THE ONES THAT GOT AWAY 
by Randy DuBurke.

Ominous forces may have brought "strange death" to a President and scores of others in his wake, but try as they might, they didn't nail everyone. Let's take a look at a few of THE ONES THAT GOT AWAY.

"Antonio Veciana" was the head of "Alpha 66", a CIA-sponsered group of militant cuban exiles. Veciana's co-conspirator in concocting Castro assassination schemes was a CIA man "Maurice Bishop." Several months prior to the JFK assassination, Veciana claims, Bishop arrived for a Dallas meeting in the company of Lee Harvey Oswald. According to House Assassination Committee investigator Gaeton Fonziœ, "Maurice Bishop" was a pseudonym for career CIA officer David Atlee Phillips.

After Veciana told his story to Fonzi - and agreed to testify about the "Bishop"-Oswald connection - four .45 slugs were pumped into his passing truck. Veciana miraculously survived and, although blaming the assassination attempt on Castro agents, he had this to say about "Maurice Bishop": "I would really like to talk to him."

The slaying of police officer J.D. Tippit shortly after the JFK assassination was the second murder pinned on Oswald by the Dallas Police, the FBI, and the Warren Commission. (Tippit was shot by an automatic, while the gun claimed to be Oswald's was a revolver.)

Along with other witnesses, Domingo Benavides claimes: "The killer did not look anything like Lee Oswald". That's when Benavides began receiving death threats. Then Benavides's brother Edward - who closely resembled Domingo - was killed in a bar fight. Suddenly Benavides changed his tune: "The killer did look like Lee Oswald!" No more deaths threats were reported. Fellow witness Warren Reynolds chased Tippit's killer for an entire block south on Patton Avenue.

After refusing to identify Oswald as the killer - and after other witnesses had been threatened, intimidated, and misquoted - Reynolds was shot through the head with a rifle in a dark basement. The motive, according to the police, was not robbery. The FBI's "prime suspect" in the shooting - Darrell Wayne Garner - admitted to the deed and was arrested. But then another of Jack Ruby's ubiquitous dancers - Nancy Jane Mooney - stripped away Garner's guilt with a convenient alibi: "He was with me all night!" Garner was released and Mooney was arrested eight days later for "disturbing the peace."

Police claimed she promptly hanged herself to death in her cell - preserving Garner's alibi forever. Good cops, those Dallas boys - terrific œprotection. Warren Reynolds made a miraculous recovery from being shot through the head - but never recovered from paranoia and fear. Shortly after Reynolds got out of the hospital, someone tried to abduct his ten-year-old daughter. The attempt was unsuccessful, but it was enough; like Domingo Benavides, Reynolds reversed himself and identified Tippit's assailant as Oswald. Our final 'one who got away' is perhaps the most important, and certainly the most tragic JFK assassination witness and Dallas County Deputy Sheriff Roger D. Craig. According to Craig, upon hearing a whistle about fifteen minutes after the shots had been fired in Dealy Plaza he 'turned and saw a man running down toward a station wagon coming west on Elm Street from Houston, real slow - 'the man got in the station wagon, and I attempted to cross the street, but the traffic was so heavy I couldn't get across.' (This account of a running man and a nash rambler station wagon was corroborated by several other witnesses.)

In his statement to the FBI that day (November 22), Craig identified the driver of the station wagon as a 'negro male' - and the man who - jumped in and sped away with hhim as Lee Harvey Oswald. Since this made total hash of Oswald's alleged bus-and-taxi 'escape route' from the school book depository, Captain Will Fritz was forced to asked Oswald: 'Now, what about this car?' Oswald's answer: ' That station wagon belongs to Mrs. Paine - don't try to tie her into this!' But Ruth Paine was already involved - as a friend of the Demohrenschildts who took Marina Oswald and child into her home while Lee made his infamous New Orleans trip. Shortly before JFK's trip to Dallas, it was Ruth Paine who helped Oswald secure his new job at the Texas School Book Depository site of the fabled sixth floor 'sniper's nest.' Oswald even spent the night before the assassination with his wife in Paine's house - and she did indeed own a station wagon exactly like the one described by Roger Craig. It was Ruth Paine who alerted police to the rifle Oswald allegedly kept in her garage - but which was 'missing after his last visit.' And finally Ruth Paine's husband Michael (who was 'estranged' from her, thereby making room for Marinaœ) reportedly had ties to a CIA front. As for Roger Craig, there were several failed attempts on his life, he received numerous threats, lost a number of jobs, endured the breakup of his marriage, and was reduced to poverty. In other words, Craig went through sheer hell. Telling the truth as he saw it, he was one who got away, all right but only for a brief time, before finally commiting suicide - a small fish in a big and murky pond.