He claimed all 35 key Kennedy witnesses were dead within three years
Still playing out
Paulson 1978 — all 35 key witnesses to the Kennedy assassination dead or missing within 3 years
OPEN
The call: Paulson, 1978: 'The exact group that had Pres. Kennedy killed can never be found, because all 35 key witnesses were dead or missing and presumed dead within 3 years after the assassination.' He adds that the random probability of this 'is astronomical'.
What happened: No test is attached to it. He never names the 35, never says who qualifies as a key witness, and gives no source for the count, so there is nothing to check the claim against. Recorded and held open rather than scored, pending a named list.
President John F. Kennedy was shot dead in Dallas in November 1963. Paulson wrote in 1978 that all 35 of the key witnesses were dead or missing within three years, and that the odds of that happening by chance were astronomical. The problem is that he never says who the 35 are, what makes somebody a key witness, or where the number came from. With no list there is nothing to check, so this is logged rather than marked right or wrong. The contrast is in the same letter: a few paragraphs earlier he proposes a real experiment — take the ten best rifle shots available and see whether the two timed shots can be repeated — and that is a test which could fail.
The engine's record — word for word
Paulson 1978, Boston Globe letter, 'WHO KILLED PRESIDENT KENNEDY?', scan lines 7309-7316. Scored OPEN: the claim carries no list, no definition of 'key witness' and no citation, so it has no falsifier attached. Held against the same letter's ten-riflemen proposal, which does. The letter closes by asking that none of it be printed: 'This is a person letter designed solely for the Editors, managers, and owners of the Boston Globe, i.e. I desire none of this letter to appear in print.'
Walk this on the live map →