False Witness

by Patricia Lambert

  Abraham Zapruder, balding, wearing glasses, and displaying a gentle manner, told of standing on a concrete abutment next to the grassy knoll filming the motorcade as the presidential limousine approached. Zapruder heard a shot. The president “grabbed himself with his hands towards his chest or throat and leaned towards Jackie,” Zapruder said. Then he heard another shot. “I saw the head practically open up,” Zapruder stated (showing his emotion), “and blood and many more things, whatever it was, brains, just came out of his head.” He stopped his camera, began walking around and crying out, “They killed him! They killed him!”2

  This harrowing testimony was nothing compared to the film. Today most everyone has seen it; many possess their own copies, but in 1969, except for the Warren Commission, its staff, and a few others, only a handful of journalists and researchers had viewed the print at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. In terms of long-range influence, other than the jury’s verdict, this public screening was the most important moment of the proceedings.3

  Clay Shaw now became a spectator at his own trial. He, the attorneys, the press, and the audience all shifted to the jury side of the room, lining the walls in order to view the screen. In the darkened courtroom “the only sound was the subdued clatter of the projector,” one reporter wrote. The film, he noted, clearly showed “Kennedy slumping forward and clutching his throat after he was hit for the first time. Seconds later, his head appears to snap backward as the bullet’s impact causes it to virtually explode in a spray of blood and tissue . . . the intent audience gasped as the fatal shot destroyed the president’s head.”4 The prosecution ran the film four more times that afternoon.* Before the trial concluded, it was shown nine more, always over Dymond’s objection. For the defense, the film was more than grisly and unforgettable. They feared its impact would move the jury to exact retribution from the only target available, the defendant. Irvin Dymond labeled that Thursday afternoon their darkest hour.5

  Over the next five days, the prosecution called two FBI agents, a photographic lab supervisor, a pathologist, as well as a batch of people present at Dealey Plaza when the shots were fired. Dymond, laying the groundwork for an appeal, objected to the testimony of each on the grounds of irrelevancy to the issues in this case and, overruled each time, reserved a bill of exception, a litany also repeated for each of the many exhibits the state introduced.

  The co-worker who drove Oswald to work the day of the assassination said Oswald carried a package into the building that morning, assumed to be the dismantled Mannlicher-Carcano rifle. Oswald told him the package contained “curtain rods.” FBI photographic expert Lyndal Shaneyfelt took the stand and the film was shown four times outside the presence of the jury and again after the jurors came back. On cross-examination Dymond posed the question the prosecution had avoided. “My impression,” Shaneyfelt replied (referring to the bullet that struck the president in the head), “is the shot came from the rear.” The brain matter, he noted, was “going in a forward motion.” And he indicated he had found no evidence that either of the shots that hit the president came from any direction other than the rear. The headline in that day’s States-Item blared the news: JFK SHOT FROM REAR, FBI EXPERT TESTIFIES.6 The prosecution immediately scrapped its plans to call Shaneyfelt’s colleague, Robert Frazier, and the defense added him to its witness list.

  Wilma Bond, Philip Willis, and Mary Moorman took the stand to tell about the photographs they took that showed the grassy knoll and the reaction of the crowd. Some ran toward it. A former railroad company employee on the triple overpass described seeing “a puff of smoke” coming from under the trees on the knoll. Later, on the rail behind the picket fence, he noticed “muddy footprints.”* William Eugene Newman, Jr., one of several witnesses who thought the shots came from the knoll, was standing at the curb to the president’s right. He saw President Kennedy’s “ear flying off.”† A Dallas motorcycle policeman riding behind the presidential limousine said he and his motorcycle were splattered with “red splotches” and “grey matter” (consistent with human blood and tissue). A former Dallas deputy sheriff claimed that after the shooting he saw Oswald jump into a “light green Rambler station wagon” and later heard Oswald say the car belonged to Mrs. Paine.* A construction worker said he saw three men leaving the Texas School Book Depository and two of them entered a Rambler Station Wagon; the FBI, he claimed, warned him to keep his mouth shut.† A woman standing on Houston near Elm observed two men in another Dealey Plaza building and one of them, she said, was “holding a gun.”7

  Reporter David Snyder sat in the courtroom day after day listening to this testimony and “wondering what the hell it had to do with Clay Shaw.” The defendant wondered, too. Shaw found it “fascinating” but couldn’t see where he “fit in.” He didn’t. That was one of the fundamental flaws in Garrison’s case.

  Dr. John Nichols, an assistant professor of pathology at the University of Kansas, who had studied the Zapruder film, took the stand and prompted another showing of it. Nichols testified that the president and Governor Connally appeared to be reacting to a separate “stimulus.”‡ Nichols also found the Zapruder film “compatible” with the gunshot wound to the head coming “from the front.” (After a one-day recess for the Mardi Gras Rex Parade, court reconvened with Dr. Nichols still on the stand.) If the president had been struck in the rear of the head, Nichols said, his movement would have been forward.§ On cross, Dymond pointed out that Nichols’s testimony was more about photography than forensic pathology. By asking Nichols to describe the steps in an autopsy, Dymond emphasized that this testimony was based solely on the Zapruder film.8

  The prosecution returned to its New Orleans scenario in the person of Mrs. Jessie Parker, a black former hostess in the Eastern Airlines VIP room at New Orleans International Airport. She claimed that on December 14, 1966, she saw Clay Shaw sign the name “Clay Bertrand” in the guest book. The prosecution offered no theory to explain why Shaw, if he had conspired to murder the president using this alias, would have continued to use it afterwards. The signature appeared on the last line of a page, where it could have been added at any time by anyone.9

  On the heels of the VIP lounge book signature, a plus for the prosecution, Alcock concluded his case with a spectacular defeat from Judge Haggerty. It involved the strange episode of Police Officer Aloysius J. Habighorst and Shaw’s fingerprint card. Habighorst fingerprinted Shaw the night of his arrest and filled out the card. He claimed Shaw had admitted using the alias, “Clay Bertrand.” It was then typed on the card, and Shaw signed it. Shaw said he had signed a blank card, which meant the alias was filled in afterwards. The state naturally wanted to present the card and Habighorst’s testimony to the jury. But because Garrison had allowed the matter to be widely publicized six months earlier,* admissibility was now in question. The matter was argued outside the presence of the jury.10

  Officer Habighorst testified that he obtained the information directly from Shaw. But three other police officers gave testimony inconsistent with Habighorst’s. The sergeant assigned to guard Shaw was one of them. He was within a few feet of Shaw and heard no question about aliases asked. Two of Shaw’s attorneys—Edward Wegmann and Salvatore Panzeca—then Shaw himself took the stand and hotly refuted Habighorst’s story.11 †

  After asking some questions of his own, Judge Haggerty rejected the fingerprint card evidence. Shaw’s constitutional rights, he said, had been violated twice.‡ But Haggerty had heard enough to be moved to express himself further. “So even if Officer Habighorst is telling the truth,” Haggerty said, “and I doubt it very seriously . . .” Alcock leaped to his feet. “Are you passing on the credibility of the state’s witnesses,” he demanded, his voice trembling with outrage, “in front of the press and the world?” “The jury is not hearing it,” Haggerty replied, “That is the main thing. The whole world can hear it. I do not believe Officer Habighorst.” Then he said it again. “I do not believe him.”12

  STATE IS STUNNED BY JUDGE’S RULI
NG, read the headline in a local newspaper. The state was not alone. Everyone was stunned, not by the ruling but the remark. Alcock immediately moved for a mistrial, which Haggerty immediately denied. Alcock said he would appeal to the Louisiana Supreme Court. That was fine with Haggerty, who adjourned court to await the Supreme Court’s decision. He announced it the next morning. Denied. And Haggerty refused to reconsider his own decision. “I will not change my mind,” he told Alcock.

  The jury was brought in. Haggerty instructed the prosecution to call its next witness. Alcock “dramatically,” by one account, “intoned the words, ‘The state rests.’ ”

  No one expected it. Everyone was waiting for the big disclosure that Garrison had to have up his sleeve. He had, after all, solved the case. For many who had believed in him, reality began seeping in. Yet the faithful still flocked to his side and the general sentiment among the media covering the trial who were sympathetic to Shaw remained extremely pessimistic. This was, after all, New Orleans.

  Dymond quickly asked for a directed verdict of acquittal, claiming the state had failed to prove a prima facie case. Alcock objected and Judge Haggerty adjourned court to read Perry Russo’s transcript before ruling. The courtroom was packed in the morning when Haggerty, without explanation, denied the motion, triggering applause and a few soft “yeas” from the spectators. One reporter attributed the outburst to people who didn’t want the entertainment to end. Jim Garrison received the news in the judge’s chambers and left immediately afterwards, saying, “I have no reaction. I have no nervous system anymore.” “I am still confident I will be vindicated,” Shaw told reporters.13

  After a five-minute recess, the jury was brought in and the defense began its presentation.

  The first witness was Marina Oswald Porter, the pretty, blue-eyed Russian wife of the accused assassin who provided something for both sides. She and her friend Ruth Paine both testified that Lee Harvey Oswald was beardless and always neat and clean. He was nothing like the dirty, unkempt “Leon Oswald” Russo described. Both women also said that Ruth Paine’s station wagon was parked outside her house in a Dallas suburb (where Marina was living) when the president was shot. As for the Clinton witnesses, Marina said neither she nor Oswald could drive a car. She had never been to Clinton, nor had he to her knowledge and she had never known him to use the name “Harvey Oswald.” Until the trial she had never heard of Clay Shaw, Clay or Clem Bertrand, or Perry Russo. She didn’t recognize the photographs of David Ferrie, and had never seen Clay Shaw until today.

  On cross-examination she acknowledged that Oswald told her he had fired at General Edwin Walker, though she could not remember when it happened.* For awhile after Oswald lost his job at the Reily Coffee Company in New Orleans, he pretended he still was going to work and she admitted she had no idea where he went instead. But he was away from home only one night, she said, when he was in jail after his arrest in the leaflet-scuffling incident.

  A business colleague of Clay Shaw and Shaw’s secretary described his unusually heavy work load during the time he was allegedly seen in Clinton. Shaw was away from the office only one day, visiting his parents. Both said Shaw never wore a hat, as claimed by one of the Clinton witnesses, nor tight pants, as described by Perry Russo. Both also indicated his trip to the West Coast (prior to the assassination) was to fulfill a speaking engagement in Oregon.

  The last challenge to the Clinton story came from a meteorologist. Two of the Clinton witnesses had tied their recollections to the cool weather they were experiencing at the time. But the meteorologist testified that during “late August or early September” 1963, the temperature in the Clinton–Jackson area was always in the high- to mid-nineties.14

  The other half of the FBI team, ballistics expert Robert A. Frazier, now took the stand. He had examined, among other items, the president’s clothing, the limousine, the bullet found at Parkland Hospital, and the fragments found in the president’s car, as well as the Zapruder film and slides. The shots, he said, came from above and to the rear.15

  Col. Pierre A. Finck, the chief forensic pathologist at President Kennedy’s autopsy, was the first witness the next day. Though called by the defense, his testimony appeared to help the prosecution, as he spotlighted existing conflicts in the medical evidence and added new ones. A slender man, wearing large black-rimmed glasses, Finck testified a day and a half, longer than any other defense witness. His direct examination by Dymond went well. In discussing the back wound (which he described as “on the right side in the back of the neck”) and the head wound, Finck stated unequivocally that “both bullets struck in the back, one in the back of the neck and the other in the back of the head.” And he described the characteristics of each that led to that conclusion. For the defense, in its effort to support the Warren Report, so far so good.16

  But on cross-examination by Oser, Finck admitted that the wound he saw in the president’s back was “higher” than shown on the autopsy drawing. And Finck could not say why, when he examined the tracheotomy (performed at Parkland Hospital), he failed to see the bullet exit wound there. He admitted that the doctors at Parkland Hospital should have been consulted during the autopsy and could not explain why they were not. But, he said, “I was not in charge.” Who then was in charge? Finck said that when Dr. Humes asked that question, an Army general replied, “I am.” The general’s name Finck could not remember. Why didn’t the doctors dissect the neck wound? “I was told not to,” Finck said, “but I don’t recall by whom.” He said the same about why he failed to remove the neck organs. Pressed by Oser, Finck said he was able to “probe” the back wound only a fraction of an inch because the muscles had contracted. Finck also stated that the X-rays showed the bullet (which he said exited at the approximate level of the president’s neck tie knot) passed through the body without striking “major bones.” Again pressed by Oser, Finck acknowledged that “there was no evidence of bone injury.” As for the report on the autopsy by the panel of four doctors recently released by Attorney General Ramsey Clark (which almost derailed the trial), Finck had no recollection of the small “rectangular structure” in the brain, nor the metallic fragments in the throat wound described by the panel. And Finck insisted that the panel had placed the head entrance wound three inches too high.17*

  The defense had called Dr. Finck to establish that the autopsy supported the findings of the Warren Report.18 In his conclusions, Finck did that. The devil was in the details. Speaking to a writer afterwards, Irvin Dymond attributed Finck’s difficulties to his unfamiliarity with the cross-examination process. While his performance was dispiriting to the defense, Shaw and his attorneys understood that any anomalies in the medical record had no bearing on the New Orleans scenario or the guilt or innocence of Clay Shaw. The worry was whether or not the jury understood that.

  “First father” of the case, Dean A. Andrews, Jr., sporting his usual dark glasses and cocky air, took the stand a convicted perjurer free on bail with, as James Alcock informed the court, “another perjury case” pending. If Garrison thought this other case would encourage Andrews to cooperate that day, he misunderstood Andrews’s determination to purge himself. Since Andrews’s conviction was on appeal, the court ruled it could not be mentioned, but the subject matter, meaning “Clay Bertrand,” could be. Dymond went straight to the call Andrews received while in the hospital the weekend of the assassination. Was that call from the defendant? He had never received a telephone call from Clay Shaw, Andrews replied. He did not know Clay Shaw and had never even seen his picture until it appeared in the newspaper in connection with Garrison’s investigation.19

  He told of his telephone calls from his hospital bed and his encounters with FBI Agent Regis Kennedy.† Andrews spoke about his condition that weekend, his “double pneumonia” and his sedation. Dymond tried repeatedly to elicit information about the “fictitious name” he used to identify the person who called him. Andrews, though, took the fifth (to protect himself from further perjury charges) and was sustaine
d. Then, inexplicably, he answered one of Dymond’s questions about Clay Bertrand. “No,” Andrews said, Clay Shaw was not the Clay Bertrand to whom he had referred in his conversations with Agent Kennedy. Andrews could have pleaded the fifth again but he chose instead to clear Clay Shaw.20

  On cross-examination Alcock dwelt at length on the alleged Oswald visits to Andrews’s office in the Summer of 1963, and Andrews spun out one final time the details about the “swishes” and the “Mex,” unable at this low point in his life to relinquish this last bit of face-saving fantasy. Because he had answered some questions about “Bertrand,” Andrews was now forced to respond to all inquiries from Alcock about the Bertrand telephone call. But Andrews telling all didn’t help the prosecution. The jury had already heard about the 1950s “fag wedding reception” at the Rendezvous bar where “Big Jo,” aka Helen Girt, introduced Andrews to one “Clay Bertrand.” Now Alcock forced Andrews to name “Gene Davis” as the person who had telephoned him in the hospital the Saturday after the assassination. Andrews explained, as he had two years earlier to the press gathered outside the grand jury room and then inside to the jurors themselves, that he had used the name “Clay Bertrand as a cover name” to protect Gene Davis, who was a completely innocent party.21

  Andrews insisted he “didn’t deliberately lie” to the Warren Commission. “I might have overloaded my mouth with the importance of being a witness in front of [it],” he said, “I call it huffing and puffing.” But he termed that testimony, “page after page of bull.” In the hospital “under sedation I elected a course that I have never been able to get away from. I either get indicted or I get charged,” he said, “I started it and it has been whiplashing ever since, I can’t stop it.” When Gene Davis telephoned him that Saturday, he was calling about the sale of an automobile, not about Oswald, he explained. “I don’t know whether I suggested—man I would be famous if I could go to Dallas and defend Lee Harvey Oswald, whoever gets that job is going to be a famous lawyer” or if the idea just came about in the course of the conversation.22