Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast
Speaker 1: I and I'm Tracy Wilson, and we're coming up on
Speaker 1: the fiftieth anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, which is an
Speaker 1: event that is often referenced as a pretty pivotal moment
Speaker 1: in American history, and it has spawned certainly endless debate
Speaker 1: about conspiracies and cover ups and what actually happened. And
Speaker 1: there are an endless array of websites to visit if
Speaker 1: you love digging into the conspiracy angle. I don't know
Speaker 1: about Tracy. I know I myself have never really been like,
Speaker 1: I'm fascinated by it, But I'm not one of those
Speaker 1: people that's really obsessed with the whole thing. When I
Speaker 1: was a kid, I was really into all kinds of
Speaker 1: like the true crime kind of conspiracy. Were kids love
Speaker 1: a question mark? Yeah, I love a not certain angle. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I remember like plowing through my grandmother's time life books,
Speaker 1: kinds and subjects along this line. Yeah. I mean. Uh.
Speaker 1: Even though there have been at various points on the
Speaker 1: curve uh statements that no, no, this was solved, a
Speaker 1: lot of people don't believe those statements um or don't
Speaker 1: adhere to that motive thinking. And so, I mean it's
Speaker 1: a huge, huge topic, and today we're actually just going
Speaker 1: to talk about the assassination itself on a pretty fairly
Speaker 1: basic level. We're not going to include all of the
Speaker 1: many facets. We couldn't even begin to dig through all
Speaker 1: of that and all of the pro and anti conspiracy
Speaker 1: evidence in one podcast. I mean, that could be a
Speaker 1: series and has been for some people. Uh, But our
Speaker 1: focus today is on one of the witnesses to the assassination,
Speaker 1: and it is a person who remains rather shrouded in
Speaker 1: mystery even fifty years later. Yeah, it's kind of incredible
Speaker 1: to me that that there can have been someone obviously
Speaker 1: present at so high profile and events and we're still
Speaker 1: not sure what the story is there. Um So first
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about the assassination just in brief,
Speaker 1: in terms of like broad stroke will hit some detail points,
Speaker 1: kind of a refresher for people who are steeped in
Speaker 1: American history and for our many listeners who are from elsewhere, yeah,
Speaker 1: or even you know, younger listeners and maybe haven't gotten
Speaker 1: to this yet. Uh. And it's like I said, it's
Speaker 1: a basic rundown. It's by no means comprehensive. We've really
Speaker 1: paired this down to the elements and details of the
Speaker 1: event that are most relevant to today's topic. So, on
Speaker 1: November twenty two of nineteen sixty three, US President John F.
Speaker 1: Kennedy's presidential motorcade was Indeley Plaza in Dallas, Texas, en
Speaker 1: route to a sold out luncheon at the Trademark where
Speaker 1: the President was to speak, and he was in that
Speaker 1: motorcade when he was fatally shot at about twelve thirty.
Speaker 1: About forty five minutes after the shooting, Dallas Police patrolman J. D.
Speaker 1: Tippett stopped twenty four year old X Marine Lee Harvey
Speaker 1: Oswald to question him. Oswald fit was basic description of
Speaker 1: the suspect that the police had been given, and Oswald
Speaker 1: shot and killed him uh At two fifteen. Oswald was
Speaker 1: then arrested for the shooting of officer Tippett. He was
Speaker 1: apprehended in a theater where he had fled after the shooting,
Speaker 1: and at seven fifteen PM, Oswald was arraigned for Tippet's murder.
Speaker 1: And it actually wasn't until after midnight. At one thirty am,
Speaker 1: on what was now November twenty three of nineteen sixty three,
Speaker 1: that Oswald was arraigned for the murder of JFK. They
Speaker 1: hadn't determined that he was their suspect until he had
Speaker 1: already been in custody for killing a police officer. While
Speaker 1: Oswald was being transferred from the city jail to the
Speaker 1: county jail on November four, nightclub owner Jack Ruby shot
Speaker 1: and killed the suspect. Ruby's indictment for Oswald's murder was
Speaker 1: two days later on November twenty six, and he was
Speaker 1: found guilty and sentenced to death on March fourteenth of
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four. Jack Ruby ended up dying of cancer
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty seven while he was awaiting new trial
Speaker 1: after an appeal of the conviction. So that's the very
Speaker 1: short version, in a nutshell, the assassination. There are certainly many, many, many,
Speaker 1: many more details that we could go into, and resources
Speaker 1: and lots of videos people can watch online. Um As
Speaker 1: many people probably know, Jack Ruby shooting Oswald actually happened
Speaker 1: on live television, so there is footage of it all
Speaker 1: over the internet. It's not particularly grizsly, thankfully if you're
Speaker 1: sensitive to that, but it is still unsettling to kind
Speaker 1: of see that all unfold in a very chaotic It's
Speaker 1: a little frightening obviously. Um So it's out there if
Speaker 1: you're interested in in more details. Immediately after the shooting
Speaker 1: of JFK, investigators, of course began questioning bystanders, anyone who
Speaker 1: could have witnessed what had happened, anyone who had taken
Speaker 1: photos or shot film, anyone who could provide any clues
Speaker 1: as to who had shot the president uh photograph. Some
Speaker 1: films that were taken by witnesses were developed and analyzed
Speaker 1: by the authorities, so it became clear and all of
Speaker 1: this that one of these witnesses had never been identified.
Speaker 1: She's in the famous Abraham's A Pruder film as well
Speaker 1: as other films and photographs. That famous film we talked
Speaker 1: about in our Yeah. Louise Hoarez is one of the
Speaker 1: scientists who evaluated that film to try to figure out
Speaker 1: exactly what had happened. And this woman in question, UH
Speaker 1: was wearing a brown trench coat in a headscarf, and
Speaker 1: she filmed the motorcade as it passed down Elm Street,
Speaker 1: and unlike other spectators, she didn't run when the shots
Speaker 1: were fired. She kept filming, so she has some additional
Speaker 1: footage from a unique angle that people might not have
Speaker 1: otherwise seen. Uh. And then after that, after the shooting
Speaker 1: had happened, she moved across the street, crossing Elm towards
Speaker 1: the famous Grassy Knoll, along with a lot of other
Speaker 1: people that were in the crowd. Uh. Some have speculated
Speaker 1: that the crowd was sort of looking for who the
Speaker 1: shooter had been, but if you look at it, there's
Speaker 1: also a little bit of it seems like they're just
Speaker 1: confused and looking around in general, like they're not even
Speaker 1: quite sure how to process what's just happened. So, because
Speaker 1: of her location on the south side of Elm Street
Speaker 1: during the assassination, the film that this Mystery Woman shot
Speaker 1: would have been almost a mirror to the prud footage,
Speaker 1: and it is worth noting that she was not the
Speaker 1: only person shooting from this angle. An a c engineer
Speaker 1: named Orville Nix also captured the event on film from
Speaker 1: the south side of Elm, but her vantage point also
Speaker 1: would have included the book depository where Lee Harvey Oswald
Speaker 1: shot from. And because of the triangular head scarf she
Speaker 1: was wearing that day, which is similar to those often
Speaker 1: associated with elderly Russian ladies. She became known as the
Speaker 1: Babushka Lady, and her identity has been hotly debated, actually
Speaker 1: for decades. The search for Babushka Lady includes a possible imposter,
Speaker 1: allegations of a cover up, of course uh, and a
Speaker 1: lot of fierce debate. But for several years after the shooting,
Speaker 1: no one had any idea who this woman could be.
Speaker 1: And before we get to the only person who's really
Speaker 1: claimed to be her, So let's get back to the
Speaker 1: bush Lady. So, as Tracy had said right before the break,
Speaker 1: for many years after the shooting, no one knew who
Speaker 1: this woman was. But in nineteen seventy that all began
Speaker 1: to change. A woman emerged to claim the identity of
Speaker 1: Baboushka Lady, and that woman was named Beverly Oliver. In
Speaker 1: an interview with Jay gary Shaw, who is a researcher
Speaker 1: and a writer of several books about the assassination, including
Speaker 1: one called cover Up, The Governmental Conspiracy to Conceal the
Speaker 1: fact about the public execution of John Kennedy, Oliver had
Speaker 1: said that she had been there on Elm Street the
Speaker 1: day of the shooting, and she had met Shaw by
Speaker 1: chance and mentioned that she had witnessed the assassination, and
Speaker 1: apparently he sort of felt like he had accidentally stumbled
Speaker 1: upon this gold mine because people had been wondering who
Speaker 1: that person was, and she just off handedly said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was there, and he was, wait, are you this person?
Speaker 1: And this raises quite a number of really important questions,
Speaker 1: like who was this woman and why hadn't she been
Speaker 1: silent for so long? And also why now? Yeah? So, uh,
Speaker 1: you know she does She did mention off handedly in
Speaker 1: that meeting, allegedly that she just didn't want it to
Speaker 1: be a big public thing. Uh. But one of the
Speaker 1: other things that's problematic is that some of the aspects
Speaker 1: of her life caused people to question her credibility a
Speaker 1: little bit. She had been a singer and a dancer,
Speaker 1: though she is pretty adamant not a stripper, at a
Speaker 1: Dallas burlesque club called the Colony Club from roughly one
Speaker 1: and nineteen sixties six. A lot of sources you'll see
Speaker 1: will say that she was working at the club in
Speaker 1: sixty three, but she said in subsequent interviews that she
Speaker 1: worked there until she was married in sixty six, and
Speaker 1: she had worked there four and a half to five years.
Speaker 1: So that's why we do the sixty one to sixty
Speaker 1: six range. Uh. And the important thing is that the
Speaker 1: Colony Club was right next to the Carousel Club, and
Speaker 1: the Carousel Club was owned by Jack Ruby. Beverly Oliver
Speaker 1: claimed to have been close with Jack Ruby and that
Speaker 1: she had worked for him occasionally on a freelance basis,
Speaker 1: not in his club as a normal performer, but as
Speaker 1: a hostess and a cocktail mixer for after hours parties.
Speaker 1: And she described the Carousel Club as rather sleezy in
Speaker 1: comparison to her main place of business, which was the
Speaker 1: Colony Club. Beverly Oliver was married briefly to George McGann,
Speaker 1: who was also associated with the mafia and was murdered
Speaker 1: in ninety so, which is another reason people kind of
Speaker 1: don't give her a lot of credit. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: she she does have a little bit of seediness in
Speaker 1: her past. Yeah. These all feel like things that like
Speaker 1: a defense attorney would be using to try to undermine
Speaker 1: someone's credibility. Do you watch a lot of procedurals on television? Yeah.
Speaker 1: And Oliver would have been seventeen at the time of
Speaker 1: the assassination, and uh, in one of the questions of
Speaker 1: like why didn't you come forward, she says that she did,
Speaker 1: in fact walk across the street to the Grassy Knoll
Speaker 1: after the shooting along with others because she had seen
Speaker 1: official looking people there and she expected to be questioned,
Speaker 1: but no one approached her, so she left. So it's
Speaker 1: a little bit of a shrugger at that point, kind
Speaker 1: of like, yeah, all right, you didn't approach them, or yeah,
Speaker 1: that was my question. But I also can't claim that
Speaker 1: I wouldn't know the mindset of a person who had
Speaker 1: just witnessed that horrific event. I'm sure there's a little
Speaker 1: bit of shock involved, so I don't know how a
Speaker 1: normal a quote normal person would react. Just part of
Speaker 1: the mystery. So according to Oliver, it wasn't until three
Speaker 1: days later on November when she finally went back to
Speaker 1: work at the Colony Club and then that she was questioned.
Speaker 1: She described two men with FBI credentials waiting for her
Speaker 1: at the club and they asked about her film from
Speaker 1: the day of the shooting. She said she had it
Speaker 1: in her makeup bag and turned it over to these
Speaker 1: two men, and she asserts that one of them told her, well,
Speaker 1: we want to take the film and develop it and
Speaker 1: look at it for evidence, and we'll get back to
Speaker 1: you in a few days. Then she said that no
Speaker 1: one has seen the film since According to Oliver and
Speaker 1: conspiracy researcher Gary Shaw, all government offices deny ever having
Speaker 1: had possession of this film and it's never surfaced anywhere. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this particular story of how her film was taken
Speaker 1: is one that people point to, uh and kind of
Speaker 1: pick apart because it's shifted a little. There have been
Speaker 1: times when it has been suggested that it was two
Speaker 1: FBI agents and others where she's not sure if they
Speaker 1: were both FBI, and Uh, there has been some speculation
Speaker 1: that there were people walking around with fake credentials trying
Speaker 1: to do potentially seedy things or cover up ethings. Uh.
Speaker 1: So we don't really know. Uh. And the film sort
Speaker 1: of being m I A it doesn't help matters. No,
Speaker 1: But there are additional problems with her story. Uh. She
Speaker 1: made several claims that really turned out to be a
Speaker 1: little bit problematic. Yeah. Number One, nobody else has been
Speaker 1: able to corroborate her claim that she was actually at
Speaker 1: Dealy Plaza on the day of the shooting and at
Speaker 1: the same time. No one has been able to place
Speaker 1: her anywhere else either. Yeah, she doesn't have anybody that
Speaker 1: could say I was with her or I knew she
Speaker 1: was at place X, Y or Z, So it's really
Speaker 1: just her word as to where she was. She also
Speaker 1: asserted at one point that she had chosen a spot
Speaker 1: near a man and his son on Elm Street in
Speaker 1: anticipation in the motorcade passing by, and if you see
Speaker 1: photos from that day, there is a man and a
Speaker 1: young boy. However, that man, who was identified as Charles Brim,
Speaker 1: had mentioned in an interview that he and his son
Speaker 1: had first seen the motorcade at the corner of Maine
Speaker 1: in Houston, and that they had then run over to
Speaker 1: Elm just in time to see the motorcade passed by again,
Speaker 1: So he couldn't have been standing there beforehand when she
Speaker 1: said she took up her position near this family. Um.
Speaker 1: There have been people that have said, like, this is
Speaker 1: obviously a case of someone looking at a photograph and
Speaker 1: then putting together a story based on what they see,
Speaker 1: and that she's saying, no, no, I took it and
Speaker 1: stood near these people when they weren't there to be
Speaker 1: stood next to you prior to the event happening, right. Well,
Speaker 1: then there's also the question of would you actually remember
Speaker 1: that piece of it. I don't know. I don't really knew.
Speaker 1: So then we get to the part where Oliver claimed
Speaker 1: to have used a Yeshika Super eight zoom camera, but
Speaker 1: that did not exist at the time of the assassination.
Speaker 1: She's talked about this several times and tried to address
Speaker 1: this as a criticism. Will kind of get into that
Speaker 1: in just a minute, but her detractors have never found
Speaker 1: her explanations for this to be very satisfactory. Uh yeah.
Speaker 1: Oliver then later identified one of the men who she
Speaker 1: said took her film as agent Redid Kennedy, who was
Speaker 1: in fact an FBI agent, but Kennedy was actually in
Speaker 1: New Orleans on the day that she claims he came
Speaker 1: to the club. She also said that about two weeks
Speaker 1: before the shooting, Jack Ruby introduced her to Lee Harvey
Speaker 1: Oswald at the Carousel Club, referring to him as my
Speaker 1: friend Lee Oswald of the CIA, which I'm not really
Speaker 1: standard operating procedure for people who are supposed to be
Speaker 1: operating in secret. Too, announced that fact to other people
Speaker 1: and then be introduced that way. Yeah, Hi, my name
Speaker 1: is Lee. I'm a CIA spook. Well, like I I
Speaker 1: remember what a huge, huge deal that the Valerie plane
Speaker 1: scandal was. Um, it was an enormous thing. Yeah, to
Speaker 1: have leaked that information my understanding. I'm not in the CIA,
Speaker 1: don't know. But my understanding is that you don't really
Speaker 1: go around blabbing about it. There's usually a back a
Speaker 1: secondary backstory to what your job is that it gets told.
Speaker 1: But again, I'm not in it, I don't know. Oliver
Speaker 1: also said that Janet Confordo, who was a dancer at
Speaker 1: the Carousel Club she went under the stage name of Jada,
Speaker 1: had witnessed grew Be introducing Lee Harvey Oswald to Beverly Oliver,
Speaker 1: but Conforto had given interviews shortly after the events immediately
Speaker 1: surrounding the assassination, and she had explicitly stated that she
Speaker 1: had never seen Oswald at the club. So once again
Speaker 1: her Beverly Oliver's account really contradicts what other people were saying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then we get to the physical nature of what
Speaker 1: Beverly Oliver looked like. The stature of the Baboushkal lady
Speaker 1: compared to what Beverly Oliver looked like at age seventeen.
Speaker 1: They don't quite match up. There even debates over whether
Speaker 1: different images that people have claimed are the Baboosh Glady
Speaker 1: are all the same woman. But the images mostly appeared
Speaker 1: to be somebody with a thicker build than Oliver had
Speaker 1: at that age. Yeah, most of them. She looks like
Speaker 1: more like a middle aged woman that's a little bit heavier. Um,
Speaker 1: whereas Beverly Oliver was a dancer and very fit. Uh
Speaker 1: And in pictures and films from that time of Beverly Oliver,
Speaker 1: you can see that she's a very lean well men,
Speaker 1: So there's that. However, there's also the fact that the
Speaker 1: woman was wearing a trench coat, so it obscures the figure.
Speaker 1: It's not always clear. Well, and I know I have
Speaker 1: a couple of coats that I put on and go wow,
Speaker 1: this makes me look that's no, ma'am. And Tracy is
Speaker 1: a lean girl. Uh So there are other discrepancies, and
Speaker 1: they've all been analyzed and picked apart and supported and
Speaker 1: refuted and argued over by Beverly believers and Beverly detractors.
Speaker 1: Uh And before we get to the next bit about
Speaker 1: how this really affected Beverly Oliver, we're gonna take a
Speaker 1: brief moment, So back to Beverly Oliver. In an interview
Speaker 1: with mobile Alabama paper The Harbinger in May, Beverly Oliver
Speaker 1: mentioned how frustrating it was that people didn't believe her,
Speaker 1: and she also asserted that Dan Rather, who's the only
Speaker 1: member of the press who was allowed to see the
Speaker 1: Zapruter footage early on, was part of the cover up
Speaker 1: and that his career skyrocketed in aims for his involvement
Speaker 1: in perpetuating this deception to the American people. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: whole interview. I mean, it's with like a smaller paper,
Speaker 1: but she really kind of comes off as she feels
Speaker 1: very victimized by all of this, that there is a
Speaker 1: cover up and that she particularly has been purposely discredited
Speaker 1: because she somehow, you know, has this information like about
Speaker 1: Lee Harvey Oswald knowing Jack Ruby and being in the CIA,
Speaker 1: and that it's kind of all been a smear campaign.
Speaker 1: And the reason that she points to for saying that
Speaker 1: Dan Rather was part of this cover up is that
Speaker 1: after seeing the footage for the first time, Rather described
Speaker 1: what he had seen live on television and it's not
Speaker 1: entirely accurate to what's actually in the film and in
Speaker 1: his book that Cameron never blinks. He actually mentions these
Speaker 1: inaccuracy of his account as being the result of relaying
Speaker 1: rather shocking information. Uh. He has you know, he's still
Speaker 1: in shock from the president being shot. He is seeing
Speaker 1: this horrifying footage of the president being shot. He then
Speaker 1: had to run several blocks she uh, do the broadcast
Speaker 1: and relay this information, and he was doing it without
Speaker 1: any notes. So he says it's just one of those
Speaker 1: things where he did his best, but there are problems
Speaker 1: with it, whereas all of our points to the discrepancy
Speaker 1: and says he was clearly lying. Did you notice how
Speaker 1: good his career got after that? It's all a cover up.
Speaker 1: Also in this same interview, she was asked about Gerald
Speaker 1: Posner's book Case Closed, in which he discredits her whole
Speaker 1: story on the basis that it changed and that she
Speaker 1: claimed to have used a camera that didn't exist in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty three. Uh, and her assertion that she was
Speaker 1: introduced to Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby, and that
Speaker 1: Ruby introduced Oswald as being with the CIA. So he
Speaker 1: pretty much discredited her whole thing based on these definitely
Speaker 1: problematic uh, pieces of her story. Yeah, and I'm going
Speaker 1: to read a chunk. It's kind of longish, but it's
Speaker 1: her response and it just kind of gives you interesting
Speaker 1: insight into you, uh, kind of how she has been
Speaker 1: dealing with these things as they've come up. One she
Speaker 1: said that she never actually read General Posner's book. Uh,
Speaker 1: and the interviewer in this uh this article where they
Speaker 1: do the interview, actually reads her sections of it. This
Speaker 1: is her response. She says, Well, first of all, I
Speaker 1: would like for him to tell me how my story
Speaker 1: has ever changed. It has never changed. I never said
Speaker 1: that I used to super eight camera that came from
Speaker 1: a man named Gary Shaw in a book that he
Speaker 1: wrote called The Cover Up. I might have said to him,
Speaker 1: and this was seventy super eight meaning eight millimeter. All
Speaker 1: I know is that it was a prototype camera that
Speaker 1: a man I was dating, who worked for Eastman Kodak
Speaker 1: by the name of Lawrence Taylor Ronco Jr. Gave me
Speaker 1: as a present the September before the President was killed
Speaker 1: in November, a brand new camera, a magazine load and
Speaker 1: I had to send these little envelopes to Rochester to
Speaker 1: be developed. That's all I know about the camera. And
Speaker 1: it was a Yeshika. When this came out about the camera,
Speaker 1: I called Yeshika New York and spoke to John Start.
Speaker 1: I don't know what his position was. He was very
Speaker 1: excited to do research on the camera. Posner is right
Speaker 1: that camera was not available to the general public in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty three, but it does not mean that I
Speaker 1: could not have had a prototype camera of it. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying it was super eight. I don't know what
Speaker 1: it was. He also made a statement, and I have
Speaker 1: it in writing in talking to his supervisors and people
Speaker 1: of that time, that they felt like, probably if I
Speaker 1: had used the word super eight in an interview, it's
Speaker 1: like people going today to get something xerox. After they
Speaker 1: came out, they just became the nomenclature for any kind
Speaker 1: of an eight millimeter camera. She's so tired of talking
Speaker 1: about that camera. I can tell um, Yeah, she's UM.
Speaker 1: I mean, I can appreciate. I don't know if her
Speaker 1: story is true or not. If it is, I can
Speaker 1: only imagine how frustrating it would be to have people go,
Speaker 1: I don't believe you, I don't believe you. I don't
Speaker 1: believe you. But at the same time, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of convenient mulessness in the details. And at this point
Speaker 1: it's been so far back, and there was time in
Speaker 1: between different interviews. I don't I don't know that it
Speaker 1: can never be sorted through. In two thousand three, forty
Speaker 1: years after the Kennedy assassination, ABC News published polling results
Speaker 1: that found that seven and ten of the Americans polled
Speaker 1: believed that the killing of John F. Kennedy was a plot,
Speaker 1: although they had varying degrees of conviction. Some were sure,
Speaker 1: some we're pretty sure, somewhere I think probably. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: all of those got counted in the seven out of ten. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so a plot and not the work of just a
Speaker 1: loan shooter. Of of those people, scent believed also that
Speaker 1: there had been a government cover up. Only thirty two
Speaker 1: percent of the people polled accepted the nineteen sixty four
Speaker 1: findings of the Warren Commission UH that determined that Lee
Speaker 1: Harvey Oswald had acted alone. And at the end of
Speaker 1: the interview that we were talking about earlier in with
Speaker 1: reporter Gary James, James asked Oliver if she had had
Speaker 1: any regrets, and in response, she said, I'll tell you
Speaker 1: there are two things in my lifetime I would change
Speaker 1: if I could. One of them would be I would
Speaker 1: not have been on the Grassy Knoll in November twenty.
Speaker 1: The second thing is I would never have opened my mouth. However,
Speaker 1: she has gone on to kind of make a career
Speaker 1: out of being the Baboushka lady um In. She worked
Speaker 1: with writer Coke Buchanan and wrote a book about her
Speaker 1: story called Nightmare in Dallas, and she still makes public
Speaker 1: appearances as the Baboushka Lady. Yes, she did one, I
Speaker 1: don't remember where it was, but last month she appeared
Speaker 1: coming to this part of a lead up to the
Speaker 1: anniversary so act when yeah, uh and literally, I just
Speaker 1: want to point out once again every person mentioned in
Speaker 1: this discussion that we've had today has been called into
Speaker 1: question in terms of truthfulness and credibility, as has almost
Speaker 1: anyone who has touched the story, made a documentary, you know,
Speaker 1: written a blog post on the internet. Uh. It's tricky too.
Speaker 1: It's a tricky thing to want to talk about, I
Speaker 1: think because if you do, the second you have an opinion,
Speaker 1: there is already going to be a herd of people
Speaker 1: that want to disagree with you and argue it. So
Speaker 1: it's It's a dynamic that's constantly kind of adversarial, which
Speaker 1: is pretty fascinating. It's everyone trying to discredit everyone all
Speaker 1: the time about everything related to the assassination of John F.
Speaker 1: Kennedy and her testimony before the United States of America
Speaker 1: Assassination Records Review Board in November, she concluded her testimony
Speaker 1: with the following statement. She says, but I would like
Speaker 1: to make one statement to you and to anybody else
Speaker 1: who is interested. When all the pictures or all the
Speaker 1: pieces of this puzzle is put together, and I have
Speaker 1: faith enough in my government and in my country to
Speaker 1: believe that eventually it will all be it will be
Speaker 1: all out, all of it will be given to the
Speaker 1: researchers and the research community, unredacted, unedited, undamaged in any manner.
Speaker 1: And whenever this is all put together and we really
Speaker 1: have the honest pick sure of what happened that day,
Speaker 1: no one more than Beverly Oliver hopes I have to
Speaker 1: stand up to America and apologize. I'm not sure what
Speaker 1: that means. That left me scratching my head, and it's
Speaker 1: one of those things that I was surprised. I mean,
Speaker 1: I granted him, not like surfing all of the various
Speaker 1: conspiracy theory boards and the various historical analysis boards that
Speaker 1: people really do deep dives on a lot of this,
Speaker 1: but it's not something that comes up very often in
Speaker 1: most of like the writing about her. And it's such
Speaker 1: an odd statement that I yeah, it's a really odd
Speaker 1: statement because it was a testimony before this review board.
Speaker 1: Presumably it was given extemporaneously, right, Yeah, you and I
Speaker 1: both know from doing this podcast sometimes when we are
Speaker 1: speaking extemporaneously, ridiculous things that make no sense come out
Speaker 1: of our mouth. Uh. But at the same time, the
Speaker 1: part about no one more than Beverly Oliver hopes I
Speaker 1: have to stand up to America and apologize, it just
Speaker 1: rings odd. It's really strange. I mean, it follows this
Speaker 1: questioning about the discrepancy of her camera model description, but
Speaker 1: it's unclear whether she means like she wants to apologize
Speaker 1: about saying the wrong things about the camera or just
Speaker 1: in general, which seems like that doesn't make sense in
Speaker 1: the context of all of this unredacted. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: pieces of the puzzle that she hopes magically all come
Speaker 1: together at some point. It's just it opens up like
Speaker 1: a whole new can of worms. For It's like, Beverly,
Speaker 1: what are you talking about? What are you apologizing for?
Speaker 1: But I don't know, you know, will we ever know
Speaker 1: the true identity of Babushka Lady. There's no telling. There
Speaker 1: are so many crazy theories. But I shouldn't say they're
Speaker 1: crazy their theories. We don't know what's true. Well, it's
Speaker 1: the big question of if it isn't Beverly Oliver, then
Speaker 1: who is it? Yeah? You know, is it just a
Speaker 1: random person who somehow was in such a media blackout
Speaker 1: that they didn't see or hear any of the many
Speaker 1: requests for all witnesses to come forward, and anyone who
Speaker 1: had taken film, Uh, some someone who had some clear
Speaker 1: reason not to want to meet questions. Yeah, there have
Speaker 1: even been people that have theorized that, in fact, Babusha
Speaker 1: Lady was part of the whole thing. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: why didn't she run away and stop filming when this
Speaker 1: all happened? Why did she keep filming, you know, seemingly
Speaker 1: very calmly. Why did she know ahead of time what
Speaker 1: was going on? Well, and the preter similarly kept filming. Yeah,
Speaker 1: although he was much further away, she was quite close
Speaker 1: to the street. Um. But yeah, there's lots of questions
Speaker 1: and she's I will say this to that. Beverly Oliver
Speaker 1: is not the only witness whose account has been questioned,
Speaker 1: um and picked apart and kind of discredited, although she
Speaker 1: is the only one that kind of emerged from a
Speaker 1: cloud of not knowing who this person was after many
Speaker 1: years well, and is a growing body of scientific study
Speaker 1: examining how I witness. Yeah, eye witness testimony is often
Speaker 1: vastly inaccurate. Yeah, I mean, and that's shown, like I said,
Speaker 1: in some of the other accounts of that day by eyewitnesses.
Speaker 1: I forget the name of the woman who um. At
Speaker 1: one point, I think it was that same day she
Speaker 1: gave an interview where she was talking about a dog
Speaker 1: in the road and there was no dog in the road,
Speaker 1: and so you know, some people have used that to discreditor,
Speaker 1: but others have said basically what you say, that eyewitnesses
Speaker 1: don't always clearly remember what's happened, especially at a very
Speaker 1: sort of watershed shocking event. Beverley Oliver has even said
Speaker 1: at various times that she didn't really remember a lot
Speaker 1: of that day and she only came to these memories
Speaker 1: under hypnosis. Which has made other people kind of I mean,
Speaker 1: that's the whole other thing. So we may never know
Speaker 1: the truth. And I feel like the further and further
Speaker 1: we get away from that day, I mean, we're fifty
Speaker 1: years out now, the less and less likely we will
Speaker 1: ever know. Well, and it's at this point but Busha
Speaker 1: Lady could be deceased. Yeah, we don't know. Well, it's
Speaker 1: we're fifty years out now. At this point, we have
Speaker 1: like an official version of the story that has been
Speaker 1: official for quite some time, although it's been questioned by
Speaker 1: other officials, but it's also been so deeply screwed. May
Speaker 1: I think maybe more deeply scrutinized and more persistently scrutinized
Speaker 1: than any other event in modern American history. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think in the modern equivalent is sort of nine
Speaker 1: eleven and fifty years after that. It'll be very interesting
Speaker 1: to be able to compare that and what's going on
Speaker 1: in terms of investigation and questioning still, because I'm sure
Speaker 1: it will still be happening to this at its fifty
Speaker 1: year mark, and where will we be. And unfortunately, because
Speaker 1: you know, so many of the players in the JFK
Speaker 1: assassination were dead within you know, a short period of time,
Speaker 1: we can't ever question them. Uh so maybe for ever
Speaker 1: probably uh But in the meantime we'll switch gears. Because
Speaker 1: I have some really fun listener mail. Please read it.
Speaker 1: I will. It made me laugh so hard. This actually
Speaker 1: came to us via Facebook and it's from our listener,
Speaker 1: Amanda Uh and it is in response to our Haunted
Speaker 1: Mansion episode. She says, I never felt I had anything
Speaker 1: outstanding to tell you about, but after listening to your
Speaker 1: recent podcast on the history of the Haunted Mansion, I
Speaker 1: knew I had something unique to contribute. Em boy does
Speaker 1: she it's so fun. She says. My grandpa's best friend SI,
Speaker 1: and one of those family friends that are just known
Speaker 1: as my uncle. SI was the head of sanitation for
Speaker 1: Disneyland in the early years. This was a really important
Speaker 1: job because Mrs Disney stipulated that the park had to
Speaker 1: be immaculate, unlike the other fairs and parks at the time.
Speaker 1: So SI was interested with a very big job and
Speaker 1: would tell us cool stories about the early years of
Speaker 1: the park. So when I listen to your podcast on
Speaker 1: the Haunted Mansion and how the creators had played pranks
Speaker 1: on the cleanup crew. I had to giggle because I
Speaker 1: had heard that story before, but from the jan Dur's perspective,
Speaker 1: and how so I had to defend his poor staff
Speaker 1: even though he knew it was just in good fun. Okay,
Speaker 1: I love that so much because you never hear that
Speaker 1: ankle like we always hear the worldly crumb story about
Speaker 1: how you know they got the note about how you
Speaker 1: couldn't you would have to clean up your own space.
Speaker 1: But when you think about it from the janitors side,
Speaker 1: like just trying to protect his people from these shocking
Speaker 1: and scary moments, let's see it, and she says, I
Speaker 1: wanted to leave you with my favorite story he ever told. Though.
Speaker 1: So back in the very beginning of the Parks creation,
Speaker 1: when things were pretty secretive about what was happening there,
Speaker 1: my uncle Si would do all kinds of odd jobs
Speaker 1: for the company to get everything set up, and I
Speaker 1: was always told that he needed to keep a low
Speaker 1: profile on what he was doing. One of these jobs
Speaker 1: did not go as planned, so I was trusted to
Speaker 1: move some of the animatronic animals for the Jungle Cruise
Speaker 1: from the studio where they were created to their new
Speaker 1: home and adventure Land. So siloeded the animals into a
Speaker 1: big truck and covered the top and sides of the
Speaker 1: tarps so no one could see through the slats of
Speaker 1: the truck. But as he was driving along the highway,
Speaker 1: the tart aim unhinged and everyone could see the tigers, elephants,
Speaker 1: and giraffes all piled up in his truck together. The
Speaker 1: people driving along next to him and passers by gave
Speaker 1: him very confused and concerned looks. One man seemed to
Speaker 1: fear for size life and shouted to him that he
Speaker 1: was a tiger in his truck, that there was a
Speaker 1: tiger in his truck. So I just replied, it's okay,
Speaker 1: I know. The man turned white, so I just laughed.
Speaker 1: I hope this gives you a little more insight into
Speaker 1: the park development, and I hope to hear more great
Speaker 1: stuff from his troop in the podcast. I love that
Speaker 1: it's so fun. Yeah, And I have to say I
Speaker 1: love the janitorial staff at Disneyland specifically. And here's why.
Speaker 1: Tell me, because when you run a race at Disneyland,
Speaker 1: which I do a lot, the janitorial staff will put
Speaker 1: up these huge banners when you're running through the backstage
Speaker 1: area that say, let's say like things like Disneyland Sanitation
Speaker 1: cheers you and they are all out there, like you know,
Speaker 1: six in the morning, cheering for strangers, reading your name
Speaker 1: off your bibb and clapping and they're all just so awesome.
Speaker 1: They'll high five everybody as you go by, like they
Speaker 1: just a great group of people. Holly is tearing up.
Speaker 1: I love It's one of my favorite parts. Whenever I
Speaker 1: do a race there. That's always like when I know
Speaker 1: I'm coming around that corner to the sanitation office, I'm
Speaker 1: always like, I love this pool because it's always really fun.
Speaker 1: They're strangers who'd treat you like family well, and I'm glad.
Speaker 1: Uncle Slide was a good boss who wanted, you know,
Speaker 1: to protect his crew from undue stress, and his legacy
Speaker 1: is that their sanitation department is still awesome. Love it.
Speaker 1: If you want to write to us stories that will
Speaker 1: make me miss the od and we'd be in a
Speaker 1: good way, you could do so at History Podcast at
Speaker 1: Discovery dot com. You can connect with us on Facebook
Speaker 1: at facebook dot com, slash history class stuff on Twitter
Speaker 1: at Misston History and at Miston History dot tumbler dot com.
Speaker 1: We are also always pinning things on Pinterests. If you
Speaker 1: would like to learn a little bit more about what
Speaker 1: we talked about today, you can go to our website
Speaker 1: and just type in the letters JFK in the search bar,
Speaker 1: and one of the first articles you will see is
Speaker 1: who killed JFK's examined some of the controversy and conspiray
Speaker 1: you see around, various findings and stories and accounts of
Speaker 1: the events of that day. Well, and by the time
Speaker 1: this episode airs, we should also have a brand new article.
Speaker 1: It's about JFK conspiracy theories fantastic, So if you want
Speaker 1: to read those or almost anything else your mind can
Speaker 1: think about, we have an article for it, and that
Speaker 1: is auto website, which is houst works dot com for
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics. Because it
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