Billie Sol Estes

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Billie Sol Estes (born January 10, 1925 in Clyde , Texas , † May 14, 2013 in Granbury , Texas) was an American businessman and banker who was close friends with the later US President Lyndon B. Johnson around 1960 . Some authors consider him a key figure in the assassination attempt on John F. Kennedy .

Life

Estes was born on January 10, 1925 to John and Lillian Estes on a farm near Clyde. He was one of the couple's six children.

By 1955 he was already one of the world's largest traders of liquid ammonia fertilizer and also supported the Democratic Party with generous donations. He also indicated on various occasions that he had bribed individual politicians. He began large-scale mortgage fraud in the late 1950s, which was finally exposed in 1962. The charges against him turned into one of the biggest corruption scandals in the United States, and Estes was sentenced to 24 years in prison. The sentence was later overturned by the United States Supreme Court and Estes was paroled in 1971. The journalist Oscar Griffin Jr. , who exposed the scandal, received the 1963 Pulitzer Prize for his research .

Eight years later, Estes came back on trial for another fraudulent offense, this time serving four years in prison. He was released in November 1983.

Estes' clues to the Kennedy murder

On August 9, 1984, Estes' attorney Douglas Caddy addressed a letter to Stephen S. Trott of the United States Department of Justice . In it he accused Lyndon B. Johnson of having been involved in the murder of John F. Kennedy . A key role is played by Malcolm Wallace , a friend of Johnson's who was one of the assassins. At the same time, Estes offered to provide detailed information on seven other unsolved murders from Johnson's environment, if he would be granted impunity, especially since he was not directly involved in any of these crimes. The deal did not go through because Trott insisted in his September 13 reply that Estes would actually provide the FBI with all information he knew about the killings mentioned, and none of them that could be used against him.

In May 1998, however, forensic scientist A. Nathan Darby announced at a press conference in Dallas that a previously unidentified fingerprint in the Texas School Book Depository was from Wallace. He was found there shortly after November 22, 1963 by the Warren Commission and in 1998 could be attributed to Wallace by Darby, the longtime director of the Austin Police Department's forensics department . On April 15, 1998, Darby's report was confirmed by E. Harold Hoffmeister, another fingerprint expert. The allegations made by Estes thus appeared - at least in essence - quite credible.

In his book about the Kennedy murder, published in November 2013, political advisor Roger Stone also referred to talks with Estes and posthumously accused Johnson of the Kennedy murder. It is also the first book in which an author from the “inner circle of power” and a close friend of several Republican US presidents describes the act as a conspiracy .

literature

  • Pam Estes, Billie Sol: King of Texas Wheeler-Dealers , Noble Craft Books, 1984
  • Glen Sample & Mark Collom, The Men on the Sixth Floor , Garden Grove 1996
  • Barr McClellan , Blood, Money & Power: How LBJ Killed JFK , New York 2011
  • Philipp F. Nelson, LBJ: The Mastermind of the JFK Assassination , New York 2013
  • Roger Stone (with Mike Colapietro), The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ , New York 2013, ISBN 978-1-62636-313-7

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Sample & Collom (1996), pp. 150f .; Nelson (2013), pp. 245-247; Stone (2013), p. 208
  2. ↑ Ibid
  3. ↑ See McClellan (2011), Appendix, Exhibit G and I, with illustrations and Darby's report of March 9, 1998; Stone (2013), p. 212
  4. ↑ Ibid., Exhibit H.
personal data
SURNAME Estes, Billie Sol
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American businessman and banker
DATE OF BIRTH January 10, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Clyde , Texas
DATE OF DEATH May 14, 2013
Place of death Granbury , Texas