a conspiracy theory case study: John Melvin Liggett

John Melvin Liggett was in the USAF from 1951 to 1954. After leaving the Air Force, he commenced work at Restland Funeral Home.

It is here where we encounter the first possible problem with he history and stories presented in the 1990s by Nigel Turner and Billie Sol Estes and repeated ad nauseum since. 

The story goes that he was a master of facial reconstruction and was called to Parkland where, his ex-wife Lois surmised he was given the task of altering JFK's appearance and wounds. BSE apparently reinforces/endorses this opinion with similar ideas.

One of the issues is that Liggett was most often referred to as a "Mortician"... but that is not the same thing as an Embalmer - which is  the person responsible for preserving and presenting the body.  A Mortician is just another name for a Funeral Director. To be sure, both roles can be conducted by the same person, but that person would need to be trained and certified in both disciplines. 

That leads to the next issue... even if Liggett was trained and certified  in both roles, his alleged skill as the best in the business is belied by the fact that Restland was not given the job with JFK. Why would plotters hire one funeral home, but use an embalmer from a second funeral home? Sounds a bit of a stretch. Any plotters who knew of Liggett's alleged skill would surely just hire Restland for the job. Why needlessly hire one funeral home, but then secretly use another? The second issue is that in a 1974 Dallas Morning News account of Liggett's arrest, he is described as being an "unemployed undertaker". The alleged best in the business was unemployed in 1974? 

"Garland detectives arrested the suspect, described as an unemployed undertaker, at his apartment in the 9700 block of Plano Road in Dallas at 1:07 a.m. Wednesday. About 18 hours earlier, a man who reportedly accompanied Mrs. Peck home from a Greenville Avenue nightclub beat her about the face and head in her home at 1202 Melrose and left her on a burning bed." Dallas Morning News, Mar 28, 1974.

Reasons for unemployment if you are the "best in the business"

1. you have come into a lot of money some other way
2. you become ill
3. you are caught being dishonest with customers or your employer
4. you are charged with a criminal offence and serve jail time
5. you don't like the job/the company 

There are no indications that any of these applied. But we do know from news accounts that he was employed as a Mortician in 1972 by Laurel Land Memorial Park in Oak Cliff. When and why did he leave Restland? When and why did he leave Laurel Land? Did either company do anything to try and keep the alleged greatest restoration man in Texas?

On top of this, at least some of the allegations made by Liggett's ex-wife were shown to be wrong through a successful lawsuit filed against the owners of the History Channel by Malcolm Liggett, brother of John, who had also been implicated by Lois.

Then we come to Liggett's arrest in March, 1974 for the alleged attempted murder of Dorothy Peck, the widow of Jay Bert Peck who allegedly had a brief uncredited role in a film playing LBJ.  According to Estes, Peck was used as an LBJ double in real life and was a cousin to the president. Estes further claims Peck was murdered by Liggett in 1969. But again, there is no evidence for this. Firstly, officially it was a suicide and secondly, Linda Minor, a noted genealogist among JFK researchers, could find no such familial connection between Peck and LBJ.

It is also wrongly but widely reported that at the time of his death, Liggett was a convicted serial killer.

This was also not the case. He had been in the County jail for about a year awaiting trial on charges relating to the Dorothy Peck matter only, and it seems the only evidence in that case against him was Dorothy picking his photo out while still in hospital from the assault. 

This begs the question of why Liggett's photo was even among those shown to her. Did he have any police record at all between leaving the Air Force in 1954 and his arrest in 1974? 



While in custody, police tied Liggett to 3 murders with striking similarities to the attempted murder of Dorothy Peck. But again, there is nothing concrete. They were relying upon "informants".



There is no indication anywhere that police had any forensic evidence linking Liggett to any of these crimes. 

But we do know that Liggett's attorney stopped him being questioned about these other cases.



Now we come to Liggett's own demise, having been shot attempting to escape after coming back to County jail from a brief pre-trial hearing.



How difficult is it to slip out of chains and handcuffs without being Harry Houdini?

Researcher Ron Ecker suggested in 2005 that it was a case of la ley fuga.

TIME Magazine, February 15, 1937 had this to say: "the lynch law of Latin American justice is the "ley de fuga" (law of flight). This is supposed to empower police to shoot fleeing prisoners, but in practice often means that a troublesome prisoner is set free, then drilled before he can scoot out of range. 

Was Liggett a "troublesome" prisoner? 

Apparently he would not confess.

His attorney had blocked questioning him about past murders.

The case against him was the identification of him by the victim who was still in hospital at the time of the identification and may have been on heavy pain-killers and/or been susceptible to police pushing one particular suspect.

I think any involvement in the assassination or in later attempts to cover up the crime with body alteration can and should be laughed at.

In the rush to find conspiracy in everything, the real questions have not been addressed.

1. Why was he unemployed in 1974?

2. Did Liggett have a criminal record between 1954 and 1974? 

3. If not, why and how did he become a suspect in the Peck case in the first place, and how and why did they have his photo?

4. Was he guilty or innocent in one, more or all of the cases? 

5. If innocent, was he being framed?

6. Was he killed via ley de fuga because the case was too weak and thy could not get a confession?


sources
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,882688,00.html
https://www.jfkassassinationforum.com/index.php/topic,719.0.html
http://dperry1943.com/liggett.html
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/9985064/john-melvin-liggett
https://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/free/lobster67/lobster67.pdf
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/24110-lois-liggett-challenge-to-jim-di-eugenio/page/3/
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/3486-john-liggett-and-lois-liggett/page/5/

Thanks Greg. Great deconstruction of the Liggett myth.

TMWKK was one of the great missed opportunities. Instead of being a sober deconstruction of the WC and a serious attempt t catalogue the crimes and omissions that made the official myth completely untenable Turner and his band of merry pranksters set out instead t create a whole new mythology. And what a fucking mythology..Atlas..Persephone and Demeter..the rape of Europa by a bull has nothing on the bullshit peddled here..I'd sooner believe Zeus transformed himself into a bull than Lee Oswald transformed into a Russian speaking Adonis just t get his leg over the suspiciously bovine Miss Baker..Marina Oswald..if Judy Baker looks like Marina Oswald then Brian Doyle looks like a young Marlon Brando..
That series stands epitomises everything that's wrong with CT " research"
I find it unwatchable. A celebration of failure. Profound failure.
The moment the post Oliver Stone momentum completely imploded....splintering into covens of self righteous ideologues..obsessed with their internecine squabbles. Look at the talking heads they assembled..it was the equivalent of getting the cast of the Golden Girls t comment on cocaine politics in 1980s Miami..or the surviving cast of Dads Army t opine on Chamberlains failed Appeasement Plan..
Liggett was one of the lingering myths that needed skewering. Symptomatic of the fantastic CT illogic that permeates so called research.
ROKCs Myth Fumigation Department strikes again..turning the fetid odour into the sweet scent of Sanibel Island..
" I love the smell of Sanibel Island in the morning.."
P.S.
Check out LarryTrotterImages dynamic contributions t the Prayer Woman thread on the Imaginarium..

vinny wrote:Thanks Greg. Great deconstruction of the Liggett myth.

No problem, Vinny.

alex wrote:TMWKK was one of the great missed opportunities. Instead of being a sober deconstruction of the WC and a serious attempt t catalogue the crimes and omissions that made the official myth completely untenable Turner and his band of merry pranksters set out instead t create a whole new mythology. And what a fucking mythology..Atlas..Persephone and Demeter..the rape of Europa by a bull has nothing on the bullshit peddled here..I'd sooner believe Zeus transformed himself into a bull than Lee Oswald transformed into a Russian speaking Adonis just t get his leg over the suspiciously bovine Miss Baker..Marina Oswald..if Judy Baker looks like Marina Oswald then Brian Doyle looks like a young Marlon Brando..
That series stands epitomises everything that's wrong with CT " research"
I find it unwatchable. A celebration of failure. Profound failure. 
The moment the post Oliver Stone momentum completely imploded....splintering into covens of self righteous ideologues..obsessed with their internecine squabbles. Look at the talking heads they assembled..it was the equivalent of getting the cast of the Golden Girls t comment on cocaine politics in 1980s Miami..or the surviving cast of Dads Army t opine on Chamberlains failed Appeasement Plan..
Liggett was one of the lingering myths that needed skewering. Symptomatic of the fantastic CT illogic that permeates so called research. 
ROKCs Myth Fumigation Department strikes again..turning the fetid odour into the sweet scent of Sanibel Island..
" I love the smell of Sanibel Island in the morning.." 
P.S. 
Check out LarryTrotterImages dynamic contributions t the Prayer Woman thread on the Imaginarium..

Could you imagine the offspring of Larry Trotterimage and God's Gaalbladder?  

The color! The fonts! The imagery! 

Hollywood beckons...

The Gaalbladder That Ate Paris! starring Larrisa Gaal-Trotterimage

The 300 Pound SaraStantonImage vs Badge Man! with special guest appearance by Brian Dingo Doyle as the operator of the mobile CIA film and special effects lab.

I'm thinking more a steampunk sequel t 2001- A Space Odyessey..
2019- A Space Enema..
LarryTrotterImage as the psychotic super computer..HALImage...
Blasted through time and space he turns up on the fog shrouded streets of London's East End in 1888..
LarryTheRipper..a sexually deranged Commodore 64 on stilts with a black coat and the sharpened selfie stick he found embedded up the anus of one of the ape like inhabitants of Sanibel 69..a rocky swastika shaped meteor deep in the Lemkin Quadrant...
LarryTheRipper roams the streets murdering the prostitutes who won't stroke his joystick..just for clarification..until he falls into the river Thames..he was chasing a crooked hunchback by the name of Martha Doyle..
He tried t catch her before she boarded the SS Genital Wart..owned by a wizened 4 foot Scottish dwarf called Macrae..bound for a new life in an artificial limb factory in Sanibel Island..
LarrySchickelgruberImage then turns up in Vienna at the turn of the 20th century..he befriends a moody young wannabe artist in a dosshouse but things go badly wrong when LarrySchickelgruberImage burns his friends paintings and takes him t an infamous Viennese brothel..just for clarification..there his young friend falls in love with the syphilitic Evelyn Goldstein..Viennas 1003rd most hygienic prostitute..
Maddened by syphilis young Adolf vows revenge on the Jews of Europe..
To be continued...

Some points of order, if you don't mind, Alex.

1. Is the space enema inserted into a black hole?
2. There are rumors that LarryTrotterImage is being signed on to a new Knight Rider movie to play KittImage. Is he being typecast?
3. Didn't some of the LarrytheRipper witnesses describe him as a BBC Micro riding a penny farthing and wearing a pork pie hat, imitation pink sandals and the insane smile of someone who has Nana Mouskouri playing on their Walkman?
4. Is LarrySchickelgruberImage available for bar mitzvahs?

Greg, you need t consult the LarryTrotterImage family tree( ask TomScullyImage I'm sure he'll be delighted t oblige)..
You're getting your LarryTheRippers confused with your LarrytheKipper..an insatiable fish fetishist from Cape Cod..he wore the imitation pink sandals actually they were imitation pink flippers.
Also you got your LarrytheDripper( the terror of Tennessee urinals for over 40 years) mixed up with your LarrytheZipper ( a concertina playing flasher who holds the world record for indecent exposure..although his cousin LarrytheDipper ran him close..for Armstrong's sake don't ask how he got his name..think jars of mayonnaise and withered scrotums) it's an easy enough mistake t make.
SpringheeledLarryImage wore the pork pie hat( and nothing else I'm afraid t say) and LarrytheStripper( a 50 stone half walrus exotic dancer and brother of Larrythe Flipper a notorious dolphin fancier and nude weighlifter) rode the penny farthing..but he kept getting his tusks caught in the spokes..LarrytheStripper had MANY tusks..in fact Marine biologists are trying t make sense of the carcass. Need i add it washed up on Sanibel Island beach..this might explain Brian's sudden interest in the ancient art of erotic scrimshawing..he sent a giant tusk carved in the shape of Eva Brauns oviducts t a visibly distressed Grace Slick)
Lets not forget the VirginLarryImage either..he claimed he saw the Virgin Mary appear in a Dallas doorway...or LarrytheGripper..his unique masturbation technique nearly caused revolution in a small East African country.
As for LarrySchickelgruberImage...if you need any clarification please check your Albert Doyle Aryans Only Annual..i believe he was a full Aryan..bizarrely the Nuremberg Laws considered warthogs honorary Aryans so his dad LarrytheNipper was able t get a job watering the Fuhrers daffodils..although his tusks almost caused an international incident when American hausfrau Evelyn Doyle got a little carried away one night at Bayreuth..when LarrytheWhipper and LarrytheSlipper were starring as Valkyries..LarrytheSlipper incidentally got his name because of what he slipped into unsuspecting teenage boys milkshakes..and LarrytheWhipper got his name making those milkshakes..
Don't even ask what LarrytheSlipper put into LarrytheWhippers milkshakes..
Some more Larries i forgot: LarrytheLipper, pioneer of tongueless fellatio..LarrytheClipper, homicidal vegetable and plant activist, attacks humans with garden shears( see LarrytheLipper)..LarrytheBipper dyslexic one legged rock n roll dancer and who can forget LarrytheBigDipper..bizarre half man half fairground ride and LarrytheDayTripper Beatles loving mass murderer of holiday makers

Thanks for setting me straight!