All photos under the “Shaw Legacy” Tabs on this website are the property of J. Gary Shaw. Some photos are copyrighted and are for viewing only on project jfk.com. They are not to be downloaded or reproduced without the express written permission of J. Gary Shaw.
J. Gary Shaw
J. Gary Shaw is a first-generation researcher and is considered an authority on the JFK assassination. A retired architect from Cleburne, Texas, Shaw began studying the case the day after it happened.
While still in high school, Gary and some of his classmates formed a “doo-wop” group and began singing back-up for a local rock singer by the name of Johnny Carroll. In about 1957 they performed together at the Texas Theatre in Dallas and it was at one of these performances that the group was introduced to Jack Ruby who had come backstage after the show and asked them to join the artist’s guild in Dallas.
The scuttlebutt in Dallas at the time was that Ruby was Mob connected. After Ruby shot Lee Oswald in the basement of police headquarters, Gary realized something was wrong and began collecting every newspaper, magazine and book he could find.
Later, Shaw met Penn Jones, Jr. of Midlothian, Texas. After reading Forgive My Grief, a self-published book by Jones, Penn sold Gary two complete sets of the 26 volumes and Gary was hooked. He began a close relationship with Penn and eventually began writing articles for Penn’s newspaper, The Midlothian Mirror. He became convinced beyond any shadow of a doubt that the true story of the assassination was not being told by the government and mainstream media.
Decades before the invention of the Internet, Gary traveled across America interviewing individuals directly connected to the case. Some of these are Dallas County Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig, Richard Carr, and Gerry Hemming.
In 1976, along with co-author Larry Ray Harris (1952-1996) published Cover-Up: The Governmental Conspiracy to Conceal the Facts About the Public Execution of John Kennedy. Later Shaw was an active member of the board of directors for the Assassination Archives and Research Center.
He also was co-founder/director with Larry Howard (1940-1993) and Bud Fensterwald (1921-1991) of the JFK Assassination Information Center in Dallas and headed up the Dallas ASK Conferences and a consultant to the movie JFK.
In 1992, Gary co-wrote JFK: The Conspiracy of Silence with Dr. Charles Crenshaw. Immediately after publication, the book was the number one seller of the New York Times list for paperbacks. The book was later updated and republished under the titles, Trauma Room One and JFK Has Been Shot. He was in the process of co-authoring a book about assassination in general with Bud Fensterwald when Bud suddenly died in 1991.
Shaw has recently provided PROJECT JFK / CSI DALLAS access to his large collection of assassination related photographs and color slides. Included in this series are early generation slides from Phil Willis, Wilma Bond, S. L. Reed, and Tina Towner. Each slide was scanned at 48-bit, 3200 dpi format, taken directly from the originals.
