Posted on 03/08/2005 8:10:03 AM PST by jtminton
FORT WORTH - The name is etched on a pink granite tombstone only inches from the grave of one of the most notorious killers in American history.
"Nick Beef."
The neighboring gravestone, nearly identical, says merely:
"Oswald."
Lee Harvey Oswald was buried Nov. 25, 1963, in east Fort Worth's Rose Hill Cemetery. It was three days after the assassination of President Kennedy in downtown Dallas and one day after Oswald was fatally shot by nightclub owner Jack Ruby.
Oswald's mother, Marguerite, who died Jan. 17, 1981, is buried next to him. The Beef marker is on the other side. It is not clear who placed the Beef tombstone, or exactly when it appeared.
The rectangular tombstones are the same size. Each bears only a name, without the customary inscription of date of birth and death. On holidays, when the cemetery blooms with flowers from loved ones, both plots typically remain barren.
But there is one big difference between the two grave sites:
"Nick Beef's" is empty.
Just about every aspect of Oswald's life and death has been examined and re-examined by reporters, history buffs and conspiracy theorists, all looking for another small clue into what drove him to kill the president.
But the Beef marker, sitting so close to the infamous grave, is virtually unknown to some of the most veteran scholars of the Kennedy assassination.
"I've just never, ever, run across that name," said Gary Mack, curator for the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, where Oswald fired the shots into Kennedy's motorcade.
Deby Alexander, general manager of Shannon Rose Hill Funeral Chapel & Cemetery, said no "interment card" is on file for the Nick Beef plot.
"A burial," she said, "has not been done there."
Alexander said she cannot reveal who owns the plot, for privacy reasons. She has heard the unsubstantiated accounts, many of them circulated on the Internet, that the marker was placed by a comedian with the stage name Nick Beef.
So where's the humor in placing a fake grave site next to a man who killed a president?
"We've scratched our heads about this for a long time," said Barb Junkkarinen, a self-described JFK researcher who lives in Forest Grove, Ore.
Junkkarinen said she first saw the Beef marker in November 1998, when she visited Rose Hill while attending a Dallas event commemorating the assassination.
Another assassination buff, Arthur Snyder, a scientist and researcher for Stanford University, said he also noticed the Beef stone in 1998. It wasn't there a year earlier, Snyder said, when he and his wife visited Oswald's grave.
"We were shocked to see it there," said Snyder, of Palo Alto, Calif.
Snyder and Junkkarinen said they were among a group of JFK/Oswald enthusiasts who sought out Rose Hill workers to find out about the new marker.
Junkkarinen said several of workers told them that "Nick Beef" was the stage name for a comedian from the Northeast who paid $2,000 for the plot.
The comedian bought the plot, the group was told, as part of an act in which he told audiences they could get directions to Oswald's grave by asking Rose Hill employees for the Beef burial site.
The workers are not allowed to divulge the location of Oswald's grave.
"Only thing is, now they won't tell people where Nick Beef's grave is either!" Junkkarinen wrote on a Web site.
Alexander, the general manager at Rose Hill, acknowledged that curiosity-seekers are not told how to find his grave at the sprawling cemetery, out of respect for his relatives.
"The family is very private about it," she said.
If there is any truth to the story that a comedian tried to turn the national tragedy of Kennedy's murder into a comic skit, his show apparently flopped.
Among the veteran journalists, scholars and members of the entertainment world who have studied the assassination, few know about the "Nick Beef" mystery.
It is a piece of an unsolved puzzle that never came up when Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone was doing his research for the 1991 movie JFK.
"He's never heard of this guy's name before," said Rob Wilson, a spokesman for Stone.
Ian Griggs, a retired British police officer and co-founder of the overseas research group the Dealey Plaza UK, said he has studied the Kennedy assassination for more than 30 years and remains baffled by the Beef marker.
Like Snyder and Junkkarinen, Griggs said he noticed the gravestone while attending a Kennedy conference in Dallas. He said he got this response when he questioned a Rose Hill worker: "Mr. Beef is not dead."
Computerized property records suggest only one possibility -- that a "Nick Beef" might have lived in a high-rise apartment complex in New York City during the middle to late 1990s. The spot is in Manhattan's trendy West Village, known for its nightspots -- and comedy clubs.
But there is no phone number for a "Nick Beef," and several residents of the complex said they do not remember a neighbor by such a name.
Only a block from the complex is the Comedy Cellar, one of New York City's most established stage-comedy clubs, whose featured entertainers have included Robin Williams, Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock.
But, as with everything else, when it comes to the name "Nick Beef," the trail quickly turns cold.
Estee Adoram, manager and 23-year veteran employee of the Comedy Cellar, said she doubts that a comic has ever tried to make people laugh about the Kennedy assassination.
She added, "I don't think there was a stand-up comedian by this name."
News Researchers Cathy Belcher and Marcia Melton Contributed to This Report.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jack Douglas Jr., (817) 390-7700 jld@star-telegram.com
Oswald was just a patsy, we all know George W. Bush did it /sarc
Mr. Beef is buried on a grassy knoll somewhere.
Now this thread has double the Beef of your average thread.
Whatever became of Marina?
Nick Beef was probably one of those assassins who shot Kennedy from one of the sewer grates, and had to be 'silenced' to protect the conspirators, you know.
Mr. Beef apparently had a bone to pick with this policy.
Where's the Beef?
The workers are not allowed to divulge the location of Oswald's grave.
"Only thing is, now they won't tell people where Nick Beef's grave is either!" Junkkarinen wrote on a Web site.
Someone should just go out to the cemetary with a GPS and record the precise location. Once that's done and the location is posted on the internet, there's no way to keep people from finding the grave.
What do you want on YOUR tombstone?...
In 1965 Marina married Dallas carpenter, Kenneth Porter and went to live in Richardson, Texas with her two daughters and her new husband. Later she gave birth to a son.
At first Marina accepted the truth of the Warren Commission but over the years she has began to question the role her husband played in the killing of John F. Kennedy. She was especially influenced by the House Select Committee on Assassinations report published in 1979.
In an interview she gave to the Ladies Home Journal in September 1988 she argued: ''I'm not saying that Lee is innocent, that he didn't know about the conspiracy or was not a part of it, but I am saying he's not necessarily guilty of murder. At first, I thought that Jack Ruby (who killed Oswald two days after the assassination) was swayed by passion; all of America was grieving. But later, we found that he had connections with the underworld. Now, I think Lee was killed to keep his mouth shut.''
Marina added: '' I believe he worked for the American government... He was taught the Russian language when he was in the military. Do you think that is usual, that an ordinary soldier is taught Russian? Also, he got in and out of Russia quite easily, and he got me out quite easily.''
Marina remarried after the death of Lee Harvey Oswald and became known as Marina Oswald Porter. In the 1990s she became involved in a campaign to clear the name if her former husband. In April 1996 she wrote that : "At the time of the assassination of this great president whom I loved, I was misled by the "evidence" presented to me by government authorities and I assisted in the conviction of Lee Harvey Oswald as the assassin. From the new information now available, I am now convinced that he was an FBI informant and believe that he did not kill President Kennedy."
Oh, please! Paul Krassner had a totally tasteless routine about the exit wound becoming an entrance wound. I doubt very much that he was unique in treating the Kennedy assassination as fodder for comedy.
Oswald Grave N 32 43.948’ W 097 12.192’
In 1965 Marina married Dallas carpenter, Kenneth Porter and went to live in Richardson, Texas with her two daughters and her new husband. Later she gave birth to a son.
Marina remarried after the death of Lee Harvey Oswald and became known as Marina Oswald Porter. In the 1990s she became involved in a campaign to clear the name if her former husband.
Yep.
Lee Harvey Oswald was buried Nov. 25, 1963 … one day after Oswald was fatally shot by nightclub owner Jack Ruby.
"What do you want on YOUR tombstone?..."
It's already in my will: "I told you I was sick!"
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