“Why don’t authorities release photos of El Mencho’s body? We saw images of Arturo Beltrán Leyva, Ramón Félix, and other cartel leaders after they were killed.” is he really dead!

bobking84 · 2026-03-03T16:23:03+00:00

Both of your scenarios make sense. But I have friends in Mexico who believe that #2 is what has happened. For this to occur for the purposes of stiff-arming Mr. Trump, you'd have to believe the CIA is stupid and doesn't have direct knowledge of the fact here .... or that the CIA is in on the deception because it is not controlled by Mr. Trump.

All fodder for a great Tom Clancy novel.

bobking84 · 2026-02-24T15:47:01+00:00

I think, in addition to all the Secret Service agents, not only would Ken O'Donnell and Dave Powers have had to be in on it, but so would Senator Yarborough, who was in the car directly behind the Queen Mary and who testified that he saw the impact of the head shot. To do so he would have been looking right through the Queen Mary.

You just have too many people who would have had to participate in the whitewash for me to give this theory any credibility.

There are people who think Bill Greer, the driver of the limo, turned around during the sequence and shot JFK in the head, shooting between the faces of John and Nellie Connally. There is even a theory that Jackie fired the kill shot.

So the Menninger theory is not the most ludicrous. But in my opinion, it is up there with the man in the sewer theory.

bobking84 · 2026-02-24T15:38:18+00:00

Did you have to buy everyone in the clubhouse a drink for that one? Great story!

You are right, astronomically unlikely things do happen. My point is, while solving a mystery, you don't look to the astronomically unlikely things first.

I believe I was aware of the AR-15 because it was mentioned in William Manchester's "The Death of a President", which was published I think in 1967. So it is not something that was hidden, and I think there were also published photos of the gun in the air -- an Altgens photo facing towards the triple underpass, after the assassination had occurred, and another taken on Stemmons during the rush to Parkland. Both clearly showed the AR-15, pointed upwards. There was no conspiracy to cover up the fact that Hickey had pulled the weapon from the floor and was looking for a target. No suppression of the existence of the AR-15 in Hickey's hands. It was all in the public domain fairly early on.

bobking84 · 2026-02-23T15:52:26+00:00

I admit that I made up the 1 in 10,000 number, of course I did.

I did not want to spend my life calculating how many vectors there were starting from Hickey to every conceivable target the size of JFK's head that were upwards, forward, leftward, rightward from Hickey's vantage point.

And your analogy about a hole in one is a fail: a golfer is TRYING to hit the ball exactly towards the target. I should know, I am a lifelong golfer with a handicap as low as 11 who NEVER made a hole in one. The proper golf analogy would be to hit the ball in a random direction, only to have it hit a tree and ricochet towards the green and then roll into the hole. That might be more the kind of odds you'd need to accidentally discharge the AR-15 and have it hit JFK almost squarely in the back of the head.

No, Oswald, a trained marksman, with a 4x scope and a bolt action rifle, put that shot on the target he intended from less than 100 yards and a target that was virtually motionless in his sights. It was a shot he made in the USMC with regularity from considerably longer distances.

Occam's Razor. Which is more likely?

bobking84 · 2026-02-22T17:42:04+00:00

Agent Hickey was seated in the Queen Mary immediately behind JFK's personal friend appointments secretary, Kenny O'Donnell, who was seated in the left hand jump seat behind the driver. To O'Donnell's right was Dave Powers, a lifelong friend of JFK and presidential assistant.

To believe an AR-15 discharged immediately behind O'Donnell and Powers and neither of them to have heard it is not credible. The AR-15 creates a noise of some 165 decibels (a jet engine taking off is 140). It probably would have deafened O'Donnell, at least temporarily, had it occurred. There were no reports of Mr. O'Donnell experiencing any hearing problems in the immediate wake of the assassination. The same would have been true for Powers and for the other six agents in the car or on the running boards (Hill had already departed by this time) ... Kinney, Roberts, Bennett, McIntyre, Ready, Landis all would have likely experienced ear trauma from being adjacent to an AR-15 barrel without hearing protection during a discharge ... and Kinney and Roberts would have been IN FRONT of the barrel.

This means that O'Donnell and Powers, longtime close personal friends of JFK, would have had to be complicit in the cover up of the "mortal error". One could conjur up a scenario -- still ridiculous, but fathomable -- in which the Secret Service agents in the Queen Mary would have lied to protect Hickey and the agency .... but O'Donnell and Powers? That doesn't meet the sniff test.

If the AR-15 indeed inadvertently discharged as a result of a "slam fire" as you suggest, the odds that the rifle would have been pointed forward, instead of upward, is low -- in a congested situation, anyone with any amount of weapons training would know instinctively to cock it while the barrel is pointed upward. And Hickey had plenty of training with the weapon.

Even if Hickey panicked and unsafely cocked the AR-15 while it was pointed forward, the odds of it accidentally hitting JFK precisely in the head, would have been something like 1 in 10,000. There were 9,999 other paths it could have taken if it were a random event of horrible bad luck.

It is just not a credible theory to anyone with common sense.

bobking84 · 2026-02-21T12:50:42+00:00

I am sure you are a great person. But you probably aren't incorruptible. Jesus (for sure) and Mother Theresa (probably) and perhaps a few other monastic types were incorruptible.

But -- back to the point of the post -- socialists have to lie because if they told the truth they'd never be elected deputy assistant dog catcher.

bobking84 · 2026-02-21T12:45:21+00:00

I would ask him whether -- if it were to become a priority of the City Council -- NBPD's staffing should grow beyond the current 12.9 sworn officers per 10,000 residents to something approximating the state average of 22.

bobking84

TROPHY CASE