THE MOON LANDING: FACT OR FICTION - PART ONE

My teenage son makes fun of most of the conspriracy theories that I subscribe too like my belief in the government cover up of UFOS and aliens, but one conspriracy that he believes in that I do not (or have doubts about) is the belief that we never landed on the moon. Moon landing conspiracy theories claim that some or all elements of the Apollo program and the associated Moon landings were hoaxes staged by NASA, possibly with the aid of other organizations. The most notable claim of these conspiracy theories is that the six crewed landings (1969–1972) were faked and that twelve Apollo astronauts did not actually land on the Moon. Various groups and individuals have made claims since the mid-1970s that NASA and others knowingly misled the public into believing the landings happened, by manufacturing, tampering with, or destroying evidence including photos, telemetry tapes, radio and TV transmissions, and Moon rock samples.

Much third-party evidence for the landings exists, and detailed rebuttals to the hoax claims have been made. Since the late 2000s, high-definition photos taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) of the Apollo landing sites have captured the Lunar Module descent stages and the tracks left by the astronauts. In 2012, images were released showing five of the six Apollo missions' American flags erected on the Moon still standing. The exception is that of Apollo 11, which has lain on the lunar surface since being blown over by the Lunar Module Ascent Propulsion System.

Reputable experts in science and astronomy regard the claims as pseudoscience and demonstrably false. Opinion polls taken in various locations between 1994 and 2009 have shown that between 6% and 20% of Americans, 25% of Britons, and 28% of Russians surveyed believe that the crewed landings were faked. Even as late as 2001, the Fox television network documentary Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon? claimed NASA faked the first landing in 1969 to win the Space Race.

An early and influential book about the subject of a Moon-landing conspiracy, We Never Went to the Moon: America's Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle, was self-published in 1976 by Bill Kaysing, a former US Navy officer with a Bachelor of Arts in English. Despite having no knowledge of rockets or technical writing, Kaysing was hired as a senior technical writer in 1956 by Rocketdyne, the company that built the F-1 engines used on the Saturn V rocket.He served as head of the technical publications unit at the company's Propulsion Field Laboratory until 1963. The many allegations in Kaysing's book effectively began discussion of the Moon landings being faked.The book claims that the chance of a successful crewed landing on the Moon was calculated to be 0.0017%, and that despite close monitoring by the USSR, it would have been easier for NASA to fake the Moon landings than to really go there.

In 1980, the Flat Earth Society accused NASA of faking the landings, arguing that they were staged by Hollywood with Walt Disney sponsorship, based on a script by Arthur C. Clarke and directed by Stanley Kubrick. Folklorist Linda Dégh suggests that writer-director Peter Hyams' film Capricorn One (1978), which shows a hoaxed journey to Mars in a spacecraft that looks identical to the Apollo craft, might have given a boost to the hoax theory's popularity in the post-Vietnam War era. Dégh sees a parallel with other attitudes during the post-Watergate era, when the American public were inclined to distrust official accounts. Dégh writes: "The mass media catapult these half-truths into a kind of twilight zone where people can make their guesses sound as truths. Mass media have a terrible impact on people who lack guidance." In A Man on the Moon, first published in 1994, Andrew Chaikin mentions that at the time of Apollo 8's lunar-orbit mission in December 1968, similar conspiracy ideas were already in circulation....

TO BE CONTINUED...

UFOS - THE AGE OF DISCLOSURE

For many years, Americans have sought answers to various unnatural phenomena in the last century. One of the most awaited approvals that citizens desire from the government is the truth behind aliens.

The government has not provided answers to the people of the U.S. and the world regarding the secrets it holds, despite testimonies from several officials affirming that aliens do exist.

However, an upcoming documentary, "The Age of Disclosure," promises to disrupt decades of secrecy surrounding Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP). Set to premiere during the opening weekend of the SXSW Film Festival at Austin’s historic Paramount Theater, the film, directed and produced by Dan Farah, aims to unveil an 80-year cover-up regarding non-human intelligence and the covert efforts by major global powers to reverse-engineer extraterrestrial technology.

The documentary features testimonies from 34 senior members of the U.S. government, military, and intelligence communities, all of whom claim direct knowledge of UAPs.

Among them are high-ranking officials such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Mike Rounds, and Jim Clapper, the former Director of National Intelligence.

The documentary also includes comments from former Department of Defense officials, NASA researchers, and military eyewitnesses, offering new perspectives.

Experts featured in the film make definitive statements asserting the existence of non-human intelligence and the presence of unidentified craft that defy known human technology.

Lue Elizondo, a former Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) member, stated in the trailer, "Humanity is not the only intelligence in the universe."

Similar declarations came from astrophysicist Eric Davis, quantum physicist Hal Puthoff, and CIA veterans, further backing the documentary’s central claims.

According to the documentary, the U.S. government has conducted a secretive technological arms race with rival nations to recover and exploit non-human craft.

"We learned that the U.S. government was involved in a long-running secret war with other nations to collect and reverse-engineer vehicles not made by humans," one expert said.

Another warned of the geopolitical consequences: "The first country that cracks the code on this technology will be the leader for years to come."

Beyond the military and strategic implications, "The Age of Disclosure" addresses the ethical concerns of removing such knowledge from the public. Several figures in the documentary highlight the dangers of an unchecked governmental apparatus that withholds paradigm-shifting discoveries.

"It’s not acceptable to have secret parts of government that no one ever sees," one official said.

Another warned, "You better be careful about a government that doesn’t trust its people because there’s no telling what they’ll pull on you."

The documentary also explores the potential benefits of disclosing such knowledge.Technology derived from non-human sources could revolutionize clean energy and fundamentally alter the trajectory of human civilization.

"You had information being locked away that could change the trajectory for species," one scientist remarked, while another said, "It has so many beneficial impacts, including clean energy."

The release of "The Age of Disclosure" coincides with recent legislative efforts in the U.S. Senate to declassify government-held UAP knowledge. The UAP Disclosure Act was designed to compel the public release of such information. However, the act has faced significant resistance from vested interests and concerns over societal preparedness.

"The American public has a right to learn about technologies of unknown origins, non-human intelligence, and unexplainable phenomena," an expert argued.

"The Age of Disclosure" challenges the status quo of governmental secrecy regarding extraterrestrial phenomena by compiling the testimonies of high-ranking officials, intelligence operatives, and scientific experts. As the trailer concludes, "The time has come."

THE SMILEY FACE MURDER THEORY

In the previous blog entry we spotlighted the disappearance and unfortunate death of Dakota James from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of the theories is that James was part of the Smiley face murder theory. The smiley face murder theory (also known as the smiley face murders, smiley face killings, and smiley face gang) is a theory advanced by retired New York City detectives Kevin Gannon and Anthony Duarte, as well as Dr. Lee Gilbertson, a criminal justice professor and gang expert at St. Cloud State University. It alleges that 45 young men found dead in bodies of water across several Midwestern American states from the late 1990s to the 2010s did not accidentally drown, as concluded by law enforcement agencies, but were victims of one or multiple serial killers.

The term "smiley face" became connected to the alleged murders when it was made public that the police had discovered graffiti depicting a smiley face near locations where they think the killer dumped the bodies in at least a dozen of the cases. Gannon wrote a textbook case study on the subject titled "Case Studies in Drowning Forensics."The response of law enforcement investigators and other experts has been largely skeptical.

Gannon and Duarte have theorized that the young men were all murdered, either by an individual or by an organized group of killers. The term "smiley face" became connected to the alleged murders when it was made public that Gannon and Duarte had discovered graffiti depicting a smiley face near locations where they think the killer had dumped the bodies in at least a dozen of the cases. Furthermore, Gannon and Gilbertson claim to have found other types of graffiti symbols associated with the suspicious deaths, but have not disseminated these other images outside a few trusted law enforcement contacts for fear of inspiring copycat graffiti or alerting suspects.

In respone to the theory the FBI has issued a statement:

The FBI has reviewed the information about the victims provided by two retired police detectives, who have dubbed these incidents the "Smiley Face Murders," and interviewed an individual who provided information to the detectives. To date, we have not developed any evidence to support links between these tragic deaths or any evidence substantiating the theory that these deaths are the work of a serial killer or killers. The vast majority of these instances appear to be alcohol-related drownings. The FBI will continue to work with the local police in the affected areas to provide support as requested.

Is it just a coincidence that so many young college aged men are disappearing, and a victim of a drowning? If you have any information please reach out to me or your local authority...

THE DISAPPEARANCE AND DEATH OF DAKOTA JAMES

On January 25, 2017, Duquesne University graduate student Dakota James disappeared from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The “smart, outgoing” 23-year-old had been walking back to his apartment after a night out drinking with friends, and his last known sighting was caught on a surveillance camera in the downtown area. The recording captured Dakota entering an alleyway while looking down at his phone, and that was the last time he was seen alive.

Forty days after his disappearance, Dakota's body was found floating in the Ohio River, about 10 miles from where he was last sighted. Police believed Dakota had fallen into the river while crossing a bridge near the city center, and the medical examiner ruled his death an accidental drowning. But Dakota's parents, Jeff and Pamela James, did not believe that Dakota, an athlete and swim team captain, could have drowned. They told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 2017 that Dakota was not an inexperienced drinker, and there is no way he would have been so intoxicated that he accidentally fell into the river.

Now eight years after his disappearance, Jeff and Pamela are still convinced foul play had something to do with their son's death.

"[It] doesn't make any sense to me — never has…” Pamela told “Once we learned that the case was closed, it was very disappointing. I don't feel that they ever wanted to look further into the possibility that there could be foul play. I knew 100 percent in my heart that someone did something to Dakota."

Former NYPD detectives and “The Hunt for Justice” hosts Kevin Gannon and Anthony Duarte agreed. Along with retired NYPD detective Michael Donovan and professor of criminal justice Dr. Lee Gilbertson, the team has concluded that Dakota could be a potential victim of the Smiley Face Killers, a possible interstate gang of serial killers that abducts and murders college-aged men before dumping their remains into local waterways and painting smiley face graffiti near the body recovery sites.

With the hope of changing Dakota's cause of death from accidental drowning to homicide, the “Hunt for Justice" team pushed Allegheny County law enforcement to release a copy of Dakota's autopsy report, which had never before been seen by the James family. While local police initially declined them access to the case files, District Attorney Stephen Zappala later agreed to have an off-camera meeting with Pamela to discuss Dakota's case and provide her with the documents.

Gannon and the team were then able to review the official police reports along with Dakota's autopsy and recovery photographs. In one of the photographs of Dakota's neck, Gannon noticed "suspicious marks," which had not been noted anywhere in the written autopsy report.

Gannon and Dr. Gilbertson brought the documents to consulting forensic pathologist to the late Dr. Cyril Wecht to see if he could discern what caused the injuries on Dakota's neck. Dr. Wecht concluded the marks were "strongly suggestive of and entirely consistent with a ligature having been applied around the neck. This death may have been due to ligature strangulation." Dr. Wetch also noted a "distinct difference in the coloration of the fingernail beds of the fourth and fifth fingers on both the right and left hands," which "certainly would be consistent with someone reaching up and trying to release the pressure from a ligature that is being applied around their neck."

After reviewing the files and examining the findings with Dr. Wetch, Gannon and Pamela requested a meeting with the district attorney's office to further discuss Dakota's case.

Gannon told Pamela, "The good news is, when we speak to the DA ... we have some really good facts about Dakota's case. There's human intervention. So he didn't do that falling into the water. You know, whether it's one person, two people or ... a gang ... that's insignificant at this point. We believe it's connected to Smiley Face killers, but it doesn't matter. The main thing is, somebody murdered him, and they have to reinvestigate."

On October 3, 2018, Gannon and Pamela had another off-camera meeting with Zappala as well as an unidentified FBI agent and Secret Service agent. Gannon and Pamela presented their findings to Zappala and the two agents, who reportedly agreed the injuries to Dakota's neck and fingernail beds could be the result of strangulation.

Pamela later told Duarte, "[Zappala] specifically said, 'I want you to know I'm not going to the police for them to do this investigation. I'm using my homicide investigators.'"

At this time, the district attorney's office cannot move its investigation forward without the medical examiner "concurring with our assessment," said Gannon. The Allegheny County Medical Examiner's office has not reopened Dakota's case, but it has agreed to review additional evidence related to Dakota's death.

I interviewed some of the people involved in the search party, and there were a lot of odd occurances. For example, the police were getting phone tips that Dakota was held captive in the North Hills of Pittsburgh as well, and that his death had something to do with him being a homosexual.

If you have any clues or tips regarding the disappearance and murder of Dakota James, please reach out to me or the Pittsburgh police...

NEWS BREAK: PRESIDENT TRUMP RELEASED JFK FILES

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump released material related to the 1963 assassination of former President John F. Kennedy on Tuesday, seeking to honor his campaign promise to provide more transparency about the shock event in Texas.

An initial tranche of electronic copies of papers flooded into the National Archives website in the evening with a total of more than 80,000 expected to be published after Justice Department lawyers spent hours scouring them.

The digital documents, including PDFs of previously classified memos, offers a window into the climate of fear at the time surrounding U.S. relations with the Soviet Union shortly after the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 nearly led to a nuclear war.

The release is nonetheless likely to intrigue people who have long been fascinated with a dramatic period in history, with the assassination and with Kennedy himself.

Many of the documents reflected the work by investigators to learn more about assassin Lee Harvey Oswald's time in the Soviet Union and track his movements in the months leading up to Kennedy's assassination in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.

An initial review of the papers did not show deviations from the central narrative.

Trump's secretary of health and human services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a son of Robert Kennedy and nephew of John F. Kennedy, has said he believes the Central Intelligence Agency was involved in his uncle's death, an allegation the agency has described as baseless. Kennedy Jr. declined comment when contacted by Reuters on Tuesday.

One document with the heading "secret" was a typed account with handwritten notes of a 1964 interview by a Warren Commission researcher who questioned Lee Wigren, a CIA employee, about inconsistencies in material provided to the commission by the State Department and the CIA about marriages between Soviet women and American men. Oswald was married to a Soviet woman, Marina Oswald, at the time of the shooting.

Department of Defense documents from 1963 covered the Cold War of the early 1960s and the U.S. involvement in Latin America, trying to thwart Cuban leader Fidel Castro's support of communist forces in other countries.The documents suggest that Castro would not go so far as to provoke a war with the United States or escalate to the point "that would seriously and immediately endanger the Castro regime."

"It appears more likely that Castro might intensify his support of subversive forces in Latin America," the document reads.

One document released from January 1962 reveals details of a top secret project called "Operation Mongoose," or simply "the Cuban Project," which was a CIA-led campaign of covert operations and sabotage against Cuba, authorized by Kennedy in 1961, aimed at removing the Castro regime.

Trump signed an order shortly after taking office in January related to the documents release, prompting the Federal Bureau of Investigation to find thousands of new documents related to the Kennedy assassination in Dallas.

Alice L. George, a historian whose books, including The Assassination of John F. Kennedy, explore modern America, said American's curiosity about assassinations and questions about government transparency add "to a sense that there must be important evidence hidden away in these files."

But she said government records were unlikely to resolve questions people still have.

"I think there may continue to be more record releases," she said. "I seriously doubt that any will include great revelations. The Warren Commission report was done well, but it was done when many of the key players were alive. It's much harder to find the truth when most of the people involved are dead."

Kennedy's murder has been attributed to a sole gunman, Oswald. The Justice Department and other federal government bodies have reaffirmed that conclusion in the intervening decades. But polls show many Americans still believe his death was a result of a conspiracy.

Trump has also promised to release documents on the assassinations of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Robert Kennedy, both of whom were killed in 1968.

Trump has allowed more time to come up with a plan for those releases.

THE MOST UFO SIGHTINGS: PENNSYLVANIA

When pilot Kenneth Arnold took off from Chehalis, Washington, in his single-engine airplane one afternoon in June 1947, he was looking for a lost military aircraft that had crashed. But what he found was something completely different—something that would set off a cultural obsession in the U.S. that persists today. While flying around Mount Rainier, Arnold reportedly encountered nine curious, wingless objects speeding through the sky at 1,200 mph, faster than any plane at the time could. Arnold spent years afterward trying to describe what he had seen, reportedly using a term that has been ingrained in the American lexicon ever since: "flying saucer."

Since then, Americans have been uniquely fixated on the idea that aliens are somewhere in the sky above us—and the number who believe that to be true is growing. In 2019, a Gallup survey found that 33% of Americans believed some UFOs were alien spacecrafts, while 60% felt they could all be explained by human activity or some natural phenomenon. Just two years later, in 2021, 41% of respondents said they believed at least some UFOs were alien-related compared to 50% who were confident any sightings could be explained by human behavior or scientific events.

Pennsylvania has had it's share of UFO sightings through the years. Of course this interests me, because Pennsylvania is my home state. Here is a ranking (as of 2024) of the Pennsylvania cities with the most UFO sightings:

10.      West Chester
9.        Easton

8.        Harrisburg

7.        Lancaster

6.        York

5.        Erie

4.        Allentown

3.        Reading

2.        Pittsburgh

1.        Philadelphia

 

                         

THE SEARCH FOR BRAD BISHOP

After government worker Bert Bishop killed his family on March 1, 1976 - Bishop had about a week before the bodies of his family were discovered and identitied. It has been suggested that he could have traveled on his diplomatic passport. FBI Special Agent Steve Vogt stated in 2014 that neither Bishop's wallet nor passport have ever been found. It has also been speculated that Bishop may have had intelligence training in the 1960s which could have helped him evade detection in 1976.Since 1976, there have been numerous claimed sightings of Bishop in various European countries, including Italy, Belgium, England, Finland, the Netherlands, Germany, Greece, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland. The three most credible sightings noted by the United States Marshals Service are:

In July 1978, a Swedish woman, who said she had collaborated with Bishop while on a business trip in Ethiopia, reported she had spotted him twice in a public park in Stockholm during a span of one week. She stated she was "absolutely certain" that the man was Bishop. She did not contact the police at the time because she had not yet realized he was wanted for murder in the U.S.

In January 1979, Bishop was reportedly seen by Roy Harrell, the State Department colleague who had last seen him before the murders, in a restroom in Sorrento, Italy. When Harrell greeted a bearded man eye-to-eye, asking him, "Hey, you're Brad Bishop, aren't you?", the man responded in a distinctly American accent, "Oh no", and fled.

On September 19, 1994, on a Basel train platform, a neighbor who had known Bishop and his family in Bethesda was on vacation and reported that she had seen Bishop from a few feet away. The neighbor described Bishop as "well-groomed", and said that he was getting into a car.

After the initial investigation, the Bishop case became the subject of articles in national publications like Reader's Digest and Time at milestone anniversaries. It was followed on an ad hoc basis by The Washington Post, the Washington Star, and The Washington Times as well as local Washington, D.C. television stations. The case was featured on television shows such as NBC's Unsolved Mysteries, ABC's Vanished and Fox's America's Most Wanted. Bishop was profiled on the AMW website thirty-three years to the day since his family's bodies were discovered, with a new age-enhanced bust of him with facial hair. A German TV show, Aktenzeichen XY… ungelöst, also featured the case in its 250th episode on November 6, 1992, to find possible evidence of Bishop living abroad.

In 2010, authorities believed Bishop was living in Switzerland, Italy or elsewhere in Europe, or possibly in California; he may have worked as a teacher or become involved in criminal activities. Authorities revealed in 2010 that before the murders, Bishop had been corresponding with federal prison inmate Albert Kenneth Bankston in the United States Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois, though it is unknown why or how. Bishop evidently had instructed Bankston to send letters to his State Department office address. America's Most Wanted posted on its website the last letter from Bankston, which he had mailed to Bishop sixteen days after the murders unaware that Bishop was a fugitive and unable to receive mail at his office. Bankston died in 1983, ten years before law enforcement discovered his connection to Bishop.

In 2014, the FBI exhumed the body of an unidentified man resembling Bishop who had been killed by a car in 1981 while walking along an Alabama highway. A DNA test indicated the man was not Bishop. The FBI also used fingerprints to determine in 2011 that reports that Bishop had died in Hong Kong or France were false.

Authorities stated in 2014 that Bishop was probably living in plain sight in the U.S. and avoiding discovery by avoiding arrest. An arrest on any charge would enable law enforcement to fingerprint him, which in turn would link him with the murders.That same year, at the request of the FBI, forensic artist Karen Taylor created an age progression sculpture to suggest Bishop's projected appearance at about age 77. Using Taylor's sculpture, several alternative images were created by Lisa Sheppard to show the addition of facial hair and glasses.

In early April 2014, WRC-TV in Washington, D.C. launched a webpage to display multiple investigative reports and extensive information on the Bishop case. This included samples of Bishop's handwriting, fingerprints, dental records and previously unseen Bishop family videos. On July 27, 2014, the search for Bishop was a featured story on The Hunt with John Walsh on CNN.

In March 2021, a woman who had been adopted came forward claiming she found out through a DNA testing service that Bishop was her biological father. The FBI confirmed that she was indeed his biological daughter.

If you have any tips or sightings of Brad Bishop, please reach out to the FBI...

VIDEO BREAK: THE MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF THE BISHOP FAMILY

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF BRAD BISHOP

William Bradford Bishop Jr. seemed to have the perfect life.

Born in Pasadena, Calif., he graduated from South Pasadena High School a year ahead of his cheerleader girlfriend Annette. The former high school football player received an American Studies degree from Yale University and graduate degrees in Italian from Middlebury College in Vermont and African Studies at UCLA.

He married Annette in 1959.

That same year, he enlisted in the U.S. Army and spent four years in U.S. military intelligence overseas. He became fluent in Italian, Spanish, Serbo-Croatian and French.

After his military service was over, he got a job in the State Department in the foreign service in Italy, Ethiopia, and Botswana.

During this time, he had three sons, William, Brenton, and Geoffrey, who was born in 1971.

He eventually returned to the U.S. in 1974 and became an assistant chief in the Division of Special Activities and Commercial Treaties.

Bishop and his wife and three sons, along with his mother Lobella and a Golden Retriever named Leo, moved to the quaint D.C. suburb of Bethesda. In their spare time, the couple played tennis and went swimming at the local country club.

They enjoyed skiing in the winter and Bishop even bought himself a motorcycle. Annette, a stay-at-home mom, took art classes at the local college. However, their perfect life seemed to be unravelling — and the full extend that all was not as it seemed Bishop and Annette were rumored to be struggling financially. Furthermore, Bishop, who was described as a "lone wolf" and under psychiatric care in the past and had used medication for depression, became despondent when he was passed up for a promotion for an overseas post.

According to authorities, on March 1, 1976, Bishop left early from work, claiming he wasn’t feeling well. On his way home, he stopped at a bank and withdrew $400 before purchasing a gasoline can and a sledgehammer. Once home, he killed his family and then drove their bodies to Columbia, N.C., where he disposed of the bodies of his wife, his mother and three sons, ages 14, 10, and 4, in a hole he'd dug and then set them on fire.

A coroner later determined they died from blunt force trauma.

Bishop, an avid outdoorsman and licensed amateur pilot, was linked to the crimes via his fingerprints found on the gasoline can at the fire scene as well as in the blood at the family’s home.

His maroon-colored station wagon was later found in the parking lot of the Elkmont Campground in Great Smoky Mountains National Park near Gatlinburg, Tenn. Inside the vehicle, authorities discovered two blood-stained tarps, a blood-stained blanket, an axe, a shotgun and a suitcase containing men’s clothing, toiletries as well as cigarette butts in the ashtray.

Bishop has been on the run ever since. Now, close to 50 years later, the FBI is still looking for him. He is described by the FBI as a “longtime insomniac” who "may have kept a diary or journal.”

“He drank scotch and wine and enjoyed eating peanuts and spicy food” and was “intense and self-absorbed, prone to violent outbursts, and preferred a neat and orderly environment.”

NEWS BREAK: GENE HACKMAN CAUSE OF DEATH

The causes of deaths of actor Gene Hackman and his wife, Betsy Arakawa, were revealed by officials on Friday, more than one week after the couple was mysteriously found dead in their Santa Fe, New Mexico, home.

Hackman, 95, died of cardiovascular and Alzheimer's disease likely around Feb. 18, about one week after his wife died from a rare syndrome, hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, on about Feb. 11, officials said.

Hackman's death was from "hypertensive and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, with Alzheimer's disease as a significant contributory factor," Dr. Heather Jarrell, chief medical investigator for the state's Office of the Medical Investigator, announced at a news conference.

"Mr. Hackman showed evidence of advanced Alzheimer's disease," she said. "He was in a very poor state of health. He had significant heart disease, and I think, ultimately, that is what resulted in his death."

Arakawa, 65, died from hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, a rare disease transmitted through rodent urine, droppings or saliva, officials said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the disease "initially causes flu-like symptoms that can progress to more severe illness where people have trouble breathing."


Those who contract hantavirus after being exposed to rodent excrement often feel ill for roughly three to six days, Jarrell said.

"Then they can transition to that pulmonary phase, where they have fluid in their lungs and around their lungs," she said. "And at that point, a person can die very quickly, within 24 to 48 hours, roughly speaking, without medical treatment."

Hackman was likely home with his deceased wife for one week before he died, Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza said. There was no food in his stomach, which means he had not eaten recently, but he had also no evidence of dehydration, officials said.

Hackman "was in an advanced state of Alzheimer's, and it's quite possible that he was not aware that she was deceased," Jarrell said, adding that the "question is difficult to answer."

Hackman was discovered on the floor in the mud room and it appeared he fell suddenly, according to the search warrant. Hackman suffered from "severe heart disease, including multiple surgical procedures involving the heart, evidence of prior heart attacks and severe changes of the kidneys due to chronic high blood pressure," Jarrell said.

The actor's "initial pacemaker data revealed cardiac activity on Feb. 17, with subsequent pacemaker interrogation demonstrating an abnormal rhythm of atrial fibrillation on Feb. 18, which was the last record of heart activity," Jarrell said.

Hackman tested negative for hantavirus, officials noted.

Arakawa was found lying on her side on the floor in a bathroom, with a space heater near her body, according to the search warrant. Her body showed signs of decomposition; there was mummification to her hands and feet, the document said.

On the counter near Arakawa was an opened prescription bottle, with pills scattered, according to the search warrant. The pills were determined to be thyroid medication that was being taken as prescribed and did not appear to have any contribution to her death, officials said on Friday.

One of the couple's three dogs was found dead in a crate about 10 to 15 feet from Arakawa's body, officials said. But their two other dogs were found alive. It appeared they had access to a doggy door; one dog was found near Arakawa's body and the other was located outside, according to Mendoza.

The sheriff on Friday outlined Arakawa's final days.

On Feb. 9, Arakawa picked up one of their three dogs -- the dog who was later found dead in the home with the couple -- from a vet hospital after a procedure, which may explain why the dog was discovered in a crate when the bodies were found, the sheriff said.

On the afternoon of Feb. 11, Arakawa went to a farmer's market, CVS and a pet food store, and entered her gated community at 5:15 p.m., the sheriff said.

There's no evidence she had any communication after Feb. 11, the sheriff said, saying all of her emails were unread after that date.

It's possible the dog died from lack of access to food and water, said Dr. Erin Phipps, veterinarian with the New Mexico Department of Health, but officials are awaiting results of the necropsy.

Dogs do not get sick from hantavirus, she noted.

There were 864 cases of hantavirus in the U.S. from 1993 to 2022, according to the CDC.

NEWS BREAK: GENE HACKMAN DEATH INVESTIGATION UPDATE

Here is the news regarding the investigation into the death of Gene Hackman and his wife as of today March 6th. The investigation into the deaths of legendary actor Gene Hackman, his wife, Betsy Arakawa and one of their three dogs, remains ongoing after they were found dead on Feb. 26.

Many questions remain about regarding the circumstances surrounding their deaths, but earlier this week, the Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office issued an update based on the New Mexico Gas Company's "extensive investigation for gas leaks and carbon monoxide at Gene Hackman's home," ruling out one cause of death.

"There were no significant findings. NMGC did issue five (5) red tags. One red tag was for a minuscule leak (0.33% gas in air – not a lethal amount) at one of the stove burners," the statement read. "The other four red tags were for code enforcement violations -not involving gas leaks or carbon monoxide – involving a water heater and gas log lighters installed in three fireplaces."

While a gas leak appears to have been ruled out, three more causes of death were posited by James Gill, Chief Medical Examiner, with the Connecticut Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. Gill is not investigating Hackman's death in his professional capacity, but he believes both died from natural causes.

“From the initial kind of circumstances, it seems like he may have collapsed,” he told People. “He's got a history of heart disease. He's got a pacemaker. So that would not be unusual. But the unusual part is that why then did she also collapse? Assuming she would've found him. Then you start wondering about: There is this thing where the stress of seeing someone die that could have triggered a natural death in her.”

Gill floated another possibility that Betsy died first and Gene "found her and was going out to get help or get his phone, and he then collapsed from the stress of that, too. Just as likely. He's older, he’s got known heart disease. But the autopsy would certainly show if she had heart disease or cancer or what have you.”

He suggested a “kind of a broken heart-type thing, almost," that's been "known to happen."

“Suddenly finding your loved one dead on the floor that can increase your adrenaline and that stimulates your heart to beat faster, and that can put your heart into an irregular rhythm,” he said.

In the final theory, Gill suggested after finding a loved one dead, “people get very despondent and they do something to take their own life, and that may be with pills or what have you. I think the toxicology workup will be helpful in excluding causes such as an intoxication or injuries.”

The toxicology report is expected to take several weeks...

THE KENNEDY CONSPIRACY: JACK RUBY

Delving into any aspect of the November 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy is an ambitious and even perilous endeavor. So much has been said and studied: thousands of pages of scientific evidence, hundreds of witness accounts including some that have evolved over fifty-plus years, numerous government investigations and literally thousands of books. It has long been difficult for so many to believe that Lee Harvey Oswald, who had previously defected to Russia, killed Kennedy acting alone and that less than two days later, Jack Ruby, with his loose ties to the Dallas underworld, also acting alone, so easily killed Oswald. Dozens of conspiracy theories about who “really” assassinated JFK have abounded and become a booming and seemingly limitless business. After all, an angry and broadly anti-government Oswald pulling off the assassination of the century isn’t nearly as intriguing as the Mafia, CIA, FBI, Fidel Castro, the Russians, or even Lyndon Johnson leading the effort.

In almost every single Gallup poll taken in the decades since Kennedy’s death, a majority of Americans, across all demographic and political lines, were convinced that Oswald was part of a broader conspiracy to kill the president. Of course, if Oswald was part of any orchestrated plan to kill Kennedy, it also significantly increases the probability that Jack Ruby was involved in the assassination, as well.

The intrigue has been exacerbated by the fact that some significant information connected to the case still remains under seal. In 2017, as required by a law passed twenty-five years earlier, more documents and information were finally released. But like everything Kennedy assassination related, the new material presented as many questions as answers. For the first time the public saw a memo apparently dictated by then FBI director J. Edgar Hoover the night of Oswald’s death: “The thing I am concerned about…is having something issued so we can convince the public that Oswald is the real assassin.”

In that same memo, Hoover mentioned a specific threat to Oswald’s life: “Last night we received a call in our Dallas office from a man talking in a calm voice and saying he was a member of a committee organized to kill Oswald,” Hoover wrote. “We at once notified the chief of police and he assured us Oswald would be given sufficient protection. This morning we called the chief of police again warning of the possibility of some effort against Oswald and again he assured us adequate protection would be given. However, this was not done… Oswald having been killed today after our warnings to the Dallas Police Department was inexcusable.”

About Jack Ruby, who had been arrested instantly for killing Oswald, Hoover said, “We have no information on Ruby that is firm, although there are some rumors of underworld activity in Chicago.”

For many, understanding Jack Ruby, his background, travel and associates, became the key to blowing open the conspiracy. For example, one author and former high-ranking official in the administration of Richard Nixon has said that in 1982 Nixon recalled hiring Ruby as an informant for the House Un-American Activities Committee when Nixon was a member of Congress. The official, who believes Lyndon Johnson was the architect of the assassination, claimed Nixon said he hired Ruby at the behest of LBJ, one of “Johnson’s boys.” A document presumably from a congressional staffer in 1947 even sought to prevent Jack Rubenstein (Ruby’s given name was Rubenstein) from having to testify in front of the committee in public. “It is my sworn statement that one Jack Rubenstein of Chicago noted as a potential witness for hearings of the House Committee on Un-American Activities is performing information functions for the staff of Cong. Richard M. Nixon, Rep. Of California. It is requested Rubenstein not be called for open testimony in those aforementioned hearings.”

Putting aside the paucity of support for any theory that Johnson was somehow involved, some dispute the authenticity of the document; others more persuasively argue that the Jack Rubenstein referred to in the document was a prominent young communist of the same name who later became a labor union official. But perhaps most importantly, the source of the supposed Johnson connection came from a former Nixon official named Roger Stone, who was convicted, and then pardoned by former President Donald Trump of a host of crimes including lying to Congress. But this sort of conspiracy rabbit hole is familiar terrain for many Kennedy assassination buffs.

Even those with mundane intentions can get caught up in the desire to find that tantalizing Ruby connection that could break open the case. There would be no more certain way to do so than by offering proof of a connection between Oswald and Ruby who according to every official account did not know one another. Texas Judge Brandon Birmingham, an expert on the Ruby trial, had access to many of the original documents and pieces of evidence in that trial, which were stored at the Dallas courthouse. He described digging through the files as part of an effort to find and preserve evidence for a local museum. There, he made a startling finding: “One day, I found a transcript of a tape-recorded conversation between Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby from days before the assassination. I nearly had a heart attack.”

If this transcript was authenticated, it would have proved that these two critical figures who supposedly had each acted alone and did not know one another, were actually part of a larger conspiracy to kill the president. “For about 30 minutes, I thought I’d uncovered a single piece of evidence that would have rewritten the history books.”

It certainly would have done just that. Alas, it was not meant to be. He “realized it was a part of a movie script written in the ’70s. In my defense, it did look like an official transcript, numbered margins and all.”

In retrospect, it is fair to say that the official and often under-appreciated 888-page Warren Commission report, which ruled out any possible conspiracies, missed some details and got certain facts wrong. The FBI and CIA were partially responsible since both had Oswald on their radar—even though not as a threat to the president—and sought to minimize that fact. But did the report whiff on the ultimate question of whether Oswald and then Ruby acted alone?

That question certainly was in our minds when we decided to further examine one of the most interesting and often over-looked trials of modern American history. A forgotten trial somehow few have focused on despite the fact that it served as the genesis or launching pad for many of the conspiracy theories. Sometimes in the form of testimony, and many other times with questions left unanswered. And while the trial wasn’t about a possible conspiracy, the issue was forever lurking within the halls of the courthouse and the courtroom itself. Both sides sought to use the possibility of there being “more to the story” for strategic advantage.

It has even been alleged that the defense team was involved in the conspiracy, that Ruby’s lead attorney, Melvin Belli, then considered the nation’s greatest legal showman, was part of an effort to ensure that Ruby was actually convicted. Neither David Fisher nor I take that seriously, but we did differ on the strategy employed by the defense. This was not an easy case, but I believe Belli did Ruby a disservice with the defense he chose and yet David felt Belli generally made a compelling case. So keep an eye out for the subtleties in our agreed upon characterizations of the defense and decide for yourself.

This is our fourth book together, where we have tried to tell the story of an overlooked trial while tracking the evolution of the American legal system, from the Boston Massacre trial, to defense attorney Abraham Lincoln and defendant Theodore Roosevelt, to The State of Texas v. Jack Rubenstein. By the time this trial took place in 1964, the once streamlined trial system had expanded to include a great variety of different legal paths, from pretrial hearings through appeals. More than just stories about trials with great repercussions, these books have been an exploration of the American legal system, in all its glories and complexities.

In the end, when examining this trial and Jack Ruby’s role, re-member that fate played a role. If Oswald had not paused to put on a black sweater over his shirt before being transported that fateful day, or if Ruby had not agreed to wire $25 to a woman who worked in his club, history would have been changed forever...

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