On 17 December 1941, aged 11, he was admitted to the Albany Home for Children, an orphanage. His father, Louis, had died during his early childhood, and his mother was listed as "destitute" when she placed him in the care of the institution. When he turned 18 and graduated from high school he discharged himself from Albany Home to join the army. Nagell entered the US Army in 1948, served in two
tours of duty in the
Korean War with the
24th Infantry Division where he was awarded three
Purple Hearts and a
Bronze Star. and was honourably discharged with the rank of Captain in 1959. In November 1954 he was the sole survivor of an plane crash that left him with facial injuries. In November 1958 he married nineteen-year-old Mitsuko Takahashi in Tokyo. She petitioned for United States citizenship in December 1963 in Honolulu and was granted citizenship in May 1964 while a resident of Los Angeles. Nagell was arrested on September 20, 1963 after he entered the
State National Bank in
El Paso, Texas and fired two shots into the ceiling of the bank. Nagell walked out of the bank after firing his weapon and sat down and waited for the police to arrive. He was sentenced in 1964 to ten years in prison, but acquitted after a 1968 retrial. Director
Oliver Stone cited Nagell's relationship with Garrison as a justification for the character of 'Mr. X.' in his 1991 film
JFK, stating that "I feel that was not a violation of the spirit of the truth, because Garrison also met a
Deep Throat type named Richard Case Nagell". On 11 June 1968 Nagell was detained by East German authorities after attempting to enter the state via train from
Zurich, Switzerland. The
Stasi's records note that Nagell told them that "the CIA tasked him with investigating an organization that was planning the death of the U.S. president. In the course of his apparently successful investigation, he received the order to shoot Lee Oswald before the attack on Kennedy". Suspected of espionage, he was held in
remand at Berlin-Hohenschönhausen prison before being released. Nagell told the Stasi that his intention was to apply for political asylum at the Cuban embassy in
East Berlin.
Dick Russell's biography of Nagell was published in 1992 under the title
The Man Who Knew Too Much. Russell first met Nagell back in 1975 when he showed up unannounced on Nagell's doorstep. The book expands on Nagell's earlier claims with additional research to argue Nagell had foreknowledge of
assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and also supported Nagell's claim he had gotten himself arrested in the El Paso bank shooting in late September 1963 to avoid becoming a
patsy. ==Death==