Troy Houghton: The Minuteman

rand,

I was intimidated to read through 19 pages of discussion here but you've obviously done some terrific research on this guy. Can I ask you to review what connections T.H. had (or might have had) with the SF Bay area? We know that Z was active in this area on dozens of occasions and SEEMED to have a real identification with the area. Can he be placed in specific locations in or near the Bay area on any given dates? Any reason why he would have animosity toward SFPD specifically?

Thanks in advance...

I can't place TH in the Bay Area. But he disappeared in April 1967, so I can't place him anywhere after that. The MM were active in the Bay Area. TH worked out of Southern California. That's where I believe Z was from, e.g., Domingos/Edwards, CJB, and I think Swindle murders (San Diego), and Boles family. Why would he dislike the SFPD? TH disliked the police in general. He had lots of run-ins with them. Not only his own personal problems and arrests, but also a potential shoot-out at DePugh's headquarters in Missouri. Houghton was fully prepared for the shootout and to die, if need be, if the cops had tried to get the MM files. He was guarding the files upstairs when the cops raided the place.

He also hated the press. For years they had labeled him a sex pervert. Here are some examples of TH's problems with the press and his belief that the Communist press was running the country.

He was arrested on Nov. 11, 1961 in San Diego for failure to register as a sex offender. The police found three guns and some ammo in his home. Sgt. Orr said: "Houghton was belligerent and even slugged a news photographer as he left the police station." So Houghton didn't like the press much. interesting. Sgt. Orr also said: "Houghton has a string of arrests, dating back to 1948, including suspicion of delinquency, burglary, grand theft and traffic warrants. Quotes are from LA TIMES, Nov. 11, 1961, "State 'Guerrilla' Chief Arrested in San Diego."

MM BELIEVE MEDIA CONTROLLED BY COMMUNISTS



MORE MEDIA HATRED:

Guns Flash Over Tape Recorder's Use as Ultra-Conservatives Meet
DON ANGEL; DAVE LARSEN
Los Angeles Times; Sep 11, 1966

Guns were drawn Saturday in an Anaheim restaurant when a tape recorder was discovered planted at the first state convention of the ultra-conservative Patriotic Party.
One of the weapons ws pulled by the man who had placed the recorder in the room--a radio station news editor. He fled, but was tackled and hand-cuffed by two private security guards waving their guns.
The melee concluded, the newly formed political party proceeded with its business, one item of which was preparations to field its own candidates in 1968....
Keech said the Patriotic Party which was formed in July by Robert DePugh, national coordinator of the right-wing paramilitary Minutemen, will "make an attempt to push the conservative political viewpoint with the idea of making conservative action effective."

The one-day meeting at the Jolly Roger Inn, which attracted about 250 persons, was, Keech said, one of 44 such conventions across the country. The party claims a membership of 5,000.
Next Sunday, the state chairman disclosed, a meeting wil be held at a school in El Segundo to organize the party in Los Angeles Conty.
He declined to name the school. "We have trouble," he said. "There's a radical opposition."
The incident wit the guns occurred during the afternoon session while a speech was being given by Troy Haughton, leader of the California Minutemen unit.

NOTICE THAT DEPUGH SINGLES OUT A SAN FRANCISCO NEWSPAPER WITH RESPECT TO HOUGHTON BEING "UNFAIRLY" LABELED A SEX PERVERT:


ONE OF Z's MOTIVES WAS TO TAKE OVER THE PRESS, TO CONTROL WHAT THEY PUT ON THE FRONT PAGES. THIS SEEMS CONSISTENT WITH THE ABOVE GRIEVANCE REGARDING HOUGHTON BEING CALLED A SEX OFFENDER BY THE S.F. NEWSPAPERS, AND THIS BEING EMBLAZENED ACROSS THE FRONT PAGE.

Thanks for the response, rand. Again... terrific research.

Thanks, Entropy (coincidentally, I'm writing a book about entropy at the moment).

Rand, I did note the Paradise Valley connection with this Moore guy as well as his appearance. I also noted that in TH's arrest for attempted arson at 14 that he had "hoods" with him and his accomplice.

I realize by the time the Z used the black hood with what looks like the identical cross in a circle symbol used by this organization...TH was supposed to have been either murdered...or deep underground in the MM or SAO.

In the news article posted about Moore reasons for leaving the MM was, "Moore did not approve of the MM leaders fascination with the ladies and unlawful activities." Another article you posted about DePugh being sought by LE stated he was likely in the company of a 17yr old girl, but it didn't say if she was related to him or not.

Concerning the wife of TH...I agree it doesn't make sense that she didn't try and have him declared dead till 20 years later. Perhaps she knew that she couldn't attempt to collect SS on him for her minor children. He didn't seem to have any real consistent work history that would have been registered with the SS admin at least under his TH name. He didn't appear to have been successful as a miner. I find it strange the fact a guy with his history would even have life insurance. In order to get that life insurance would that mean that she paid the premiums for 20 years??

I think I've read all the documents presented about the SAO, COINTELPRO you've posted and it is just proving that IF TH was the Z...there would have been some real problems trying to catch this guy. Many folks sure wouldn't want him to get caught and talk. HE had people all around him that couldn't afford it. Could he have been smart enough to write code that couldn't be cracked ?? Maybe the codes were not all meant to be cracked and are just games.

(I understand that is a debatable subject as to whether they were cracked)

I agree with you that LE should have investigate the link of the Z symbol to the symbol of the MM/SAO. Perhaps they did and we just don't know about it.

MY THEORY OF THE CASE

Okay, I know it's controversial, but it's A theory. I think it comports with what we know about the facts. But don't get angry with me if you disagree with it. It's just a theory.

The key to the theory is Raithby Roosevelt Husted. He testified against DePugh and Houghton at the trial in 1966,, and his testimony sealed the deal for the prosecution. Husted claimed he was drugged and beaten by the FBI to get a false statement from him. He then vowed to get back in the MM's good graces.

So what role does Raithby Husted play? He lived by the SF airport in San Bruno. He was related, I believe, to Lt. James Husted of the Vallejo PD. This is the key connection. Lt. Husted is the cop who fingers ALA as Z. His partner thinks that ALA is a terrible suspect. But Husted pushes ALA anyhow. And for 35 or so years, the subterfuge/distraction of ALA worked. Husted fingered ALA because he wanted to distract LE from the truth.

What do I think the truth is? I think the whole Z series of murders were motivated by drugs. Just like the Serpico story in NYC, the Bay Area was flooded with drugs in the 1960s, and SOME rogue cops were taking kick backs.

Lake Berryessa is also key. Everyone views the Z murders as a serial killer with a lover's lane MO. According to this theory of the case, the Stine murder is the outlier. I disagree. I think LB is the outlier. It doesn't fit the MO of the other murders, which appear to be hits. And that's the point: Z needed a "lover's lane" type murder that fit the MO of a vicious, sadistic serial killer to suck all the air out of the case - to draw everyone into the mystique of Z as a sadistic serial killer. In fact, Z was a killer, but LB-type killing wasn't his style. This was a ritualistic type killing. Z was a hit-and-run type killer.

Troy Houghton went underground in April 1967. DePugh said he was dividing the MM into two groups -- the known MM with high profiles would go underground and start the guerilla movement. TH was one of them. But what does he do for money? A guerilla group needs money to survive. What is TH good at? Killing. I believe he killed Domingos/Edwards, the Swindle couple, and CJB.

So TH drifts down from MT to the Bay Area, searching for Raithby Husted, who owes him and the MM bigtime.
Raithby connects TH with his uncle (?) Lt. Husted. This is the rogue cop connection in the VPD ("ask the Vallejo cop about my electric gunsight.")

Now the individual murders:

I firmly believe that Z was a hitman for drug dealers or rogue cops taking kickbacks for drugs or dealing drugs themselves. This means that the victims, with the exception of Hartnell and Shepard, were not random, as is commonly believed. The question is: How could Z have known where they were going to be? Because they were told to go to each murder scene -- LHR, BRS, and where Stine picked up Z -- by Z himself or the connection through whom they were dealing. When they arrived, they were assassinated. It started in Vallejo for a reason. Each murder is discussed in turn. More later.

LAKE HERMAN ROAD
The dealer or Z himself tells Faraday and/or Jensen that they should meet at LHR to make some drug deal. There, they are assassinated for knowing too much.

This is from Zk.com: http://zodiackiller.com/FaradayJensen.html

Conclusion: While Faraday and Jensen are traditionally considered definite Zodiac victims, there have been many other suspects in this case. In the early 1990s, former Vallejo Police Department detective John Lynch said the couple was killed because Faraday had learned of a major drug deal and had been talking openly about who was involved. Other sources have speculated that Zodiac wasn't responsible because no taunting letters or phone calls were received until months after the murders. However, when Zodiac finally took credit for this attack, he provided many details that were not known to the general public.


The best evidence for this, IMO, is what Z writes on the Bomb Letter: http://www.zodiackiller.com/BombLetter7.html
Z is telling us that a Vallejo cop knows him and his activities. Why else would Z tell LE to ask a Vallejo cop about his electric gun sight? It doesn’t make sense if there’s no connection

BLUE ROCK SPRINGS:
My understanding is that Darlene told someone in her family that she was going to be in the papers the next morning, hinting that she was going to be part of a drug bust. The problem is that she was the one set up by the cops, not the drug dealer. This might explain why Mageau wears lots of extra clothes. I believe he knows far more than he has said, but he’s afraid because he knows he can’t trust LE.

LAKE BERRYESSA
Z's statement: "I have to stab you," should be taken quite literally here. Z was a hitman, not a psychopathic or sadistic killer. LB was an ordered murder for the purpose of misdirection. Z seemed to get no pleasure from LB, and he never wrote about it. Why? After all, it was the murder that he took the most time to create drama with. He didn't write about it bc he loathed this murder. He was ordered by whomever hired him to do something that would give credibility to the idea that he was a psychopathic serial killer, not a hitman. Given the MO of his murders to this point, his principals feared that the letters, alone, might not be enough to convince people that he was a deranged killer. So he "had to do it." So he does the dirty deed.

He knew he had to use a knife to make the crime dissimilar from the other "hits." But, like the others, it had to be a couple (lover's lane type thing). So he needed a place where he would find a young couple alone with a secure escape route -- a situation he could control. He had a gun with him but fully intended to use the knife. Why? Why this location? To be sure, a gunshot would have drawn too much attention. A knife is the obvious choice here. But that's not the reason for the knife. The reason for the knife is, instead, that he needed to change his MO; that is, he needed to commit a bloody sustained and psychopathic-looking murder WITH A KNIFE. In other words, the question isn't: why choose a knife over a gun to commit a murder at LB? The answer to that question is obvious. The more basic and prior question is: why LB and why this type of murder?

I believe that LB was planned out beautifully: he needed to commit a murder that would follow the MO of his past murders but would distract from the other murders' fundamental similarity: they were hits. He probably already knew he was going to do another hit on Stine, too. So the plan is: attack yet another young couple in a sadistic way (leave one alive to tell the bizarre story), then go back to the assassinations and no one will figure out what it's all been about.

He wrote dates of other murders on the car door to make sure everyone knew who did the crime in case Hartnell didn't live. He had to make it look like he fully intended to kill Hartnell, so it was going to be a close call either way with little margin for error. Then he calls the PD and says: I want to report a homicide…no, a double homocide. Again, this betrays his true intentions: to make it look like he tried to kill both of them but to have at least one live to tell the story.

THE STINE MURDER:
Stine’s first trip of the day is to the airport to pick up a package. Then he meets Z. Z’s finger prints are on the driver’s side of the cab. Why? Because he goes to the cab and says: “Yes, I’m the guy you’re looking for.” Z acts as the middle man, getting the package or whatever it is from Stine. Then he shoots him in the head. Stine must have known too much.

WHY DO THE MURDERS STOP SO ABRUPTLY?
Because Z wasn't a psychopathic killer. Once you eliminate this preconception, there's no mystery why it all ends. The whole thing was about misdirection. The SFPD found out who it was and why -- they probably didn't have any idea initially, but they figured it out -- and put an end to it. In other words, it was treated as an internal affair that was taken care of behind closed doors. I know this casts a terrible light on LE, which I have the utmost respect for. But, at the time, it was very possible that a rogue element existed in the Vallejo and SF Police Depts. NYPD was having similar problems at the time (think Serpico movie here).

The bottom line: all the crimes, except LB, look like plain-old hits for hire, not the work of a psychopathic or sadistic killer. That's what they were, IMO. This is not to suggest that a murderer is entirely sane. Z wasn't, of course. But it wasn't about Z being anything more than evil and willing to kill for hire. TH was the perfect person to become a hit man. He needed money, he could justify it as getting money for the MM underground cause, and he was underground and thought himself to be crackproof.

When DePugh and Peyson went underground and were eventually caught, DePugh said that local police helped them. Here is an article from Oct. 14, 1968, where DePugh, a fugitive on the run, claimed that local police were aiding Minutemen fugitives to escape the FBI.
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=C88zAAAAIBAJ&sjid=KvgDAAAAIBAJ&pg=3389,3972942&dq=troy+haughton&hl=en
This supports the idea that Z, if Houghton, would work with local police (rogue cops). Houghton was would have been a great candidate for a hitman. And we know he had no problem whatsoever with the act of shooting people, including women, in cars.

THE ZODIAC SYMBOL AND IDENTITY
Again, this is part of the hoax and coverup/distraction angle. He doesn’t call himself The Zodiac at first. The crosshair originally stood for the Minutemen logo. Days later he claims to be The Zodiac. Ask yourself: why would he identify with a watch? Does this make sense by itself? I believe that Z calls himself the Zodiac to misdirect about what the true meaning was of the original crosshair symbol. He probably thought that he had given too much away, so he thinks: “I must explain this symbol in some other way? Oh, I know, I’ll call myself, ‘The Zodiac.’” He chooses the Zodiac because he knows that the crosshair symbol is for the Zodiac watch -- it's also a nice metaphor for MINUTEmen. Why else would he name himself after a watch because there is very little other than these commercial products that places the crosshair symbol together with The Zodiac as an astrological term. True, there is a Zodiac wheel, but Google it and see what you get. Very little. He didn’t have a search engine to work with. How many references would there have been to a crosshair symbol association with the Zodiac? Very few outside the watch and British car. Does it make sense to think that Z based his identity on these products? Why? There is precious little in Zodiac’s messages or MO that supports the idea that Z drew his identity and motivations from Zodiac symbols. Other than the Taurus signs in the My Name Is cipher, what is there? If the Zodiac symbol and identity was part of the hoax, one would expect Z to support it somehow. What’s telling is how little he does to support this identity.


Okay: Why does Z publicize the hits? Because the "serial killer" identity is key to the misdirection. The bigger the lie, the more people will believe it.

rand wrote:

Thanks, Entropy (coincidentally, I'm writing a book about entropy at the moment).

I'm flattered and will expect 10% royalties.

it's all about you. should be a bestseller

Houghton, Mower, Swift were the "riflemen who had drifted off to the Nazi sandbars along the shore of Southern California..."

"In his memoirs, Rampart's former editor Warren Hinckle describes just how genuinely confusing the divisions inside the far right really were:

My political education around this time was advanced by learning the distinction between left-wing Minutemen and right-wing Minutemen. Far from being a relatively cohesive block of lunatics, the gun-toting paramilitary right was split between the anti-Communist Minutemen, in some relative position approximating a left on the fanatical right, and the late George Lincoln Rockwell's American Nazis, located farthest to the racist and anti-Semitic right, with those armed bigots operation under sheeted cover of the KKK somewhere toward the middle - liberals on this bizarre spectrum. . . .
[Minuteman leader] De Pugh, who considered himself a responsible extremist, was worried sick over the uncontrolled activities of the Minutemen "defector" groups .... He suspected that some of his fallen away riflemen who had drifted off to the Nazi sandbars along the shore of Southern California had been part of a rifle team shooting at President Kennedy. Master Marksman De Pugh scoffed at the idea of Oswald scoring those hits on his own; his opinion was that the President had been caught in a "classic guerrilla crossfire" at Dealy Plaza.
De Pugh was so concerned about cleaning up his organization's act he offered Ramparts the resources of the Minutemen's extensive intelligence system. . . . They provided carte d'identite to sundry Minutemen units, and to the armed religious camps with whom De Pugh was engaged in intraservice rivalry on the right. One was "The Church of Jesus Christ-Christian," the hyphen-Christian being a signal that a dirty Jew like Jesus couldn't' get in the door; this fundamentalist Church worshipped the gods of race prejudice . . . ."

Check this out:

THE WARLOCK

In 1972 New Solidarity openly denounced Robert Miles and the attempt of the far right to try to make overtures to the far left. Two years later, the NCLC would become part of the political alliance it had labeled as fascist. A key figure in these murky doings was an obscure far rightist self-proclaimed occultist named Ken Duggan. Duggan, who lived in New York City, was a Minutemen activist. In 1965 he headed the "New York Citizens Committee to Support Your Local Police."3 He also published his own tiny journal called The Illuminator, which was obsessed with the power of the Rockefeller family and the Council on Foreign Relations. Besides The Illuminator and an organization called the Provisional National Government (PNG) - which may have been a factional split off from the Minutemen or its armed underground - Duggan also headed the Industrial Enterprise Foundation, CED Associates, and the Interplanetary Nationalist Society.
In 1967 Duggan ran as an independent candidate for the 66th Assembly District. In 1969, he ran for New York City Council under the banner of the Patriot Party, which may have been the overt legal wing of the PNG. The reportedly well-funded Patriot Party was founded on 4 July 1966 in Kansas City, Missouri, as the electoral front for the Minutemen.4 After DePugh's arrest, it relocated its headquarters to Michigan and was led by James Freed of Dearborn, Michigan, who also was heavily involved in the Minutemen paramilitary right.5
Duggan was also a male witch or warlock and The Illuminator's symbol was a sinister looking figure in a triangular mask with horns. In his 1971 book Power on the Right, investigative journalist and former FBI agent William Turner reports that Duggan "developed a full line of witchcraft and attracted right-wing nationalists into their fold" because Duggan believed that "great political power lies rooted in the occult."

All of this is from this fascinating chapter: http://laroucheplanet.info/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=Library.UnityNow1

CIA - Gun Merchants to America's Hate Groups

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=109482&relPageId=2

Here's a social network diagram of TH:
http://www.namebase.org/cgi-bin/nb06?_HOUGHTON_TROY_

This Howard Godfrey was one of the people (see above) that Bettie Houghton, as leader of the West Coast chapter of the MM in Troy's absence, gave instructions to harass Left-wing groups.

HOUGHTON IMPLICATED (POSSIBLY) AS A HITMAN:



THE MAN WHO HEARD TOO MUCH Link for full article: http://karws.gso.uri.edu/JFK/The_critics/Whitmey/Man.html

Peter Whitmey
Abbotsford, B.C.

Published in The Third Decade, November 1990
[Updates bracketed and italicized.]

Sometimes it doesn’t pay to listen in on other people’s conversations, especially if they might have been involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. That’s apparently how a man named Richard Giesbrecht of Winnipeg, Manitoba, came to feel, looking back at the events that took place on February 13, 1964, at Winnipeg International Airport.[1]
According to a report prepared by FBI agent Merle Nelson from the Grand Forks, North Dakota, office,[2] Giesbrecht had sat down at a table in the airport lounge where he was to meet a client. Directly in front of him in the next booth were two men, one of whom was heavy set, between 45 and 50, with dark bushy hair and bushy, pronounced eyebrows, and wearing heavy-looking, plastic-framed glasses. [“bushy” only in reference to eyebrows, according to CD 645, the FBI’s six-page report] He also recalled that the other man, who had his back to Giesbrecht, appeared to be around 50 years of age, and was wearing a light tweed suit, despite the winter weather, along with two-tone brown shoes. His hair was red, he had a badly pock-marked neck, was wearing a hearing aid in his right ear, and spoke with an accent (which the FBI reportedly believed was “southern”). [The accent was described as slightly European in CD 645.]
Giesbrecht indicated to Nelson that he couldn’t help overhearing the two men’s conversation, in that they were not only discussing the assassination of President Kennedy, which had occurred three months earlier, but appeared to have inside information about the event. As summarized in the May 2, 1964, edition of the WINNIPEG FREE PRESS (the informant’s name was withheld “for security reasons”):

…both men expressed concern over how much of the plot to kill Kennedy Lee Harvey Oswald had passed on to his wife…The pair apparently agreed that even should the Commission currently investigating the assassination conclude that Oswald was guilty, the FBI would not stop the investigation. A man named Isaacs, and his relationship with Oswald was also discussed. The pair found it odd that a man of Isaacs’ background would become mixed up with Oswald, whom they described as a “psycho.” Isaacs had apparently been spotted near the President in TV film of Mr. Kennedy’s arrival in Dallas. At the time of the airport conversation he was being followed by a man named either Hoffman or Hockman [or “Haughtman,” according to CD 645], who was to “relieve” him and destroy a 1958 model automobile Isaacs had in his possession. [Identified as a Dodge in CD 645]
The older of the two men…told his companion (that) “we have more money at our disposal now than at any other time.” He disclosed that the group of which both men were apparently a part, would be holding a meeting March 18 [1964] in a Kansas City, Missouri hotel. [identified as the Townhouse Motor Hotel, which the FBI discovered was actually in Wichita, Kansas] The group was to reserve rooms under the name of a textile concern [Giesbrecht might have heard the name “Ero Manufacturing” which Lawrence Meyers of Chicago, a friend of Jack Ruby’s, worked for, and thought he had heard “Arrow” as in shirts] The two switched their conversation and began discussing airplanes after a third man, sitting at a separate table, apparently signaled them that someone was in earshot of their discussion.
The FBI informant testified the man sitting separately stared at him, in such a manner that he got up and left the room in an attempt to locate the police…

The Winnipeg article, with its dramatic implications, appeared on the front page under the heading “PROBE KENNEDY DEATH HERE: FBI Man visits Winnipeg to Check Assassination Clue.” The remainder of the article [which was written by Don Newman, now a distinguished CBC-NEWSWORLD Ottawa Bureau Chief] reads like a James Bond novel, as Giesbrecht attempted to leave upon realizing that the third man was not only glaring at him but had signaled to the other two men. The informant described this third man as being about 35, six feet tall, weighing 200 pounds, with a deformed nose, fair hair and flushed cheeks [which sounds a lot like the unidentified man photographed at the Russian Embassy in Mexico City, identified as “Henry Lee Oswald”]. Giesbrecht had noticed that he appeared to be left-handed, with either scars or tattoos on the fingers of that hand
(SKIPPING DOWN THE ARTICLE)
In reference to a man named Isaacs, who seemed to be linked somehow to Oswald and allegedly appeared in film footage near the President when he arrived in Texas, Turner indicated that a classified document did, in fact, exist, entitled “Harold Isaacs.” An unnamed Garrison investigator[56] had located a man somewhere in Texas with that name, who admitted to owning a 1958 Ford which had been destroyed in a wrecking yard. [The investigator was William Wood, aka William Boxley, but the man named Harold Isaacs was not the subject of the still-classified document—CD 1080—and the 1958 vehicle discussed at the Winnipeg Airport was a Dodge.] Finally, Turner, in reference to the Kansas City meeting mentioned in the Winnipeg conversation [which was to take place at the Townhouse Motor Hotel, located at Broadway and Kellogg Sts. in Wichita, Kansas, as the FBI had discovered, as reflected in a report I obtained in 1999], pointed out that this happened to be the headquarters of the Minutemen, a right-wing, paramilitary organization that Garrison suspected was involved in the assassination. [Wichita had been the head office of AMERICAN MERCURY magazine in the early 1960s, however, and was the home of oilman Fred Koch, who had cofounded the John Birch Society in the 1950s, as pointed out in a June, 1994 VANITY FAIR article on the family.]
(Turner wrote a lengthy article on the Minutemen and its founder, Robert DePugh, in the January 1967 edition of RAMPARTS, with much of his information provided by a defector named Jerry Milton Brooks. He had served “as DePugh’s intelligence and security officer until he became squeamish over the Minutemen’s intent to overthrow the government”.[57] Intriguingly, Brooks made reference to Guy Banister, who had headed an anti-Castro organization in New Orleans with links to the CIA, until his death in 1964. Banister was closely associated with both David Ferrie and Lee Oswald, according to Garrison’s investigation, which became public knowledge a month after Turner’s article was published.)
(SKIPPING DOWN THE ARTICLE)
In June 1970 William Turner of RAMPARTS, who had referred to Giesbrecht in two 1968 articles, reported once again on developments within the Minutemen organization, which he had suspected was “the group” planning to meet in Kansas City, as described by Giesbrecht.[73] [Even though the FBI did determine that the Townhouse Motor Hotel was actually in Wichita, and indicated in a report that no sales meeting had been scheduled there for March 18, 1964, they didn’t seem to consider the likelihood that it would have been cancelled.] Turner had been subpoenaed by lawyers representing Robert DePugh, founder of the Minutemen, who had been charged with jumping bail on an illegal weapons charge. Before being caught in New Mexico, DePugh, disguised as a hippie, had been on the run for 18 months (which became the basis of his 1973 publication entitled CAN YOU SURVIVE: GUIDELINES FOR RESISTANCE TO TYRANNY FOR YOU AND YOUR FAMILY), convinced that “an opposing element of the radical right had marked him for death.” DePugh had suggested to Turner in October 1967 that a splinter group of former Minutemen were attempting to promote fascism in the United States “in the guise of anti-Communism.” In regard to the Kennedy assassination, Turner (at the urging of Garrison) “posed the possibility that renegade Minutemen had been involved…DePugh readily agreed, saying that he had some evidence that might explain unanswered questions abut events in Dealey Plaza in Dallas.” A few months after making this comment, DePugh had disappeared, in fear for his life, suspecting that the FBI itself “was in cahoots with this very element.” Although the possibility of collusion between the FBI and a fascist organization such as the American Nazi Party sounds hard to believe, DePugh’s comment reminded me of an earlier discovery while looking through old copies of the extreme anti-Communist magazine AMERICAN MERCURY. Amongst the regular contributors of this Bible of hate-mongers were such notable individuals as General Walker of Dallas,[74] whom Oswald allegedly fired on in the spring of 1963; Professor Revilo Oliver from Illinois,[75] George Lincoln Rockwell, founder of the ANP,[76] and none other than J. Edgar Hoover himself[77]—four “experts” on the spread of Communism within the U.S.A.
DePugh also revealed in his 1970 interview with Turner that he had spoken directly to Garrison in October 1967 (not long after Garrison’s contact with Giesbrecht) and verified that three individuals being investigated by Garrison were at one time members of the Minutemen (possibly including Ferrie and Banister). Turner learned from DePugh that “some of his former members are literally Nazis, having gone over to the ANP,”[78] which included John Pratler,[79] convicted of assassinating George Lincoln Rockwell in August 1967, firing at him from a rooftop as the ANP leader prepared to drive away from a laundromat.[80] According to DePugh, the ANP was chiefly financed by a prominent Texas millionaire (a member of the Hunt family perhaps?), and had become associated with a “sympathetic clique” based in California calling itself “the Real Minutemen,” suggesting that DePugh’s organization was becoming soft from the point of view of certain extremists.
It would appear that DePugh had good reason to fear for his life, according to a “reliable reporter” referred to in Turner’s 1970 article. Allegedly, “a sometime employee of Guy Banister’s New Orleans detective agency” had tape-recorded evidence between himself and a “right-winger in Denver” of a $7500 offer to have DePugh killed, along with DePugh’s associate Walter Peyson, both of whom were fugitives at the time.
Robert DePugh’s activities during the early sixties are also discussed at length in the 1987 book ARMED AND DANGEROUS, by James Coates.[81] According to Coates, who had covered the HSCA hearings in 1978, DePugh had posters printed only a few months after Kennedy’s assassination, warning twenty members of Congress who had voted in favour of a bill that DePugh feared would lead to the abolition of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. It is interesting to note that the content of the posters had originally been printed on the front page of the Minutemen’s “hate sheet” ON TARGET (whose logo was a picture of the cross hairs of a telescopic sight) shortly before the assassination and read as follows:

See the old man on the corner where you buy your paper? He may have a silencer-equipped pistol under his coat. That extra fountain pen in the pocket of the insurance salesman that calls on you might be a cyanide-gas gun. What about your milk-man? Arsenic works slow but sure. Your auto mechanic may stay up nights studying booby traps. These patriots are not going to let you take their freedom away from them. They have learned the silent knife, the strangler’s cord, the target rifle that hits sparrows at 200 yards. Only their leaders restrain them.
Traitors beware! Even now the cross hairs are on the back of your necks…[82]

Kennedy himself was certainly considered a traitor by both the “anti-Castro” movement and neo-Nazis, such as the Minutemen and the John Birch Society. In fact, a “Wanted For Treason” poster showing his “mug shot” and a long list of “crimes” was circulated in Dallas prior to Kennedy’s arrival.[83] A full-page advertisement in the DALLAS MORNING NEWS on November 22 (with its ominous-looking thick black border) attacking his policies also reflected the animosity that existed. Coupled with DePugh’s jailhouse comments to Turner, it could be that one of those “target rifles” was aimed at JFK’s neck by renegade “patriots” unwilling to be restrained any longer.
The FBI actually received a warning that “a militant revolutionary group may attempt to assinated (sic) President Kennedy on his proposed trip to Dallas…”[84] The memo was dated November 17, 1963, and sent from Washington D.C. to all Special Agents In Charge. This included the New Orleans office where security guard William Walter took note of the warning as it came over the telex at 1:45 a.m. He contacted five local SACs and wrote their names at the bottom of the bulletin.[85] While having his hair cut on November 22, Walter learned to his chagrin that Kennedy had been assassinated and ran back to the office where he reread the warning. Later that day he typed a copy, which he took home, which he provided to the 1975 Senate Intelligence Committee. (It was subsequently printed in the Feb. 1978 special edition of the L.A. FREE PRESS and is also referred to by Garrison in his book ON THE TRAIL…). It should be noted that when Walter decided to look at the original again after the FBI’s “lone assassin” conclusions became public knowledge (through intentional leaks to the press) in Dec. 1963, it had disappeared and has not surfaced since.[86]
In his book ARMED AND DANGEROUS, Coates also points out in a brief discussion of the Garrison investigation that the New Orleans D.A. (now an appellate court judge in New Orleans) [he died in the fall of 1992] claimed to uncover “…evidence that the triggerman, Lee Harvey Oswald, was a member of the heavily armed extremists known as Minutemen”.[87] Although there is no convincing evidence to prove this assertion, a large number of Minutemen were charged with a variety of crimes, including evidence that “…many group members had been assigned assassination targets, including President Johnson and UN Ambassador Arthur Goldberg”.[88] Again the possibility that Kennedy was also on that list comes immediately to mind.
As paranoid as ever, DePugh wrote urgently to his readers in the April 1, 1964, edition of ON TARGET to purchase a weapon immediately, recommending a number of different high-powered weapons for males, females and even children, suggesting their lives might “depend on it.”[89] Just as DePugh had indicated losing members to the ANP under George Rockwell, the head of the ANP mentioned to author Harry Jones of Kansas City (THE MINUTEMEN) in a March 1967 interview, that “…Minutemen had recruited dozens of his members,”[90] although there was the strong possibility of infiltration and counterinfiltration taking place between the two organizations.
According to Turner, Rockwell also had connections to Guy Banister, the former FBI agent from Chicago, who ran the Anti-Communism League of the Caribbean in New Orleans until his death in 1964. Banister worked “closely with American Nazi Party members…,”[91] which included association with Maurice Gatlin, who was both a partner in Banister’s “league” and Rockwell’s attorney in that area of the country.[92]
Banister was also closely associated with the anti-Castro movement and, according to a number of witnesses, including his secretary at 544 Camp/531 Lafayette (a corner office with entrances on both streets), was also in frequent contact with Lee Harvey Oswald.[93] In fact, the address “544 Camp” was stamped on some of the leaflets Oswald began handing out in August, 1963 [which it turns out had been mailed from CIA headquarters, as pointed out by Jim DiEugenio], although the material encouraged readers to support Castro through the Fair Play For Cuba Committee—a chapter established by Oswald himself. Numerous books have suggested that these activities were nothing more than a ploy designed to provide a fictitious “pro-Castro” image for Oswald,[94] but for reasons that even Oswald was not aware of prior to his arrest in Dallas. By then he knew that he had undoubtedly been set up.
By the fall of 1967, Banister, Ferrie, Rockwell and others were all dead; if DePugh was threatened with death, it could be that a small group of fanatics with links to both the Minutemen and the ANP (or to “the real Minutemen”), encouraged from a safe distance by organized crime and anti-Castro elements, made a decision to kill Kennedy, Connally and possibly even Johnson as they came down Elm Street together on Nov. 22, 1963, against both the wishes and knowledge of Rockwell and DePugh. If Oswald was involved, it would not be too difficult to leave evidence incriminating to Oswald, Castro and Communism in general.[95

Dennis Mower as well as several other top Minutemen, like Walter Peyson, were closely tied to the extreme right-wing/white supremacist church "Church of Jesus Christ – Christian" founded and lead by Rev. Wesley A. Swift (1913-1970) in Lancaster, CA. Mower was Houghton's right-hand man.

http://www.kingidentity.com/ait.htm
A group called "American Institute of Theology ", founded in 1965, said about Swift:
http://www.kingidentity.com/cjc.html
“Wesley Swift is considered the single most significant figure in the early years of the Christian Identity movement in the United States.”

Check out the "American Institute of Theology " logo: the cross/circle, 13 stars, 13 little black arrows, 13 leafs:


ZODIAC AND NUMBER 13: 13 Letters in MY Name Is, 13 Eyes on Halloween Card, 13 punched holes on postcard:





MINUTEMEN FLAG: 13 STARS

Rand...great research.

I'm wrapping my mind around the theory that he was simply a hitman and his ulterior motives were not sexual but for the purpose of terror, disruption of political forces, and the get the heat off their organization. I don't know if they MM have any relationship to a militia we have/had up here in Washington State in the late 80's-90s' that pretty much used that patriot handbook to terrorism a few clinics, and robbed/blown up a few banks in NE Washington as well as some other supposedly unrelated murders.

Am traveling for 5 days...but with check in when I have WiFi so I can keep following. This is such a fascinating way to see history that was occurring when I was a child. I remember were I was when all those assassinations occurred, and I remember the news about the MM and the JB society and all the unrest and bombing and kidnapping and hijacking going on during those turbulent times. IF there is any Z DNA or prints...that would be great...IF a child of TH was willing to give it. I think what is more interesting than possibility of TH being Z is the story of his MM leaders who seem to be working with the FBI and against their own to save their own A$$ as well as willing to eliminate a threat to their existence.

FROM RAMPARTS, JUNE 1970




MORE TO COME...

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The Zodiac was known for tampering with victims' cars. He took the wire off the distributor cap of CJB's car, and he loosened the wheel on Lass's car. Troy Houghton was also known for tampering with cars.

New York Times, Nov. 1961: