Earl A Golz

His career highlight might have been a triumphant legal settlement following his firing from the Dallas Morning News in the early 1980s after he wrote an article drawing attention to a troubled bank.

Golz, represented by famed attorney Racehorse Haynes, responded with a libel lawsuit after the bank placed full-page ads in several newspapers claiming the article was false. The bank, whose former president was sent to prison, would settle the claim for roughly $150,000, said his wife Lois.

By the time the settlement came in, Golz was off to New York to work for the tabloid Star Magazine, another stop in a career that included stints in Wisconsin, Arizona and various spots in Texas, culminating with working on the American-Statesman’s business desk in the 1990s before his retirement.

During his tenure in Dallas, Golz had carved out a niche writing about the Kennedy assassination, writing more than a hundred stories in the 1970s, including ones about Secret Service impostors spotted by assassination witnesses and a film that purported to suggest a second gunman.

“He was just very patriotic and liked Kennedy, and was curious as to what had happened,” said his wife, Lois. “He never believed Oswald alone killed him.”

Golz won at least two significant awards at the Dallas Morning News — a Headliners award for investigative reporting for work on bank looting with a team of reporters, and a John Hancock award for business and financial reporting, according to his wife.

Former Statesman business reporter Kirk Ladendorf remembered Golz as a “very quiet-spoken kind of guy, and a thorough, persistent reporter.”

Besides his wife, Golz is survived by a sister, a son, daughter and three grandchildren.

Earl August Golz, 79, retired newspaper journalist of Austin, Texas, died January 1, 2014. At the family’s request there will be no viewing hours.

Earl was born on March 4, 1934 in Waukegan, Illinois to the late Earl August Sr. and Betty Golz.

As a career newspaper reporter, Earl, had worked at several newspapers in Texas, Wisconsin and New York until his retirement in early 2000.

Earl will be remembered most for a significant series of articles he had written for the Dallas Morning News about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Earl began these articles in 1970, at a time when many people in Dallas did not want any additional attention given to the assassination. On many occasions Earl mentioned that these articles were extremely important to him and were written under great duress. He continued writing such articles until 1982 and was credited by many for keeping the public interested in this national tragedy. At the time of the assassination, in November 1963, Earl was working as a reporter for the Milwaukee Sentinel newspaper in Wisconsin and had worked on several stories about Jack Ruby. Within a few years Earl’s passion to investigate and write about the assassination motivated him to move to Texas and obtain a job at the Dallas Morning News where he won two (2) journalism awards for his “Outstanding Reporting”. Although Earl was a strong critic of the Warren Commission’s conclusion; that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, and there was no conspiracy in the death of the President, he is highly respected by all assassination researchers regardless of their theories and will be greatly missed. While following his passion his investigative reporting rendered him the ability to interview many important witnesses and write an extremely prolific amount of groundbreaking newspaper stories about many aspects of the assassination.

Prior to his death, Earl had been ill for the past several years and was residing in a nursing home.

Earl is survived by his loving wife of 38 years, Lois. A sister Donna Ramsey of Waukeegan, IL., a son Brian Golz of San Antonio, TX., a daughter Lesley Daniels of Arizona. Step children John M. Bedier of Austin, TX., Lynne Ann Mullenix of Missouri and 3 grandchildren.

No Services are planned. The family would like to extend a special thank you to William M. (Bill) Drenas for composing this article in honor of Earl.