The William Pitzer Murder

[Mitch Todd]

I am not nessarily arguing whether Eaglesham did a goo job in deconstructing the evidence in the years since the Navy's initial findings, but rather why the Navy ruled the way they did

What I get from Eaglesham's work is: as he gets his hands on more of the crime scene and autopsy materials and learns more about the underlying forensics, he comes to understand why the Navy decided Pitzer committed suicide in the first place. And at the same time he comes to the same conclusion. The "why the Navy ruled the way they did" is embedded in AE's odyssey through the evidence.

[Mitch Todd]

        They had just done a major upgrading at Bethesda prior to the JFK Assassination. Bethesda had state-of-the-art audio visual technical abilities when the body of JFK was first viewed by Humes at roughly 18:35 PM,. This was well in advance of the arrival of Jackie and the empty JFK coffin. Humes testified as to the 1963 cutting edge audio visual capabilities at Bethesda in addition to his viewing the body of JFK for the 1st time at roughly 18:35. The Official MD 236 of Sgt Roger Boyajian corroborates the 18:35 arrival time of JFK's body. Humes further testified that the audio visual capabilities of Bethesda were so advanced in 1963 that they frequently telecast various medical procedures and autopsy procedures LIVE to other training schools around the country. These 1963 advanced audio visual capabilities at Bethesda were the responsibility of Pitzer before, during and after 11/22/63.
         With regard to the alleged Pitzer suicide, let's not forget about the CIA Hit on Pitzer that was rejected by Col Daniel Marvin.

It was only a matter of time before Dangerous Dan made an appearance!!!

Eaglesham was an early Marvin proponent. As he and Robin Palmer began working more an more with Marvin, they came to distrust the ex-Green Beret. It finally came down to this letter to Jerry Rose and The Fourth Decade:

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/marvin.htm

in particular:

"We do not know whether or not Dr. Vanek is telling the truth, but we are now certain that Col. Marvin has been lying in crucial elements of his story. We know also that Col. Marvin continues to insist that his contradictory versions of key events are not mutually exclusive.

"We have come full circle. From working closely with Daniel Marvin, seeing him regularly and talking frequently on the telephone - planning to write a book together - now we are convinced that he has been dishonest with us. Where lie the limits of this deceit? It is pointless to speculate. But the implications of what he wrote in his TFD article and what he said on The Men Who Killed Kennedy are so important that we feel obliged to alert the research community of his duplicity, hence this letter."

After Eaglesham and Palmer washed their hands of Dan Marvin, Kent Heiner took up Marvin's cause, ultimately producing the book Without Smoking Gun. However, Heiner also ultimately concluded that Marvin was an untrustworthy source, and wrote about it, and Pitzer's death, on his blog. See:

https://www.memresearch.org/documents/Ghosts0.php
https://www.memresearch.org/documents/Ghosts1.php
https://www.memresearch.org/documents/Ghosts2.php

As a kind of bonus, the third page includes Pitzer's WaPo obit, and the scan of the Waukeegan paper story on Dennis David that started all this.

BTW, it's interesting to me that Marvin's story about Vaneck being solicited to kill Pitzer parallels the MLK assassination scenario that got William Pepper into a lot of trouble ("green beret assassinates someone, is later killed") when the named "assassin" turned out to be very much alive, angry, and willing to sue. Pepper has said that he'd talked with Marvin, but hasn't said that Marvin was or was not his source.

As to the Bethesda CCTV setup, "state of the art" in 1963 was still orthocons, vacuum tubes, and 400+ volt power supplies. The cameras we still large and cumbersome and needed an operator, a lot of power, and a lot of illumination to run.  Like I said before, if someone was filming JFK's autopsy, everyone in the room would have known it.

If you want to discuss Boyajian, I agree with Matt: feel free to do so, but in another thread, please. 






 

[Mitch Todd]

I remember seeing somewhere that Pitzer couldn't have fired the pistol with his right hand as it (his right hand) was deformed.

According to Eaglesham, a family member was dispatched by Mrs Pitzer to retrieve the wedding band. That family member came back with a story that the ring could not be removed because of some deformity of the hand prevented removal. Eaglesham figured that the deformity story was an excuse for the family member's inability to get the ring. The reason for that is unknown. However, if the deformity existed before the suicide, Mrs Pitzer and the other Pitzers would have known about it beforehand; none of the would have asked for the ring, because they would already have known it could not be removed.

Also, any disability that would prevent you from firing a weapon will pretty much disqualifies you from active military service, with the possible exception of injuries sustained in combat or similarly in the line of duty. I've never heard anything about Pitzer sustaining such an injury.

[Matt Grantham]

According to Eaglesham, a family member was dispatched by Mrs Pitzer to retrieve the wedding band. That family member came back with a story that the ring could not be removed because of some deformity of the hand prevented removal. Eaglesham figured that the deformity story was an excuse for the family member's inability to get the ring. The reason for that is unknown. However, if the deformity existed before the suicide, Mrs Pitzer and the other Pitzers would have known about it beforehand; none of the would have asked for the ring, because they would already have known it could not be removed.

Also, any disability that would prevent you from firing a weapon will pretty much disqualifies you from active military service, with the possible exception of injuries sustained in combat or similarly in the line of duty. I've never heard anything about Pitzer sustaining such an injury.

 Does Eaglesham have quotes somewhere from Pitzer family members that William was right-handed and had no problems with said hand?

[Mitch Todd]

Does Eaglesham have quotes somewhere from Pitzer family members that William was right-handed and had no problems with said hand?

What I know is what Eaglesham wrote:


"LEFT HAND NOT DAMAGED

I recently learned from a member of the family, who learned it from Mrs. Pitzer herself, that she had asked a third member of the family to obtain the wedding ring. The third member of the family returned without the ring with the account that a contact person in the navy had stated that the left hand was damaged, preventing removal of the ring. In contrast, the autopsy report states:

The upper and lower extremities...exhibit no remarkable gross lesions. No evidence of abrasions, contusions, or lacerations are noted in any part of the body with the exception of the head wounds.

Likewise, neither Kenneth Hersh [5] nor I saw damage to either hand in the autopsy photographs (despite information to the contrary [10]). The third member of the family may have forgotten to request the wedding ring or decided that it should stay with the deceased, and invented the story of the mangled left hand."

[Matt Grantham]

 The criticisms of Marvin significant Maybe he decided he was mistaken on who it was who supposedly asked him to kill Pitzer. I checked out his website. Seems like he raises some interesting questions One that struck me in terms of Mrs Pitzer's' right to know about the autopsy According to Marvin she was not allowed any information for 25 years

http://expendableelite.com/UW_archives/UW_archive.0004.html

[Mitch Todd]

The criticisms of Marvin significant Maybe he decided he was mistaken on who it was who supposedly asked him to kill Pitzer. I checked out his website. Seems like he raises some interesting questions One that struck me in terms of Mrs Pitzer's' right to know about the autopsy According to Marvin she was not allowed any information for 25 years

http://expendableelite.com/UW_archives/UW_archive.0004.html

Marvin was originally certain that it was Vanek. When the ARRB was able to find Vanek, and got a statement from him denying any involvement, Marvin was suddenly equivocal. As Palmer and Eaglesham put it, Marvin's revised position "represented a significant retreat: from certainty of identification to 'who I thought to be David Vanek.'" In fact, Marvin's account changes in a number of other ways. One of the more pronounced was Marvin's original clam that he and Vanek had walked with each other talking about the assassination offer. In the new version, Marvin never got closer than 40' to the now-maybe-Vanek. When P&E began to press Marvin about the issue, Marvin became increasingly evasive to the point where he simply lost credibility with Palmer and Eaglesham. Something similar happened between Heiner and Marvin.

As for Marvin's website (assuming it wasn't actually written by one of Trine Day's copywriters), look at the following passage

"as the investigative report tells of Pitzer committing suicide by a right-handed self-inflicted handgun wound in the head and yet Pitzer?s associate whom he had shared the fact and the essence of his secret possession of the autopsy photos, Dennis D. David, told me unequivocally, when I first spoke with him, that his friend William Bruce Pitzer was indeed left handed."

If you've gone through Eaglesham's recounting of his investigation into Pitzer's death, you might have noticed this:

"In a telephone conversation with Daniel Marvin in 1995, of which I have an audiotape, Mrs. Pitzer stated clearly that her husband had been right-handed [4]:

Marvin: Was he -- was Bill -- right-handed or left-handed?
Mrs. Pitzer: He was right-handed.
Marvin: Right-handed."

This was before Marvin started working with Heiner, and before the Expendable Elite book/website came out. He knew Pitzer was right-handed, so why not tell us?

Now, I expect you were wondering about this particular claim: "Why was the widow Pitzer refused a copy of her husband?s autopsy for 25 years after his death?" My question is, was she really refused? Or is Marvin(and/ or his Trine Day ghost) simply trying to insinuate something sinister where they is no evidence by asking an open-ended question?

[Matt Grantham]

So Hersch was the only expert to examine the 20 autopsy photographs?