Over the last week, I believe I have shown that Raymond Broshears was a crackpot. His provable lies, his fanciful tales, and his ridiculous claims would make any reasonable person ignore his value as a witness. As Stephen Roy has written, it is unlikely that Broshears ever met David Ferrie, let alone was his roommate.
The HSCA interview was laughable. And, they knew he was a fraud, which is why his name is not mentioned in any of their volumes. But, let's have a look at what conspiracy theorists have written about Broshears.
First, let's go back to the conference Jim Garrison had with his investigators on September 21, 1968. Here is a short segment in which they are dismissive of Broshears' claim that the assassins had flown out of Dallas but had crashed near Corpus Christi. Note that Box = Bill Boxley, a Garrison investigator; F = Bernard Fensterwald, a Warren Report critic; T = William Turner, a Garrison investigator and writer for Ramparts Magazine; and G = Jim Garrison.
But, we've already seen that Jaffe looked for confirmation of a plane crash in the newspapers and could not find any. Did Garrison not know that?
Desoite this, Garrison expressed confidence in Broshears as a witness (Broshears is spelt wrong).
So, there you have it, Garrison thought that Broshears "could be very creditable," but ruled him out as a witness because he had spent time in an institution - not because his testimony was ridiculous. Further, Garrison believes Broshears on the nonsense about sleeping with Thornley - and as I mentioned in a previous post - he believed that Thornley's body is in the Oswald backyward photographs.
Garrison devoted two full pages to Broshears in his book, On The Trail of The Assassins.
Garrison tries to hedge his bets in the last paragraph saying that "or so Broshears states." However, anybody reading these two pages would have to conclude that Garrison believes most of what Broshears claims. He doesn't mention that Broshears said that the plane with the two assassins (later amended to three assassins) crashed off of Corpus Christi - and Garrison doesn't mention that, at the time, he thought it wasn't a great lead (let alone that Jaffe found no confirmation of a crash).
Dick Russell interviewed Raymond Broshears and discusses him in his book, The Man Who Knew Too Much.
Broshears tells Russell that he would refuse to testify before Congress (on the last page). Yet, as we showed yesterday, he was interviewed by the HSCA in 1977. And, Broshears now makes up this story about Leon Oswald, a fake Oswald, whom he had sex with.
And, this is picked up by James DiEugenio in his book, Destiny Betrayed. He tries to make the case that there was a second Oswald, named Leon Oswald, who was at the party at David Ferrie's in September 1963. Broshears is one of his corroborating witnesses. Here is an excerpt from page 248:
DiEugenio's footnote refers to Russell's book.
DiEugenio also uses Broshears as a witness who corroborates that Clay Shaw knew David Ferrie (page 209):
In a future post, we will examine all of the witnesses in the above paragraph.
Joan Mellen has a field day with Raymond Broshears who is mentioned 13 times in the text. Here is a key paragraph:
Joan Mellen proves here that she is a very good stenographer, but not such a good historian.