In the Crosshairs: Famous Assassinations and Attempts from Julius Caesar to John Lennon

288 Pages·2003·5.24 MB·English

by  Stephen J. Spignesi

In
the
Crosshairs
Famous
Assassinations
andAttempts
from Julius Caesar
to
John Lennon
Stephen J. Spignesi
NEW PAGE BOOKS
A division of The Career Press, Inc.
Franklin Lakes, NJ
001 Crosshairs Title cip.p65 1 12/20/2002, 1:03 PM
Copyright  2003 by Stephen J. Spignesi
All rights reserved under the Pan-American and International Copyright Con-
ventions. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form or by
any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any
information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, with-
out written permission from the publisher, The Career Press.
IN THE CROSSHAIRS
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Spignesi, Stephen J.
In the crosshairs : famous assassinations and attempts from Julius Caesar to John
Lennon / by Stephen J. Spignesi.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-56414-624-3 (pbk.)
1. Assassination—History. 2. Attempted assassination—History. 3. Assasins—
History.
I. Title.
HV6278 .S77 2003
364.15’24’09—dc21 2002023964
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This is for two splendid women,
Melissa Grosso
and
Colleen Payne,
who know why.
I
was aided and abetted in the research and writing of In the
Crosshairs and, as always, my attempt to thank everyone who helped
will fall short of my true depth of appreciation. The quality of the
assistance I received from many, many angels was extraordinary;
any mistakes that made it into the final text are mine, and mine
alone. Thank you all.
John White, Mike Lewis, Colleen Payne, Melissa Grosso,
Dr. Bob McEachern, Southern Connecticut State Univer-
sity, Lee Mandato, Jim Cole, Ron Fry, Career Press, Mar-
tin Wolcott, University of New Haven, Stacey Farkas, Kevin
Quigley, Anne Brooks, ABC News, BBC News, CNN, the
New York Times, the New Haven Register, the Los Angeles
Times, USA Today, Yale University Press, Gale Research,
Yahoo News, Time, Time Europe, Time Asia, Newsweek,
PBS, E!, www.cia.gov, www.whitehouse.gov, www.fbi.gov,
www.newsmax.com, www.arttoday.com, www.abe.com,
www.ebay.com.
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Contents
Introduction: Sic Semper Famous . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1: Thomas á Beckett . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2: Alan Berg. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
3: Julius Caesar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4: Jimmy Carter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
5: Fidel Castro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
6: Jacques Chirac . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
7: Winston Churchill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
8: Claudius . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
9: Bill Clinton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
10: John Connally . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
11: Bob Crane. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
12: Jefferson Davis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
13: Charles De Gaulle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
14: Thomas Dewey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
15: Medgar Evers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
16: Louis Farrakhan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
17: Archduke Franz Ferdinand. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
18: Larry Flynt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
19: Gerald Ford . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
20: Henry Clay Frick. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
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21: Indira Gandhi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
22: Mohandas Gandhi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
23: James Garfield . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
24: Germaine Greer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
25: George Harrison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
26: Phil Hartman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
27: Wild Bill Hickok. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
28: Adolf Hitler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
29: Herbert Hoover . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
30: Hubert Humphrey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
31: Andrew Jackson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
32: Reverend Jesse Jackson. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
33: Jesse James . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
34: Andrew Johnson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
35: Vernon Jordan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
36: Edward Kennedy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
37: John F. Kennedy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
38: Robert F. Kennedy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
39: Martin Luther King, Jr. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
40: Vladimir Lenin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
41: John Lennon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
42: Abraham Lincoln . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
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43: Huey P. Long . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
44: Malcolm X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
45: Jean-Paul Marat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
46: Imelda Marcos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
47: Christopher Marlowe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
48: William McKinley. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
49: Harvey Milk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
50: Sal Mineo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
51: Lord Mountbatten. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
52: Hosni Mubarak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
53: Haing S. Ngor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
54: Richard Nixon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
55: Lee Harvey Oswald . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
56: Pope John Paul II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
57: Pope Paul VI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
58: Yitzhak Rabin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
59: Rasputin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
60: Ronald Reagan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
61: George Lincoln Rockwell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
62: Franklin Delano Roosevelt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
63: Theodore Roosevelt. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
64: Anwar el-Sadat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
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65: Theresa Saldana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
66: Rebecca Schaeffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
67: Monica Seles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
68: William Henry Seward. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
69: Alexander Solzhenitsyn. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
70: Margaret Thatcher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
71: Leon Trotsky . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
72: Harry S Truman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
73: Gianni Versace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
74: George Wallace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
75: Andy Warhol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
Afterword: Death by Design. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244
Appendix: Weapons of Choice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
Endnotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
Selected Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
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IIIIInnnnntttttrrrrroooooddddduuuuuccccctttttiiiiiooooonnnnn
Sic Semper Famous
Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.
—George Bernard Shaw1
Anybody can kill anybody.
—Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme2
When a famous person is attacked and mortally wounded, the medi-
cal personnel tending to him or her will often go to extreme (and obvi-
ously futile) lengths to resuscitate the victim.
When President Kennedy (page 123) was brought to Parkland Memo-
rial Hospital in Dallas, part of his skull was missing and his brain was a
bloody mess. Anyone else probably would have been declared DOA the
moment he or she was wheeled in, but in Kennedy’s case the doctors per-
formed a tracheotomy; pumped in fluids, blood, and steroids; and worked
20 minutes to keep the President alive before giving up.
Indira Gandhi (page 76) was clinically dead when she was rushed to the
hospital, but the doctors operated nonetheless, removing between 16 and 20
bullets from her body and even putting out a call for blood donations.
It must never be said that everything that could have been done, was
not done; and, thus, the attempt to summon a miracle.
In the Crosshairs looks at assassinations and assassination attempts.
Assassination has been used for many reasons over the eons. It has
been a political tool, and it has also been a manifestation of obsession,
psychosis, and delusion.
Sometimes, when an assassination attempt succeeds, enormous political,
cultural, and societal changes can result (as in the cases of John F. Kennedy
— 9 —
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