Portrait of an American Hero

"I have three social security numbers, at least three . . . I am presently drawing social security under three different numbers because I worked under those names and I paid under those names."

 

This here is Chauncey Marvin Holt. Chauncey claims he was one of the infamous "Three Tramps" busted at the rail yard near Dealy Plaza right after President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated. He liked himself well enough to paint this self portrait.

 

In an interview he did in 1991, Holt was asked how he learned the craft of forgery.

 

'Well, I was interested in art from the time I was six, seven years old. I sold my first painting in 1927 and I had been painting continually. During the war, when I worked at the Bethelem-Fairfield Shipyard Company, I was very interested in art and thought I'd like to make a career of it. I went to the Baltimore Art Institute . . . I was always interested in increasing my skills as a draftsman, and I was noted as being one of the better ones around. It just naturally followed that you could forge."

 

 



 

That's him, supposedly, bringing up the rear, right behind - again supposedly - Woody Harrelson's daddy, Charles.

 

This is not a casting call for "Mad Men."
Lee Harvey Oswald is second from the left, handing out Fair Play for Cuba leaflets. Our man Chauncey is far right, in more ways than one.

 

Holt's was a gaudy, lurid kind of life. He was a sort of WASP Zelig. He was bred in Old Kentucky, to a family of circus performers. In his younger years he worked as a high wire walker. By the time he was 15 Holt was a licensed pilot. He lied about his age to join the Army Air Corps as the War began in Europe. Shortly thereafter he assaulted another soldier with his rifle and ended up in Leavenworth. In June, 1940, they let him out, returning him to duty in a newly-formed armored division. Upon hearing the news about the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, Holt promptly went AWOL with one of his buddies. He reported back, eventually; but by 1942 he had been busted on federal car theft charges. He ended up in a "reformatory" in Chillacotte, Ohio. There Holt met an enforcer for the Detroit mob. 

 

By now the Army was sick of him. He got a job at a shipyard, where he did his part for the War Effort for the duration.

 

After the war Holt renewed his connection with the mob's Detroit branch. They farmed him out to Meyer Lansky in Florida. His first gig there was auditing the books at Kite's Bar and Grill in Jacksonville, a numbers hub. Holt found that Kite had his hand in the till. They found Kite floating in the surf not far from his bar.

 

Holt then went to work at "a very respectable accounting firm" (Holt's words), that did all of Meyer Lansky's books. 

 

"I was hired by him personally. . . We did accounting work during the day and we handled gambling proceeds at night."

 

Holt was also Lansky's pilot, ferrying Lansky back and forth to Cuba. One trip was to Vegas, to check on rumors that Bugsy Segal and Virginia Hill were squirrelling away some of the river of money flowing into the Flamingo project. We all know how that ended.

 

Things were getting too hot for the mob, and Holt was looking to get out. Through Lansky, Holt got involved with The International Rescue Committee, a CIA front that handed out money to organizations looking to overthrow left wing governments, an official US Government policy known as Executive Action. Holt was made the IRC's controller.

 

"Lansky didn't explain anything about the position, he just said to go over there and your job description will be forthcoming. So I went over there and sat around for a couple of weeks reading the Racing Form when a guy by the name of Sluder came down from Washington, I suppose, and informed me that this IRC was a propriety interest of the CIA. That its main function was dispensing funds for the agency. At that time I didn't know what a propriety interest was. Didn't even known what the CIA was."

 

After the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Lansky sent Holt to California. He worked at the Los Angeles Stamp and Stationary Company, churning out forged documents and fake police badges. One day, a banker in Fullerton asked him to make fake IDS for a couple of guys in New Orleans, and deliver them himself. The bank was a laundry for monies to be used in Executive Action operations. One of the fake IDs was in the name of Alek Hiddell. As some of you may already know, Alek Hiddell was an alias used by Lee Harvey Oswald.

 

Holt claimed in 1991 that he delivered untraceable guns equipped with silencers and forged Secret Service papers to Harrelson and the guy in the front of the Three Tramps shot, Charles Rogers. It's been claimed that Rogers was the Oswald impostor photographed at the door of the Soviet embassy in Mexico City. Rogers disappeared in 1965 after his folks were found chopped up like  slaughtered hogs in their freezer.

 

For reasons that are not at all clear, Holt was arrested at his LA office and did two years at Terminal Island on federal charges. According to the family of (I believe) his business partner, he did this time under the alias John Moon - said business partner's name!

 

How much of any of what is "known" about Holt is true is, though, anybody's guess.

 

This mid-century modern icon to the American Way can hang over your mantle-piece for a mere $500.00.

Hopperesque Beauty

We just got her in. No clue as to the artist, but whoever he or she was, this is a fine work.