When Richard Charnin saw the film Executive Action in 1973, he was astounded when the narrator disclosed that an actuary engaged by the London Sunday Times calculated a one in 100,000 trillion probability of eighteen material JFK-related witness deaths in the three years following the assassination.

As a quantitative analyst with three degrees in applied mathematics, Charnin recognized that the calculation was mathematical proof of a conspiracy. After all, a professional actuary who has passed difficult mathematical exams would be expected to come up with a good estimate of the odds; that is what he does for a living. But in 1978 the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) dismissed the actuary’s odds, stating they were invalid and that the universe of witnesses was “unknowable”. The HSCA never showed the actuary’s methodology. In 1989 Jim Marrs published Crossfire in which he listed 103 convenient JFK-related deaths. Along with Jim Garrison’s On the Trail of the Assassins, Crossfire was the basis for Oliver Stone’s JFK. In 2003, using Marrs’ list, Charnin calculated the probability of at least 15 unnatural witness deaths in the first year, essentially confirming the actuary’s calculation. The HSCA did not consider unnatural deaths which comprised the majority of suspicious deaths; it noted just 21 deaths when there were at least 122 by 1978.