. has stonewalled these efforts to the extent of first conducting a bogus investigation, and more recently, denying to re-investigate the case properly even after I presented new evidence pointing to murder in "Denial of Justice," the follow-up book to the bestselling, "The Reporter Who Knew Too Much."jrDuring the past couple of years, many of you have shown great support for my efforts to get Dorothy Kilgallen the justice she deserves based on no real investigation of her death in 1965. Despite that support, and my continuing quest to make it happen, NYC DA Cyrus Vance,
This said, my only option now, as Dorothy's voice, is to convince Geoffrey Berman, the US Attorney for the Southern District of NY, to investigate Vance Jr.'s handling of the case while also probing Dorothy's death in a proper manner. To that end, I have written the below letter to Mr. Berman and am in need of any support you may provide through your contacting his office. Information about how to do so is at https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/contact-us
Thank you for the consideration.
Mark Shaw
mshawin@yahoo.com
March 25, 2019
Mr. Geoffrey Berman
United States Attorney’s Office
1 St. Andrew’s Plaza
New York, New York 10007
Re: Did NYC DA Cyrus Vance, Jr. and ADA Eugene Hurley Obstruct Justice via an Unlawful Investigation into Investigative Reporter Dorothy Kilgallen’s death in 2017?
Dear Mr. Berman,
As an investigative reporter, author, and a member of the California Bar (inactive) living near the Stanford campus where you earned your law degree, I believe it is important to report possible obstruction of justice by government officials regarding criminal activity. This is important even if the crime itself took place more than 50 years ago since the victim of a homicide has rights regardless of the time lapse.
The crime I speak of, as I believe your office will agree, involves the November 1965 death of important historical figure Dorothy Kilgallen, best known for being the star panelist on the long running CBS program, What’s My Line?, but whose reputation as a legendary journalist resulted in Ms. Kilgallen being a crack investigative reporter like few before or since. In fact, it was Ms. Kigallen’s dogged 18-month investigation of the JFK assassination and her pursuit of justice to discover the truth about what happened to her friend, the president, that ultimately put her in peril.
Details of Ms. Kilgallen’s life and times, her JFK assassination investigation (she was present at the Jack Ruby trial and the only reporter to interview him among other accomplishments) and her death are memorized in two books of mine, the bestselling “The Reporter Who Knew Too Much,” published in late 2016, and “Denial of Justice: Dorothy Kilgallen, Abuse of Power and the Most Compelling JFK Assassination Investigation in History,” published in November 2018. The latter, my 25th publication, is enclosed for your interest. More about Kilgallen, whose story has touched the emotions of readers around the world, including videotaped interviews with those who are important witnesses to her demise may be learned at www.thedorothykilgallenstory.org. A presentation I gave about her case at the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco this past December is available on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vUA4TSYLyI.
The potential obstruction of justice involves NY District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr., former Assistant District Attorney Eugene Hurley, and the D.A.’s office’s investigation of Ms. Kilgallen’s death in 2017. Announced with much fanfare in the media, the decision to investigate was apparently due to Vance Jr. and Hurley’s belief that the conclusion reached in 1965 that Ms. Kilgallen accidentally died of a drug overdose combined with alcohol warranted an investigation since none had been conducted after her death in 1965.
At the heart of the possible misconduct is the DA’s office abrupt decision to terminate the probe in 2017 by issuing a statement he and ADA Hurley authorized and circulated to the media in August 2017 and whether it was indeed a false statement they knew to be false. It reads:
Following a thorough, eight-month-long investigation
into the death of Dorothy Kilgallen, the [NY County]
District Attorney’s Office has found no evidence from
which it could be concluded that Ms. Kilgallen’s death
was caused by another person. We would like to thank
those who advocated on behalf of Ms. Kilgallen,
because information provided by her supporters is one
of the reasons why an investigation commenced 51 years
after her death. This Office remains dedicated to the
investigation of cold cases and, if new evidence comes
to light, we will review it appropriately. We will decline
further comment on this matter.
Important to note are the words “a thorough, eight-month long thorough investigation,” and “has found no evidence from which it could be concluded that Ms. Kilgallen’s death was caused by another person.” Since there are considerable facts in opposition to the investigation being even close to “thorough” and a mountain of evidence to the contrary regarding her death being accidental, by this letter I am respectfully requesting that your office review conduct by Vance, Jr.’s office from the moment his office accepted the responsibility to investigate this death in January 2017. Since your reputation as a man of the truth who believes injustice in any form cannot not be tolerated is well known and respected, I also request that your office launch a thorough investigation of Ms. Kilgallen’s death perhaps through the convening of a grand jury so that she finally receives the justice she deserves denied to her in 1965 and 2017. This will permit witnesses never interviewed by DA Vance’s office to appear and documents hidden by that office essential to understanding what happened to her to be exposed.
Details in both books and in my March 14, 2018 and November 16, 2018 letters to Mr. Vance, Jr., enclosed for your interest, provide the overall basis for my request. Interaction with the DA’s office after it accepted the Kilgallen case for review resulted in my sharing vital evidence about her death with Detective Richard Ramos, assigned as chief investigator for Ms. Kilgallen’s case. For several months, he and I corresponded by email (copies in “Denial of Justice”) leading to my meeting with Ramos on June 2, 2017 in his New York City office. At that time, I presented him with an “Evidence Report” (enclosed) which included the listing of 33 reasons as to why Ms. Kilgallen did not die accidentally. This conclusion was specifically due to fresh forensic evidence never exposed before when she died along with witness statements and documents relating to her death but hidden from the public.
During our meeting, Ramos talked about how excited he was to be investigating Ms. Kilgallen’s death since he normally handled embezzlement cases, that he had already sent out subpoenas to retrieve important documents connected to her death, and most importantly, called her the “victim” of a crime. Ramos also said he would share the evidence provided with the ADA assigned to the case who turned out to be Eugene Hurley.
All seemed square with Ramos complimenting me on my cooperation as I continued for several months to share with him via email new evidence compiled for “Denial of Justice.” This included statements by Ms. Kilgallen’s butler’s daughter that Ms. Kilgallen had been killed, and admissions by Ms. Kilgallen’s daughter Jill to the effect, “My mother was murdered” (confirmed by two witnesses). Most importantly, Ramos was made aware of the admissions by journalist Ron Pataky, Kilgallen’s confidant and last lover (still alive and living in Ohio), whose less than truthful statements about his relationship with Ms. Kilgallen indicated complicity in her death, and a statement he made to family members that “I was the last person to see Dorothy alive, that I was at her apartment the night she died, the last one to leave the building,”
Based on my disclosures, Ramos not only questioned Pataky’s involvement in Ms. Kilgallen’s demise but agreed with me that if Pataky were confronted with the plethora of evidence pointing to his guilt including admissions and false and conflicting statements, he might very well confess. Ramos also wondered if “Pataky may have sold Ms. Kilgallen’s JFK assassination evidence to the wrong people,” an indication that little doubt existed Pataky was involved in Ms. Kilgallen’s death (It is this author’s opinion that Ramos did not agree with the DA office’s decision to stop the 2017 investigation. Interviewing Detective Ramos, who left the office in 2018 and has been evasive since, is a real key to probing Vance Jr. and Hurley’s conduct and whether the August 2017 statement terminating the investigation into Ms. Kilgallen’s death was false and known to be false yet disseminated to the public.
Ramos was also made aware of Pataky’s violent background including several arrests involving alcohol abuse and that he admitted attending an “Assassin’s School” in Central America. All of this compelling evidence connected to, as Ramos was well aware, Pataky’s publication of two incriminating poems in the 1990s about Ms. Kilgallen included in both of my books. The first is entitled, “One cannot write who is zippered tight,” an obvious reference to Ms. Kilgallen being silenced, and the second, a revealing poem under the banner, “Vodka Roulette Seen as Relief Possibility” alongside the photo of a bartender mixing drinks. It reads:
Since, as a fresh investigation will confirm, the forensic evidence accumulated based on Ms. Kilgallen’s autopsy and a subsequent blood analysis point squarely to her being poisoned by the insertion of three barbiturates into her cocktail on the night she died which, as proven through expert witnesses, rules out either accidental death or suicide. This “verdict” is contrary, as Ramos was aware, to the conclusion reached by the NYC Medical Examiner despite no investigation on his part or by the NYPD. Regarding the latter, no probe occurred even though little doubt existed that the death scene had been staged with Ms. Kilgallen discovered in her townhouse bedroom she never slept in wearing bedclothes she never wore to bed with her earrings, hairpiece, false eyelashes, and makeup still in place.
More importantly, Pataky obviously has knowledge, as Ramos was advised, of how Ms. Kilgallen was poisoned that only the killer or one knowing how she was killed, could know. This rings true since none of this inside information about the three barbiturates was ever reported until “The Reporter Who Knew Too Much” was released in late 2016 with the book exposing for the first time Kilgallen’s autopsy report.
As noted, a copy of “Denial of Justice is enclosed for your interest. It provides details of the DA’s bogus investigation beginning in Chapter 38 at page 423. New, however, to the accusations of obstruction of justice are two recent admissions by the DA’s office in response to the enclosed FOIL request I filed in February 2019. Of special interest is not only a statement that “the investigation into the death of Dorothy Kilgallen is a sealed criminal proceeding” which triggers the question as to why the case became a “criminal proceeding” when the DA’s office basically announced there was no crime when it denied a previous FOIL request in late 2017, but also the responses to these two specific FOIL requests. They are:
The response from ADA Susan Roque reads as follows regarding #’s 36 and #37
Logically, as any fresh investigation will indicate, it may be concluded that based on this statement (“those documents are not in DANY’s possession”), there was no contact or investigation, not even an interview of any kind regarding Pataky, the main suspect in Kilgallen’s death. Not interviewing more than twenty witnesses who shed light on her death, especially those with direct knowledge including Pataky’s family member who said he admitted to being the last person to see Kilgallen alive, appears to go completely against the grain of a district attorney’s duty to search for the truth during an investigation. But not probing Pataky, a pathological liar with psychopathic tendencies as proven in “Denial of Justice,” at all, appears to fly in the face of any sense of a “thorough” investigation by the DA’s office adding to the weight of Vance Jr. and Hurley making the false statement to the media in August 2017.
Regarding Pataky, who had the motive (Kilgallen exposing his leaking of her JFK assassination investigation evidence would have ruined his career), means (he was a trusted ally and involved in a romantic relationship with her and admits being at her Manhattan townhouse), opportunity (met her on the last night of her life at the Regency Hotel near her residence), and benefit from the crime (the potential that his career would be ruined would no longer a threat and he may have received money for leaking her JFK evidence as Ramos suspected), it is critical that your investigation involve interviewing witnesses as soon as possible based on their advanced age but for certain Pataky. His contact information is Ron Pataky - 4800 Knightbridge, #230. Columbus, Ohio 43204, 614.933.0654 or 614.457.6440. Email address is Rons.place@yahoo.com. Contact information for other witnesses is supplied in the aforementioned Evidence Report.
Based on these disclosures, two disturbing points of interest about the DA’s statement in 2017 terminating the Kilgallen death investigation seem undisputed – by no stretch of the imagination was there a “thorough” investigation of any kind since witnesses provided by this author were never contacted (see email exchanges in “Denial of Justice” from several confirming they were never contacted), and the supposition that there was “no evidence from which it could be concluded that Ms. Kilgallen’s death was caused by another person” appears quite disturbing on its face since the facts point to the DA’s office not even making a solid effort to even discover such evidence. Also, it should be noted that when this author spoke with Ramos and ADA Hurley just prior to the issuance of the DA statement in August 2017, Hurley, as noted in “Denial of Justice,” became upset at my questions and without thinking, went off script, and said, “I am not going to argue with you Mr. Shaw and besides we don’t know who did it.” Ramos, who never spoke during the conversation, must have been as perplexed as I was at Hurley’s words admitting a crime had occurred.
Certainly, a fresh investigation will determine whether Vance, Jr. and ADA Hurley issued the false statement knowing it to be false to the media amounting to obstruction of justice but if so, these actions deprived Ms. Kilgallen of the justice she deserved since the DA’s office undertook the responsibility to conduct a thorough investigation of her death as it would do with any victim of what was obviously, based on the mountains of evidence, a homicide. The issuing of such a false statement flies in the face of Rule 8.4 of the New York Rules of Professional Conduct. It states that misconduct occurs if a lawyer “engages in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation” or “engages in conduct that is prejudicial to the administration of justice.” These violations appear to fit the conduct of Vance Jr., Hurley and the DA’s office’s handling of the Kilgallen investigation not only because what they did was at the very least misrepresentation, and at the worst dishonest and deceitful regarding the facts about her death. By doing so, the public was led to believe that the DA’s office had done its job in a professional manner and therefore determined that she died accidentally of an overdose of deadly barbiturates resulting in further defaming of her good name. With your office looking into the matter, the question as to whether this conduct is “prejudicial to the administration of justice” for the victim of a crime may be resolved. This is true whether the victim is a famous woman like Dorothy Kilgallen or named Dorothy Doe.
Deciding whether the DA office’s conduct is rendered prejudicial amounting to an obstruction of justice must also involve considering the end result here – that Pataky, the man mostly likely to have caused her death remains free. Interviewing Ramos as to his reasons for suspecting Pataky of selling Ms. Kilgallen’s JFK assassination evidence (several witnesses still alive including Brenda DeJourdan and Pataky’s family members speak of his being poor), may open the door to further proof Ramos discovered implicating Pataky.
Since there has a been a pattern of shaky ethical conduct on the part of Vance, Jr. and his office (failure to prosecute Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump, Jr. for fraud, failure to prosecute Harvey Weinstein, each based on undue influence through their attorney’s campaign contribution, and the recent Jeffrey Epstein case where Vance Jr. coddled a known pedophile), the disturbing allegations of abuse of power, a cover-up, in Ms. Kilgallen’s case comes as no real surprise. In fact, such behavior adds to the need for holding DA Vance, Jr. and ADA Hurley accountable for their actions regarding the false statement issued to the media about her death.
No doubt exists that if it is determined by your office that stonewalling the investigation into Kilgallen’s death is arbitrary and capricious, then Vance Jr., and Hurley’s conduct is completely contrary to the duty of a prosecuting attorney “to do the right thing,” one of the foundations of the Rules of Fairness and Ethical Conduct as provided in the Rules of Professional Conduct codified at Title 22, Part 1200 of the New York Code of Rules and Regulations. If Vance Jr.’s behavior, especially approving the statement by the DA’s office that “it found no evidence from which it could be concluded that Ms. Kilgallen’s death was caused by another person,” was known to be false by the DA. and yet he permitted the statement to be made to the media which was then disseminated to the public at large, the State Bar of New York is likely to condemn such actions. This is as it should, since a public servant, a prosecutor like Vance Jr. must adhere to what “doing the right thing” means as discussed in the article, “The Right Thing: Ethical Guidelines for Prosecutors” where it is stated that this phrase means:
“[Prosecutors] must seek the truth, tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may. It means [prosecutors] have a duty to know the ethical rules that govern our conduct, and to remain alert to the myriad of and often subtle ethical challenges that arise in our work. It means that district attorneys and their senior staff must set the tone, emphasize the primacy of ethical conduct, instruct junior prosecutors in these principles, and monitor their compliance.”
With these principles in mind, if there is a determination by your office that Vance Jr. and his colleagues did not “seek the truth” by acting in not only an unethical manner but perhaps an illegal one as well by suppressing evidence, hiding evidence the public should view, then your office has the opportunity to right the wrong. This can happen by investigating Vance Jr. and his office regarding its insufficient investigation of Kilgallen’s death and to properly and professionally probe that death using all of your investigatory powers.
So as to gain an independent evaluation of the Kilgallen case in tandem with her investigation of the JFK assassination, former federal prosecutor and United States Congressman Robert Livingston was enlisted to provide an opinion. He concluded:
After reading “Denial of Justice,” your follow-up to “The Reporter Who Knew Too Much,” I find that you’ve made a convincing case that the Warren Report covering the assassination of President Kennedy is woefully incomplete and possibly misleading. Clearly, evidence exists to imply that Oswald and even more likely, his killer Jack Ruby, were acting in concert with others. Moreover, you’ve shown that Dorothy Kilgallen was investigating and had likely uncovered much of that evidence when she was discovered to have suffered an untimely death at her home in 1965. Finally, because of your most thorough examination of the confusing facts surrounding her death, one is left with convincing evidence that she died neither from natural causes nor suicide. In short, she was murdered and the circumstances of her death appear to have been covered up. Why and by who is still open to speculation, but you have provided an exhaustive list of possibilities and potential assailants.
As a former prosecutor, I cannot say that you have solved the case “beyond a reasonable doubt.” But you surely have provided sufficient “reasonable cause” to convene a grand jury for a thorough investigation. That said, the case is 50+ years old and limited resources available to government investigative authorities might provide them with reason to “put it on the back shelf” but for the connection to the most horrendous crime of the past century, to wit: the killing of President Kennedy.
There are still a number of potential witnesses alive today. Because of your work, they could be subpoenaed to testify and such proceedings should not take too much time to definitely answer some of the questions yet unanswered.
Mr. Berman, at a time when there is so much turmoil in the world, politically and otherwise, I realize your office has a fistful of priorities regarding upholding the law across the state of New York. This said, Dorothy Kilgallen, a remarkable woman who rose from being a college dropout to being, among other things, the most credible reporter to have investigated the JFK assassination, cannot defend herself. As many thousands of people have told me, she was a true patriot, a woman of the truth, of integrity who risked her life to tell the truth about what happened to the 35th president of the United States and in the end, as the evidence clearly indicates, paid the price for attempting to print that truth.
Without question, Ms. Kilgallen, through her breakthrough research as presented for the first time in both of my books, has provided a new lens with which to view through her eyes JFK’s tragic death. Following up on my end has permitted me to expose the most important assassination documents in history, the Jack Ruby trial transcripts for the first time permitting the public to realize what she realized and was going to write about in her tell-all book for Random House. This conclusion pointed to a definite plot to kill JFK to the extent that the trial testimony proves Jack Ruby actually watched the assassination as it took place, stalked Oswald with the admission that Ruby said “He would be there” when Oswald was transferred, etc. Thousands of people have viewed the shocking testimony on the original trial transcript pages in “Denial if Justice,” and on my website, www.markshawbooks.com.
As such, Kilgallen, whose exhaustive JFK assassination investigation has cleared up many distortions of history and whom readers around the world have come to respect to the extent of wishing we had more journalists like her in today’s world, deserves better than a much less than thorough investigation into her death. My hope is that you will, at long last, provide her with the “thorough” investigation she warrants, at long last by doing the “right thing” in accordance with the powers of your office. Certainly, the potential for this to happen is strong based on a statement by Mary Jo White, the chair of the Securities Exchange Commission under President Obama, who was the U. S. attorney in the early 1990s when you were an assistant. When asked about your integrity, she wrote, “Doing the right thing, and acting on the merits completely, that may sound naïve, but it is the steel spine of that place [your office]. Geoff has that.”
Hopefully the “steel spine” Ms. White notes about your moral and ethical makeup will prevail here since Kilgallen, who was a bastion of truth once called the “the most powerful female voice in America” by the New York Post, is a symbol of those who cannot scream for justice themselves but must look to those in power to protect their rights. To that end, a full investigation of her death as well as an investigation of Vance Jr.’s conduct should be provided to make certain her voice is heard and that Ron Pataky is brought to justice, if the evidence warrants that conclusion once his involvement in Kilgallen’s death has been thoroughly probed.
Doing so will answer large and looming questions that need answers based on transparency, what is the real reason the DA’s office suddenly pull the plug on the investigation when it was full bore with cooperation ongoing between Ramos and me? What prompted that decision; what may be hidden from public view and most puzzling, why did Vance, Jr. and ADA Hurley, seasoned prosecutors for sure, decide to issue the media statement based on apparent falsehoods instead of simply closing the investigation in a quiet, orderly and professional manner as is the norm in 99% of all cases investigated? Instead, they projected the image through a media statement to the world that due to a “thorough” probe on their part, Ms. Kilgallen was not the victim of a crime with the same fanfare the office exhibited when it took on her case choosing to flaunt its professionalism in handling the case. Dishonest? Deceitful? Misrepresentation? Your office may decide.
Thank you for the consideration. I look forward to hearing from you and promise to cooperate in any way possible including meeting in NYC with your staff. I am sure you will agree that victims of a crime have rights whether they died five days ago, five years ago, or fifty-plus years ago. Now you can give her those rights, be her paladin, be the one to stand up for Kilgallen when so many have failed to do so.
Shortly before she died, Ms. Kilgallen told her hairdresser and confidant Charles Simpson, “If the wrong people knew what I know about the JFK assassination, it would cost me my life,” and she said to a second hairdresser and friend Marc Sinclaire (both interviews at www.thedorothykilgallenstory.org.), “I am afraid for my life and my family and I have bought a gun.” Her concern was understandable since Ms. Kilgallen had challenged the power of the government and the ludicrous J. Edgar Hoover “Oswald Alone” theory in her columns and articles. And because of quotes like this one which exemplifies what her character, what her integrity, was all about. Like you, she sought justice and her remark is as true today as it was 50+ years ago. She said: “Justice is a big rug. When you pull it out from under one man, a lot of others fall, too.”
Pull out the rug from under the office of Cyrus Vance, Jr., Mr. Berman, and who knows what you may find.
Best wishes,
Mark Shaw
P. S. You, and your staff, may wonder what are my motives here, chasing justice as I have for a dead woman I never knew? I have been accused of just trying to sell books and seeking personal glory for my actions in behalf of Ms. Kilgallen. I have gotten threats that I should leave the case alone; my email and Facebook pages have been hacked and yet I continue on. Why? Because my defending people who cannot defend themselves goes back to my early days as a public defender when I represented the downtrodden like they were my brothers and sisters. In this case, I believe Dorothy picked me to be her voice, and as such, I am doing the best I can to see that justice is served. As it should be.
Enclosures:
Copy of “Denial of Justice.”
March 14, 2018 letter to Cyrus Vance, Jr.
November 16, 2018 letter to Cyrus Vance, Jr.
February 8, 2019 response letter from ADA Susan Roque re FOIL request
Evidence Document proving Kilgallen Victim of Homicide
Evidence Document proving Ron Pataky complicit in Kilgallen’s death
2017 “Evidence Report” Provided to DA Chief Investigator Det. Richard Ramos
