by Barry Ernest
It reconnected me to Gary Schoener, whom I had not heard from since 1970. He had remained in Minnesota, completing all the requirements for his Ph.D. in clinical psychology, except for his dissertation. He was now in charge of the Walk-In Counseling Center, a pet project of his back when I first met him.
Life’s demands had forced Schoener to quit his assassination research in the mid-seventies.
And it reconnected me to Vincent Salandria, who stopped his studies of the assassination because his wife could no longer tolerate his obsession with that subject. Tired and frustrated at seventy-two and convinced that Kennedy was murdered at the hands of the U.S. military-intelligence system, Salandria had no patience with those who felt that “who did it” was still a mystery.
There was David Lifton. Since writing his bestseller, Best Evidence, he had persisted, researching and composing again for an upcoming volume about the many lives of Lee Oswald. Still in California, he once more asked for my assistance in obtaining documents for him from the Archives.
And of course, I would help him.
Reestablishing old ties by way of the computer made me think. Could this thing be used to find Victoria Adams? With its far and instantaneous reach, was it the perfect resource?
It proved as fruitless as everything else. When I typed her name into a search engine, all I found were pages devoted to spicy women’s wear from Victoria’s Secret or references to a dark-haired singer in an all-female band called the Spice Girls.
I e-mailed the Scott Foresman Company in Dallas, where she last worked. Then I queried the company’s main offices in Chicago.
The immediacy of this techno-mail system allowed me to hit the proverbial brick wall much quicker than I had become accustomed to with the U.S. Postal Service.
I sent more such letters to places where she had worked between high school and Dallas. I scoured the Internet for birth records, death records, voter records, tax records, any records. The occasional and unknown “Victoria Adams” popped up, giving me encouragement. Closer inspection always led to dead ends and more frustration. Searches made by my son through his employer’s extensive computer banks at a large Washington, D.C. law firm showed nothing on record nationwide. A private detective specializing in locating the lost told me that with no other information than what I possessed—especially with no idea of the state she may be residing in or if she had taken a married name—it would be a waste of time and money for him to continue.
I was losing hope, motivation, and even the desire to continue writing my story. Then, at the height of my despair, it happened. Isn’t that the way things always seem to work?
CHAPTER 26
February 3, 2002
The words in Larry’s e-mail struck me at full throttle. “She said she is the one who graduated from Presentation High School in 1959 and used to work in Dallas, Texas. I think it would be too much of a coincidence not to be the same one.”
Victoria Adams mentioned during her Warren Commission testimony that she had graduated from high school in San Francisco. Weeks earlier I had begun an online search through what seemed like an endless list of schools in that city. I was exploring alumni pages for her name, hoping for a last-chapter reprieve from what seemed like the inevitable: an epilogue to my book that said all my efforts to find this woman, in the end, had failed.
Then, alphabetically, I came upon Presentation High School. Its site revealed a listing for a 1959 graduate named Victoria Adams. The name fit. So did the year. Despite numerous attempts, though, I was unable to access any more information. So I typed off an e-mail to the school, seeking assistance.
No one replied.
Then Larry Roberge, a computer-geek friend of mine, asked one day how I was progressing with my book and my search for the missing witness. I brought him up to date and explained how I lacked the technical knowhow to pursue my most recent online discovery. He offered to help.
I gladly dumped the job into his lap.
Somehow, within a week, he had ferreted out the woman’s e-mail address and written her a note, asking if she had once lived in Dallas. When she replied yes, he immediately notified me.
I had been down this road before—so many times. Yet there was something about this one, something that finally seemed to lend this lead an aura of authenticity. So I drafted a lengthy e-mail, taking my time, explaining everything, sweating out every word. I knew if she were the real thing, I had to be careful with my words. I didn’t want to scare her away.
Was it really “too much of a coincidence,” as Larry said?
I clicked the Send button and waited, for three hours.
“Wow,” this woman finally replied. “Hard to believe someone has been looking for me for over 30 years.”
Had she really said “looking for me”?
“Yes, I am Victoria Adams, graduated from Presentation High School in 1959 and worked for Scott, Foresman in Dallas, as well as in Chicago.”1
I had finally found her.
CHAPTER 27
February 3, 2002
Victoria Elizabeth Adams was sixty-one now and living on the West Coast. No longer the “Miss Adams” I had grown accustomed to, she had married during the intervening years. She chose to keep her maiden name but preferred the more contemporary “Ms. Adams.” It was a subtle change.
“Too bad you didn’t know my biography is in Who’s Who of American Women and Who’s Who in the World,” she wrote that day. “Has been for years. But that is basically irrelevant except as a way of perhaps adding more credibility to what I saw and said at the time.1
“Remember, though, I was a very young woman at the time (22 years old) and believed in my government. Because of the strange circumstances and discounting of my statements, my multiple questioning by various government agencies and the Warren Commission’s conclusions, I lost my starry eyed beliefs in the integrity of our government. And I was scared, too. I was a young lady alone with no family or friend support at the time.”
I was absorbed by her words.
“Still, I saw what I saw and my testimony apparently didn’t fit what the government wanted. That is too bad. Repeatedly I asked that my testimony be confirmed by another witness who was with me part of the time, but I was basically blown off.”
She said she once spoke briefly with Mark Lane. And she appeared on the Mort Sahl television show, which Lane had arranged. But neither seemed interested in her real story. Other than that, and a few relatives, she had told her full story to no one.
“Essentially, however, things kind of died around it and I just gave up, figuring I would die with my own truth inside of me.”
She refused to read much of anything regarding the assassination. “My husband is bored by the topic, and I had no desire to read someone’s opinion of what happened when I was actually there and indirectly participated in the events of the day.”
In subsequent conversations, she became careful with me, feeling out this person who had suddenly trespassed into her otherwise tranquil life. She sought details, writing samples, verifications. She queried me philosophically, closely examining my opinions and thoughts, trying hard to repress the fear she said she had felt so many times in the past.
“I don’t have burly guys at my side and don’t do investigations on people,” she told me, referring to the experiences I had shared with her about S. M. Holland. “What I do have is a sense of trust that my Universe is operating exactly as it should if I operate in the same way. But, still, once in awhile, my old survival, and fight-or-flight fears surface.”
I did my best to dampen her concerns. I didn’t want to have to search for her anymore.
“Thanks for quelling those fears,” she responded. “I’ll help you in any way I can.”
Permission granted, I bombarded her on an almost daily basis with the questions I had held in reserve. She answered. I checked the details she provided, then sought more. She answered. One day I inquired if this was the first time she had provided such particulars to
anyone.
“Absolutely,” she replied.
Why me? I wondered.
“The reason I chose to discuss it with you was, you convinced me that you were sincerely interested in knowing the truth. And most importantly, you seemed convinced that I had been consistent in telling the truth as I remember it. So often, people just give up . . . like me . . . and quit. You didn’t.”
Suddenly, the gaps in her story began to close. Victoria Adams had led a troubled early life. At the age of eleven, she became a ward of the State of California after her parents abruptly deserted her. She was raised in several foster homes until she finished high school.
“Much of my young life was spent in fear and I concentrated more on survival than anything else,” she recalled. “I was afraid to speak, afraid of ridicule, afraid I couldn’t defend myself. Fear was a constant companion.”
After graduation, Ms. Adams entered the Novitiate at St. Martin, Ohio, in the Ursuline Order. She had gone to boarding school there when she was ten and considered it a stable environment. Two years later, she moved to Atlanta, where she worked briefly for a social-services organization and an attorney before becoming a sixth-grade teacher at the Immaculate Heart of Mary School. When the academic year ended in 1962, she was off again, this time to Dallas. Her first job there was in reservations at a Holiday Inn, and in the fall of that year, she taught a sixth-grade class at St. Monica’s School.
It was at this point that she began to closely examine her religious convictions, pondering her past and becoming fearful of what might be her only future. She decided for the first time to take control.
“I realized I was no longer a believer,” she admitted. “If I could not believe what I had been taught, I could not teach the concepts and beliefs, because I would be untrue to myself. Rather than subject children to any lies on my part, I chose to give up Catholicism and the Catholic school system. Those days were really confusing, but liberating in a sense.”
When the school term ended at St. Monica’s in mid-1963, Ms. Adams set her sights on something new and applied for what seemed like an interesting job at the Texas School Book Depository.
“My position with Scott Foresman in Dallas was a created one. They needed someone to be a customer service representative with the Catholic school system and the colleges in the southeast because they wanted to increase their market share in that arena. That was my job. And I always felt kind of out of the flow, since I was the only one who did that and I was the last hired, only working there for about a year.”
That year, however, became a turning point for Ms. Adams, both professionally and philosophically. Her life was changing dramatically, unalterably, in many different ways. And right in the middle of it came November 22.
“The day was cold and looked like it was going to rain. I carried a huge purse, big enough to accommodate my shoes, and I wore a gray coat. These details seem rather insignificant until later when we were released to go home, because I remember thinking that the Secret Service wouldn’t know if I had been carrying a weapon in my purse or the umbrella was a shotgun or some kind of rifle, which I had under my coat.
“I parked my car near the railroad tracks several blocks away, walked to the office in my tennis shoes, into the front of the building and took the elevator to the fourth floor, arriving ahead of time as I always did, took my high heels out of my purse and changed into them.
“Normally the office was quiet, but that day everyone was excited since the presidential motorcade was going to come right by our building. We were on the fourth floor and our windows would give us a good view, so I decided I would watch from the windows instead of trying to watch on the street. I am short, and figured I could see better, especially if the President and First Lady were in a convertible.2
“I remember some grumbling about JFK and someone showed me a black bordered statement or something in the newspaper, but I didn’t care. It didn’t affect me directly and I wasn’t particularly political anyway. It was just exciting being able to see the President go by.
“The morning went as usual, with typical letters, phone calls and customer service activity. About 20 minutes before the motorcade was due, someone opened our windows (the old kind that lift up) so we could see well, and I think six of us gathered at the windows to watch. Some people who worked in my office went downstairs and became part of the crowd gathering on the corner.
“I stood with Sandra [Styles] and we strained toward where we knew the motorcade would be coming from. To us the Kennedys were like a fairy tale—one in which the rich and beautiful live a life of make believe. They didn’t have to work like we did, doing the same things day after day with more of the same on the horizon. They had power, money and jewels and could jet here and there. In contrast, I could collect my $350 a month wages and go home and dream of what it must be like to be rich and married to a handsome powerful man.
“As I watched the motorcade proceed toward the Depository, the President and Mrs. Kennedy were clearly visible. I thought Mrs. Kennedy looked stunning with roses on her lap. As they rounded the corner, they turned toward our building, waving and smiling. The car continued moving slowly and a tree obstructed my view. That is when I heard what I thought was a firecracker go off. As the car came back into view I saw that something was wrong and watched as Mrs. Kennedy appeared to be trying to climb out of the car. I saw a Secret Service man jump in and the car began speeding up toward the triple underpass. Before it reached that I turned to Sandra and I said, ‘I want to see what is going on.’
“We ran to the back of the office and down the stairs.”
“We ran down the stairs,” Ms. Adams continued. “We were both in high heels. No one was there. We would have heard other steps. The noise on those steps is very obvious. And remember, the elevator cables were not moving. It was quiet.
“We ran outside and noticed a lot of people running toward the railroad tracks. The railroad yard behind the grassy knoll was quite a distance away. I could not see anything other than people running toward the railroad cars and I tried to run that way, too. But a policeman stopped us. I didn’t get very far—maybe 10 or 20 feet from the Depository building. So we turned back to Houston and to the front of the building.
“It was mass confusion. That was when I noticed Ruby.”
How sure was she it was Jack Ruby?
“Supposedly Jack Ruby was a great admirer of President and Mrs. Kennedy,” she answered. “What was peculiar was according to his testimony he was several blocks away at the newspaper office when the motorcade was passing by on Houston and Elm. But I saw him immediately after the gunshots on the corner of Houston and Elm and just happened to notice him since he was asking questions of people, like he was a reporter. He was rather distinctive in that he had on a suit and hat. I didn’t see anyone else acting like that. I mentioned this in my testimony more than once, trying to give as much information as I could about what I saw that day. From what I know nothing ever was said about that.
“But when I met Mark Lane, he showed me a picture of Ruby dressed like I had seen him and where I said he was. He said the Warren Commission had cropped the photo.
“Now, remember, I wasn’t into investigative reporting or anything and had no idea how important that information was about Ruby’s whereabouts and I am not even sure it is important now. The reason I know it was Ruby was I saw him on TV after he shot Oswald and recognized the face as being the same one I had seen on that corner.”
While she was standing in front of the Depository, observing all that was happening around her in the early moments following the assassination, Ms. Adams said she heard a police broadcast coming from a motorcycle parked nearby. I pressed her for more details about the nature of what she overheard.
“The only thing I remember about that was the fear it produced—that I might be implicated in some way. I do not recall what was said.”
Even though she couldn’t recollect the exact words, the “fear it produced” is cons
istent with what she told the Warren Commission she had heard: a police broadcast indicating the shots may have originated from the fourth floor, the very floor where Ms. Adams worked.
“Sandra went back inside. I stayed outside. I didn’t care if I would be fired. I needed to know what was happening.”
Only after satisfying her curiosity a bit longer did Ms. Adams return to the building, taking the front elevator to her office and her desk. She was sent home not long after being questioned by “several men.” By then, it was shortly after 2 P.M.
“One of the things I did immediately after I got home,” she continued, “was write a longhand, six-page letter to John O’Connor, who was the editor of The Monitor, a San Francisco Catholic newspaper. I detailed my moves and exactly what I did that day and especially what I witnessed. John never received that letter and I don’t know what actually happened to it.”
She wrote him, she said, because she had worked for O’Connor while in high school. I asked how she could be so sure he had not received her letter.
“I never spoke directly with O’Connor. My foster father, when I discussed the letter with him—he also worked at The Monitor—told me that John O’Connor had never received such a letter from me. My foster father was the advertising manager of the newspaper at the time and he and O’Connor spent a lot of time together.”
Ms. Adams did not keep a copy of the letter for herself. She was at the time, she admitted, still “young and naïve.”
“I suspect it was taken by someone in Dallas after I mailed it, but have no proof of that.”
“Maybe I Was Key and Didn’t Know It”
The initial statements Ms. Adams made to investigators in her office that Friday afternoon hoisted some red flags. Ms. Adams suddenly became a focus, questioned repeatedly by various agencies and always about the same thing: her trip down the stairs and exactly when she had made it.
“It really didn’t dawn on me that my actions were pertinent to anything until much later,” she said. “In Dallas, the people in my office were pretty chagrined that the secret police and CIA and all those others were interested in me. I think they were disappointed it wasn’t them. And, quite frankly, I couldn’t figure out why they were so interested. At least then.”