[Sample B: Approval/Signature Sheet] - George Mason University

Ferrie, and private investigator Guy Bannister. However, Noyes focused his
investigation on a mystery man in Dealey Plaza that he tried to connect to all these parties
– a man known by various names including Eugene Hale Brading. Noyes suggested that
organized crime and right-wingers assassinated Kennedy, and that Oswald was not the
left-wing extremist as portrayed by the Warren Commission. Noyes’ convoluted story
centers on Brading and his apparent role in the plot.
A Dallas sheriff’s deputy questioned a man who identified himself as Jim Braden
just after the assassination because the deputy thought the man was acting suspiciously.
The man claimed he went into a building to make a phone call, and was accosted by the
deputy upon leaving the building. The man’s statement was included in the Warren
Report, and seemed, according to Noyes, simply “a footnote to history.” 403
What Noyes found, however, was that Braden was really Eugene Hale Brading,
and the he was a convicted felon who rose “from petty thief to a ranking member of the
underworld” with ties to “the Mafia, oil men, and ‘far right’ industrialists.” 404 The
journalists’ investigation showed Brading in close proximity at key moments to other
suspects in the assassination, including Ferrie, Marcello, and the Hunt family of right-
wing oil barons. Brading was actually on parole from an embezzlement conviction when
he was in Dallas November 22, 1963, and had reported to the authorities in Texas as
required. While Noyes found many disturbing connections and coincidences involving
Brading, the author had a hard time finding what the mystery man’s role was in an
403 Peter Noyes, Legacy of Doubt, (New York: Pinnacle Books, 1973), 23.
404 Noyes, 39.
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