Justification For Killing

by Larry Edward Hunt

  It is known at least twenty-nine Secret Service agents were in Dallas this horrific day; however, it is also known not a single one of them was ever near the area identified as the ‘Grassy Knoll’ or in the parking area behind the Texas School Book Depository. The Secret Service stated unequivocally: there were no agents on foot in the vicinity of Dealy Plaza before or immediately after the shooting.

  Three minutes after the shooting Oswald left the lunchroom on the second floor and headed for the main entrance. Oswald will later testify he ran into two Secret Service agents in front of the Book Depository. The agents ask the location of the nearest telephone. The men Oswald meet leaving the Texas School Book Depository are not Secret Service agents! In fact, the Secret Service will say they had no men on the ground, in or around Dealy Plaza prior to or after the assassination.

  Oswald will never be asked which exit he used or whether he had seen another policeman stationed at the door, and if so, did the officers try to stop him from leaving or did they attempt to check his identification to determine whom he was?

  Lonnie Joe and Rocky pretended to use the phone then made their way to the hallway outside the lunchroom where Rocky leaned against the wall next to Mr. Roy Trudy’s office. Lou and Bud mingled with the parade crowd outside on the steps leading into the building.

  Deputy Sheriff Roger D. Craig was standing outside the Sheriff’s Office at the corner of Houston and Main waiting to the see the parade. He had not been assigned any official Presidential motorcade responsibilities; he just wanted to see the President. A few seconds after the motorcade turned from Houston onto Elm he heard a shot ring out. Being an army veteran he immediately recognized it as a shot from a high-powered rifle. Springing into action as a Deputy Sheriff instead of a private citizen watching a parade he bolted across Houston and swiftly crossed the grass of Dealy Plaza and arrived at the Grassy Knoll. He encountered a man, the man’s wife and their son. They were the Rowlands. Deputy Craig asked Mr. and Mrs. Rowland to tell him what they had witnessed. Mrs. Barbara Rowland, looked down at her son Arnold, she asked him to tell the Deputy what he had just seen. Arnold said he had observed two men, one with a rifle with a telescope on the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository building. On further questioning, Officer Craig determined the window where the boy saw the two men. The window was on the SOUTHWEST corner of the TSBD building. Oswald supposedly fired from the SOUTHEAST corner window, on the far end of that building. Arnold Rowland further explained he saw the two men at least fifteen minutes before the motorcade arrived on Elm Street. A couple of minutes before the President arrived he glanced back up to the window, and only one man was seen, the other was gone! Officer Craig turned the trio over to Deputy Sheriff Lemmy Lewis the Criminal Investigator for the Sheriff’s department.

  Deputy Craig testified at the time he released the witnesses to Deputy Lewis about ten minutes had gone by since the sound of the first gunshot. It was at this time he noticed Deputy Sheriff Buddy Walthers searching the curb on the south side of Main Street. Officer Craig crossed Elm and inquired as to the purpose of the search. Officer Walthers said it had been reported to him someone had found a spot on the curb where a bullet appeared to have ricocheted. Craig began to assist Walthers in the search. As they were walking the curb looking for evidence, Deputy Craig heard a shrill whistle coming from the western end of the TSBD building. Looking over in that direction, he saw a man running around the corner of the building toward a Nash station wagon with a luggage rack on the rear of the top. The Nash was traveling west on Elm at a slow rate of speed. The driver was leaning over to his right as if he were searching for someone. The running man jumped into the station wagon, and it sped off in the direction of the triple overpass. He thought the make and color of the station wagon was a light tan or white Nash Rambler. When questioned as to the running mans description Deputy Craig testified, “Oh, he was a white male of middle age or older, at least six feet or taller, something like that; about 180 to 200 pounds; he had medium brown hair; you know like it had not been combed - you know like he had been in the wind or something - it was all wild looking; had on... a tan overcoat...,” he said the driver had short black hair, but couldn’t remember any more about him.

  “Had you ever seen either of these two men before?”

  “No, but I didn’t get a decent look at the driver.”

  “Did you have an opportunity to see either later?”

  “Yes, around 5:30 I went to Captain Fritz at the Sheriff’s office and told him what I had seen. He carried me into a small office with Oswald sitting in a chair beside the desk.”

  “Do you recognize this man?”

  “Yes,” said Deputy Craig, “this is the man I saw running around the building and jumping into the station wagon.” He was never questioned as to the discrepancy between seeing the six feet tall “Oswald” running from the building to the real Oswald’s 5’9” size.

  Deputy Sheriff Craig testified to the Warren Commission, “about ten minutes” had passed from the first shot to his interview with the Rowland family. Mr. Belin, the Commission attorney asked, “This would put the time at 12:40 p.m. when you walked across Elm Street to examine the bullet’s ricochet mark on the Main Street’s south curb and the time you heard the whistle?” Mr. Belin, asked what he did next, and Craig answered about moving to the front of the TSBD building and guarded the front door. He said he was not to let anyone in or out unless approved by the Captain in charge. “From the time of the first shot until you took up your post in front of the Texas School Book building how much time had passed?

  Craig answered, for the record, “I’d say nearly 20 minutes.”

  Sometime around the 30th of November the mother of one of the girls that work at Abraham Zapruder’s dress factory in the Dal-Tex building, across from the Texas School Book building, told an FBI interviewer her daughter and some of the girls at the factory knew Lee Harvey Oswald. They also knew Jack Ruby. She said her daughter and a few of the other girls saw Oswald come out of the TSBD and meet Jack Ruby. They said Ruby passed a gun to Oswald. Her daughter or the other girls have never substantiated this. Two glaring problems exist with this woman’s statement: if Ruby passed a gun to Oswald it would not have been so apparent and besides Rocky Jolliet was following Oswald out of the building as he walked east to the bus stop on Elm. Rocky never saw Oswald stop and talk to anyone

  Lee Harvey Oswald unhurriedly pushes his way through the throng of onlookers and walked down the seven concrete steps of the Texas School Book building onto the crowded sidewalk adjacent to the corner of Houston and Elm Street. He appeared to be looking around for something - first he looked back west toward the spot where the President had just been assassinated. Next he glanced down Houston and immediately turned to his left and strolls, again unhurriedly, across Houston and proceeded east down the north side of Elm.

  Lonnie Joe and Rocky met at the corner and decided Rocky would follow Oswald on foot and Lonnie Joe would hurry back to the parking lot at the Stephen Austin hotel, get their car and drive east on Wood Street to Lamar Street, a left turn north and he would be at the Greyhound bus station and in position to wait for Oswald to walk down Lamar.

  Rocky said, “I’m going to follow Oswald to the corner of Lamar and Elm and stop. I can watch him get on the bus at St. Paul from there. That should give me enough distance that he will not observe I am following him. We know after he gets on the bus he will ride from St. Paul up to Lamar and get off and walk the two blocks south to the Greyhound bus station. While the bus is traveling west from St. Paul to Lamar, I will quickly walk south down Lamar and meet you. I will walk on the east side of Lamar since Mr. Watley’s Checker cab will be parked in Stand Number Three on the west side of Lamar a few feet past the entrance to the bus station.”

  “Sounds good Rocky, I will position the car on the northeast corner of Jackson and Lamar. From there, we should have a perfect view of Mr. Watley’s cab and Oswald when he arrives.”

  At about this
time, the interference on the police radio stops. It has been determined the microphone has been “stuck” open for a total of four minutes; however, a strange occurrence was reported by several policemen on duty in the Police Dispatch room about an electronic beeping that those who understood Morse code said spelled out the word “Victory.” This has never been ‘officially’ proven, only the words of the officers present are to be believed.

  Another peculiar, inexplicable occurrence takes place. The telephone system in Washington, D. C. goes out. In some areas, it is off for upwards of an hour.

  Back in Dallas at Love Field, Master Sergeant Jonathon Medlock, Chief Steward on Air Force one was idling the time away until the presidential party arrives for the return trip to Washington listening to the Secret Service radio frequency. He heard one of the agents saying, “The President has been shot!! It is terrible; I believe it could be fatal. The President needs medical attention immediately. We have to — ” before Sergeant Rhodes could hear more details for some inexplicable reason the radio chatter turned into static. The first thing Sergeant Rhodes though was jamming. During the Korean War, he had served as a radio operator and recognized radio-jamming techniques. Nah, he thought, why would someone want to jam Air Force One? A few seconds later he tuned on one of the televisions aboard the Presidential plane and heard the painful news the President had been shot, this tragic information was relayed to the pilot Colonel Swindle and his co-pilot Lieutenant Colonel Lewis Hammonds.

  On November 22, at 12:36 p.m., Mr. John McWatters driving the Marsalis-Ramona-Elwood-Munger bus, known as the Marsalis 1213 run, left the intersection of St. Paul and Elm, going west on Elm Street - bound for Oak Cliff (Oswald’s rooming house was located at 1026 North Beckley Avenue in Oak Cliff). The Dallas Transit Company dispatcher verified the departure time of Mr. McWatters bus. It had arrived and departed on schedule from St. Paul and Elm. Heading west on Elm, he stopped at Griffin Street, he said during testimony with the Warren Commission, “I come to a complete stop, and when I did, someone come up and beat on the door of the bus. My bus was about even with Griffin Street; I was between Field Street and Griffin. This was the time Oswald boards the bus at a point on Elm St. seven short blocks east of the TSBD. The bus is traveling west toward Dealy Plaza, the area from which Oswald has just come. To do this, Oswald has had to walk, at a brisk pace, seven blocks from Dealey Plaza. The man got on the bus, fumbled around in his pocket and found 23-cent for the fare, and “he took the third chair back on the right.” Mary Bledsoe, sitting across from McWatters, in the side seat, would later identify the later arrival as Lee Harvey Oswald saying she knew him because he had previously been a former tenant of hers.

  The Warren Commission attorney asks, “Did he see you?”

  “No.”

  “Did you look at this man very long?”

  “I didn’t look at him at all, I only glanced at him as he walked on the bus.”

  “After he took a seat did you have an occasion to look at him?”

  “No, as I said, I did not want to see him.”

  “Why?”

  “I just didn’t like him.”

  “He only stayed at your house five days, is this right?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Did he say or do something to make you mad at him?”

  “No, I just didn’t like his looks.”

  The Warren Commissions only witness for substantiating Oswald’s presence on the bus was Mary Bledsoe, an elderly widow who lives at 621 North Marsalis Street (Mrs. Bledsoe first met Lee Harvey Oswald in early October 1963 when he had rented a room in her house. He stayed there for less than a week. This is the first time she has supposedly seen him since then.)

  Her account, however, differed from two other witnesses on the bus: the bus driver, Cecil J. McWatters and Milton Jones (a part-time student attending the morning classes at Dallas Technical High School) who was sitting near the front of the bus. McWatters and Jones agree the man who boards the bus was wearing a jacket. Mrs. Bledsoe testifies the man she saw, Oswald is in shirtsleeves, and he boarded the bus taking a seat near the front of the bus -- immediately behind Jones. Mr. McWatters said the man sat in the back of the bus. The Commission accepts Mrs. Bledsoe’s testimony over McWatters and Jones.

  The bus was headed west toward Dealey Plaza; it ran into a bumper-to-bumper traffic jam, bringing all traffic to a stop. Mr. McWatters testified to the Warren Commission attorney, Mr. Ball, that once the bus had become entangled in traffic a woman asked if she could get off because she had to catch a train at Union Station, four blocks south of Dealy Plaza on Houston Street. She asked, and received a transfer ticket, telling the driver she would reboard the bus if he were able to proceed through the traffic tie-up. Mr. McWatters further testified another man said he was getting off the bus also, and he wanted a transfer. The driver thought this strange since he had only got on the bus two blocks earlier.

  “This all occurred at the intersection near Lamar Street? Lamar is only three blocks from the corner of Houston and Elm?”

  “That is correct,” answered Mr. McWatters.

  “Did you later go to police headquarters and witness a lineup?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you identify Lee Harvey Oswald?”

  “No, I identified one of the men in the lineup that was of the same build as the man who got on my bus between Griffin and Field Street, but I never said he was Oswald.”

  “Did you know if the man you identified in the lineup was Oswald, the man who boarded your bus?”

  “No sir, I was never told whether it was him or not.”

  “Okay, let me get this straight – later that afternoon Mr. McWatters you were taken to the Dallas Police headquarters and shown a lineup. Lee Harvey Oswald was in the group of four men. You were asked if any of the four men was the man who boarded your bus at Griffin Street, received a transfer ticket and got off at Lamar Street.” Mr. Ball, attorney for the Warren Commission asked. “Anyway, you were not able to identify any man in the lineup as the passenger?”

  The bus driver Mr. McWatters answered, “No sir.”

  Two blocks to the west Rocky Jolliet, walking as fast as humanly possible south on Lamar, had beaten Oswald to the Greyhound Bus Station and was now, breathing hard but resting comfortably in the car with Lonnie Joe was awaiting Oswald’s arrival across the street at the taxi stand.

  After leaving McWatters bus, the official story, as now taken as fact, states Oswald walked two blocks south to the Greyhound bus station at the corner of Lamar and Commerce Street. He walks up to a cab and says to William Whaley, the cab driver, “May I have this cab?”

  “You sure can, get in.”

  Instead of opening the rear passenger door, the man opens the front passenger door and gets in next to the driver. Mr. Whatley explains this is done frequently and is okay with his company.

  It is approximately twenty minutes before one o’clock; records of The Warren Commission establish Lee Harvey Oswald obtained a ride from a taxicab parked in front of the Greyhound bus station. Proof of this taxicab ride was provided by the driver’s taxi log for Friday the 22nd, which showed a trip for a single passenger from the Greyhound Bus Station to the 500 Block of North Beckley.

  Mr. Whatley’s records showed the taxi ride lasted from 12:30 p.m. to 12:45 p.m. If the times he recorded were correct, it would mean Oswald boarded the cab at the exact time an assassin shot JFK from the window of the Texas School Book depository about seven blocks away. Obviously, the assassin could not have been Oswald.

  The Warren Commission explained this apparent inconsistency by saying the taxi driver recorded his trips by quarter-hour intervals regardless of their actual length. Using the same log the Commission could have proven Mr. Whatley may have been logging actual trip data. A look at his entire log show he had pickups and discharges at 7:40, 8:10, 9:25, 11:05 and 11:35. Further, Whatley testified just as he shifted his taxi into low gear to leave the bus station, an elderly woman approached his driver sid
e window and asked Mr. Whatley if he would get her a cab. Whatley’s passenger, presumably Lee Harvey Oswald, opens the cab door and tells the lady, “I am in no hurry, you can have my cab.” The lady says she appreciated the gesture, but the driver could call another cab for her.

  Does anyone else seem to think it strange the passenger’s behavior in this instance was peculiar? Especially since this man has just assassinated the President of the United States and was attempting to flee the scene of the crime? This all seems farfetched; however, the Warren Commission would eventually conclude Oswald, was without a doubt, the passenger Mr. Whatley drove from the Greyhound Bus Station to North Beckley at a couple of minutes past 12:30 the afternoon of November the 22nd. To come to this conclusion, the Warren Commission would rely solely on the testimony of the taxi driver Mr. Whatley.

  Ten minutes after the Presidential shooting, the staff at the Parkland Hospital emergency room was prepared to receive John Kennedy, case ‘24740, white male, suffering from gunshot wounds to the back and neck.’

  It was long until the mortally wounded President Kennedy was wheeled into the emergency room at Parkland Hospital. A couple of minutes later, Secret Service Agent Clint Hill, the agent who had earlier been spread eagled on the rear of the Presidential limousine, was now walking around the emergency room in a wild-eyed, disoriented fashion, waving his .38 caliber service revolver over his head threatening to shoot someone. Robbie Newman the head nurse in the trauma room spoke to Hill and tried to calm him down, “I can tell you agent, whoever shot the President is not in this emergency room. That I can assure you.” Hill huffed, stared at her and attempted to say something, but thought better of it and leaves.

  Police broadcast over the police airwaves a description of the suspect in the President Kennedy assassination. The description was for, “a white male, age approximately thirty to thirty-five, slim build, height around five feet ten inches, weight estimated to be around one hundred sixty-five pounds possibly armed and dangerous.” The time of broadcast: 12:45 p.m.