Annotated chronology

1947: December 20: Thomas Albert Tarrants III born.

1963: September: Leads violent student protests against school desegregation at Murphy High School, Mobile, Alabama. Is subsequently charged with disorderly conduct.

1964: Drops out of school to devote himself to the rightwing cause. Buys a .45-caliber Colt automatic pistol. Campaigns for Barry Goldwater, joins the Ku Klux Klan, and helps found the Christian Military Defense League. Is influenced by the conspiracy theories of the John Birch Society, J. Edgar Hoover's Masters of Deceit and the Christian Identity movement.

1964: August: Police in Prichard, Alabama, seize his automatic shotgun. Soon afterwards, police in Mobile seize his .38 calibre revolver and sawn-off shotgun.

1966: Meets Kathy Capomacchia (Ainsworth).

1967: Moves to Laurel, Mississippi, to be near Sam Bowers, head of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

1967: August: Begins working as a maintenance worker at the Masonite plant in Laurel

1967: September 18: 10pm: He and Ainsworth bomb the newly-built synagogue in Jackson, Mississippi. The building is empty at the time and no one is hurt. Jackson police initially suspect Joe Denver Hawkins, his son Danny Joe, and J. L. Harper. What evidence is there that Tarrants and Ainsworth were actually responsible?

1967: October 6: Bombs the house of Dr William T. Bush on the campus of Tougaloo College, near Jackson. Again, no one is hurt.

1967: November 15: Bombs the parsonage of black Methodist minister the Rev. Allen Johnson in Laurel, Mississippi. Again, no one is hurt.

1967: November 19: He and Ainsworth bomb the house of civil rights activist Robert Kochitzky in Jackson. Again, no one is hurt.

1967: November 21: He and Ainsworth bomb the house of Rabbi Perry Nussbaum in Jackson. Again, no one is hurt.

1967: December 20 (or 22): Charged with illegal possession of a machine gun in Collins, Mississippi.

1968: January: Enrols at Mobile College.

1968: March: Makes a trip to California, where he buys a rifle from Dr Wesley Swift of Lancaster. Swift has been described as 'the single most significant figure in the early years of the Christian Identity movement in the United States.' Tarrants told journalist Jack Nelson that he bought the 30.06 rifle for the purpose of assassinating Martin Luther King - quite an admission to make, when you recall that the bullet that killed King was a 30.06. But is procuring a rifle for the MLK hit the only reason Tarrants went to California? Or was the California trip also related to the events that took place in Los Angeles on the night of June 4-5?

1968: March 23: Returns from California to find his house under FBI surveillance. By this date, he possesses a pistol and a submachine gun in addition to the rifle purchased in California.

1968: March 28: Declares himself 'underground and operating guerrilla warfare.' This is exactly a week before Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.

1968: March 30: By this date, he is allegedly in hiding in a safe house in the mountains near Franklin, North Carolina. Could he really have been on his way to Memphis to kill Dr. King?

1968: April 4: According to Jack Nelson, he 'danced with joy' when he heard at his North Carolina hideaway that Dr King had been assassinated. However, according to information passed on by FBI informant Willie Somersett, his car was involved in the assassination. William Pepper, authority on the MLK assassination, has not yet identified the person who he believes was the shooter. (NOTE 1) Given Somersett's reliability as a source on the American right wing - he was the FBI agent who taperecorded Joseph Milteer speaking in early November 1963 about the forthcoming assassination of President Kennedy - he should probably investigate Tarrants before he says anything further about this subject.

1968: April 5-15 (approx.): Spends ten days in hiding in Mobile, Alabama at the home of the individual who was Willie Somersett's source.

1968: May 2: Fires a machine gun into the home near Jackson of a black woman active in the NAACP. Her niece suffers wounds to one leg. She is the only known casualty of his violent activities. For a 'mad dog killer,' as he was described by FBI Special Agent Frank Watts, Tarrants proves extremely unlucky. After eight months of terrorist activity, he has not claimed a single life, black or Jewish, at least so far as the public record of his activities is concerned.

1968: May 20: Earliest documented sighting of the polka dot girl in Los Angeles at Robbie's Restaurant in Pomona, where Kennedy held a campaign luncheon for 400 guests. If Ainsworth was already in Los Angeles, could Tarrants have already been there with her?

1968: May 29: 12.15am: He and Danny Joe Hawkins allegedly bomb the Meridian synagogue. Once again, no one is hurt.

1968: May 29-June 24: His whereabouts in this period are completely unknown. Jack Nelson assumes that he is once again in hiding in North Carolina.

1968: June 2: Meridian police officer and Meridian mayor tell the ADL that those responsible for the synagogue bombing were Alton Wayne and Raymond Roberts. However, FBI Special Agent Frank Watts is already convinced by early June that Tarrants is responsible, although he has no hard evidence to support his suspicions. What is the basis for Watts' belief? Could he have been instructed by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to focus on Tarrants as a cover for a cleanup operation that would lead to the elimination of Tarrants and Ainsworth?

1968: June 5: 12.15am: If the speculations in this website are correct, he and Ainsworth are involved in the shooting at the Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles, California, that leads to the death of Senator Robert F. Kennedy. His appearance disguised by permed and bleached hair, he is seen wearing a gold coloured shirt by several persons present at the crime scene. After shooting Bobby Kennedy three times at point blank range, he and Ainsworth leave the pantry while almost everyone else is preoccupied with Sirhan. They exit the Hotel via the fire stairs and the carpark, where in their haste they nearly collide with an elderly Jewish couple, the Bernsteins.

1968: June 10: Raymond Roberts, who is now an FBI informant, tells the FBI that Tarrants and Hawkins were involved in the May 29 synagogue bombing.

1968: June 24: Seen with Danny Joe Hawkins in Meridian.

1968: June 27: In a mysterious development, Hawkins drops out of the mission to bomb the house of ADL official Meyer Davidson. His inevitable replacement is Tarrants' other regular partner, Kathy Ainsworth.

1968: June 28: 11pm: He and Ainsworth arrive in Meridian for the planned bombing.

1968: June 29: 12.50am onwards: Ainsworth is killed and he is severely wounded in an ADL/FBI set up. The ambush is a classic 'cleanup' operation, with the attempted bombing providing the pretext for a massive shootout in which both Tarrants and Ainsworth were expected to be killed. After a dramatic 15-block police chase, he is captured and taken to hospital, where a doctor gives him just 45 minutes to live.

1968: November 26-27: Tried and sentenced to 30 years in prison. Danny Joe Hawkins is subsequently indicted for his role in the Meridian synagogue bombing, but his case never went to trial. As Jack Nelson remarks, 'his case was put on the court's dead docket.' (p. 269) Why? Why was one (alleged) perpetrator of the Meridian synagogue bombing lured into a death trap while the other never even needed to stand trial?

1969?: Escapes from Parchman State Penitentiary. Is recaptured and his prison term extended by a further 6 years. Experiences a religious conversion shortly afterwards and adopts (or affects) a politically-correct philosemitism.

1976: December 13: Governor Cliff Finch of Mississippi approves his release from prison.

1977-78: Studies at the University of Mississippi.

1979: Publishes a small book, The Conversion of a Klansman.

1980: Marries into a wealthy North Carolina family.

1990-1992: Is interviewed 12 times by Jack Nelson for his book Terror In The Night on the ADL/FBI set up in Meridian. Tells Nelson that his ambition, in March 1968, was to assassinate Dr King. But Nelson fails to elicit the details of his plan to kill Dr King. Nor does he ask about Robert Kennedy.

1994: Publishes book with John Perkins and David A. Wimbish, He's my brother: former racial foes offer strategy for reconciliation.

BELOW: Tom Tarrants as he looks today.



BELOW: Sam Bowers, the head of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. The real instigator of much of the violence that marred Mississippi in the 60s, Bowers spent a grand total of six years in prison for the one murder for which he was ever convicted. If anyone was ever a 'mad dog killer' it was this vicious man who got off virtually scot free. FBI agent provocateur anyone?

This website argues that Sirhan's handler was Kathy Ainsworth, a 26yo KKK terrorist from Jackson, Mississippi. If she was, her involvement points to her boyfriend, 21yo Thomas A. Tarrants III, as the Caucasian man seen firing three shots into Robert Kennedy by Don Schulman. The other persons involved in the assassination were a hypnotized Sirhan Sirhan, Sirhan double Michael Wayne, Gabor Kadar, Thane Eugene Cesare, as well as a possible traitor within the Kennedy camp, Frank Mankiewicz. The assassination was a joint FBI/ADL operation. The two organizations co-operated again a few weeks later when they arranged for the execution of two of the principals involved in the successful operation to purge America of its last great progressive politician. The country has been on a downward slide to militarism and irrationality ever since.

NOTES

(1) In his book Act of State, Pepper concludes that Earl Clark of the Memphis Police Department, who is on several grounds the most likely suspect, was not the actual shooter. Based on a witness description of the shooter's clothing, Pepper thinks that the shooter was probably a fellow member of the MPD. However, it could have been anybody disguised in an MPD uniform.
(2)

DISCLAIMER: This website should be regarded as conspiracy theory only! The author does not mean to suggest that Sirhan Sirhan did not kill Robert Kennedy, or that the FBI and the ADL don't have the right to kill whosoever they damn please. After all, it's a free country!

For information about the RFK assassination: