The Girl on the Stairs

by Barry Ernest

  But Burkley’s admission on the death certificate was specific and, based on every other bit of existing evidence, confirming. The wound in Kennedy’s back was lower than the wound in the front.

  That bullet could not have been the one that went on to hit Connally.47

  Burkley accompanied Kennedy to Dallas, was with him in the emergency room at Parkland Hospital, was with the body on the way back to Washington, and was present at his autopsy. He signed the death certificate that clearly described the wounds, and he verified the position of those wounds on the controversial face sheet. Yet he was never called as a Commission witness.48

  I needed a copy of this, especially for Weisberg, since he had assigned me the task of finding the death certificate. I waited for my opportunity, then approached a clerk behind the main desk who was obviously new to all this and momentarily alone. I explained that I was in the navy and there for the day and hoped for some quick copies to take with me.

  I handed him a stack of about twenty papers, the death certificate tucked into the middle of the bunch. As was the custom, he glanced at each page. I figured he would look up at me with a knowing eye as he came upon the only document I really wanted, but he passed by it without hesitation.

  “Be right back,” he said.

  Moments later, he returned. I expected to see an army of security guards flanking him, but he was alone. He gave me the originals first and watched carefully as I put them back in the open box on the table in front of me. As I reached for my copies, he suddenly pulled them away with a smile.

  I had been caught.

  “That’ll be four fifty,” he said.

  I laughed nervously. “Here’s ten; keep the change.” Had I only found a fifty-dollar bill in my wallet, he would have been that much richer.

  Not long after, I casually left the building, glancing over my shoulders, waiting for the alarm bells to sound and the massive exit doors to clang shut in front of me, locking me inside until my copies could be confiscated. But nothing happened. It was the dreaded paranoia, I agree. But at least I hadn’t failed Weisberg on this one.49

  CHAPTER 15

  April-December 1969

  Every turn, sign, and pothole along I-95 became a part of my mind. I was killing myself from lack of sleep. But I was gaining ground in my research at the Archives.

  For instance, no one believed Roger Craig when he said he saw a man thought to be Oswald get into a Nash station wagon fifteen minutes after the assassination. But as so often happens in the Archives, an otherwise innocuous document came to light. This one told the story of Marvin Robinson, who happened to be driving through Dealey Plaza moments after the shooting when “a light colored Nash station wagon suddenly appeared before him.”1 As he related to the FBI on November 23, “this vehicle stopped and a white male came down the grass covered incline between the building and the street and entered the station wagon after which it drove away in the direction of the Oak Cliff section of Dallas.”

  To anyone unfamiliar with Roger Craig’s story, Robinson’s observations served little purpose. Yet it verified what the deputy sheriff had seen.

  But was the man who got into the station wagon Lee Oswald?

  No one believed Craig either when he said he went to Capt. Will Fritz’s office to identify Oswald later that afternoon.

  One day I received a package from Craig. Inside was a book written by Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry. On an attached note, Craig had written, “Recognize the man on pg. 72?” The picture I turned to showed Fritz’s outer office, under heavy guard while Oswald sat inside.

  Standing in that office was Roger Craig.2

  If it wasn’t the real Oswald whom Craig saw running from the scene, could it have been the infamous “second” Oswald? There were numerous instances of someone portraying himself as Oswald in the weeks before the assassination. This body double appeared at rifle ranges, a furniture store, a gun-repair shop, a Selective Service office, a used-car lot—even the doorstep of a Dallas resident’s home. This mysterious person always drew attention to himself, with what would later turn out to be self-incriminating actions or comments.

  The Commission dismissed these oddities, saying it could not have been the real Oswald. It never once wondered why so many independent and guilt-associating sightings had occurred in the weeks prior to the assassination and suddenly stopped immediately thereafter.

  Then there was Carolyn Arnold. The Warren Commission published in the twenty-six volumes her March 18, 1964, statement to the FBI that she left her office at the Depository and went outside “at about 12:25 p.m.” to stand on the front steps. It also included her remark she “did not see Oswald at the time President Kennedy was shot.”3

  Yet it completely brushed off a November 26, 1963, FBI interview in which Mrs. Arnold said she left her office “between 12:00 and 12:15 PM” and “thought she caught a fleeting glimpse of Lee Harvey Oswald standing in the hallway between the front door and the double doors leading to the warehouse, located on the first floor.” The document continued, “She could not be sure that this was Oswald, but said she felt it was and believed the time to be a few minutes before 12:15 PM.”4

  At that same moment, others in Dealey Plaza, including Arnold Rowland and Carolyn Walther, were observing at least one gunman in the sixth-floor window. It obviously could not have been Oswald up there if Carolyn Arnold was right. Was this why her November 26 FBI interview was ignored?

  Questions arose too about the physical evidence used against Oswald. According to the Warren Report, “A handmade bag of wrapping paper and tape was found in the southeast corner of the sixth floor alongside the window from which the shots were fired.”5 The Report concluded the bag was linked to Oswald in three ways: by fingerprints found on it, by fibers found in it, and by materials that had been used to make it.

  But was the bag even on the sixth floor?

  In order to preserve evidence, photographs were immediately taken upon discovery of the “sniper’s nest.” Those pictures, however, do not show the paper bag. They do reveal the arrangement of boxes around the window and what appear to be three spent rifle hulls on the floor.

  The paper bag, however, is missing, even though the field of vision in those initial crime-scene photos includes the corner where the Report says the bag was located.6 The Commission therefore had to use dotted lines on those pictures to indicate what it called the “approximate location” of the bag.7

  Sheriff’s Deputy Luke Mooney, the first person to discover and examine the sniper’s nest, related in detail what he saw and how he took great care to preserve the area. He said nothing about a paper sack.

  Mooney was specifically asked during his testimony if he had noticed “anything” lying on the floor in the corner, the spot where the bag was to be. He replied, “No sir; I didn’t see anything over in the corner.”8

  Several Dallas Police officers who arrived shortly after Mooney made similar statements. They too had not observed a paper bag.9

  This is the same thing Roger Craig had told me months earlier.10

  Considering its large size and its placement in a conspicuous and open spot, it is odd no one noticed it.

  Although the Report did not mention names, it apparently relied on Dallas Police Detectives Marvin Johnson and L. D. Montgomery to settle the mystery, at least somewhat.

  Belin: Did you find anything else up in the southeast corner of the sixth floor? We have talked about the rifle, we have talked about the shells, we have talked about the chicken bones and the lunch sack and the pop bottle by that second pair of windows. Anything else?

  Johnson: Yes, sir. We found this brown paper sack or case. It was made out of heavy wrapping paper. Actually, it looked similar to the paper that those books was wrapped in. It was just a long narrow paper bag.

  Belin: Where was this found?

  Johnson: Right in the corner of the building.11

  Montgomery testified he also saw the paper bag lying in the corner.12 It is strange that bo
th Johnson and Montgomery saw the bag where others before them had not. This is especially odd when one considers Johnson’s comment that nothing in that area had been moved prior to when the police pictures were snapped, pictures that did not show the paper bag.13

  Regardless, a suspicious-looking sack was turned over to the Dallas Police Crime Lab, and officers were seen carrying it from the building. The outside of it was later dusted with powder, but no legible fingerprints emerged.14 Later that night, the bag was sent to an FBI laboratory in Washington. Two legible prints were uncovered there, one of a left index finger and the other of a right palm.

  Both prints belonged to Oswald.

  The palm print was in such a position that it supported Buell Wesley Frazier’s recollection of how he had seen Oswald carrying the package on the morning of November 22, as Oswald walked toward the Depository. Frazier said he observed Oswald carrying the bag with the butt end of the package in his palm and the other end tucked neatly under his armpit.

  The discovery of the palm print and its location on the bag therefore verified Frazier’s recollection. That fact was not disclosed within the Warren Report, however, which said only that the palm print “was from Oswald’s right hand, in which he had carried the long package as he walked from Frazier’s car to the building.”15

  That wording may have been carefully chosen because, only one page earlier, the Report had discounted Frazier’s claim that he saw Oswald carry the package with one end in his palm and the other in his armpit—a physical impossibility based on Oswald’s arm size if that package contained the disassembled rifle.16

  The Report gives further assurance of an Oswald/paper bag link in a clipped subheading, “Fibers in paper bag matched fibers in blanket.”17 The evidence for that declaration, however, is not very convincing. When asked if fibers found in the bag came from the blanket in which the weapon had been stored, FBI hair-and-fiber expert Paul M. Stombaugh was guarded in his response: “All I would say here is that it is possible that these fibers could have come from this blanket.”18

  His caution resulted from the fact that not all of the fibers present in the blanket were found inside the paper bag. Since the blanket fibers were commonly used in many different fabrics, Stombaugh admitted that even if he had found every single one of the blanket fibers in the paper bag instead of the “so few” he did find, the best he could then say was those fibers “probably had come from this blanket.”19

  Noticeably absent from the Report was what FBI questioned-documents expert James Cadigan disclosed wasn’t found on or in the paper bag.

  Cadigan: I was also requested at that time to examine the bag to determine if there were any significant markings or scratches or abrasions or anything by which it could be associated with the rifle . . . that is, could I find any markings that I could tie to that rifle.

  [Commission Counsel Melvin A.] Eisenberg: Yes?

  Cadigan: And I couldn’t find any such markings.20

  Moments later, the agent was more emphatic, saying, “There were no marks on this bag that I could say were caused by that rifle or any other rifle or any other given instrument.”21 Eisenberg then used a lawyer’s trick, reversing the question and asking Cadigan if the absence of marks would preclude the rifle from having been in the bag. The agent did not budge, telling Eisenberg the absence meant very little to him. More important, he emphasized, would be the presence of such markings, the abrasions that could be directly associated with the rifle. And he had found none.22

  Nor did Cadigan find any oil on the inside surfaces of the paper bag, unusual since the rifle was described by the FBI as being in “well-oiled condition.”23

  Cadigan also conducted physical tests on the bag when questions arose about the origin of materials used to construct it.

  On the day of the assassination, Dallas police confiscated samples of the heavy brown wrapping paper and tape found in the shipping room at the Depository. Those samples were turned over to Dallas FBI agent Vincent Drain, who then immediately forwarded them to Washington. Following comparison tests, Cadigan said he was able to determine that the paper from the bag and the wrapping paper from the Depository’s shipping room were identical. The Report cited a portion of his testimony, in which he said, “In all of the observations and physical tests that I made I found . . . the bag . . . and the paper sample . . . were the same.”24

  That is exactly what Drain wrote in his November 29, 1963, follow-up report. He said the sample paper from the Depository “was examined by the FBI Laboratory and found to have the same observable characteristics as the brown paper bag shaped like a gun case which was found near the scene of the shooting on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository.”25 Yet something was strange.

  What appeared to be an identical copy of that report was put into the files of Dallas Lt. Carl Day, mentioned by Drain as the one who took custody of the paper bag. Drain’s November 29 report and the copy found in Day’s file had the same information: the date of release, date of dictation, city of origin, agent’s name, and FBI file number. The details were the same, as they should have been if it were merely a copy of Drain’s report. There was, however, one exception.

  In Drain’s copy, it states the sample paper from the Depository “was examined by the FBI Laboratory and found to have the same [author’s emphasis] observable characteristics as the brown paper bag shaped like a gun case which was found near the scene of the shooting. . . . ” But the version in Day’s file read “was examined by the FBI Laboratory and found not to be identical [author’s emphasis] with the paper gun case found at the scene of the shooting.” The inclusion of the word “not” changed its entire meaning. Was it a simple typographical error?

  When I brought that question to the FBI’s attention, the agency never responded.

  If the Commission accepted Cadigan’s laboratory results and Drain’s report indicating that paper from the Depository and the paper used to make the sack were the same, then why almost four months later was the Commission still asking the FBI to obtain paper samples from two of Oswald’s previous employers, including where he worked in New Orleans during the summer of 1963, to see if those samples matched the bag from the sixth floor?26

  Then came this intriguing document. Postal authorities in Irving, where Oswald stayed on the weekends, found on December 4, 1963, a partially opened parcel that, upon inspection because of its damaged and undeliverable condition, contained “a brown paper bag made of fairly heavy brown paper which bag was open at both ends.”27 The package had been addressed to a “Mr. Lee Oswald at a non-existent address in Dallas, Texas.”28

  The Warren Report said absolutely nothing about this one either.

  “Why Would the Government Lie?”

  Burton Cummings of The Guess Who was singing “No Time” as I entered the radio station a little before midnight that cold December evening. I was home on leave for a week, a full seven days before that behemoth of a boat I was assigned to—the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt—set sail for a seven-month sojourn in the Mediterranean Sea. The program I had been invited to this night was a live call-in show. Listeners could phone direct to the studio and ask whatever questions they wanted. A call-in program was a first for me. I had been reluctant about this, assuming the audience for late-night fare would lean more toward a discussion of aliens, the Loch Ness monster, and perhaps the spirit world.

  Tim Burns, the overnight disc jockey and congenial host, told me he would start by asking a few general questions. Then he’d open the phone lines at about 12:30. “You should be out of here by one thirty—two at the latest.”

  Six hours later, we had to abruptly cut off callers when time limits ended the program. People were genuinely interested. For the most part, they were polite, hungry for knowledge, sincerely concerned, and, in many cases, making educated inquiries.

  But one of my callers was a ringer. Knowing few would be aware of the story of Victoria Adams, I convinced my father to stay awake and telephone the studio,
posing a question about her. I wanted to introduce listeners to her name and mention my search.

  I had another motive too. At 50,000 watts and with some atmospheric skip and good propagation, I was hoping someone out there on that dark night might hear and help me. I was willing to try anything.

  Around two o’clock, an older gentleman called. He insisted I was wrong to raise doubts about our government. Doing so, he said, was tantamount to treason.

  His voice went an octave higher. “You are a disgrace to my country!” he shouted. Then he hung up.

  An hour later he was back. “Why would the government lie about something like this?” was all he asked me.

  The words hit hard. They were exactly what I had asked in response to Terry’s long-ago question of why I believed the Warren Report. They were the words that started all this, put me in this very chair this very night.

  “Well, why would it lie?” the man pressed, impatient at my silence.

  “I don’t know. . . . I don’t know why,” I heard myself say. “But I feel it may have.” Now it was my turn. “Have you ever read the Warren Report?” I asked him.

  He hesitated. “No. I don’t have to.”

  “I suggest you do,” I offered.

  “This is unbelievable,” he sputtered.

  “Yes, yes it is,” I replied. “I find it hard to believe myself.” I’m sure he never understood what I really meant. His was an unfortunate attitude but one I would encounter often as the years rolled on.

  Yet for now, it had been an exhilarating exchange.29 I loved the spontaneity, the give and take, the challenge of not knowing what was coming next, the realization I had become more knowledgeable than even I imagined. I relished the opportunity of helping others better understand the growing confusion over the assassination. Many authors by now had introduced their own theories and solutions to the murder, whether evidence supported such wild ideas or not. It was fun to clarify those issues.