Who Killed Kennedy Who Killed Kennedy was a non - fiction book by the journalist James Stevens and his co - author David Bishop . Stevens began writing the book on 22 January 1996 , completing it shortly before his disappearance in April of that year . Using his notes from October 1969 to September 1971 , Stevens wrote an exposé detailing his investigations of the Doctor , UNIT , Department C19 and the numerous alien invasions which befell Earth during the late 1960s and early 1970s . While primarily focussed on these investigations , the book also provides details of Stevens ' personal life , such as the fact that he was born in New Zealand on 22 November 1945 as the illegitimate son of a wealthy 17 - year - old girl and an American GI who died before he was born . His interest in journalism was sparked by the assassination of U . S . President John F . Kennedy on his 18th birthday in 1963 . After moving to the United Kingdom in 1968 , he married Natasha Howarth , the daughter of Lord Howarth , in September 1969 . However , their marriage proved to short - lived due to Stevens cheating on her with another woman , also named Natasha . In October 1969 , Stevens began researching the book when he was working for the " Daily Chronicle " . Through the paper ' s crank line , he received a report from an Ashbridge Cottage Hospital porter named Mullins that a man with inhuman blood had been admitted into the hospital . Upon arriving at the hospital , Stevens noticed the presence of Brigadier Lethbridge - Stewart , the commander of the British division of UNIT . Several days later , the United Kingdom suffered its worst terrorist attack of the 1970s . Unbeknownst to Stevens , Black Thursday was in actuality a cover story for the attempted Nestene invasion of Earth . These two incidents marked the beginning of Stevens ' two year investigation of UNIT , C19 and a series of " agent provocateurs " known as " the Doctor " who had been involved in numerous unusual incidents over the course of almost thirty years . He believed that these " Doctor " agents were malevolent figures in the employ of C19 and , along with UNIT , were secretly working against the interests of the United Kingdom . Shortly after Black Thursday , in November 1969 , Stevens investigated the plague outbreak which began at the Wenley Moor nuclear research facility and killed approximately 400 people in both the UK and continental Europe , including Frederick Masters , the Permanent Under - Secretary at the Ministry of Defence . In the midst of the crisis , Stevens was provided with the phone number of the facility by a . He briefly spoke to Brigadier Lethbridge - Stewart but the UNIT commander slammed down the phone when he realising that he was speaking with a journalist . In his " Bad Science " series of articles , Stevens attributed the failures of both the Wenley Moor facility and the subsequent Inferno Project to the Labour Party Prime Minister Harold Wilson . As the collected " Bad Science " articles were published as a book only days before the UK general election in June 1970 , they were regarded as instrumental in winning the election for the Conservative Party , led by Edward Heath . However , Stevens himself believed that the role of the book in bringing down the Wilson government was exaggerated . After seven weeks of research , Stevens was able to identify four distinct " Doctor " agents and included detailed information concerning each of them and their role in the formation of UNIT in an article titled " The UNIT Dossier " . By collating information from dozens of disparate sources , he was able to determine that the " Doctor " operatives were involved in the ULTIMA Incident in 1943 , the Shangri - La Incident in 1959 , the Shoreditch Incident in November 1963 , the C - Day fiasco and the contemporaneous Gatwick Incident on 20 July 1966 and the London Event . He believed that the Shoreditch Incident and , in particular , the London Event were crucial to UNIT ' s foundation , which had been championed by Lethbridge - Stewart . In the course of his investigation , he interviewed many people including Samantha Briggs , Isobel Watkins , Professor J . P . Kettlewell , Petra Williams and Greg Sutton . It was from Watkins that he first learned of the existence of the Doctor but he dismissed her claim that Earth had been invaded by " robot men from outer space . " He was also highly sceptical of Sutton ' s outlandish claim that a green slime from the centre of the Earth had transformed scientists into wolf monsters during the Inferno Project , describing it as sounding like the plot of " a science fiction potboiler . " While he was writing the article , he began to receive threatening letters and phone calls at both his work and his home , the latter coming from a man with a pronounced lisp . In spite of the threats , Stevens did not stop his investigation . The article was due to be published in the " Daily Chronicle " in February 1970 . However , before this could happen , it was pulled due to interference on the part the British government and he was fired by the paper ' s editor Sir Peter Wise . On the same day , his pregnant wife Natasha left him when she learned of his one - night stand with her namesake . Stevens realised that the woman had been a plant . Although he believed that she was working on behalf of UNIT , she was in fact in the employ of C19 , as were those who were threatening him . After spending much of the following March attempting to get his life back together , Stevens was commissioned by his friend Henry Spencer , the non - fiction editor of a London - based publishing house to write a book exploring what would have become of JFK if he had not been assassinated in Dallas , Texas . He also found employment as a freelance journalist for the magazine " Metropolitan " . This gave him the financial freedom to continue his investigation into the Doctor and UNIT for another six months . That November , Stevens attended the demonstration of the Keller Process at Stangmoor Prison . It was at the prison that he saw one of the " Doctor " operatives for the first time . He described this Doctor as " an ageing dandy " with a " hawkish nose , " " piercing eyes " and a " lived - in face . " He was accompanied by a small , mousy looking woman with a pleasant face . Over the course of the next several days , Stangmoor Prison was the scene of two prison riots before it was recaptured by UNIT . Stevens noted that , at the time , UNIT was supposed to have been providing security at the World Peace Conference and speculated that the Doctor ' s presence at the demonstration of the Keller Process could signify that UNIT was involved in mind control experiments . In December 1970 , Stevens met a young homeless woman named Dodo Chaplet , who had been committed to a psychiatric institution called the Glasshouse after the events of C - Day due to her bizarre claims to have met one - eyed reptile men and Wild West gunfighters and to have played a game with living dolls . Dodo told Stevens that the of the Glasshouse had subjected her to cruel mind control experiments and continually questioned her about doctors . She was left with considerable gaps in her memory to the point that she could not even remember her mother . After allowing Dodo to stay at his flat for the night , Stevens quickly grew extremely fond of her and invited her to stay with him on a more permanent basis . They eventually fell in love . In May 1971 , shortly after the broadcast of the disastrous opening of Devil ' s Hump on the BBC3 series " The Passing Parade " which resulted in the death of Professor Gilbert Horner , it was announced that a terrorist named had been captured in the nearby village Devil ' s End . He was charged with Horner ' s murder as well as causing Black Thursday , the plague outbreak and the failure of the World Peace Conference , among other incidents . Stevens was sceptical that Magister - who was soon dubbed " the Master " by the press as his surname was Latin for " Master " - could have been responsible for all of these events as no one had ever heard of him until his capture was announced on television . Furthermore , he believed that the prejudicial reporting of Magister ' s alleged crimes during the summer of 1971 meant that it was unlikely that he could receive a fair trial in Britain . He appeared on " The Passing Parade " with Peter Wise and Malcolm Muggeridge to discuss whether the situation warranted him receiving a trial in camera . While on the programme , he attempted to reveal the existence of UNIT and C19 to the general public but the broadcast was cut off . The government eventually announced that Magister would receive an in camera trial and Stevens came to believe that the " massive media overkill " had been engineered to ensure that this would occur . After barely surviving an attempt on his life in July 1971 , Stevens was captured by C19 and taken to the Glasshouse . He remained under sedation for approximately three weeks before regaining consciousness and learning that the Director , Magister and his mysterious informant were all one in the same . He told Stevens that he was " usually referred to as the Master . . . universally . " While in the Glasshouse , Stevens met a young Liverpudlian soldier named Francis Cleary , who helped him to escape the facility . Cleary had been subjected to the Master ' s mind control techniques and was conditioned to save JFK ' s life . However , Stevens dismissed his reference to saving Kennedy at the time as he was not aware of the existence of time travel . After escaping , Stevens first checked to see that Dodo was alive and well and was gratified to discover that she was . He then contacted his friend Vincent Mortimer , the producer of " The Passing Parade " , and convinced him to expose the Glasshouse on live television . However , when he returned to the facility with a camera crew , he found that it had been completely cleared out and that there was no evidence to suggest that anyone had been in it in months . Stevens was completely discredited . This humiliation was compounded by the fact that the government produced the Master , claiming that he had been in custody continuously since his capture . Demoralised , Stevens returned home to discover that Dodo had been murdered . He was arrested and charged with her murder but was soon released when it came apparent that she had been killed while he was appearing on live television . While in police custody , he learned that Dodo had been pregnant at the time of her death . After seeing a report about the Second World Peace Conference at Auderly House several weeks later , Stevens attempted to enter its grounds clandestinely but was soon attacked by an ape creature . However , the Doctor saved his life . He was taken into UNIT custody and was shown the ape creature ' s body by Brigadier Lethbridge - Stewart . Stevens realised that it was an alien and that all the reports of alien invasion over the course of the previous two years had been true . Furthermore , he came to understand that the Doctor and UNIT were fighting these incursions and were in no way malevolent . The revelation that he had ruined his life and gotten Dodo killed based on a misconception caused Stevens to contemplate suicide . However , before he could shoot himself , he was contacted by the Doctor , who sympathised with him regarding Dodo ' s death . Stevens informed the Doctor of Cleary ' s plan to go back in time and prevent Kennedy ' s assassination using a metal bracelet which Stevens had taken from him . The Doctor told him that it was a Time Ring and instructed him to travel back in time and prevent the Master ' s plan from coming to fruition . In the book ' s final chapters , which he noted in the prologue " would seem like science fiction " to many of its readers , Stevens described being sent back in time to Dallas , Texas on 22 November 1963 and immobilising Cleary before he could stop Lee Harvey Oswald from shooting President Kennedy . He learned that the Master had ordered Cleary to wear a Soviet military uniform in order to fool the United States of America into thinking that the Soviet Union was responsible for the attempt on Kennedy ' s life , thus leading to a nuclear war in which hundreds of millions would die . Looking through the rifle ' s sights , Stevens saw that there was a second shooter on the grassy knoll and was astonished to discover that it was an older version of himself . Using the Time Ring , Stevens returned to his own time , September 1971 , and brought Cleary with him . However , Cleary ' s mind had been permanently damaged by the Master ' s mind control experiments . In the epilogue , which was written in April 1996 , Stevens noted that many of the dates had been changed prior to the book ' s publication . He claimed that he had managed to get his life back together since the early 1970s . After his former father - in - law Lord Howarth ' s death in 1986 , he was able to build a relationship with his son William . He began teaching journalism . His favourite students were Sarah Jane Smith and Ruby Duvall . After spending most of the previous 24 years in a coma with only occasional moments of lucidity , Cleary died in his mother ' s arms on 5 April 1995 at the age of 46 . Stevens kept the Time Ring in his safe deposit book and used it to return to Dallas , Texas on 22 November 1963 and kill Kennedy , as his younger self had seen him do almost 25 years earlier in his personal timeline . ( PROSE : " Who Killed Kennedy " ) By May 1997 , it was believed that Stevens had gone into hiding as he had disappeared more than a year earlier . However , his co - author David Bishop was still living in London at the time . ( PROSE : " The Dying Days " ) Behind the scenes . " Who Killed Kennedy " was the fictional book - within - a - book contained in full in the " Doctor Who " novel of the same . Most of the events of the novel can be assumed to be within the fictional book , but the novel certainly contains things that weren ' t in the fictional book . However , it is difficult to separate the two with any degree of specificity .