Who killed JFK? The answer to this question has been a mystery since that Friday afternoon in November 1963. I admire John F Kennedy for what he was. He risked his life and finally got killed because he wanted to change the world. He was the only man at that time who was committed to peace (in a country that was, and still is, a war machine).

I would seriously recommend you to read his book "Profiles in Courage".

In the four decades since the November 22, 1963 public execution of President John F. Kennedy as he rode in a motorcade through Dallas, Texas, several hundred books, thousands of articles, and two major US government investigations have all sought to answer this question: Who did it? Despite the best efforts of the Warren Commission to prove that an ex-marine named Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone (and then was in turn killed by Jack Ruby), no one appears to be any closer to the 'truth' today than we've ever been. The conspiracy theories that follow are some of the most outrageous ever unearthed, but be assured: As strange as they may seem, no one can really argue whether they are true or not!

They Stole The President's Brain

If you're starting to think the entire JFK controversy is starting to look like something out of central casting, then according to researcher David Lifton, you may be right. Lifton gained notoriety with the publication of Best Evidence (Carrol & Graf, 1988), an enormous volume that claims there was some serious hanky-panky going on with the JFK corpse.

According to Lifton's latest visions, the Kennedy Body was "switched" en route from Dallas, Texas to Washington, with the real cadaver taken off the plane and "disguised as luggage" in furtherance of the cover-up. In the final act designed to conceal the details, Lifton asserts that JFK's brain was removed, disguised as a baby, put on a gurney and put back in his head at Bethesda Naval Hospital. This is a theory that has met with some doubts.

Hobo Hit

While numerous suspects were briefly detained by police in Dallas on the day of the JFK assassination, none have generated so much suspicion and speculation as the "tramps". Right after the killing, Dallas cops discovered three apparent hobos sitting in a railway boxcar in the railroad near Dealey Plaza. The trio were marched by Texas Lawmen over to the police station, but the slovenly clad, motley trio of "bums," whoever they were, was never heard from again. However, conspiracy sleuths scrutinising the photos claimed they could see "listening devices" in the suspects' ears, and asserted they were too well-dressed and well-groomed to be "real" tramps.

Alan J. Weberman and Michael Canfield in their conspiracy treatise Coup D'état In America (Quick Trading, 1992) shocked the assassination community by alleging that two of the "bums" were E. Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis in tramp outfits. Using photographic overlays, the authors said they could positively match the pair, and also ID the third man as fellow intelligence agency hitman Daniel L. Carswell. Some conspiracy probers thought the three resembled any number of small-time hoods or low-level intelligence operatives.

Then John R. Craig and Philip A. Rogers wrote The Man On The Grassy Knoll (Avon, 1992), where they claimed the tramps were career criminal Chauncey Holt, Charles O Rogers, the chief suspect in the 1965 murder and dismemberment of his parents, and none other than Charles V. Harrelson, the father of Hollywood star Woody Harrelson.

Oops, Sorry - The "Friendly Fire" Theory

If you tend to be a klutz, this theory should make you feel a whole lot better. According to Howard Donahue, a retired ballistics expert from Towson, Maryland, JFK did not die from an assassin's bullet, but as the result of an accident when a Secret Service agent's gun went off by mistake and shattered the president's skull, killing the respected Kennedy outright. Oops!

This "friendly fire" theory is laid out by Bonar Menninger in Mortal Error (St. Martins, 1992), who claims that JFK was killed by Secret Service agent George Hickey, who, riding in the limo directly behind the president, tripped forward, accidentally discharging his AR-15 into the back of Kennedy's head.

Donahue, a nationally recognised firearms examiner, says that based on the trajectories involved, the position of Kennedy's head, and the type of wound inflicted, there is no other physical possibility other than the shot being fired in error by Hickey.

"It was just one God-awful mistake, just some very bad luck on Hickey's part," says Donahue. Donahue asserts that shots fired by Oswald wounded Kennedy, with gunfire causing a standing Hickey to pitch over, firing his weapon in a "convulsive reflex" - accidentally releasing the bullet that actually killed the president.

The AIDS assassination

What if the JFK assassination was part of a larger plot that included the invention and spreading of the deadly AIDS virus? That may be the case, according to Albuquerque, New Mexico advertising copywriter Edward T. Haslam, author of the soon-to-be published Mary, Ferrie & The Monkey Virus.

Haslam began to pore through information developed as part of Jim Garrison's ill-fated JFK probe when he hit upon something strange. As part of Garrison's investigation, he had stumbled upon an underground lab allegedly run by cancer researcher Dr. Mary Sherman and CIA contract pilot David Ferrie. Ferrie, a supporter of various right wing causes, a shadowy intelligence operative, and allegedly an employee of mobster Carlos Marchello, was known to be "working on a cure for cancer."

Halsam dug further, and claims that reliable sources told him that the underground medical facility was allegedly being used by the unlikely pair to experiment with monkey viruses in an effort to develop a biological weapon to be used against Cuba's Fidel Castro. All of this supposedly took place in the early '60s, decades before AIDS had become a world-wide epidemic. Haslam believes they created the virus to use against Castro and other targets, but inadvertedly let loose the plague that in the future would become a major health threat around the world.

It would be very hard to find info on the pair of "conspirators" now. Dr Sherman was brutally murdered and then set on fire in a still-unsolved 1964 killing. Ferrie, about to be indicted in 1969 for his role as a getaway pilot in the Kennedy assassination, was found dead - officially the result of what the government termed as "natural causes."

How Many Oswalds?

One of the most controversial assassination critics is a 67-year-old Fort Worth, Texas graphics artist named Jack White, who has spent the last 30 years collecting and analysing the hundreds of still photos and home movies taken that day in Dallas.

Calling the Warren Report "beyond common sense," White put together a four-hour, 600-slide presentation called "The Framing Of Lee Harvey Oswald" and took to the lecture circuit. White claims there might have been 60 - or more - of the man known as Lee Harvey Oswald! "The Oswald that entered the Marines was 5'11", the one who went to Russia was 5'6", and the one who was killed by Jack Ruby was 5'9", so there's at least three right there," asserts White, who claims a large interlocking conspiracy involving the CIA, FBI, right-wing extremists, rich Dallas oilmen, "super patriots," the Secret Service, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and others.

White believes the "real" Oswald was forced to "lend" his identity to the U.S intelligence community as a teenager, and this identity was used by various individuals involved in espionage activities over the years.

Johnson's Job?

Accusations that then-Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson played a role in knocking off his boss was one of the last taboos of the conspiracy community. It is a possibility that few have wanted to even consider - until recently.

These people point out that LBJ was obviously the one with the most to gain by the murder, and at the time was thought to be in danger of being dumped from the Democratic ticket in the 1964 election.

He also allegedly hated JFK's guts after Kennedy trounced him for the 1960 presidential nomination. Craig I. Zirbel's The Texas Connection (Warner, 1991) makes a circumstantial case that LBJ was directly involved in the killing, establishing that Johnson was allegedely the type of selfish, corrupt, power-obsessed thug that would have done anything in order to become president.

After the assassination, Johnson allegedly ordered the immediate removal of JFK's symbolic rocking chair from the White House, as well as all of his other belongings.

If Zirbel's highly persuasive work isn't enough for you, then a little photo evidence might help. Some researchers say careful study of Johnson's body movements in his motorcade car directly behind the president's indicated he allegedly began to duck before the first shot rang out - proof he knew what was coming.

One more? A Monograph sold at conspiracy conventions over the years actually claims that computer-enhanced photos taken of the motorcade at the time of the shooting "clearly" shows Johnson himself allegedly whipping out a couple of Texas six-guns from under a black cape and shooting JFK dead.

Talk about a "hands-on" vice president!

Secret Service Assassin

If you can't buy the idea of a Secret Service agent shooting Kennedy by accident, how about one who did so on purpose? Bill Cooper, an assassination buff from California, says that microanalysis of key frames from the famous Zapruder film shows the president's limo driver, William Greer, allegedly whipping out a gun, turning quickly, shooting JFK, and the returning his attention to the road as if all was well.Well, no tip for him!

"It's just ridiculous," says Robert T. Johnson of the AIC of this theory. "I've looked at those frames, it's just an optical illusion created by sunlight glancing off the driver's head and forehead, that's all… the result isn't even a good illusion. It's a stretch to say it even looks like a gun. It actually looks like a cartoon of a gun." That's not enough to please some theorists on this controversial bent.

They say that after the first bullet hit Kennedy, even if he didn't take his own shot at the president, Greer appears to slow the limo down to almost a stop, wait for Kennedy to take another slug, and only then speed away. Some days, you just can't win.

The Umbrella Man

One of the most enduring theories revolves around the so-called "Umbrella Man," an individual sighted in a number of photos and films taken in Dealey Plaza during the assassination who can be seen holding a black umbrella.

Robert B. Cutler, a retired 80-year old Massachussets architect and author of the self-published The Umbrella Man, alleges the man with the umbrella is the true assassin who killed Kennedy. Cutler believes that the "umbrella" is actually a highly sophisticated weapon called the Overhead Flechette Launcher, which fired a poisonous dart at JFK as he came down Elm Street.

Cutler, who has published a dozen books on the assassination as well as a bi-monthly newsletter, The Grassy Knoll Gazette, says that the dart struck Kennedy in the neck, immediately paralyzing him in a vertical position so that he would sit still for the gunmen in the rear to finish up the sordid and deadly murder.

The researcher asserts that his 26-year investigation had determined that the lethal umbrella was loaded with shellfish toxins invented before the killing and actually used in the Vietnam war. "They tried it on guard dogs, and it just put them to sleep for six hours, and then they woke up," says Cutler. "But it's deadly for humans."

Nagell's Niche

While a lot of assassination researchers can be fairly described as a bit kooky, that can't be said about Dick Russel, a Boston-based writer who is about as sane as they come. Unfortunately for Russell, the man he's been researching is state-certified.

Russel, the author of the immense volume The Man Who Knew Too Much (Carrol & Graf, 1992), bases much of his conspiracy claim on the credibility of one Richard Case Nagell, an ex-CIA agent, former KGB operative and international espionage adventurer who has also allegedly spent time in psychiatric hospitals diagnosed with "organic brain damage."

For years, in between stints in prisons and mental health facilities, Nagell has allegedly contacted various researchers, hinting at his knowledge of a plot to kill JFK and his personal connections to Lee Harvey Oswald. For three decades, Nagell was largely ignored. He was never interviewed by either the Warren Commission or the House Committee. He was, after all, considered "sick."

However, Russel wasn't so sure, and, intrigued by such things as the discovery of the address of Oswald's one-man Fair Play For Cuba Committee in Nagell's notebook at the time of his bust prior to the earth-shattering Kennedy assassination, he decided to delve further.

In over 800 lucid pages accompanied by about a zillion footnotes, Russel concludes that Nagell was allegedly a double-agent who had prior knowledge of the plot, and tried in vain to warn at least three nations about it.

Nagell was then allegedly assigned by the KGB to prevent the assassination by murdering Oswald himself, a job that would've prevented the tragedy had it been carried out.

He Did It Himself:

When it comes to way-out conspiracy theories, there can be none more outrageous than the one floated anonymously at the last Assassination Symposium of John F. Kennedy conference, which asserted it was non other than Kennedy himself who had set up the shooting in an elaborately staged and spectacular suicide.

JFK killed himself? Crazy, right? It has been established that JFK suffered from Addison's disease, a usually fatal illness that was slowly sapping the president's strength. It was therefore likely that Kennedy would have become incapacitated before dying during his term in office.

Knowing this, isn't it possible that Kennedy, always with one eye toward his place in history, allegedly decided to go out in a blaze of glory rather than a wretched invalid? So the "idea" went that JFK ordered a small group of insiders to dispatch an assassin on Dallas, Texas to finish him off.......