After Leo Jackson passed away several years ago, the Holland webmaster quickly searched around to see if he could befriend somebody else close to Jim Reeves, that he could manipulate and curry favor with, in order to lend his poorly researched website some credibility. I heard from some of these people, who rudely rebuffed him because they knew of his long record of trying to stir up trouble and discord on the Reeves fan scene.

He finally latched onto the vainglorious Tom Perryman, who was always happy to get publicity and Tom threw a few crumbs to the Holland webmaster. That's why, if you ever glanced at that irrelevant site in hopes of finding something of merit there, you found references to Tom. Well, Mr. Perryman is recently deceased. So the webmaster now appears to have latched onto Bill White, whom I imagine will now become the new "hero" with anecdotes, etc.

I suspect that's what's behind the renewed attack on me as having been negligent in not mentioning in my book that a young Bill White went to Nashville. He writes “The news that Bill White Jr. participated in the search for his uncle is indeed a scoop. I am pretty sure that if a certain author had known it, he would have included it in his jim Reeves Story. It would have been silly to know about it and not share that information with the fans or perhaps it was an act of censorship? Keeping an historical fact hidden introduces the risk that someone else could publish it and have a scoop.”

A SCOOP? Thanks for the laugh. Bill White personally told me he went to Nashville, so I was aware of it. I also have a copy of Mary’s mother’s diary, in which she mentioned her thoughts about the tragic events and how members of her family rushed to Nashville.

As I reported in my book, I also interviewed John White who, along with Mary’s brother Fred, played a more important role in events. Fred stayed at the crash scene when the wreckage was found (he was a Houston based attorney), while John went to the Reeves home to tell their sister Mary that her husband was found. Bill White was just one of 2000 people out searching and had no role of consequence, so it surely was not “silly” for me to leave him out of my narrative.

But if the Holland webmaster is so desperate to have a real “scoop,” why hasn’t he posted the rare recordings and photos of artifacts owned by his Knoxville buddy and longtime collector of Reeves memorabilia? They both claimed repeatedly for years that they were just waiting for my book to come out, before they would release these rarities. (The goal being to try to foil my research). Well, my book came out in 2011 and we are STILL WAITING for these supposedly important items to be shared with the fans. I predicted years ago they were lying, and it now is clear that they were.