From George W. Bailey, “The Lonesome Death of Dorothy Kilgallen”, Oswald’s Mother, 21 June 2008



Today, Dorothy Kilgallen’s name will go unrecognized by the current generation but she was at one time one of the first of a new bread of celebrity journalists. By the mid-50s, she was the most famous journalist in America, made even more apparent by her 15-year stint as a panelist on the popular CBS show, What’s My Line. The events surrounding her untimely and mysterious death have become intertwined with the lore of the Kennedy assassination. She would be one of many suspicious deaths in the case.



She started her career in journalism at the age of 17 covering crime stories and earned a reputation of good, thorough reporter–someone that left no stone unturned. By 1950 her column was running in 146 papers, and reaping 20 million readers. Kilgallen’s style was a mixture of gossip, movie star news, and politics.



As time went on her reporting got closer to heart of power in this country. She was one of the first reporters to imply, which we now know to be true, that the CIA was working with the mob to assassinate Fidel Castro. Declassified documents show that the FBI was monitoring Kilgallen’s activities since the 1930s while the CIA closely watched her travels overseas.



Devastated by the news of John Kennedy’s death (of whom she met on a White House tour with her son), Kilgallen increasingly turned her attention, and her impressive crime investigation skills, to the assassination of the president. Dorothy Kilgallen quickly made a name for herself as one of the first (and few) people in the mainstream press to question the Warren Commission report. Kilgallen pulled no punches as she wrote the first article on the FBI’s intimidation of witnesses, interviewed Acquilla Clemons a witness to the shooting of Officer J. D. Tippit whom the Warren Commission never questioned (Clemons claimed to see two men at the scene of the murder—none matching Oswald’s description), and was successful in interviewing key figures such as Jack Ruby.



Kilgallen’s death has many mysterious elements to it. The autopsy showed her to be in overall good health, but tests found her to be over the legal limit for alcohol consumption. The cause of death would be ruled as “acute ethanol and barbiturate intoxication, circumstances undetermined.” In an odd turn of events, Dr. James Luke, a New York City medical examiner that did the autopsy, did not sign the death certificate. It was signed by another physician, Dr. Dominick DiMaio, who when questioned, did not know why his name was appeared on the certificate, nor was he working out of Manhattan at the time.

