Dorothy Mae Kilgallen
"I don't need a psychiatrist, i'm Catholic."
She was was a no-nonsense, tough, uncompromising, aggressive and fearless, American journalist and television game show panelist.She was a true representative of the people, and felt the public had a right to know the truth, wherever it may lead.
Ernest Hemingway called her
”the greatest woman writer in the world”.
Dorothy was born July 3, 1913 in Chicago, Illinois to newspaper reporter James Lawrence Kilgallen and his wife, Mae Ahern.She started her career shortly when she was 17 as a reporter for the Hearst Corporation's New York Evening Journal.
In 1936, at 23 years old, Dorothy competed in a race around the world using only transportation available to the general public.
She was the only woman to compete in the contest and she came in second.
She wrote a book about the experience, Girl Around The World.
In 1938, she began her newspaper column "The Voice of Broadway," which was syndicated to more than 140 papers with 30 million readers.
She also covered high-profile murder trials.
In the case of Dr. Sam Sheppard, who denied killing his pregnant wife, and inspiration for the television series The Fugitive (1963-67), Dorothy single-handedly led Sheppard’s murder conviction to be overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.
She told defense lawyer F. Lee Bailey that when the trial started, Judge Edward Blythin called her into his chambers to get her autograph and commented that,
”It’s an open-and-shut case.
He’s guilty as hell”.
She was one of the first reporters to imply that the CIA was involved in working with the mob to try to assassinate Fidel Castro.In 1950, she became a regular panelist on the television game show What's My Line?
She was on the show for 15 years, until her death.
Most of her articles dealt with show business news and gossip.
She did venture in more serious topics, such as the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
She scored the only interview with Jack Ruby, the killer of Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused killer of President John Kennedy.
She scored a world exclusive when she obtained an advance copy of the Warren Commission's controversial report.
This infuriated President Lyndon Johnson, who had not yet even seen it.
She was publicly skeptical of the conclusions of the Warren Commission's report into the assassination of President Kennedy.
She wrote several newspaper articles on the subject and obtained a copy of Jack Ruby's testimony to the Warren Commission, which she included.
She wrote the first article on the FBI’s intimidation of witnesses.
She interviewed a witness to the shooting of Officer J. D. Tippit, Acquilla Clemons, whom the Warren Commission never questioned.
Clemons claimed to have two men at the scene of the murder, none matching Lee Harvey Oswald‘s description.
Dorothy also launched a private inquiry which took her to New Orleans.
This resulted in her drawing the scrutiny and scorn of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and LBJ. FBI agents were dispatched to her private residence in New York to interrogate her.
She said she’d rather die than reveal her sources.
She turned down a an opportunity for a private interview with Adolph Hitler.
On August 3, 1962, Less than 48 hours after Dorothy wrote a piece about Marilyn Monroe‘s affair with President John K. Kennedy, Monroe was found dead.
Dorothy began writing of her suspicions that Monroe’s cause of death was an overdose of pills and challenged the police and medical evidence.
When LIFE Magazine came out, with a controversial photo of Oswald, Dorothy publicly challenged its authenticity.
Agencies of the federal government like the CIA and FBI followed Dorothy and her friends for many years.
Her phones were tapped and she had to arrange secret meetings with sources.
Near the end of her life, she very much felt she was in danger .
Before her death, she bought a gun for protection.
She told her coworkers on What's My Line? that she had planned a second trip to New Orleans to investigate Mafia don Carlos Marcello.
Dorothy was quoted as saying,
”If the wrong people knew what I know about the JFK assassination, it would cost me my life.”
On November 8, 1965, Dorothy's hair dresser, found her dead, propped up in bed, in full make-up, wig, and earrings.
She was not wearing her regular pajamas, but instead a blue matching peignoir and robe.
A book lay on her bed, that she had finished reading weeks earlier.
Her reading glasses were nowhere nearby.
She was found in a third-floor bedroom of her Manhattan townhouse, although she always slept in the fifth-floor.
Her death was much like Marilyn Monroe's, which she had also questioned.
”If she were just trying to get to sleep, and took the overdose of the pills accidentally, why was the light on?
Usually people sleep better in the dark.”
When Dorothy was found, her light was also on and like Marilyn Monroe it was determined that her death had been caused by a fatal combination of alcohol and barbiturates.Dr. James Luke, the medical examiner that did her autopsy, did not sign the death certificate.
It was signed by another physician, Dr. Dominick DiMaio.
When he was questioned, he did not know why his name was appeared on the certificate, and he was not working in Manhattan at the time of Dorothy's death.
An investigative article that took months to assemble, and relied on eyewitnesses and other sources who were never interviewed by authorities, her most likely was tied into her probe into the death of JFK.
A mysterious man befriended her in the months leading up to her death.
Just a day or so before she died, Dorothy told her hairdresser, Marc Sinclaire, her belief that someone close to her was a “snitch” and was watching her closely and feeding information to people who wished to do her harm.
Three years after her death, tissue samples were analyzed.
The glass next to her bed showed traces of a drug she was known to take called Nembutol, however that drug was not found in her body.
Analysis showed a deadly combination of three barbiturates: Secobarbital, Amobarbital, and Pentobarbital.
Her husband, who was sleeping on the fourth floor, gave inconsistent accounts of what happened the night of Dorothy's death.
He claimed that she arrived home at 11:30 p.m., happy, and went off to write her column, but at the same time she was seen in the lounge at The Regency Hotel where the What’s My Line? cast and guests gathered until 2 a.m.
The Regency was seven blocks from the townhouse.
Later, when asked about his wife’s JFK investigation, he stated that,
”I’m afraid that will have to go to the grave with me.”
He died of a drug overdose in 1971 without revealing any information about the investigation.In 1975, Dorothy's son was contacted by the FBI wanting to know where her JFK files were.
He told them the notes were still missing.
This was long after the FBI decided Oswald had killed the president.
The large folder of notes on the JFK assassination that Dorothy carried with her was never found.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office is still looking into Dorothy's death.
Dorothy was laid to rest at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Westchester, NY.
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