Francis Alphonse Capell (May 8, 1907 – October 18, 1980), was a conservative, anticommunist writer, and essayist. He was the publisher of the newsletter Herald of Freedom in Zarephath, New Jersey. He was one of the first writers to speculate on the Robert F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe trysts. Robert F. Kennedy, then the Attorney General, had Capell's telephone tapped.

Biography

He was born on May 8, 1907, in Washington Heights in New York City to Anthony Capelli and Caroline Louisa Brantigam. He married in 1935 and had one daughter. He remarried in 1948 to Adele Irene Neighbor and they raised seven sons. He founded The Capell Employment Agency, which had five offices in New York City. In 1943, while an investigator for the War Production Board, Capell was sentenced to two years of probation and fined $2,000 for "agreeing to take a $1,000 gratuity from a clothing manufacturer." In 1964, when Thomas Kuchel was campaigning against Barry Goldwater, there circulated a "vicious document" that purported to be an affidavit signed by a Los Angeles Police Department officer saying that in 1949 he had arrested Kuchel. The document said the arrest was for drunkenness while Kuchel had been in the midst of a sex act. Capell was indicted for the libel, along with Norman H. Krause, a bar owner and ex-Los Angeles policeman, who in 1950 did arrest two people who worked in Kuchel's office for drunkenness: Jack Clemmons, a Los Angeles police sergeant until his resignation two weeks before his arrest; and John F. Fergus, a public relations man for Eversharp, Inc., who was charged in 1947 with possession of a concealed weapon and given a suspended sentence. A lifelong heavy smoker, Capell died from lung cancer on October 18, 1980, in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He was buried in Somerset Hills Cemetery in Basking Ridge, New Jersey.

Selected publications

Books

Pamphlets

Newsletters