The Day Kennedy Was Shot

by Jim Bishop

  Fritz came into the outer office to talk to the chief in private. Curry wanted to know how it was going. At times, the captain of Homicide would blink those eyes like an uncommunicative frog. He was a big man, bigger in his Texas hat. It was apparent to Curry that he was not going to get a detailed report. The captain said he thought he had enough evidence on Oswald to “file on him for the murder of Tippit.” Curry nodded. That would hold the man for a long time. There would be no bail in a first degree murder charge. This would give the Homicide division plenty of time to build a solid case. Fritz may have felt that he owed a little more to the chief. “I strongly suspect,” he said, “that he was the assassin of the President.” This was information which had been imparted to the world hours ago. The conference between the chief and the captain was brief and guarded, almost formal.

  Across the hall in Forgery, Detective Rose was on the phone. He was talking to Detective McCabe of the Irving Police Department. “We have Wesley Frazier right here,” said McCabe. “He was found at the Irving Professional Center visiting his father.” Detective Rose was grateful. This kid could be a missing link in the case. McCabe said that Frazier had been arrested. The word hurt. Frazier should have been picked up, or apprehended, but hardly arrested. No one could think of a charge on which to hold him, unless the great big legal basket called “material witness” could be used.

  “I’ll leave here right away,” Rose said. “I’m taking Detective Stovall with me.” McCabe told him that the prisoner would be waiting. The two left their office, fighting their way toward the press room and the back elevator, as Curry stalked his way coldly in the opposite direction. In the county building, off Dealey Plaza, one of Sheriff Bill Decker’s deputies noticed a Negro boy standing in the outer office. He asked Amos Lee Euins if he had signed an affidavit. The sixteen-year-old said yes. It was he who had watched the execution of President Kennedy from one of the vantage points in the plaza.

  The deputy asked if anyone wanted this boy to remain in the sheriff’s office. Deputies looked around and said no. Typists sat intently behind their machines, taking down the oral testimony of scores of witnesses. Some had seen something. Some thought they had seen something. Day had passed into night and a few refused to sign if a word or a phrase was not quite in context in the affidavit. Copies of the approved affidavits were being delivered to Captain Fritz regularly. His men sorted them and acquainted the captain with a digest of the important ones. Hour by hour, the case against Lee Harvey Oswald began to congeal. If Fritz did not share all of his findings with his superior officer, it is also true that he did not confront the prisoner with them. He might have dealt a more slashing attack on his man, causing him to retreat, to admit, to concede here and there, but the interrogation continued with repetitious questions and, whenever the prisoner felt sensitive to them, he refused to answer and sat staring at the hound dogs who stalked him.

  The First Lady crouched in the back of the limousine. On the other side of the seat, silent, sat her secretary, Elizabeth Carpenter. Mrs. Johnson felt cold. The Secret Service agents up front—Knight and Rundle—turned on the heater, but Lady Bird Johnson felt spasms of shivering run through her arms and knees and her teeth chattered. She looked out of the window at the darkness impaled by street lights and all of the wealth of practical sense within her kept saying that this was a bad day; a tragic day; a stunning, horrifying day which she wished could be cast away into the blackness outside, never to return. She was going to have to live with this day, but it would take time. It was as though a blue bolt had fallen on a picnic, and everyone had been frozen into congenial attitudes in death. It was as though no one would ever smile again because, in the ghastly presence of this day, there would never be anything to bring a smile to a friendly face.

  There were moments when it seemed not to have happened at all. The mind could not sustain the intensity of shock too long; it short-circuited and, for a brief time, everything was as it had been at noon. It is possible that, with the exception of Mrs. John F. Kennedy, no mind raced over as many despairing trails that night as that of Mrs. Johnson. She was wife and mother to her man, and she meant it when she said, over and over: “Dear God, not this!”

  All her life she had been a Texas belle and proud to be one. She had worked as long and as arduously as her husband in the House of Representatives, but success, to her, meant a step closer to home. At any time she was asked about the most lofty post in the nation, Lady Bird Johnson always gave the same answer: “United States Senator from the State of Texas.” In her mind, she could play back every campaign as though it were a motion picture in color; she knew the true friends from the false; she knew the right moves from the wrong. She husbanded her husband as one would a national resource; when he fell with a myocardial infarction, it was this small woman with the brown eyes who sat up nights at Bethesda Naval Hospital listening to the soft hiss of oxygen, watching the rise and fall of the massive chest.

  The thing she had to offer, besides love, was scared courage. The brown eyes were frightened, but the brain forced her to remain cheerful, to keep him from being restless. When he left the hospital, she might have entertained a latent hope that the doctors would order him back to the ranch in Texas, to retire from politics. They didn’t. His recovery was splendid. Lyndon Johnson stopped smoking; he cut his drinking down to a casual dinnertime cocktail; his workload increased—he was Democratic Majority Leader of the United States Senate.

  The higher he went in life, the further the ranch faded behind him. To Mrs. Johnson, who was also the business head in the family, the ranch was all. The mountains of alien Washington had been climbed. They had the house, several thousand acres of land in the hill country, a television station, some good stocks, some loans owed to banks, and two daughters who would like to see their parents return to Texas permanently. When the political drums began to beat a tattoo for Lyndon Johnson’s nomination for the presidency, in 1959, Mrs. Johnson thought of it as the final accolade for her husband. So, too, did Lyndon Johnson.* He fought hard, at times bitterly, with the inner feeling that the Democratic Party would not offer the nomination to a Texan.

  Kennedy won it and offered the vice-presidential nomination to Lyndon Johnson. There was a moment of hesitation on both sides. When Johnson accepted, Kennedy’s palace guard—including his brother Robert—was enraged. The period November 1960 to November 1963 was to be the cruel and cutting part of Lyndon Johnson’s life. President Kennedy used his Vice-President’s services wisely, sending him on many missions to many parts of the world; asking his assistance in getting legislation through the Congress; keeping state leaders in the Kennedy corral. In return, the Kennedy group made Lyndon Johnson the butt of their jokes; they could make him look bad in clannish conferences; some even tried to sabotage his chances of running for Vice-President a second time. The onetime majority leader of the United States Senate was forced to truckle to the junior Senator from Massachusetts.

  She had been through it all. Socially, the Johnsons lacked the glitter, the polish, the urbane wit of the Kennedys. At the White House receptions, none of the society columnists pressed to know what Lady Bird was wearing, but everyone was prepared to gasp with pleasure when Mrs. Kennedy appeared. The most protracted hurt of all was that Lyndon Johnson was not emotionally suited to be second man on anyone’s team. Mrs. Johnson knew her husband.

  Now what? She rode through this darkest of nights without elation. Her husband had become the President of the United States. He would start pulling all those people together; he would plead; he would give a little to get a little; he would work the late hours acquainting himself with every facet of this awesome post; Vice-Presidents are poorly informed; he would lead because he enjoyed being in front; but was any of it worth the LBJ Ranch? What good could possibly come of leading a nation in an era of chronic tension? What if it broke his health and he had another heart attack?

  The car pulled into the drive at 4040 Fifty-Second Street Northwest. There was a crowd outside
. A few trucks and cameras were there; these had attracted the neighbors. Mrs. Johnson felt small and alone in the back seat. She thought: “I love this house. I love it. Now we’ll never live in it again.” Under the dome light at the entrance, she saw the slender figure of Luci. Three Secret Service agents stood in the shadows. “Oh, mother!” Luci said. Mrs. Johnson pressed the younger daughter in her arms for a moment. “My school said prayers,” the girl said.

  The Elms seemed busy to Mrs. Johnson. She had expected to come home and undress and put on a robe and slippers. She had envisioned a quiet home with few lights on. The street outside was heavy with watchers. She stepped inside with Luci and was surprised to find people standing everywhere. They were personal friends, or co-workers, or people important to the administration. As she nodded and summoned her small smile, Mrs. Johnson realized that this was the way it was going to be. It would never be quiet and peaceful again. Even the ranch would be swarming with Secret Service men and political friends.

  Luci was prattling, but her mother did not hear the words. Mrs. Johnson went upstairs with Liz Carpenter. Mrs. Carpenter could summon a moonlike smile at the most abysmal of moments, and this was one. Mrs. Johnson was rubbing her wrists. “How do you feel?” Liz said. Mrs. Johnson reached into a closet for a dressing robe and slippers. “I’m freezing.” she said. “Please turn that set on. We can watch it up here.”

  She propped several pillows at the headboard. A great weariness overcame her. There was no sleep in it. Mrs. Johnson phoned Lynda at the University of Texas. She wondered what Luci had been talking about. The television set told the same story over and over. When there was nothing new to tell, the networks fell back on rerunning material already shown. She saw herself getting off the plane with her husband; she saw the motorcade of the morning; there were random shots of people running and falling on grass; the face of a sullen young man in handcuffs being led through a crowd of men in a hall; she heard her husband ask for “your help—and God’s.”

  Lynda was saying: “. . . the first thing I did was to go to the Governor’s Mansion to be with the Connally children.” Mrs. Johnson nodded. “That was just right, darling.” Inside the massive fatigue, the mother felt a lift. Her girls had thought of constructive things. One prayed; the other hurried to help Nellie Connally’s little ones. It was good to know that both of her daughters were safe. She made a few calls to close friends. Mrs. Johnson glanced at Mrs. Carpenter. “I don’t know when he’ll be home. But he’ll probably have people with him, and he hasn’t eaten yet.” The First Lady pulled a quilt over her and felt a spasm of shivering.

  The Bethesda elevator brought the Kennedy party—the first section of it—to the seventeenth floor. Navy officers in dress blues escorted the group to a special suite of rooms. As in the Hotel Texas in Fort Worth, there was a short corridor. To the right was a well-lighted kitchen. On the left was a bedroom. Farther on was a living room with settees, mirrors, a fireplace, a few ornate chairs, and prints of paintings on the walls. Mrs. Kennedy examined each room. The television set was in the bedroom. Two Secret Service men stood outside the little hall. The rest of the Clan Kennedy would be arriving in groups. There were facilities in the kitchen for making tea and toast; one could also phone the hospital kitchen. There was plenty of time to peel the bloody clothes from the body and to soak in a warm tub. Mrs. Kennedy kept them on, including the gloves.

  Now that she was safe from the reporters and cameras, Mrs. Kennedy wanted to do what Mrs. Johnson had done—inquire about her children. She phoned her mother. “He didn’t even have the satisfaction of being killed for civil rights,” she said. “It had to be some silly little communist.” Mrs. Hugh Auchincloss mentioned that the children were safe at her house. Her daughter was puzzled. She had sent no message to have the children taken there. “Mummy,” said Mrs. Kennedy. “My God, those poor children. Their lives shouldn’t be disrupted, now of all times.” She thought about it. “Tell Maude Shaw to bring them back and put them to bed.”

  Grand-mère may have thought that Caroline and John were comfortable in her house. Still she would not dispute it. If Jacqueline wanted the babies back in the hurly-burly of the White House, then so be it. It seemed a pity to dress them again and send them back. The phones were replaced on their cradles. Grand-mère may have wondered why her daughter had not asked if the children knew. Perhaps she wanted to tell them herself. In the excitement messages became unreliable. If Jacqueline had not ordered Maude Shaw to bring the children to Georgetown, then maybe she didn’t want the nanny to tell the youngsters about their father.

  Mrs. Kennedy left the phone in a daze. Thinking about the children can be, at a time such as this, both a lovely and a heart-wrenching reality. To have them as a valentine from him is solace; to think of the innocents as not having a father, especially two who adored their father, is depressing. She walked into the living room and asked someone to phone Sargent Shriver at the White House. In the family sitting room on the second floor, Mrs. Kennedy said, there was a large-size book on Lincoln. It held a lot of daguerreotypes and line drawings of the funeral of America’s sixteenth President. Tell them, she said, to study those drawings and the lying-in-state in the East Room of the White House. She would like to have her husband’s funeral correspond as closely as possible to Lincoln’s.

  On the ground floor, Navy doctors met the Secret Service and two FBI agents in the hall. The casket reposed on wheels. Enlisted personnel tried to move it. Major General Wehle, who had arrived from Bethesda, waved them away. Roy Kellerman and William Greer grabbed handles on opposite sides; General Godfrey McHugh stepped into position to help. So did General Wehle. Valiantly they tried to lift the casket up a short flight of railinged steps to the autopsy room. Collectively they were not strong enough. The enlisted men watched the box teeter from side to side. Silently they moved between the older men and grunted as the burden was lifted over the railing and set upon a trolly. Admiral Burkley and FBI Agents Francis O’Neill and James Sibert followed.

  The body was wheeled into a large, square, bright room. It was tiled. Over a table in the center, adjustable lights diffused their beams. To one side, there was a place with eight ports for bodies to slide into a wall in drawers. As the casket stopped next to the table, Special Agent-in-charge Roy Kellerman took a census of personnel. The Federal Bureau of Investigation was also interested.

  The senior officer was Admiral C. B. Holloway, commandant of the hospital, who stepped aside as a spectator. Admiral Burkley was the President’s physician. Commander James J. Humes, chief pathologist of the hospital, said that he would conduct the autopsy. Captain James Stoner, Jr., chief of the Bethesda medical school, was an observer. One who would be present soon and who would participate in the work was Lieutenant Colonel Pierre Finck, of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. Commander J. Thornton Boswell, would assist. A medical photographer who would take overhead photos, in color and black and white, was John T. Stringer, Jr. In addition, Lieutenant Commander Gregg Cross and Captain David Osborne, chief of surgery, could be expected to be in and out of the autopsy room, depending upon whether Commander Humes required assistance.

  Major General Wehle announced that he was present only to ask when the body would be returned to the White House. He had no desire to remain. If someone could give him an approximate time . . . No one could. No one knew precisely what the injuries were, nor how much time the work would take. There would be photographs of the exterior of the body in different positions; there would be X-rays; there would be oral notations of the doctors of their observations. Then the autopsy would start. It would consist of tracking and diagramming the wounds; examining the wet plate X-rays against the observations of the human eye; the removal of the brain; removal of certain organs in the torso, examinations for grossness, pathology, weighing. There would have to be time for summary conclusions among the doctors.

  Roy Kellerman guessed it would take a good part of the night. He also would guess that the body would be returned to the
White House in the same ambulance. The family wanted the body to be embalmed here in the autopsy room. That would take additional time. General Wehle thought it best to post a guard of honor at the main entrance of the White House and wait. Kellerman polled eight additional technicians and enlisted personnel in the room; James Ebersole: Lloyd Raihe; J. G. Rudnicki; Paul K. O’Connor; J. C. Jenkins; Jerrol F. Chester; Edward Reed; and James Metzler. And, directly beside Kellerman on a bench, one additional man who was sinking uneasily, almost ill: General Godfrey McHugh. The total, including William Greer and Agent O’Leary, also FBI men O’Neill and Sibert, came to twenty-four. They would not all be present at any one time; this was the aggregate. President Kennedy was not counted.

  Commander Humes took charge. He stood under the big lamps in his white coverall and drew on the long rubber gloves. He reminded the men around him that X-rays would be taken and that anyone not actively participating in the autopsy should sit in an adjacent room. Most of the observers could see everything from there without being exposed to dangerous rays. Some men moved. Some did not.

  Commander Boswell signaled to the enlisted personnel to open the casket. The locks were unsnapped. The lid was raised. The men looked in. They saw a bloody mummy. The President was wrapped in plastic, in addition to a sheet. The awkward handling of the heavy casket had jogged the body inside. The enlisted men gathered around the casket, and tenderly they lifted the rigid form within the sheet. It was placed face up on the autopsy table. The doctors began to speak their observations; notes were taken.

  The doctors began to peel the sheet and plastic away. It stuck against the throat and the back of the skull, and tenderly they lifted the head and cut the material away. Humes waved the enlisted men in, and they lifted the body again and yanked the loose material away. For the first time, they saw John F. Kennedy. He was nude, on his back. It was a lean, well-muscled body. The hair had remained combed, or dressed. There was a ragged-edged wound in the neck, obviously a tracheostomy. The face appeared to be fatter, or more bloated, than expected. The left eye was black and blue. A massive hole appeared in the right posterior of the skull and, without moving the body, it was apparent that some brain tissue was still emerging from the gaping wound.