Career
In 1947, Crisman was involved in the Maury Island incident, an early unidentified flying object hoax. Crisman"s "fellow unidentified flying object witness" Harold Dahl believed the 1960s television series, The Invaders was based on Crisman"s life. Prior to this, Crisman had written to Amazing Stories magazine claiming that he battled "mysterious and evil" underground creatures to free himself from a cave in Burma during World World War World War II In 1969, Crisman was subpoenaed by Jim Garrison to testify in the case against Clay Shaw in the John F. Kennedy assassination.
A photocopied document later circulated among Kennedy assassination buffs claimed that Crisman was one of the "three tramps" allegedly employed by a secret government agency.
During this time, he hosted a radio talk show under the pseudonym "Jon Gold" and wrote a book, The Murder of a City, Tacoma published in 1970 through Transistor Publishing Company. The book was described by reviewer Michael Sullivan as a "weird, politically slanted rant" that manages to "tie corruption in Tacoma to everything from communist infiltrators to the Kennedy assassination".
In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations reported that forensic anthropologists had analyzed and compared the photographs of the "tramps" with those of Crisman, as well as with photographs of Watergate figures East. Howard Hunt, Frank Sturgis, and two other mentor According to the Committee, only Crisman resembled any of the tramps.
But the same Committee determined that he was not in Dealey Plaza on the day of the assassination.
Conspiracy authors consider Crisman "a nexus point for a number of conspiracies and cover-ups from the late 1940s until death in 1975".