandalous homosexuality angle and portraying young Plunkett as positively demented.
It is anyone’s guess whether or not the two really were gay lovers, but it matters little; the rest of the story was almost certainly a work of fiction. In reality, both men were likely murdered as part of the massive cover-up/damage-control operation that followed the disclosure of the Harding-era Teapot Dome scandal, which the Doheny family, as it turns out, was very deeply immersed in. The murder/suicide scenario was then trotted out because, as we all know, if the alleged perpetrator is already dead, it pretty much eliminates the need for things like investigations and trials....Some forty years after those gunshots rang out in the opulent Greystone Mansion, a new Ned Doheny, scion of the very same Doheny oil clan, would join the ranks of the Laurel Canyon singer-songwriters club.
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If anything, Kendall brings us back to Laurel Canyon and the 1920's before there were talking pictures a la Hollywood. Kendall's address, years after Hollywood became synonymous with movies and rock stars, was 1319 N Doheny Drive West Hollywood--in the heart of Laurel Canyon.
http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=1319...1&ct=image
http://www.newyorksocialdiary.com/node/2550
Greystone, the Doheny mansion which sits on the hillside above Doheny Road on the eastern edge of Beverly Hills is now a park, so named officially in 1971.When it was built,in the late 1920s, it was the second largest house (56,000 square feet) in California after Hearst’s castle at San Simeon.
[COLOR="Red"]In the 1920s, all of that area, which includes what is now Trousdale Estates and the adjacent Doheny Drive properties, extending westward and upwards into the foothills of the range that is known as the Santa Monica Mountains; all of it belonged to the Dohenys, and most specifically Edward L. Doheny Jr., known as “Ned,” son of E.L. Sr., who first struck oil in the Los Angeles area in 1892.[/COLOR] At the beginning of the 20th century, the elder Mr. Doheny was pumping enough oil to rival only one other oilman of consequence in America, John D. Rockefeller.
In those early days, the family lived where all the rich of Los Angeles lived, in the southwest part of the city (Beverly Hills and the western sections like Holmby, Bel Air and Brentwood had yet to be developed), in the vicinity of West Adams Boulevard, Chester Square and Lafayette Square.
Sunset Boulevard around what is now Doheny Drive wasn’t much more than a bridlepath (and often used as one). What is West Hollywood now was then poinsettia fields in an area known as Sherman. The Dohenys used their land in the hills now know as Truesdale, as a ranch -- a place to get away -- out of town, for horseback riding, hiking and other healthy outdoor activities.
By the
early 1920s, young Ned, with his wife Lucy and their five children occupied a large and stylish house up in these hills, as did several of their relatives with young families like them.
By the early 1920s, E.L.Doheny Sr. was one of the richest men in the world with hugely productive oil fields in the southwest and Mexico. His wealth made him a very powerful man politically, and he used that power to ingratiate himself with, and even create, national political leaders, such as presidents. One president whose administration was profoundly affected by old man Doheny was Warren G. Harding.
President Harding had a Secretary of the Interior named Albert Fall who was a very close friend of the elder Mr. Doheny. In fact, Mr. Doheny once gave Mr. Fall $100,000 to help him along (that’s about $10 million in today’s dollars). In return -- out of gratitude of course, as it so often is with our politicians -- Secretary Fall made it possible for Mr. Doheny to secure
oil drilling rights to a large deposit of oil on federally owned lands, particularly one rich one which was called the Teapot Dome because its vastness was shaped like ... a teapot.
The Teapot Dome was to become the nemesis in the downfall of Warren G. Harding and his administration, as well as the greatest political scandal in American history until Watergate, a half century later. Albert Fall was disgraced and went to jail. Mr. Doheny escaped a prison sentence by the skin of his teeth and an incident which caused his family fortunes took a far more tragic turn.
The $100,000 cash
bribe to the Secretary of Interior Fall had been hand delivered in a black valise, by Mr. Doheny's son Ned, who was then in his late twenties, and a boyhood friend who was then employee of the family, Hugh Plunkett. That single act -- carrying that black bag and handing it over to Secretary Fall -- was to seal the fate of both young Doheny and his friend Plunkett in a most terrible way.
In the early 1920s while all of this political mischief was going on with men in high places in Washington, Ned Doheny, an only child, decided to build his dream house on the ranch land in the hills. The original design by architect Wallace Neff, was inspired by the Petit Trianon at Versailles, and, like Rosecliff it became a massive project, dwarfed at the time only by the activities of William Randolph Hearst who at about the same time farther up the coast at San Simeon, was building his castle.
The property of pines and barren hillside was transformed and planted and replanted to make way for a sprawling stone mansion with broad terraces overlooking the city (which at that time was mainly bungalows and clusters of stores amidst a lot of vacant land) as far south as the
family oil wells on Signal Hills, just north of Long Beach. Hollywood was several miles down those almost remote roads to the east, and what is now Downtown L.A. was about forty-five minutes away.
As the house was abuilding, Ned Doheny and his wife Lucy (daughter of a local gas station owner), and their designers scoured Europe for artisans and craftsmen, and for antiques and interiors. After several years and an expenditure said to be about $5 million (or a hundred times that today), Greystone was finished. Huge, regal, a kind of neo-Tudor confection, solid and substantial, it was equipped with all the luxuries any young modern family could want or need, including stables, and athletic facilities, tennis courts, gyms, swimming pools, screening room, ballroom, bowling alleys. It even had its own switchboard and telephone system.
It was the largest house in Los Angeles and it commanded a legend by the time of its completion. Later generations of Los Angelenos called it
Dragonwyck, after the movie that was said to have been inspired by the property.
The house was completed to take occupany in the late summer of 1928. The family, Ned and Lucy Doheny, their five children and fifteen in staff, moved in in the autumn.
The son’s taking possession of Greystone was a milestone in the life of E.L. Doheny, a rough and tumble oil wildcatter who worked long and hard at his quest to finally hit one of the biggest oil strikes on the North American continent that would make him rich and powerful. And now, at the completion of the son’s palace, he, and because of him, the son, he was also in trouble with the Feds. Because of Teapot Dome.
A bribe is a bribe is a bribe. And a hundred grand to a White House Cabinet member? All this, not to mention Hugh Plunkett, the Dohenys’ retainer, the trusted confidant of young Ned -- so trusted that he signed many of the checks in the building of Greystone -- Hugh Plunkett was in trouble with the Feds too. The black bag with the hundred grand that the two pals delivered that day to Secretary Fall, was under investigation.
At the same time the young Dohenys were the golden couple of Los Angeles society with their elevated Eastern social and political connections. When they finally moved into Greystone, with its real kind of palatial splendor, with the world at their feet, so to speak, the shadow of the Teapot Dome had begun to cast its shadow.
Congress was calling for blood. Secretary Fall went first: indicted, convicted and sent to jail. And the bribers? They were next. And who were they? Were they the men who carried the black bag of cash? Young Ned Doheny and his cohort Hugh Plunkett? Or was it the man with the money, E.L. Sr.?
The world was about to find out because a Senate investigation had been launched, and the guilty were going to be dealt with. Now a pillar of the community and an elder; one of the world's richest men, Doheny couldn’t fathom the ramifications. Now a pious Roman Catholic as well, a great contributor to the community and most especially the Roman Catholic church in Los Angeles, guilt was, in his mind, outside his purview, yet now under his skin.
There was now speculation going on in the national press: what would happen to E. L. Doheny when he had to testify under oath before the committee? Would he fold? Would he incriminate himself? Was this the end of the line?
The world was about to see. It was going to start first with the two men who carried the black bag of bribery: Ned Doheny and his buddy Hugh Plunkett. The family was in turmoil.
Neither father nor son had any plans on taking the rap. They intended to protect themselves. Hugh Plunkett, however, was a different story. He was involved also. And his relationship to the family was so close that there could be a case made for his taking matters into his own hands. And getting his own hands dirty.
This reality became apparent to Plunkett as the date of testifying in Washington drew nearer. His own behavior, as revealed in later testimony became unhinged to the point that his friend, young Doheny suggested he be institutionalized until he calmed down.
He did not calm down, however. And as young Doheny pulled away from his boyhood friend, the unhinging took a sharper turn for the worse,. Finally, on a Saturday night in early February 1929, only four months after the young family moved into the house, a very troubled Hugh Plunkett drove up to Greystone from his apartment in Hollywood. A familiar figure on the property, he was let through by the gatekeeper at the big gate (still standing) on Doheny Road.
Just exactly what his movements were after that will never be known precisely. However, Plunkett did let himself into the big house (he had his own key), and made his way to a bedroom in the east wing of the house, a room which might have been available for his use. It was there that he called his friend Ned, who was in another part of the house, through the switchboard, and asked if they could talk.
Ned Doheny, a good-looking man of thirty-five with dark hair, sharp dark eyes, a Black Irishman’s bearing and sometimes alcoholic demeanor, in his silk dressing robe, made his way across the long corridors of the house to meet with Hugh Plunkett.
What happened thereafter remains, seventy-eight years later, mere speculation. The newspaper accounts at the time generally went like this:
Lucy Doheny had been sitting by herself in the library reading magazines when about 11:30 she heard a gunshot. According to press accounts, she didn’t look for the source of the gunshots, nor did she call the police. Instead she called the family doctor who was with his wife at the movies in Beverly Hills. Paged at the theatre, the doctor immediately drove up to the house (about a ten minute drive from downtown Beverly Hills). There he was greeted at the imposing front door (see photos) by Lucy Doheny who led him immediately escorted him to the east wing where she claimed to have heard the gunshot.
At that point, as the doctor and Mrs. Doheny approached the room where Plunkett had called Ned from, Plunkett came out of the room in a state of anguish and with a gun in his hand.. On seeing the family doctor (whom he knew) and Lucy Doheny, he ran back into the room and slammed the door. Whereupon, the doctor and Lucy Doheny (later) claimed they heard another gunshot.
Mind you, this, according to the official story, occurred more than twenty minutes after Lucy Doheny had heard the first gunshot.
Then the doctor and Mrs. Doheny entered the room where they found Hugh Plunkett dead on the floor in a pool of blood, and Ned Doheny also dead on the floor in a pool of blood. This was the official story carried in the newspapers in Los Angeles the next day.
The gunshots occurred around eleven-thirty and midnight that Saturday night. Whatever occurred afterward is obscured by time and testimony. The police were called almost three hours later at 2 a.m. In the meantime, many of Lucy Doheny’s relatives who lived nearby showed up at the house. Called, obviously by someone in the house. Later it was admitted that the bodies were also moved before the police could see and photograph them.
The Dohenys were the richest family in Los Angeles. Their oil wells were everywhere including in many neighborhoods. The sudden death by gunshot of the only son and heir was big news. Everyone wanted to know what happened. Two days later the local DA’s office, however, closed an inquest on the deaths.
It was officially concluded that Hugh Plunkett shot Ned Doheny, his boyhood friend, and then turned the gun on himself. About a half hour later, of course, if the official story is to be believed.
Ned Doheny was buried with pomp and circumstance a few days later. His stepmother (his mother, a half-Cherokee, had died many years before), Estelle Doheny, was one of the biggest contributors to the Roman Catholic church in Los Angeles (she owned the Gutenberg Bible, acquired many decades later by Bill Gates). Curiously, Ned was not buried in a Catholic cemetery but instead at Forest Lawn in Glendale. The reason for this has never been explained, although it could be deduced that his death was not necessarily by murder but perhaps by his own hand -- a mortal sin in the eyes of the Church.
After a much simpler ceremony, without pomp or public clamoring, Hugh
Plunkett was buried in the same cemetery just a few yards from his friend Ned. From all this arose the story that the two men had been lovers, and that the quarrel which had ensued that night in the big house had to do with their relationship. The implication that both men were at some time engaged in a homosexual relationship became the note of interest in the case, and remains so to this day.
Nothing was ever written in the newspapers at the time about the fact that Hugh Plunkett was, with Ned Doheny, a participant in the bribery of Albert Fall, and was scheduled to testify before the Senate investigating committee, and that the elder Doheny would be next..
Instead it was assumed that the mystery of their deaths had to do with a sexual drama. On the face of it, the idea that two men in their thirties who had been friends since their teenage years were having a sexual relationship is almost absurd. The idea that Hugh Plunkett might have been terrified and enraged that he was going to be “hung out to dry” and face jail time in the case of delivering the bribe money to Secretary Fall, is another matter entirely.
However, none of that came to the surface. The two men were buried days later, and everyone’s life went on.
The sympathy for the father of the dead man, Ned Doheny, was so great that the Congressional investigation was called off and he never had to testify.
Lucy Doheny, a little more than a year later, almost to the day, married a man named Leigh Batson, a stockbroker whom she and her late husband had known for some time. Six years later E.L. Doheny Sr. died – “of a broken heart” it was written in the papers.
The Batsons lived at Greystone for the next twenty-six years, raising her children, until 1955 when Mrs. Doheny Batson decided the big house was too big.
She gave the property to the city of Beverly Hills and built a new “smaller” house for herself on the adjoining property that ran along Schuyler Road.
Equipped with 22 bathrooms, the newer house, called “The Knoll” was later sold to film producer Dino di Laurentiis, who sold it to singer Kenny Rogers, who in turn sold it to Barbara and Marvin Davis. With the occupation by the Davises, “The Knoll” has been the scene of some of the greatest parties in America in the 1980s and 1990s.
Lucy Smith Doheny Batson lived to a very great age, over a hundred. At the end of her life, she moved to a large (5000 square feet) and luxurious condominium on the Wilshire Corridor. A very formidable character, at the very end of her life, she would arise each morning, get herself dressed up for a luncheon engagement, place herself in a wingback chair in her livingroom, her handbag on the floor at her side, and sit. And wait.
Her grandchildren would visit the intimidating dowager. It was said that even her grandchildren, ever curious, were afraid to ask her “what happened” in the big house on that fateful night in February 1929. One of them told me once that they wondered why she went to the trouble to dress and sit there, handbag ready, and wait. Was she, the very devout Roman Catholic lady, waiting for her Maker to come a-calling. Was she worried about the Judgment Day, the believer that she was? Did she have reason to suffer guilt? Was it because of what really happened to Neddie and Hughie on that fateful February night almost seventy years before?
These are their ghosts of Greystone. JH, with his Digital taking in the architectural details one afternoon, and on hearing the story, he thinks so. His comments reminded me of the house that sat on the top of the hill behind Greystone, visible through the giant pine trees still standing. That house, built in 1927, belonged to Gypsy Rose Lee in the 1960s. She died there in 1970. Later owners of the house claimed that Gypsy’s ghost was active in the house, so much so that they sold it to another party. That buyer became so exasperated by her ghost that they too sold it. The third new buyer, aware of the ghostliness of the property, tore the place down and built a new house in its stead.
A tour of Greystone produces a curiosity that has no direction and no conclusion. There is a vibe about the place. Most visitors have no idea of the house’s story or the economic importance of the Dohenys in Los Angeles, or the scourge of the political scandal that destroyed at least two young lives. The house however, 78 years after its building, still stands stolid, solid and substantial. It has been used many many times for television and film shoots.
For many years it was occupied by the American Film Institute. It remains, however, lifeless, a hapless reminder of great wealth, without a hint of spent lives.
The story of Ned Doheny ended up in rumor to be linked with Hugh Plunkett, his boyhood friend. The idea that the two men died because of a lover’s quarrel is a compelling but deeply misleading testament to the corruption of the patriarch.
When E. L. Doheny died in 1935, his widow Estelle buried all of his personal papers. She later gave tens of millions more to the Church. They also built a library at USC in memory of Ned. But they also buried him outside the church.
Ned, it was said, was a spoiled son, Over indulged and reckless, he drank too much, as was the fashion during his time (Prohibition). It might have been a relief, it has been suggested more than once, that Ned was gone. That way Lucy could have a decent life, good life, with a man who respected her. Which is what, apparently, she did. At least until the very end when she was old and frail, and dressed and waiting, for the Judgment Day.
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So we have been told that Sir Denis came to America in 1923 before going back to England to build first a munitions factory and later an economy car works with a retired American admiral on the American subsidiary board. We also are told that he lived on a street in Laurel Canyon named for the famous oilman whose family owned the entire area which became "Laurel Canyon".
Could there be a connection?
tickyman: