Updates

This file consists of stuff that came in after the deadline for the current issue of Fair Play.

Penn Jones Dies

Penn Jones, Jr., the crusading editor of the Midlothian Mirror and first generation JFK assassination researcher, has died in Alvarado, Texas. He died on January 25 from Alzheimer's disease. Family members have asked that donations be sent to the Alzheimer's Foundation.

"Penn was a wonderful human being, sweet-tempered and kind, and had a great sensse of humor," said John Judge of the Coalition on Political Assassinations. "He always said that the many connections we unearthed were 'just happenstance' before he started laughing. Many, many of us loved him."

Fair Play is now soliciting tributes and remembrances about Penn Jones for its next issue (due March 1). Please send them to jkelin@rmii.com.

The following was sent by Martin Shackelford.

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Penn Jones was a military veteran, editor of the small-town Midlothian Mirror weekly, near Dallas. He was a large figure, but you wouldn't know that to look at him--he was a feisty little guy. He went to Dallas after the assassination, and took a number of interesting photos, one of which may show Jack Ruby outside Parkland Hospital.

Challenging the conventional tide in the area, he persisted in raising questions about official theories of the assassination. No stranger to controversy and hostility (the Ku Klux Klan had once bombed his office), he collected his Mirror articles in a series of four books (volume three was reissued in expanded form, as well) called Forgive My Grief. It was Penn who began the focus on "mysterious deaths."

He assisted Jim Garrison's investigation. After the Clay Shaw trial, he was active in circulating bootleg copies of the Zapruder film at a low cost to anyone who wanted one. He made available sets of the Willis and Bond slides for researchers, along with various other items. In the 1970s, he started a research journal called The Continuing Inquiry, aided by Jack White and others. He and I corresponded and sometimes talked on the phone, and I had a great deal of admiration for him.

In August 1978, we scooped the HSCA with my first article on stereo analysis of the Zapruder film. That year, he and Robert Groden made available 20 full sets of Zapruder frame slides (133-488). Increasing costs and diminishing subscriptions in the mid-1980s caused him to give up The Continuing Inquiry.

I finally met him in person early this decade when I went to Dallas for a conference. By then, he had been through lengthy illnesses, but he hadn't lost that firm determination that every one of us could make a difference in this case--and that we owed it to our country to make the effort.

With deepest respect,
Martin Shackelford

"Rest In Peace, Maggie Field"

The current issue of Probe magazine (Vol. 5, No. 2) reports the recent death of Maggie Field. No details, such as cause of death, are given.

Maggie Field was, like Penn Jones, an early researcher in the case and an instant skeptic of the Warren Commission findings. A supporter of Mark Lane, some of her achievements are recounted in his book A Citizen's Dissent, published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston in 1968.

Probe is the bi-monthly magazine of Citizens for Truth about the Kennedy Assassination.

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