by Jim Bishop
15. Selective Service registration certificate in name of Lee Harvey Oswald, bearing signature, Lee Harvey Oswald, Oct. 18, 1939.
16. Slip of paper marked Embassy USSR, 1609 Decatur St., N.W. Washington, D.C., Consular Pezhuyehko.
17. Slip of paper marked The Worker, 23 W. 26th Street, New York 10, New York.; The Worker, Box 28 Madison Square Station, New York 10, N.Y.
18. Snub-nosed Smith and Wesson Revolver, .38. Chambers loaded.
19. Two types ammunition, 6 cartridges, .38.
Fritz, like some policemen, can detect a complicated matter from a distance. The nineteen items added up to two persons who were possibly one, with overtones of communism or a communistic plot, in addition to evidence which pointed to this man as a possible double murderer. The captain did not know how smart the fellow was; he would know in a moment. He left his desk and asked a policeman to get a superior officer to start collecting eyewitnesses to the Tippit murder in headquarters. If any two of them could pick this man out in a lineup, it would be enough to hold him on suspicion of homicide and give everybody time to start unraveling the assassination from the murder.
At a door, a policeman whispered to Fritz: “I hear this Oswald has a furnished room on Beckley.” Fritz blinked his owlish eyes and went into the room. He had noticed that the hall outside was beginning to look crowded with reporters and photographers. Policemen moving from one office to another had to step gingerly over long black cables which snaked the length of the hall. Technicians were bringing a heavy-duty cable up from a generator down in the street. It was being hauled up the outside wall.
The situation in Dallas began, at this point, to go out of control. Press relations was not a function of Captain Will Fritz, but he was not blind to the increasing number of reporters and photographers choking the hall of the third floor. The police department had a press relations man, Captain Glen D. King. He was a personable officer who realized that, while he had the law on his side, the press had the last loud word on theirs. His office adjoined Chief Curry’s, and King was responsible to Curry. It was a pleasant situation, so long as the captain worked for a man who was afraid of the press and what it could do to him. King could go to Fritz or Jack Revill, the newly appointed lieutenant in charge of police intelligence, and get the latest information on any story and release what he thought was proper and discreet. Fritz remained aloof from it. He ran his Homicide and Robbery Division as though it was an entity unto itself.
Fritz decided that he did not want a stenographer to take notes while he questioned this prisoner. Nor did he desire a tape recorder. The first order of business would be to find out what kind of a fish he had in the net, who he was, where from, how clever and, most of all, how tough. There was a time, not too long ago, when the first order of business would have been for a couple of young detectives to rattle the prisoner around a locker room to still the stubbornness and develop some cooperation. Those days were past. Fritz had to match wits with his prisoners, frequently a tiresome game of listening to obvious lies hours on end.
He sat with a sigh. “All right, son,” he said. “What’s your name?”
The crew of Air Force One monitored the Secret Service. They had heard the walkie-talkies discuss an unannounced departure from Parkland Hospital. Colonel Swindal ordered the crew to unscrew two double seats adjacent to the rear entrance of the plane and to secure them in the tail. The box containing the President’s remains could be carried up there and lashed to eyebolts in the floor. He called the tower and asked for taxi instructions. They gave him wind, barometric setting, clearance on Runway 31, and a handoff to Fort Worth FAA after passing the outer perimeter.
He didn’t start an engine. A Secret Service agent came forward and told the crew that the Johnson party was already aboard and the Vice-President was waiting for Mrs. Kennedy. A generator truck stood below, whining at the nose of the air giant, but the crew engineer did not turn the air conditioning on. The captain of Air Force Two was told to open his hatches. Some luggage came from his plane and was carried by hand to Air Force One. Whoever was in charge was confused, because he began to take some of the Kennedy luggage from Air Force One and place it on Two. The pilot of the press plane asked for instructions and was told that no one knew the plans of the press. He was to remain on the stand for instructions.
Swindal was told by the tower that a small plane was en route from Austin with a “V.I.P.” for Johnson. Could the private plane have clearance to pull up alongside AF-1? Swindal asked who was on the little plane. No one seemed to know. Then the plane, still en route, caught the question and said: “Bill Moyers.” Permission was granted. Moyers was a young assistant to Johnson, an ordained Baptist minister who was not yet thirty years old and was associate director of the Peace Corps.
Richard Johnson, of the Secret Service, watched the casket roll up the hospital corridor like a box of laundry. He was approached by O. P. Wright, a hospital policeman, who handed an expended bullet to him. “The Secret Service may want this,” said Mr. Wright. Johnson rolled it around in the palm of his hand. “Where’d you get it?” he said. Wright explained that there were some carts, used ones, standing between the restroom and the elevator. This one had rolled off a cart. “It may have come from the President’s cart.” It couldn’t. Mr. Kennedy’s cart remained in Trauma One until after his body had been prepared for the trip. The body had been lifted from that table to Oneal’s funeral carriage. “I also found rubber gloves and a stethoscope on that cart.” the cop said.
Johnson slipped the bullet into his pocket. He had been told to get on the follow-up car to the airport. There was no time for further conversation. He thanked the man and started out. Back in Trauma One, Miss Bowron studied the antiseptic brightness of the room—ready now for another effort to save another life—and she reached into her pocket. She had the President’s watch. She ran through the corridors, holding it ahead, the gold band dull with dry blood, and gave it to a member of the party. At the same time, Doris Nelson found a blue coat. In it was an envelope marked “cash” and a card labeled “Clint Hill.” They, too, were returned. It was the jacket Clint Hill had tossed over the dead President’s face.
On the National Broadcasting Company network, Tom Whalen intoned: “The weapon which was used to kill the President and which wounded Governor Connally has been found in the Texas School Depository on the sixth floor—a British .303 rifle with a telescopic sight. Three empty cartridge cases were found beside the weapon. It appeared that whoever had occupied this sniper’s nest had been there for some time.”
The casket was moving fast now, except for the sharp turns leading back to the emergency entrance of the hospital. Vernon Oneal was pulling; two of his men pushed from behind. Jack Price, administrator of the hospital, ran ahead asking everyone to please step aside. Everyone did, except the priest, who had arrived late. He held up a hand to stop the casket and suggested that he say some prayers over it. “Not now!” an agent yelled hoarsely, and the body kept moving. Price touched the top of it. He didn’t know why, but he had to do it. He told himself it was a sort of final salute.
An attendant held the door open and the gleaming casket emerged into the sunshine. A few uniformed nurses stood outside the door, under the eaves, weeping. A doctor at a third-floor window glanced once and turned his back to the scene. Tom Wicker of The New York Times stood near some parked cars watching. Larry O’Brien and Kenny O’Donnell, hanging onto silver handles, had their heads down. They were weeping. Some of the White House staff stood near the back of the white Oneal ambulance, mouths and eyes agape, not believing.
Mrs. Kennedy came out into the sunshine, a portrait of despair. The hat was gone. The pink suit was splashed with blood. The stockings, askew, stuck to the legs with dry blood and brain matter. The white gloves were darkened with deep stains. The face, the immaculate face, was almost wild-eyed, whether with fear that they might take him away again or with the crashing waves of reality which come in steady tandem to all who grieve or
whether the emotions were cracking under the repeated cruelties—no one knows. The doctors had offered her sedation several times; one even offered to help her clean the blood from her person. She preferred to taste death at the side of her husband, and, at 2:05 P.M., her knees were beginning to knock without control, her fingers trembled, her brain might not endure one more brutality.
Nor was O’Donnell certain that they were going to be able to steal the body of the President of the United States from officious Dallas. He urged Vernon Oneal to hurry. The mortician asked the Secret Service if they were going to the mortuary. They said yes, yes. Suddenly, the flight from Parkland Hospital became more precipitous than that of Lyndon Johnson. Men were running for cars; motors were starting; police were trying to line up as escorts and were told to “get the hell out of the way.”
No one paused to reason. Roy Kellerman ordered Agent Andy Berger to get behind the wheel of the ambulance and drive to Love Field. Mr. Oneal wanted to know why he was not permitted to drive his own hearse, and he was told to stand aside. Kellerman tried to get Mrs. Kennedy in beside the driver, but she insisted that she would sit in the back “beside my husband.” Doctor Burkley got in the back and helped her up and in. The third person, Clint Hill, got inside and slammed the back doors.
Agent Stewart Stout got in front. Roy Kellerman ran around the ambulance to make certain that the right people were inside. Then he told Kenneth O’Donnell and Lawrence O’Brien to take the next car and, privately, head for Love Field and Air Force One. Audrey Riker, who worked for Oneal, ran up to the driver’s side of the ambulance and said: “Meet you at the mortuary,” and Berger nodded: “Yes, sir.”
The ambulance left the parking area fast. It moved across the service road to Harry Hines Boulevard and Berger hit the siren to clear the traffic. Roy Kellerman was on the radio, telling the agents at Love Field to permit an ambulance and one following car through the fence. After that, shut it to everyone and seal it off. In the back, Clint Hill watched behind and saw Oneal and his assistants make the turn—the wrong way to get to the mortuary. They were following, but they were behind O’Brien and O’Donnell and the agents in the second car.
O’Donnell was radioing the same instructions from the second car. Let the ambulance and one other through the fence. Then lock the place up. Tell Colonel Swindal to get ready for takeoff at once. The party would be aboard in ten minutes.
The sun used Air Force One as an aluminum oven. It was unbearably hot inside, and yet people were running toward the front or the back with imperative instructions from someone else. Both entrances were sealed tight. President Johnson received a return phone call from Assistant Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach with the precise wording of the oath of office. Johnson asked a secretary, Miss Marie Fehmer, to please take it down and type it. Mr. Johnson looked at the television set in time to hear a commentator say that the Dallas Police Department had just arrested a suspect in the assassination.
The President, on another phone, thought of Federal Judge Sarah Hughes, a Kennedy appointee. The communications people required a couple of minutes to find out her local office number. Then Johnson called, but her office said she was out. He asked that she be found at once and to call him through the White House number in Dallas. He paced the little bedroom, thought of other phone calls, and made them. Mrs. Johnson understood this reaction better than anyone else. Her husband was a man of action; inaction could kill him, but not work.
The day was so horrifying, so beyond belief, that she had to keep reminding herself that it had really happened; then when the reality crushed her, she tried to think of other things. Sometimes, she was seen with a fixed half smile on her face as though people were watching and she had to put up a front. She had been reassured that her daughters were now under the protection of the Secret Service; she wondered what they were thinking. She thought of the two little Kennedy children, and it was a thought impossible to sustain.
Judge Sarah Hughes phoned, and Johnson briefly explained the tragedy and asked if she could come right out to Love Field; he would send Secret Service agents to escort her. No, the judge said, she knew quicker ways of getting to the airport than the White House detail, and she would be there in ten minutes. That would bring her to Air Force One by 2:20. The President said to please hurry, that they desired to take off for Washington. He hung up and told Agent Youngblood to radio clearance for the judge. She would be along in a few minutes. “Check on the location of Mrs. Kennedy, too,” Johnson said. “Let me know when she will arrive.”
Fritz could hear the noise from the corridor, and he asked two of his detectives to tell the newsmen to hold the noise down. An agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, James Bookhout, phoned his office in Dallas and said that a suspect in the Tippit killing had been picked up. His name was Lee Harvey Oswald. In the office, Agent James Hosty was still running through the old files, trying to dig up anyone who might be a suspect in the assassination, and, when he heard the name Oswald, he felt the chill that comes to all law officers who find themselves on the wrong end of a gigantic surprise.
At once Hosty reported to his boss, Gordon Shanklin, that he had been handling the case of a Lee Harvey Oswald, that he was a defector who had fled to Russia, returned to Texas with a Russian bride, left Texas for his native home in New Orleans, fled to Mexico recently in an attempt to get to Cuba, been turned down, and come home to Irving, Texas. Shanklin demanded a quick rundown, and Hosty said that Oswald could not, on his performance chart, be regarded as a potential cop killer. He wasn’t even a member of the local Communist Party. Hosty knew, because the FBI had a man in it who kept him well-informed.
Shanklin got on the phone. He spoke to Will Fritz. Again he offered the services and facilities of the FBI—in Dallas and in Washington—to the Dallas Police Department. He also asked if he could send Agent Jim Hosty as the bureau representative to listen in on the interrogation of the prisoner. The FBI knew a little about Oswald. The police captain said to send Hosty on over.
The disparate work of the law enforcement agencies began to spread and dissolve, then congeal, only to dissolve again. Three detectives were en route to Oswald’s home in Irving. Stovall phoned ahead to the Irving police and asked to have some local officers meet them at the city line. Their assignment was to find out who lived with the suspect and to search the premises and take with them anything which might be regarded as evidence.
At the Trade Mart, there were several anti-Kennedy pickets who had not heard the news. Lieutenant Jack Revill and his Intelligence unit arrested them to protect them from possible mob violence. At the Texas School Book Depository, policemen continued to work looking for an assassin. V. J. Brian and his officers had found some acoustical tile in the ceiling on the second floor. They were ripping it out because someone had suggested that an assassin could be hiding in the space above it.
Lee Harvey Oswald gave Captain Fritz his right name. The prisoner had a lump and a laceration over his right eye and another underneath the left eye. The captain sat at his desk, rolling a pen back and forth across the blotter, looking up at his man now and then. How, he asked, were the bruises acquired? Oswald said that he had punched a police officer and the cop had punched him back—“which was right and proper.”
“Do you work for the Texas School Depository?” Fritz asked. He had a deep, deliberate tone, the manner of a man who is never in a hurry. An accent touched by the South and by the West. “Yes,” said Oswald, and he too knew that now the forces had joined battle. It was important for him to know when to answer, when to lie, when to evade, when to lapse into sullen silence. He had to know these things, because it was a whole police department pitted against one man. He might tire; they wouldn’t. Nor was he lulled by the soft, easy manner of the captain. That had its own built-in danger. Oswald’s greatest asset was that he enjoyed this game; he knew that the innocuous questions could be answered glibly, as though he were an innocent person trying hard to cooperate; the difficult ones could be bl
ocked by a display of anger or impenetrable silence.
“What floor do you work on?” “The second, usually, but my work takes me to all floors.” “Where would you say you were when the President was shot?” “I was on the first, having my lunch.” “Where were you when the police officer stopped you?” “On the second floor, having a Coke.” “Tell me, why did you leave the building?” Oswald permitted himself a little smile. “There was so much excitement all around, I figured that there would be no more work. Mr. Truly isn’t particular about the hours; we don’t even punch a clock. I thought it would be all right to leave.”
“Do you own a rifle?” “No, sir.” “You don’t own one?” “I saw one at the building a few days ago. Mr. Truly and some of the fellows were looking at it.” “Where did you go when you left work?” “I have a room over on North Beckley.” “Where on Beckley?” “1026.” “North or South?” “North or South?” “Yes.” “I couldn’t say, but it is 1026 Beckley.” “What’s the area look like?” “Oh, a couple of streets come together at that point, and there is a filling station across from the boarding house—.” The captain nodded. “That’s North Beckley.”
Fritz excused himself. He went out into the hall and told a couple of detectives to run over to 1026 North Beckley and search a room rented by Lee Harvey Oswald. “All I did,” Oswald was saying, “was go over to Beckley and change my pants. I got my pistol and went to the pictures. That’s all.” He knew the next question, and he was prepared. “Why do you find it necessary to carry a gun?” The prisoner waved his manacles in an explanatory gesture. “You know how boys do when they have a gun.” He shrugged. “They just carry it.” In Texas, this is good rationale. Young men in large numbers carry pistols not to use them, but to establish manhood, perhaps even virility.
“Can I get a lawyer?” The question was not unusual nor unexpected. The captain nodded. “You can call one anytime you want,” he said. Oswald said the one he wanted was in New York. His name was John Abt. Fritz shrugged. “You can have anyone you want.” Oswald seemed to be calmer. “I don’t know him personally,” he said, “but that’s the attorney I want.” He remembered a case Mr. Abt had handled involving the Smith Act. “If I can’t get him,” he said, “then I may get the American Civil Liberties Union to get me an attorney.”