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Ep 77: LBJ (Part 8)

  • Matt Crumpton
  • Aug 13
  • 14 min read

Pilots, The 1964 Ticket, and the Murchison Party

 

Over the last seven episodes, we’ve studied the life and times of Lyndon Baines Johnson, the man who would ascend from the Vice Presidency to become the 36th chief executive of the United States when President John F. Kennedy was murdered in broad daylight on November 22, 1963.

 

I had previously said this would be our final episode of the LBJ series. But, to get all of the information in and provide a meaningful conclusion, we’re going to need a 9th installment on LBJ, which will be out next week.

 

In this 8th episode of the series, we continue our analysis of Lyndon Johnson by looking at Johnson’s order to his pilots to fly his plane in bad weather, the likelihood that Johnson would have been removed from the 1964 presidential ticket if JFK had lived, Madeleine Brown’s claim about the alleged party at the Murchison home the night before the assassination, and Barr McClellan’s assertion that Johnson’s attorney, Ed Clark, was a central figure in the assassination.

 

LBJ Gets His Pilots Killed

 

On February 17, 1961, about a month after being sworn in as Vice President, Lyndon Johnson called for his airplane pilots to pick him up at his ranch in the Texas hill country along the Pedernales river. The pilots had stayed overnight in Austin the previous day. Pilot Harold Teague told Johnson that it would be extremely dangerous to fly because of the weather and because there were no ground control instruments on the landing strip at the Johnson ranch.

 

According to author James Evetts Haley, Johnson is said to have QUOTE “exploded, venting his profanity upon the pilot, demanding to know, ‘what do you think I’m paying you for?” And telling Teague to QUOTE “get that plane to the ranch!”[1] According to Barr McClellan, who we’ll get to later in this episode, Johnson’s urgency was because he had to visit with Billie Sol Estes in person regarding Henry Marshall’s ongoing investigation.[2] The timeline would fit, but, I could not find any corroboration for that idea.

 

Teague, the pilot, called his wife before the flight and told her that he had been ordered to make the flight. When the pilots searched for the runway through the fog, they couldn’t see it, and there was no technology on the ground to help them find it. The two pilots were killed instantly when the plane crashed into a rocky hillside about seven miles from Vice President Johnson’s ranch.[3] Johnson told the Rocky Mountain News, QUOTE “I’ve lost the best pilot in the world and two wonderful friends. If they had been thirty feet higher they would’ve missed [the hill].”[4]

 

Even with a tragedy that was caused by Johnson’s selfish disregard of aviation safety protocols, Johnson still found a way to blame the incident on the pilots.[5]

 

LBJ On the 1964 Ticket?

 

Between the Billie Sol Estes scandal, the Bobby Baker scandal, the Don Reynolds testimony, and the general acrimony between Johnson and the Kennedys, an important historical question is, ‘if President Kennedy had lived, would Lyndon Johnson have been invited to run on the 1964 Presidential ticket, or would he have been replaced?’

 

An October 29th, 1963 Newsday article on the Bobby Baker scandal said that the Justice Department started the investigation to embarrass Johnson so that he would not be on the 1964 ticket, according to unnamed sources.[6]

 

In a press conference two days later, President Kennedy was asked whether he wanted Johnson on the ticket and whether he expected that Johnson would be on the ticket. Kennedy responded QUOTE “Yes, to both of those questions. That is correct.”[7] So, the last time Kennedy publicly spoke on the issue, he said that Johnson would be on the ticket. However, the president’s statement did not accurately reflect what was going on behind the scenes.  

 

You may recall that when Bobby Baker was being investigated by the Senate in the Fall of 1963, it was Attorney General Robert Kennedy who was providing information about Baker to Senator John Williams, who was leading the investigation. RFK even assigned a Justice Department lawyer to supply the committee with information about Johnson and Baker’s financial dealings.[8]

 

Burkett Van Kirk was the chief counsel for the Republicans on the Senate Rules Committee during these investigations. Van Kirk told author Seymour Hersh that Bobby Kennedy’s motive in providing this information to the Republicans was QUOTE “To get rid of Johnson. To dump him. I am as sure of that as I am that the sun comes up in the East….There’s no doubt that Reynold’s testimony would have gotten Johnson out of the vice presidency.”[9]

 

Colonel Howard Burris, who was Johnson’s military aide, told historian John Newman that Lyndon Johnson knew he was going to be thrown off the ticket.[10] Evelyn Lincoln, President Kennedy’s personal secretary said that the president discussed the Bobby Baker investigation with her and told her that Lyndon Johnson would not be his running mate. This conversation was just two days before the president left Washington for his 1963 Texas Trip.[11] Similarly, President Kennedy mentioned that he was leaning towards not keeping Johnson on the ticket to North Carolina governor Terry Sanford.[12] Hubert Humphrey also said that he heard Bobby Kennedy was plotting Johnson’s ouster from the 1964 ticket.[13] On November 22nd, the Dallas Morning News ran an article with the title “Nixon Predicts Kennedy May Drop Johnson.”[14]

 

Conversely, Bobby Kennedy said during oral history interviews that there was no plan to drop Johnson. It should be noted, that those statements were made while Johnson was the sitting president and when Bobby had political ambitions of his own.[15] So, while it remains a somewhat disputed issue, we can safely say that public statements were to the effect that LBJ would not be dropped, but behind closed doors, those in the know were of the opinion that Johnson would not have remained on the 1964 presidential ticket, if John F. Kennedy had survived Dallas.

 

Madeleine Brown

 

We can’t say that we have fully covered the JFK Assassination related allegations against Lyndon Johnson without discussing Johnson’s alleged mistress, Madeleine Brown.

 

On November 5, 1982, during a meeting of the Dallas Press Club, Brown stood up and announced to the room that she had an extramarital relationship with Lyndon Johnson from 1948 until 1967.[16] She claims to have caught Johnson’s eye at a 1948 party associated with his radio station, KTBC, and says that the next time she saw Johnson, their affair began.[17]

 

Brown is most known for the claims that she made about Johnson related to the JFK Assassination. Here’s what she said in the documentary series, The Men Who Killed Kennedy:  

 

Lyndon called me from the Texas Hotel and he was still irate. I said, Lyndon, about last night, and he went to cursing (he used foul language all the time) and he said ‘Those Kennedys, they will never embarrass me again. That’s no threat. That’s a promise.” And I’d like the entire world to know how I personally feel, it’s the fact that Lyndon Johnson knew about the assassination and was a part of it.[18]

 

…I met Lyndon on New Year’s Eve at the Driskoll Hotel in Austin. And the people in Dallas, I mean, everyone was talking about Lyndon Johnson was the cause of the assassination. And it made my heart very heavy. I just couldn’t believe that he could be a part of something so bad. So, I confronted Lyndon. I said, Lyndon, you’ve got to tell me, were you part of the assassination. And, of course, he had a high tempered fit, hit the wall, and he was very irate and angry. And he said “No, I was not, but the oil people, he called them the fat cats of Texas that I knew and intelligence was the cause of the assassination.”[19]

 

So, Madeleine Brown says that she had an affair with Johnson and that he admitted that the assassination was not done by a lone nut, but instead was a plot between Texas fat cats and intelligence. But, Brown is perhaps best known for her story about a party at Clint Murchison’s house on the night before the assassination with an impressive guest list.

 

‘We had H.L. Hunt, Murchison, Lyndon Johnson made an appearance, we had Hoover, we had Richard Nixon. They were the most influential people there. But, I was under the impression that, since J. Edgar Hoover was there, it was to honor Hoover, rather than anything else.

 

When Lyndon came in, no one was expecting him. So, when Lyndon arrived at Clint Murchison’s they all went into a conference room. And you could just feel the atmosphere. When Lyndon came out, I was, of course, happy to see him. I did not know that he was going to be there. And he whispered in my ear at that time “those blankety blank Kennedys will never embarrass me again. That’s no threat. That’s a promise.” So, he departed the party and the party rapidly broke up after Lyndon departed.’[20]

 

This is a huge claim that Brown is making. She’s saying that the night before the assassination Lyndon Johnson met with Richard Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover, along with Texas oil tycoons like Hunt and Murchison, and that during that party there was a private meeting, which appeared to be about the assassination because Johnson came out of the meeting saying that the Kennedy’s would never embarrass him again.

 

Brown is not alone in asserting that this party with big name VIPs happened the night before the assassination. A woman named May Newman, who worked in another house for Virginia Murchison, Clint Sr.’s second wife, also supports Brown’s claim. Here’s what she had to say:

 

I remember well the night before the assassination. I worked with a man called Jewel Pfeiffer, a black man, who was Virginia Murchison’s chauffeur. He got a call from her step-son, John, at the big house. They were having a big party for a very special guest that was coming from Washington to go to the party, by the name of Bulldog, which I found out later was J. Edgar Hoover. And he said he was very excited to go to the airport to take this guest to a very special party. And I asked him if he got a good tip and he said, “No” and he was very upset.

 

He had to go back that night to take J. Edgar Hoover to the airport to go back to Washington. And he still didn’t get a tip.

 

Further verification of Hoover’s presence in Dallas, came from a friend of May’s who worked at the Murchison family home. Beulah May Holman, she was the cook at John and Lupe’s house. She wanted me to help her that night, which I didn’t. But, she told me she was cooking Quail and I wanted the recipe, so she gave it to me. She said that a very important guest by the name of J. Edgar Hoover was coming and I should go out to help so I could get to meet him. If he was a film star, I probably would have gone, but I didn’t know who he was. No, not at that time.[21]

 

So, May Newman claims that two other people told her about the party – and, specifically, the fact that J. Edgar Hoover was attending. There’s the chauffeur, Jewel Pfeiffer, who says he went to pick up Hoover at the airport and then take him back later that night, and that he didn’t get a tip either time. And, then there’s Beulah May Holeman, the cook, who also said Hoover was coming to the party. Wearing my lawyer hat, the first thing that comes to mind is that May Newman did not have personal knowledge of either of these facts. She merely relayed what other people told her. And we have no other corroboration for those two stories. Still, standing alone, the fact that Newman says this, tends to support the existence of an assassination eve party with J. Edgar Hoover.

 

Brown Counterpoints

 

However, there are several counterpoints to Madeleine Brown and May Newman’s claims. First, there seems to be confusion about where the party happened. For May Newman’s story to make sense, the party would have been held at John Murchison’s house (one of Clint Sr’s sons and the brother of Clint, Jr.) – not Clint Murchison, Sr’s house. Beulah May Holeman, who told May Newman about the dinner party for Hoover, was a cook for John Murchison and his wife, Lupe, at their house.[22] Clint Murchison, Sr.’s closest home to Dallas was in Glad Oaks, Texas – south of Athens, Texas.

 

Now, let’s look at what we know about the whereabouts of each of these men on the evening of November 21st, 1963. First, Clint Murchison, Sr. was at his home at Glad Oaks the night before the assassination – and there was no party - according to Eula Tilley, who was a cook for Murchison, Sr. at the time.[23]

 

Another person who Brown says was at the Murchison party was H.L. Hunt. But, Hunt’s assistant, John Curington says that H.L. Hunt was not present. If Hunt would have attended such a party, Curington says that he would have been Hunt’s driver. And Curington definitively states that there was no such party on the night before the assassination.[24]

 

As for Richard Nixon, it is true that he was in Dallas on the night before the assassination. After Nixon lost the 1962 election for California governor, he went to work as a corporate lawyer, and Pepsi, one of his clients, was having its annual bottlers convention in Dallas that week.[25] Dallas Morning News entertainment reporters, Tony Zoppi and Don Safron claim that they saw Nixon at the Empire Room at the Statler Hilton Hotel on the Thursday night before the assassination. Nixon was with actress, Joan Crawford. Entertainer, Robert Clary (of Hogan’s Heroes), stopped the show to point Nixon out. The reporters left around 10:45pm. And when they did, Nixon was still there.[26]

 

As for Lyndon Johnson, he was in Houston on Thursday night and his flight into Fort Worth landed at 11:07pm. The motorcade arrived at the Hotel Texas at 11:50. There is a photograph of Johnson entering the hotel just after the motorcade’s arrival.[27] If the party was at Clint Murchison, Sr.’s home, which is not possible according to the cook, Eula Tilley, Johnson would have had to drive 2 hours, which means that he would have arrived around 2 am in Glad Oaks. If the party was at John and Lupe Murchison’s home on Ash Bluff Lane in Dallas, Johnson would have arrived at 1am at the earliest. However, that would assume that Johnson left immediately after the photo was taken of him at Hotel Texas in Fort Worth.[28]

 

Note that Brown said she was already at the party when Johnson arrived and that she was surprised that he was there. Are we to believe that Madeleine Brown was invited to a party at the Murchison home, or Ranch – whichever it was, without Lyndon Johnson? It’s hard for me to understand how she could have been at this rather important party alone without Johnson.

 

The Murchison Party was first reported by early JFK assassination researcher, Penn Jones, Jr. in his book Forgive My Grief, Volume 3. Jones claims that both Nixon and Hoover were present at Clint Murchison Sr.’s home. He does not mention any other attendees at this party. Jones ends the section on the Murchison party with QUOTE “Admittedly, our information about Hoover’s presence was learned second hand, but it is reliable. We will never tell how we got the information.”[29]

 

In Penn Jones’ book, in the same section where he mentions the assassination party, he talks about an article written by Val Imm for the Dallas Times Herald - about a party that happened in 1969 thrown by Clint Murchison Jr.’s wife. Madeleine Brown would later state that Val Imm wrote a story about the Murchison party the night before the assassination. But when Brown asked Imm to find the story, she said it didn’t exist. It could be a coincidence, but Brown mentioning Val Imm’s story seems to be proof that she was at least aware of Penn Jones book, and that she misunderstood the timeline of the Val Imm story.[30]

 

Given what we just covered about the original reporting of Penn Jones, combined with the fact that Hunt, Nixon, and Clint Murchison, Sr. all had alibis, and Johnson would not have arrived until 1am to the party at the extreme earliest, it seems clear to me that the most likely scenario is that Madeleine Brown made this party up. Now, we do have the word of May Newman and that is worth something. But, Newman never saw anything with her own eyes. Instead, she spoke to the chauffeur and the chef at John Murchison’s home. The burden of proof for a big claim like this is on the party asserting the claim. And, aside from Newman, and whoever Penn Jones’ anonymous source was, there is no independent corroboration for the Murchison Party.

 

Separate from the issue of whether the Murchison party actually happened, is the question of whether Brown had a child that was fathered by Lyndon Johnson. Joan Mellen believed that Johnson was the father of Brown’s son, Steven Mark Brown.[31] If you look at photos of Steven Brown, there is a resemblance to Johnson. But, that’s no guaranty that he was Johnson’s son. Steven Mark Brown filed a paternity lawsuit against the Johnson estate for $10.5 million in 1987, but the case was dismissed after Brown failed to appear at a court hearing. The next year, Steven Brown died of cancer at age 39.[32]

 

The only evidence Brown has that she had a relationship with Lyndon Johnson is a photo of her and Johnson seated at a dinner party, with her back to Johnson.[33] While I believe it is possible that Brown had an affair with Johnson, and it’s even possible that Steven Brown was Johnson’s son, the failure to follow through on the litigation to prove this disputed fact is a real red flag.

 

Claims of Barr McClellan

 

Having covered Madeleine Brown, we must also address the claims of another Texan who says he had inside information about LBJ killing President Kennedy. Barr McClellan was an attorney at the Clark, Thomas, and Winters law firm from 1966 until 1977. The firm was named for Ed Clark, Lyndon Johnson’s personal attorney – the same one who bailed Mac Wallace out of jail in 1951.[34]

 

In 2003, McClellan wrote a book called Blood, Money & Power, in which he shared what he had been told about the JFK Assassination by senior partner, Don Thomas. McClellan was involved in drafting a research memo about whether LBJ’s physician was subject to the attorney-client privilege, which McClellan said was done to make sure that LBJ’s post-presidential psychiatry confessions could not be disclosed.[35] The primary first-hand information that McClellan has to share is that Don Thomas told him QUOTE “Clark handled all of that in Dallas.”[36] Years later, another partner at the firm, John Coates told McClellan QUOTE “If the truth be told, Clark arranged the assassination of Kennedy.”[37]

 

While these statements from partners at a firm that was LBJ’s law firm are disturbing and potentially point to Johnson’s involvement in the assassination, the challenge with McClellan’s book is that much of it is the author speculating about what he believes must have happened – without any evidentiary support. McClellan also relies heavily on the Sixth Floor Mac Wallace fingerprint, which can no longer be said to be credible based on the work of Bob Garrett.

 

NEXT TIME ON SOLVING JFK: We conclude our series on Lyndon Johnson with part 9. Was Lyndon Johnson just an innocent bystander who benefitted from the actions of a lone nut, or was he an active participant in the plot to kill President Kennedy?


[1] James Evetts Haley, A Texan Looks at Lyndon, at 249-250.

[2] Barr McClellan, Blood, Money & Power: How LBJ Killed JFK, at 249-250.

[3] Phillip Nelson, LBJ: The Mastermind of the JFK Assassination, at 207-208.

[5] Nelson at 208, Footnote. (It turns out that the airplane that was destroyed in the fatal crash, actually belonged to oil man John Mecom, who loaned Johnson the plane for the 1960 campaign. Johnson had retained the plane and was using it well after the election was over.)

[6] Newsday, October 29, 1963, Baker Scandal Quiz Opens Today

[8] Nelson at 256.

[9] Seymour Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot, at 407, 447. (This is not one continuous quote, but it is from the same interview, and I don’t have time (and it would sound awkward) to explain that in the podcast version.)

[10] Nelson at 314.

[11] Id. at 260, 314. 

[12] Id. at 314. 

[14] Nelson at 385.

[18] The Men Who Killed Kennedy, Part 9, at 26:00.

[19] Id. at 27:50.

[20] Id. at 22:23

[21] Id. at 24:07

[23] Id.

[24] John Curington, H.L. Hunt: Motive and Opportunity, at 105-106.

[31] Joan Mellen, Faustian Bargains, at 179.

[33] Id.

[35] Barr McClellan, Blood, Money & Power, at 3.

[36] Id. at 9.

[37] Id. at 11.

 
 
 

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