Virgil (Ed) Hoffman was
born in 1937. After leaving school he found employment at Texas Instruments
in Dallas. On 22nd November, 1963, Hoffman stood on the shoulder of
the Stemmons Expressway in Dallas when John
F. Kennedy was
assassinated. The deaf-and-dumb witness claimed he saw a man with
a rifle moments after the shots were fired. He later described how
a man wearing a dark suit and tie, with an overcoat, ran west along
the wooden fence with a rifle and tossed it to a second man who was
dressed like a railroad worker. The second man then disassembled the
rifle and put it in a soft brown bag.
Hoffman immediately tried
to alert the Secret Service agents about what he had seen. However,
unable to understand what he was trying to say, he was threatened
with a machine-gun (believed to have been George
Hickey). He then attempted to tell his story to a Dallas
policeman (believed to be Earle Brown). Unable to understand him,
Brown waved him away. Hoffman then visited the local Federal
Bureau of Investigation office. No officers were there and so
he left written details with the receptionist. (The FBI never responded
to this note.)
Hoffman told his father,
Frederick Hoffman, about what he saw. His father, concerned that his
son could be in danger, urged him not to tell anyone about what he
had seen. Ed Hoffman did tell his story to his uncle, Robert Hoffman,
a Dallas police officer. However, the police officer decided not to
take the story to the Dallas Police Department: "I know that
Eddie's a very bright person and always has been, and can't think
of any reason why he would make up something like this.... His father
(Frederick) was very, very concerned that Eddie knew anything about
the assassination at all. It was time when suspicions were running
high and he (Frederick) was worried about Eddie getting involved in
any way... It just wasn't a time for loose statements that couldn't
be proved or backed up with any evidence."
In June, 1967, Ed Hoffman
took his story to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
When agents checked out his story they discovered his father did not
want it investigated. The following month the FBI reported that "the
father of Virgil Hoffman stated that he did not believe that his son
had seen anything of value and doubted he had observed any men running
from the Texas School Book Depository and for this reason had not
mentioned it to the FBI." One FBI agent confirmed the worries
of Frederick Hoffman by telling Ed Hoffman to keep quiet about what
he had seen or "you might get killed".
Ed Hoffman did keep quiet
until 1975 when he wrote to Edward Kennedy
about his story. Kennedy replied: "My family has been aware of
various theories concerning the death of President Kennedy, just as
it has been aware of many speculative accounts which have arisen from
the death of Robert Kennedy. I am sure that it is understood that
the continual speculation is painful for members of my family. We
have always accepted the findings of the Warren Commission report
and have no reason to question the quality and the effort of those
who investigated the fatal shooting of Robert Kennedy."
On 25th March, 1977, Hoffman
contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation
again. This time Hoffman took with him Richard H. Freeman, one of
the supervisors at Texas Instruments. Freeman understood sign-language
and was able to help explain in more detail what Hoffman saw on 22nd
November, 1963. Again the FBI showed little interest in pursuing the
story.
In 1985 Hoffman
told the reporter Jim Marrs what he had
seen on 22nd November, 1963. This was fully reported in Marrs' book,
Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy
(1989).
Open
Debate on the Kennedy Assassination
(1)
Federal
Bureau of Investigation report on
the testimony of Ed Hoffman (28th June, 1967)
On June 26,
1967, Mr. Jim Dowdy, 725 McLenore, Texas, advised a deaf mute, Virgil
E. Hoffman, who is employed at Texas Instruments, had indicated he
wanted to furnish information to Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
regarding the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
It was pointed out to Mr. Dowdy that Hoffman should put in writing
in detail everything he saw the day of the assassination.
On June 28, 1967, Virgil
E. Hoffman appeared at the Dallas Office of the FBI and advised he
resided at 424 Grand Prairie Road, Grand Prairie, Texas, and was employed
at Texas Instruments, Dallas. He said he parked his automobile near
the railroad tracks on Stemmons Freeway and Elm Street, about 12:00
noon on November 22, 1963.
Hoffman said he was standing
a few feet south of the railroad on Stemmons Freeway when the motorcade
passed him taking President Kennedy to Parkland Hospital. Hoffman
said he observed two white males, clutching something dark to their
chests with both hands, running from the rear of the Texas School
Book Depository building. The men were running north on the railroad,
then turned east, and Hoffman lost sight of both of the men...
Hoffman said the only description
he could furnish of the men was that one of them wore a white shirt.
He stated he had discussed this matter with his father at the time
of the assassination, and his father suggested that he not talk to
anyone about this, but after thinking about what he saw, Hoffman stated
he decided to tell the FBI.
(2)
Federal
Bureau of Investigation report on
the testimony of Ed Hoffman (6th July, 1967)
On July 5,
1967, Mr. E. Hoffman, father of Virgil E. Hoffman, and Fred Hoffman,
brother of Virgil Hoffman, were interviewed at 428 West Main Street,
Grand Prairie, Texas. Both advised that Virgil Hoffman has been a
deaf mute his entire life and has in the past distorted facts of events
observed by him. Both the father and brother stated that Virgil Hoffman
loved President Kennedy and had mentioned to them just after the assassination
that he (Virgil Hoffman) was standing on the freeway near the Texas
School Book Depository at the time of the assassination. Virgil Hoffman
told them he saw numerous men running after the President was shot.
The father of Virgil Hoffman stated that he did not believe that his
son had seen anything of value and doubted he had observed any men
running from the Texas School Book Depository and for this reason
had not mentioned it to the FBI.
(3)
Edward
Kennedy, letter to Ed Hoffman (19th
November, 1975)
My family
has been aware of various theories concerning the death of President
Kennedy, just as it has been aware of many speculative accounts which
have arisen from the death of Robert Kennedy. I am sure that it is
understood that the continual speculation is painful for members of
my family. We have always accepted the findings of the Warren Commission
report and have no reason to question the quality and the effort of
those who investigated the fatal shooting of Robert Kennedy.
(4)
Federal
Bureau of Investigation report on
the testimony of Ed Hoffman (25th March, 1977)
On March
25, 1977, Richard H. Freeman, Texas Instruments, Semi-Conductor Building,
Richardson, Texas, telephone number 238-4965, home address 2573 Sheli,
Frisco, Texas, telephone 377-9456, telephonically advised Special
Agent (name deleted) that he knew sign language and has communicated
with Virgil E. Hoffman, a deaf mute who is employed at his building
at Texas Instruments. Mr. Hoffman communicated with him by the use
of sign language and Hoffman was concerned that the FBI perhaps did
not fully understand what he was trying to communicate. Hoffman communicated
the following information to Mr. Freeman:
Hoffman was watching the
motorcade of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, at Dallas,
Texas. Hoffman was standing on Stemmons Freeway watching the presidential
motorcade, looking in an easterly direction when the motorcade sped
away and headed north on Stemmons Freeway. Hoffman communicated that
this must have been right after President Kennedy was shot. Hoffman
saw two men, one with a rifle and one with a handgun, behind a wooden
fence, approximately six feet in height, at this moment. This fence
is located on the same side of Elm Street as the Texas School Book
Depository building but closer to Stemmons Freeway. Since he is deaf,
he naturally could not hear any shots but thought he saw a puff of
smoke in the vicinity of where the two men were standing. As soon
as he saw the motorcade speed away and saw the puff of smoke in the
vicinity of the two men, the man with the rifle looked like he was
breaking the rifle down by removing the barrel from the stock and
placing it in some dark type of suitcase that the other man was holding.
The two men then ran north on the railroad tracks by actually running
on the tracks. Hoffman was standing approximately 75 yards from this
fence. This fence was at approximately the same height or level as
the ground floor of the Texas School Book Depository building.
On March 28, 1977, Virgil
E. Hoffman accompanied Special Agent (name deleted) to Stemmons Freeway,
also known as Interstate Highway 35 North, Dallas, Texas.
Hoffman communicated that
he was driving a 1962 Ford Falcon on November 22, 1963. He parked
his car on the west shoulder of Stemmons Freeway at the northbound
lane near the Texas and Pacific Railroad overpass that crosses Stemmons
Freeway. He could not see the presidential motorcade as it was proceeding
west on Elm Street toward the Triple Underpass. He saw the motorcade
speed up as it emerged on Stemmons Freeway heading north. His line
of vision was due east looking from Stemmons Freeway toward the Texas
School Book Depository building. The two men he saw were behind the
wooden fence above the grassy knoll north of Elm Street and just before
the Triple Underpass. He indicated he saw smoke in that vicinity and
saw the man with the rifle disassembling the rifle near some type
of railroad track control box located close to the railroad tracks.
Both men ran north on the railroad tracks.
He tried to get the attention
of a Dallas policeman who was standing on the railroad overpass that
crosses Stemmons Freeway, but since he could not yell, he could not
communicate with the policeman. He drove his car north on Stemmons
Freeway after the motorcade passed him in an effort to find the two
men, but he lost sight of them.
(5)
John
McAdams, Ed
Hoffman: Did He See a Grassy Knoll Shooter? (2003)
If Ed Hoffman's
account is accurate, there was a Grassy Knoll shooter and a conspiracy.
A deaf mute, Hoffman now claims to have stopped above the on-ramp
of the Stemmons Freeway, hoping to get a view of the presidential
limousine as it drove past. He thus had a view of the area behind
the Stockade Fence at the time of the shooting in Dealey Plaza. He
claims to have seen a man, dressed in a business suit, shoot from
behind the fence, and then toss the rifle to a man in a man dressed
as a railroad worker, who disassembled it, put it into a case, and
walked off. An explosive story, if true.
If Hoffman
didn't literally see a shooter, did he add that element to his story
sometime after he talked to the FBI in 1967, or was it there all along?
Mark Panlener, in a thorough review of this issue, concludes that
Hoffman was telling of seeing a shooter and accomplice from the very
beginning. Two witnesses, his wife Rosie, and his friend Lucien Pierce,
confirm that he was telling of a shooter as far back as 1963. However,
both are friends of Hoffman, and would not want to see him embarrassed.
One need not believe they are lying to doubt their corroboration of
Hoffman's story. It would suffice that they have heard several versions
of the story, and are simply confused, remembering details given later
as part of the first telling.
On the other
side is Ed's father Frederick Hoffman who maintained until his death
in 1976 his son's first version of the story did not mention the two
men behind the fence or seeing a shot fired. Hoffman supporters claim
that Frederick was simply lying - not from evil motives but out of
a desire to avoid seeing his son in harm's way...
The fact that
Hoffman changed his story in the 1990s, adding the Joe Marshall Smith
encounter and Sam Holland and his coworkers, might suggest that he
was capable of changing it between the time he talked to the FBI in
1967 and the time he talked to them again in 1977. But it's also possible
that this badly shaken and highly emotional witness was talking about
seeing a shooter when he first told his story on November 22, 1963.
(6)
Jim
Marrs, Crossfire: The Plot That
Killed Kennedy (1989)
After waiting
for a time, Hoffman decided to walk along the shoulder of the freeway
to a point where it crossed over Elm Street in hopes of getting a
view into Dealey Plaza. From this vantage point, Hoffman was approximately
two hundred yards west of the parking lot behind the picket fence
at an elevation of about the height of the first floor of the Texas
School Book Depository.
Being unable to hear,
he was not aware that Kennedy's motorcade was passing through the
plaza. However, he was aware of movement on the north side of the
picket fence. He became aware of a man running west along the back
side of the fence wearing a dark suit, tie, and an overcoat. The man
was carrying a rifle in his hands. As the man reached a metal pipe
railing at the west end of the fence, he tossed the rifle to a second
man standing on the west side of the pipe near the railroad tracks
that went south over the Triple Underpass. The second man was wearing
light coveralls and a railroad worker's hat.
The second man caught
the rifle, ducked behind a large railroad switch box - one of two
at that site - and knelt down. The man disassembled the rifle, placed
it in a soft brown bag (Hoffman's description matches that of the
traditional railroad brakeman's tool bag), then walked north into
the rail yards in the general direction of the railroad tower containing
Lee Bowers.
The man in the overcoat,
meanwhile, had turned and run back along the picket fence until midway,
when he stopped and began walking calmly toward the comer of the fence.
Hoffman could not see the corner of the fence due to cars and overhanging
tree branches. Unable to hear, Hoffman was at a loss to understand
what was happening as he watched these men.
However, moments later
Kennedy's car came into sight out of the west side of the Triple Underpass.
Hoffman saw the President lying on the seat of the blood-splattered
car and realized something terrible had occurred.
As the presidential limousine
turned onto the Stemmons access ramp just below his position, Hoffman
decided to try to alert the Secret Service agents to what he had witnessed.
He ran down the grassy incline waving his arms and trying to make
them understand that he had seen something, when one of the agents
in the President's follow-up car reached down and produced a machine
gun, which he leveled at him. Hoffman stopped and threw up his hands
and could only watch helplessly as the motorcade rushed past him onto
Stemmons in the mad rush to Parkland Hospital.
(7)
Robert Hoffman, a police officer and Ed Hoffman's uncle, was interviewed
by Bill Sloan for his book, JFK: Breaking the Silence (1993)
Maybe it
is better that I didn't understand what he had seen. I know that Eddie's
a very bright person and always has been, and can't think of any reason
why he would make up something like this. It would be completely out
of his character for him to change his story or to add to it at a
later date, but all I knew at the time was that someone in a car had
pointed a gun at him. I understood it to be a shotgun. His father
was very, very concerned that Eddie knew anything about the assassination
at all. It was time when suspicions were running high and he [Frederick]
was worried about Eddie getting involved in any way.. If I had known
the whole thing I guess it would have been my duty (as a police officer]
to come forward with the information and I imagine Chief Curry would
liked to have known about it. But as a relative, I would have probably
have felt pretty much like Eddie's father felt... It just wasn't a
time for loose statements that couldn't be proved or backed up with
any evidence.
(8)
Larry
Hancock,
JFK
Assassination Forum (15th May, 2004)
Ed's pastor
and sign language interpreter addresses many of those issues in the
booklet "Eye Witness", anyone seriously interested in Ed's
story and what he has described over time should get a copy. Specifically
the booklet deals with Ed's observation of a policeman up by the fence
after the shooting... as well as his observation of a train passing
over the overpass shortly after the limo passed by him.
However, there is still
considerable controversy over how much detail Ed really could see
at that distance, how he could see the figures up by the fence given
the number of cars and how they were parked up against the fence.
The fact that the running man would have had to be behind those cars
and the issue of how much depth perception Ed would have had at that
distance to accurately call out specific locations. I've personally
watched Ed locate the men behind the fence, trace their steps and
describe his observations and there is no doubt in my mind of his
sincerity. And he does describe the running men going out of sight
behind the parked rail cars as he ran north into the rail yard.
However in attempting to
duplicate his specific observations last year on a Dealey Plaza tour
(the same way we attempted to see the detail Carr describes for a
man with glasses on an upper floor), the whole tour group and myself
were hard pressed to see how Ed could have seen that amount of detail
pertaining to the "suit man" shooter that he describes...
especially given the parked cars.
Again, personally, I have
no doubt Ed saw something going on behind the fence and saw multiple
people... beyond that I just don't know.
(9)
Larry Peters, JFK
Assassination Forum (15th May, 2004)
A lot of
people do not know that Ed Hoffman, aside from being a deaf mute,
does not have a good grasp of the English Language. It is so easy
for misunderstandings on both sides to occur when trying to communicate
with Ed over what he witnessed on 11/22/63. In 2002, A couple of researchers
met with Ed Hoffman and his family in Dealey Plaza and Ed walked them
through step by step as to what happened behind the fence as seen
from the overpass he had stood on. Ed's daughter helped with the translation
between Ed and the researchers.
Back in 1963, Ed didn't
wear glasses and had better than average vision. Of course this is
not uncommon when a person is without one of his five senses. Ed being
deaf, did not know anyone was shooting at the motorcade for he could
not hear the shots. It's what Ed seen that is important. What Ed did
see was a puff of smoke at the stockade fence where a gentleman wearing
a dark suit and hat had immediately turned away from it. Ed immediately
noticed this individual had a long gun in his possession. Ed said
the man did not run, but rather briskly walked the weapon up near
the steam pipe where he tossed it to another man who then took the
gun and broke it down before leaving the area. The hatted man then
turned and casually walked back east along the fence in the direction
he had just come from. The tossing of the gun near the steam pipe
seems to be supported by a RR worker who told Seymour Weitzman that
he had witnessed something being tossed through the trees. When Weitzman
asked where did this happened exactly, the RR worker said 'over by
the steam pipe'.
James Files did not say
anything about walking a gun to the steam pipe and tossing it to anyone.
Also, Lee Bowers described this man in the dark suit as being rather
stocky, which doesn't match the build of James Files at the time of
the shooting. So not only does Files not match the description of
the man seen with the long gun, but his alleged actions do not match
that of the man who tossed the gun over the steam pipe. These two
important points tend to dispute Files being where he said he was
on 11/22/63.
(10)
Terry
Mauro, JFK
Assassination Forum (16th May, 2004)
That is an
excellent point you bring up regarding the acuity of the senses when
one of them is compromised. It is common knowledge that a blind person's
hearing is substantially more acute than that of a person who has
all of his faculties intact. Consequently, the same can be expected
of a deaf person's visual acuity as opposed to someone with their
senses uncompromised, unless of course they had been diagnosed with
myopia as a child. In this case, we have Ed Hoffman not needing glasses,
and most likely wouldn't need them until later in life, and then only
if presbyopia became an issue as it sometimes does in middle age.
|
Texas journalist
Jim Marrs pulls together a wealth of facts and new evidence
to reveal the glaring defects in official versions of what happened
that fateful day in November 1963 when President Kennedy was
shot. Backed up by rare photos and evidence from a dramatic
video-sequence, Crossfire is the startling and comprehensive
account of America's most infamous crime. Disturbing by its
very thoroughness, this book poses and answers new questions
on an event that too many people in high places have been trying
to lay to rest.
(Jim Marrs, Carroll & Graf, ISBN 0 88184 648 1)
|
Jim
Marrs, Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy, Carroll & Graf
Available from Amazon
Books (order below)
