IN MEMORIAM
Four Died Trying is an ongoing franchise of documentary films about what happened before, during, and after the four cataclysmic political assassinations of the 1960s. Firsthand sources who were physically on the scene back then are in their eighties and nineties now. Our efforts to find them and preserve their stories is effectively a race against time — which waits for no one, as the saying goes.
The following men and women were witnesses to history. They spoke to us on camera and on the record about what they heard, saw, thought, and experienced during the turbulent decade that is the focus of our films. In some cases, our interview was the first they ever gave. In others, it was the last.
Here, in alphabetical order, are the citizens we’ve spoken with whose voices have since been silenced. Taken together, their end-of-life interviews prove the prescience of that Shakespearean idiom, “the truth will out.”
JOHN BARBOUR
April 24, 1933— May 10, 2026
As cocreator and host of Real People — one of the first popular unscripted shows — Barbour became known as the father of reality TV. Later in his career, he wrote and directed two JFK documentaries: The JFK Assassination: The Jim Garrison Tapes and The American Media and the Second Assassination of John F. Kennedy.
G. ROBERT BLAKEY
January 7, 1936 — May 1, 2026
Coauthor of The Plot to Kill the President, Blakey was Staff Director and Chief Counsel to the House Select Committee on Assassinations in the late 1970s and helped write the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992.
He found evidence of conspiracy in the RFK and MLK murders. But his biggest claim to fame was his masterful drafting of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act of 1970. Prosecutors still use it to thwart organized crime today.
ANTHONY "TONY" BOUZA
October 4, 1928 — June 26, 2023
Tony Bouza was a New York City police officer from 1953 to 1979. He initially served as a detective in the undercover unit known as the Bureau of Special Services and Investigation (aka BOSSI), eventually rising to the rank of Assistant Chief and Commander of the Bronx. Later, he became Chief of the Minneapolis (MN) Police Department. Considered the “father of evidence-based policing,” Bouza was also the author of nine books, including The Decline and Fall of the American Empire: Corruption, Decadence, and the American Dream.
FERNANDO FAURA
October 12, 1932 — April 17, 2018
Puerto Rico-born Faura was a Pulitzer Prize-nominated newspaper reporter and author of the nonfiction book The Polka Dot File on the Robert F. Kennedy Killing: The Paris Peace Talks Connection. In 1968, he served as Vice President Hubert Humphrey’s press director. A talented investigative journalist, Faura discovered evidence that there were multiple assassins at the Ambassador Hotel the night Senator Robert Kennedy was killed.
CORNELIUS "NEIL" GALLAGHER
March 2, 1921 — October 17, 2018
A New Jersey congressman from 1959 to 1973, Neil Gallagher chaired the Special Subcommittee on the Invasion of Privacy in 1966 and was an early critic of J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI.
LEWIS GARRISON
July 9, 1932 — September 2, 2020
Lewis Garrison was the longtime Memphis attorney who represented Loyd Jowers in the November 1999 wrongful-death civil suit pursued by the family of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The official name of the trial was “King Family v. Loyd Jowers and Other Unknown Co-Conspirators,” and the jury unanimously found Jowers guilty.
DICK GREGORY
October 12, 1932 — August 19, 2017
This legendary comedian and political activist was friends with both MLK and Malcolm X. As an assassination researcher, he criticized the Warren Commission’s findings and spearheaded efforts to get new investigations into the murders of JFK and MLK. In 1975, he co-presented the first network TV broadcast of the Zapruder film.
REVEREND JESSE JACKSON
October 8, 1941 — February 17, 2026
As a staff member of the Southern Christian Leadership Congress, Rev. Jackson wasn’t just Martin Luther King’s protégé: He was talking with MLK at the Lorraine Motel at the moment King was assassinated and was therefore a primary witness of that terrifying historical event. In the aftermath of the assassination, Jackson’s voice played a key role in highlighting the enormity of the loss and emphasizing the dangers that come with fighting for civil rights.
CLARENCE JONES
January 8, 1931 — May 22, 2026
An iconic civil rights activist and lawyer, Jones was one of MLK’s confidants and his liaison to Malcolm X. Jones smuggled Dr. King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” out to the public and helped MLK shape his seminal “I Have a Dream” speech.
DR. NAOMI RUTH BARBER KING
November 17, 1931 — March 7, 2024
This Dr. King was the widow of MLK’s brother, Rev. A.D. King, and the mother of Drs. Alveda and Derek King. In 1963, the Birmingham home she lived in with her husband and children was bombed by white supremacists. A passionate civil rights activist, she founded Atlanta’s A.D. King Foundation in her husband’s name later in life; the organization focuses on nonviolent conflict resolution and social change.
JOHN J. KIRBY, JR.
October 22, 1939 — October 2, 2019
The father of the director of Four Died Trying, John Kirby, Jr. was a member of the Civil Rights Division of the Kennedy and Johnson Justice Departments from 1961 to ’68. As a summer intern in 1961, Kirby, Jr. discovered the mechanism by which Black Americans were being denied the vote in Mississippi.
LEWIS LAPHAM
January 8, 1935 — July 23, 2024
This legendary author, editor, and essayist was the longtime editor-in-chief of Harper’s Magazine and founder of Lapham’s Quarterly. An American Society of Magazine Editors Hall of Fame inductee, Lapham had an intense interest in history and covered numerous political upheavals over the course of his long and storied career.
REVEREND JAMES LAWSON
September 22, 1928 — June 9, 2024
Lawson was a key advisor to Martin Luther King, who called him “the leading theorist and strategist of nonviolence in the world.” A renowned civil rights activist, Lawson was a board member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and a founder and mentor of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which led sit-ins, voter registration drives, and Freedom Rides in the 1960s Deep South.
MARITA LORENZ
August 18, 1939 — August 31, 2019
Lorenz was Fidel Castro’s lover and was later recruited by the CIA to assassinate him. She testified before the House Select Committee on Assassinations about the JFK assassination, stating that she was involved with a group of anti-Cuban militants — including Frank Sturgis and E. Howard Hunt, of CIA and Watergate infamy — shortly before the assassination.
GRAEME MACQUEEN
1948 — April 25, 2023
MacQueen was founding director of the Centre for Peace Studies at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. He was also author of the in-depth article “John F. Kennedy 55 Years On,” in which he reflected upon the direction that JFK‘s assassins steered America, “to the detriment of all of us, U.S. citizens and otherwise.”
BEVERLY OLIVER MASSEGEE
March 14, 1946 — August 10, 2026
In 1970, Massegee came forward and said that she was the infamous “Babushka Lady” in the Zapruder film, and that, at age 17, she had witnessed and filmed JFK’s assassination and had been personally acquainted with David Ferrie, Lee Harvey Oswald, and Jack Ruby. She later wrote about her traumatic experience in the book Nightmare in Dallas and served as an advisor on Oliver Stone’s film JFK.
PHILLIP NELSON
December 12, 1944 — June 2, 2024
An acclaimed JFK-assassination researcher, Nelson wrote the books LBJ: The Mastermind of the JFK Assassination, LBJ: From Mastermind to “The Colossus”, and Who Really Killed Martin Luther King, Jr.?, among others.
RUTH PAINE
September 3, 1932 — August 31, 2025
Paine’s interest in the Russian language eventually led her to cross paths with the Russian-speaking Oswalds. Her connection with the young family deepened to the point that they stayed in her Dallas home and she became a patron of Lee Harvey’s wife, Marina. Prior to JFK’s assassination, Oswald stored his rifle in Paine’s garage. She was famously questioned at length by the Warren Commission.
WILLIAM "BILL" PEPPER
August 16, 1937 — April 7, 2024
Best-selling author of three nonfiction books about the King assassination — The Plot to Kill King, Orders to Kill, and An Act of State — Pepper was the attorney who represented James Earl Ray in the assassination of MLK. He also represented Sirhan Sirhan after the assassination of RFK, and the King family in the 1999 wrongful-death suit King Family v. Loyd Jowers and Other Unknown Co-Conspirators. Pepper’s decades-long connection with and investigation of his friend Martin Luther King’s murder shined a spotlight on the government conspiracy that silenced the leader and hero.
JERRY POLICOFF
February 27, 1947 — March 7, 2020
As a freelance journalist and Executive Director of the Assassination Archives Research Center, Policoff was a major critic of the media’s handling of President Kennedy’s assassination. Convinced that Lee Harvey Oswald was not the real killer, Policoff spent almost 55 years amassing evidence to refute the findings of the Warren Commission.
MORT SAHL
May 11, 1927 — October 26, 2021
Born in Canada, Sahl became a wildly popular Jewish-American comedian and political satirist in the 1950s. Now credited with reinventing stand-up comedy, he made the cover of Time magazine and served as interim host of The Tonight Show. He was friends with both Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy and wrote jokes for JFK when the latter was running for office. After JFK was assassinated, Sahl joined NOLA DA Jim Garrison’s investigation team. His outspoken criticism of the Warren Report and obsession with JFK’s murder ultimately damaged his career.
VINCENT "VINCE" SALANDRIA
March 28, 1928 — August 23, 2020
Considered “the godfather of JFK assassination researchers,” Salandria was a Philadelphia-based civil rights lawyer and author of the book False Mystery: Essays on the Assassination of JFK. A fierce critic of the Warren Commission, he was the first person to challenge Arlen Specter’s “single-bullet theory” and concluded that Kennedy was killed in a state-sponsored coup d’état. Salandria’s two articles about the Commission and its findings sparked national debate. “We, if we are free citizens,” he wrote, “now must serve our government not by blind acceptance of the Commission’s work but rather by and through the exercise of our critical judgment concerning the findings of this body.”
PAUL SCHRADE
December 17, 1924 — November 9, 2022
Schrade was vice president of United Auto Workers and RFK’s labor advisor, and he was shot in the head and wounded during RFK’s assassination. After that, Schrade became a major advocate for the release of convicted assassin Sirhan Sirhan, whom he firmly believed could not have shot Robert Kennedy from behind at close range.
SANDY SERRANO SEWELL
April 17, 1948 — April 29, 2021
At age 20, Sewell was at the Ambassador Hotel the night Robert Kennedy was assassinated. Soon afterward, she told the press that a girl in a polka-dot dress had run past her and shouted, "We've shot him!" Sewell asked her, "Who did you shoot?" And the girl said, "Senator Kennedy!" The authorities later railroaded Sewell into recanting her account.
ANTONIO VECIANA
October 18, 1928 — June 18, 2020
Veciana was a Cuban exile who became the founder and leader of the anti-Castro group known as Alpha 66. He told the House Committee on Assassinations that a representative for the CIA (whom he knew as “Maurice Bishop”) had directed him to organize Alpha 66 and helped plan many of the group’s operations — including two assassination attempts on Fidel Castro. Veciana also claimed that he’d met a man he later recognized as Lee Harvey Oswald, during a meeting with Bishop a few months prior to the JFK assassination.
JAMES WAGENVOORD
1935 — July 26, 2022
The author of 43 books over the course of his career, Wagenvoord worked at Life magazine in the 1960s as both Editorial Business Manager and Assistant to the Executive Editor. Within days of President Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, a federal agent came to the magazine’s office and handed Wagenvoord ready-made visual materials of Lee Harvey Oswald. Not long after, Life published a series of stills from the Zapruder film — and Wagenvoord realized that some images had been misprinted to show Kennedy’s head moving forward instead of backward.
ADAM WALINSKY
January 10, 1937 — November 2023
Walinsky was a Yale Law graduate who eventually became Robert F. Kennedy’s aide and speechwriter. In 1968, he wrote RFK’s famous “GNP speech,” in which Kennedy asked if the gross national product was an adequate measure of freedom, health, and happiness. The GNP, Walinsky wrote, “measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.”
CYRIL WECHT
March 21, 1931 — May 13, 2024
Cyril Wecht was a world-renowned coroner and forensic pathologist who advised on the autopsy of Robert Kennedy and was the first civilian to examine the evidence of JFK’s assassination. Wecht was the lone voice to testify before the House Select Committee on Assassinations that the so-called “magic bullet” could not possibly have inflicted all seven of the wounds discovered on the bodies of President Kennedy and Governor Connally. Wecht also vociferously dissected the government’s fictional case against Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s accused assassin, James Earl Ray.