Man found fatally shot in Queens crash was convicted killer, JFK assassination author

A man found fatally shot in the head in the backseat of a Range Rover after it crashed in Queens is a convicted murderer and amateur historian who self-published a book on the JFK assassination.

Cops responding to a 4:15 p.m. crash Wednesday near Parsons Blvd. and Franklin Ave. in East Flushing found 48-year-old Myron Dukes dead in the back of the SUV after it had rear-ended a vehicle at a traffic light.

Dukes, an amateur historian who lived in Bridgeport, Conn., self-published “JFK Assassination Eye Witnesses Speak Together — 1963 Second Edition,” earlier this year.

He claimed in the book to have eyewitness accounts of the Kennedy shooting that had not been heard by the Warren Commission, which was set up by President Lyndon Johnson to investigate the November 22, 1963, assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Dukes theorized people with racist ideologies were emboldened by Kennedy’s murder, leading to the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Robert Kennedy Jr.

“There was a five-year span where evil was prevalent, and they were allowed to quiet men because of their voices,” he said during a May interview with News12 Bridgeport.

During the interview, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) stood beside Dukes, holding his book. Blumenthal did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Dukes’ death.

The grim discovery on Wednesday was an eerie echo of a shooting from Duke’s teenage years, which landed him in prison for 20-plus years.

In 1992, Dukes was convicted in a “harebrained robbery scheme” turned fatal with two Bridgeport friends — a “streetcorner crack dealer” named Taj Meyers, and a high school friend, Jason Williams.

Planning to rob drug dealers at a Washington Heights drug den, court papers say, the three men drove on Feb. 6, 1992, from Connecticut to upper Manhattan.

The three bickered over the plot and how to share one gun among the three of them during the heist, court records say. Dukes and Williams were to rob the dealers while Meyers was supposed to drive the getaway car, a white Audi

“Things did not go as planned,” Judge Kimba Wood wrote in her decision to deny Dukes’ attempt to get his conviction tossed.

All three men went into the apartment. During the stickup, Meyers shot and killed one of the drug dealers, Elvis Cruz. Dukes tossed the weapon, and as the three fled, Meyers was also shot in the head and killed.

Williams and Dukes fled in the white Audi, chased by the drug dealers and the police.

They wrecked the car at W. 160th St. and Broadway and fled on foot. The robbery yielded them no cash — Dukes had to pawn a gold chain for $15 so he could buy a train ticket back to Connecticut, court papers say.

Meyers’ sister eventually led detectives to Dukes after she was arrested on an unrelated drug charge. Dukes was tried and convicted on charges of murder and attempted robbery in 1993 and sentenced to 21 years to life in prison.

In prison, Dukes became something of a jailhouse lawyer. He filed a court papers seeking to have his conviction tossed, and sued Greenhaven Correctional Facility for denying his bid for parole.

Lee Owen, a barber who grew up with Dukes, said that his childhood friend had “a big heart” but suffered from grandiosity and made some bad choices.

“Myron’s life was rough because he made it rough,” Owen told The News Thursday. “He didn’t have to choose that life.”

“He was a smart guy, but he was about that street life,’ Owen said. “He’s out here making a whole bunch of noise.”

Dukes’ grandmother Ivory Carr, 89, said that she thought he was going to a doctor’s appointment in the city Wednesday until she got a visit from the Bridgeport Police.

“I thought it was more of an accident, but then the Bridgeport police came last night and told us he had passed and that was all they can tell,” she said.

“He was a friendly person. Everyone knew him,” Carr added. “He wrote a book. He was thinking about writing another, but he was kind of private on what he did.”

She said that she is still getting over the loss of her husband in July.

“The family are very, very upset by this,” Carr said.

To Owen, his friend’s death in the back of the Range Rover was an eerie echo of the 1992 drug robbery. “It sounds to me like the same situation came back around,” he said.

With Thomas Tracy