Russell Crawford

Robert Groden and Marshal Evans are two of the last members of a community dedicated to investigating the assassination of President John F Kennedy. Every weekend (nearly), they bring tables, speakers, and microphones to Dealey Plaza to convince tourists of their truth about the assassination. Both men have dedicated their lives to research, investigation and activism about the investigation of the assassination, which they claim is fraudulent. On this path, they have faced harassment and legal troubles, but they have remained steadfast in their mission to bring justice to the memory of President Kennedy. They call themselves “assassinologists.”

This is an ongoing project about the last "analog" conspiracy theorists.

Marshal Evans says he started researching the day it happened, when he was a teenager. Back then, there was little standing in the way of a determined young man and the people he wanted to talk to, so he started making cold phone calls to people involved in the events around the assassination. His threads ran so deep that he even became personal friends with Marina Oswald, the wife of the alleged assassin.

Having had some children and grandchildren since then, Marshal is still a central figure in the landscape of Dealey Plaza. He has continued making his weekly trips to the site of the assassination through broken bones and even liver disease. He has no intentions of slowing down so far. 

“The President was shot on November 22, 1963, which was my 18th birthday. I was playing hooky from high school that day, it was a Ferris Bueller thing. I was watching the TV, it was NBC, and wasn’t paying too much attention to it. But then the story came on… the President’s been shot. They didn’t announce that he was dead yet because they didn’t know it. He was probably still alive at that time. Anyway, I ran in, sat down by the TV, and just started paying attention right away. The first story that they told was that the police were chasing the assassin through the parking lot behind the stockade fence and grassy knoll. That story disappeared real quickly. I sat up and took notice of that. Within an hour or so the whole thing changed, now it was a guy who had fired from an office building. I’m from New York, in New York everything’s a grid, north-south and east-west. In my mind’s eye I saw this roll of office buildings and behind it are railroad tracks. And everything changed so quickly thereafter, I knew something was crazy, something didn’t fit.”

~ Robert Groden, 2024

Both men have authored several books each, and have also collaborated on multiple occasions. 

Their 47 page magazine, "JFK: The Case for Conspiracy," sells out often at $20 per copy. 

Both men agree that the amount of tourists circulating through Dealey Plaza has dwindled over the decades. Especially since the pandemic, the plaza has been slower than ever. While they do depend on book sales for some of their income, both of them claim to persist due to moral obligation

The Sixth Floor Museum is the “official” tourist destination, where people can go and learn the popular version of events. The assassinologists claim that nothing in that museum is true, and some of it even contradicts the official government investigation. Both men claim that they have even been harassed by museum security, but Evans and Groden have the legal right to stay at the plaza.

This precedent was establish in 2010 when Groden was arrested for selling merchandise in a city park. The case was dismissed due to the fact that the city does not offer or require permits for such activity, and because Dealey Plaza is not technically a city park. Marshal claims that you only need a permit to sell food or flowers, and their books are totally legal. Since the start of their activity at the plaza, the assassinologists have been charged with illegal activity nearly 100 times. 

The Zapruder film is considered to be the clearest, most complete film of the John F. Kennedy assassination. After being used as evidence during the Warren Commission, the film was quietly stored away in several archives, only to be seen by carefully chosen eyes for the next 11 years.

Until Robert, a young film lab technician, was awarded the privilege to assist on a special assignment at “Life Magazine”. He was to produce enlarged copies of the original film.Life Magazine unknowingly hired an up-and-coming assassinologist, a term that Robert coined. He made the most of his opportunity.