by Barry Ernest
Now here was something new: the FBI relying on the news media to determine the source of the shots. Curious too was that in the right-hand margin of this document, next to where Miss Adams said she felt the sounds came from the “right of the building,” someone had drawn an arrow to emphasize that comment.
“After the third shot, she observed the car containing President Kennedy to speed up and rush away. She had not been able to fully observe the President at the exact moment he was shot, inasmuch as her view was partially obstructed. She and her friend then ran immediately to the back of the building to where the stairs were located and ran down the stairs. No one else was observed on the stairs at this time, and she is sure that this would be the only means of escape from the building from the sixth floor. She and her friends [sic] ran out of the building, turned to the left and ran across the railroad tracks in the direction where they observed other people running, inasmuch as they felt that an attempt had been made on the life of the President, and they wanted to find out more about this situation. They had not gone far until they were stopped by a police officer who instructed them to return to the building. Consequently, they returned to the building and re-entered it.
“She did estimate that the time between her departure from the building and her return to the building was about four or five minutes. She stated that she did not observe anything or anybody during this time or immediately before or after, which would cause her place [sic] a connection with the attempted assassination of the President.
“Miss Adams was shown a photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald, bearing New Orleans, Louisiana number 112 723. She stated that she saw this individual only on one occasion which was about two or three weeks ago while he was in the company of other individuals at the building. At that time she did not know who he was and did not speak with him. She recalled only after seeing his photograph in the current newspapers that this was the individual suspected of having shot President Kennedy. She stated that she is rather sure that she did not see this individual on the day of President Kennedy’s assassination.”23
Odd, but again Miss Adams did not mention seeing Shelley and Lovelady. Other than that missing detail, there was remarkable consistency between what she said on November 24, what she told the FBI on March 23, and what she testified to before Commission staff on April 7.
This was unlike the inconsistencies shown by a number of other witnesses. She was certainly no Howard Brennan or Helen Markham in that respect.
The FBI returned December 19, 1963, this time regarding a different matter.
“Vickie Adams, 3651 Fontana, Dallas, Texas, employed by Scott-Foresman Company, Texas School Book Depository Building, was recontacted to determine if she had any knowledge as to acquaintanceship and/or association between Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby. Miss Adams stated she had been only slightly acquainted by sight with Lee Harvey Oswald. She is not acquainted with Jack Ruby and has no knowledge regarding Ruby’s activities or associates. She has no knowledge of any connection between Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald.”24
In still another box of documents, I found more. On February 17, 1964, Dallas Police Detective James R. Leavelle knocked on Miss Adams’ door. Leavelle was the cop handcuffed to Oswald who gazed in shock as his prisoner was murdered by Ruby. According to Leavelle’s report:
I talked with Vickie Adams at 8:10 pm this date, February 17, 1964. The following statement is what she said happened on November 22, 1963.
“My name is Vickie Adams, 3909 Cole, Apt. D., no phone. My job is office service representative. I reported to work that day about 8:30 am, and I worked in that capacity until noon.
“A friend of mine, Elsie Darmon [sic] who lives in Oak Cliff and works in the office, wanted to take some moving pictures of the motorcade. I opened a third floor window [sic] about the third one from the front of the building. She took pictures of the motorcade. When the President got in front of us I heard someone call him, and he turned. That is when I heard the first shot. I thought it was a firecracker. Then the second shot I saw the Secret Service man run to the back of the President’s car. After the third shot I went out the back door. I said, ‘I think someone has been shot.’ The elevator was not running and there was no one on the stairs. I went down to the first floor. I saw Mr. Shelly [sic] and another employee named Bill. The freight elevator had not moved, and I still did not see anyone on the stairs.
“I ran out the back door of the depository and around to the front. I started down toward the railroad tracks when an officer stopped me and turned me back. I asked the officer if the President was shot, and he said he did not know. As I turned back I saw another employee Molena [Joe Molina] standing by the front of the building facing Elm Street. I stopped and talked with Avery Davis another employee. I saw two men in street clothes, one was gesturing with his hands and asking questions. I asked Mr. Davis who he was. I later saw Jack Ruby on TV and thought it was the same man. No one had surrounded the building at that time. I went back into the building and to the passenger elevator, but the power was off. I went to the back to the freight elevator. There was two plainclothes men on it. However, the power on it also was turned off. I walked up the stairs to the fourth floor to my office. We were later told to leave.”
This concludes Miss Adams’ statement to me.25
Curiously, this rather casual interview nearly three months beyond the assassination, and taken after several other more detailed FBI reports, was the first one to include the names Shelley and Lovelady, an admission that later would be used to discredit Miss Adams.
There certainly seemed to be a lot of official interest in this woman.
As I tried to substantiate exactly when Miss Adams left the window, I was struck by how little investigators had done on the record to nail down this crucial timing issue. Did she leave immediately after the last shot, or did she dillydally? With her that day were fellow workers Elsie Dorman, Dorothy Garner, and Sandra Styles. Anyone in that trio could have confirmed Miss Adams’ actions, had they been asked. But they weren’t. The Warren Commission didn’t question a one of them about anything.
The absence of any documentation on Sandra Styles was particularly disturbing. After all, she had accompanied Miss Adams throughout the ordeal. If any of those women needed to be questioned, it was her.
Striking out with Victoria Adams was becoming the norm. It had happened in Dallas; now in Washington too. But I began to hit pay dirt with others.
On the fifth floor of the Depository, the floor between Victoria Adams and the assassin, three others watched the passing motorcade. Bonnie Ray Williams, Harold Norman, and James Jarman, Jr., were positioned directly under the window where the Commission placed Oswald.
Williams was interesting. He said he ate his lunch near the infamous sixth-floor window between noon and 12:20 P.M. but saw and heard no one there.26 If that time is accurate, it would have given Oswald only a precious few minutes to prepare for his feat, since news reports indicated Kennedy was scheduled to pass the building at 12:25 P.M. Oswald would have had no way of knowing the motorcade was running five minutes late.
Norman claimed he had such a keen sense of hearing, he was able to hear the bolt action of the rifle being used and the expended cartridge cases hit the floor over his head.27 Yet neither he nor his companions heard other sounds from above, such as the noise of someone running or even a hint of hurried footsteps.28
This is especially peculiar since the sixth floor had been undergoing repairs that week. The floor was so thin at spots that daylight could be seen through it.29 Even more unusual, the three said that immediately after the shots, they moved to the west side of the building, closer to the back staircase Oswald descended, yet they still heard nothing.
It was only when Officer Baker suddenly emerged onto the fifth floor, on his way to the roof after his second-floor encounter with Oswald, that Williams, Norman, and Jarman noticed anyone in the direction of the staircase.30
Whether Oswald could have done all he wa
s supposed to within the allotted time was, of course, invaluable to the Commission’s conclusions. From the moment the final shot sounded, he was on an extremely tight schedule. He had to move quickly from the sixth-floor, southeast-corner window along an obstacle course of cluttered book cartons to hide his gun and escape down the back stairs at the northwest corner of the building in less time than it took Roy Truly and Officer Baker to run into the building and up a single flight of stairs to confront him within the second-floor lunchroom.
The reader will be more out of breath from reciting the above sentence than was Oswald after his four-flight dash.
On November 29, 1963, the FBI conducted what it called a “survey” to determine the possible ways Oswald might have escaped. It used ten different scenarios that involved the back stairs, the freight elevator, or combinations of both. After the “survey” was completed, agents settled on a scenario that had Oswald “walking from window on sixth floor to stairway, walking down stairway to second floor, walking on second floor from stairway to lunch room, spending 30 seconds in lunch room, and then walking to front stairway and walking downstairs to first floor and then walking to front door: 2 minutes 25 seconds.”31 It was the only scenario capable of putting Oswald in the lunchroom in enough time to greet Truly and Baker.
Timed tests were then conducted. Using a stopwatch, FBI Agent John Howlett reenacted Oswald’s actions from the sixth to the second floor. He completed the feat in one minute eighteen seconds the first time, one minute fourteen seconds the second.32
Truly and Baker were also asked to reconstruct their run up to the second floor. Two tests were made, timed again by the FBI. They completed the trip in one minute thirty seconds the first time, one minute fifteen seconds the second.33
Based on these calculations, Oswald must have reached the lunchroom only seconds in advance of the showdown, all calm, cool, and collected.
The Secret Service performed additional time trials on December 5, 1963. It picked up Oswald’s trail from the Depository’s front steps. It clocked his movements from there to where he boarded the bus seven blocks away (four and one-half minutes); the time he was on the bus until it became stalled in traffic and he got off two blocks later (four minutes); his four-block walk to a waiting cab (three minutes); his 2.6-mile cab ride to a location beyond his rooming house (seven minutes); his four-tenths of a mile walk back to the rooming house (six minutes); his departure from there and his wait for a bus back to the city (thirty seconds); his eight-tenths of a mile hike to the Tippit murder scene (twelve minutes); and his six-tenths of a mile walk to the Texas Theatre, where he was finally captured (ten minutes).34
The Commission remained steadfast in its efforts to show that all of the actions attributed to Oswald in the hour following the assassination could, in fact, have been accomplished by him. If it intended to prove its case against him in a truthful and unbiased manner, that is exactly how the Commission should have handled those matters. Why, then, did it lack the same resolve with Victoria Adams?
The Commission knew how important she was; it admitted as much in its final Report. Why then didn’t the FBI, Secret Service, or a Commission attorney grab a stopwatch and accompany her as she retraced her steps down the back stairs? Why wasn’t her timing compared with that of Oswald’s?
This oversight seemed inexcusable since Commission staffers Joseph Ball and David Belin, in charge of identifying the assassin, specifically listed Miss Adams’ time conflict as one of the key areas they intended to closely examine.
They addressed that issue in a February 25, 1964, internal report. Under the heading, “The Time Sequence,” Ball and Belin admitted, “If he [Oswald] were the assassin, he had to descend to the second floor in a short space of time in order to meet Truly and Baker.”35 The duo then cited Miss Adams:
“Vickie Adams, employed on the fourth floor of the TSBD Building, when interviewed on November 24, stated that she went to the second window from the left of the building on the fourth floor and opened same in order to see the motorcade and was there with a fellow employee, Sandra Styles. As the motorcade passed, she heard three loud reports that she first thought to be firecrackers and what she believed came from toward the right of the building rather than from the left and above. After the third shot, she observed the Presidential car speed up and rush away. She then ran immediately to the back of the building to where the stairs were located and ran down the stairs. No one else was observed at the stairs at this time and she said she was sure that this would be the only means of escape from the building from the sixth floor. She and her friends [sic] ran out of the building, turned to the left and ran across the railroad tracks. Five minutes later, they were directed to return to the building. We should pin down this time sequence of her running down the stairs.”36
We should pin down this time sequence.
Why then didn’t they?
As the days wore on and I continued to slowly gather information from my readings at the Archives, the faces of employees and other long-term researchers became familiar to me. One afternoon I noticed someone different. Yet I had seen him before, somewhere. Was it on television or the back of a dust jacket?
I inched my way to his table. “Mr. Weisberg?” I asked timidly.
He glanced up over the top of his narrow glasses. I introduced myself.
“Oh, yes,” he said. He smiled and reached up to shake my hand. “Gary [Schoener] told me you might be here. He speaks highly of you. Pull up a chair and let’s talk a bit. And please call me ‘Harold.’”37
He was in his early fifties then, with short hair and a close-trimmed moustache. Wrinkles crossed his forehead and emanated from the corners of his tired eyes. He had a soft voice and gave the impression of a wizened warrior, a grandfather, the source of it all.
He wore the customary outfit of the times: baggy pants, leather shoes, a loud and large-checkered shirt with two breast pockets. He immediately made me feel at ease.
Weisberg asked what I was doing. I brought him up to date on my efforts and told him I had watched the Zapruder film.
“It’s important for you to see that,” he said. He asked about my trip to Dallas and told me that his time was spent laboriously searching through documents at the Archives. He drove there almost daily from his home forty-five minutes away.
He was here today, he explained, gathering some records to take to Jim Garrison.
I told him that I had read his Whitewash series of books38 and that I greatly admired and respected his style of using facts rather than speculation to support his analysis.
He was generous with his time, and we chatted quietly for nearly an hour. I knew he was busy. So was I. As I got up, he told me he would look for me before leaving.
Two hours later, we were ambling down Pennsylvania Avenue to his parked car. Weisberg asked what hotel I was staying at and whether I intended to pursue research into the assassination. I assured him I did.
“Would you like to do some work for me?”
I stopped as if a bottomless chasm had suddenly opened in the sidewalk ahead. Had the most respected name in JFK assassination research just offered me a job?
“Well . . . ah . . . sure . . . I guess . . . I mean, of course . . . if I’m able.”
He chuckled. “You’ll do just fine. I’ll be in touch.”
Quick to honor his word, Weisberg called my room that night in front of a disbelieving Terry, who had spent his day touring monuments. While reviewing his papers at home, Weisberg found he needed some additional materials from the Archives. Would I mind getting copies of what he was missing and mail them to him, in care of Jim Garrison’s office?
The next morning, I retrieved what Weisberg wanted and sent the records to the address he specified. I half-expected to be followed from the post office, based on Garrison’s name on the mailing label and the intense attention his investigation had been attracting from the media.
The clerk simply tossed the parcel into a large, open bin with barely a lo
ok. It was merely the beginning of my long association with Harold Weisberg.
A day later, Terry decided to leave early for home. We exchanged goodbyes at the downtown bus depot. The one who got me involved in all of this promised to keep in touch.
But I would never hear from him again.
CHAPTER 11
July 1968
It was nearly 100 degrees on the streets that day. The cool air gushing from the Criminal Courts Building felt refreshing as I entered, searching for Dallas County Sheriff Bill Decker’s office.
I couldn’t seem to stay away from this city. I had some new questions and some new leads on Victoria Adams. I hoped to get some answers before I had to leave at the end of the month for the navy. Plus, I had my first assignment from Weisberg.
Echoing Penn Jones, Weisberg wrote me at home one day saying, “I wonder if there is not the possibility doors may open to you that close to Penn and the rest of us.”1 That’s why he wanted me to interview Sheriff Decker on this, my latest trip. Weisberg was interested in files and photographs the sheriff supposedly never turned over to the Warren Commission.
As I entered the Sheriff’s Department, a kindly secretary asked if I had an appointment. When I told her I didn’t but explained I was a long way from home and doing some innocent research, she asked me to wait.