Asylum Antics

Judyth Vary Baker Claimed She Obtained Political Asylum in Sweden

By Glenn Viklund

Card Shows Judyth Baker to Have
Been an Asylum Seeker in Sweden.
She is denied, appeals this decision and is denied again and leaves the country in the summer of 2008.

Yes, those are the simple, basic facts about her asylum procedure in Sweden. But, as usual and as I was about to find out, very few things are ever simple or straightforward about Judyth Baker.

Back in 2008 I was well aware about the existence of Judyth Baker. I knew about her basic claims but had never bothered to look into her story on a deeper level. I had for many years followed some of the Internet forums and at times she was the subject of debate.

In the fall of 2008 I happened to notice (alt.assassination.jfk) that someone claimed that Baker was living in asylum, in Sweden. To say the least, this was surprising. An American citizen having been granted asylum in Sweden? The last time I could recall that happening was when US citizens avoided the US draft for the Vietnam war, those people who did apply for political asylum and on this basis were granted asylum in Sweden. Primarily because they risked being imprisoned if they returned to the US. I also knew that one basic requirement to be granted political asylum is that you can prove that your own government cannot or will not protect your personal safety to the same standards as any other citizen when living in your home country. Had she really proven this?

I decided to do some research into this matter. The first thing I wanted to know was of course if she’d ever been to Sweden at all? It didn’t take very long to find this interview, which she had given to a Swedish local newspaper, published the 22nd of November 2007:

http://www.dt.se/allmant/dalarna/jag-var-oswalds-flickvan

The title of the article is “I was Oswalds girlfriend” and it certainly starts with a bang: “I know who killed President Kennedy and that’s the reason I will be killed if I return to the US.” And below the photo of her, it says “I’m the last living witness who knows what really happened when Kennedy was murdered.” Wow. Now she had indeed caught my interest, these statements are sensational, but could they really be true? And how could I not be aware about such fantastic claims?

In the article it also says that she’d recently been denied asylum in the first (lower) instance, and that she could therefor be thrown out of Sweden at any moment, so in retrospect we know that the interview was done before she appealed. She was to stay in Sweden for almost another nine months as things turned out. The backlog to deal with asylum appeals was heavy at this point in time and that’s the reason her appeal took eight or nine months to pass through the asylum process.

But, of course, now I wanted to know about the entirety of this story. For the next couple of weeks I spent a fair amount of time on phone calls and emails to dig through the bureaucratic fog related to Baker’s asylum process and also to learn the fine points about how the asylum procedure works. But the efforts paid off well. I received the asylum decisions in Judyth Baker’s case from both instances involved, the Migration Board and the Migration Court (appeals). The information contained in these documents is really very thorough indeed. It included her story as told word by word by Baker herself, all relevant dates, the decisions of the courts and the reasoning behind those decisions. Really all you can ask for. Here it was, all of it. Now I knew.

This is when I decided to forward this information to Professor John McAdams. In order for all concerned on his forum, I figured it was a good idea to give them the correct information about her asylum. I had certainly noticed that those discussions were littered with falsehoods, incorrect facts and outright lies. And in general terms it was of course the right decision to provide everyone interested with the info I had. On a personal level, however, I’m not so certain. As I could have no idea of what was about to come because of this.

In 2007 Judyth Baker applies for political asylum in Sweden. Part two.

In the discussion forum alt.assassination.jfk the debate about Judyth Baker was intense in the late fall of 2008. By now, Baker had apparently completely given up participating herself directly in any forums at all. She had, without success, tried several forums. In fact, it’s fair to say that by now she didn’t have much support at all in the research community. But she did still have a few and some of those actually acted as JVB proxies.

They seemed to have direct access to Baker and they would relay her views on basically any subject related to her story and anything related to the JFK assassination. And, I strongly suspect, she had now again realized that it’s a good thing to be able to blame others for your own screw-ups, just as she did regarding one of the first versions of her book. And she would, indeed, do so later on.

These are the basic facts of her asylum process as stated in two court decisions:

Judyth Baker arrived in Sweden on September 11th, 2007, applied for asylum (PUT) the same day. This was rejected on 11th of November, 2007. She appealed November 28th, 2007, and the appeal was rejected the 2nd of June, 2008. She left Sweden on July 14, 2008. I will go through her own story in greater detail in the next part, but as for decisions of the courts involved, it can be summarized to this, in short:

They did not agree to her claims that her home country would not, or could not, protect her. No evidence of this was presented to the courts. Both of them likewise rejected her claims that she had been threatened and/or harassed in Europe, as she had presented no evidence of this. Having this information, I decided to join the newsgroup alt.assassination.jfk, and share it. I was quite shocked by the treatment I received from a couple of others in that forum.

But first, this is one example from April 2008, a posting that describes what Baker obviously had told her proxies, (“team Judyth,” as they were commonly referred to):

“I am told that it is permissible to mention that the country that gave Judyth asylum, based in part on information confirmed by the Hungarian police, was Sweden. The information indicated that her life had been in danger, and that Hungarian police had warned her to leave the country for that reason.”
In reality, the Migration Board had rejected her application; they had not granted her asylum. Her status was that of an asylum seeker and the only reason she was still in the process (and in Sweden) was her appeal of this decision. In other words, she had been granted nothing, quite the contrary. Moreover, she had indeed told them that she’d been harassed and threatened, both in Hungary and in the Netherlands. She also told them that she could, and would, prove this. Which, of course, she never did. The Migration Board specifically commented on this; “this most likely never happened.”

Baker was all over the Internet already back then, just not in any of the established research forums where members were highly critical of her claims. These are her own words about this, from earlier in 2008:

I was unable to show you the Holland permits until now — as the Swedish government kept my passport. I can now show you one of the permits. NOTE: I am choosing to leave Sweden, after ten months. The law is an American can stay only 90 days in Sweden, but I was given political asylum for ten months.

INTERESTING: BECAUSE I WAS IN POLITICAL ASYLUM, MY PASSPORT HAS NOT BEEN STAMPED ! NOT AT ALL! IT’S THE WAY THEY DO IT IF YOU ARE IN POLITICAL ASYLUM. NO RECORD OF WHERE YOU WERE. ALL FOR MY PROTECTION, YOU CAN’T TELL I WAS EVER IN SWEDEN!

My life was saved. I could have petitioned for permanent residency, here, but I’d probably be rejected because of my age (over 65). I can’t afford to stay without social security here, on MY social security, with the dollar in trouble, it is too expensive, so I’m moving. I’ve been given a letter explaining that I was not deported, because Barb and others will of course try to say that, and that is not true.

But this is the reality:

  1. She did not choose to leave Sweden, she was forced to.
  2. She was not “in political asylum” for ten months.
  3. She was denied twice during which time she was an asylum seeker.
  4. The duration of ten months was due to a backlog of cases like hers, not due to a decision.
  5. The lack of stamps in her passport has got nothing to do with her being in asylum, or her being “protected,” even after 9/11 no stamps is common practice in Europe.
  6. It is relatively easy to find her traces from Sweden, as ten months of her whereabouts are in the publicly available record.
  7. She did apply for permanent residency, that’s exactly what the asylum process is all about. She could not have “petitioned” for anything more, as she had exhausted her options already.
  8. Her age had nothing to do with her being rejected; the fact is that the courts did not believe her story.
  9. She has received no letters from Swedish authorities stating “I was not deported...”
  10. The fact is that she was indeed deported, at the expense of the Swedish Government.

Needless to say, the above is probably unsurpassed; such a short statement and basically all of it verifiably separated from the truth.

When joining alt.assassination.jfk I was certainly prepared to discuss anything about the asylum issue. However, I was not prepared to be accused of being a thief or a spy for bringing these facts forward. Her most ardent and loud supporters made all kinds of accusations like those. I found this very unpleasant.

None of them had probably ever heard of the Swedish principles of Public Record, which among other things means that any court decision made is in the public domain. You just need to figure out how to find them, that’s all. In order words, I must have stolen those documents, or was a translator involved in her process that simply leaked the information!

But Baker does not give up easily. In December of 2008, team Judyth proudly announced this:

”I just forwarded a copy to Tony Marsh of the letter granting asylum, which was issued in July of this year.”
Marsh’s site was where the document was published.

When reading this document, I could hardly believe what I saw:

“You are called to the Migration Board to talk about your journey home” (translated). Simply. With the appropriate logos and preprints, no doubt the document was authentic. Judyth Baker had sent to her supporters a document proving that she was about to be deported, which had been presented as a grant of asylum. Simply unbelievable.

Bakers explanation? As usual she had one:

Nit-picking.Marsh posted the letter to prove I had been accepted into the Swedish political asylum SYSTEM and was NOT an illegal alien, as [redacted] and others were accusing me.
After about a month of debate I withdrew from the group. I’d had enough of Baker, of asylum and of being accused of this and that. It was just about 15 months before I discussed Baker again. Which was needed, because when, in March of 2010, I again joined in to discuss Judyth Baker, this time at the Education Forum (run by John Simkin in the UK). Well, that’s when the real fun began …

Now, Baker produced a photo of an identity card (see at right, above) given to all asylum seekers. In the discussions at the Education Forum, Baker said this about the ID-card:

“YOU ARE NOT LOCKED UP. YOU GET LIVING QUARTERS, A FUNDS CARD, ETC. I HAVE ATTACHED MINE. NOTE THE EXPIRATION DATE IS FAR BEYOND ONE MONTH. IT WAS GOOD UNTIL JULY, 2008. I ENTERED THE SYSTEM SEPTEMBER, 2007.”
What she’s not telling anyone about is that this is her second ID-card. This is easily confirmed as those ID cards are issued only with a duration of three, four or six months. But her (cleverly disguised) claim that it was issued already when she arrived, does fit very well into her story of having been granted asylum for ten months. She was, in reality, first issued one of those with a duration of three or four months and then, when she appealed, another one with a duration of six months.

But that isn’t really the same thing, is it?

End of part two.

In 2007, Judyth Baker applies for poltical asylum in Sweden. Part three.

By 2010 Judyth Baker was now represented by a another, and new, proxie; Professor James Fetzer. At the Education Forum this became clear when Professor Fetzer started a new thread, “Judyth Vary Baker: Living in Exile.” This thread was to become the longest in the history of forum, with more than 3000 postings, nearly all of them in just a little over two months. It should be noted that despite Baker and Fetzer desperately working around the clock, their efforts to convince even a single researcher about the authenticity of Judyth Baker’s claims failed completely. To the contrary, judging by how the debate progressed it is far more likely that the number of sceptics increased as a result of Fetzer’s outlandish behavior.

Oh my, was this a thread! In some respects, probably one of the best discussions I’ve ever seen, related to the JFK assassination. In other respects, no doubt also with some of the worst characteristics of any Internet forum discussion about any subject. Those interested to see it, here’s the link:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?s=acaa924280443db318427fc4a7c978d8&showtopic=15559&st=0

Long time JFK researcher Barb Junkkarinen, who has assiduously fact checked many of Baker’s assertions, participated in this discussion. Not surprisingly, Baker has ever since constantly tied to smear Junkkarinen. Baker likewise has constantly attacked researcher Dave Reitzes, who was also highly critical of her story. It’s not an overstatement to suggest that Baker went all-in here. Photos, newspaper snippets, lengthy postings endlessly and even some answers. We were all honored to see JFK-assassination through the eyes of Judyth Baker, spring 2010 version. Everything presented through the watchful eye of Professor Fetzer.

Shortly after the thread was initiated I contacted Fetzer to provide him with the info I had (Fetzer later published the entire email exchange in this thread), thinking that perhaps it might be of interest to him. But this turned out to be wishful thinking and a little later Fetzer dismissed both me and the info as “drivel!” Team Judyth (including Fetzer) produced this impressive list of invectives within 24 hours of my first posting at the Education Forum:

QUOTE [caps in original]:

UNQUOTE.

In other words, they both blew a fuse. But then I would quickly discover that Baker now had a entirely different strategy. If I was naïve enough to be surprised by Baker pulling out this nonsense, I was flabbergasted to see a scholar, an academic and professor, behave this way.

Previously, the excuses for all the errors and outright lies about her asylum issue had basically been referred to as misunderstandings. Team Judyth of 2008 had diligently explained that “temporary asylum,” “provisional asylum;” “In the asylum process” and so forth, had been what they had tried to say. Neither one exists in the judicial language related to asylum in Sweden. “No, no – no grant of asylum,” “of course not.”

Now Baker was taking it all a step further. In her deposition to the Migration Board Baker she had claimed that she had been kidnapped, politically persecuted, had her phone tapped, been chased by cars, had phone threats, had been the victim of attempted murder, to mention her most notable claims. With some clearly visible surprise, the Court simply states that no evidence of any of this had been presented. Beyond the dry judicial lingo; they simply didn’t believe a word of this.

When I now asked Baker if she had ever, even once, reported a single incident to the police in either the US, Greece, Hungary or the Netherlands where she claimed these various atrocities had occurred, I received just her standard blathering, but no real answer. Look at the claims – no reporting of such claims? And it’s still going on today as she readily conveys on a frequent basis.

But Baker is not Baker for nothing. To her much visible excitement, she had now found an ad that I placed in a newsgroup, more than nine years earlier, “confirming” that I was a mercenary, and clearly implying once again that I’d been paid by McAdams to steal the information about her. Judyth (and Fetzer) were now in full blown attack mode as new revealing information about me had finally surfaced!

I had indeed placed the ad. As an economist I’d worked for several years as a consultant and among other things assisted many companies in finding info about markets, competition and other things on Internet when the net was still in its infancy. At the time I’d recently returned to Sweden from working a year in London and was looking for new clients. Nothing came of it though as I shortly after I placed the ad was offered a nice position which I did accept. Confidentiality in Baker’s world is something sinister. In my world, the business community, it’s a badge of honor.

But this is how you smear and plant mistrust into the discussion. Character assassinate your adversaries, if nothing else works. She’d frantically searched the Internet to find anything, this was obvious; since I’d (supposedly) been living Armenia how would I know about her asylum procedure; since I was (supposedly) a translator and was working for the Government why did I not know that the information about her asylum process was confidential? Etc, etc, Baker learned the hard way that I’m not the only Swede who is named Glenn Viklund. I’ve never set foot in Armenia and neither am I a spy, nor did I work for the government or steal any documents. Above all, not a single document I found is confidential.

Instead of answering questions, in true Baker fashion and unsurprisingly she had new information. One of her new claims was that she had been escorted to Sweden by “Swedish agents” when first arriving. She had been threatened on the phone to leave Hungary “before the 11th of September.” So when did she arrive in Sweden? Right, the 11th of September 2007. “Escorted by agents.”

But when she could produce no evidence of this, she now claimed that the Swedish Government had assisted to “make sure of her safe arrival” in Sweden. Of course, I had talked to a couple of officials and they in no uncertain terms strongly denied this, and if I remember correctly this is when one of them asked me: “what’s wrong with this woman?”

But it did not stop at that. Again, there’s was a new twist. Her story changed. Now this had all taken place “under the table.” Accordingly, there’s mothing to be found in any document or that could be verified by any official. How surprising and how convenient. Baker in a nutshell.

And so it goes. If any of this seems hilarious and incomprehensible, you have my sympathy. It does to me also.

After asking her a few questions three or four times, at long last she responded as follows [my comments are in brackets] :

1. Who — what authority — has decided that you are to travel in secrecy, “for your protection?”

“Who are you to dare ask such a question of a person you have never met and for whom you have only secondhand information. Further, do you think I would expose the agents who saved my life? Do you think I would place in my files everything pertaining to the case, knowing that snoopers such as you exist?”
[ Drama queen Baker shows herself. She’s certifiably lying up to her neck about this and still has the audacity accuse those who asks her questions. This really is nothing but laughable. It is indeed telling that researchers who check out her story, which any honest broker would welcome, are referred to as snoopers.]

2. Why did your friends present — as I showed by quotation — a summon to a meeting, as a grant of asylum?

“They are not ‘experts’ (as you are) in technical legal terminology. They were only trying to help, when I was accused of being an illegal alien. My friends did not know that ‘granted political asylum’ is a term that could only be used after being granted ‘permanent political asylum’—something I told them would not happen.”
[This is pure baloney, an outright lie. The discussion and how this came about has zero to do with Team Judyth not understanding. They triumphantly claimed it to be a grant of asylum, and most certainly did so as a result of Baker telling them this. To put the blame on her team Baker standard practice. There are nowadays an astounding number of ex-team-Judyth-researchers-and-ex-friends. There are only believers and traitors in the world of Judyth Baker.]

3. Why are you giving the impression that you received special treatment, when your case, in every possible respect, was a standard asylum seekers case?

“You are wanting to hear motive in this loaded question. Let’s get to the ‘question’ : WAS it a “standard asylum seekers case”? I was an American woman with a service dog, handicapped, who had just come from another EU country and should have been sent right back to that other EU country. I was the first American non-combatant woman, I was told, in decades, to enter the system. After five days of inquiries, etc., they advised me I could never win the case, but I would receive help by being allowed into the system for my protection. Is any of this ‘standard?’”

[Another non-answer, answer. Nothing of this has the slightest to do with my question. She pompously told everyone that she set the dates, she asked for and got extra time, that she got special protection and quite a bit more along these lines. None of which is true. Here, when caught, she does say that she couldn’t have been permitted to stay. Without the public records out in the open, in all likelihood she would be all over the Internet stating that a foreign government believed and support her story.]

“a) I came from Hungary and had been there only one month, yet was not returned to Hungary, as EU agreements specify. Was that standard? No.”
[Anyone can apply for asylum in Sweden. Those who do of course don’t get thrown out at the border if after a quick initial examination their story cannot be immediately dismissed. Her fantastic tale, however ridiculous, certainly couldn’t at first sight. Not despite her being an American, but because she’s an American citizen; this fact helped her get in.]
“I was granted inhibition: few people obtain it. Is inhibition ‘standard?’”
[Here she uses a word I had explained a couple of days earlier. And yes, for those who are on appeals, it is standard procedure. It simply means that they won’t have to leave before a verdict has been rendered. She trying to muddy the waters here without understanding what it is that she is talking about.]
“c) I was not immediately deported to the US at the outset, even though the US is on a list of countries considered ‘safe.’ Is there another non-combatant American in the system anywhere? Why wasn’t ‘standard deportation’ upheld?”
[See above.]
“d) I was advised to make an appeal in person. Other kinds of appeals were also made, as I was guided on what to do so I could stay as long as possible until my family could help me. Such advice does not get into an official record. Why would it? I was also advised to appeal on Swedish national television to receive inhibition. After the TV appeal was made, inhibition was granted. That was not ‘standard.’”
[This makes no sense: “I was also advised to appeal on Swedish national television to receive inhibition.” Appeal to receive something she already had? She had inhibition for the duration of her stay except for the short periods after the two verdicts. Moreover, Baker is suggesting that any of this has anything to do with her appearing on a local TV-station. In her mind, I’m sure that is so, but that’s positively the only place it is.

Note that she’s suggesting that others told her to go on television, which she did (a local station, not national), and as many researchers have long since pointed out, how can she claim to be hiding and still go to interviews and making herself public?]

4. Why are you saying that you could have stayed another “year or two,” when, in fact, you by every possible means available to you, had exhausted your options to stay in Sweden?

“I exerted ‘every possible means’ because I faced real danger. I had to leave a good teaching job in Hungary, with free housing, free bus transport, health insurance, an annual plane ticket to the US, and $750/mo. teaching 25 hours a week total, for two high schools. I had prestige and good living conditions for a single person there.

Imagine how horrible it was to have to leave, due to death threats. How expensive. My options were not exhausted regarding living in Sweden. I could have filed a third appeal from any country outside Sweden (or not) and then returned, to take a position in a company that offered to hire me so I could stay in Sweden. I could have stayed under a business residency permit. Such permits are good from six months to two years and are renewable. What business is this of yours, Mr. Vuklund?”

[She’s avoiding the question – her laywer must have told her that she was done in Sweden. She had to leave the country no matter what she wanted to apply for again.]

5. Why are you suggesting that the two Swedish courts who decided in your case, disregarded the evidence and used a “standard reply” to motivate their findings?

“Again, a loaded question. Asking ‘why’ is a common rhetorical ploy. You ask why and then add any old question to the ‘why.’ The ploy tries to extricate information that has nothing to do with the question. It also makes a reader of the question suspicious of me instead of being suspicious of Mr. Viklund’s motives. BTW, Citation, please.”
[More no-answer, answering. She stated this earlier in the thread the above, and here she cannot stand by that statement, as she knows I have it in front of me. The courts reached their findings very diligently, with all necessary specifics.]

6. What is the name of the official who told you that the two court decisions would be kept confidential?

“This intrusive question into my civil rights is none of your business. I have witnesses who will privately verify the fact to Dr. Fetzer and others who are of reputable character — who respect issues of privacy and human rights (unlike yourself) to reveal the names of the kind people who helped me.”
[Of course no Swedish Official would tell her any such thing; it’s beyond belief that she would make a claim like this one. All it shows is how little she understands about Sweden. Again, it’s like an American Official telling immigrants to the US that ”we don’t have free speech in this country”? I don’t think so.]

Finally, within minutes of a post of mine, on April 10th, 2014:

“I make only one statement concerning this man who went to my handler in Sweden and asked questions of her. He had to go quite a distance to do that. When she asked him to write down the questions before she would reply he left her office. She was shocked that I was being followed, so she told me what happened.”
[None of this is true. I never visited any of her handlers in Sweden and I never traveled anywhere to obtain the information I gathered, neither was necessary. Met no one, traveled nowhere, period. My research was done over the phone and online, simple as that.]

So there we have it. The asylum issue in reality is a microcosm of the rest of her story. She never quits coming up with answers and new twists. When one proves indefensible, she wheels out another different one.

I’ve included a lot of picky detail here, but as we know the devil is in the details. Baker’s story is a vast web of details – details that get fact checked, found to be false, and are constantly adjusted and changed.

In 2007 Judyth Baker applies for political asylum in Sweden. Part four - the end.

“You’ve never met me!"
Many are those of us who’ve been accused by Judyth Baker for not having the right to speak our minds about her since we’ve never met in person with her. It’s difficult to describe the experience of having discussed and researched Baker online. Her asylum process was a straightforward, well documented and standard procedure. Nothing can be misunderstood or misinterpreted. The laws and regulations that constitutes the judicial foundation for this area are also not very complicated. The difficulties sometimes lies in the application of these foundations, it’s after all human beings involved and to many of those the outcome of this process can truly be a question of life and death.

It is of course not possible to be certain about Bakers motives for so monumentally misrepresenting her asylum experience. I would suggest that there were basically two; the economic advantages and the links to her alleged knowledge about the Kennedy assassination. A positive outcome would have given her a pension, free health care and a roof over her head. Nothing fancy but a life where her elderly years would have a degree of financial stability. Moreover, there can be no doubts that she hoped to be granted asylum, and that this would legitimate her stories about the JFK-assassination.

Vince Bugliosi sometimes refer to the assassination as “a toxic subject;” once you get into it, it’s impossible to stay away. And I believe many would agree no matter what level of knowledge on the subject they may have, it is surely hard to quit. The actual variety of people among researchers is truly amazing. Scholars, scientists, hobbyists, journalists and what not, endlessly. For better or worse, I find Judyth Baker to be both one of the most fascinating and most tragic characters that I’ve come across in relation to the Kennedy assassination.

No one should doubt the intelligence of this woman. Her student years are often mentioned and she was indeed a prodigy in her high school years, this is unquestionable. Having said this, she may have exaggerated her prowess somewhat. Nor can it be denied that she is a dedicated assassination researcher. And of course, her story as a witness cannot be put together without a deep level of knowledge about various facts related to the assassination, and in her case, more specifically about the Garrison investigation and trial back in the sixties.

With this in mind it’s all the more perplexing that she’s concocted and twisted the facts related to the asylum issue, obviously convinced that she could get away with it. During the process of defending an indefensible story she repeatedly entangles herself into more and more lies to the point where it simply does not make any sense whatsoever.

Her total lack of judgment here is, on many levels, astonishing. She could have, at the very beginning of the discussion of “asylum,” and made the following statement, to which she eventually retreated:

“I did not know the language and did not know the difference between being a political asylum seeker and one who gets political asylum....”
This would have saved her, her “team” and others a considerable amount of time and energy wasted on nothing but nonsense.

This is however not the only way where she repeatedly shows poor judgment. Instead of giving her adversaries the benefit of doubt, she instantly treats those who oppose her as completely unable or unqualified to engage in educated arguments with her. I would suggest that this is why she reacts with both anger and patented rants when she realizes that she’s made a mistake in treating people this way.

Moreover, she often very quickly switches from anger to flattery, or from total disrespect to normal courtesy. And then, ultimately, when nothing else works, the nasty personal attacks. Thus shows at the very least a complete lack of judgment. To this day, she will still do anything to backstab and smear those long time researchers who has looked at her story and rejected it. If it’s credibility she’s trying to achieve, her behavior is highly conterproductive.

It has been suggested that these events took place a very long time ago and accordingly it isn’t fair to expect her to remember every little detail here and there. I agree. It isn’t fair. But more importantly, Baker herself does not seem to agree. Her knee jerk reaction is to always defend whatever it is that she has claimed. This sort of approach has time and again resulted in embarrassments of a caliber that would make most people run for the hills – at least until the overheated blushing has faded away.

Those obvious and easily detected patterns in her behavior had, of course, surfaced many years prior to Baker applying for asylum in Sweden. Probably the probably first occasion was the infamous Cancun debacle which started in 2000 and went on for years, but there is an interesting observation one can make that has been far less written about, in relation to this episode.

Long time JFK researcher David Lifton had made a phone interview with Baker, a quite lengthy interview where Baker responded to Lifton’s questions. Lifton concluded almost immediately that he did not believe her story, partly based on the fact that she had mentioned her supposed rendezvous with Oswald in Cancun. Of course the Cancun, as we’ve all come to know it, didn’t exist in 1963. At first Baker had all kinds of explanations as to why Lifton had misunderstood or misinterpreted what she’d said. And there was more to come. As this went on Baker switched strategy and went into full attack mode instead.

She was now accusing Lifton of lying about what had occured and vigorously defended her position. Lifton had twisted the interview in order to back up his conclusion that she was a fraud. And this is where this becomes really telling, in my opinion.

Lifton announced, shockingly, that he had taped the entire interview and that, with her permission, he was ready to release the interview and make it publicly available. Personally, I may think that to tape an interview this way without the consent of those interviewed is not fair (David Lifton is a meticulous researcher and I don’t believe he had any kind of sinister motivation). But this is beside the point here. As I understand it, in the US it is not illegal to do the actual recording but it would be illegal to make it publicly available without the consent of, in this case, Judyth Baker. Which in no way restrained Baker from making exactly this kind of accusions; Lifton had illegally taped her – or, he was lying altogether about the existence of such a recording. Which, again, prompts me to note that this is very much like the way where she accused me of stealing confidential information.

But if Baker’s purpose was to distract from the essential question of whether she had said what Lifton claimed, and which she denied, she did indeed achieve this purpose. Suffice to say, to this day the tape has never been released by Lifton and Baker has never answered the question of why she didn’t want the recording published. She took this issue to the brink, but when she finally had the opportunity to demonstrate to the research community that her side of the story was correct, well, that’s when she backed off. To never return.

Another event that deserves mentioning here is Baker’s claim that she knew the story behind Oswalds missing tooth,” and how it connected David Ferrie to Oswald. This has been excellently researched and explained in detail by Dave Reitzes.

In short, when Baker is shown that she has the chronology of some critical events wrong, she changes the story slightly in an effort to save herself. As Reitzes so brilliantly shows, step by step she entangles herself into a web of absurdities that does nothing but confirm that she’d been making the whole thing up.

But I believe this issue is best seen as another example of a pattern where Baker, yet again, underestimates those asking questions. How is it possible that a woman of her intelligence does not understand that researchers who put some effort into it will inevitably find out what’s correct and what’s not? How is it possible that she does not understand how her credibility will suffer fatal damage from repeated issues like this one? And, frankly, how is it possible that there are still a few believers in the research community who apparently refuse to acknowledge this fatal credibility problem? Would they really buy a used car from a dealer that’s been proven to scam an endless number of car buyers in the past? Or trusting a car dealer who gives one story about a certain car on Monday, to give a completely different story on Wednesday? Would they really not be suspicious when they see a brand new paint job on that same old vehicle?

There are numerous examples like the ones I’ve mentioned in this article, but there’s not much point in endlessly recount these things here. Her asylum issue being simply one in a very long series where Judyth Baker repeats behaviors that have been counterproductive in the past, and finds that they continue to be so.


Idealized Drawing Shows Judyth’s Fantasy:
Lover of Lee Oswald
Baker has left her children and grand children on the other side of the planet – for what, really? There is a fine line between dedication and obsession. It saddens me to see her repeating herself. Is she aware of what she is doing, or does she believe in the things she’s simply made up? There is, I believe, also a fine line between obsession and something that would be far worse. Of course, while I certainly have my opinions about this, the answer is that no one knows what the problem is. Maybe the tragedy of this thing is best illustrated by the drawing of her and Oswald she now has on her Facebook page (see right).

Her overconfidence in her own abilities is demonstrated very clearly in the quotation I started this article with:

“You’ve never met me!”
An argument that she is constantly using. And perhaps rightly so, by the way. It is obvious that she’s been very successful in convincing many of those who have met her in person. She does apparently not learn from the fact that most of those have long since changed their mind about her. She does appear completely unable to learn from her mistakes. She can be extremely manipulative and it takes a bit of studying her to see this. Instead she repeats her mistakes, again and again. From this several patterns are quite easily distinguished, as I hope I have been able to demonstrate.

It saddens me to see that of late she’s not only the usual, overly dramatic Judyth Baker. Her present endeavours on the Internet look to me like crusades. There has rarely been anything casual about Baker, but it seems that she turned her back on the research community and thereby left all crítical voices behind. It is now Judyth Baker unleashed that we see.

It saddens me also because somewhere in all this I do believe that there’s been a complete waste of talent involved. I would sincerely hope that she somehow finds a different path in life. As it looks today though, this does indeed not seem likely.

The End. And by that I’m referring also to my research and debates with and about Baker. I’m signing off all of it now that I finally got my thoughts and experiences down on paper. I wish others who will continue to follow her escapades - Good Luck, she’s a handful!