Man found dead shot in head after Queens crash is convicted murderer and amateur JFK history author

A man found fatally shot in the head in the backseat of a Range Rover after it crashed into a white van 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. Wednesday crash 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, an independent body set up in 1963 by Lyndon Johnson and Congress to investigate the assassination of John F. Kennedy Jr.

Dukes theorized people with racist ideologies became emboldened after the murder of the president, 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 in which Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal stood beside him holding his book. The senator 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 “hair-brained robbery scheme” turned fatal with two Bridgeport friends, a “street-corner crack dealer” named Taj Meyers and Jason Williams, a high school friend. The planned rob some Washington Heights drug dealers, according to court records.

The three men drove from Connecticut to upper Manhattan on February 6, 1992, with the plan to hold up a drug house.

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’s attempt to get his conviction tossed.

All three men went into the apartment and during the stick up one of the drug dealers, Elvis Cruz, was shot and killed by Meyers. Dukes tossed the weapon and as the three fled Meyers was shot in the head and killed.

Williams and Dukes fled in the Audi as the rival dealers and police gave chase until they wrecked the car at 160th St. and Broadway and were forced to flee on foot.

The robbery was such a failure that Dukes had to pawn a gold chain for $15 in order to have enough money to pay for a train ticket back to Connecticut, court papers say.

Meyers’ sister eventually led detectives to Dukes when she was arrested for an unrelated drug charge. He was tried and convicted to 21 years to life in 1993 after being convicted of second-degree murder and attempted robbery.

He was convicted again in 1996 for promoting prison contraband.

While in prison, Dukes became something of a jailhouse lawyer. He filed a writ of habeas corpus to have his conviction tossed and sued Greenhaven Correctional Facility for denying his bid for parole.

“After a review of the record and interview, the panel has determined that if released at this time, there is a reasonable probability that you would not live and remain at liberty without again violating the law,” the parole board said at the time.

The board’s failure to consider his youthful offender status won him another crack requesting parole but that too was denied.

Lee Owen, Jr. 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.”

His grieving family had a softer take on his death.

His 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.

Owen said that he had a connection with Dukes because of their shared childhood but the two took different paths in 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.”

He said that the death in the back of the Range Rover seemed like an eerie echo of the 1992 drug robbery.

“It sounds to me like a the same situation came back around,” Owen said.

With Thomas Tracy