Almost 50 years ago, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in a shockingly public shooting in Dallas. Lee Harvey Oswald was taken into custody and then shot dead himself by Jack Ruby. Oswald's body is buried in the Shannon Rose Hill Cemetery in Ft. Worth, with only his last name on a stone marker. Cemetery employees do not give out the location of the grave to people who inquire. But many know where it is, and even the grave gives fodder to conspiracy theorists.
For the last 15 years, this curious name has vexed the obsessive assassination buffs who make regular pilgrimages to the Oswald plot here in Fort Worth. That is because a pinkish granite marker suddenly appeared beside the assassin’s grave sometime in 1997. And all it said was Nick Beef.
In their quest to make sense of a national catastrophe — to find a narrative more acceptable than that of one gunman, acting alone — some theorists have tried to divine meaning in a name that, more than anything else, evokes a private eye who specializes in agricultural intrigue. It added another question to their already exhausting list. Who was Nick Beef?
The New York Times found out who Nick Beef is, and the story has nothing to do with conspiracies of any kind. However, it is an interesting story of how events conspired unfolded to bring a puzzling marker to the gravesite. Link
(Image credit: Flickr user Texican Chick)