Noted JFK author and researcher David S. Lifton died Monday December 5th, 2022, at the age of 83 in Las Vegas. Lifton was well-known for his 1981 best-selling book Best Evidence which theorized that the body of President Kennedy had been altered to conceal a conspiracy. The book served as an introduction to the JFK case for a multitude of researchers. Lifton had been working for many years on a follow up book titled Final Charade. According to a Go-Fund-Me page for the book, Lifton considered it the culmination of a “lifetime of research” that included nearly “one hundred filmed interviews.” Lifton’s friend Steven Kossor says that the book will be published.
Author and researcher Anthony Summers commented "I am sorry to hear about David Lifton’s death. I talked with him a good deal over the years, and we had cordial exchanges. He was one of the Old Guard on the JFK case, and in my experience a decent man. It is a pity his grand opus never made it to publication."
Lifton grew up in Rockaway Beach New York where he displayed a fascination for Erle Stanley Gardner mysteries. He graduated from Cornell University’s School of Engineering Physics in 1962 and then enrolled at UCLA with a view toward a degree in Engineering. Lifton became interested in the JFK assassination after hearing a lecture by Mark Lane in 1964. By 1966, he quit his job at North American Avation to research the assassination full-time making ends meet through odd jobs and free-lance writing.
Lifton’s friend, writer and editor Patricia Lambert, encouraged him to develop his research into a manuscript. He ultimately did that but the result proved to be unmarketable. Lifton was advised to rewrite the manuscript in the first person. He did so, but eventually had to rework the book again to reduce the 1200 pages to a manageable 747.
Although Lifton believed in a conspiracy, he sometimes shared beliefs with lone assassin supporters. He vehemently disagreed with Jim Garrison’s prosecution of Clay Shaw telling filmmaker Oliver Stone that the New Orleans District Attorney was a “fraud.” “It wasn’t that Garrison fought the good fight and lost,” Lifton wrote. “When the dust settled, it was clear he had nothing to begin with.” Lifton concluded his correspondence by advising Stone “I’m writing this letter to suggest that when you shout ‘lights, camera, action,’ you keep in mind that twenty years ago the man you are portraying on film, while mouthing eloquent theories about justice and truth, persecuted people who were innocent.”
Another instance that found Lifton agreeing with the lone assassin side was the Palmer McBride matter pushed by double-Oswald theorist John Armstrong. Lifton’s skillful interview with McBride essentially demolished Armstrong’s notion that McBride’s remembrances proved his unusual theory. McBride had stated that he had worked and socialized with Lee Harvey Oswald in New Orleans in 1957-58 when Oswald was known to be in the Marine Corps.
Lifton was universally regarded as a remarkable writer and researcher. Even author Vincent Bugliosi, who devoted an entire chapter in his book Reclaiming History to Lifton, was forced to admit that he was “thorough and meticulous.” In 1996, Lifton wrote a memo to Jeremy Gunn of the Assassinations Records Review Board regarding his experiences with Robert Groden and the latter’s questionable history with the JFK autopsy materials. The memo, which Lifton made available to researchers through an Internet forum, is a notable first-person account of his research experiences from 1972-1993.
Kossor said that in addition to the posthumous publication of his book, Lifton’s voluminous files may be “assembled for publication” at a future date. According to Kossor, Lifton will be interred in the family plot on Long Island.
