Crossfire

by Jim Marrs

  The president’s death was legally a Texas homicide and by law, the body could not be removed until after an autopsy or a coroner’s ruling, which would have involved further medical investigation. Dallas County medical examiner Dr. Earl Rose, who died in 2012 at age eighty-five, tried to block the efforts of Secret Service agents trying to remove Kennedy’s body from Parkland. But after some shouting, including profanities and, by some accounts, even drawn weapons, Rose was forced to step aside. In 2003, Rose told the Associated Press he and his staff should have conducted an examination as required by law. “We had the routine in place to do it and it was important for the chain of evidence to remain intact. That didn’t happen when the body was taken to Bethesda,” he explained.

  Totally against prevailing law and despite the protest of Texas officials, a coffin was ordered from O’Neal Funeral Home and Kennedy’s body was whisked away from Parkland Hospital. Ambulance driver Aubrey Rike told this author that even though his ambulance was on standby at Parkland, his boss, Vernon O’Neal, arrived with an expensive bronze casket into which Kennedy’s body was placed. Government agents then drove off in the newly arrived ambulance leaving both O’Neal and Rike standing at the hospital’s loading dock. Both men then climbed into Rike’s ambulance and trailed the first ambulance to Love Field. Rike said there were no stops.

  After Kennedy’s body left Parkland and while Dallas doctors worked on Connally in a second-floor operating room, another incident occurred in the hospital that was to have long-reaching effects on the official theory of the assassination—a hospital worker discovered a bullet in a hallway.

  During the feverish activity in the emergency room, the hospital’s senior engineer, Darrell C. Tomlinson, was asked to manually operate an elevator that connected the ground-floor emergency room to the second-floor operating theaters. It was Tomlinson who found an intact bullet, which became the key exhibit of the Warren Commission.

  Despite efforts by Warren Commission attorney Arlen Specter to confuse the issue during testimony, Tomlinson was remarkably clear on what had happened that day. Tomlinson stated that one hospital stretcher containing two rolled-up bloody sheets, some surgical instruments, and some sterile packs was sitting against a wall near the elevator.

  No effort apparently was made by the Commission to determine the true origin of this stretcher. Some researchers believe it may have held Kennedy’s body while in the emergency room. But this is extremely doubtful since Kennedy’s body remained on his stretcher until the Dallas casket arrived about 1:40 p.m. At this time, his body was placed in the casket and the stretcher was stripped of sheets and rolled across the hall to Trauma Room 2, according to nurse Diana Bowron. Since Tomlinson claimed to have discovered a bullet at this same time and two nurses reported placing Kennedy’s empty stretcher in Trauma Room 2, it is virtually impossible to believe that the hallway stretcher carried the president.

  Today, it is more likely that this stretcher was used in treating two-year-old Ronald Fuller, who entered the Parkland emergency room at 12:54 p.m. with a bad cut on the chin. The child’s mother, Mrs. Ross Fuller, years later told the Dallas Morning News what happened:

  I was watching the President’s parade on television when they announced he had been shot. I knocked over the bottle of soda pop I was drinking and it broke into pieces. My little boy Ronnie fell on it and started bleeding badly. My husband and I ran to the car and headed for Parkland with the baby.

  Mrs. Fuller finally reached the Parkland emergency room and handed her son to medical personnel. Then she fainted. She recalled, “When I came to, they told me Ronnie was all right. They were sewing him up. Then they told me the President was dead. It happened in the cubicle right next to us. The doctor said I was living a part of history.”

  The Fuller child was briefly placed on a stretcher and his cut was treated with sutures and gauze packs, which could have been left behind on the cart.

  Considering both the condition—bloody sheets, instruments, sterile packs—and the location of Fuller’s stretcher—the child originally was placed on a stretcher in the same hallway leading to Trauma Rooms 1 and 2—it is most likely this stretcher on which the bullet was found.

  Tomlinson said a second stretcher was on the elevator—perhaps the one that carried Connally to the second-floor operating room—and that he pulled it out and placed it near the first stretcher. Specter designated the stretcher pulled off the elevator as stretcher A and the stretcher already in the hall near the elevator (Fuller’s?) as stretcher B.

  After making a few trips in the elevator, Tomlinson said one of the stretchers was moved away from the wall so he could enter a men’s restroom. Tomlinson told Specter as he pushed the stretcher back up against the wall to clear the hallway, “I bumped the wall and a spent cartridge or bullet rolled out that apparently had been lodged under the edge of the mat.” “And that was from which stretcher?” asked Specter. “I believe that it was B,” replied Tomlinson.

  Later in his testimony, Specter tried to shake Tomlinson’s recollections. Specter asked, “And at the time we started our discussion, it was your recollection at that point that the bullet came off of stretcher A, was it not?” “B,” Tomlinson quickly responded.

  Finally, after Specter continued to confuse the matter by telling Tomlinson that he had identified stretcher A during a Secret Service interview, the hospital worker said:

  I really don’t remember. I’m not accustomed to being questioned by the Secret Service and the FBI and by you and they are writing down everything, I mean . . . I’m going to tell you all I can, and I’m not going to tell you something I can’t lay down and sleep at night with either.

  From Tomlinson’s testimony, it appears more than likely that the stretcher holding the bullet did not belong to Connally. But this would be evidence of planted evidence, which would mean an accomplice to the assassination—a conspiracy. Therefore, the Warren commissioners, while acknowledging Tomlinson’s uncertainty, nevertheless concluded that the intact bullet came from Connally’s stretcher. “That conclusion is buttressed by evidence which eliminated President Kennedy’s stretcher as a source of the bullet,” they explained, closing off any suspicion that the slug might have come from anywhere else.

  It was this bullet—Commission Exhibit 399—that became the foundation of the single-bullet theory of the assassination. It has also been called the “magic bullet.”

  Tomlinson turned the bullet over to Parkland’s chief of security, O. P. Wright, who gave it to Secret Service agent Richard Johnsen.

  Interestingly, Wright was the father-in-law of Dallas police sergeant Patrick T. Dean, the officer blamed by the Warren Commission for allowing Jack Ruby into the police department basement just before Oswald’s slaying. Dean’s mother-in-law, Mrs. O. P. Wright, was director of nursing at Parkland and on duty when Kennedy was being treated.

  Neither Wright nor Agent Johnsen were interviewed by the Warren Commission—perhaps because, in later interviews with researchers, neither man could positively identify Commission Exhibit 399 as the bullet found that day. Oddly, Tomlinson never was asked to identify Commission Exhibit 399.

  In fact, during a 1966 interview with author Josiah Thompson, Wright, a professional security officer, picked a pointed-tip bullet shape as more nearly like the bullet discovered at Parkland. He rejected round-nose bullet shapes similar to Commission Exhibit 399. Likewise, Tomlinson selected a pointed shape as resembling the bullet he found.

  The whole bullet matter becomes even more clouded when the possibility of substitution and planting is considered. The hallway in which both stretchers A and B were left unattended was a public corridor and neither stretcher belonged to either Kennedy or Connally. Although the Warren Commission apparently never considered that Commission Exhibit 399 may have been planted on one of the stretchers or later substituted for the found bullet, these possibilities find favor in the minds of assassination researchers.

  Adding to this suspicion is the presence of Jack Ruby
at Parkland Hospital while Kennedy’s body was still there.

  Jack Ruby at Parkland

  Veteran newsman Seth Kantor told the Warren Commission that he encountered Jack Ruby at Parkland Hospital about the time Kennedy’s death was publicly announced. Kantor said he and Ruby even shared a brief conversation. Kantor recognized Ruby, having worked in Dallas for some years. He said he spoke to Ruby at 1:30 p.m. and recalled that Ruby asked if he should close his club out of respect for the slain president.

  When asked about his presence at Parkland, Ruby denied ever being there, and the Commission chose to believe him and concluded that Kantor must have been mistaken.

  Ignored by the Commission were FBI interviews with a Dallas woman whose experiences on the day of the assassination fully supported Kantor’s account of his Parkland meeting with Ruby. Wilma Tice was home when she heard the news of the Dealey Plaza shooting. Curious, she drove to Parkland Hospital, arriving about 1:30 p.m., and joined the throng of bystanders awaiting word on the president’s condition.

  Some months later, she told the FBI she stood beside a heavily built man in a dark suit who was hitting his hat against his leg. She was only three or four feet from the man when another man approached him and said, “How are you doing there, Jack?” She said the two men had a brief conversation during which the man named Jack offered to donate a kidney to John Connally.

  Two days later Tice was astounded to see the man called Jack on television identified as Jack Ruby, the slayer of Oswald. However, she assumed that the authorities knew about his presence at Parkland and did not notify anyone until late in the spring of 1964.

  Tice had telephoned Ruby’s sister, Eva Grant, to express her condolences over Ruby’s death sentence when she mentioned her encounter at Parkland and learned that Ruby had denied being there. It was at this point that Tice contacted the FBI and told her story.

  On April 12, 1964, she received a call from a man claiming to be a newspaper reporter. He asked about her Parkland encounter and then advised her not to talk about the incident. On July 19, Tice received a letter asking her to testify for the Warren Commission. The next day she received an anonymous call from a man who warned her, “It would pay you to keep your mouth shut.”

  On July 22, Tice called police because someone tried to break into her home while her husband was away. This incident was followed by other phone calls, but she had a fourteen-year-old niece answer the phone and the caller would hang up.

  The account of Ruby at Parkland has been further supported in recent years by former radio newsman Roy Stamps, who said he had met Ruby on about forty-five occasions before November 22, 1963. Stamps told Texas researchers that he was in the hall of Parkland holding open a telephone line to his radio station when he noticed Ruby enter the hospital. He said Ruby was carrying some television equipment and trailing behind a TV crew.

  In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations reversed the Warren Commission’s decision that Kantor was mistaken about his Parkland meeting with Ruby, stating, “While the Warren Commission concluded that Kantor was mistaken, the Committee determined he probably was not.”

  With the presence of Ruby in Parkland plus the lack of firm identification, the possibility that Commission Exhibit 399 was planted appears more than likely.

  Of course, virtually anyone could have planted the bullet, since the stretcher in question sat unattended in the public hallway for some time. But even if the bullet were not planted—and there is some evidence to suggest that a bullet slug may have worked its way out of Kennedy’s back wound—there is also the possibility that Commission Exhibit 399 was substituted for the bullet found on the stretcher. There is even the possibility that Commission Exhibit 399 represented an entirely different bullet, a suggestion strengthened by John Connally, who wrote in 1993:

  But the most curious discovery of all took place when they rolled me off the stretcher and onto the examining table. A metal object fell to the floor, with a click no louder than a wedding band. The nurse picked it up and slipped it into her pocket. It was the bullet from my body, the one that passed through my back, chest, and wrist, and worked itself loose from my thigh. . . . I have always believed that three bullets found their mark. What happened in the hospital demonstrated how easily a bullet could have been swept aside and lost.

  But this extraneous bullet was not lost. According to several reports, it was given by the nurse to Texas highway patrolman Bobby Nolan, who said he turned it over to Captain Will Fritz. From that point onward, it was in the hands of federal authorities. Of course, if bullets were switched, it could have been done only while in the hands of authorities—a most ominous suspicion.

  After Kennedy’s body was returned to Air Force One at Love Field, Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as thirty-sixth president of the United States by federal judge Sarah T. Hughes.

  On the plane flight back to Washington, it seems the original destination for Kennedy’s body was to have been Walter Reed Army Hospital—long the major military medical facility for Washington. Examining US Army Signal Corps transcripts of radio messages from Air Force One that day, researchers have found several references indicating that military officers were going to send the body to the Army hospital. General Chester Clifton, senior military aide, radioed:

  This is Gen. Clifton. We do not want a helicopter to go to Bethesda Medical Center. We do want an ambulance and a ground return from Andrews to Walter Reed, and we want the regular post-mortem that has to be done by law under guard performed at Walter Reed. Is that clear?

  Even the official history of the 1001st Air Base Wing, which included Air Force One, reported, “The body of the slain President was removed to Walter Reed General Hospital.”

  Why the sudden change to Bethesda?

  Kennedy’s personal physician, Dr. George G. Burkley, wrote in his report of that day:

  During the course of the flight [back to Washington], determination of the immediate action on arrival in Washington was made to assure complete compliance with Mrs. Kennedy’s wishes. I spoke to her while kneeling on the floor so I would be at the level of her face rather than leaning forward, and expressed complete desire of all of us and especially of myself to comply with her wishes, stating that it was necessary that the President be taken to a hospital prior to going to the White House. She questioned why and I stated it must be determined, if possible, the type of bullet used and compare this with future material found. I stated frankly that I had no preference that it could be any hospital, but that I did feel that, if possible, it should be a military hospital for security measures. The question was answered by her stating that she wanted the President taken to Bethesda Naval Hospital.

  Oddly, having just received Mrs. Kennedy’s wishes, Dr. Burkley then added, “Arrangements were made on the ground for departure to Walter Reed Army Hospital or Bethesda Naval Hospital, as the case may be.”

  Why such confusion over military hospitals? Was Mrs. Kennedy’s natural desire to take her husband, a former naval officer, to the naval hospital an unexpected hitch in a plan for an autopsy at Walter Reed?

  It certainly appears that Bethesda was not prepared for this most important autopsy. The three military physicians who performed Kennedy’s autopsy were clinical pathologists with little experience in gunshot wounds. Neither Navy Commander James J. Humes nor Navy Commander J. Thornton Boswell had practical, firsthand experience with bullet wounds. Army Lieutenant Colonel Pierre Finck did have some such experience, but he later said he was hampered in his autopsy procedures by officials in the room. The military autopsy doctors apparently were surrounded by both military and civilian superiors who directed much of the autopsy—some of this direction contrary to normal autopsy procedures.

  During the Clay Shaw trial in New Orleans, Dr. Finck was asked under oath if Dr. Humes had been in charge of the president’s autopsy. He replied:

  Well, I heard Dr. Humes stating that—he said, “Who’s in charge here?” And I heard an Army general, I don’t
remember his name, stating, “I am.” You must understand that in those circumstances, there were law-enforcement officers, military people with various ranks, and you have to coordinate the operation according to directions.

  An unnamed Army general in charge? Directions to the doctors? Finck continued to describe the scene:

  The autopsy room was quite crowded. It is a small autopsy room, and when you are called in circumstances like that to look at the wound of the President of the United States who is dead, you don’t look around too much to ask people for their names and take notes on who they are and how many there are. I did not do so. The room was crowded with military and civilian personnel and federal agents, Secret Service agents, FBI agents, for part of the autopsy, but I cannot give you a precise breakdown as regards the attendance of the people in that autopsy room at Bethesda Naval Hospital.

  New Orleans executive assistant district attorney Alvin Oser then pressed Finck on why, as an autopsy pathologist, he had not tracked the bullet wound through Kennedy’s body to determine its exact path.

  After dodging the question for a time, Dr. Finck finally was ordered by the court to answer Oser’s question. Dr. Finck stated, “As I recall I was told not to, but I don’t remember by whom.” “Could it have been one of the admirals or one of the generals in the room?” asked Oser. “I don’t recall,” said Dr. Finck.

  Finck, the only member of the autopsy team who was a member of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, asked to examine Kennedy’s clothing—a normal and acknowledged autopsy procedure. His request was denied.

  Further, the autopsy doctors were ordered not to talk about what they had seen in the autopsy room. Finck again:

  When you are a lieutenant colonel in the Army you just follow orders, and at the end of the autopsy, we were specifically told—as I recall it, it was by Admiral [Edward C.] Kenney, the surgeon general of the Navy . . . not to discuss the case.