Reclaiming History

by Vincent Bugliosi

  37. Oswald’s left palm print and right index fingerprint were found on top of a book carton next to the windowsill of the southeasternmost window on the sixth floor of the Book Depository Building. The carton appeared to have been arranged as a convenient gun rest. Both prints were pointing in a southwesterly direction, the same direction the presidential limousine was proceeding down Elm Street.81 A print of his right palm was found on top of the northwest corner of another carton just to the rear of the gunrest carton.82

  38. The revolver in Oswald’s possession at the time of his arrest at the Texas Theater was a Smith & Wesson .38 Special caliber revolver, serial number V510210. Handwriting experts found that the mail-order coupon for the revolver contained the handwriting of Lee Harvey Oswald, and the seller of the revolver sent it to Oswald’s post office box in Dallas.

  39. Four bullets were recovered from the body of Officer Tippit. A firearms identification expert for the Warren Commission concluded that one of the four bullets was fired from Oswald’s revolver to the exclusion of all other weapons, and another expert acknowledged that all four bullets “could have been” fired from the revolver, since the bullets recovered from Tippit had the same general characteristic as those test-fired from Oswald’s revolver—five lands and grooves (including the same width of the lands and grooves) with a right twist. (Recall that the bullets were .38 Special bullets, not .38 Smith & Wesson bullets, and the barrel of Oswald’s revolver was slightly oversized for such a bullet. Therefore, during the passage of these slightly smaller bullets through the barrel, the barrel did not clearly imprint its signature striations or markings on the sides of the bullets to enable a positive identification.)

  40. Four expended cartridge cases were found near the site of the Tippit killing. Firearms experts from the Warren Commission and the HSCA concluded that all four were fired in and ejected from Oswald’s Smith & Wesson revolver to the exclusion of all other weapons. At the time of his arrest, then, Oswald owned and had in his possession the revolver used to kill Tippit. Also at the time of his arrest, he was carrying in one of his pockets five live .38 Special cartridges.*

  So we know that not only was Oswald the owner and possessor of the rifle that killed Kennedy, but he was also the owner and possessor of the revolver that killed Tippit. In a city of more than 700,000 people, what is the probability of one of them being the owner and possessor of the weapons that murdered both Kennedy and Tippit, and yet still be innocent of both murders? Aren’t we talking about DNA numbers here, like one out of several billion or trillion? Is there a mathematician in the house?

  41. Dallas police performed a paraffin test on Oswald’s hands at the time of his interrogation to determine if he had recently fired a revolver, and the results were positive, indicating the presence of nitrates from gunpowder residue on his hands.83

  42. When Oswald left the Book Depository Building within minutes after the shooting in Dealey Plaza, he left his blue jacket behind, the jacket being found on December 6, 1963, in a depressed area beneath the windowsill in the domino room on the first floor.84 Marina Oswald identified the jacket as one of two he owned, the other being a light-colored gray jacket.85 Several brown head hairs found inside the blue jacket had the same microscopic characteristics as a sample of hair taken from Oswald.86 Leaving one’s jacket behind, particularly where Oswald did, can only go in the direction—though certainly not conclusively—of a consciousness of guilt, not innocence.

  43. When Oswald left his rooming house around 1:00 p.m. on the day of the assassination, the housekeeper noticed that he was zipping up his jacket, which he had not been wearing a few minutes earlier when he arrived at the rooming house. When he was arrested around forty-five minutes later, he did not have a jacket. Shortly after Tippit’s murder and after Oswald was seen running toward the rear of a Texaco gas station on Jefferson Boulevard, police found a light-colored jacket with a zipper under one of the cars in the parking lot behind the gas station. The last time anyone saw Oswald before he appeared near the Texas Theater was when Mary Brock, the wife of an employee at the gas station, saw him, wearing a light-colored jacket, walk past her into the parking lot at a fast pace.87 Marina Oswald later identified the jacket as being the second one her husband owned.88 What is additionally damning to Oswald is that the jacket was found along the path (from Tenth and Patton, south on Patton to Jefferson, then right or west on Jefferson, with a slight detour behind the gas station, then on to the Texas Theater) we know the murderer of Officer Tippit took after the slaying. Finally, dark blue, gray-black, and orange-yellow cotton fibers were found in the inside areas of the sleeves of the jacket, and their microscopic characteristics matched those of the dark blue, gray-black, and orange-yellow cotton fibers composing the brownish shirt that Oswald was wearing at the time of his arrest.89

  44. Oswald’s clipboard was found on the sixth floor after the assassination. Three orders for Scott, Foresman & Company books were on the clipboard, all dated November 22, 1963. Oswald had not filled any of the orders.90

  Oswald’s Own Words during His Interrogation

  I told the jury in London that during his interrogation, “Oswald, from his own lips, told us he was guilty. Almost the same as if he had said, ‘I murdered President Kennedy.’ How did he tell us? Well, the lies he told, one after another, showed an unmistakable consciousness of guilt.”91 Oswald tried very hard to lie his way out of the quickly developing evidence against him. Let’s look at some of the more important lies he told, each of which, alone and by itself, is evidence of his guilt because if he were innocent, he wouldn’t have had any reason to tell even one of the lies. More often than not in a criminal case, the means a criminal employs to conceal his guilt (here, Oswald’s words) are the precise means that reveal his culpability.

  45. Oswald lied when he denied purchasing the Carcano rifle from Klein’s Sporting Goods Company in Chicago. He even denied owning any rifle at all.92 Since Oswald knew he had killed Kennedy with that Carcano rifle, he knew he had no choice but to deny that the rifle was his. (It’s interesting to note that although Oswald himself knew the obvious, that ownership of the murder weapon was tantamount to identifying himself as Kennedy’s killer, his countless defenders in the conspiracy community apparently do not realize this.)

  46. When Oswald was shown a backyard photograph of himself holding the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, he lied and said it was not he holding the rifle, that someone had superimposed his face on someone else’s body.93

  47. He also lied when he said he had never seen the photograph before, even though handwriting experts concluded it was Oswald’s handwriting on the back of a copy of the photograph that was found among the personal effects of a friend of Oswald’s who later died.94

  48. Oswald consciously tried to distance himself from the murder weapon so much that he apparently even went to the following extreme: He and Marina and their daughter June lived at the apartment on Elsbeth Street in Dallas for exactly four months (November 3, 1962, to March 3, 1963),95 and then moved to the apartment on Neely Street for close to two months (March 3, 1963, to April 24, 1963).96 However, when he was asked to furnish all of his previous residences since his return from Russia, and the approximate time he lived at each, he gave all of them (including his residences in Fort Worth and New Orleans) with one notable exception. He omitted any reference to the Neely residence, the residence, of course, where he knew his wife had photographed him with the murder weapon in the backyard. He cleverly accounted for the close to two months at Neely by saying he lived seven months (not the actual four) at Elsbeth.97 And when Captain Fritz, during his interrogation of Oswald, asked Oswald about the Neely address, Oswald flat-out denied ever living there.98 All of this, of course, shows a consciousness of guilt on Oswald’s part.

  49. Oswald denied telling Wesley Frazier that the reason he came to Irving on Thursday night was to get curtain rods for his Dallas apartment.99

  50. He also denied putting any kind of long package or bag on the backseat o
f Frazier’s car on the morning of the assassination, saying he only brought a cheese sandwich and some fruit to work with him. But unfortunately for Oswald, not only did Frazier see him put the long package in the car, but Frazier’s sister, Linnie Mae Randle, also saw him put such a package in the car.100 Oswald also denied carrying any long package or bag into the Book Depository Building, which Frazier saw him do.101 He also denied telling Frazier that curtain rods were inside the large bag.102

  Warren Commission critics and defenders of Oswald have always steadfastly maintained that the brown paper bag was too short to contain even a disassembled Carcano. But if the Carcano was not in the bag that Frazier and his sister, Linnie Mae Randle, saw Oswald place in the backseat, and something nonincriminating was, instead of lying and saying he never placed a large bag or any other bag on the backseat, why didn’t Oswald admit placing the bag there and simply tell Captain Fritz what was in the bag? To put it succinctly, if Oswald’s rifle wasn’t in that bag, he wouldn’t have had any reason to lie and say that he did not put the bag on the backseat of Frazier’s car and did not carry it into the building that day.

  51. Oswald told Fritz that the only thing he brought to work on the morning of the assassination was his lunch, but we know from Frazier that this was the only day he noticed that Oswald did not bring his lunch.103

  52. Oswald told Fritz that at the time the president was shot, he was having lunch on the first floor with “Junior” (James Jarman Jr.) and another employee he did not identify, but Jarman testified that he did not have lunch with Oswald, that he ate alone.104

  53. Oswald told Fritz he had bought his .38 caliber Smith & Wesson revolver in Fort Worth,105 when he actually purchased it from a mail-order house in Los Angeles.106

  Not that the case against Oswald, which is already absolutely conclusive, needs any more strengthening, but the fact that Oswald never was able to offer any evidence at all to exonerate himself is itself evidence of his guilt. For instance, if, as the conspiracy theorists allege, Oswald was set up, and he knew he had been, then surely he would have known or at least have had some idea who framed him. Yet as we’ve seen, during his time in custody, instead of trying to clear himself by pointing to the identity of those who allegedly framed him, Oswald dug an even deeper hole for himself by telling one provable lie after another, showing a consciousness of guilt. Is that believable? Obviously, not. Oswald never put the hat on anyone because the hat only fit him. Even if he had no idea at all who framed him (which would be unlikely), if he knew he didn’t kill Kennedy with the Carcano rifle, why didn’t he, in anger, say something like this to the police questioning him: “Yes, the Carcano is my rifle, but someone stole it from where I had it in Ruth Paine’s garage. Find the SOB who stole my rifle and you’ll have the person who shot and killed Kennedy.”

  It should also be noted that after more than four decades of searching by the conspiracy theorists, they haven’t been able to come up with one speck of credible evidence that some other person killed Kennedy, which is additional circumstantial evidence of Oswald’s guilt. As Warren Commission member Allen Dulles told Look magazine in 1966, “If the Commission critics have found another assassin, let them name names and produce their evidence.” Author Jim Moore asks simply, “If Oswald is innocent, who did shoot President Kennedy and officer Tippit?”107

  If Oswald didn’t kill Kennedy and someone else did, how is it possible that there are, as I’ve set forth, fifty-three pieces of evidence pointing toward his guilt, and after close to forty-four years of an enormously massive investigation, not one single piece of evidence pointing toward the guilt of anyone else? Indeed, even though, as we’ve seen, everything Oswald did and said reeked of guilt, who else in Dallas that day was acting and talking guilty? No one. No one at all except Lee Harvey Oswald. By the way, knowing the conspiracy theorists as I have come to know them, I can assure you that if any one of the fifty-three pieces of evidence against Oswald presented here existed against some third party, that one piece, all by its lonesome, would be more than enough to convince the conspiracy community that he, not Oswald, was the killer of Kennedy.

  Coupled with all the evidence set forth, if anyone ever had the psychological profile of a presidential assassin, it was Lee Harvey Oswald. Here is someone who, as I point out in the “Motive” section of this book, not only had a propensity for violence (his attempted murder of Major General Edwin Walker seven months before the assassination, his threat to blow up the FBI building around two weeks before November 22,1963), but also was emotionally and psychologically unhinged; was a bitter, frustrated, and beaten-down loser who felt alienated from society and couldn’t get along with anyone, including his wife; irrationally viewed himself in a historical light, having visions of grandeur and of changing the world; was one whose political ideology consumed his daily life, causing him to keep time to his own drummer in a lonely obsession with Marxism and Castro’s Cuba; and hated his country and its representatives to such an extent that he defected to one of the most undesirable places on earth. If someone with not just one but all of these characteristics is not the most likely candidate to be a presidential assassin, then who would be?

  As we all know from reading the newspapers and watching the nightly news, with so many killers, including mass murderers, the discovery of their crimes is oftentimes met by incredulity on the part of neighbors, coworkers, and friends. But when Warren Commission counsel asked Fort Worth lawyer Max Clark, who knew Oswald, if, based on his knowledge of Oswald, he thought he was capable of killing Kennedy, Clark replied, “Definitely. I think he would have done this to President Kennedy or anyone else if he felt it would make him infamous.”108 Oswald’s disposition, personality, and virulent beliefs were such that when Michael Paine, Ruth Paine’s husband, heard of the assassination, he immediately “felt cold sweats.” Although he felt he probably was not involved, he thought of Oswald “as soon as I heard the Texas School Book Depository Building mentioned,” and “was nervous…wondering whether Oswald would do it.”109 Would that thought enter your mind if you learned the president had been shot from a building where a friend or acquaintance of yours worked? John Hall testified before the Warren Commission that when he and his Russian wife, Elena, and Max Clark and his wife, Gali, all friends of Lee and Marina’s, learned over television that the authorities believed Oswald had murdered the president, “We said, ‘I am not surprised at all. That is the kind of guy that would do something like that.’”110 And although there were some exceptions, this was generally the feeling among the people who knew him.

  Even UPI correspondent Aline Mosby, who met Oswald only once, when she interviewed him in his Moscow hotel room, said, “I was not surprised” when she received a phone call on the night of November 22, 1963, informing her that Oswald was a suspect in the president’s slaying.111 Think of anyone you know or have ever known. Do any of them even remotely come close to Oswald as the type of person who you would not be shocked to learn had killed the president of the United States?

  How exceedingly instructive and illuminating it is that those who knew Oswald personally felt that he was the exact type of person who would kill the president, and weren’t surprised at all by his arrest. And they felt this way without even being aware of the massive evidence against him that would eventually be gathered. Yet conspiracy theorists and Warren Commission critics around the country, not one of whom knew Oswald, and who are aware of all the evidence against him, are convinced he is innocent.

  I told the jury in London, “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, if Lee Harvey Oswald had nothing to do with President Kennedy’s assassination, and was framed, this otherwise independent and defiant would-be revolutionary who disliked taking orders from anyone turned out to be the most willing and cooperative framee in the history of mankind, because the evidence of his guilt is so monumental that he could just as well have gone around with a large sign on his back, declaring in bold letters, ‘I just murdered President John F. Kennedy.’ Anyone, anyone wh
o would believe that Lee Harvey Oswald was innocent would believe someone who told them that they once heard a cow speaking the Spanish language.” I went on to ask the jury, “If Oswald was framed, how could these phantom framers have gotten Oswald, who was supposed to be totally innocent, to act like the guiltiest person imaginable? For instance, how did they get him to tell one lie after another when he was taken into custody, such as that he did not own a rifle, that it wasn’t he in the backyard photo, that he never carried a large package into the building that day, et cetera? How, exactly, if Oswald is not guilty, did they get Oswald, within forty-five minutes after the assassination, to murder Officer Tippit? Or was he framed for that murder too?”112 I mean, why would Oswald, who supposedly, per the conspiracists, was only a patsy for Kennedy’s murder, decide, on his own, to murder Tippit?

  The case against Oswald consists of both direct evidence and circumstantial evidence. It is so overwhelming and absolute that even his own brother Robert felt constrained to say in 1993 that “a struggle…has gone on with me for almost thirty years now. This is mind over heart…The facts are there. And I say to people who want to distort the facts,…I say, ‘What do you do with his rifle? What do you do with his pistol?…What do you do with his actions?’ To me, you can’t reach but one conclusion. There’s hard physical evidence there. It’s good that people raise questions and say, ‘Wait a minute. Let’s take a second look at this.’ I think that’s great, you know? But when you take the second look and the third and the fortieth and the fiftieth—hey, enough’s enough. It’s there. Put it to rest.”113 But, of course, enough is never enough for the Warren Commission critics and conspiracy theorists. Enough isn’t even an hors d’oeuvre. Ten years later, Robert Oswald added, “He was my kid brother…If I had the facts that Lee was innocent, I would be out there shouting it loud and clear. It is my belief, my conviction, no one but Lee was involved, period.”114