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Goodreads Top 150 Best 21st Century Nonfiction, 2022. Pulitzer Prize in History nominee, 2018. Ebook ranked second on Amazon Bestseller list, Presidents category, 2017. Updated in 2024. While numerous books cover the 1963 crime-of-the-20th-century from a conspiracy or lone-assassin viewpoint, this work by veteran journalist Kevin James Shay presents new and old facts objectively to allow readers to better understand what happened.
This updated, compelling narrative is infused with behind-the-scenes details that have been brought to light in recent years through fresh government documents and other sources. The book includes facts related to plots against Kennedy that occurred in Chicago, Tampa, and other cities shortly before the November 1963 assassination. For instance, suspect Thomas Vallee was arrested right before Kennedy was to visit Chicago on November 2, matching some of the same characteristics as Lee Harvey Oswald.
Vallee was in Tennessee at the same time that a gunman approached Kennedy in that state in May 1963. Then Vallee soon moved to Chicago and took similar actions there as Oswald did in New Orleans and Dallas. Vallee later wrote to FBI Director Hoover, who amazingly wrote him a polite response shortly before the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. A different suspect in the November 18 Tampa plot, Gilberto Lopez, also featured a similar background as Oswald.
Lopez traveled from Texas into Mexico soon after JFK was killed, along an escape route that Oswald tried to take, and then flew to Cuba. There were also gunmen along the proposed presidential motorcade routes in Chicago and Tampa, with Vallee and Lopez believed to be set up to take the blame should an assassination attempt be successful. New government documents also detailed many other threats, such as statements shortly before JFK's assassination by a CIA courier on how Kennedy and his presumed assassin would both be killed.
Another aspect not covered in most books is the involvement of Willie Somersett. The Klan leader opposed the racial violence in the 1960s to the point that he risked his life exposing and helping to prevent it as a government informant. He likely helped save and prolong the Kennedys' and King's lives. Finally, this book shows how some justice in the case has been served. Several prime suspects in the Mafia, CIA, and Cuban community received prison sentences for other crimes, similar to how gangster Al Capone was imprisoned for tax evasion.
Shay grew up in Dallas and has researched the tragedy since 1978. He witnessed President John F. Kennedy's funeral in Washington, D. C., where he was born on JFK's birthday. He first became interested in the case when eyewitness Bill Newman entered his college newspaper office and led him on a search.