Link: Jim Reeves: His Untold Story
I know that a foreign website recruited some of its flunkies to go digging around in the woods using metal detectors some years ago, and I also know the owner of the property is NOT happy about trespassers due to the loss of privacy and liability issues.
For me to tell anyone exactly where these locations are within the woods would surely result in a frantic effort by these same individuals to descend upon those woods. But they're too late. I began researching that crash more than 16 years ago and have had the home movie for some time. With the cooperation of the powers that be I was already able to comb those woods but I am not going to divulge what was found.
As you may know, I posted a previously unknown and very rare color home movie of the crash scene on YouTube. I edited this to remove any images of the human remains, although the original film, which I have locked up in a safety deposit box and have a personal DVD dub of, DOES show the remains in close-up, explicit detail, including both before and after these remains were picked up and placed in body bags on stretchers.
So far that video has garnered in excess of 310,000 views; over 150,000 the first time I posted it and most recently 160,000 additional views.
I felt it was historically important to post portions of this video so Jim Reeves' fans could see for themselves the aftermath of the tragedy. After all, at the time it happened, people dressed up for church were bringing their CHILDREN to have picnics at the crash site -- a truly horrific thing to do.
As you can see from the video, hundreds of people assembled on the edge of the woods and over 150 individuals were allowed to wander around the crash site and even move wreckage, thus compromising the investigation. No FAA man worth his salt would have permitted that if the woods had not already been searched.
This is a further indication that the crash location was discovered PRIOR TO the public announcement as I believe officials knew from the moment that plane disappeared from radar EXACTLY where that was. This was attested to by the controller who spoke with Reeves (and whom I interviewed twice on tape), the tower supervisor, other airport personnel, and even a now-deceased neighbor who had never been interviewed by authorities despite living across the street from the crash scene. He actually observed the plane go down, and described its flight path and movements in precise detail consistent with forensic evidence at the scene and certain other information I know about the accident.
This neighbor said in an interview videotaped for my book that it was "WRONG" (his word) that the wreckage wasn't found for two days. In fact, he said it was located almost immediately. He went on to describe on tape how people were abandoning their cars off Franklin Road and running across his yard -- even knocking down his fence -- to get to the crash scene moments after the plane went down along the busy road during RUSH HOUR TRAFFIC.
Ground searchers including civil defense workers assembled on the corner of Baxter and Franklin (within sight of the woods) later that night, and also met at a house within view of the woods. And yet we are to believe that they did not find this wreckage for TWO DAYS? That is laughably absurd. Internal airport memoranda also remark on this incomprehensible fact because John Hettish, the controller, knew the precise point where the plane disappeared from radar and he marked a spot on his scope -- just south of the high voltage power towers. He gave the EXACT COORDINATES to Jim's charter pilot, Bill Larson, who got airborne within mere minutes of the crash, and flew over the spot.
Granted, Jim's plane had penetrated the tree canopy at such a steep angle the branches closed up behind it and hence it was not visible from the air. But it was only a little way into the small, 2 acre woods. It was UNAVOIDABLE that ground searchers would have found the wreckage before two days had passed!
Instead, they blocked off Baxter so nobody could go down the road, and told people to look over toward Radnor Lake (far to the northwest of the actual crash site), even though there had been fishermen on the lake who would have seen a plane go down if it really had ended up there.
The airport officials were frustrated by being told that the woods had been searched and no wreckage was found.
Somebody in an official capacity in Nashville deliberately misinformed members of the Tennessee State Highway Patrol, the lay public and scores of civilian volunteers.
Two men who worked in U.S. military intelligence played key roles in this story, and I identify them by name and interviewed one of them (even though people tried to tell me he was deceased for years; I tracked him down).
Federal agency files have been sanitized of almost all references to the Reeves crash and so have local, state and regional files. I believe there is an ongoing cover up that continues to this day.
After I filed a Freedom of Information Act request -- twice -- for all government files on Jim and Dean, I was informed that records relevant to my request had been DESTROYED on the orders of a federal judge in Washington, D.C. AFTER my request, and that further records were locked up with Kennedy assassination papers.
(As an aside, Jim and the Blue Boys were in Dallas the day JFK was killed, and Reeves told friends he recognized Lee Harvey Oswald and "would never forget that face" as being a man who had come to his shows at Dewey Groom's nightclub -- which Jim and the Blue Boys had just played THE NIGHT BEFORE the President was murdered. That nightclub had been co-owned by JACK RUBY, the killer of Oswald.)
A young woman who waited on Jim and Dean at the small general store that functioned as an ad hoc airport adjacent to a rural landing strip in Batesville, Arkansas -- and was the person who could have seen anyone around Jim's plane -- was killed when she was run off an Arkansas mountain road in what her family still believes was a hit-and-run accident shortly after Jim and Dean died.
Days before going to press with my book I also received a call from a retired Nashville police officer whom I had earlier consulted, who put a man on the phone who identified himself as having previously worked for U.S. military intelligence. He warned me not to probe too deeply into the crash.
You need to read my book for the two chapters I devote to this. The Jim Reeves plane crash mystery also appears in the book "Hit List" by Richard Belzer and David Wayne. They devote an entire chapter to it, based on my book.
Over 2000 searchers participated in the hunt for Jim's plane and I discuss in detail how events unfolded. I have not yet told all I know about this matter.
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