Investigation confirmed Parr died by suicide

1969 Chrysler Imperial similar to Parr's car.

POSTED BY: CARDENAS.AE@GMAIL.COM MAY 24, 2018

On May 20, the Washington Post ran a story debunking the idea that Adolph Hitler had escaped alive and was living in the moon. About the same time, the Alice Echo-News Journal ran a story on the presentations made at the Jim Wells County District Courtroom on May 17 regarding George B. Parr and the Freedom Party. One reader commented on the newspaper’s Facebook Page that he was

“not convinced Parr committed suicide. I think Parr was gonna roll over on LBJ and their involvement in JFK’s assassination in order to escape the tax evasion charges and LBJ just tied up some loose ends.”

Or perhaps he was hiding out on the moon with Adolph.

The fallacy of the comment is that LBJ would have had to do his shenanigans from the grave since he had been dead and buried for two years. Or maybe, he too was on the moon in a colony of political reprobates.

This question also arose at the Q&A of the talks at the courthouse. I indicated then that a copy of Parr’s death was at the Texas Library and Archives in Austin. On my return home, I searched my files and found a copy of this report which I had seen several years before.

The report covered many pages, in three parts. While the Texas Rangers conducted most of the investigation, at the request of Duval County Sheriff Raul Serna, FBI agents also participated. The investigators proceeded with a “Criminal Offense Report” of a “Questionable Death.” Suicide was the definite conclusion as the cause of death. The report concludes that Parr “shot self in the right side of the head while sitting in the automobile with the bullet exiting on the left side of the head and out the car window.” That is what Justice of the Peace Luis Elizondo ruled.

Much of the report included information on activities leading up to the shooting at Parr’s ranch known as Los Horocnes. I will cover only the investigation of the scene where the shooting took place.

On the morning of April 1, 1975, at about 11:15 a.m. a Department of Public Safety helicopter began to search the ranch for Parr and found his “black over dark blue 1969 Chrysler” Imperial parked by a windmill some eight miles inside Los Horcones. Five minutes later word came from the scene that Parr was dead and asking for an ambulance and a Justice of the Peace to the location of the shooting.

“George Parr was sitting in the car under the steering wheel, slumped to his right. Investigators noted that the exit wound of the bullet was on the left side of the head. There was a cocked automatic pistol lying on his lap pointing toward his stomach.” The gun was a .45 automatic Colt. An AR-15 rifle was also in the front seat pointing to the floor of the car.

“When Mr. Parr slumped to his right, blood from the head ran down the stock of his rifle, and it was lying close to his right side.” There was also a leather ammunition case with eight or nine loaded clips for the AR-15 rifle and three or four boxes of ammunition for the Colt .45 pistol.

After searching the area around Parr’s car, investigators found no other tire marks or footprints, leading them to believe that Parr never got off the car and that no one else was at the scene. Deputy Israel Saenz said when he arrived at the scene in the helicopter that the car’s engine was still on and the driver’s window was down. The deputy turned the engine off.

When the Justice of the Peace arrived, they removed Parr from the car and investigators noticed an entry wound on the right of the head and exited on the left side. They found a .45 casing in the front seat. Parr was still wearing his glasses but his size seven Stetson hat was lying in the front seat. An examination of the hat appeared to reveal powder burns on the lower right brim of the hat and a bullet hole in the left side as the bullet exited the head. Since the window was open investigators searched the area outside the care but the search for the bullet did not yield any results.

A search for a suicide note in the car also yielded nothing. Investigators found another .45 casing on the floor of the vehicle but determined that it was an old casing that probably had been there for some time. The evidence, the .45 Colt pistol, the rifle, fired casings, and the hat, were turned over to Sheriff Serna. Texas Ranger George Powell asked the Justice of the Peace to order an autopsy, but the judge refused. Powell made it a point to report that Judge Elizondo was a longtime supporter of Parr and that District Judge O.P. Carrillo had recently removed him from the Benavides school board.

Parr’s nephew, Archer Parr, was satisfied with the finding of suicide. His only question was why George Parr was wearing his hat when he shot himself. The sheriff forwarded evidence from the scene to the lab at the Texas Department of Public Safety. Clearly, for everyone familiar with modern-day forensic science, the forensic scientists at the lab were no Abby Sciuto.

They concluded that the two bullet casings came from the Colt .45 found at the scene. The fingerprint on the gun did not contain sufficient ridges to determine whether they were Parr’s fingerprint. The forensic investigator removed the blood, and the report provided no other information on the blood. The investigation, of course, occurred ten years before courts allowed the use of DNA as evidence.

The forensic science was not what we have today. Some can and will question the Justice of the Peace’s conclusion of suicide. More importantly, they will challenge his decision not to call for an autopsy. Still, the evidence seems sufficient to support death by suicide. There were no signs of anyone else being at the scene of the crime. The bullet wound and the blood is supportive of the finding.

It will never, however, satisfy the conspiracy devotees.