The Noncons
Kenneth A. Rahn, Ph.D., is an atmospheric chemist, Professor Emeritus at the University of Rhode Island, and lecturer in scientific writing at Boston University. He is been interested in the JFK assassination since 1992, and taught a course on it at URI for a decade. A 30-year specialist in neutron activation analysis (NAA), he (along with Larry Sturdivan) has just published two peer-reviewed scientific articles on the NAA of the bullets and fragments from the assassination, which show unequivocally that two bullets from Oswald's rifle did everything that day. He founded Nonconspiracists United in 2003.
Mel Ayton has a B.A. Honours degree in Politics and History and an M.A. from Durham University. In 1988 he was a "Fulbright Teacher" in the U.S. He has also worked in Bermuda and taught in Zambia. His first book, Questions of Conspiracy, examined claims made by JFK conspiracy theorists. It was updated and published in 2002 as The JFK Assassination: Dispelling The Myths. In 2001 he published Questions of Controversy – The Kennedy Brothers, which examined the controversial stories about John, Robert and Edward Kennedy. In 2003 he served as historical adviser for the BBC’s television documentary The Kennedy Dynasty. He has recently completed research on the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and is presently researching the 1973 murder of Bermuda’s Governor Sir Richard Sharples. Mel has a Web site, at www.melayton.co.uk .
Tim Brennan, Sydney, Australia
Russ Burr
John Cahill, Ph.D., is a freelance writer, historian, and fine-art photographer. He collects vintage military firearms, is a competitive shooter, and is interested in the ballistic and firearm aspects of the JFK murder. He was trained as a historian, and holds the Ph.D. in Modern German History from the University of Cincinnati.
Jean Davison is a free-lance writer. Her 1983 book Oswald's Game was published by W. W. Norton and remains in the minds of many the seminal work on Lee Harvey Oswald.
Joe Durnavich is a computer programmer and amateur photographer. He has been active in debunking those who claim that the Zapruder film is a hoax.
Dennis Frank is a psychologist in Milwaukee. He is interested in Oswald's personality.
Robert A. Frazier is a firearms specialist and a former career FBI agent. He worked from June 1941 to April 1973 in the Firearms and Toolmarks unit of the FBI Laboratory, primarily matching bullets and cartridge cases with the firearms from which they were fired, plus matching toolmarks with the tools that made them. The last two years, he was promoted from Chief of the Firearms and Toolmarks Unit to Chief of the Physics Branch of the FBI Laboratory, a supervisory position. He retired in 1975, and worked in same fields at the Northern Virginia Crime Lab until 1990, while self-employed as a consultant, mostly in civil cases involving firearms. He has a B.S. in forestry from the University of Idaho, 1940, and an M.S. in forensic science from George Washington University, 1970. He is best known to JFK people as the FBI's lead agent in the ballistics examinations and in the reconstruction of the shooting.
Joel Grant is a computer programmer. He has been interested in the JFK assassination for nearly 30 years.
Robert Grossman, M. D., is chairman of neurosurgery at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. He was one of the physicians to treat President Kennedy in the emergency room at Parkland Hospital, and has recently come forward to share his recollections of the small entry wound in the rear of the president's head. Along with three colleagues, he is publishing a three-part neuroforensic analysis of the wounds in the medical journal Neurosurgery, to try to clear up the confusion and misimpressions on the injuries suffered by the president.
Martin Kelly, Ph.D., is a retired professor of psychology from the Hobart and William Smith Colleges in upper New York State. His specialty was ...
Patricia Lambert is a writer/editor. Her 1998 book False Witness: The Real Story of Jim Garrison's Investigation and Oliver Stone's Film JFK is widely regarded as the definitive work on both subjects.
Steve Lytwynec is a police officer in the Baltimore area. He is most interested in the acoustic aspects of the case.
John McAdams is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he specializes in American government and teaches a course on the JFK assassination. He has an extensive Web site on the assassination, at http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/home.htm . He also founded the popular newsgroup alt.assassination.jfk. His JFK specialty is debunking factoids and errors of conspiracists.
Michael O'Dell
Dave Reitzes is a free-lance writer. He received a B.A. in liberal arts from the New School for Social Research in New York. A former conspiracist, he now believes strongly in the lone-assassin explanation. He has a Web site on the assassination, JFK Online, at http://www.jfk-online.com.
Johann W. Rush was the WDSU TV news cameraman who photographed Lee Harvey Oswald and Carlos Bringuier at the New Orleans courthouse on August 12, 1963, after their "disturbing the peace" trial, and he photographed the WDSU film of Oswald handing out leaflets at the New Orleans Trade Mart on August 16, 1963. He was present in the WDSU newsroom when Oswald made his "I am a Marxist" statement during the Bill Slatter film interview. As a cameraman and news producer, he has had many film reports on various television networks since the early 1960s. In the 1980s Mr. Rush investigated the assassination and produced a series of special reports about it, including an analysis of the Zapruder film (with Dr. Michael West) that was shown at the 1993 AMA Symposium, at the 1992 annual meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, and at the FBI Academy in 1992. The program was studied by Gerald Posner and mentioned in his book Case Closed.
Lyndal Shaneyfelt is a retired FBI special agent who lives in Maryland. He worked on the JFK case.
Rob Spencer has a B.A. in History from St. John Fisher College, Rochester, NY, where he minored in Political Science and completed extended concentrations in American, European, and strategic, military, and diplomatic studies. He is presently using the sounds of two-wheeler and three-wheeler motorcycles to document that the Dictabelt that purportedly contains sounds from the assassination was actually recorded by a three-wheeler, and so could not have come from Dealey Plaza. Rob is currently a systems engineer in Rochester, NY.
Larry M. Sturdivan has a B.S. in physics from Oklahoma State University and an M.S. in statistics from the University of Delaware. He worked at the Ballistics Research Laboratory, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, from 1964 to 1972, and then at the Edgewood Research, Development & and Engineering Center, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, from 1972 through 1995. He held levels of responsibility from bench-level research to management, including Associate Technical Director for Technology at the Research, Development & Engineering Center. He wrote the majority of the casualty criteria for bullets, fragments, etc. used by the U.S. and NATO, and has had contracts to update them. He consulted and testified on ballistics to the House Select Committee on Assassination in 1978. He is currently a consultant in mathematical and statistical modeling for LMS Scientific Applications. He has written an book entitled The JFK Myths: A Scientific Investigation of the Kennedy Assassination, which will be published by Paragon House Publishers, St. Paul, MN, in early fall 2005.
Chad R. Zimmerman is a chiropractor from Boulder, Colorado, with a strong interest in the JFK case. He went to school in Bloomington, MN, part of the Twin Cities area. He presently also serves as one of the three moderators on the newsgroup alt.assassination.jfk. He is interested in firearms aspects of the shooting, and was recently part of the Discovery Channel special program that investigated the "magic bullet." In September 2004 he visited the National Archives viewed the original autopsy photos and X-rays along with Larry Sturdivan. He has a Web site, at www.zimmermanjfk.com.