RIP: Richard Belzer Who Played a JFK Detective in Real Life

A comedian turned cop whose pursuit of 'Law and Order" took him to Dallas

Richard Belzer, the wiry, bespectacled comedian best known for his two-decade-long stint in “Homicide: Life on the Street” and “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” as the cynical, world-weary detective John Munch who, among myriad suspicions, didn’t believe the official story of the JFK assassination, died at his home in France on February 19 at age 78.

Munch’s bleak and “conspiratorial” worldview was no act. Belzer grew up in an abusive household in Bridgeport, Conn., honing his comedy as a survival tool. He went on to work as a reporter for The Bridgeport Post where he witnessed how power could be corrupted in the court system and beyond.

Belzer became an outspoken critic of the official version of President Kennedy’s assassination. The cover of his 1997 comedy album, “Another Lone Nut,” featured Belzer’s head superimposed on the famous backyard photograph of accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. (The album’s title played on both Belzer’s interest in the JFK assassination and his battle with testicular cancer.)

Belzer went on to write five books, two of which directly challenged the official theory of JFK’s assassination.

The first was 1999’s “UFOs, JFK, and Elvis: Conspiracies You Don’t Have To Be Crazy To Believe,” followed in 2013 by the New York Times bestseller “Hit List” (co-written with David Wayne), a compendium on the many mysterious deaths in the years following JFK’s assassination, from Oswald and his assassin Jack Ruby, to Oswald’s friend David Ferrie and newspaper columnist Dorothy Kilgallen, to name a few.

In a 1999 Village Voice piece entitled “Stand-Up Conspiracist,” writer Jason Vest noted: “the word ‘conspiracy’ has no stigma for Belzer; as he points out, its Latin root simply means ‘to breathe together,’ and, to him, conspiracies are as natural as breathing. If a conspiracy led by a drunk, out-of-work actor could kill a president over 100 years ago, he asks, is it so ridiculous to believe more sophisticated people in power can’t execute any number of nefarious plots? Is it so absurd to entertain notions that involve ulterior motives and hidden agendas?”

‘Work of Magicians’

Promoting “Hit List” at the National Press Club in 2013 to coincide with the 50^th anniversary of JFK’s murder, Belzer had Dick Gregory at his side. Gregory, whom Belzer said inspired him as both a comedian and an activist, was instrumental in bringing the Zapruder film to the public for the first time in 1975 along with Robert Groden and Geraldo Rivera.

Belzer opened the event with a quote from the 1968 book “Farewell America,” written under the pseudonym James Hepburn and originally published in France, but, as Belzer noted, rumored to reflect the thinking of French intelligence officials.

“President Kennedy’s assassination was the work of magicians. It was a stage trick complete with accessories and fake mirrors. And when the curtain fell the actors and even the scenery disappeared. The plotters were correct when they guessed that their crime would be concealed by shadows and silence that would be blamed on a madman and negligence.”

Belzer went on to offer that, “one thing I feel that people lose sight of with the assassination and all the myths and theories: A man died that day” — an all too human tragedy that he lamented had been transformed into pop culture confection.

“‘JFK’ ‘the Grassy Knoll’ ‘the Lone Gunman’— phrases that diminish and marginalize the depth, the complexity and the true meaning of what it meant to have our president’s head exploded in broad daylight.

And … they got away with it.”

Belzer told Politico at the time of the “Hit List” release, “Ninety percent of the American people believe there was a conspiracy involved in the assassination of the president. The other 10 percent work for the media or the government, probably. The public knows. Most people believe Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone at the very least.” 

The assassination, he said, is “one of the ghostliest parts of our history.”

RIP Richard Belzer (1944-2023)