Midland College employees write book about President Kennedy assassinationOctober 23, 2019

Bancroft Press recently published The Lone Star Speaks:  Untold Texas Stories about the JFK Assassination written by two Midland College (MC) employees, Sara Peterson and Katana Zachry.  The book provides new insights into the assassination of John F. Kennedy and uses actual witness testimony to raise new questions concerning what many have called “the crime of the twentieth century.”  Peterson and Zachry have collected books and artifacts concerning the assassination for years.

The book originated from a presentation that Peterson and Zachry made at the Midland College West Texas Symposium of History in 2014.  The presentation soon expanded into a four-year research project that resulted in more than 150 interviews. 

Among the most intriguing of the interviewees is Robert T. Davis, who was the Assistant Attorney General in Texas in 1963.  As an attorney who was sent to help interview Warren Commission witnesses, Davis immediately sensed that the official investigation was a “whitewash.”  Davis was one of the first to suggest that the investigation should include Jack Ruby’s contacts with Mafia members.

The book also includes testimony from a Lyndon Johnson staff member who was directed by the new President to serve as his eyes and ears in Dallas after the assassination.  She personally reported Oswald’s death immediately to President Johnson on November 24, 1963.

Still another previously unknown witness (who even today insists on anonymity) was part of at least two “abort teams” in Dallas on November 22, 1963.  Working with a U.S. Marshall in Dallas that day, he attempted to tell the FBI that more than one assassin had been firing at the President. 

Peterson and Zachry also interviewed a personal female friend of President Kennedy and another woman who spent the late hours of November 21, 1963 with Jack Ruby.  In addition, the authors uncovered several individuals who can personally vouch for the fact that there was and is a Dixie/Texas Mafia, and that it may have been involved with the Kennedy assassination.

Sara Peterson is the MC Writing Center coordinator, and Katana Zachry is a tutor in the Writing Center.