DOROTHY KILGALLEN

Opening

On the night of Sunday 7 November 1965, Dorothy Kilgallen sat on the panel of the CBS game show What's My Line? as she had nearly every week since 1950. She was one of the most famous journalists in America: a Broadway columnist read in well over a hundred newspapers, a television star, and since November 1963 one of the loudest public doubters of the official story of President Kennedy's assassination. The next morning she was found dead in her bed at her townhouse on East 68th Street in Manhattan. She was 52.

The medical examiner found a combination of alcohol and barbiturates, saw no sign of violence, and called the circumstances undetermined, adding that the overdose could have been accidental. Kilgallen had interviewed Jack Ruby, the man who shot Lee Harvey Oswald, and had published his secret testimony to the Warren Commission. Ever since her death, people have asked whether she was killed for what she knew, and what happened to her notes.

Timeline

November 1938Kilgallen begins her "Voice of Broadway" column for Hearst's New York Journal-American. It is eventually syndicated to 146 newspapers.

2 February 1950She joins the panel on the first live broadcast of What's My Line?, and stays for fifteen years.

22 to 24 November 1963President Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas. Two days later Jack Ruby shoots Lee Harvey Oswald in the Dallas police headquarters. Kilgallen soon becomes publicly sceptical of the official account.

23 February 1964She publishes an article about a conversation she had with Ruby at his defence table during a recess in his murder trial in Dallas.

August 1964Having obtained a copy of Ruby's 7 June testimony to the Warren Commission, she publishes it in three instalments before the Commission's report is out. The Commission condemns the "premature publication", and a federal inquiry into her source is announced.

7 November 1965Kilgallen appears on What's My Line? for the last time.

8 November 1965She is found dead at 45 East 68th Street, still in the make-up from the night before. The medical examiner, James Luke, gives the cause as alcohol and barbiturates, with the circumstances undetermined.

1979Lee Israel publishes Kilgallen, a biography that raises questions about the death.

2016Mark Shaw publishes The Reporter Who Knew Too Much, arguing that she was murdered to stop a book about the assassination.

2017After a letter from Shaw, the Manhattan District Attorney's office reviews the case, then closes it months later, saying it found no evidence that anyone else caused her death.

2025New York City dedicates the corner of East 68th Street and Park Avenue as "Dorothy Kilgallen Way".

Key figures

Dorothy Kilgallen was a celebrated reporter long before she was a television star, with a career that included covering famous trials and racing around the world against other journalists in 1936. She was sharp, competitive and unusually willing to challenge the official story in public.

Jack Ruby, who killed Oswald, was the subject of her most famous scoops: the courtroom conversation and the leaked testimony.

Lee Israel and Mark Shaw wrote the books that kept the questions alive. Kilgallen's daughter, Jill Kollmar, has said she and her brother suspect no foul play, and has called the murder theories "a lot of hoopla".

Physical and documentary trail

The record: Kilgallen's columns and her published Ruby testimony, the Warren Commission's public complaint about it, the medical examiner's findings, police records, the television recording of her last show, the biographies, and the District Attorney's 2017 statement.

What is missing is the material at the heart of the theory. Her supporters say she kept a file of notes for a book on the assassination and told friends she was close to a breakthrough, and that the notes were never found after her death. That claim comes from people around her and from later authors, not from any official record of what was in her home. Shaw has also claimed, citing an anonymous source, that the District Attorney's office found the notes and buried them. The office declined to comment, and no evidence for that has been published.

Things you might not know

• She once raced around the world. In 1936, as a young reporter, she competed against two male journalists to circle the globe by commercial transport, and wrote a book about it.
• The Warren Commission complained about her. Her early publication of Ruby's testimony embarrassed the Commission, which announced an inquiry into how she got it.
• She went straight from the studio. She was found the morning after a live broadcast, still wearing the make-up and false eyelashes she had put on for the show.
• The ruling was not suicide. The medical examiner did not call it suicide or murder, and said the overdose could have been an accident.
• Her family does not believe the theories. Her daughter has publicly rejected the idea that she was killed.
• She has a street corner. In 2025 New York named the corner near her old home "Dorothy Kilgallen Way".

Competing explanations

An accidental overdose. This is closest to the official finding. Barbiturates and alcohol were a common and dangerous combination at the time, and the medical examiner said an accident was possible. Her family has accepted this.

A deliberate overdose. Suicide has been suggested, but the medical examiner did not rule it so, and there was no note or sign of it.

Murder to stop her book. This is the theory of Shaw and others: that people linked to organised crime, fearing her work on the assassination, drugged her. It rests on her known interest in the case, the reported missing notes and doubts about the scene. No one has been identified, and the District Attorney's review found no evidence of anyone else's involvement.

Later life of the case

Kilgallen's death has become a fixture of JFK assassination literature, often listed among the "mysterious deaths" said to follow the case, a list historians have long criticised for including ordinary deaths. Her own work has had a revival too, as a reminder of a journalist who asked hard questions in public when few others did. In 2018 a Hollywood production company bought the film rights to Shaw's book.

Finding

Dorothy Kilgallen died from a combination of alcohol and barbiturates at her Manhattan home in November 1965, at the height of her fame and while she was openly questioning the official account of the Kennedy assassination. The medical examiner left the circumstances undetermined, and a review by the District Attorney in 2017 found no evidence that anyone else was involved. Her family accepts that her death was not a crime. The murder theory depends heavily on notes that, as far as anyone can show, were never found.

What still will not resolve: whether Kilgallen's notes on the assassination existed in the form her supporters describe, and if so, what happened to them.