25: Willem Oltmans and His Clairvoyant
I Am a Patsy! by George de Mohrenschildt
After our return from Haiti, we were literally assailed by a great number of journalists, who wanted to interview us. The most interesting among them was Willem Oltmans, United States representative of NOS Television (Dutch State Television) with headquarters in New York.
Oltmans, a Dutchman but educated in the United States — a Yale graduate — told me how he became interested in the President’s murder in 1964, while we were still in Haiti. He flew to Dallas on March 9, 1964 on an American Airlines from Kennedy airport in New York to address the next day the Criterion Club in Wichita Falls, Texas. At the counter in New York he ran into Marguerite Oswald. The two sat together during the following dinner–flight and it was during this journey that Oltmans first began to doubt the truth as to Lee Oswald being the killer of President Kennedy all by himself and miserably alone. It was Marguerite Oswald who told him that the chief of police in Dallas interrogated Lee for forty–eight hours, without making a tape–recording of the hearing and even keeping his notes. When the Warren Commission asked the Dallas police official whether they didn’t think Oswald an important enough subject to borrow a tape–recorder for the investigation of the murder of the president of the United States, the answer had been negative.
The Clairvoyant, Gerard Croiset
Upon returning to the Netherlands. Oltmans discussed his conversation with Marguerite Oswald with the famous clairvoyant, Gerard Croiset in Utrecht, the Netherlands. It was Doubleday who had published in 1964 the biography of this amazing Dutchman, who has been solving crimes and murders all over the world, including in the United States.
It was Croiset who first described to Oltmans in a tape–recorded interview (which is being kept at the Institute of Parapsychology of the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands) that I existed. Croiset told Oltmans that Lee had a friend in Dallas, in his fifties. He described some of my physical features, including that my name held the letters ach and the word de.
Oltmans immediately consulted the chief of programs of National Dutch Television in Hilversum, Carel Enkelaar. He received the assignment to return to Dallas and try to locate this mysterious friend of Oswald’s, who, according to the Dutch clairvoyant, was of noble decent and was a geologist. He, mysterious X, was, according to Croiset, the architect of the ambush in which Kennedy had been killed. Oswald was only the fall–guy.
Oltmans returned to Fort Worth and visited Mrs. Marguerite Oswald. It was Lee’s mother who, following Croiset’s description, pointed to a volume of a complete set of the Warren Report and indicated our name and existence to the Dutch journalist.
Oltmans reported back in Hilversum that Croiset’s indication had been correct. There was a friend, in his fifties, and his name did match the words de and sch. He was George de Mohrenschildt.
NOS Television then instructed Willem Oltmans to phone me April 22, 1967, to ask for a TV interview. I replied that I had to attend the World Petroleum Congress in Mexico City and that he should contact me in two weeks. I did not hear from him again until later that year.
Willem Oltmans and Robert Kennedy
When Oltmans reported to Hilversum that he had contacted me, the Dutch television presidium felt Oltmans was in grave danger. They reasoned that so many people, directly or indirectly connected with trying to unravel the Kennedy assassination had been killed or mysteriously disappeared, that Oltmans was immediately instructed to contact the office of Robert F. Kennedy, at the time the Senator of the State of New York.
This office was located at the US Post Office building, near 43rd Street. Oltmans saw Tim Hogan, Robert F. Kennedy’s press assistant, and explained the situation, including Croiset’s analysis, that Kennedy had been killed in a plot an that I was the engineer of the ambush.
Tim Hogan said the Senator was making a speech in Albany that morning and was flying back at 1 p.m. in the “Caroline”. He would inform the Senator immediately relaying Oltman’s request whether he could have some protection from FBI. NOS Television had figured that Robert Kennedy, former Attorney–General of the United States, was as safe a person to ask advice in this delicate manner.
Tim Hogan called back around 2 p.m. in Oltman’s apartment in Kew–Gardens, New York. He relayed to Oltmans that RFK had personally picked up the phone and talked to J. Edgar Hoover in Washington, D.C. FBI agents were to contact him later that day.
Indeed, already at 4 p.m. two agents called at Oltman’s apartment. they stayed two full hours, but Oltmans only relayed to them that he was instructed to interview us in Dallas and that, at the same time, NOS TV had told him to contact Robert Kennedy.
When the agents left the Oltmans apartment, they assured him that from that moment on he would be 24–hours a day under surveillance of the FBI and there would be nothing to worry about.
Willem Oltmans Leaves the United States
The next evening Oltmans wanted to visit an Indonesian friend in Greenwich Village, an architect, who was designing a cover for a book Oltmans was writing about the late President Sukarno of Indonesia.
Driving southward on Westside drive at around 8 p.m. in a Sunbeam Tiger, with a V–8 motor, a convertible sports model, with aluminum racing wheels, at a speed of about sixty miles per hour. Oltmans was being overtaken by a cab with a passenger riding in the back–seat. The cab cruised for a while next to Oltmans’ car until the 53rd Street exit was reached. Then the cab made a fast move, in which Oltmans was cut off in such a way that he crashed in the rails. His car was a total loss. His head was bleeding. He was brought to the Kew–Gardens hospital, where he was examined, bandaged and sent home. The insurance awarded him within ten days a new car, which Oltmans quickly shipped to the Netherlands. He himself left a few days afterwards.
Two months later, Oltmans received in his bungalow in the country near Utrecht a telephone call from a certain Glenn Bryan Smith, attorney from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Smith announced that he was conducting an investigation into the JFK murder for …………………, the author of Green Berets. He wanted to discuss with Oltmans the Dallas affair and compare notes. Oltmans agreed to a meeting in Hotel Terminus in Utrecht, but only in the presence of Carel Enkelaar, NOS TV boss. It so happened.
During the conversation, however, Glenn Bryan Smith slipped in some threats. He cautioned Oltmans in the presence of Enkelaar to stop investigating President Kennedy’s assassination because “you would not be the first person to die or disappear in this matter. What they do is, they will kidnap you in a New York street, drive you to a private airport, and dump you over the Atlantic Ocean. You would not be the first person to die this way either.”
Oltmans says that he remained unperturbed. He waited a few months more publishing an extensive report on his automobile accident in the leading weekly magazine Haagse Post, showing on the cover pictures of John F. Kennedy and myself. Oltmans then returned to the United States in October 1967 and came to film us with the Dallas CBS TV crew on October 15th. It was a very pleasant meeting for us.
From that moment on, this Dutch journalist, who initially approached us, because he had received indications that we might be involved indirectly through Oswald with the Kennedy assassination, became a very personal friend. He has visited us every year since 1967.
He will by now be convinced, that we had nothing to do whatsoever with the JFK assassination.
As a matter of fact, he told us, that despite of Gerard Croiset’s great gifts for solving crimes, at the same time some forty per–cent of his indications and prognoses are always false.
Nevertheless, Oltmans relayed to us as recently as the summer of 1976, that this famous Dutch clairvoyant is still deadly convinced that I am the man who tricked Lee Harvey Oswald, and who set up, financed by the Dallas oil lobby, the assassination of John F. Kennedy. I am supposed to have done it from Haiti, probably through some voodoo trick …
I probably should have sued that Dutch clairvoyant but I presume that he is probably broke and an international law suit would be very costly.