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Curtis (Larry) Crafard was born Farwell, Michigan, on 10th March, 1941. When he was a child the family moved to California and attended school in San Joaquin.

After leaving school he enlisted in the U.S. Army. He did his basic training in San Francisco before being sent to Germany. He was discharged from the army in November 10, 1959. He then moved to Oregon where he worked in a cannery. In 1961 he joined the Royal West Golden Gate touring carnival in California. The following year he returned to Oregon where he married Jean Case Johnson. The marriage was not a success and in 1963 Crafard moved to Dallas, Texas.

Crafard met Jack Ruby while working at the Texas State Fair. In October, 1963, Ruby employed Crafard as a handyman at the Carousel Club. The day after the assassination of John F. Kennedy Crafard had a meeting in a Dallas garage with Ruby and George Senator. Later that day Crafard left Dallas and went to stay with his sister in Michigan. Mark Lane argues in Rush to Judgment (1966) that Crafard was "one of Ruby's closest companions during the weeks preceding the assassination" and claims that his flight from Dallas following the assassination was highly suspicious.

Crafard testified before the Warren Commission that on 23rd November, 1963, he went with Ruby and Senator to photograph an "Impeach Earl Warren" billboard in Dallas. Ruby said he wanted to photograph the billboard because of its similarity to an anti-Kennedy advert that appeared in newspapers on the day of the assassination. This information created some interest as it had not been mentioned by either Ruby or Senator.

Ruth Paine testified before the Warren Commission that Crafard bore a "strong resemblance" to Lee Harvey Oswald. In 1968 Joachim Joesten published How Kennedy was Killed: The Full Appalling Story (1968). In the book he claimed Crafard impersonated Oswald in the weeks leading up to the assassination. However, David E. Scheim, has commented: "There is no possibility that Crafard could have been mistaken for Oswald since Crafard had no front teeth, was creepy, looked like a bum, and had sandy hair."

In the 1980s it was reported that Crafard was working as a night security guard.

 

 

 

 


 

(1) Joachim Joesten, How Kennedy was Killed: The Full Appalling Story (1968)

What are my reasons for believing that Larry Crafard is the person who deliberately impersonated Oswald over a period of several weeks, manifestly for the purpose of planting false clues that would incriminate Oswald after the assassination and thus divert attention from the real murderers of the President?

While I cannot go into the matter at any length here I shall briefly outline some of the points of evidence which I have developed in Oswald: The Truth. In the first place, the Warren Report itself notes that 'Ruth Paine testified that Crafard's photograph bears a strong resemblance to Oswald.'

Secondly, the Report recounts an episode in which a Dallas electronics salesman, Robert K. Patterson, and two of his associates expressed the belief that they had seen Ruby in the company of Oswald, enter their store. The Commission however, established that Ruby's companion on this occasion was Larry Crafard.

Thirdly, about half a dozen people testified, or told the police or the FBI, that they had seen a person resembling Oswald at the Carousel Club, while the real Lee Harvey Oswald, according to the Commission, never set foot there

In the fourth place, Larry Crafard, again according to the Commission, lived at the Carousel Club while working for Ruby from mid-October until the day after the assassination when he hurriedly left. It is particularly worthy of note that the time when Crafard took up his job with Ruby closely coincides with the time Oswald was planted at the Texas School Book Depository by solicitous but false friends who procured the job for him.

The clincher, however, is the testimony of a waitress at the B & B Cafe in Dallas, next door to the Carousel Club who
stated, in a Dallas police affidavit, that she had served Ruby and Oswald together at 3 a.m. on the morning of November
22th, Assassination Day.

Now, it is established beyond a shadow of doubt that Oswald at that time was asleep with his family at the Paine place
in Irvmg. And, what's much more important, Crafard himself told the FBI that he had had breakfast with ruby at the B & B Cafe in the morning of November 22, between 2.30 and 3.30 a.m.

 

(2) Seth Kantor, Who Was Jack Ruby? (1978)

The camera was a gimmick of Ruby's, used for taking good-natured pictures of volunteer customers dancing the twist with the strippers, as part of the show. Then the pictures would be made available to the customers as free souvenirs. When Crafard got in the car with the camera, about 5 a.m., Ruby didn't bother to tell him where they were going or
what he was supposed to shoot.

Ruby drove to the location of the impeachment sign posted on the side of a building in a prominent location at the edge of downtown Dallas. Three pictures were taken of it. Ruby was excited because the sign encouraged people who wanted Earl Warren ousted to write to post office box no. 1754 - a number vaguely similar to post office box no. 1792 in the Weissman ad. Ruby thought he was on to Something Big.

"He is trying to combine these two together," Senator recalled, "which I did hear him say, 'This is the work of the John Birch Society or the Communist Party or maybe a combination of both.' "

Later in the day, Saturday, Ruby would telephone his friend Weird Beard, the disc jockey, and ask who is this Earl Warren.

From the signboard the three drove to the main post office, where Ruby tried to get the night clerk to tell him who paid for box 1792. The clerk said he wasn't permitted to give out such information and said it would have to come from the postmaster. Ruby looked through a slot in no. 1792 and grew angry when he saw it was filled with responses. His
anger seemed to build as the three then went to the coffee shop in the Southland Hotel. Senator recalled that Ruby's "voice of speech ... was different and... he had sort of a stare look in his eye." Ruby was miserable. The killing of President Kennedy in Dallas... the Weissman ad... the Earl Warren sign... it was all going to reflect badly on the city.

 

(3) Gaeton Fonzi, speech on receiving the Mary Ferrell-JFKLancer Pioneer Award (21st November 21, 1998)

Is there any doubt that the Warren Commission deliberately set out not to tell the American people the truth? There is a brief glimpse, an illustration of the level at which that deceit was carried out, in an incident that occurred during the Warren Commission's investigation. Commission chairman Earl Warren himself, with then Representative Gerald Ford at his side, was interviewing a barman, Curtis LaVerne Crafard. Crafard had worked at Jack Ruby's Carousel Club before he was seized by FBI men as he was hightailing it out of town the day after the assassination, having told someone, "They are not going to pin this on me!"

In the interview, Warren asks Craford what he did before he was a bartender.

"I was a Master sniper in the Marine Corps," Craford answered.*

The next question that Warren immediately asked was: "What kind of entertainment did they have at the club?"

 

 

 

 

 


 

 

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