HILDE: Garrison linked Kerry Thornley with Lee Harvey Oswald, the man people
claim killed Kennedy. They served in the Marines together, and Thornley wrote
The Idle Warriors, the only book written about Oswald before the Kennedy
assassination. But there's stories of a man firing at President John F. Kennedy
from the grassy knoll while Kennedy was riding in the presidential limousine in
Dallas, Texas, and links to Clay Shaw and a mysterious figure known as
Brother-in-law. Thornley actually told people he planned the assassination, and
some people wonder if Thornley was the man on the grassy knoll, the second
gunman.
MARSHALL: No. He had nothing to do with it. Thornley said lots of things just to
shake people up. But he was a prankster, not a killer. Oswald killed Kennedy.
HILDE: But there are some odd circumstances with the assassination. Didn't the
chief pathologist burn all of his own notes? And they never found Kennedy's brain.
In the movie JFK--
MARSHALL: Oh God, don't talk to me about that bullshit propaganda disguised as
history. They turned crazy Garrison into a hero.
Here's what happened. The pathologist--don't remember his name (it was
Commander James Humes--P.H.)--when he was writing the autopsy report he got
Kennedy's blood on it. You're examining a dead body that was shot, it happens. So
he copied his notes on clean paper and destroyed the messy original. No
conspiracy there. Wouldn't you retype a story--OK, nowadays you'd reprint--but if
you were turning in a story and your original got dirty, wouldn't you print a clean
copy?
HILDE: I do my stories on computer, but I see your point.
MARSHALL: And JFK's brain? Look, they had Kennedy's brain, they just lost track
of it. Robert Kennedy got it, I think from the National Archives, and the family
probably buried it when J.F.K's body was moved to another grave in the late 60s or
early 70s. When the government told them to give it back, they didn't, and
because they were the Kennedys nobody went to dig up the grave and look for it.
No conspiracy there, just a family protecting its dead.
And the grassy knoll, the unknown second gunman, the magic bullet? Pure
bullshit. Excuse my French.
HILDE: Please tell me about the "magic bullet."
MARSHALL: There's two versions. Both of them come from witnesses hearing
three shots when they only found evidence of two. Not surprising; there's a bunch
of tall buildings around, sound echos. But the conspiracy theorists ignore that.
The first "magic bullet" is what conspiracy theorists named the bullet that hit both
Kennedy and Governor Connally. That's a real bullet. But the conspiractors
claim--and I mean "claim"--Connally was sitting in the limo directly in front of
Kennedy.
According to them, for a bullet fired from Oswald's book depository window to hit
both, it would have to hit and shoot through Kennedy, make a sharp turn in mid air,
make another sharp turn in the other direction, and then hit Connally in the
shoulder, which is impossible. A magic bullet. But check the photos, check the
Zapruder film, and you'll see Connally wasn't sitting directly in front of Kennedy,
but was in a jump seat slightly to one side. The angle where Kennedy got hit and
Connally got hit line up. The bullet shot out of Kennedy--I think through his
throat--and hit Connally in the shoulder. No magic there.
The other magic bullet idea supposedly explains the missing third bullet. It's a
bullet that goes in but doesn't come out; it just disappears. There was no exit
wound on the opposite side of Kennedy's head from where a second gunman
could have shot him from the grassy knoll, so the idea of a second gunman was
dismissed by the Warren Commission. But someone came up with the idea of a
bullet that wasn't made of metal, but of ice frozen in a bullet mold. That wouldn't
blow through, but would dissolve after it hit so there'd be no trace.
HILDE: Is that possible?
MARSHALL: No. Ice is too fragile--there's a lot of heat when a gun's fired. Ice
would never survive the distance. You'd be lucky to hit your victim with a few drops
of water. Water balloon would work better.
HILDE: You sure you weren't in the Marines? You sound like you know a lot about
guns.
MARSHALL: Nothing personal, remember?
HILDE: How did all this affect Thornley?
MARSHALL: It drove him mad. Threats against him, being questioned, knowing he
was constantly spied on; drive anyone mad. How would you feel if they investigated
you for killing the president of the United States, altered your photo to look more
like the suspected assassin and called you "the second Oswald," and then you
learn that some of the people you hung out with were organized crime figures who
just might have put Oswald up to it?
HILDE: Gorightly said there were drug experiments performed on Oswald and
Thornley when they were in the Marines that may have led to mental imbalance for
them and others.
MARSHALL: Yes, I know about that; Thornley talked about it a lot as he got older.
The CIA and OSI's MK-ULTRA project where they used heroin, mescaline, LSD
and several other drugs to study mind control. Wouldn't surprise me if they really
did that to Thornley and Oswald. Military does that kind of thing. Once made
enlisted men stand up after a nuclear blast to see how it would affect them. Did
you know that?
HILDE: No, I didn't. I know you wanted to end on time, so let's end this interview on
a positive note. What's your favorite memory of Kerry Thornley?
MARSHALL: I have several; hard to pick one.
HILDE: Pick one.
MARSHALL: I guess I'll go with something he said, something that's stayed with me
through the years. It was at a party, might have been in New Orleans--no, it was
California, probably San Francisco. Hill and Thornley were both there, and we
were, as they say, "under the influence," so don't remember the details. But we
were talking and laughing and discussing and arguing.
We were in the middle of a very serious, heated discussion. I remember Hill saying
something about Einstein and randomness--oh, and the physicist with his undead
cat and the law of uncertainty. (Erwin Schrödinger's cat is a fictional feline that is
both alive and dead at the same time, and inspired the title and theme of Robert
Anton Wilson's Discordianesque Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy. Werner Heisenberg's
uncertainty principle is mentioned as Heisenberg's Law in Principia
Discordia.--P.H.) Somehow Hill linked all that to King Solomon cutting a baby in half
and it got somebody pissed. Then out of the blue Thornley started laughing and
laughing, like he was literally going to laugh himself to death. He and Hill used to
laugh a lot when we were young.
Then he said, "This, all of this? Everything we talk about, everything we do?
Everything anybody does. A hundred, a thousand, a billion years from now, none
of this will matter. Nothing we do here will make a damn bit of difference."
Then he got very serious. "But it matters now, damn it," he said. "It matters now."
I think it was after that they re-created Eris and started writing Principia Discordia.
claim killed Kennedy. They served in the Marines together, and Thornley wrote
The Idle Warriors, the only book written about Oswald before the Kennedy
assassination. But there's stories of a man firing at President John F. Kennedy
from the grassy knoll while Kennedy was riding in the presidential limousine in
Dallas, Texas, and links to Clay Shaw and a mysterious figure known as
Brother-in-law. Thornley actually told people he planned the assassination, and
some people wonder if Thornley was the man on the grassy knoll, the second
gunman.
MARSHALL: No. He had nothing to do with it. Thornley said lots of things just to
shake people up. But he was a prankster, not a killer. Oswald killed Kennedy.
HILDE: But there are some odd circumstances with the assassination. Didn't the
chief pathologist burn all of his own notes? And they never found Kennedy's brain.
In the movie JFK--
MARSHALL: Oh God, don't talk to me about that bullshit propaganda disguised as
history. They turned crazy Garrison into a hero.
Here's what happened. The pathologist--don't remember his name (it was
Commander James Humes--P.H.)--when he was writing the autopsy report he got
Kennedy's blood on it. You're examining a dead body that was shot, it happens. So
he copied his notes on clean paper and destroyed the messy original. No
conspiracy there. Wouldn't you retype a story--OK, nowadays you'd reprint--but if
you were turning in a story and your original got dirty, wouldn't you print a clean
copy?
HILDE: I do my stories on computer, but I see your point.
MARSHALL: And JFK's brain? Look, they had Kennedy's brain, they just lost track
of it. Robert Kennedy got it, I think from the National Archives, and the family
probably buried it when J.F.K's body was moved to another grave in the late 60s or
early 70s. When the government told them to give it back, they didn't, and
because they were the Kennedys nobody went to dig up the grave and look for it.
No conspiracy there, just a family protecting its dead.
And the grassy knoll, the unknown second gunman, the magic bullet? Pure
bullshit. Excuse my French.
HILDE: Please tell me about the "magic bullet."
MARSHALL: There's two versions. Both of them come from witnesses hearing
three shots when they only found evidence of two. Not surprising; there's a bunch
of tall buildings around, sound echos. But the conspiracy theorists ignore that.
The first "magic bullet" is what conspiracy theorists named the bullet that hit both
Kennedy and Governor Connally. That's a real bullet. But the conspiractors
claim--and I mean "claim"--Connally was sitting in the limo directly in front of
Kennedy.
According to them, for a bullet fired from Oswald's book depository window to hit
both, it would have to hit and shoot through Kennedy, make a sharp turn in mid air,
make another sharp turn in the other direction, and then hit Connally in the
shoulder, which is impossible. A magic bullet. But check the photos, check the
Zapruder film, and you'll see Connally wasn't sitting directly in front of Kennedy,
but was in a jump seat slightly to one side. The angle where Kennedy got hit and
Connally got hit line up. The bullet shot out of Kennedy--I think through his
throat--and hit Connally in the shoulder. No magic there.
The other magic bullet idea supposedly explains the missing third bullet. It's a
bullet that goes in but doesn't come out; it just disappears. There was no exit
wound on the opposite side of Kennedy's head from where a second gunman
could have shot him from the grassy knoll, so the idea of a second gunman was
dismissed by the Warren Commission. But someone came up with the idea of a
bullet that wasn't made of metal, but of ice frozen in a bullet mold. That wouldn't
blow through, but would dissolve after it hit so there'd be no trace.
HILDE: Is that possible?
MARSHALL: No. Ice is too fragile--there's a lot of heat when a gun's fired. Ice
would never survive the distance. You'd be lucky to hit your victim with a few drops
of water. Water balloon would work better.
HILDE: You sure you weren't in the Marines? You sound like you know a lot about
guns.
MARSHALL: Nothing personal, remember?
HILDE: How did all this affect Thornley?
MARSHALL: It drove him mad. Threats against him, being questioned, knowing he
was constantly spied on; drive anyone mad. How would you feel if they investigated
you for killing the president of the United States, altered your photo to look more
like the suspected assassin and called you "the second Oswald," and then you
learn that some of the people you hung out with were organized crime figures who
just might have put Oswald up to it?
HILDE: Gorightly said there were drug experiments performed on Oswald and
Thornley when they were in the Marines that may have led to mental imbalance for
them and others.
MARSHALL: Yes, I know about that; Thornley talked about it a lot as he got older.
The CIA and OSI's MK-ULTRA project where they used heroin, mescaline, LSD
and several other drugs to study mind control. Wouldn't surprise me if they really
did that to Thornley and Oswald. Military does that kind of thing. Once made
enlisted men stand up after a nuclear blast to see how it would affect them. Did
you know that?
HILDE: No, I didn't. I know you wanted to end on time, so let's end this interview on
a positive note. What's your favorite memory of Kerry Thornley?
MARSHALL: I have several; hard to pick one.
HILDE: Pick one.
MARSHALL: I guess I'll go with something he said, something that's stayed with me
through the years. It was at a party, might have been in New Orleans--no, it was
California, probably San Francisco. Hill and Thornley were both there, and we
were, as they say, "under the influence," so don't remember the details. But we
were talking and laughing and discussing and arguing.
We were in the middle of a very serious, heated discussion. I remember Hill saying
something about Einstein and randomness--oh, and the physicist with his undead
cat and the law of uncertainty. (Erwin Schrödinger's cat is a fictional feline that is
both alive and dead at the same time, and inspired the title and theme of Robert
Anton Wilson's Discordianesque Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy. Werner Heisenberg's
uncertainty principle is mentioned as Heisenberg's Law in Principia
Discordia.--P.H.) Somehow Hill linked all that to King Solomon cutting a baby in half
and it got somebody pissed. Then out of the blue Thornley started laughing and
laughing, like he was literally going to laugh himself to death. He and Hill used to
laugh a lot when we were young.
Then he said, "This, all of this? Everything we talk about, everything we do?
Everything anybody does. A hundred, a thousand, a billion years from now, none
of this will matter. Nothing we do here will make a damn bit of difference."
Then he got very serious. "But it matters now, damn it," he said. "It matters now."
I think it was after that they re-created Eris and started writing Principia Discordia.
This is kerry thornley dot com, a site about kerry wendell thornley aka lord omar khayyam ravenhurst, co-conspirator with gregory hill aka greg hill aka
malaclypse the younger, contributor to principia discordia, worker on operation mindfuck, investigated by im garrison, friend of robert anton wilson and
robert shea, supposed co-assassin of president john f. kennedy, and fnord
malaclypse the younger, contributor to principia discordia, worker on operation mindfuck, investigated by im garrison, friend of robert anton wilson and
robert shea, supposed co-assassin of president john f. kennedy, and fnord
| An Interview with Richard Marshall November 23, 2009 by Pope Hilde |
| This is part E of the second of a series of three interviews with original Erisian Richard Marshall conducted by Pope Hilde. We have them all. |
| PART E |
| HOME Bio Contact Us Credits Greg Hill Help Us Interviews JFK Kerista Letters Misc Publications Omar's Store |
| Some researchers believe there was a third bullet fired, but it simply wasn't found in the crowded area. |
| Kerry Thornley at top, Lee Harvey Oswald at bottom. |