The Vehicle on the Grassy Knoll

[Peter Lemkin]

Peter,

As for the car, it could not be more wrong to believe that Jay Harrison and Tosh Plumlee stored it properly or kept it safe.

I alone discovered George Wing's 1959 Rambler station wagon on May 29, 1989, on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin, parked in a handicap space next to Batts Hall. I alone, investigated, wrote about and presented my research paper on Wing's Rambler in June 1993 at the Third Decade conference in Providence, RI.

I met Jay Harrison on September 1, 1994 at UT's Barker Texas History Center. Jay was living in his step van on an empty lot next door to a friend of his just west of IH-35 north of the Hwy 183 exit. His friend had recently told him to vacate the empty lot. I arranged for him to move his van to the driveway of my friend Stephen Bright at 3304-A Robinson Ave., Austin, TX 78722. This is where the Rambler had been parked since I drove it there myself after buying it from Lucila Lopez Wing, George's widow in March 1992.

Jay contributed these facts to the history of Wing's Rambler:

• Jay and I thoroughly searched the car at 3304-A Robinson Street and documented its contents on November 12, 1994. Stephen Bright videotaped the search.
  
  
• Jay confirmed that C.B. Smith's first wife, Fronia Ellen S. Smith, the mother of C.B. Smith, Jr. (the sales manager at the time of the April 1963 Rambler sale to George Wing), was working in the third floor, TSBD office of Macmillan Publishing Co. at the time of the assassination.
  
  
• In 1997, Jay arranged for the Rambler to be stored at Del Valle Imports, a junk yard at 3501 Darby St., Austin, TX 78721 (now Vanoye's Auto Sales) after it had been tagged by the City of Austin for removal from 3304-A Robinson St.
  
  
• Jay moved the car from Del Valle Imports without my knowledge or permission in December 2000 and gave it to Tosh Plumlee. I learned about the move from the junk yard's owner a year later when I went to check on the Rambler. Bill Kelly told xxxx yyyyyyy and me that it was scrapped in a junk yard on Airport Blvd. in Austin around 2009, presumably by Plumlee.
  

Lee Harvey Oswald's interrogation statement, as reported by Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig, that the station belongs to Mrs. Paine, always raises the question of Ruth Hyde Paine's car. The question is simple, but the answer is a little more complicated. I cover all of the facets at length in the monograph and its updates. One example is the fact that there are three Mrs. Paines involved: Ruth Hyde Paine of Irving, and her mother-in-law, Ruth Forbes Paine, who is the one with more direct Dulles/CIA connections. A third Mrs. Paine might be a possible wife of Secret Service Agent William Paine, the Austin based agent whom Bill Moyers has characterized as the man in charge of JFK's Dallas itinerary (discussed in the Evica Connally Transcript).

Ownership of the D713121 Rambler prior to C.B. Smith is still an open question. But I think I've answered it as well as it can be without judicial power. I never contacted Lucila Lopez Wing after buying the car from her, and amazingly neither has anyone else to my knowledge. Nor have she or her son and daughter (both last known living in Pittsburgh, PA) contacted me. Feel free, but be warned. Ms. Wing was employed in some very powerful areas of UT. And around the time of the assassination of Luis Donaldo Colosio Murrieta, the a Mexican PRI presidential candidate who was assassinated (March 23, 1994) at a campaign rally in Tijuana during the Mexican Presidential campaign of 1994, I noted some spooky-looking cars at her house with Mexican plates. I was contacted by the grandson of C.B. Smith and offered to meet with him. I told him I was no longer actively investigating, but would talk to him if he wanted. He never contacted me again.

Based on what Gerry Patrick Hemming told me about Howard K. Davis' identical Rambler, I think it was the car he loaned to two gunrunners. They were arrested in Mexico and the car was impounded in Houston. The guy who had the Texas region's federal contract for auctioning impounded cars was a man named "Boots" Trousdale. His daughter, my neighbor Michelle Sheehan still has the federal contract and runs the auction house in Pflugerville. They famously auctioned Madalyn Murray O'Hair's estate after her death. I interviewed her mother, Mrs. Trousdale. He and C.B. Smith were close friends. Trousdale's junkyard was just up the same street from Smith's dealership. Davis' car was impounded, according to Hemming, in late '62. The Rambler was sold to Wing April 26, 1963. The timing works.

The evidence I found and analyzed regarding Wing's Rambler failed to rule it out, amazingly, as one of several suspicious identical Ramblers photographed and witnessed in Dealey Plaza. I discuss most of the photographic aspects of the Rambler in my monograph and it's updates. The captions and comments throughout my restricted Facebook "Rambler" photo album give further updates.

Here, for convenience, are all of the links to my Rambler monograph and updates:

Posible Discovery of an Automobile Used in the JFK Conspiracy
FORWARD
http://www.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back...frwrd.html

PART-1
http://www.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back...bler1.html

PART-2
http://www.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back...bler2.html

PART-3
http://www.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back...bler3.html

PART-4
http://www.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back...bler4.html

1994 UPDATE
http://www.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back...94.fp.html

1996-UPDATE
http://www.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back...96.fp.html



Thanks,
Richard Bartholomew

My note: It has been some years since I was actively being informed about this as it was happening by Tosh and others involved. I was shocked and upset to learn from Plumlee directly that the car was gone. As he portrayed it [no way for me to independently verify this], it had been in the back yard of a close relative of his; that relative moved (if I remember) and no one wanted to bother with the car care further. I though Tosh should have done this on his own, or found someone who did want to...as it is EVIDENCE in the case.....now destroyed. For years Tosh boasted to me and others in the know that he was saving this important piece of evidence, and then.....

I have photos of the car in the yard of Tosh's relative. Some have Tosh and Jay in the photos.