To understand the present, look back sixty years to the 1960s. This traumatic decade of high-profile killings fomented widespread anxiety and mistrust. It also marked a boom in conspiracy theories, today’s political weapons of mass manipulation! Aside from the JFK assassination, some of the most high-profile and mysterious deaths of the 1960s were:
malcolm x
Born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1931, Malcolm X was an African-American Muslim minister and a prominent figure in the civil rights movement; the ‘X’ signified his original, lost tribal name, the surname Little having been imposed on his ancestors by their slave master. A spokesperson for the Black nationalist group Nation of Islam, he received death threats on leaving the organisation. He was shot twenty-one times at a public event in New York on 21 February 1965. In 2021, two men convicted at the time were exonerated after decades in prison.
Martin Luther King Jr.
African American Baptist minister, activist, and political philosopher Martin Luther King Jr. was killed by a single shot on 4 April 1968 at a motel in Memphis, Tennessee. A fugitive called James Earl Ray later confessed to the crime but then retracted his statement, saying a Cuban called Raul was responsible. The King family have since shown support for Ray: they believe that the US government, the mafia, and the Memphis police were involved.
Robert F. Kennedy
JFK’s younger brother was shot three times on 5 June 1968 while campaigning for the presidency. The assassin was Sirhan Sirhan, a twenty-four-year-old Christian Palestinian immigrant. Witnesses and some experts say that not only the position of Sirhan was wrong, but the bullets did not match the gun, and at least thirteen shots were fired from an eight-shot firearm. As of April 2023, Sirhan has been denied parole seventeen times.
Marilyn Monroe
Born Norma Jeane Mortenson in Los Angeles in 1926, Marilyn Monroe died of an overdose on 4 August 1962 in her home. However, there are claims that both John and his brother Robert Kennedy were having affairs with the actress, and that sensitive information was recorded. A 2022 Netflix documentary claims that the FBI cleaned Monroe’s room of evidence of a Kennedy connection as she lay dead, and before her death was reported.