![]() ![]() Kilgallen, who called “laughable” the Warren Commission’s conclusion that Oswald acted alone, launched her own probe. “It’s a dark chapter in our history, but we have the right to read every word of it.” “The American people have just lost a beloved president,” she wrote in her column a week after he was shot while riding in a Dallas motorcade. 22, 1963 - two years before her own death - devastated Kilgallen, who had visited the president in the White House with her youngest son, Kerry, and considered Kennedy a friend. ![]() “She broke the glass ceiling before the term was fashionable,” juggling multiple careers - and earning today’s equivalent of millions of dollars a year - while raising three kids, Shaw says. ![]() Ernest Hemingway, a friend, called her “the greatest woman writer in the world.” She cultivated extensive sources, including underworld figures such as New York Mafia boss Frank Costello. Her marital problems and longtime affair with pop singer Johnnie Ray were fodder for gossip. He’s guilty as hell.”Īn A-list celebrity herself, Kilgallen and her husband, Richard Kollmar, hosted lavish parties with guests ranging from actress Jayne Mansfield to Beatle George Harrison. Lee Bailey that when the trial started, Judge Edward Blythin called her into his chambers to get her autograph and blabbed: “It’s an open-and-shut case. She single-handedly led Sheppard’s murder conviction to be overturned by the US Supreme Court after she told defense lawyer F. Sam Sheppard, who denied killing his pregnant wife - and inspired the smash TV series “The Fugitive.” She also covered high-profile murder trials, including the case of Dr. The daughter of journalist James Kilgallen, Dorothy wrote the Voice of Broadway column for the New York Journal-American, which was syndicated to 200 papers nationwide. Murrow about her favorite career, the media icon replied, “My first love is the newspaper, and always will be.” She also co-hosted a radio variety show, “Dick and Dorothy.”īut when asked by TV interviewer Edward R. Kilgallen is best known for her role on “What’s My Line?” - the 1950s and ’60s CBS show watched by 25 million every Sunday night - with episodes still popular on YouTube. “Victims have rights, and Dorothy was denied hers because there was no investigation.” Kilgallen with Frank Sinatra in 1944 Getty Images “Murder is murder whether it happened five days or 50 years ago,” Shaw says. ![]() Her JFK book was never published.Ĭiting his findings after three years of research, Shaw is now calling on the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office to resurrect and fully investigate the Kilgallen case. “The killers won, because she was eliminated and erased from any historical record about the JFK assassination,” Shaw says. “I’m going to break the real story and have the biggest scoop of the century,” she told her lawyer. Kilgallen died weeks before a planned second trip to New Orleans for a meeting with a secret informant, telling a friend it was “cloak and daggerish.” “He didn’t have access to Kilgallen’s research.” The possibility that Marcello was responsible for JFK’s death came up in the 1991 Oliver Stone movie “JFK,” but New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, who launched a probe, dismissed the idea. Shaw makes a compelling argument that Kilgallen was the victim of foul play, likely orchestrated by New Orleans Mafia don Carlos Marcello, who feared the results of her 18-month investigation for a tell-all book that would accuse Marcello of masterminding the JFK and Lee Harvey Oswald assassinations. The truth is far more complex and ominous, contends lawyer and veteran author Mark Shaw, whose exhaustively researched, true-life whodunnit, “ The Reporter Who Knew Too Much” (Post Hill Press/Simon & Schuster), comes out Tuesday. Quickly closing the case, the city left a tarnished image of Kilgallen as a possible drug abuser and alcoholic. Her body was found sitting up in a bed, naked under a blue bathrobe, with the makeup, false eyelashes and a floral hair accessory she had worn on TV still on.Īfter an autopsy, the city’s chief medical examiner, James Luke, put on Kilgallen’s death certificate: “Acute Ethanol and Barbiturate Intoxication, Circumstances Undetermined.” Luke ruled her death accidental, caused by a combination of sleeping pills and booze. 8, 1965, the 52-year-old newspaper columnist hailed by The Post as “the most powerful female voice in America” was dead in her Manhattan town house. The glamorous, razor-sharp Kilgallen delighted viewers, but behind the scenes, the dogged and courageous reporter was hot on the trail of the biggest story of her life: the assassination of President John F. On the night before her shocking death, Dorothy Kilgallen, a star panelist on the hit TV game show “What’s My Line?,” correctly guessed the occupation of a mystery guest: a woman who sold dynamite. ![]()
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