David Samuel Lifton (September 20, 1939 – December 6, 2022) was an American author who wrote the 1981 bestseller Best Evidence: Disguise and Deception in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy, a work that puts forth evidence that there was a conspiracy to assassinate John F. Kennedy. Biography Lifton grew up in Rockaway Beach, New York. He graduated from Cornell University's School of Engineering Physics in 1962 and thereupon enrolled in the University of California, Los Angeles to work on an advance degree in engineering. While there Lifton worked nights as a computer engineer for North American Aviation, a contractor for the Apollo program. In autumn 1964, around the time the Warren Report was published, Lifton became interested in the JFK case after attending a lecture on the topic of the conspiracy to cover up the Kennedy assassination by Mark Lane. Lifton purchased a set of the 26 volumes of the Warren Commission's investigation and started his own research on the Kennedy case. In 1966, Lifton was dismissed from UCLA for neglecting his studies. He quit his aerospace job, devoting all his time to the Kennedy assassination. The January 1967 issue of Ramparts magazine presented a "special report" by Lifton, with David Welsh, entitled "The Case for Three Assassins" that laid out the scenario that more than one assassin was firing at Kennedy based on anomalies in the medical evidence. In 1993, Lifton was played by Robert Picardo in the television movie Fatal Deception: Mrs. Lee Harvey Oswald. He testified before the Assassination Records Review Board in September 1996, and provided the Board with various materials including 35mm interpositives of the Zapruder film, as well as copies of audiotapes, videotapes, and transcripts of witness interviews he conducted. As of 2010, Lifton lived in West Los Angeles where he was working full-time on a major written work about Oswald entitled Final Charade. Lifton died on December 6, 2022, at the age of 83. Best Evidence After Lifton's book Best Evidence: Disguise and Deception in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy was rejected by 21 or 23 other publishers, Macmillan gave Lifton a $10,000 advance and published his book in 1981. Due to the controversial nature of the book, Macmillan went to unusual lengths to fact-check the book; it was "examined for potential factual errors by in-house counsel, an outside law firm, a forensic pathologist, and a neurosurgeon." The book eventually reached