On a quiet Sunday -- Dec. 11, 1960 -- a small crowd waited patiently outside St. Edward's Roman Catholic church in Palm Beach, Fla., to greet a man attending Mass inside.
In a matter of minutes, President-elect John F. Kennedy would emerge.Aloof from the crowd, but still on the sidewalk Kennedy would have to travel, was a small, white-haired man with a ruddy complexion and determined jaw. His name was Richard Paul Pavlick. He was 73 years old and a former mental patient.
Pavlick planned to murder the future president that morning. No Roman Catholic would ever occupy the White House while Pavlick was alive to prevent it.
Bound to his chest by a leather belt and concealed under his dark-blue suitcoat were six sticks of dynamite. They were linked by a wire connected to a switch at his beltline. Another wire ran from the switch to a small dry-cell battery in his grouser pocket. When the switch was thrown, the current would flow from the battery to the dynamite, causing it to explode.
Pavlick planned to appraoch the president-elect after he was clear of the crowd at the main door. He was planning to wait until Kennedy was close -- close enough to touch. Then he would throw the switch and they would die together.
He later was quoted as saying he was "set to go that morning."
Kennedy's would-be assassin had arrived in Palm Beach the day before. He had estalbished himself at a motel four miels from the luxurious ocean-front winter home occupied by the Massachusetts senator. Ironically, Pavlick had moved into the same motel wehre the Secret Service agents guarding Kennedy had their quarters.
Pavlick rose early Sunday. He waited patiently outside the church at the start of every Mass. At 10 a.m., Kennedy drove up in a limousine.
Pavlick went into the church and watched every move Kennedy made. Toward the end of the service, Pavlick ducked outside and took up his position on the walk.
The Mass ended. Kennedy, who was seated at the rear, was among the first outside. The crowd applauded when he appeared, and he flashed his famous smile. A few tried to shake his hand, but they were brushed back by the Secret Service.
In seconds, Kennedy should have been within range of his assassin, but people coming out of the church also were anxious to glimpse the president-elect. They cut around Kennedy and his guards and lined up along the path to the limousine.
Pavlich found himself surrounded by men, women and children. As deep as his desire was to kill the Catholic president-elect, his love for children was greater. Rather than risk harming a child, Pavlick abandoned his attempt. He would try another time.
Secret Service agents guarding Kennedy noticed the small man with white, wavy hair scamper away. Four days later, the same agents would positively identify him as being at the church that morning.
Richard Paul Pavlick decided to kill John Fitzgeral dKennedy on Wednesday, Nov. 9, 1960 -- the day after American voters, by the narrowest of margins, had chosen JFK to serve in the White House.
While the world waited for Vice President Richard Nixon to concede, Pavlick was pacing nervously in his three-room bungalow in Dearborn Street in Belmont, N.H., hatching his plot.
When the opportunity came, whether in Washignton, D.C., in Palm Beach or in Hyannisport, he would be there, ready to punge past the Secret Service and kill JFK. Pavlick knew he would die, but his life was a small price to pay for keeping his country free from domination by the Vatican.
He would kill Kennedy no later thanb Dec. 20. The nation woul dhave a full month to recover, then Lyndon Baines Johnson would be sworn in as the 35th president of the United States.
Before Pavlick could kill Kennedy, he planned to study his intended victim firsthand, check the security measures taken to protect him and, where necessary, photograph his surroundings -- so that when the eventful day dawned, all would go smoothly.
Pavlick alos wanted to place his own house in order. His personal possessions would be sold, hos money would go to a charity that aided young children.
Pavlick, a retired postal worker with two fingers missing on his right hand, could not, and would not, accept the fact that the voters had chosen a Catholic to be president. He disliked Catholics' "hypocritical piety." He hated the "mumbo jumbo" of their religious services. He distrusted priests and nuns and the spiritual control they exercised over their flock. Most of all, he despised the Vatican and "the way it had of telling people what to do."
"The safety of the United States can ony be preserved by controlling or eliminating those ideologies foreign to the American way of life," he wrote to a grou pof Boston ministers in 1955, when he attempted to organize the Protestant War Veterans Lwegion. He was a World War I veteran.
Pavlick lived in Belmont, a staunch Republican town 50 miles north of Manchester. The day after the election, Pavlick confided to friends that life had lost all meaning to him. He talked of "destroying" himself and "taking others with him."
Nobody took himn seriously. He was considered the town eccentric. Twice he had been confined to mental hospitals. In 1933, he spent time in an institution in Medfield. Eleven years later, he was confined to a veterans hospital in Bedford. He was a constant letter writer. His letters were described by an editor of the Laconia Citizen as being "rambling and dumb." At town meetings, he battled for outlandish proposals, all his own, such as three shifts of workers at town hall.
"After the election, he rambled on and on about Kennedy," said Eleanor Stockbridge, his closest neighbor. "I didn't pay too much attention to him. He was alway srambling about something."
Fire Chief Howard Reed described Pavlick as "a radical type." Said Reed, "When Pavlick favored something, he was for it with all his heart. When he was against something, he was against it all the way."
When the would-be assassin wasn't busy clearing rocks from his acre of property on Dearborn Street or repairing the bungalow and two sheds on the land, he was at the post office.
At first, Postmaster Thomas M. Murphy did not consider Pavlick dangerous. "One morning, he raised a ruckus because the American flag wasn't flying," recalled Murphy, who was 34 at the time. "Most of the time, though, he talked about the old days and how hard it was when he worked for the postal service. I thought he was harmless.
"Then he disappeared for a few days, and when he came back, he told me he had been to Hyannisport. He told me the Secret Service agents were stupid. At the time, I was busy and didn't pay attention. Later, I got to wondering why a man who was so opposed to Kennedy would make a trip to Hyannisport to see him."
It is not difficult to iiipinpoint where Pavlick developed his hatred for Catholics. It happened in Boston, more specifically, in overwhelmingly Irish Catholic South Boston, where Pavlick was born and lived for the first 55 years of his life.
At Boston's South Station postal annex, where Pavlick worked, officials had difficulty with him. He was complaining constantly about the lack of stools for use when sorting mail. Another time, he asked two Harvard professors to investigate "the cruelty inflicted on postal workers by having them memorize more than 200 routes."
Pavlick, hwo worked for the postal service for 30 years, was never a full-time government employee. He chose to be a substitute. A bachelor, he loved to travel. Steady work woul dhave tied him down.
In 1948, Pavlick quit and moved to Gilmanton, a stone's trhow from Belmont. Except for his letter writing, he lived a quiet life. He moved to Belmont in 1952.
In 1955, he paraded in front of the White House protesting disrespect to the American flag.
In 1958, he threatened suicide in a letter to President Eisenhower. In 1959, in another letter to Eisenhower, he complained about treatment he had received in some business dealings.
During the last week of November 1960, he sent the Laconia Citizen and all Belmont officials a mimeographed letter announcing he was leaving the area because "everybody (there) was back in the Stone Age."
A week earlier, he had sold his bungalow and furnishings for $2,000.
Pavlick turned over the proceeds to the Spaulding Youth Center in Northfield, N.H. He also deeded a small tract of land he owned to the center.
"He descended on us from out of the blue," said JDonald Farrington, executive director of the center.
Pavlick left town Dec. 1. Parking his 10-year-old green sedan with ski carriers attached to the roof in front of the Belmont Post Office, he went inside to say goodbye to his friends. He abandoned a second car.
"Pavlick said he was leaving town," recalled postmaster Murphy. "He said he might `end up in pieces.' He scared me.
"As he was going out the door, he shouted over his shoulder that he would send me a forwarding address," Murphy said.
On Dec. 6, Murphy heard from Pavlick. The letter was postmarked Washington, D.C. "He wanted his mail forwarded to General Delivery there," said Murphy. "that was enough for me. I had read that Senator Kennedy was in Washington. I notified my superiors immediately."
Postal authorities in Concord notified U.S. Attorney Maurice Bois, who ordered an immediate investigation.
Agent Frank V. McDermott of the Boston office of the Secret Service was dispatched to Belmont. After questioning Murphy and others on Dec. 7, he alerted agents in Washington to watch for Pavlick.
McDermott was convinced Pavlick planned to make a human bomb of himselof and kill the president-elect. McDermott had learned of Palick's suicidal complex, of his hatred for Kennedy and the quanitity of dynamite Pavlick had purchased. he also learned Pavlick had taken photos of St. Francis Church in Hyannisport and of the Kennedy compound.
Treasury agents staked out the post office in Washington. Pavlick never showed.
On Saturday, Dec. 10, while at a motel in Aiken, S.C., Pavlick penned a note to Murphy. "Please forward my mail to Palm Springs. After Decd. 20, do not forward any more mail."
Pavlick had written "Palm Springs" by mistake. After mailing the letter, he headed for Palm Beach, Fla., where Kennedy was staying.
The next day, Pavlick made his aborted attempt outside St. Edward's Churchg. IN fairness to the agents guarding Kennedy, they had not been informed the would-be assassin was in Palm Beach. Murphy had not yet received the note, and the search for Pavlick was still centered in Washington.
No pictures of Pavlick were available; his only identifying feature was the two fingers missing on his right hand. As lonhg as he kept it in a pocket, he was safe.
Kennedy left Palm Beach Dec. 12. He was to return on the 16th and remain there through Christmas.
Any dreams Pavlick had of killing Kennedy vanished on Dec. 15. That Thursday, a short, gray-haired man approached the general delivery window at the main post office in Palm Beach.
"Any mail for Richard Paul Pavlick?" he asked.
The clerk hesitated, then nodded to two Secret Service agents who were behind the counter sorting mail. After Pavlich postively identified himself, the clerk handed over the mail.
Outside, as Pavlick was about to enter his car, Palm Beach traffic officer Lester Free arrested him on a "technical" charge of crossing a white center strip. He was taken to the local police station for questioning by federal authorities.
The next day, U.S. Commissioner George L. Pink ordered Pavlick held on $100,000 bond -- at the time, one of the largest federal bails ever ordered in Florida.
In Pavlick's car, investigators found Pavlick's dynamite belt. Other sticks of dynamite were found in his motel room.
Several letters of farewell to friends and relatives were found on his person. One contained his last will and testament. He left everything to the Spaulding Youth Center.
Pavlick spent the next six years in mental institutions. His case was never brought to trial. He was released in 1966 when Dr. Warren Burns, superintendent of the New Hampshire State Hospital, informed Superior Court Judge Robert Griffith, "I feel he (Pavlick) could be maintained outside the hospital, if some provision could be made for his medication."
Griffith placed Pavlick on parole for three months. Burns, who supervised the aprole, reported Pavlick's behavior was perfect, and he was formally released from custody.
The day after his release, he gave $9,000 that had accumulated from an Army pension to a local charity. Pavlick lived out his life in a lonely flat in downtown Manchester, N.H.
When interviewed, he spoke sharply and loudly in an effort to get his point across. He rarely smiled. Though the evidence against him was overwhelming, Pavlick denied he planned to kill Kennedy.
"I've sent off thousands of letters since I was released from the state hospital," he said. "I want to clear my name."
Pavlick often appeared on Manchester streets wearing sandwich boards, urging citizens to sign a petition he hoped would get him a public hearing.
"I got a lot of sympathy," he said, "but very little help. People just don't care."
He denied he was anti-Catholic. "I was as shocked as everybody else when I learned John F. Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas. It is a cruel thing to kill the man who has been elected the leader of your nation."
In his final years, Pavlick used his pension money to sponsor christmas parties for children in Manchester and for patients at the state hospital in Concord.
"It's a small thing," he said. "But I know how it feels to be confined in a mental institution at Christmas, so I try to make the holiday a little happier for my friends."
Richard Paul Pavlick died in 1972. He was never able to clear his name.