Reclaiming History

by Vincent Bugliosi

  So we see that apart from all the conclusive evidence that Oswald shot Kennedy from the sniper’s nest, and therefore had to have descended from there to the second floor, his story about going up to the second floor to get a Coke doesn’t even make sense. Why go up to the second floor to get a drink for your lunch when there’s a soft drink machine on the first floor, the floor you say you are already on, particularly when the apparent drink of your choice is on this first floor, not the second floor?

  14. There is yet another reason why Oswald’s statement that he was on the first floor eating lunch at the time of the shooting makes no sense at all. If he had been, once he heard the shots and the screaming and all the commotion outside, if he were innocent, what is the likelihood that he would have proceeded to go, as he claims, up to the second floor to get himself a Coke? How could any sensible person believe a story like that?

  15. Though Oswald was probably more politically oriented than all thirteen other warehousemen at the Book Depository Building put together, if we are to believe Oswald’s story, he apparently was the only one who had no interest at all in watching the presidential motorcade go by, either from out on the street or from a window, claiming in one version that he was having lunch on the first floor of the Book Depository Building at the time of the shooting, and in another version that he was working on the sixth floor. Indeed, Oswald, the political animal, was so uninterested in the fact that the most powerful politician on earth had just been shot that he had no inclination to stick around for a few minutes and engage in conversation with his coworkers about the sensational and tragic event. Does that make any sense?

  16. After the shooting in Dealey Plaza, nearly all of the sixteen warehousemen who worked in the Depository Building returned to the building and were present at a roll call of employees. Only Lee Harvey Oswald and Charles Givens were not present; Givens was located shortly thereafter.49 So only Oswald left the building and was unaccounted for. Dallas Morning News reporter Kent Biffle, who was inside the Depository Building, wrote in his journal that day, “I listened as the building superintendent [Roy Truly] told detectives about Lee Oswald failing to show up at a roll call. My impression is that there was an earlier roll call that had been inconclusive because several employees were missing. This time, however, all were accounted for but Oswald.”50*

  17. After exiting the front door of the Book Depository Building, if Oswald hadn’t just murdered the president but still wanted to go home, he only had to turn left on the sidewalk in front of the building, cross Houston, and wait for the Beckley bus, which stopped at the northeast corner of Houston and Elm.51 This is the same bus that he took every weekday to and from work, picking it up almost directly in front of his rooming house52 and getting off at Houston and Elm, and on the way home getting off diagonally across the street from his rooming house on the northwest corner of the intersection of Beckley and Zangs Boulevard.53

  But instead of waiting at the bus stop at Houston and Elm for his Beckley bus, Oswald walked past the bus stop and continued walking east on Elm, apparently wanting to get as far away as he could and looking for the very first Oak Cliff bus that came along, eventually boarding the Marsalis bus, which was proceeding westbound on Elm about seven blocks from the Book Depository Building.54 But the closest the Marsalis bus could possibly take him to where he lived was Marsalis and Fifth Street, requiring him, if he had stayed on the bus, to walk five blocks to the west and one block north to get to his home.55 Why would Oswald take a bus that he knew couldn’t take him closer than a half mile from his home (when he knew the next bus, the Beckley bus, would take him to his front door) if he weren’t in a frenzied flight from the scene of where he had done something terrible?56

  18. When the Marsalis bus he had boarded got snarled in traffic, Oswald got off after just a few blocks, again demonstrating he was in flight from the scene of a crime. Flight, in the criminal law, is always considered circumstantial evidence of a consciousness of guilt.

  19. When Oswald got in the cab shortly after getting off the bus for the trip to Oak Cliff, and the cab drove off, the cabdriver, seeing all the police cars crisscrossing everywhere with their sirens screaming, said to Oswald, “I wonder what the hell is the uproar?” The cabdriver said Oswald “never said anything.” Granted, there are people who are very stingy with their words, and this nonresponse by Oswald, by itself, is not conclusive of his guilt. But ask yourself this: If a thousand people were put in Oswald’s place in the cab, particularly if they, like Oswald, were at the scene of the assassination in Dealey Plaza and knew what had happened, how many do you suppose wouldn’t have said one single word in response to the cabby’s question?

  20. Instead of having the cabdriver, William Whaley, drop him off at his residence, 1026 North Beckley, Oswald had him drive directly past his residence and continue on for about almost blocks before dropping him off close to the intersection of Neely and Beckley.57 Since we know Oswald was going home, this was obviously a feeble but incriminating effort to prevent the cabdriver from telling the authorities where the passenger he drove that day lived, and/or Oswald, in driving past his residence, was checking to see if the authorities had zeroed in on him yet. So instead of getting out of the cab in front of his residence, Oswald has the cabdriver, William Whaley, drive right past it. And this is the person who conspiracy theorists believe was as innocent as a newborn baby of the assassination that had taken place about a half hour earlier.

  21. Oswald entered his rooming house around 1:00 p.m. on the day of the assassination, and per the testimony of the housekeeper, Earlene Roberts, before the Warren Commission, he seemed to be “walking unusually fast…he was all but running.” When she said to him, “Oh, you are in a hurry,” he did not respond.58 The first person who interviewed Roberts on the afternoon of the assassination was Dallas Morning News reporter Hugh Aynesworth. Roberts told Aynesworth, “He came in running like the dickens, and I said to him ‘You sure are in a hurry’ but he didn’t say anything…just ran in his room, got a short tan coat and ran back out.”59

  22. Oswald picked up his revolver at the rooming house, not a normal thing to do unless he felt he had a need to protect himself in light of some terrible act he had just committed. That he had no nonincriminating reason for getting his revolver was proved by the fact that when police later asked him why he picked up his revolver, he lamely answered, “You know how boys do when they have a gun, they just carry it.”60

  23. In addition to picking up his revolver at the rooming house, Oswald changed his trousers.61 So Oswald changed his clothing, in the middle of the day, after the assassination.

  24. Forty-five minutes after the shooting in Dealey Plaza, out of the close to three-quarters of a million or so people in Dallas, Lee Harvey Oswald is the one who just happened to murder Dallas police officer J. D. Tippit on Tenth Street near Patton in the Oak Cliff area, only about nine-tenths of a mile from his rooming house. One witness, Helen Markham, identified Oswald in a lineup later in the day as the man she saw shoot Tippit.62 (Years later, the HSCA found another witness, Jack Tatum, who saw Oswald shoot and kill Tippit).63 Another witness, William Scoggins, identified Oswald as the man he saw approach Tippit’s car after it pulled up alongside Oswald, who was walking on the sidewalk. He lost sight of Oswald behind some shrubbery, but heard the shots that killed Tippit, saw Tippit fall, and then saw Oswald, with a pistol in his left hand, run away south on Patton Street in the direction of Jefferson Boulevard.64 Another witness, William Smith, heard some shots, looked up, and saw Oswald running west on Tenth Street out of his sight.65 Two other witnesses, Virginia and Barbara Davis, identified Oswald as the man they saw cutting across the front lawn of their apartment house right after they heard the sound of gunfire from the Tippit murder scene and a woman screaming. Oswald had a revolver in his hand and was unloading the shells from his gun on their lawn. They saw Oswald proceed down Patton toward Jefferson Boulevard.66 Four other witnesses (Ted Callaway, Sam Guinyard, B. M. Patterson, and
Harold Russell), from their position on two used-car lots at the intersection of Patton and Jefferson, identified Oswald as being the man who, right after the Tippit shooting, ran past them on Patton toward Jefferson Boulevard (where the Texas Theater was located) holding a revolver in his hand.67 Two men who were on one of the lots, Warren Reynolds (the owner of the lot) and Patterson, followed Oswald until they lost him behind a Texaco gasoline station on Jefferson. Mrs. Mary Brock, the wife of a man who worked at the gas station, identified Oswald as the person she saw walk past her, at a fast pace, into the parking lot behind the station.68

  One of the canards of the conspiracy theorists that they’ve sold to millions is that there was only one eyewitness to Oswald killing Officer Tippit, Helen Markham, and she wasn’t a strong one. But in addition to Jack Tatum also being an eyewitness to the killing, for all intents and purposes there were eight other eyewitnesses. For instance, with the Davis women, can anyone make the argument that although someone else shot Tippit, it was Oswald who was seen running from the Tippit murder scene with a revolver in his hand unloading shells? And when Scoggins saw Oswald approach Tippit’s car and then lost sight of him for a moment, Tippit’s true killer appeared out of nowhere, shot and killed Tippit, then vanished into thin air, whereupon Scoggins then saw Oswald again, running away from Tippit’s car with a pistol in his hand?

  So there were ten witnesses who identified Oswald as the murderer. And we know that the physical evidence was all corroborative of their testimony.

  Granted, mistaken identity has resulted in many wrongful convictions. But here, and not counting Mrs. Brock, there were many eyewitnesses who identified Oswald. Show me any other case where ten eyewitnesses were wrong.

  I argued to the jury in London that “Oswald’s responsibility for President Kennedy’s assassination explains, explains why he was driven to murder Officer Tippit. The murder bore the signature of a man,” I argued, “in desperate flight from some awful deed. What other reason under the moon would he have had to kill Officer Tippit?”69* It should be noted that even if we assume just for the sake of argument that Oswald didn’t murder Officer Tippit, then who in the world did? The conspiracy community never says. And although we know why Oswald would have had a reason to kill Tippit, what possible reason would the phantom killer have had?

  25. Within minutes after the murder of Tippit, the manager of a shoe store on Jefferson Boulevard that was located several doors down from the Texas Theater, hearing police sirens on Jefferson and having heard over the radio of the shooting of the president and Officer Tippit, saw a man enter the recessed area of the store off the sidewalk and stand with his back to the street. After the sirens grew fainter, the man looked over his shoulder, turned around, and walked up the street toward the Texas Theater. The shoe store manager positively identified the man as Oswald. Because Oswald’s hair was “messed up and he looked like he had been running, and he looked scared,” the manager “thought the guy [Oswald] looked suspicious” and followed Oswald to the theater.70

  26. The cashier at the theater said that Oswald had “ducked in” to the theater without buying a ticket.71

  27. Responding to a call from the cashier, the police approached Oswald in his seat in the theater. When the lead officer told Oswald to stand up, Oswald rose and said, “Well, it is all over now.” What else could he have possibly meant by these words other than that he knew the police had been in pursuit of him and were there to arrest him? And how would he have known they were after him if he hadn’t killed Kennedy and/or Tippit?72

  28. After saying, “It is all over now,” Oswald immediately struck the officer in the face with his left fist and drew his loaded revolver, but he was subdued by other officers after a struggle and placed under arrest.73 If Oswald hadn’t just murdered Kennedy and Tippit, not only wouldn’t he have been likely to have a loaded revolver on him, but there wouldn’t have been any reason for him to draw that revolver on the arresting officer and strike him. Is that what an innocent person normally does when a police officer approaches to arrest him—pull a revolver on the officer and physically resist arrest? Or does he say words to the effect, “What’s going on? What have I done? Why are you doing this to me?”

  29. After Oswald’s arrest at the Texas Theater, he refused to give even his name to the Dallas police officers who captured him.74 As a pretty consistent general rule, when a person is innocent of a crime, he cooperates with law enforcement.

  30. While being led by Dallas detectives down the hallway of police headquarters on the day of the assassination, Oswald suddenly lifted his manacled right hand in a clenched-fist salute of some nature (see photo section). One would expect an innocent person to have an expression on his face conveying bewilderment or anger or a plea for help. Instead, it’s clear Oswald is making some type of statement by his clenched-fist salute, one closer to that of defiance, satisfaction, even triumph. In no way would he confess to Kennedy’s murder, which would ensure his execution, but by the body language of his clenched fist (for which he would suffer no consequences), he seems to be telling posterity that he did it. If not, ask yourself how many people charged with a murder they did not commit would respond the way Oswald did—with a clenched-fist salute? One out of a thousand? One out of a million?

  31. When asked to, Oswald refused to take a lie detector test.75 By contrast, Ruby volunteered to take one. In view of all the other evidence of Oswald’s guilt, his refusal to take a lie detector test, though certainly not conclusive, goes in the direction of showing a consciousness of guilt on his part.

  32. No one knew Oswald as well as his wife, Marina, and after the assassination, Marina never cooperated with any writer or journalist as much as she did with Priscilla McMillan, who ended up writing the very well-received Marina and Lee, a 659-page anatomy of their life together. Marina told McMillan that when she visited her husband in jail on the day after the assassination, she came away knowing he was guilty. She said she saw the guilt in his eyes. Moreover, she said she knew that had he been innocent, he would have been screaming to high heaven for his “rights,” claiming he had been mistreated and demanding to see officials at the very highest levels, just as he had always done before over what he perceived to be the slightest maltreatment. For her, the fact that he was so compliant, that he told her he was being treated “all right,” was an additional sign that he was guilty.76 In Marina’s appearance before the Warren Commission on February 3, 1964, she testified, as she later told McMillan, that when she visited with her husband on November 23 at the jail, “I could see by his eyes that he was guilty.”77 In her September 6, 1964, testimony before the Warren Commission, she said “I have no doubt in my mind that Lee Oswald killed President Kennedy.”78

  The Physical Evidence

  33. A Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, serial number C2766, was found on the sixth floor of the Book Depository Building shortly after the shooting in Dealey Plaza. Handwriting experts determined that the writing on the purchase order and money order for the rifle was Oswald’s. And the seller shipped the rifle to Oswald’s post office box in Dallas. So Oswald owned the Carcano. Also, photographs taken by Oswald’s wife, Marina, in April of 1963 show Oswald holding the Carcano, and Oswald’s right palm print was found on the underside of the rifle barrel following the assassination.* So we know that Oswald not only owned but possessed the subject rifle.

  In the same vein, a tuft of several fresh, dark blue, gray-black, and orange-yellow cotton fibers was found in a crevice between the butt plate of the Carcano and the wooden stock. The FBI laboratory found that the colors, and even the twist of the fibers, perfectly matched those on the shirt Oswald was wearing at the time of his arrest.79 Though such fibers could theoretically have come from another identical shirt, the prohibitive probability is that they came from Oswald’s shirt.

  34. Firearms identification experts from the Warren Commission and the HSCA concluded that two large bullet fragments found in the presidential limousine were parts of a bullet fired from
Oswald’s Carcano rifle to the exclusion of all other weapons. Likewise, the firearms experts found that the whole bullet recovered from a stretcher at Parkland Hospital, believed to be the stretcher Governor Connally was on, was fired from Oswald’s rifle to the exclusion of all other weapons.

  35. Firearms experts determined that the three expended cartridge shells found on the floor beneath the southeasternmost window on the sixth floor of the Book Depository Building were fired in and ejected from Oswald’s Mannlicher-Carcano rifle to the exclusion of all other weapons.†

  So we know, not just beyond a reasonable doubt, but beyond all doubt, that Oswald’s rifle was the murder weapon, the weapon that fired the bullets that struck down the thirty-fifth president of the United States. If there were no other evidence against Oswald, the fact that the murder weapon belonged to him, and that there was no evidence or even likelihood that anyone else had come into possession of the weapon, would be devastating evidence of his guilt.

  But likewise, it should be realized that even if, hypothetically, Oswald had succeeded in secreting his weapon and law enforcement never found it, and hence, the murder weapon could never be connected to him, as can be seen from all the preceding pages and those that follow, the evidence against him would still be much more than enough to prove his guilt beyond all doubt. Convictions are secured every day without the prosecution finding the murder weapon.

  36. A large brown handmade bag of wrapping paper and tape of the appropriate size to contain Oswald’s disassembled Carcano rifle, undoubtedly the bag Wesley Frazier saw Oswald carry into the Book Depository Building on the morning of the assassination, was found inside the sniper’s nest on the sixth floor close to the three cartridge cases ejected from Oswald’s rifle. Oswald’s left index fingerprint and right palm print were found on the bag.80