My mom was the oldest of 5 siblings, Her, uncle Bob, Carol and Darrell (twins) and Gary.
After dad and my mom got together, he started working in the construction trades, mostly HVAC. My uncle Darrell did factory work in a related field. They got to be good friends and would meet for lunch when available. That continued after mom and dad broke up in 1962. So in Nov of 63, they met for lunch earlier in the week of the assassination. Uncle Darrell was not the sharpest pencil in the till, but he was a hard worker, unhumanly strong, and always always had a tall tale of some kind. His strength garnered attention from some rather unsavory types; whom he referred to as "the syndicate."
This part of the story was told to me by my dad circa 1983.
So dad and Darrell are eating lunch and Darrell pipes up: "Bill, talk on the street here is that President Kennedy is going down to Texas and they will be gunning for him there." "Darrell, that is ridiculous! Eat your lunch!"
"Here" is Niles MI, just across the border from South Bend IN. Town of about 12,000 not too far from the arteries going between Chicago and Detroit.
So Kennedy is shot and killed. Next Monday they met for lunch again. "What'd I tell ya Bill? They got the wrong guy and he is not going to live to tell about it. That afternoon Oswald was killed by Jack Ruby, a known mobster who was dying of cancer.
Dad ended his narrative there, saying he had looked into the theories of there being 2 Oswalds and other things but got no where. Dad moved out of the area a few months later.
So then I got to fill dad in on what happened from that point to Darrell. The next summer, he just disappeared. Aunt Carol had been doing as much as she could to find her twin brother, to no avail. We did not hear from him again until 1968. He was seriously fried. He had a rather disjointed story that we had to piece together from several times of his telling it.
It seemed one of his "friends" in the syndicate had him kidnapped and taken to Florida to fight in a white slavery underground fight circus. He was there well over a year. When he found a chance to escape, he did and ended up in Texas. (various versions of how he got there) In Texas he met and married a woman who had been widowed several times. A month or 2 into the marriage he woke up with her on top of him and a butcher knife at his throat. He easily tossed her across the room and ran away. When he told the police, she claimed he had some kind of psychotic break so he was put into a mental institution for a couple of years, being pumped full of all kinds of psychotropic drugs which fried his mind. He was then declared "cured" and released, allowing him to come back home - summer of 1968.
Dad was stunned by that story. Did Darrell actually stumble onto a syndicate plot to kill the Prez? If so, they effectively silenced him. Anything he said from that point on would be considered the ravings of a mad man.
