Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery

by Norman Mailer

  And the gentlemen left, and I did not see them after that.

  And they sent the stenographer that was in the outer office to sit with me, and she started to question me.

  I said, “Young lady, I am not going to be questioned. You may just as well make up your mind that I am just going to sit here.”3

  Once more, no twelve-year interval is apparent as she speaks to Schiller in 1976:

  She said, “Uh, well, Mrs. Oswald, I’m here to be with you,” [and] she didn’t try to question me or anything. I’m going to say something that is beneath my dignity, but we live in a world, I mean, it’s not beneath my dignity. I told her I wanted to go to the bathroom. But I couldn’t even leave the room, I was under wraps. She put a lot of newspaper in the wastebasket and let me urinate in it. I was indignant and furious [but] I didn’t say too much because I sensed she was, you know, an officer of the court.4

  MARGUERITE OSWALD: I sat in the office approximately 2 or 3 hours alone, gentlemen, with this woman who came in and out [before] I was escorted into the office where Marina and Mrs. Paine was. And, of course, I started crying right away and hugged Marina. And Marina gave me Rachel, whom I had never seen. I did not know I had a second grandchild until this very moment. So I started to cry. Marina started to cry. And Mrs. Paine said, “Oh, Mrs. Oswald, I am so glad to meet you. Marina has often expressed the desire to contact you, especially when the baby was being born. But Lee didn’t want her to.”

  And I said, “Mrs. Paine, you spoke English. Why didn’t you contact me?”5

  McMillan: Marina has no idea how long they were at police headquarters, but eventually she, Ruth, Michael, and the four children were allowed to go back to the Paines’. She does not remember whether they ate, or what they ate, or who did the cooking. But the house was in an uproar. It was overrun by reporters who wanted to talk to Marina, Ruth, and Marguerite. Suddenly there were angry words between Ruth and Marguerite.6

  MARGUERITE OSWALD. Why I am bringing this up was because after I was in [Mrs. Paine’s] home about 5 minutes, there was a knock on the door, and these two Life representatives entered the home.

  The name of the men, one is Allan Grant, and the other is Tommy Thompson.

  And I was not introduced . . .

  MR. RANKIN. What time of day was this?

  MRS. OSWALD. This was approximately 6:30. We had just arrived . . . We are home 5 minutes when they knocked on the door.

  Mrs. Paine immediately says, “I hope you have colored film so we will have some good pictures.”

  I didn’t know who they were.

  But then I knew they were newsmen, because of her statement and the camera.

  So Tommy Thompson started to interview Mrs. Paine. He said, “Mrs. Paine, tell me, are Marina and Lee separated since Lee lives in Dallas?”

  She said, “No, they are a happy family. Lee lives in Dallas because of necessity. He works in Dallas, and this is Irving, and he has no transportation, and he comes every weekend to see his family.”

  “Well,” he said, “what type of family man is he?”

  She said, “A normal family man. He plays with his children. Last night he fed June. He watches television and just normal things.” . . .

  Now, while this little episode went on, I was fuming, gentlemen, because I didn’t want this type of publicity. I thought it was uncalled for, immediately after the assassination, and the consequent arrest of my son.

  But I was in Mrs. Paine’s home.

  Now I had an opportunity to be gracious. I spoke up . . . and I said, “Now, Mrs. Paine, I am sorry. I am in your home. And I appreciate the fact that I am a guest in your home. But I will not have you making statements that are incorrect. Because I happen to know you have made an incorrect statement. To begin with, I do not approve of this publicity. And if we are going to have the life story with Life magazine”—by that time I knew what it was—“I would like to get paid. Here is my daughter-in-law with two small children and I, myself, am penniless, and if we are going to give this information, I believe we should get paid for it.” . . .

  Then with that, the Life representative got up and said, “Mrs. Oswald, I will call my office and see what they think about an arrangement of your life story.”

  . . . He closed the door and called in private. And nothing was said—in the living room . . .

  He came out from the telephone conversation and said no, that the company would not allow him to pay for the story. What they would do—they would pay our expenses while in Dallas, our food and expenses, hotel accommodation.

  So I told him that I would think about it.

  Now, they continued to hang around. And they were taking pictures continuously, all the while this was going on—the photographer, Mr. Allen, was continuously taking pictures. I was awfully tired and upset. I rolled my stockings down, and the picture is in Life magazine . . . So I got up and said, “I am not having this invasion of privacy. I realize that I am in Mrs. Paine’s home. But you are taking my picture without my consent and a picture that I certainly don’t want made public.” It is the worst—with me rolling my hose. I wanted to get comfortable.

  He followed Marina around in the bedroom. She was undressing June. He took pictures of everything. And Mrs. Paine was in her glory—I will say this. Mrs. Paine was very happy all these pictures were taken . . . until finally I became indignant and said, “I have had it. Now, find out what accommodations you can make for us, for my daughter-in-law and I so that we can be in Dallas to help Lee, and let me know in the morning.”

  So they left.7

  MRS. PAINE. . . . It was by this time dark, and I think it was about 9 o’clock in the evening. I asked Michael to go out and buy hamburgers at a drive-in so we wouldn’t have to cook, and we ate these as best we could, and began to prepare to retire . . .

  Just close to the time of retiring Marina told me that just the night before Lee had said to her he hoped they could get an apartment together again soon. As she said this, I felt she was hurt and confused, wondering how he could have said such a thing which indicated wanting to be together with her when he must have already been planning something that would inevitably cause separation. I asked her did she think that Lee had killed the President and she said, “I don’t know.”8

  McMillan: Marina later made a terrible discovery. She happened to glance at the bureau and saw that, again by a miracle of oversight, the police had left another of her possessions behind. It was a delicate little demi-tasse cup of pale blue-green with violets and a slender golden rim that had belonged to her grandmother. It was so thin that the light glowed through it as if it were parchment. Marina looked inside. There lay Lee’s wedding ring.9

  Since the ring was loose on his finger, sometimes at work he would put it in his pocket for safekeeping. But he had never failed to have it with him. Now, this morning, he had left it behind.

  There were other discoveries. In a baby book they were keeping for June, she found two photographs of Lee holding his rifle and his revolver, those same stupid pictures he had made her take of him that stupid Sunday on Neely Street.

  McMillan: She took them out of the baby book carefully and, in the privacy of the bedroom, showed them to her mother-in-law. “Mama,” she said, pointing to the photographs and explaining as best she could in English, “Walker—this is Lee.” “Oh, no,” Marguerite moaned, [and] put her finger to her mouth, pointed toward Ruth’s room, and said, “Ruth, no.” She shook her head, meaning Marina was not to show the photographs to Ruth, or tell her anything about them.10

  This compact to hide evidence takes us, however, well into Friday night. Where is Lee by now? We last saw him about two o’clock in the afternoon. What has been happening since he entered police headquarters in City Hall after informing the police that he would not cover his face since he had done nothing to be ashamed of?

  7

  The Octopus Outside

  The pandemonium on the third floor of police headquarters in the City Hall of Dallas began
to increase an hour after Lee’s arrest and it would mount day and night (with small respites in the early hours of the morning), through Friday afternoon and evening, all of Saturday, and Sunday morning. The press of America, of the Western world, and much of the rest of the world, as well as every scout and stringer of TV and radio able to get a ticket to Dallas, crowded onto that third floor, and the descriptions given by Captain Will Fritz, who led the intermittent interrogation of Oswald during those forty-four hours, and by Forrest Sorrels, the Secret Service chief in Dallas, manage to depict the scene.

  MR. HUBERT. [Was it] your concern that the position and closeness and mass of the news media there presented a threat . . . ?

  MR. FRITZ. We didn’t know many of these people. We knew very few. We knew the local people. Many people were there from foreign countries and some of them looked unkempt. We didn’t know anything about who they were.

  For that reason, we wouldn’t want them up there with us at all if we could avoid it, plus the fact that the camera lights were blinding, and if you couldn’t see where you were going or what you were doing, anything could happen.

  We didn’t think we would have lights in our eyes but we were blinded by the lights. Just about the time we left the jail office, the lights came on and were blinding.

  We got along all right with the press here in Dallas. They do what we ask. [Our] people didn’t act that way. [But the other] people were excited and acted more like a mob.1

  MR. SORRELS. . . . You would have to elbow your way through, and step over cables and tripods and wires, and every time almost that I would come out of Captain Fritz’s office, the minute the door opened, they would flash on these bright lights, and I got where I just shadowed my eyes when I walked down there to keep the light from shining in my eyes. They had cables run through one deputy sheriff’s office, right through the windows from the street up the side of the building, across the floor, out to the boxes where they could get power—they had wires running out of that, had the wires taped down to keep people from actually falling or stumbling over the wires. And it was just a condition that you can hardly explain.2

  Like an octopus, the media seized the event with its limbs and suffocated movement with its body. The media had become a new force in human existence; it was on the way to taking over everything, as Nixon would learn at Watergate, and as Oswald would find out in a thunderclap on Sunday at 11:22 in the morning after two days of gathering in some vast multiple of all the attention he had been denied for most of his life.

  But let us go back and take the events of those days in order, even if there was very little order.

  MR. BALL. . . . Now, what time was it that you heard the President had been shot?

  MR. FRITZ. . . . one of the Secret Service men that was assigned to [our] location . . . got a call on his little transistor radio and Chief Stevenson . . . asked me to go to the hospital [but] I felt we were going to the wrong place, we should go to the scene of the crime and he said, “Well, go ahead,” . . . 3

  Arriving at the Book Depository at 12:58 P.M., Captain Fritz ordered the building sealed and began searching the floors methodically.

  MR. FRITZ. We started at the bottom; yes, sir. And of course . . . different people would call me when they would find something that looked like something I should know about and I ran back and forth from floor to floor as we were searching, and it wasn’t very long until someone . . . wanted me to come to the front window, the corner window, they had found some empty cartridges [in] the sixth floor corner . . .

  MR. BALL. What did you do?

  MR. FRITZ. I told them not to . . . touch anything until we could get the crime lab to take pictures of them just as they were lying there . . . 4

  MR. MCCLOY. . . . Was there anything in the nature of a gun rest there or anything that could be used as a gun rest?

  MR. FRITZ. Yes, sir; [one box] was in the window, and another box was on the floor. There were some boxes stacked to his right that more or less blinded him from the rest of the floor. If anyone else had been [there] I doubt if they could have seen where he was sitting.5

  . . . A few minutes later some officer called me and said they had found the rifle over near the back stairway . . .

  MR. BALL. While you were there, Mr. Truly came up to you?

  MR. FRITZ. Yes, sir . . . Mr. Truly came and told me that one of his employees had left the building, and . . . he gave me the name, Lee Harvey Oswald, and . . . the Irving address.6

  Truly’s testimony offers the impression of a decent man in an indecent situation.

  MR. TRULY. . . . I noticed that Lee Oswald was not among these boys . . . I asked Bill Shelley if he had seen him, he looked around and said no . . . So Mr. Campbell is standing there and I said, “I have a boy over here missing. I don’t know whether to report it or not.” . . . [and he] said, “Well, we better do it anyway.” It was so quick after that.

  So I picked the phone up then . . . and got the boy’s name and general description and telephone number and address at Irving . . .

  MR. BELIN. Why didn’t you ask for any other employees?

  MR. TRULY. That is the only one that I could be certain . . . was missing. [Then] I told Chief Lumpkin that I had a boy missing over here—“I don’t know whether it amounts to anything or not.” And he says, “Just a moment. We will go tell Captain Fritz.”

  [And Captain Fritz] says, “Thank you, Mr. Truly. We will take care of it.”

  And I went back downstairs in a few minutes.

  There was a reporter followed me away from that spot, and asked me who Oswald was. I told the reporter, “You must have ears like a bird or something. I don’t want to say anything about a boy I don’t know anything about. This is a terrible thing.” Or words to that effect.

  I said, “Don’t bother me. Don’t mention the name. Let’s find something out.”7

  Captain Fritz now drove over to City Hall to ascertain whether the missing employee had a criminal record, but when he got there

  . . . we heard that our officer had been killed, [and] I asked . . . who shot [Tippit], and they told me his name was Oswald, and I said, “His full name?” And they told me and I said, “This is the suspect we are looking for in the President’s killing.”8

  At that point, Fritz started to send some men to the house in Irving, but an officer told him, “Captain, we can save you a trip. There he sits.”

  Yes, there he sat in an interrogation room in City Hall.

  MR. FRITZ. So then I . . . asked them about how much evidence we had on the officer’s killing and they told me they had several eye witnesses . . . and I instructed them to get those witnesses over for identification just as soon as they could, and for us to prepare a real good case on the officer’s killing so we would have a case to hold [Oswald] without bond while we investigated the President’s killing where we didn’t have so many witnesses.9

  Now that he had a suspect who could be held, he was ready to begin questioning:

  MR. BALL. Will you describe the interrogation room . . . ?

  MR. FRITZ. . . . room 317, on the third floor of the courts building . . . I believe it is 9½ feet by 14 feet . . . Glass all around, and it has a door leading out into a hallway . . . 10

  My office is badly arranged for a thing of this kind. We never had anything like this before, of course. I don’t have a back door and I don’t have a door to the jail elevator without having to go through that hall for 20 feet, and each time we went through the hallway to and from the jail we had to pull him through all those [press and TV] people and they, of course, would holler at him and say things to him, and some of them were bad things, and some were things that seemed to please him and some seemed to aggravate him, and I don’t think that helped at all in questioning him. I think that all of that had a tendency to keep him upset.

  MR. BALL. What about the interview itself?

  MR. FRITZ. . . . we did have a lot of people in the office there to be interviewing a man. It is much better, and y
ou can keep a man’s attention and his thoughts on what you are talking about to him better, I think, if there are not more than two or three people.

  But in a case of this nature . . . we certainly couldn’t tell the Secret Service and the FBI we didn’t want them to work on it . . . so we, of course, invited them in too but it did make a pretty big crowd.

  MR. BALL. Did you have any tape recorder?

  MR. FRITZ. No, sir; I didn’t have a tape recorder. We need one; if we had one at this time we could have handled these conversations far better.

  MR. BALL. The Dallas Police Department doesn’t have one?

  MR. FRITZ. No, sir; I have requested one several times but so far they haven’t gotten me one.11

  MR. BALL. And you had quite a few interruptions, too, during the questioning, didn’t you?

  MR. FRITZ. Yes, sir; we had quite a lot of interruptions . . . I don’t think there was a lot that could have been done other than move that crowd out of there, but I think it would have been more apt to get a confession out of it or get more true facts from him if I could have got him to sit down and quietly talked with him.12

  Yes, there was Captain Fritz without a tape recorder, taking notes on a pad when Oswald would answer a question; pleasant, almost friendly was Fritz, a short man, built like a bull, and he wore thick-lensed glasses. He was famed in Dallas for his powers of interrogation, which were considered both very good and yet not good at all by the same man, Henry Wade, the District Attorney.

  MR. WADE. . . . Fritz runs a kind of one-man operation where nobody else knows what he is doing. Even me, for instance, he is reluctant to tell me, either, but I don’t mean that disparagingly. I will say Captain Fritz is about as good a man at solving a crime as I ever saw, to find out who did it, but he is the poorest in the getting evidence that I know, and I am more interested in getting evidence, and there is where our major conflict comes in.13