Reclaiming History

by Vincent Bugliosi

  Monday, November 25

  8:30 a.m.

  Robert Oswald has been up for two hours in his two-room suite at the Inn of the Six Flags. He telephones Paul J. Groody, funeral director at the Miller Funeral Home, and learns that Laurel Land Cemetery on Old Crowley Road in Fort Worth will hold the burial service. Groody admits, though, that he is having a hard time locating a minister to give the service. Robert can only shake his head in disgust and says he’ll start telephoning ministers in the Dallas–Fort Worth area to find one to conduct the burial services. They both agree to set the funeral for four o’clock that afternoon.

  Marguerite Oswald pounces on the photograph of Jack Ruby in the morning newspaper, her first glimpse of the man who killed her son. She brings it to Robert. “This,” she whispers to him dramatically, “is the same man the FBI showed me a picture of Saturday night” (referring to the man outside the Russian embassy in Mexico City).

  “All right, Mother,” he barks. “If that’s so, don’t tell me. Tell the Secret Service man right over there.”

  Robert is offended, impatient. He has had a lifetime of his mother’s cunning conspiracies, all of them somehow designed to prevent Marguerite from being recognized as the pivotal figure she has always imagined herself to be. If the FBI had really showed Marguerite a photo of Jack Ruby before Ruby shot Lee, Robert is certain that the Secret Service agents will report the episode to the proper authorities. Right now, he doesn’t want to hear any more about it.

  Robert begins telephoning ministers in the Dallas–Fort Worth area. He is absolutely astonished at the reactions of the ministers he speaks to. One after another flatly refuses to even consider his request to have someone officiate at his brother’s funeral. One minister, a prominent member of the Greater Dallas Council of Churches, says sharply, “No, we just can’t do that.”

  “Why not?” Robert asks.

  “We just can’t go along with what you have in mind.”

  Robert has only the simplest possible funeral service in mind and can’t understand what the minister means. Then he hears the minister say, “Your brother was a sinner.”

  Robert hangs up and breaks down.

  Robert Oswald is still making phone call after phone call into the late morning to find a clergyman when Marina tells him she wants to watch the funeral service for President Kennedy. Robert switches the television on. As they wait for the sound to come on, one of the Secret Service agents says, “Robert, I don’t think you all should watch this.” He leans down to switch it off.

  “No,” Marina says firmly. “I watch.”

  As they watch the funeral services in Washington, a call comes in for Robert. It is Chaplain Pepper, from Parkland Hospital, asking whether all the funeral arrangements have been taken care of. Robert tells him about the reactions he’s been getting from the ministers in the area.

  “It seems to me that there are a lot of hypocrites around,” Robert tells him. “After all, can the assassination be the act of a sane man?”

  “Maybe I can convince some of the ministers by raising that question,” the chaplain says. “They surely would agree that you can’t hold an insane person responsible for his acts.”1518

  9:23 a.m. (10:23 a.m. EST)

  In Washington, D.C., the weather, milder than yesterday, is still raw and wintry with whipping winds. But the day is crystal clear, with deep and hard-edged shadows. Six limousines wait in the White House driveway to convey the Kennedy family to the Capitol rotunda. Jackie Kennedy appears first, quickly followed by Pat Lawford, Bobby, Teddy, Eunice Shriver, and other Kennedy in-laws and children. The late president’s children, Caroline and John-John, are notably absent—their mother is sending them on ahead to St. Matthew’s Cathedral, where she will meet them for the Low Pontifical Mass. She has planned to spare the children the trip to the cemetery as well.

  It takes thirteen minutes for the motorcade procession to reach the Capitol plaza, where Jackie and the president’s brothers once again climb the broad, imposing flight of steps to the rotunda. They kneel briefly at the coffin, back away, and leave, reentering their limousine for the trip back to the White House.

  It takes another seven minutes for the military pallbearers to remove the flag-draped casket from the rotunda and place it on the caisson that will bear it down Constitution Avenue and then Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House and then to St. Matthew’s on Rhode Island Avenue, N.W. The huge crowds lining the streets are so quiet that the clop of hooves, the grating of the caisson’s iron tires on the pavement, and the mournful tolling of the bell at nearby St. John’s Episcopal Church are easily heard on the radio and television broadcasts being listened to and seen by a global audience.

  It is now a full military funeral procession, including the Marine Band—called “the President’s Own”—and crack drill units from all four academies, army, naval, air force, and coast guard, and it takes about three-quarters of an hour for the slow-moving cortege to reach the front of the White House.1519 The funeral procession stops in front of the White House around 11:35 a.m. EST, where the Kennedy family leaves its limousines and joins the ranks of foreign heads of state, reigning monarchs, and dignitaries who had gathered in front of the White House. After several minutes, the procession sets out on foot, with Mrs. Kennedy, the first First Lady ever to walk in her husband’s funeral procession, and the slain president’s two brothers on each side of her, leading the way on the long eight-block march to St. Matthew’s Cathedral.

  It’s a bodyguard’s nightmare. Walking bareheaded, in plain view of any potential sniper, are twenty-two presidents, ten prime ministers, and much of the world’s remaining royalty—kings, queens, princes, and emperors. There are more than two hundred officials from a hundred countries, the United Nations, other international organizations, and the Roman Catholic Church. An estimated one million people line the funeral procession route.1520 The Secret Service, seeing the obvious danger, urges the president to ride to the funeral in a bulletproof car, and Johnson considers it for a moment, but refuses. He and Lady Bird walk along right behind the Kennedys, trailed by the color guard with the presidential flag.1521

  The great phalanx of luminaries marches straight into the lens of the television camera, the front line dominated by the towering figure of General Charles de Gaulle.* Queen Frederika of Greece is remarkable as the only woman dignitary visible.1522 They set out to the skirl of pipes played by the band of the Royal Highland Black Watch Regiment, which interrupted an American concert tour to appear at the funeral, at Jackie’s behest. Just twelve days earlier the renowned pipers had played on the White House south lawn for the Kennedy children and seventeen hundred other children, and the president put aside his own duties to view their performance. It would be the last public appearance of the presidential family together.1523

  Shoulders erect and her eyes straight ahead, Jackie Kennedy, as one observer noted, bearing her grief “like a brave flag,” walked with a poise and grace as regal as any king or queen who followed her. Indeed, the London Evening Standard was moved to say extravagantly, “Jacqueline Kennedy has given the American people from this day on the one thing they have always lacked—majesty.” UPI’s Helen Thomas said, more soberly, that Mrs. Kennedy had “hidden tears and kept a decorum that few women could under such circumstances.”1524

  Arriving at the cathedral just before noon (EST) the family is greeted by Richard Cardinal Cushing, an old and beloved friend, who comes out to meet them. Cushing, the archbishop of Boston, had married John and Jacqueline, christened their two children, and only last August buried their infant son, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, who died thirty-nine hours after his birth. He bends to the two children, kissing Caroline and patting John-John on the head, then puts a comforting arm around Mrs. Kennedy’s shoulder.1525

  As the military pallbearers, who seem to be carrying the weight of the world, struggle up the steps of St. Matthew’s, the familiar voices of the television commentators are drenched in emotion.1526 By far the largest tele
vision audience in history, perhaps even to this day, had been watching the historic events unfold. In America alone, an estimated 93 percent of all sets, and 175 million people, were transfixed by the images on the screen, and Relay, a U.S. communications satellite orbiting the globe, brought segments of the events into the homes of twenty-three other countries; for the citizens of Russia, it was the first time they had ever been permitted to watch live television from abroad. The apex of the viewing audience seemed to be the funeral. National Geographic magazine, with representation worldwide, captioned a portion of their 1964 article, “World Stops at Moment of Funeral.” The magazine reported that “for the next few minutes [referring to the casket being brought from the limousine to the cathedral portico], whatever the hour in other lands, countless millions of the earth’s people paused to honor the dead President…Across our nation trains stopped. Jets halted on airport runways. The Panama Canal suspended operations. Motorists paused in New York’s Times Square. Evening traffic halted in Athens, Greece. Around the world flags stood at half-mast.”1527

  11:00 a.m.

  At police headquarters, Jim Leavelle, the lead detective in the Tippit murder case, is sipping coffee in the squad room with a couple other detectives, waiting for Captain Fritz when Fritz calls.

  “Are you in a position to talk?” Fritz asks.

  “No, not really,” Leavelle says.

  “Well, go into my office and pick up the phone in there,” Fritz tells him.

  Leavelle quietly saunters to the privacy of Fritz’s office.

  “What’s up?” he asks.

  “I’m down here at the Greyhound bus station with Graves and Montgomery,” Fritz says. “We’ve cased the county jail and it looks clear. I’m going to make a suggestion to you, and if you don’t think it will work, I want you to tell me.”

  “Okay,” Leavelle replies, wondering just what Fritz has up his sleeve.

  “Go get Ruby out of jail any way you want to, and bring him down in the elevator to the basement,” Fritz says. “We’ll pull through the basement at a prearranged time, load him up, and whisk him right on down to the county jail with another squad car following us. Do you think it will work?”

  “Yes,” Leavelle agrees. “I think it will the way you’ve got it set up.”

  “I haven’t called [Sheriff Bill] Decker or asked the chief about it,” Fritz admits.

  “Well, all you can do is get bawled out,” Leavelle says, “but a bawling out is better than losing a prisoner.”

  The two homicide men set about conspiring to move Ruby in secret.

  “How many men you got there to help you with him?” Fritz asks.

  “Three or four,” Leavelle answers.

  “Okay. Don’t tell anybody where you’re going,” Fritz orders. “Just get them like you’re going after coffee and get downstairs or somewhere and tell them what you’re going to do. I’ll meet you in the basement at exactly eleven-fifteen.”

  The two men synchronize their watches.

  “Okay, Captain,” Leavelle says, and hangs up. He walks out into the squad room and without a word motions to Detectives Brown, Dhority, and Beck to follow him. The men follow, their curiosity piqued.

  A reporter squares off with Leavelle the minute the detectives step into the third-floor hallway.

  “When are you going to transfer Ruby?” the newsman asks.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Leavelle says coyly, and keeps walking.

  When they get downstairs, Leavelle outlines the plan. He tells Brown and Beck to get another car out of the garage and get it in position to go out the ramp. He and Dhority go up to the fifth floor and check Ruby out of jail. They bring him down to the basement in the jail elevator, the same elevator Oswald rode on his fateful journey. Leavelle, who has known Ruby and been friendly with him (though not friends) since 1951, says to Ruby on the way down, “Jack, in all the years I’ve known you, you’ve never deliberately caused any police officer any trouble that I know of [but] you didn’t do us any favor when you shot Oswald. You’ve really put the pressure on us.” Ruby replied, “That’s the last thing in the world I wanted to do. I just wanted to be a damned hero and all I’ve done is foul things up.”

  “Wait here,” Leavelle tells Dhority, who has a tight grip on Ruby’s arm, as they reach the basement.

  Leavelle slips out of the elevator, letting the door close behind him. He looks at his watch. They’re only two minutes early.

  “Don’t let anybody ring for this elevator,” he tells the unaware lieutenant standing behind the booking desk. “We’re going to have it tied up.”

  Detective Brown talks casually with one of the jail officers just outside the jail office door, his eyes glancing at the top of the Main Street ramp every now and then. A few feet away, Detective Beck sits behind the wheel of an unmarked squad car, its motor running.

  Brown spots Captain Fritz’s car, with Detective L. D. Montgomery driving and Fritz in the passenger’s seat, pulling into the Main Street ramp. Brown turns and nods toward Leavelle, who opens the elevator door so Dhority and Ruby can step out.

  “I don’t want to have to push or shove you,” Leavelle tells Ruby, whom he hasn’t bothered to shackle himself to. “But I want you to move.”

  Ruby is shaking, afraid another vigilante is lying in wait for him. Captain Fritz’s car glides to the bottom of the ramp and stops. Detective Graves, in the rear seat on the far side, leans over to open the rear door and when he does, Ruby dashes away from Leavelle and Dhority, as astonished jail officers look on, running to the open door where he crawls on his hands and knees onto the floorboard in the backseat and lies on his stomach.* Leavelle follows Ruby into the backseat and places his feet on Ruby’s back. “Jack was frightened and that’s where he wanted to stay,” Leavelle said, referring to Ruby’s prone position on the car floorboard, which he would stay in all the way to the county jail. The car leaves the basement garage with Dhority, Brown, and Beck in the backup car. The two-car caravan catches every green light en route to the county jail. When they arrive, the detectives in the lead car get out and cover the jail entrance. In a matter of seconds, Jack Ruby is safely inside the county jail.1528

  11:18 a.m. (12:18 p.m. EST)

  At St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington, the cameras inside pick up the last of the mourners as they crowd into the church. Admission is by invitation only, but in spite of the planners’ best efforts, the green-domed edifice is overflowing with a thousand people, many uninvited. The casket rests at the foot of the altar as Cardinal Cushing, in the Pontifical Low Requiem Mass, prays “for John Fitzgerald Kennedy and also for the redemption of all men…May the angels, dear Jack, lead you into paradise.” First Mrs. Kennedy, then Robert and Ted Kennedy and hundreds in attendance receive Holy Communion from the cardinal, and Bishop Philip Hannan gives an eleven-minute sermon in which he quotes liberally from the late president’s speeches.1529

  New York Times reporter R. W. Apple describes his city as being “like a vast church,” where schools and businesses are closed and four thousand people stand silently in Grand Central Station to watch the funeral rites on a huge television screen, some of them genuflecting or making the sign of the cross. At anchor at Bayonne, New Jersey, the aircraft carrier Franklin D. Roosevelt fires its deck guns twenty-one times, once a minute from 12:00 noon to 12:21.1530

  “For those who are faithful to You, Oh Lord, life is not taken away; it is transformed,” Cardinal Cushing says solemnly. He blesses the casket with holy water.1531

  Outside the cathedral, after the one-hour funeral service, John-John stands hard by his mother as the casket is brought out, still clasping a pamphlet he was given as a distraction while sitting out the main body of the mass with a Secret Service agent in a cathedral anteroom. As the coffin is returned to the caisson, Jackie bends to her young son, takes the pamphlet from his tiny hand, and whispers something. In a heartbreaking gesture, the president’s son, who turned three today, cocks his elbow and salutes his father’s cas
ket. Spectators standing across the street almost buckle at the sight. Of all the images burned into the consciousness of America, nothing comes close to the power of that tiny salute.1532

  As the caisson starts to roll, the heads of state and other dignitaries stand about waiting for their cars—the distance to Arlington National Cemetery is much too far to walk. Two former presidents, Dwight Eisenhower and Harry Truman, passionate political enemies only a few years earlier, walk to their car together. The muffled drums begin again, a constant rumble that nonetheless fails to drown out the spirited clack of the hooves of Black Jack, the magnificent sixteen-year-old riderless horse with a sword strapped to the empty saddle and stirrups holding empty boots pointed backward, a part of an ancient tradition in the funeral procession of a fallen leader, symbolizing that he will never ride again. The family cars roll slowly in behind the honor guards, followed by President Johnson’s automobile and the ever-present Secret Service. One by one the other vehicles fall into position in the one-hour, three-mile-long procession, which snakes along Connecticut Avenue to Seventeenth, and then Constitution to the Lincoln Memorial, where it crosses the Potomac River on the Memorial Bridge to Arlington National Cemetery, where only one other president is buried, William Howard Taft. David Brinkley muses that the first cars are quite likely to arrive at Arlington before the last cars depart St. Matthew’s Cathedral. The cameras mark time by showing faces from the crowd of ordinary Americans: a young priest, a soldier in dark glasses, a college boy holding a radio to his ear, an older woman clutching a large purse, and a family eating their lunch on the curb.1533