{"efta_number": "EFTA00698921", "page_count": 3, "url": "https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00698921", "pdf_url": "https://epstein-data.com/pdf/EFTA00698921.pdf", "pages": [{"efta_number": "EFTA00698921", "page_number": 0, "text_content": "From: Ed la \nTo: \"Epstein, Jeff\" leevacation@gmail.com> \nSubject: My article in Newsweek today: The O'Reilly Invention \nDate: Mon, 09 Mar 2015 19:16:21 +0000 \nAttachments: Oreilly.docx \nhttp://www.newsweek.com/oreillys-jflc-reporting-was-impossible-i-know-because-i-was-there-3 12336 \nO'Reilly's JFK Reporting Was Impossible. I Know Because I Was There \nBy Edward Jay Epstein \nI was recently bemused to see that Bill O' Reilly, the Fox News host, managed in 2012 to parachute himself back \nin time to March 29, 1977 so as to make himself a witness to the gunshot that killed George de Mohrenschildt. \nDe Mohrenschildt, a well-connected Russian émigré, was a figure of interest in the mystery of the assassination \nof President John F. Kennedy because he had befriended Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of JFK. How \ndid O' Reilly get into the act? In his 2012 best-selling book Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot, he wrote \nhimself-as a 29-year-old reporter-into the de Mohrenschildt death scene, stating on page 300: \"As the reporter \nknocked on the door of de Mohrenschildt' s daughter' s home, he heard the shotgun blast that marked the suicide \nof the Russian, assuring that his relationship with Lee Harvey Oswald would never be fully understood. By the \nway, that reporter' s name is Bill O' Reilly.\" \nBut O' Reilly' s insertion suffers from a reality deficiency disorder. How do I know? I was the actual—and \nonly—reporter interviewing de Mohrenschildt on the last day of his life in 1977. I was meeting him at the \nBreakers Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida, because I was writing a biography of Oswald (Legend: the Secret World \nof Lee Harvey Oswald). \nBecause de Mohrenschildt could have helped clarify Oswald' s putative connections with the CIA, the FBI and \nother intelligence services, I paid him $4,000 for an exclusive four-day interview. I also rented a blue Ford LTD \nsedan for de Mohrenschildt so that he could travel during those days between my suite at the Breakers and the \nhome of C.E. Tilton in the nearby town of Manalapan, Florida, where he and his 33-year-old daughter daughter \nAlexandra were staying as guests. During the interview on March 29, de Mohrenschildt asked me to get him a \nphotograph from his Dallas lawyer to confirm part of his story. Then, at around 1 p.m., we broke for an hour for \nlunch. De Mohrenschildt drove back to Manalapan. As he departed, he told me with a wry smile that the town \nwas best known for the mysterious disappearance and murder of Judge Curtis Chillingworth in 1955. \nLess than two hours later, de Mohrenschildt was found shot to death on the second floor of the Tilton home. The \nWest Palm Beach deputy sheriff arrived at my hotel and questioned me and my research assistant, Nancy \nLanoue, who had been taking notes during the de Mohrenschildt interview. We both were then taken to the \ncounty courthouse, where I was interviewed by state' s attorney David Bludworth. The next day, two FBI agents \nquestioned me further and told me of the circumstances of the death. \nSubsequently, Bludworth gave me the investigative file to allay my suspicions that it might have been murder. \nAfterward, I spoke to Alexandra, and to other family members. From what I learned about the case, O' Reilly' s \nstory does not fit the facts. \nFor one thing, O' Reilly put himself at the wrong house. He writes he was on the steps of the home of de \nMohrenschildt' s daughter when he heard the shot. But de Mohrenschildt was not at his daughter' s home (158 \nVilla Lagine in Mexico City); he was at Tilton' s home in Florida. \nEFTA00698921\n", "char_count": 3590}, {"efta_number": "EFTA00698921", "page_number": 1, "text_content": "Another minor problem is O' Reilly' s claim to have been an ear-witness to the death. In the 2013 version of his \nbook for younger readers, he wrote: \"As I knocked on the door, I heard a shotgun blast. He had killed himself.\" \nAccording to the police report, however, no one inside or outside the house heard the shot (which was fired in \nthe second-floor hallway outside Nancy Tilton' s bedroom). A maid, Anna Vitsula, said she had been in Mrs. \nTilton' s room a few minutes earlier to turn on a recorder to tape a television show, but did not hear a shot. Five \nother people on the staff also said they did& t hear the report of the shotgun. When I asked Bludworth why no \none in the house heard the shot, he said it was probably because the blast was partly absorbed by the body, the \ncarpet and the furnishings. In any case, because no one heard a shot, the body was not discovered for some 15 \nminutes after the shooting. \nThe exact time of the shot was established as 2:21:03 p.m. after an examination of the recorder in Tilton' s \nbedroom, which was taping The Doctors. On the tape, the shot from de Mohrenschildt' s gun could be heard, as \ncould the sound of the shotgun falling on the floor. \nPolice investigators also determined the exact time the downstairs doors were opened because they were \nconnected to a Rawlins Alarm System that beeped when there was movement. The beeps were recorded on the \nsame Doctors tape, and the timing of each beep could be matched to the accounts given by staff members of \nwhen they entered and left the house. For example, Lillian Romani, the Tiltons' cook, had been outside \nsunbathing at the time of the shooting and re-entered the house at 2:23 p.m., just two minutes after the shooting. \nMeanwhile, Coley Wimbley, the gardener, was watering the plants outside the house at the time of the shooting \nand Dianne and Laurie Tisdale, who were working at the Tilton home, were getting ready to drive to West Palm \nBeach. \nNone of these people saw a stranger (or a reporter) arrive at or leave the property, much less standing on the \ndoorstep. \nAbout 10 minutes after the shot was fired, Alexandra returned by car from a shopping trip in Boynton Beach. \nShe was, like her father and her friend Katherine Loomis, a house guest. When she went to her father' s room to \ngive him a gift, she found the body. \nO'Reilly' s depiction of his phantom-like presence at the crime scene is odd for another reason. If he had heard \nthe gunshot, as he claims, he must have realized that he was an ear-witness to a possible murder of an important \nfigure in the JFK assassination. It would stretch credibility to believe that a reporter as earnest as O' Reilly would \nflee the crime scene without reporting what he had witnessed to anyone for 35 years. \nOne possible reason for O' Reilly' s invisibility to everyone at the Tilton home that day was that he was in \nDallas, where he worked at the local TV station WFAA. There are tape recordings of O' Reilly on the telephone \nin his Dallas office on March 29, 1977, the day he claims to have been on the doorstep of Alexandra de \nMohrenschildt' s home. They were unearthed by researcher and author Jefferson Morley. \nAccording to these tapes, O' Reilly made several long-distance calls to Gaeton Fonzi, an investigator for the \nHouse Select Committee on Assassinations, in Palm Beach in the late afternoon and evening of March 29. He \ncan be heard on the scratchy recordings asking Fonzi about the veracity of rumors that de Mohrenschildt had \nbeen killed earlier that day. These recordings, which were made by Fonzi, appear to put O' Reilly 1,200 miles \naway from the death scene in Florida. \nHow could O' Reilly be in two places at the same time, one may ask? In his 2012 account, the inventive \nO' Reilly may have been emulating the time-traveling investigator Jake Epping, who went back in time to solve \nthe JFK assassination in Stephen King' s 2011 best-selling book 11/22/63. Epping in that book used time travel \nto drop in on George de Mohrenschildt before he killed himself. But of course Epping' s feat was pure fiction. \nBut if O'Reilly has discovered the non-fiction App for time travel, it could save a great deal of legwork for \ninvestigative reporters. \n[This piece is adapted from my up-dated book, Extra: The Inventions ofJournalism, ENCLOSED] \nEFTA00698922\n", "char_count": 4355}, {"efta_number": "EFTA00698921", "page_number": 2, "text_content": "as ever \nEd \nwww.edwardjayepstein.com \nEFTA00698923\n", "char_count": 52}]}