Episode 353 Dorothy Kilgallen Miniseries Part 1

In this captivating launch of our Dorothy Kilgallen miniseries, we pivot from the Jack Ruby trial to investigate the life, investigative crusade, and mysterious death of one of the twentieth century's most formidable journalists. On November 8, 1965, Dorothy Kilgallen—a syndicated columnist read by twenty million people and star panelist on CBS's What's My Line?—was found dead inside her Manhattan townhouse at age 52, just hours after appearing on live television. While official records ruled her death as acute ethanol and barbiturate intoxication under undetermined circumstances, the physical scene in her third-floor master bedroom appeared strikingly staged. Discovered propped up in bed wearing full television makeup, false eyelashes, and a hairpiece in a room she had not slept in for years, Kilgallen left behind a vacuum of missing research files that were allegedly confiscated by federal agents following her death.

We examine Kilgallen's high-stakes two-year independent investigation into the JFK assassination and her relentless pursuit of the truth behind Jack Ruby. As the only reporter granted a private, one-on-one interview with Ruby during his 1964 murder trial, Kilgallen shattered official secrecy by obtaining and publishing Ruby's confidential Warren Commission testimony on the front page of the New York Journal-American months before its public release. Her investigative scoops triggered an intense FBI leak investigation and drew the personal ire of J. Edgar Hoover, who had maintained a federal file on her since 1959. In the days leading up to her death, Kilgallen confided in close friends that she was on the verge of breaking the entire assassination conspiracy wide open, making her sudden passing and the vanishing of her investigative dossier one of the most chilling chapters in the post-assassination era.

Finally, we trace Kilgallen's extraordinary rise from a 17-year-old cub reporter in 1931 to the pinnacle of American journalism. Raised at the kitchen table of her legendary Hearst correspondent father, Jim Kilgallen, Dorothy turned being underestimated into her greatest reporting weapon, breaking major crime stories from the Sing Sing execution watch of Anna Antonio to the trial of Bruno Richard Hauptmann in the Lindbergh baby kidnapping. We relive her legendary 1936 round-the-world air race aboard the Hindenburg and a Pan American Clipper, where she competed as the sole female journalist against rival newsmen, finishing in second place in 24 days, 12 hours, and 51 minutes. This fearless reporting heritage equipped her with the steel-trap mind and journalistic courage that she carried directly into the dangerous streets of Dallas almost  thirty years later.  Music includes excerpts from  "Hot Swing" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0
 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ and from  "Take Off and Shoot a Zero" by Chris Zabriskie (chriszabriskie.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/