Reclaiming History

by Vincent Bugliosi

  It’s about eleven in the evening when he parks at Commerce and Harwood, leaving the sandwiches and his dog Sheba in the car, and goes to the police department, taking the elevator to the second floor. Ruby’s an experienced gatecrasher, he can get in anywhere by putting on a busy, peremptory manner, “taking,” as he puts it in his weirdly mangled way of talking, “a domineering part about me.”

  “Where is Joe Long?” he speaks assertively to the officer at the desk. “Can I go look for him?” The officer lets him in.

  Emerging from the elevator on the third floor into a throng of reporters, Ruby asks everyone, cops and reporters, if they know where he can find Joe Long, determined to find Long so he can deliver his load of sandwiches out at KLIF. He even has an officer page Long, but with no luck. He knows a lot of the officers, and stops to chat with Lieutenant Leonard and Detective Cal Jones. Roy Standifer, the desk officer in the Burglary and Theft Bureau, calls out, “Hi, Jack,” and Jack calls out, “Hi, Sandy”—he calls Roy that, short for Standifer. No one else, Standifer notes wryly, ever does. Standifer, who has known Jack for thirteen years, recognizes Ruby’s use of a first name as one of his tricks. On Jack’s frequent visits to police headquarters, Standifer has seen him ask someone for the first name of an officer he doesn’t know and then greet the man by his first name like an old friend.927

  Ruby sticks his head in the Burglary and Theft door and is delighted to spot Detective A. M. Eberhardt. The detective’s work on the vice squad used to bring him to the Carousel regularly a few years back, and he even brought his wife there once on a night off. Ruby gave “Michael”—for some reason he uses Eberhardt’s middle name—a couple of tips too. He reported one of his own girls when he discovered she was forging checks and using drugs, and Eberhardt busted her right there in the club. Another time Ruby heard from some parking-lot boys that a guy under indictment for white slavery was in town and staying at the Baker, half a block down the street from the Carousel, and Eberhardt went in with a squad and made the collar. Later, when Eberhardt was transferred to burglary, he managed to run down a couple of burglars Ruby surprised in the Carousel. Eberhardt always lent a sympathetic ear to Ruby’s complaints about his competition, those damned Weinsteins. He knows Jack usually carries a large sum of money in his pocket and worries about Jack leaving the club at two or three in the morning with the night’s take in a bag. They are old friends.

  Ruby shakes hands, asks, as he always does, about Eberhardt’s wife and kids, and tells him he’s there as a “translator for the newspapers,” brandishing a little notebook. “I’m a reporter,” Jack says, tapping something in his lapel (had he purloined a press badge?) with the notebook. The only foreign language Eberhardt knows that Jack speaks is Yiddish, but the corridor outside is crammed with foreigners, shouting in languages he never heard before. Ruby tells him about the sandwiches he made up for the radio reporters, corned beef. “Nothing,” Jack boasts, “but kosher stuff is all I bring.”

  Jack starts talking about how terrible it is for the assassination to have happened in the city. “It’s hard to realize that a complete nothing, a zero like that,* could kill a man like President Kennedy was.”

  Eberhardt is busy. Even though he is only on standby, he’s using the opportunity to catch up on his paperwork. So, after a few minutes, Ruby plunges back into the hubbub in the hall, and situates himself where the height of the activity is, right outside Captain Fritz’s office door. Oswald, of course, is being interrogated inside. Ruby proceeds to put his hand on the door knob, turn it, and starts to step into the room when two officers stop him. “You can’t go in there, Jack,” one says. No problem. Ruby is content to be close to the action, right outside the door.

  You have to shout to be heard in that corridor, but Ruby enjoys being able to provide information to the reporters, many of them bewildered out-of-towners, about everyone who was coming in or out of the door. “No, that’s not Sheriff Decker, that’s Chief Curry, C-u-r-r-y,” or “That’s Captain Fritz, Will Fritz. He’s the homicide captain.” He really likes to be helpful, particularly to important people like reporters. A detective who recognizes him bellows at the top of his voice over the heads of the reporters, “Hey Jack, what are you doing here?”

  Ruby manages to get one arm free to wave to his friend. “I’m helping all these fellows,” he shouts back, pointing to the foreigners.

  Jack’s activity is taking his mind off the tragedy and he is feeling a little better than he has all day. In a way, he feels he is being temporarily deputized as a reporter. He is, he realizes, “being carried away by the excitement of history.”928

  10:30 p.m.

  Robert Oswald crosses the lobby of the Statler Hilton Hotel across the street from Dallas police headquarters. For a moment, he considers registering under a false name, to keep reporters at bay, but then decides he isn’t going to start hiding. No matter, the desk clerk doesn’t seem to pay any attention to the name on the registration card. When he arrives on the sixteenth floor, Robert finds a small, rather drab room with two chairs, a small table, and a sofa bed. Unable to face the depressing room, he returns to the hotel coffee shop and nibbles on a ham sandwich.929

  Henry Wade is returning home after dining with his wife and some friends when he hears a report on the radio that Oswald is going to be charged with being part of an international Communist conspiracy to murder the president.930 Wade, the Dallas DA since 1951, can barely believe his ears. There is no such law on the Texas books, and anyone familiar with Texas law knows that if you allege anything in an indictment, you have the burden of proving it.931

  Wade barely gets in the door when the telephone rings. The caller is Waggoner Carr, attorney general for the state of Texas. He had just received a long-distance call from someone in the White House who had heard a similar report. Carr wants to know if Wade has any knowledge of it. Wade said he didn’t.932

  “You know,” Carr says, “this is going to create a hell of a bad situation if you allege that he’s part of a Communist conspiracy. It’s going to affect international relations and a lot of things with this country.”

  “I don’t know where the rumor got started,” Wade says, “but even if we could prove he was part of an international conspiracy, I wouldn’t allege it because there’s no such charge in Texas.”933

  Within a few minutes, Henry Wade gets phone calls from his first assistant, Jim Bowie, and U.S. Attorney Barefoot Sanders—both of whom have gotten very concerned calls from Washington. Wade assures both of them that he will check into the rumor.934

  Wade immediately decides to take “charge” of the matter and goes down to the police department to make sure that no such language appears in any complaint against Oswald. His man down there, Bill Alexander,* denies to Wade that he had anything to do with the rumor, not telling Wade that his own loose lips had given birth to it.935

  In Richardson, Texas, Gregory Olds, editor of the local newspaper and president of the Dallas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), reaches for the telephone ringing on his nightstand. The caller is one of the ACLU board members, who tells him he just got a call from the president of the Austin affiliate. Lee Oswald has been seen on television complaining that he’s been denied legal representation and they think that someone should check into Oswald’s complaint. Olds agrees and tells him that he will do it.

  In a moment, Olds has the Dallas Police Department on the line and asks to speak to the chief of police. He’s told that Chief Curry is busy. Olds then asks to speak to one of the deputy chiefs, but no one seems to know where they are. When Olds is asked if he would be willing to speak to a detective, he informs the officer on the phone that he is the president of the Dallas Civil Liberties Union and that he will speak with the man in charge of the investigation and no one else. An officer eventually comes to the phone and tells him, “Captain Fritz isn’t available, but you can tell me.”

  “I’ll wait,” Olds tells them through clenched teeth. He has learned to be per
sistent when dealing with the police.936

  When Captain Fritz finally comes on the line, Olds explains to him that the ACLU was deeply concerned over Oswald’s apparent lack of legal counsel and stands ready to provide him with immediate assistance. Fritz blithely tells him that the suspect had been informed several times of his right to representation and offered opportunities to contact a lawyer, but he declined them. Olds thanks the captain and hangs up.937

  The situation is nothing new for the ACLU chapter president. He knew that every city had prisoners who refuse the services of an attorney on the assumption they don’t need one, deciding to represent themselves in court. Most of them pay for their mistake in prison. It would be easy for Olds to accept the word of the police department that Oswald’s legal rights have been safeguarded. Instead, he rubs the sleepiness from his eyes and telephones a few ranking members of the ACLU, telling them to meet him at once in the lobby of the Plaza Hotel, across the street northwest from City Hall.938

  10:40 p.m.

  After having just left police headquarters about ten to fifteen minutes ago, Detectives Guy Rose and Richard Stovall park their car in the basement garage of City Hall and walk back into the basement entrance with Wesley Frazier, his sister, and the Reverend Campble in tow. After taking an affidavit from Frazier, they were driving the three of them back to Irving and were halfway there when they received a call over the radio to return to City Hall with Frazier and contact Captain Fritz. When Detective Rose telephones upstairs, Captain Fritz tells him to take Frazier to the fourth-floor Identification Bureau and give Frazier a polygraph test. Fritz wants to know if he’s telling the truth about the curtain rod story. Did Oswald really tell him he was bringing curtain rods to work? Or is this some kind of cover story Frazier has cooked up?

  “Okay, Cap’,” Rose replies.939

  Horace Busby, LBJ’s longtime aide, speechwriter, and confidant, is waiting for President Johnson to arrive at Johnson’s home, the Elms, a large brick home in the Spring Valley section of Washington, D.C., Johnson had purchased from well-known society figure and political hostess Perle Mesta. In the past sixteen years Busby had been through the highs and the lows and everything in between with LBJ, and knew him, he said, better than he wanted to know any man. Yet he knows he is not now waiting for any man he had ever known. He was waiting for the president of the United States. The Elms is being overrun with Secret Service agents and telephone people installing new lines. After LBJ arrives and has a meeting with his close aides, friends, and Mrs. Johnson, he retreats to the sunroom with Busby. A large portrait of LBJ’s mentor, former House Speaker Sam Rayburn, looks down on the room. LBJ raises his hand to the portrait, saying quietly, “How I wish you were here.” Settling in a chair, he asks Busby to turn on the television set, saying, “I guess I am the only person in the United States who doesn’t know what happened today.” When he hears talk out of Dallas about a possible Communist conspiracy being behind the assassination, he says, “No, we must not have that. We must not start making accusations without evidence.”940

  11:00 p.m.

  At the Paine house in Irving, the rumblings of a long day are coming to an end. Ruth and Marina talk quietly as they prepare for bed. Marina tells her that just the night before Lee had said to her that he hoped they could get an apartment together again soon. She is hurt and confused, wondering how he could say such a thing when he must have been planning something that would inevitably cause their permanent separation. For an instant, Mrs. Paine’s politeness was overcome by her curiosity.

  “Do you think he killed the president?” she asks.

  “I don’t know,” Marina answers.

  There is an awkward moment, and then Marina says that she doesn’t think she’ll be able to sleep anytime soon and asks to borrow Ruth’s hair dryer. She wants to take a shower, which she has often said renews her spirits. Mrs. Paine hands her the dryer and bids her goodnight.941

  Alone, later, in her own bedroom, Marina runs across June’s baby book, which the police had failed to confiscate. She suddenly remembers the pictures Lee had given her from the set he had her take of him in the backyard when they lived on Neely Street. She peels the book open. There they are, pasted into the album, two small snapshots of Oswald wearing a pistol and holster strapped to his waist, a rifle in one hand, two left-wing newspapers in the other. On the back of one he had written, “For Junie, from Papa.” When he had given them to her, Marina was appalled and asked, “Why would Junie want a picture with guns?”

  “To remember Papa by sometime,” Oswald had said.942

  She realizes now that they will only hurt Lee. She carefully removes them from the baby book and calls Marguerite into the bedroom. She shows them to Mrs. Oswald and tries to explain to her that Lee shot at General Edwin Walker in early 1963* and that he might have been shooting at the president too. But her thoughts only come out as a series of gestures and very broken English.

  “Mama,” she says, pointing at the photographs. “Walker…”

  Marguerite doesn’t seem to understand what she means by “Walker” but understands the significance of the guns in the photos. “You take, Mama,” Marina says.

  “No,” Marguerite resists.

  “Yes, Mama, you take,” Marina says, shoving the photos at her.

  “No, Marina,” Marguerite whispers. “Put back in the book.”

  Marguerite then places a finger across her lips, points toward Ruth’s room, and shakes her head, warning Marina, “Ruth, no.” Marina understands that she is not to show the photos to Mrs. Paine, or anyone.943

  After Marguerite leaves the room, Marina makes another discovery that takes her breath away. The police, in their hasty search, also overlooked a pale, translucent, blue-green china cup with violets and a golden rim that her grandmother had given her. Inside it she finds Lee’s wedding ring. Lee had taken the ring off at work before, but this was the first time in their marriage that he had ever taken it off and left it at home. Marina immediately realizes that the shooting was not a spontaneous act, but that Lee had intended to do it when he left that morning. Apparently, he didn’t expect to return.944

  Marina didn’t sleep that night. She knew little about American law. She thought it would all be over in three days and Lee would be strapped in the electric chair and executed. Would she be found a criminal too for her knowledge of Lee’s involvement in the Walker shooting? Would she find herself in prison? She lay awake wondering what would become of her children.945

  Henry Wade plows his way through the field of reporters lined up in the corridor outside the Homicide and Robbery Bureau.* Inside, Assistant DA Bill Alexander, FBI agent Jim Bookhout, and Captain Fritz await him. At Wade’s request, Fritz begins to outline the considerable amount of evidence the Dallas Police Department has impressively gathered so far—the gun, the witnesses, the arrest, and the fingerprints and probably false statements by Oswald during his interrogation. It all looks pretty good to Wade.946

  For nearly the past five hours, thirty-five-year-old Richard B. Stolley, the Pacific Coast regional editor for Life magazine, has been ringing the home telephone of Abraham Zapruder every fifteen minutes or so without success. Stolley flew into Dallas from Los Angeles earlier in the afternoon with Life reporter Tommy Thompson and photographer Allen Grant. The team had set up headquarters at the Hotel Adolphus in downtown Dallas, and within hours Stolley learned from a local correspondent that Zapruder had reportedly taken amateur movies of the shooting.

  Stolley dials the number again, and this time a sleepy voice answers, “Hello?”

  Zapruder had been driving around the last few hours trying to shake the gruesome images from his mind. Stolley explains that he represents Life magazine and might be interested in Zapruder’s film. Zapruder says Stolley is the first journalist to contact him and confirms that he does have a film that shows the shooting. Not wishing to lose an exclusive, and knowing others will soon be hot on the trail, Stolley tries to talk Zapruder into letting him come out to
his home now to view the film and talk. Zapruder replies that he is too tired and distraught to discuss it tonight. He tells Stolley to come by his office at nine o’clock tomorrow morning, and hangs up.

  Stolley decides to show up an hour early, just in case.947

  It’s just after midnight on the East Coast as the three pathologists near the end of their autopsy of the president’s body at Bethesda Naval Hospital, when three skull fragments recovered from the floor of the presidential limousine during a Secret Service examination at the White House garage are brought into the morgue.948 Interest in the three skull fragments grows when the three pathologists note a distinct crater on the outer surface of the largest fragment, characteristic of an exit wound.949 Their suspicions are soon confirmed when X-rays of that fragment reveal minute metallic particles embedded in the margins of the crater.950 There is no doubt about it. The fragment contains a portion of the exit wound.951

  FBI agents Sibert and O’Neill, eager to submit a report on the autopsy findings, ask Dr. Humes what his findings will be?

  “Well, the pattern is clear,” Humes tells them. “Two bullets struck the president from behind. One bullet entered the president’s back and probably worked its way out of the body during the external cardiac massage at Parkland Hospital. A second bullet struck the rear of the president’s skull and fragmented before exiting.”

  “Is that then the cause of death, Doctor?”

  Humes nods, affirmatively. “Gunshot wound of the head.”952

  As the autopsy team removes its equipment from around the examination table, a group of morticians from Gawler’s Funeral Home move their portable embalming equipment into position to prepare the president’s body for burial.953 Secret Service agent Roy Kellerman signs for the photographs954 and X-rays955 taken during the autopsy, which will be delivered to Secret Service special agent-in-charge Robert I. Bouck at the White House in the early morning hours of November 23.956