The Kennedy Assassin Who Failed
By Dan Lewis
December 6, 2012

In November of 1960, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was elected President of the United States. Three years later, he was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald while in a motorcade going through Dallas, Texas.

Had Richard Paul Pavlick gotten his way, Oswald would have never gotten to pull the trigger. Because Pavlick wanted to kill JFK first.

On December 11, 1960, JFK was the president-elect and Richard Paul Pavlick was a 73-year-old retired postal worker. Both were in Palm Beach, Florida. JFK was there on a vacation of sorts, taking a trip to warmer climates as he prepared to assume the office of the President. Pavlick had followed Kennedy down there with the intention of blowing himself up and taking JFK with him. His plan was simple. He lined his car with dynamite — “enough to blow up a small mountain”, per CNN and outfitted it with a detonation switch. Then, he parked outside the Kennedy’s Palm Beach compound and waited for Kennedy to leave his house to go to Sunday Mass. Pavlick’s aim was to ram his car into JFK’s limo as the President-to-be left his home, killing them both.

But JFK did not leave his house alone that morning. He made his way to his limousine with his wife, Jacqueline, and children, Caroline and John, Jr. who was less than a month old. While Pavlick was willing to kill John F. Kennedy, he did not want to kill Kennedy’s family, so he resigned himself to trying again another day. He would not get a second chance at murderous infamy. On December 15, he was arrested by a Palm Beach police officer working off a tip from the Secret Service.

Pavlick’s undoing was the result of deranged postcards he sent to Thomas Murphy, then the postmaster of Pavlick’s hometown of Belmont, New Hampshire. Murphy was put off by the strange tone of the postcards, and his curiosity led him to do what postmasters do — look at the postmarks. He noticed a pattern: Pavlick happened to be in the same general area as JFK, dotting the landscape as Kennedy travelled. Murphy called the local police department who, in turn, called the Secret Service, and from there, Pavlick’s plan unraveled.

The would-be assassin was committed to a mental institution, pending charges, on January 27, 1961, a week after Kennedy was inaugurated as the 35th President of the United States. These charges were eventually dropped as it became increasingly clear that Pavlick acted out of an inability to distinguish between right and wrong (i.e. he was legally insane), but nevertheless, Pavlick remained institutionalized until December 13, 1966, nearly six years after being apprehended, and three years after Oswald pulled the trigger.

Richard Paul Pavlick
From Wikipedia

 Richard Paul Pavlick (February 13, 1887 – November 11, 1975) was a retired postal worker. from New Hampshire who stalked U.S. president-elect John F. Kennedy, with the intent of assassinating him. On December 11, 1960, in Palm Beach, Florida, Pavlick positioned himself to carry out the assassination by blowing up Kennedy and himself with dynamite, but delayed the attempt because Kennedy was with his family.. He was arrested before he was able to stage another attempt.

 Pavlick was born on February 13, 1887, in Belmont, New Hampshire. After serving in the United States Army during World War I, he worked as a postmaster in Boston, Massachusetts before retiring and relocating to Belmont in the 1950s. Pavlick had no family.  He became known at local public meetings for his angry political rants, which included complaints that the American flag was not being displayed appropriately. he also criticized the government and hated Catholics, focusing much of his anger on the Kennedy family and their wealth. Pavlick was suspicious that the local water company was poisoning the town water, and once confronted the company's supervisor with a gun.

 Assassination plan
After Kennedy defeated Vice President Richard Nixon in the 1960 presidential election, 73-year-old Pavlick decided to kill Kennedy. He turned his property over to a local youth camp, loaded his meager possessions into his 1950 Buick, and disappeared. Soon after, Belmont's postmaster began receiving bizarre postcards from Pavlick. stating that the town would soon hear from him "in a big way";. noticing that the postmarked dates and locations matched Kennedy's movements, the postmaster contacted the Secret Service;. the Secret Service interviewed locals and learned of Pavlick's previous outbursts and that he had recently purchased dynamite.. During his travels, Pavlick had visited the Kennedy compound at Hyannis Port, Massachusetts,. and photographed the Kennedy home while also checking out the compound's security.

 Shortly before 10 a.m. on Sunday, December 11, as John F. Kennedy was preparing to leave for Mass at St. Edward Church in Palm Beach,. Pavlick waited in his dynamite-laden car hoping to detonate his 1950 Buick to cause a fatal explosion. However, Pavlick changed his mind after seeing John F. Kennedy with his wife, Jacqueline and the couple's two small children... Pavlick said, "I did not want to harm her or the children.". While waiting for another opportunity over the next few days, Pavlick visited the church to learn its interior, but the Secret Service had informed local Palm Beach police to look out for Pavlick's automobile..

 Four days later, on December 15, a Palm Beach police officer spotted Pavlick's vehicle crossing the Royal Poinciana Bridge... After his arrest, Pavlick said, "Kennedy money bought the White House and the Presidency. I had the crazy idea I wanted to stop Kennedy from being President.".

 On January 27, 1961, Pavlick was committed to the federal medical center in Springfield, Missouri, then was indicted for threatening Kennedy's life seven weeks later.. According to Ted Sorensen, Kennedy "was merely bemused" when he found out about Pavlick..

 Later life
Charges against Pavlick were dropped on December 2, 1963, ten days after Kennedy's assassination in Dallas, Texas.. Judge Emett Clay Choate ruled that Pavlick was mentally ill—unable to distinguish between right and wrong in his actions—and ordered that he remain in a psychiatric hospital. The federal government also dropped charges in August 1964, and Pavlick was eventually released from the New Hampshire State Hospital on December 13, 1966.... 

Pavlick died at the age of 88 on November 11, 1975 at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Manchester, New Hampshire