Thread by @gumby4christ

Yesterday was the 59th anniversary of the day #CIAkilledJFK, and I happen to be on vacation in Pensacola. So let me tell you a story about how this building I passed by yesterday—the old Thiesen Building on Panafox, once the tallest skyscraper in Florida—connects to JFK's murder.

On March 17, 1964, Hank Killam was found dead with his throat slashed some 50 ft from the shattered windows of the Linen Department Store, on the building's first floor. Killam, it turns out, had connections to both Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby.

Four months prior to his death, Killam was living in Dallas, working as a house painter. His wife, Wanda, was a dancer at Jack Ruby's Carousel Club, while a friend Killiam sometimes painted houses with, John Carter, lived at the same boarding house as Oswald.

The HSCA's report identifies Wanda Killam as one of the closes links between Oswald and Ruby, noting that Wanda was not only an employee of Ruby's but his "close friend" as well and that she was also "friendly" with Oswald's boarding housemate John Carter.

After JFK's death, Hank was questioned by federal agents and soon come to believe "plotters" were following him. Fleeing Dallas to escape them, he moved to Pensacola, to Tampa, and then back to Pensacola, certain that agents were tracking him every step of the way.

In Pensacola, Hank reported being followed by a man dressed as a priest & hinted to his own minister that what he knew about "that thing in Dallas" would lead to his death.

"I'm a dead man," Hank would claim. "They're going to get me—but I've run as far as I'm going to run."

On March 17, 1964, Hank's prophecy would prove eerily correct. Around 4 AM, Hank was called on the phone at his mom's house. He got dressed and was soon after picked up by a car. 30 minutes later, he would be dead.

Killam's death was ruled a suicide by police. Coroner A.H. Northup, however, ruled it an accident. Neither party was made aware of the discrepancy until 3 years later. Said Northup: "In 10 years as a medical examiner, I've never heard of a man trying to kill himself this way."

Indeed, the suicide theory is too ridiculous to treat seriously. Hank would've needed to be inside the department store and jumped out. How'd he get in? And if he did, why was the slit throat his only injury? And who offs themselves by jumping out of a first-floor window anyway?

Interestingly, the same cop who would respond to the scene of Killam's death, had earlier that night dropped by Hank's mom's house to find Hank terrified that he was going to be killed.

What did Killam know that would've put such a target on his back? Perhaps he could establish a clear connection between Ruby and Oswald. Or maybe, his knowledge of the JFK plot goes even deeper...

According to a 1967 Enquirer report (from which much of this thread is drawn), Killam was a long-time police informant. More intriguing, in the months leading up to the assassination, Killam was moving in between Dallas & another city with major ties to the JFK plot, New Orleans.