Marie Vigil Background

Peter Heitmann writes:

Here is some follow up information regarding the mysterious Marie P. Vigil from Woodland Hills, CA.

It turns out that Marie Paula Vigil (nee Belanger) was born in Canada and lived in Quebec and Montreal, which is why her letters have comments about events in Canada, including the MLK Assassination, RFK and Zodiac.

Marie married Juan G. Vigil , who was born in New Mexico, but was actually a British citizen at this time when Juan applied for naturalization for Marie in Los Angeles County (link). Curiously, at the same time, the LA Court grants her citizenship with an attached document that states “this Court is satisfied with the fact that the petitioner has purposely misspelled her name on the application! Her actual birth name is Marie “Paule” Belanger, not Marie “Paula Belanger”. At Ancestry.com, you can see this 1949 petition for Naturalization here, and then flip back a couple pages on this link and you will see the addendum about here name being incorrectly spelled :

Smells like tradecraft going on here, and there may be an interesting reason why American born Juan G. Vigil current citizenship is British, as just a few years later in 1954 he is completing his radical design for a delta swept winged collapsable spacecraft with vertical takeoff capability. It is a design that he gains a Patent for in 1960, and then he immediately assigns this Patent to the Lockheed Corporation in Burbank California where he is working from 1958 through at least 1966.:

Official Gazette of the United States Patent Office
United States. Patent Office – 1962
FOUND INSIDE – PAGE 1284
3,065,937 COLLAPSIBLE SPACECRAFT Juan G. Vigil, Woodland Hills, Calif., assignor to Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, Burbank, Calif. Filed Apr. 18, 1960, Ser. No. 22,770 10 Claims. (CI. 244—46) 3,065,935 VERTICAL TAKE-OFF Delta-Shape fore wings …

Here is an image of the spacecraft design:

And then there is the second “Kook” letter from the RFK files, where I believe she leaves a clue as to why she is so involved with the lives of the Linkletter family. It turns out that Art Linkletter was a major investor for a large tract of land that became a Music Hall and Theatre for events and concerts in Woodland Hills, and it has quite a storied history.

The Valley Music Theater was a theater-in-the-round performing arts hall located in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California. It was just south of the Ventura Freeway at 20600 Ventura Boulevard, in the Chalk Hills of the western San Fernando Valley. The modernist style 2865-seat facility opened in 1964, and was demolished in 2007 by a developer for a condominium project.

According to Wikipedia, The Valley Music Theater was built in 1963, as a concrete shell structure, by pouring a concrete ‘dome’ over a rounded hill of soil, then excavating the soil away. The theater project was backed by entertainers Bob Hope and Art Linkletter, along with Hollywood’s Cy Warner.

The 2865-seat facility opened July 6, 1964 with The Sound of Music. The first year saw the theater mount 18 musicals, three comedies, a drama, as well as concerts with a combined audience of over 600,000.

Among the performers who appeared at the Valley Music Theater were Sammy Davis Jr., Johnny Carson, Don Rickles, Woody Allen, Ray Charles, Art Linkletter, Robert Goulet, Mitzi Gaynor, Eddie Fisher, Ike & Tina Turner, Peter, Paul & Mary, B.B. King, Lou Rawls, Three Dog Night, Jim Croce, and the Spiral Starecase. The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, and The Doors appeared there together on February 22, 1967, and the theatre was featured as a music venue in the 1967 film, The Cool Ones.

One can clearly see Robert Linkletter and pals becoming an active part of the scene when he was in town. Additionally, 1967 saw his sister Dianne Linkletter appear in the foreshadowing movie with Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda, called “The Trip”. Here is a 6 minute clip to give you the feel of the events that the Linkletter’s lives were intersecting with during this intense and dangerous drug-fueled period of revolutionary music and movies that were quickly reshaping the collective consciousness of Hollywood in particular and Southern California in general.

By late 1967 the theater began to fall on hard times, and a controversy erupted with the City Council as Art Linkletter and a Councilman were accused of attempting to bribe the city into purchasing the Theatre. Eventually, Attorney General Evelle Younger said there is nothing to see here, and charges were eventually dismissed.


Perhaps this is when Mrs.Virgil become aware and seemingly obsessed of the business and social dealings of Art Linkletter and Robert Linkletter. It also perhaps explains how and why Marie Vigil is seeing, overhearing, and then later reporting very specific conversations of murder and mayhem she believes Robert Linkletter and his associates are involved in.