Richard Paul Pavlick
Richard Paul Pavlick (born February 13, 1887 in Belmont , New Hampshire - † November 11, 1975 in Manchester , New Hampshire) was a retired postal worker who tried to assassinate John F. Kennedy in late 1960 . The act was covered up by the Secret Service at the time and is therefore still hardly known today.
Private life
Little is known about Pavlick's personal life. He was not married and had no family. After working for the United States Postal Service for decades , he retired in the 1950s. Until then, nobody had noticed him. It wasn't until he was retired that he started doing strange things. In local gatherings, he complained angrily that the United States flag was often not displayed in a dignified manner. Pavlick also criticized President Eisenhower's government , hating Catholics, and claiming the local waterworks poisoned his city's drinking water. In this context, he once threatened the head of the waterworks with a firearm.
Plan to assassinate Kennedy
After Kennedy beat his opponent Richard Nixon in the 1960 presidential election in the United States , Pavlick focused his hatred on Kennedy and said that Kennedy's wealthy father Joseph bought his son's way into the White House . In addition, John F. Kennedy was the first US President of the Roman Catholic Faith.
Kennedy was not yet in office and held the title of President-elect in late 1960 . The then 73-year-old Pavlick left his hometown Belmont, loaded his meager possessions into his Buick Super car and from then on lived in youth hostels and motels. He stalked Kennedy without initially perceiving it as a threat because Kennedy had numerous admirers who wanted to be close to him. Pavlick photographed Kennedy's property in Hyannis Port and wrote several postcards to postmaster Thomas Murphy in his hometown that he would be heard from "in a big way" soon. When comparing the postmarks on the cards, Murphy noticed after a while that the cards were always being sent from where Kennedy was and he informed the police. Murphy also noted that Pavlick has been acting strangely recently.
The information was passed on to the Secret Service, which was responsible for protecting Kennedy. During the investigation that was then carried out, it was also found that Pavlick had recently bought seven sticks of dynamite , which at the time was available over the counter in the USA in every hardware store. You just had to show your driver's license and your name was put on a list. The exact whereabouts of Pavlick were not known at the time, so that one could not interview him personally. The suspicions were not yet sufficient for a nationwide manhunt.
Attempted assassination
After learning that Kennedy was about to be in Florida , Pavlick covered the long haul of 2,400 km in his car, even though there were virtually no interstate highways back then as there are now. So the trip must have taken several days. On Sunday, December 10, 1960, Kennedy attended mass at St. Edwards Church in Palm Beach . Pavlick was waiting outside the church with his Buick with the dynamite in the trunk. He had laid a cable from the trunk to the front and connected it to the cigarette lighter via a switch. So he could trigger the detonation at any time. However, when Pavlick saw Jacqueline and their two young children Caroline Kennedy and John Jr. in addition to Kennedy , he abandoned his plan. He later said that he did not want to hurt the woman and children.
Instead, he entered the church and tried to get far forward, close to Kennedy. He was held back by the Secret Service and sent back. He then left the church and drove away. His license plate was noted by other bodyguards and put out to be searched. Five days later, he was stopped by a motorcycle police officer while he was out and about in Palm Beach. The dynamite was found in the trunk.
Investigation of the fact
After briefly denying it, Pavlick confessed to attempting murder. When the Secret Service surveyed the full extent of the preparations, they were shocked. Car bombs were unknown at the time. Nobody had expected a suicide bomber either. The Americans already knew examples of suicide bombings, such as the Bath school massacre in 1927 or the kamikaze attacks by the Japanese in World War II . Nevertheless, such an act was much less in the public consciousness at the time than after September 11, 2001 . Previous attacks on US presidents have always been carried out in open confrontation and with firearms. B. Abraham Lincoln , James A. Garfield and William McKinley .
As copycats were feared, attempts were made to remove the crime from the focus of public interest and to prevent nationwide reporting as far as possible. It has been denied that Pavlick ever got anywhere near Kennedy. The headlines were dominated by the plane collision in New York City on December 16, 1960, which killed a total of 134 people. Therefore, the act was not known at that time.
Next life
On January 27, 1961, Pavlick was transferred from prison to a mental hospital in Springfield, Missouri , and seven weeks later charged with attempted murder. He was found possibly incompetent and continued to be admitted to the mental hospital. In August 1964, the charges against Pavlick were dropped. He gave the impression that he was not a danger to the general public. Kennedy was also murdered by Lee Harvey Oswald in November 1963 . Even so, Pavlick stayed in the clinic until December 1966. Pavlick was almost 80 years old when he was released and was in need of care a few years later. He died at the age of 88 on November 11, 1975 in a retirement home in Manchester, New Hampshire.
Representation in fiction
In a 2013 Military Channel hypothetical documentary game titled What If ...? Armageddon 1962 investigated the question of how world history would have been if Pavlick had been successful in 1960. Then Lyndon B. Johnson would have been introduced to the presidency in January 1961 . The thesis is put forward that Johnson did not react as prudently as Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis. At the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviet Union did not have the same level of superiority over the US in terms of the number of nuclear weapons as it did later in the 1970s and 1980s. Johnson might have followed the advice of numerous US military officials and ordered a first strike against the Soviet Union. Thus the act of Pavlick - if it had been successful - could have influenced the whole of world history.
Web links
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Pavlick, Richard Paul |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American assassin who attempted to assassinate John F. Kennedy in late 1960 |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 13, 1887 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Belmont , New Hampshire |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 11, 1975 |
| Place of death | Manchester , New Hampshire |