I have researched and written a story about Albert Osborne. The story has new information about his life, including his tenure with he Campfire Council in Knoxville, Tennessee.
The story also includes a biography and picture of John Howard Bowen whose identity was used by Osborne. The story can be found at KennedysandKing.
Quite an intriguing and fascinating read, Mr. Kowalski, thanks for sharing.
While the rest of the world was engaged in heightened conflict amid World War I, Osborne seemed to have a lucky rabbit's foot, or had very influential connections to avoid actual military battle/conflict twice while serving with two different armies.
Wonder if Osborne's ties to both New Orleans and Montreal bears some hidden connection to and/or with Mr. Oswald?
Given Osborne's ties to missionary work and charity work with young boys, it's not frivolous to imagine if he may have crossed paths with a much younger, needy, fatherless Lee Harvey Oswald in the early to mid-1950's. Tossing in the Dulles' brothers (Allen and John Foster) propensity to use missionaries as cover for covert intelligence operations raises some red flags around this whole Mexico trip.
It's a bit of a stretch, but I'm wondering if Osborne may have been the "Mr. Hunt" in North Carolina that the wrongfully accused attempted to contact from the Dallas jail to no avail. Just seems strange that the FBI wanted Osborne to die quietly and just go away and disappear altogether, ordering those who knew him to avoid placing any obituaries, or bring any excessive attention to him in any way.
23-07-2017, 04:29 AM (This post was last modified: 23-07-2017, 04:49 AM by Tom Scully.)
Jim DiEugenio Wrote:Alan:
That was Mr. Hurt and no it was not Osborne. It was a different but real person who was in military intelligence.
JOhn's article is quite accomplished I think.
IMO, its either one of the best pieces, if not the best, written on Osborne/Bowen.
Jim.....Jim..... memory impairment? Or, is this what you do to those uninterested in contributing on your website?
Quote:http://jfk.education/node/16
Bowen or Osborne, "just one of those things?"
Submitted by Admin on Sat, 12/12/2015 - 02:39 .......
I have not been mugged to a comparable extent since Armstrong transferred my Klein's postal money order research to his website.
Quote:http://jfk.education/node/11
Sorry Brian, Jean, and DVP, Banks Did Not Key-Punch 1963 P.O. Money Orders
Submitted by Admin on Tue, 11/10/2015 - 06:47
Updated November 19, 2015:....
Jim DiEugenio Wrote:So he used the alias of a man who was passed away in 1962?
And the FBI took months to figure that out?
No, Jim, neither the FBI nor anyone else ever figured out that the real Bowen died in 1962. I discovered it last year, through the initial lead of the birthdate, address, and wife's name on the 1918 draft record.
The FBI reported that agents went to "newspaper morgues" in Delaware County, PA, which was where the municipality of Chester was located and the BUagents reported finding nothing related to the ID
leads Osborne had provided as he still insisted he was Bowen.
In a gesture of fairness to the FBI, they made the mistake of assuming the Bowen they were looking for had died in the jurisdiction they were searching for him in. He had not, but just under two years before he
had been buried in a local Delaware County, PA and cemetery. They also could have contacted his brother's widow, Edna. She was local and she was alive in 1964 and Bowen's death cert. confirms she was named Bowen..... It might have been nice to have found out in 1964 that the real Bowen had a D.O.B. change after 1918 and by Jan., 1962, and used that info to attempt to determine if Osborne had the cooperation and
possibly other support of the real Bowen, and maybe even why that was so, or whether Osborne was influencing Bowen via intimidation.
The bottomline is that the real Bowen knew, according to his 1917 military draft record, that his D.O.B. was Jan. 14, 1880, but he or his brother's wife who claimed his body in Hamlet, NC in January, 1962 and
brought it back to Chester, PA to inter it next to his wife who had died in 1934, knew or were "influenced" to make up a fictitious D.O.B., at least 20 months before Osborne took his bus ride.
Tom Scully April 8, 2015 at 6:43 pm A recap, with more documentation.: http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archiv...PageId=135
FBI conducted inquiries, John Howard Bowen, d.o.b. Oct. 14, 1887, at Chester, PA between 20 Dec., 1963 and 7 Jan., 1964. School records, credit bureau, newspaper morgue, coroner/death records all yield no traces. http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archiv...PageId=125
Feb. 8, 1964, FBI interviews Bowen again, he relates being raised by his grandmother, Sarah Hall, (actually the mother-in-law of the real John Howard Bowen). http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archiv...PageId=127 Also on Feb. 8, Bowen provides Oct. 14, 1880 d.o.b. and his parents' names, James A Bown and Edith Montgomery. http://jfk.education/images/Bowen1879MarriageJun29s.jpg
Pennsylvania church record document the marriage in June, 1879, of a Chester, PA couple with identical names as imposter Bowen had related to FBI. http://jfk.education/images/Bowen14Oct1880.jpg The real Bowen was baptized in 1897 at age 16, born Oct. 14, 1880
, and again on 1918 Draft Registration doc. http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archiv...lPageId=16
As of March 3, 1964, imposter Bowen had not admitted he was Osbourne, and FBI apparantly making inquires of all John Howard Bowens "born around 1900." ….. The FBI seems not to have gone back to Chester, PA after interviewing Bowen on Feb. 8, 1964, to search with the 1880 d.o.b. and Bowen parents names. The mystery as to why, at the time of his Jan., 1962 death, the real Bowen's age was almost three years older than he had stated his age to be in 1897 and 1918, or why the 1878 birth year was etched into his gravestone. The FBI should have searched at Chester, PA again after that Feb. 8, interview, they should have discovered the real Bowen's Jan., 1962 burial in a local cemetery, and maybe some of this mystery would be solved. Usually the imposter crafts the deceptions, the victim of an imposter rarely changes his long established d.o.b.
Tom Scully Wrote:Barnes reported what was officially unknowable, thus his report to the FBI was buried. AJ Weberman pointed out that the FBI claimed they checked the public library and credit bureau and could not find Barnes in Coral Gables. Did you notice Barnes's name is misspelled in at least one of the newspaper articles I post on his role at the ESSO Havana refinery? Probably not misspelled by accident.
You're using Osborne as a source? Do you have any idea who Osborne was? I do, and yet I do not. The real Osborne changed his own date of birth, in 1917, it had matched the one the fake Osborne gave the FBI.
John Howard Bowen's Sept., 1918 Military Draft Registration, images "b" and "a" :
FBI reported in CE 2443:
Quote http://www.history-matters.com/archive/j..._0301a.htm
.....but furnished him with a card reflecting the
following data :
Name : JOHN HOWARD BOWEN
Born : January 14, 1880
Father : JAMES A, BOWEN Mother : EDITH MONTGOMERY
Place of Birth : Chester, Pennsylvania
File Number : D-869-1880
Filed : March 6, 1956
http://findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?pag...d=32875262
1878 - 1962 John Howard Bowen
(No Social Security record found)
Quote https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/FGYJ-Y18
Name: John Howard Bowen
Event Type: Death
Event Date: 31 Jan 1962
Event Place: Hamlet, Richmond, North Carolina
Birth Year: 1878
Burial Date: 04 Feb 1962
Burial Place: Chester, Pennsylvania
Cemetery: Lawncroft Cemetery
Residence Place: Hamlet, Richmond, N.C.
Address: 3 Main Street
Gender: Male
Age: 84
Marital Status: Widowed
Race (Original): White
Occupation: Clerk-Hotel
Birth Date: 04 Jan 1878
Birthplace: Pennsylvania
Father's Name: James Bowen
Mother's Name: Edith Montgomery
Spouse's Name: Fannie Mae Hall
I have two questions.
What could the circumstances have been that resulted in the real John Howard Bowen's changed d.o.b. from the
date he put on his 1918 draft registration, January 14, 1880, which happened to be the same d.o.b., at the same place, Chester, PA, as the birthdate and place furnished by the John Howard Bowen to the FBI in Feb, 1964, to the birthdate on John Howard Bowen's January 31, 1962 Richmond County, NC death certificate, d.o.b. January 4, 1878?
Alfred Osborne gave his address, according to the FBI, as the same address as the YMCA in Montreal.
The real J. Howard Bowen.worked for the YMCA until at least 1927.
The US Census of Richmond County, NC, shows John Bowen, age 60, a widowed hotel clerk.
And, in 1961, the year before he died.:
Full text of "Hill's Hamlet (Richmond County, N.C.) City ... archive.org/.../hillshamletrichm1961hill/hillshamletrich...
Internet Archive
This is the first Hill Directory of Hamlet and is completely standardized according to ...... Tel 582-2081 Bo wen J Howard elk Terminal Hotel r3 Main
OURHAMLET.ORG View topic - Terminal Hotel in Hamlet NC
The growth of the YMCA was spurred by a demand for lodging by railroad workers. Bowen was actually employed by the Pennsylvania Railroad YMCA. IN the age before jetliner travel, the small town of Hamlet, NC was one of the busiest freight and passenger rail junctions in the eastern U.S. With only
a pop. of 6,000 the passenger rail terminal in Hamlet was recenlty reopened, despite the small population and the diminished routes of the Amtrak national passenger railroad system.
Quote:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamlet,_Nor...nformation
.........
Hamlet is at the junction of two major CSX rail lines, one running north towards Washington D.C., and the Northeast as well as south towards Florida, and the other running east towards Wilmington, North Carolina, and west towards Atlanta, Georgia and Birmingham, Alabama. It has been cited as the prime spot in North Carolina for train watchers.[SUP][6][/SUP] The recently reopened Hamlet Passenger Station, served by Amtrak, sits downtown at the junction of the lines. ......
So , Hamlet once was an ideal places to quickly slip in and out of. Railroad employees received free
travel passes as an employment benefit. The imposter Bowen obviously knew some background.:
Emily Bowen was the real Bowen's stepmother, too young to likely be his mother. Sarah Hall was the
real Bowen's wife's mother.... The imposter tol the FBI he did not know his parents and lived with his
grandmother. The real Bowen was stiill living with father, step-mother and brother at age 20 in 1900.: https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/M3SH-1H9
The movie, Billy Bathgate was filmed at the Terminal Hotel shortly before it was destroyed by fire in 1993. As in the example of William Whaley, how did an inaccurate date of birth come to find its way on the death record and on the gravestone of the real John Howard Bowen? ............
Peter Janney's uncle was Frank Pace, chairman of General Dynamics who enlisted law partners Roswell Gilpatric and Luce's brother-in-law, Maurice "Tex" Moore, in a trade of 16 percent of Gen. Dyn. stock in exchange for Henry Crown and his Material Service Corp. of Chicago, headed by Byfield's Sherman Hotel group's Pat Hoy. The Crown family and partner Conrad Hilton next benefitted from TFX, at the time, the most costly military contract award in the history of the world. Obama was sponsored by the Crowns and Pritzkers. So was Albert Jenner Peter Janney has preferred to write of an imaginary CIA assassination of his surrogate mother, Mary Meyer, but not a word about his Uncle Frank.
23-07-2017, 05:20 AM (This post was last modified: 23-07-2017, 05:41 AM by Tom Scully.)
A mystery overlooked in the new Kowalsky article is that the record indicates the
man who died in Hamlet, Richmond Cty, NC on 31 January, 1962, was born on January 4, 1878.
Where did that date of birth originate? There are also other SS #'s
[TABLE="class: table tableHorizontal tableHorizontalRuled"]
[TR]
[TH]Name:[/TH]
[TD]John H Bowen[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH]SSN:[/TH]
[TD]449369745[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH]Birth Date:[/TH]
[TD]14 Jan 1880[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH]Claim Date:[/TH]
[TD]2 Aug 1955[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH]Type of Claim:[/TH]
[TD]Life Claim[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH]Notes:[/TH]
[TD]02 Aug 1955: Name listed as JOHN H BOWEN[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
[TABLE="class: table tableHorizontal tableHorizontalRuled"]
[TR]
[TH]
Name:[/TH]
[TD]John Howard Bowen[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH]SSN:[/TH]
[TD]246017065[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH]Birth Date:[/TH]
[TD]14 Jul 1880[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH]Claim Date:[/TH]
[TD]6 Jun 1955[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH]Type of Claim:[/TH]
[TD]Life Claim[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TH][/TH]
[TD]10 Dec 1976: Name listed as JOHN HOWARD BOWEN
.......Tragedy struck Bowen in 1934 when his wife of 29 years, Fannie, died after being sick for a long time.103 In 1935 he moved to Tampa, Florida where he was employed as a hotel clerk.104 On July 6, 1937, John Howard Bowen applied for a SSN. The SSN number he was assigned was 239-12-4551, and this number can be seen on his application form (Appendix 14).105
[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
Peter Janney's uncle was Frank Pace, chairman of General Dynamics who enlisted law partners Roswell Gilpatric and Luce's brother-in-law, Maurice "Tex" Moore, in a trade of 16 percent of Gen. Dyn. stock in exchange for Henry Crown and his Material Service Corp. of Chicago, headed by Byfield's Sherman Hotel group's Pat Hoy. The Crown family and partner Conrad Hilton next benefitted from TFX, at the time, the most costly military contract award in the history of the world. Obama was sponsored by the Crowns and Pritzkers. So was Albert Jenner Peter Janney has preferred to write of an imaginary CIA assassination of his surrogate mother, Mary Meyer, but not a word about his Uncle Frank.
1.) I never have gone to that nodule web site and never knew it existed. I did know that you did comment of the Bowen death issue before.
2.) I consider anyone's submissions. Does not matter who they are or if I disagreed with them on something in the past. I judge the essay on its own merits.
3.) Are you saying that the author get his information from that web site?
1.) I never have gone to that nodule web site and never knew it existed. I did know that you did comment of the Bowen death issue before.
2.) I consider anyone's submissions. Does not matter who they are or if I disagreed with them on something in the past. I judge the essay on its own merits.
3.) Are you saying that the author get his information from that web site?
Jim D
Boy, this reminds me of another D.O.B. discrepancy from another mystery man, oh what was his name ??? ………….Mitchell, methinks. Yeah……. William Lockwood Mitchell.
Osborne really picked an opportune time to leave the army. Had he remained with his regiment he would have ended up in the trenches in France. Then he joins the Canadian army and still manages to avoid the fighting.
This man is a mystery, and this is why he is such an interesting character.
I did not find any connections between Osborne and Oswald but this does not mean that there was no connection between them. Much more research is needed to confirm if they ever met or if Osborne's presence on the bus going to Mexico was connected to Kennedy's assassination.
Alan Ford Wrote:Quite an intriguing and fascinating read, Mr. Kowalski, thanks for sharing.
While the rest of the world was engaged in heightened conflict amid World War I, Osborne seemed to have a lucky rabbit's foot, or had very influential connections to avoid actual military battle/conflict twice while serving with two different armies.
Wonder if Osborne's ties to both New Orleans and Montreal bears some hidden connection to and/or with Mr. Oswald?
Given Osborne's ties to missionary work and charity work with young boys, it's not frivolous to imagine if he may have crossed paths with a much younger, needy, fatherless Lee Harvey Oswald in the early to mid-1950's. Tossing in the Dulles' brothers (Allen and John Foster) propensity to use missionaries as cover for covert intelligence operations raises some red flags around this whole Mexico trip.
It's a bit of a stretch, but I'm wondering if Osborne may have been the "Mr. Hunt" in North Carolina that the wrongfully accused attempted to contact from the Dallas jail to no avail. Just seems strange that the FBI wanted Osborne to die quietly and just go away and disappear altogether, ordering those who knew him to avoid placing any obituaries, or bring any excessive attention to him in any way.
Given Mr. DiEugenio's helpful clarification on "Hurt" as oppose to "Hunt", I now stand corrected on my initial hunch that the mysterious "Hunt" letter penned by Mr. Oswald two weeks prior to the assassination also involved his subsequent phone call from the Dallas jail to him in North Carolina.
That now cleared up by Mr. DiEugenio (thanks BTW), I agree with your assessment, Mr. Kowalski, that much more research is required to nail down any potential connection between the wrongfully accused and Osborne/Bowen.
Certainly some food for thought on the valued input of Mr. O'Blazney and Mr. Scully as well (I'm sure Allen Welsh Dulles and his ilk never thought anyone would catch/mine a quarter, let alone a wealth of what he has managed to contribute to this case).
Now, back to Mr. DiEugenio's remark about Mr. Hurt's ties to Military Intelligence, that in and of itself should make any objective researcher wonder why a supposed lone gunman would be reaching out to someone working in Military Intelligence Operations.
One thing is crystal clear amid all of this Osborne/Bowen legend, someone/some entity went to great lengths to conceal and cover the tracks of any finger-prints of intelligence lurking in the shadows....
John Kowalski Wrote:Osborne really picked an opportune time to leave the army. Had he remained with his regiment he would have ended up in the trenches in France. Then he joins the Canadian army and still manages to avoid the fighting.
This man is a mystery, and this is why he is such an interesting character.
I did not find any connections between Osborne and Oswald but this does not mean that there was no connection between them. Much more research is needed to confirm if they ever met or if Osborne's presence on the bus going to Mexico was connected to Kennedy's assassination.
Alan Ford Wrote:Quite an intriguing and fascinating read, Mr. Kowalski, thanks for sharing.
While the rest of the world was engaged in heightened conflict amid World War I, Osborne seemed to have a lucky rabbit's foot, or had very influential connections to avoid actual military battle/conflict twice while serving with two different armies.
Wonder if Osborne's ties to both New Orleans and Montreal bears some hidden connection to and/or with Mr. Oswald?
Given Osborne's ties to missionary work and charity work with young boys, it's not frivolous to imagine if he may have crossed paths with a much younger, needy, fatherless Lee Harvey Oswald in the early to mid-1950's. Tossing in the Dulles' brothers (Allen and John Foster) propensity to use missionaries as cover for covert intelligence operations raises some red flags around this whole Mexico trip.
It's a bit of a stretch, but I'm wondering if Osborne may have been the "Mr. Hunt" in North Carolina that the wrongfully accused attempted to contact from the Dallas jail to no avail. Just seems strange that the FBI wanted Osborne to die quietly and just go away and disappear altogether, ordering those who knew him to avoid placing any obituaries, or bring any excessive attention to him in any way.
That should have just been the beginning, when he admitted to using an alias. Because his excuse for it, Bowen sounded less British, was ridiculous.
That shows that what Bill Turner told me about the FBI inquiry was correct. He said that in the files he saw, no lead was ever followed to its conclusion. He said that is not the way FBI agents work and its not the way he did investigations.
