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Information FROM Gary Shaw - Bernice Moore - 12-07-2011
June 20, 2011 Cleburnite Shaw closes book on mysterious JFK-era figure
By Pete Kendall/reporter@trcle.com [/url][url=http://www.cleburnetimesreview.com/]The Cleburne Times-Review Mon Jun 20, 2011, 01:13 PM CDT
Almost 18 years after revealing to the Times-Review that Karen "Little Lynn" Carlin was alive, Gary Shaw has officially pronounced her dead.
Shaw, arguably the most diligent of the John F. Kennedy assassination researchers, claimed for decades that history involving the assassination and its aftermath was flawed and that some of its peripheral characters might be able to shed light on crucial moments.
Warren Commission testimony led most observers to believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone when he shot the president on Nov. 22, 1963.
Live television showed Dallas nightclub impresario Jack Ruby putting a bullet in Oswald Nov. 24 in the basement of Dallas Police headquarters on Elm Street.
Court testimony suggested that Ruby parked his car near a Western Union office and wired money to Carlin, one of his featured exotic dancers, in Fort Worth. Then, it was argued by his attorneys, Ruby took a short stroll to DPD, walked down a ramp into the basement and experienced a momentary loss of sanity when he saw Oswald.
The actions of Ruby and Carlin led to unanswered questions.
Was the murder premeditated or was it not?
Was the wire to Carlin pure happenstance or was it planned to give Ruby an alibi for being in the vicinity of DPD? And if it was planned, did Carlin know Ruby was about to shoot Oswald?
Ruby never addressed those subjects while in custody. He died of cancer on Jan. 3, 1967.
The other person who could have eliminated some of the speculation, Carlin, never talked about it ... not to the Warren Commission, before which she testified, or to newspaper types like Jack Gordon of the Fort Worth Press.
Gordon revealed in a 1964 column that Carlin (July 20, 1944-Aug. 16, 2010) told him she was leaving the Metroplex and the exotic dancing profession forever because she was tired of harassment in her public life.
"I've had to move 12 times," she told Gordon. "Whenever a landlord found out who I was, I was asked to move. They were afraid of getting mixed up in the Ruby case."
Carlin was arrested at Ruby's trial on Dec. 23, 1963, for carrying a pistol into the courtroom in her purse.
She told Gordon, "I'll never forget what happened to me at the Ruby trial. I hope everyone else does."
Gordon wrote about her upcoming five-night engagement at the Skyliner Club on the Jacksboro Highway in Fort Worth with a lineup of exotics including Tammi True, Sherry Lynn and Diane Durrett: "With the money she'll collect, she figures she will be able to quit taking em off."
Police cut short the entertainment by arresting Carlin for indecent exposure on Sept. 6, 1964. She reportedly pleaded guilty to a lesser charge, paid a fine and disappeared.
And then, according to another assassination researcher named Penn Jones Jr., she got dead.
Jones wrote in one of his books, "Forgive My Grief I," that Carlin died in Houston. Jones' claim was repeated in later books by other authors and eventually accepted as fact.
Carlin stayed dead until 1992 when, through Shaw, she came back to life.
Shaw told me then that he had talked to Carlin through an intermediary and that she had disappeared because she feared for her life. Mobsters Santos Trafficante Jr. and Carlos Marcello had ample motive for killing Kennedy, researchers found, and for killing anyone else in a position to talk about their presumed involvement in the assassination. That included Carlin. Marcello, on the back of his New Orleans office door, kept a sign that said, "Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead."
So if Carlin lived, why did Penn Jones make her dead?
By 1993, Jones was at death's door, residing with his second wife Elaine in Ellis County. His memory was failing, at times nonexistent. Shaw and I went to visit him in hopes of finding out why he had given Carlin a premature burial. He was unable to tell us. But his wife said Jones told her he had been asked by an unknown person to write that Carlin died.
She said in a tape recorded interview: "Whoever it was told Penn that for her [Carlin's] sake he was to say she was dead. She was going into the government protection plan."
Almost immediately after the Times-Review story was published, Shaw and I received letters from Elaine Jones denying she had said what was quoted and accusing us of attempting to ruin her husband's reputation.
That was the last time I addressed the subject for the Times-Review. Shaw continued to probe. He said in later years that Karen Carlin agreed to meet with him and that he flew to Detroit to do the interview. Then, according to Shaw, she cancelled. He never did meet her face-to-face.
Whether you believe Karen Carlin was alive in the early '90s depends on whether you believe Shaw. There was evidence she was alive the Jack Gordon column, dated after the time Carlin was supposed to have died. And evidence that she died in Houston was nonexistent.
A month or so ago, I asked Shaw if he'd be willing to talk about Carlin's recent passing for a story. He was hesitant. He said he'd tried to put the Kennedy assassination behind him.
I'm glad he reconsidered.
Dallas in 1962
By 1962, Dallas had become less a wide-open city than one where a drink or drug could be bought and consumed and where a dice or card game could be arranged. If you knew the right people, you could hire muscle to bring someone down or protect yourself from harm. Conservative to a fault politically, Dallas was permissive socially. Some of the permissiveness was said to result from the behavior of goon elements operating under the umbrella of the New Orleans Mafia.
Marcello (Feb. 6, 1910-March 3, 1993) directed the New Orleans crime family with an iron fist. He resented interlopers and meddlers. Among his partners in crime, so to speak, was Trafficante (Nov. 15, 1914-March 17, 1987), who oversaw criminal operations in Florida and Cuba.
Marcello and Trafficante had one thing in common almost a half-century ago. Along with Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa, they despised the president and attorney general Bobby Kennedy, who went so far as to forcefully deport Marcello.
Marcello, Trafficante and Hoffa had the motive, means and opportunity to order a hit on the president in Dallas. The Warren Commission disagreed. Gary Shaw, then a young architect, wasn't so sure.
"I believe the mob was an instrument [in the Kennedy and Oswald deaths]," Shaw said. "There was more to Ruby than some would like to admit. I had a quote one time from a high-ranking state department employee. He said that if you want to assassinate somebody, find the toughest kid on the block who is crazy enough to do anything. So after he does something, people will say, He's crazy.' That fits the profile of Ruby."
But Ruby wasn't brainless or witless, as he is sometimes portrayed.
"He would table-hop at the Carousel shaking hands, and sometimes he was his own comedian [betweeen strip acts]. He'd tell stories, and he was a fast talker. He was actually pretty good."
Ruby may have been shrewd enough to fabricate an alibi at the Western Union office the day he shot Oswald.
"In the book about [Dallas County Sheriff] Bill Decker [by Jim Gatewood], it says, As Decker listened to Ruby's trial, his mind snapped to attention. Much ado was made over the fact that Ruby established his presence at a Western Union Office 11 minutes before shooting Oswald ...
"Decker recalled a jailhouse interview with a master of alibi who laid out the Western Union alibi like this: Go into the Western Union office and ask the operator for an application to send money. Leave with the form blank. Fill it out with the next day's date. Have somebody take the signed form to Western Union the next day to be sent. Later, when the operator is asked if he remembers you, he'll say yes, but the one-day difference will not be remembered.
"Decker smiled to himself at Ruby's use of the Western Union alibi to establish that it was not a pre-meditated hit.'"
Shaw added, "I suspected that all along. And I don't believe he came down the ramp at the police station, either. I think he came through the back door that was left unlocked by somebody."
In 1992, former Cleburne resident Sheila Underwood, now deceased, told Shaw that Karen Carlin was alive.
"Sheila had contact with Bruce Carlin [Karen's ex-husband]. On June 9, 1992, she called me to say Bruce said to come up and see him in Arlington. In my notes, I wrote that I met with Carlin and his common-law wife and Sheila. Bruce called Karen while he was in my presence. I talked to her for a few minutes. She was living under the name Karen Block in Detroit. Her son, Michael, also lived in that area. She was pregnant with Michael at the time of the Kennedy assassination. He was born in April, 1964.
"Karen called me on Aug. 5, 1992. She wanted to make sure I was a writer. She said she didn't trust Bruce. She said she wanted to hear the truth told but she didn't think people were ready to hear the truth."
Shaw made arrangements to fly to Detroit to meet her.
"She gave me her phone number on the promise I would not share it with anybody," Shaw said. "I checked into a motel and went to a restaurant. At 6:15 p.m., the hostess told me I had a call. It was a woman's voice saying Karen's car had broken down and that she wanted to meet me the next day.
"I said I'd try to re-arrange my flight. The woman said she'd call back in 15 minutes. She never called. I tried until midnight to call Karen, and there was no answer. To make a long story short, she got cold feet.
"She called me a few days later to apologize. She asked me to send her materials on Santos Trafficante. Her whole concern was whether he was still alive. I said no, and she said, That's good.' She said she didn't mean that like it sounded. I assured her I understood what she meant. She traveled with Ruby when he would meet Trafficante. I don't know whether that's ever been written about. I never got to talk to Carlos Marcello, but I spent some time in New Orleans talking to people who worked for him."
That was essentially the end of Shaw's contact with Karen Carlin. He said he's convinced the woman with whom he talked was Carlin.
"I asked her about things only she would know, and she freely talked about them. There's not a shred of doubt in my mind it was her."
Shaw said he holds nothing against Penn Jones for the misunderstanding 18 years ago in Ellis County.
"Elaine answered all the questions. Penn had little to say. She said she didn't know she was being recorded. The recorder was right in front of her, and she was asked permission before being recorded. She was upset because she was trying to protect his reputation. She believed Penn wouldn't make up a story. I believe that, too. I don't think he lied. He got some misinformation."
It was Beverly Oliver Massagee, another former employee of Ruby's at the Carousel, who called Shaw to say that Little Lynn was no more.
Shaw's melancholy note dated Oct. 18, 2010 reads, "Beverly Massagee called and said Karen died last month. Michael Carlin called [Massagee] to say Karen was cremated and the ashes buried in Tennessee."
http://www.cleburnetimesreview.com/local/x947032861/Cleburnite-Shaw-closes-book-on-mysterious-JFK-era-figure
or
http://tinyurl.com/5solxcf
Penn Jones was deliberately misinformed to protect a witness. Karen Carlin recently passed away.
It was Beverly Oliver Massagee, another former employee of Ruby's at the Carousel, who called Shaw to say that Little Lynn was no more.
Frog