Leo Gillick
There have been a number of high-profile assassinations in America. It’s a sure-fire way to silence someone when they’re becoming too much of a political nuisance. Most of them have a culprit, but in most cases, there are conspiracies around the real killer and the motivation behind the assassination.
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With every high-profile murder, there is always a whole group of people who theorize on the reasons behind it. Some of them are wild, and some of them make an uncomfortable amount of sense.
1. John F. Kennedy
What happened: Maybe the second most famous American president to be killed by assassination is John F. Kennedy. The official line is that the 35th president of the United States was shot in his car during a motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas. He was allegedly shot by Lee Harvey Oswald, a former U.S. Marine, from a nearby library.
The conspiracy: The case is filled with mysteries and dead ends. Shortly after Oswald assassinated Kennedy, he headed home. Here, he shot a policeman. He was then arrested, but was then killed in a nightclub basement by the owner, Jack Ruby. This killer also died in jail awaiting trial.
Since the assassination of Kennedy, there have been more than a thousand books refuting the official line. Many conspiracy theories claim that the shooter couldn’t have been Oswald because the shot came from the front of Kennedy. The proposed location was actually a ‘grassy knoll’.
Everyone has been named in the conspiracy surrounding Kennedy, including the FBI, the CIA, the U.S. military, the Mafia, the military-industrial complex, Vice President Johnson, Castro, and the KGB.
2. Martin Luther King Jr.
What happened: On April 4, 1968, civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He was shot to death by James Earl Ray, an escaped convict. After the shooting, a white man, fitting the description of Earl Ray, was seen running from a boarding house close to the shooting.
On investigation, a rifle and binoculars were found in one of the rooms bearing Ray’s fingerprints. It took authorities two months to capture the man. Ray took a guilty plea to avoid a conviction and potential death penalty. However, three days later, he recanted his guilty plea and continued to do so until his death.
The conspiracy: The family of Martin Luther King Jr. went to court claiming that the assassination was part of a conspiracy. They claimed that the murder was part of a broader plot involving the U.S. government, the mafia, and Memphis police.
They called in the support of a man known as Loyd Jowers. For 25 years, he claimed that the Ray was simply a scapegoat for the killing. He insisted that her was a part of the conspiracy. Eventually, it went to court, where both sides presented evidence. The outcome from a Memphis jury, after four weeks of testimony which involved over 70 witnesses and thousands of pages of new evidence, was that the assassination was “part of a conspiracy to kill King,” involving government agencies and Jowers.
The family was awarded $100.
3. Fred Hampton
What happened: Yet another civil rights activist was killed in America in what turned out to be a brutal assassination. Hampton was the deputy chairman of the national Black Panther Party and chair of the Illinois chapter. He was well respected in the community and active in improving the livelihoods of black folks in the US.
He was shot to death in his home by police in 1969 during an early morning raid.
Confirmed conspiracy: On the night of his assassination, Hampton returned to his apartment with a number of the other Black Panthers. Here, they prepared a meal and ate late, at around midnight. At this time, an undercover FBI agent known as O’Neil slipped drugs into Hampton’s drink.
The barbiturates found in his bloodstream knocked him out cold, and he went to bed beside his 8 and a half month pregnant wife. At around 4 am, a raid was performed on the apartment. Eight heavily armed police entered through the front, and six through the back.
A guard at the door was immediately shot in the chest. His death reflex discharged his shotgun into the ceiling. This was the only gun discharged by the Panthers. Almost 100 shots were fired into the residents of the house, including two point-blank into the head of Hampton as he lay sleeping in bed.
The assassination was deemed a shootout by the American police. However, it transpired that the only shot that wasn’t by the police was the only discharged by the already dead guard. O’Neil admitted his part in the murders and killed himself shortly after.
It wasn’t until 1982 that a settlement was agreed upon for the nine plaintiffs in what is considered the largest ever in a civil rights case. The police faced no criminal charges.
