Conference to Explore New Revelations in JFK, RFK and MLK Assassinations

Conference Schedule

Some of the nation’s foremost experts on the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. will gather April 8-9 for a conference at Olney Central College.

Political Assassinations of the 1960s: New Revelations in the Murders of JFK, RFK and MLK will explore, in an academic setting, the deaths of these iconic leaders.

“The conference will feature an outstanding array of authors, researchers, historians, and educators who possess extensive knowledge on the subjects,” said OCC Assistant Professor and conference organizer David Denton. “They will discuss some of the new revelations that have come out including the newly declassified documents that were released in the last few years. It will be a fantastic weekend.”

The in-person event is free and open to the public. Those unable to attend can join via Zoom. The link may be accessed and purchased for $40 through www.projectjfk.com.

Featured Speakers

Brian Edwards

Brian Edwards has been researching the JFK assassination since 1969 and has interviewed many of the Dealey Plaza eyewitnesses; Dallas police and sheriff’s officers; Parkland doctors and medical personnel who were on duty at Bethesda Medical Center. He has given hundreds of presentations on the assassination and since 2001 has been a regular presenter at the JFK Lancer Conference in Dallas.

He holds a Master’s Degree in Criminal Justice from Washburn University and served as an adjunct instructor in Washburn’s criminal justice department from 1994 to 2003. From 1978 to 2001, Edwards served with distinction as a police officer with the Lawrence, Kansas Police   Department. During his career with the department, he was assigned as a field training officer; and was one of the department’s firearms instructors and a senior crime scene photographer.

His research on the Zapruder film has been cited in several books, including Assassination Science (1998); Murder in Dealey Plaza (2000); The Zapruder Film (2003) and The Hoax of the Century (2004). He is co-author of Beyond the Fence Line: The Eyewitness Account of Ed Hoffman and the Murder of President John Kennedy and is currently collaborating with first-generation researcher J. Gary Shaw on a new book.

In November 2017, Edwards testified as an expert witness for the defense in a mock trial of Lee Harvey Oswald at the North Texas School of Law in Houston, Texas. Edwards appears in Oliver Stone’s newest four-hour documentary on the assassination, JFK: Destiny Betrayed.

Mal Hyman

Mal Hyman is the author of Burying the Lead: The Media and the Assassination of President Kennedy (TrineDay Books, 2019). He has served as an associate professor of sociology at Coker College in Hartsville, S.C. since 1987 and is currently the Coordinator of the Political  Science Program. His past presentations have included Media and the Assassination of President Kennedy and Media Coverage of the Assassination of JFK.

Hyman holds a bachelor’s of arts degree in political science from the University of California, Los Angeles and a master’s of arts degree from the University of California, Riverside. He has an ABD from the University of South Carolina in Government and International Relations.

A distinguished educator, Hyman received the South Carolina Governor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1993. He was named Coker College’s Master Professor of the Year in 1992, 1999 and 2012. In 2004, Hyman received a Fulbright Scholarship to study in South Korea.

Brooks LaPlante

Brooks LaPlante is a former Indiana state legislator who has researched the JFK assassination for several decades. He owes his interest in the case to his Irish grandfather and to his mother who was born on November 22.

LaPlante spent most of his career as a manufacturing entrepreneur in the aluminum industry, and from 2005 to 2009 served on the Indiana State University Board of Trustees. In October 2007, he had the opportunity to engage Vincent Bugliosi while the author was on the ISU campus to present his book Reclaiming History. Perhaps he will share an interesting anecdote about that encounter.

LaPlante has narrowed his research to the JFK medical evidence and to the Harvey & Lee  duality as put forth by John Armstrong. His presentation is titled, Math Matters: The Origins of the Frontal Shots That Struck JFK.

David Knight

David Knight has been an academic researcher and lecturer on the murder of President John F. Kennedy since 1989. His is directly affiliated with noted author and teacher Casey J. Quinlan. Quinlan was Knight’s American History and Government teacher in the Olathe district school system in Kansas City. His history classes covered the Cold War and the assassination of  President Kennedy and opened Knight’s eyes to search for the truth in American history.

Knight has been studying the assassination of JFK for over 30 years. He has read more than 400 books; traveled to the scene of the crime over 20 times; has interviewed hundreds of key people and eyewitnesses involved with and around the JFK research community including fellow researchers. He has produced nine documentary films with Project JFK/CSI Dallas. 

He has produced two documentary films with author William Matson Law entitled The Gathering for his book In the Eye of History along with a DVD and Blu-ray version of the director’s cut. He is a member of JFK Lancer and has been its audio-visual technician and the producer of Lancer’s National and International Conference, November in Dallas (NID), since 2009. He has received numerous awards for his videography and film editing.

Knight is lecturing on key factors concerning conspiracy and cover-up. He believes that current research needs to return to the beginning of the assassination of President Kennedy and apply the “newly released documents” into this equation with new technology and a fresh set of eyes.

Dr. John Newman

Dr. John Newman is an adjunct professor of Political Science at James Madison University. He is a retired U.S. Army intelligence officer and served as military assistant to the Director, General William Odom, at the National Security Agency.

Newman is the author of JFK and Vietnam, Oswald and the CIA and Quest for the Kingdom: The Secret Teachings of Jesus in the Light of Yogic Mysticism. He is currently at work producing a series on the life, public service, and assassination of President Kennedy: Volume I, Where Angels Tread Lightly; Volume II, Into the Storm; and Volume III, Countdown to Darkness. Soon to be published (late Spring/early Summer, 2022) are: Volume IV, The Search for Popov’s Mole; and Volume V, Armageddon. A supplemental volume on America in the 1960s, with particular focus on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., will be completed before the end of this year. These projects reexamine sacred truths, introduce vital new facts, and challenge many commonly accepted assumptions and interpretations. Newman’s ongoing work demystifies our hidden history and illuminates the darkest passages of America in the Cold War. New doors are about to open. His works are history in the making.

Visit Dr. Newman’s website: https://jfkjmn.com.

Peter Hymans

Peter Hymans, aka “The Glass Gun,” is a Northern California “Baby Boomer” who agonized with the rest of the nation as the four days of the JFK assassination unfolded. At Whittier College, Hymans studied political science, photography and creative writing. As a writer/photographer for the college newspaper, he met and photographed Bobby Kennedy in Los Angeles — two days before his murder. The mishandling of the evidence around Bobby’s death spot-welded Hymans’ research passion into his life. He worked with several of the very early research pioneers.

Hymans is the official photographer for several conferences, where he is highly praised for his still photography and video interviews. His solution orientation and devotion to truth captivates and informs in a fresh way and without excessive detail. Hymans’ knowledge and insights around RFK’s killing and its current painful reverberations will be addressed on April 8th at our conference.

Ed Tatro

Ed Tatro holds a B.A. Degree in English from Boston University; a Master’s Degree in Urban Education from Boston State College; and a Certificate of Advanced Graduate Studies in Educational Administration from Boston State College. He taught high school English in Quincy, Mass., for 38 years, specializing in science fiction, mystery and horror; satire and comedy; creative writing; media and propaganda; the origin, history and poetry of rock music; and William Shakespeare’s Macbeth. He was an instructor at Quincy College and taught adult education courses for 30 years specializing in the JFK assassination; subliminal messages in advertising; the influence of rock music on drug abuse; backward messages in music; and plagiarism in music.

Tatro is the author of more than 30 mystery and horror short stories, literary essays, and poems published in many magazines across the country including Cat poems published in Cat Fancy and The Morris Report. He has offered presentations on the JFK assassination conspiracy at several high schools, private organizations and clubs, and many colleges including Harvard University, Boston University, Boston College, Bryant College, Suffolk University, Western New England College, University of Rhode Island, Massachusetts Maritime Academy as well as presentations in Dallas, Texas, New Orleans, La., Washington, D.C., and Olney, Ill., via COPA, (the Coalition on Political Assassinations), JFK Lancer and the JFK Historical Group.

Tatro is the author of many research articles pertaining to the JFK and RFK assassination conspiracies published in Jerry Rose’s The Third Decade, Penn Jones Jr.’s The Continuing Inquiry, and Ireland’s The JFK Assassination Forum. His work is acknowledged and footnoted in many JFK assassination books including Crossfire by Jim Marrs; Reasonable Doubt by Henry Hurt; Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover by Anthony Summers; Pictures of the Pain by Richard Trask; Destiny Betrayed by Jim DiEugenio; The Assassinations (Probe Magazine) by Jim DiEugenio and Lisa Pease; Reclaiming Parkland by Jim DiEugenio; The Kennedys: Dynasty and Disaster (paperback edition) by John H. Davis; Killing Kennedy by Harrison Livingstone; JFK: The Book of the Film by Oliver Stone and Zachary Sklar; LBJ: The Mastermind of the JFK Assassination (paperback edition) by Phil Nelson; LBJ: from Mastermind to the Colossus by Phil Nelson; David Ferrie by Judyth Vary Baker; Kennedy and Oswald by Judyth Vary Baker and Edward Schwartz; Doug Weldon’s essay in Murder in Dealey Plaza edited by James Fetzer; Self-Portrait of a Scoundrel by Chauncey Holt; Survivor’s Guilt by Vincent Palamara; and JFK and the Unspeakable by James Douglass and many others.

Tatro contributed research leads to James Douglass’ forthcoming book about the Robert F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy and he was the original editor of Texas in the Morning, the memoirs of LBJ’s mistress, Madeleine     Duncan Brown, who considered Tatro her “adopted Yankee son.” Tatro is the editor of the Vincent Bugliosi chapter in Biting the Elephant by Dr. Rodger Remington and assistant editor of Judyth Vary Baker’s Letters to the Cyborg, a science fiction short-story collection published by Trine Day. He contributed an extensive foreword entitled, A Cozy Little Town Called Dallas, to the book, The Deep State in the Heart of Texas by Richard Bartholomew. Tatro also contributed the Preface to Remember the Liberty: Almost Sunk by Treason on the High Seas by Phil Nelson. He is acknowledged and author of part of the Prologue in Who Really Killed Martin Luther King Jr.: the Case Against Lyndon Baines Johnson and J. Edgar Hoover by Phil Nelson.

Tatro contributed the foreword entitled Lyndon Baines Johnson: The Charlatan Liberal, to the softcover edition of Who Really Killed Martin Luther King Jr.: the Case Against Lyndon Baines Johnson and J. Edgar Hoover by Phil Nelson. He is also author of multiple articles published in S.T. Patrick’s magazine, Garrison: the Journal of History and Deep Politics, including JFK: Assassination and Predestination, Earl Ruby, Jim Southwood, The Radical Right and the NSA, Lee Harvey Oswald’s Unresolved Pile, LBJ and the Bounty Hunter, Jack Ruby Tried to Snitch, Wait Until Dark — A Sleuth’s Delight from the Sixties, Mr. Eddie, Amontillado, Tragedies, Scandals, and Spooky Legends, along with the two political poems, Hailstones to the Chief (about LBJ) and The Bicentennial Boo Boo (about Richard Nixon).

Tatro edited Unqualified Soldier, an article by Jim Manning for Garrison magazine (June 2021) and What the JFK Files Tell Us, an article by Professor David Denton for Garrison magazine (November 2021). He contributed to and is acknowledged in Denton’s Essays on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, published in 2020. Tatro also is acknowledged in Voices in the Shadows: Witnesses to John F. Kennedy’s Life and Death by Sara Peterson and K.W. Zachry.

Tatro contributed research in the 1970s to Senator Sam Ervin’s Watergate Investigative Committee, The House Select Committee on Assassinations and the National Academy of Sciences (JFK assassination acoustical analysis project.) He attended Clay Shaw’s trial for one week in New Orleans, in February 1969 at age 22, and was given access to the court exhibits by Judge Edward Haggerty.

Tatro testified before the Assassination Records Review Board in March 1995 at the Massachusetts State House in Boston. He is responsible, via his ARRB testimony, for the release of the unidentified fingerprint on a box in the alleged sniper’s perch in the Texas School Book Depository Building. He also is responsible, via the LBJ library, for the release of the rough drafts of the rough draft of National Security Action Memorandum No. 273, (NSAM #273), which he shared with Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty, who shared them with Oliver Stone for post JFK research.

Tatro received the Justice for Lee Harvey Oswald Award at the JFK Assassination Conference in Dallas, Texas in November 2017 and the Ed “Treefrog” Sherry Award at the JFK Assassination Conference in Dallas, Texas in November 2019.

Tatro served as a consultant to Nigel Turner’s The Truth Shall Make You Free, Part VI of The Men Who Killed Kennedy series, broadcast on The History Channel in November 1995. He was a consultant for Part VII, The Smoking Guns and the primary recruiter and participant in Part IX, The Guilty Men, which both aired in November 2003.Tatro also was a minor consultant to Oliver Stone’s film, JFK.

Tatro is currently writing Urgency to Kill, the Complicity of Lyndon Baines Johnson, His Handlers and Cronies, in the Conspiracy to Assassinate President John F. Kennedy. He is also searching for a publisher for his work Beasties, a collection of 35 science-fiction, mystery and horror short stories.

Casey Quinlan

Casey Quinlan was born and raised in the greater Kansas City area and has been a high school American History and Government teacher for the past 40 years. He served in the U.S. Army with the 9th Infantry as a combat medical corpsman during the Vietnam War. He has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Social Studies and a Master’s Degree in American History from Emporia State University in Kansas. He is the director of Project JFK/CSI Dallas, a student-oriented educational experience designed for high school, college and adults exploring the murder of President Kennedy.

Quinlan has been the featured lecturer at many universities throughout the Midwest, including; the Alf Landon Lecture Series at Kansas State University; The William Allen White School of Journalism at the University of Kansas; The Student Lecture Series at Pittsburg State University in Pittsburg, Kan., and Student Activities at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, Kan. He has served as a historical lecturer, on a number of occasions, for the Kansas State Historical Society in Topeka, Kan., and Johnson County Community College.

In 1991, Quinlan was a guest historian for the A & E Network and the History Channel for Oliver Stone’s blockbuster movie, JFK. He was named Outstanding Educator in 1994, 2008, 2011 and 2014 by JFK Lancer, a national research organization. From 1995 to 2014, he was an adjunct instructor at Friends University in Wichita, Kan.; Ottawa University in Ottawa, Kan.; Mid America Nazarene University in Olathe, Kan., and Washburn University in Topeka, Kan. In 2007, he presented Beyond the Fence Line: The Ed Hoffman Story at the National JFK Lancer Conference in Dallas, Texas. His first publication, Beyond the Fence Line: The Eyewitness Testimony of Ed Hoffman and the Murder of President Kennedy, continues to be a best seller.

Quinlan has been studying the murder of President Kennedy for more than 50 years and has read more than 1,260 books and publications about this National Tragedy. He has been a featured lecturer at the JFK Lancer National Conference since 2004. He received the JFK Lancer 2011 and 2012 New Frontier Award for continued efforts to write and inform students of the truth behind the murder of JFK.

His national lecture series entitled, On The Right Side of History, includes these electronic books: The Eyes of   Texas, [Part 1 & 2] (2011), which unveils the people behind the murder of President Kennedy; Lee Oswald: The Great Coca-Cola Caper (2012), which explains Oswald’s location during the murder of President Kennedy; The Edge of Apocalypse: Cold War, Cold Warriors, Cold Blooded Murder! (2014), which explains who killed JFK and why; Guardians of the Republic: The Men and the Institutions who Murdered JFK (2016); Grave Injustice: Facilitating the Autopsy of President Kennedy and Institutionalizing its Cover-Up (2017) and Frontier Justice: U.S. Intelligence Instruments (2018); The Executive Action Program and QJ/WIN Project.

J. Gary Shaw

J. Gary Shaw is a retired architect from Cleburne, Texas and a first-generation assassination researcher, who began studying the case on November 22, 1963. In 1966 after reading Penn Jones Jr.’s Forgive My Grief, Volume 1, Shaw met with Jones and the two became close friends and colleagues. Shaw wrote several articles for Jones’ newspaper, The Midlothian Mirror.

In 1976, Shaw and researcher Larry Ray Harris published Cover-Up: The Governmental Conspiracy to Conceal the Facts About the Public Execution of John Kennedy. Shaw, along  with Larry Howard and Bud Fensterwald, co-founded the JFK Assassination Information Center in Dallas. Shaw was an officer and director of the Assassination Archives and Research Center in Washington, D.C.

In 1992, Shaw and Parkland hospital doctor Charles Crenshaw wrote JFK: Conspiracy of Silence which quickly became a New York Times best seller. Recently, Shaw began providing his personal assassination collection to Project JFK/CSI Dallas for research purposes.

David Denton

David Denton has served as a social science professor at Olney Central College since 1990. In 2001, he began teaching a course on political assassinations of the 1960s, which explores the deaths of President John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. Denton became interested in the JFK assassination in the late 1980s and for two decades has attended historical symposiums on the subject in Dallas, Texas. He has interviewed several people associated with the case and has researched hundreds of documents related to both Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald.

In 2013, Denton helped organize a two-day event at OCC marking the 50th anniversary of Kennedy’s death. The conference brought together nationally-known academics, scholars and authors to lend their perspectives on the events leading up to and following the assassination. In 2014, Denton organized and participated in a national conference in Washington, D.C. focusing on the Warren Commission Report.

Denton has authored several articles based on his extensive research. A collection, Essays on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, was published by Midnight Writer News and is available at www.lulu.com and JFKHistorical.com.

Denton has given numerous presentations on the JFK assassination across Illinois and Indiana at both public libraries and forums. He participated in the Illinois Humanities Council speakers’ bureau from 1995 to 2002, giving presentations on Oswald, the JFK assassination and the Vietnam War.

Denton holds both bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Eastern Illinois University. He was the 1999 recipient of the OCC Alumnus Award.

Robert Groden

Robert Groden has been researching the assassination of President John F. Kennedy since 1964 and is considered a leading critic of the Warren Commission. Groden has assembled the most photographic and film evidence on the case. He has also investigated the medical evidence and personally interviewed most of the medical professionals present that day.

In 1975, Groden showed the Zapruder film live on national television (Good Night America, ABC TV). As a result, he was invited to address the U.S. House of Representatives to present the case for conspiracy via photographic and other evidence. Two days later, a resolution to reopen the investigation was introduced by Representative Thomas N. Downing of Virginia. This led to the creation of the House Select Committee to Investigate Assassinations. Groden was the staff photographic consultant for the life of the committee. He authored the dissenting opinion report for the HSCA photographic panel. He has consulted with other investigations since then.

Groden has written eight books on the assassination. He has consulted on numerous documentaries over the years. He worked with Oliver Stone on JFK. Groden continues to investigate the assassination as he feels that “although it may be too late for justice, it is never too late for the truth.”

Randy Benson

Randy Benson is the director, producer and editor of The Searchers. His work has garnered numerous awards, most notably an Academy Award for Best Student Documentary from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Benson received an Eastman Kodak Excellence in Filmmaking Award at the Cannes Film Festival and a First Appearance Award at the International Documentary Film Festival.

He has been an instructor of film and video at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University for over a decade, and he serves on Award Juries at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham, N.C., and the Let’s All Be Free Film Festival in London, U.K.

Larry Rivera

Larry Rivera is Chairman of the Oswald Innocence Campaign. He was born in Alaska, the son of a career military man who served as a CID officer in the Army. He was 6 years old and living in Germany on November 22, 1963. He still remembers his father’s reaction upon hearing of JFK’s assassination. Rivera has made a lifelong study of the JFK assassination, making his first trip to Dealey Plaza in 1991. He attended the ASK Symposium in 1993 for the 30th anniversary.

Rivera has given interviews about the assassination to Spanish media. He has published many articles on the assassination and has many YouTube videos covering his research. He has given presentations for the OIC, Dr. James Fetzer’s Santa Barbara JFK Conference 2013, on the 50th observance of the assassination, covering the topic of Buell Wesley Frazier. He also was a presenter at TrineDay’s and Judyth Vary Baker’s 2014 JFK conference in Arlington, Texas focusing on the DPD Motorcycle Officers. For Vary Baker’s JFK assassination conferences in 2016 and 2017, he discussed the Doorway Man and Dealey Plaza.

Rivera has a degree in computer networking and is an expert at computer imaging technology and facial recognition, using state-of-the-art digital overlays. He translated Judyth Vary Baker’s book, Me and Lee into Spanish, Lee y Yo. Rivera is the author of The JFK Horseman: Framing Lee, Altering the Algens6 and Resolving Other Mysteries.

Ryan Jones

Ryan Jones is a historian for the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tenn., created on the site of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. His responsibility requires providing the validity of museum interpretation and reviewing scholarly historical content shared by the site.

Jones attended the University of Tennessee at Martin and the University of Memphis. He has presented at numerous conferences on topics including the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., and the civil rights movement.

Chana Gail S. Willis

Chana Gail S. Willis has spoken at several conferences, public and private venues and to students on the JFK topic and her dad’s 91-year life story, from the blackland prairies of cotton fields in Dallas County to making camera lenses for space satellites to equipping U2 spy planes with aerial photo equipment.

Willis is the daughter of Freddie Philmon “Phil” Spainhouer (1923-2014). Phil served in the U.S. Navy from 1941 to 1965. He worked with Photo Intelligence, ONI, CIA, FBI, Aerial Film Company, Dallas Police Department and Dallas Fire Department. He led the awarded VAP 62-photo recon mission over Cuba during Cold War I in the early 1960s. Phil’s last duty was aboard the USS Enterprise with John McCain and the 6th Fleet in the Spring of 1963, during the heightened tensions with Russia.

Phil survived an airplane crash in the Antarctic on the second day of Operation Deepfreeze I (1955 to 1956). As an Old Antarctic Pioneer, he was with the first group of men to ever winter over on the southern continent as members of the advance party building a permanent base at McMurdo Sound, under Admiral E.R. Zumalt and Admiral Dufek.  Byrd’s cousin, Harold “Dry Hole” Byrd, owned the TSBD.

After retiring from the Navy on November 23, 1963, Phil wrote and told his daughter and wife he continued intelligence work while holding civilian and civil service jobs. Willis, as a teenager in 1976 to 1978, even assisted her father in his photo lab at Dallas City Hall, learning how to develop film, make new negatives from spliced originals, and process some of the DPD evidence duplication for the HSCA.

As a historian and writer, Willis gave the memorial eulogy for President Kennedy in Dallas’s Dealey Plaza on November 22, 2021. Her son has previously played Taps for the men who served with his grandfather in Tulagi Bay during WWII. Willis has worked in business administration, economics and publishing for over four decades, including serving as Investor Relations Director of Dallas Semiconductor, Executive Editor of The Winnsboro News, Executive Editor of McKinney Living Magazine, and owner/publisher of the Whitewright Rose newspaper.

Willis, the wife of retired SFC David “Tex’ Willis, U.S. Army, was honorably inducted into the Order of St. Joan d’Arc for top volunteerism for the U.S. Cavalry and Armor Association. She is a recipient of the Yellow Rose of Texas, presented by Gov. Rick Perry for exceptional volunteerism to the Texas Military Forces family program.

Willis’ seasoned expertise in static and digital photographic forensics and research has assisted in solving various crimes, from active missing persons successfully rescued to first responder on scene photography for evidence collection, reports and legal proceedings.

A 1983 graduate of Texas Tech University, Willis has a background in Business Administration and Finance, State of Texas economics development and real estate. She also has additional training from TEEKs/Texas A&M as a Public Information Officer.

Willis’ presentation provides an update on two previous public releases from her 2017 speech Chana Gail Willis: Her Father’s Life Story on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awL_R3MODAE,  and materials presented by renowned researcher Ralph Thomas in his article Hidden Photographer Behind Picket Fence On The Grassy Knoll - Updated Confirmations & The Other Zapruder Film, located at this link: http://tiny.cc/5e1quz.x.

For more information, contact David Denton at 618-204-1498 or email dentond@iecc.edu.

The conference is sponsored and funded by the Olney Central College Foundation.