by Barry Ernest
1. 6H388.
2. Ibid., 388-90.
3. Ibid., 391.
4. Ibid., 391-92.
5. Ibid., 393.
Chapter 4
1. CE 496 (as shown in 17H210).
2. A janitor, Piper was questioned by attorney Ball the next day, April 8, but was not asked a single question about whether he saw Shelley and Lovelady reenter the building or what time that may have been (6H382-86).
3. 6H330.
4. Ibid., 331.
5. Ibid., 340.
6. Ibid., 340-41.
7. 22H632.
8. Ibid., 644.
9. Ibid., 648.
10. Ibid., 676.
11. Ibid., 673.
12. Ibid., 662.
13. CE 2003 (as shown in 24H226).
14. Ibid., 214.
15. As an interesting aside, the September 28, 1960, edition of the Washington Post reported that eight airmen at Andrews Air Force Base had been arrested by the FBI for theft of government property. One of those charged was twenty-three-year-old Billy Nolan Lovelady, who later admitted to his participation in stealing and then reselling several .38-caliber revolvers. Part of the penalty assessed to Lovelady, in addition to a discharge, was a $200 fine. Lovelady paid $125 of it, then reneged on the balance due. The FBI caught up with him in Dallas in January 1963 and arrested him at his place of employment, the Texas School Book Depository. He was immediately taken to a local jail. Ochus V. Campbell, vice president of the Depository, advanced Lovelady the outstanding amount of his fine, and the case was officially closed. (See FBI Document No. 52-75836.)
Chapter 5
1. A cashier at an Irving grocery store told the FBI that on Thursday, October 31, 1963, she cashed a thirty-three-dollar Texas unemployment check for Lee Oswald (CE 1165, 6, as shown in 22H225). Without any explanation, the Commission changed the date and stated in its Report that the transaction occurred on Friday, November 1 (WR, 331).
2. Marina Oswald felt that there was a different reason for the unexpected Thursday visit. Because her husband had not been to Irving the previous weekend and did not intend to visit during the upcoming weekend of November 22-24, and since they had had a bitter argument over the telephone earlier that particular week, Marina told the Commission that Oswald made the Thursday evening visit to “make up” with her (18H638) and to “make his peace with me” (1H65). She also said that her husband talked with her that night about wanting them to live together again and “that if I want to he would rent an apartment in Dallas tomorrow—that he didn’t want me to remain with Ruth [Paine] any longer, but wanted me to live with him in Dallas” (1H66).
3. WR, 130.
4. See CE 994, 43 (as shown in 18H639). See also the testimony of Marina Oswald, 1H69.
5. 2H243.
6. WR, 137.
7. 6H360.
8. 1H120.
9. 3H49.
10. 1H66.
11. 3H48.
12. 2H249.
13. Ibid., 226.
14. Coincidentally, Frazier once worked in a department store and often uncrated curtain rods as part of his duties. He told the Commission, “If you have seen when they come straight from the factory you know how they can bundle them up and put them in there pretty compact, so he [Oswald] told me it was curtain rods so I didn’t think anymore about the package whatsoever” (2H229). The FBI’s measurements are discussed in CE 2009 (as shown in 24H409).
15. WR, 134.
16. 6H377.
17. WR, 250.
18. CD 87.
19. 3H144-45.
20. 3H148. Brennan said he declined to make a positive identification (even after seeing Oswald’s picture twice on television prior to the lineup) because he was afraid for himself and his family. It was only after Oswald was killed and fears of possible reprisal subsided that Brennan changed his mind and said he knew all along Oswald was the man in the window. But according to his testimony, Brennan did not notify authorities of this important flip-flop until December 17, more than three weeks after Oswald was murdered (see 3H155).
21. 6H351. See also WR, 143.
22. 6H383.
23. 6H328.
24. 2H173-76.
25. One can only appreciate the lengths to which the Commission went to prove Rowland wrong by reading the testimony of his wife, who, for lack of a better term, was verbally coerced into admitting her husband had once exaggerated about his school grades (see 6H189-90). Despite Commission attorney David Belin assuring Mrs. Rowland that his line of questioning would not “take away from the testimony of your husband as to what he saw in the building at the time,” that is exactly what happened.
26. 6H263.
27. The sixth floor was used for storage of textbooks and routinely had hundreds of boxes strewn throughout. The area was even more disorganized on that day as the result of a new floor being laid by a crew of men who were working there during the morning hours and broke for lunch around noon.
28. WR, 149-56.
29. 3H246.
30. Ibid., 250.
31. Ibid.
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid., 225.
34. Ibid., 278-79.
35. WR, 157.
36. 6H409-10.
37. WR, 159.
38. Ibid. See also 2H280-81.
39. Ibid.
40. 6H412.
41. See CE 381-A (as shown in 16H974). The ticket indeed has the date of “Fri. Nov. 22, ’63” on it, but the time is listed only generally as “P.M.” Some critics later charged that the ticket was planted on the unsuspecting Oswald. Although the Warren Report does not say exactly when the transfer ticket was discovered—it mentions only that it was found “when Oswald was apprehended” (WR, 157)—the footnote it uses to support that statement takes the reader to the testimony of Dallas Police Detective Richard M. Sims, who stated he actually found the ticket in Oswald’s shirt pocket two hours after his arrest, at about 4 P.M. that Friday, during a search of the suspect shortly before the first lineup was held (7H173).
42. 2H256.
43. CE 370 (as shown in 16H966).
44. 6H429.
45. 6H428. The agent was John Howlett, who had been the stand-in for Oswald during the time tests of the assassin’s escape to the second-floor lunchroom. Others in the car included Commission counsel Joseph Ball and a member of the Texas attorney general’s office.
46. WR, 161.
47. 6H443.
48. Ibid.; 6H444.
49. WR, 253.
50. Ibid., 163.
51. See the December 5, 1963, affidavit of Mrs. Roberts in 7H439.
52. WR, 165.
53. Ibid.; WR, 166.
54. Ibid., 167.
55. Ibid.
56. 3H310-11.
57. 11H435.
58. CE 2523 (as shown in 25H731).
59. 11H438.
60. Bushes obscured his view of Tippit’s police car, so Scoggins was not an eyewitness to the actual shooting.
61. WR, 166.
62. Ibid.
63. Ibid. See also 3H334.
64. 2H261. Interesting too was the testimony of W. E. Perry (7H234), Richard L. Clark (7H237-38), and Don R. Ables (7H241). Each was a Dallas Police Department employee who participated, with Oswald, in the police lineups. They explained that when called on during the lineup procedure, each gave a fictitious name and occupation. Oswald, however, gave his true name and where he worked—details by now in wide public circulation.
65. 6H447. The Report gives the distance as twenty-five feet (WR, 166).
66. Benavides was interviewed for a four-part series on the assassination that was broadcast by CBS News in June 1967. Asked then if there was any doubt in his mind that it was Oswald who shot Tippit, Benavides replied, “No, sir, there was no doubt at all. I could even tell you how he combed his hair and the clothes he wore and what have you, all the details. And if he had a scar on his face, I could probably have told you about it, but—you don’t forget things like that.” See Part III, 6, of the offici
al transcript of “CBS News Inquiry, ‘The Warren Report.’” Only someone who had read Benavides’ testimony in 6H444-54 could appreciate what a startling reversal this was.
67. 6H451.
68. Ibid.
69. WR, 175.
70. CE 2003, 117 (as shown in 24H253).
71. CE 1843 (as shown in 23H521). As a curious aside, when Benavides was shown the jacket during his questioning by Commission counsel Belin, the lawyer blundered. Instead of displaying CE 162, the “light-beige” jacket found at the gas station and presumably the one worn by Tippit’s murderer, Belin showed Benavides CE 163, a separate blue jacket of Oswald’s found in the Depository:
Belin: I am handing you a jacket which has been marked as “Commission’s Exhibit 163,” and ask you to state whether this bears any similarity to the jacket you saw this man with the gun wearing?
Benavides: I would say this looks just like it (6H453).
The mistake went uncorrected.
72. 7H4.
73. 7H10-11.
74. Ibid., 15.
75. Ibid., 12.
76. Ibid., 10. Mrs. Postal couldn’t be exact as to how many persons had purchased tickets because “everything was happening so fast.”
77. 3H299. One Commission member was astonished by McDonald’s relaxed manner, asking the officer if, despite Brewer’s specific identification, he still intended to search the other patrons. “It was my intention—everybody I came to,” the officer replied (3H303).
78. See, for instance, the testimony of Mrs. Postal, 7H12-13.
79. WR, 169.
Chapter 7
1. From handwritten notes made during a personal interview with Aldredge, March 19, 1968.
2. From handwritten notes made during a personal interview with Jones, March 19, 1968.
3. See CE 18 (as shown in 16H69-70).
4. I would verify this by checking a cross-reference telephone directory at the Dallas Public Library.
5. Penn Jones, Jr., Forgive My Grief Volume I: A Critical Review of the Warren Commission Report on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy (Midlothian, TX: Midlothian Mirror, 1966).
6. Penn Jones, Jr., Forgive My Grief II: A Further Critical Review of the Warren Commission Report on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy (Midlothian, TX: Midlothian Mirror, 1967).
7. From handwritten notes made during a personal interview with Truly, March 20, 1968.
8. Pauline E. Sanders, a Depository employee standing outside near the front steps of the building, told the FBI that a uniformed police officer wearing a white helmet ran up the steps and into the building “within a matter of ten seconds” following the shooting. See CE 1434 (as shown in 22H844-45).
9. Although Truly (3H225) and Baker (3H251) both testified that Oswald was holding nothing in his hands, Baker wrote in a signed statement on September 23, 1964 (the Warren Report was presented to President Johnson the next day), “On the second floor, where the lunchroom is located, I saw a man standing in the lunchroom drinking a coke.” The words “drinking a coke” were then scratched out by the officer (see CE 3076, as shown in 26H679). It is strange that at that late date, and six months after testifying to the contrary, Baker spontaneously wrote that Oswald had a drink in his hand. Maybe Baker simply had made a mistake. But one thing is for certain: the additional time it would have taken Oswald to deposit money in the soda machine and select his drink before Baker got to him would have posed further headaches to a Commission already grappling with a strained schedule, not to mention the question as to why an escaping assassin, cops on his heels, would even bother to stop for a soda. There is evidence suggesting that Baker was accurate in his September description after all. Oswald was asked, during a Friday-night interrogation by Dallas Police Capt. Will Fritz, where he was when Baker confronted him. According to Fritz, “He [Oswald] said he was on the second floor drinking a coca cola [author’s emphasis] when the officer came in” (WR, 600).
10. See CE 1118, a diagram of the second floor, in 22H85 and reprinted in larger scale in WR, 150.
11. 3H255.
12. Ibid.
13. WR, 151.
14. Ibid.
15. 3H255.
16. 3H223.
17. 3H255.
18. 3H256. Mrs. Robert A. Reid testified, however, that Oswald occasionally came to her office on the second floor next to the lunchroom to “get change” for the soda machine and even to converse with others about his newborn girl (3H275-76).
19. This embarrassing line, including any others in Cody’s presence, is taken from handwritten notes made during a personal interview with Cody, March 21, 1968.
Chapter 8
1. From a tape-recorded interview with Jones, March 22, 1968.
2. See 6H430-31 for Whaley’s testimony describing this breach of police ethics. Whaley, sixty, was killed in a head-on collision in his cab on December 18, 1965. The other driver also died. Jones wrote, “Whaley had the opportunity to talk to Oswald; Oswald may have told Whaley nothing, but there was a chance.” See Jones, Forgive My Grief II, 12.
3. Mrs. Roberts, sixty, died on January 10, 1966, after suffering “an apparent heart attack.” Jones wrote, “Oswald may have told Mrs. Earlene Roberts nothing, but there was a possibility which could not afford [sic] to be overlooked by the plotters of the assassination.” See Jones, Forgive My Grief II, 12.
4. Ibid., 19. Jones wrote that the brother looked so much like Domingo, his death may have been a case of mistaken identity. “Benevides [sic] described a man other than Oswald” and “was not asked to go down to the lineup to view Oswald,” Jones said. After his brother’s death, Benavides left the area for a few months but later returned and “now . . . cooperates completely with the Dallas Police Department” and “states positively now that the escaping person was Oswald.”
5. From handwritten notes I was permitted to make during a personal interview with Holland, March 25, 1968.
6. Although police who also ran to the knoll would look through the windows of many of the cars parked behind the wooden fence, testimony reveals that the trunks of those vehicles were not searched. Veteran Dallas Police Officer Joe M. Smith testified he “looked into all the cars” during a twenty-minute search of the parking lot immediately following the shooting but saw nothing suspicious in any of the vehicles. As an aside, he said when he first entered the parking area with gun in hand, another man already there quickly flashed identification indicating he was a Secret Service agent (7H535).
7. Jones, Forgive My Grief Volume I, 54-60.
8. From handwritten notes made during a personal interview with Jarnagin, March 27, 1968.
9. FBI File No. DL 89-43, 24-25.
10. From handwritten notes made during a telephone interview with Walther, March 27, 1968.
11. Those critical of Mrs. Walther often cite this mistake in floor location as one of the reasons she is unreliable and therefore not to be trusted with any of her other observations. In Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy (New York: W. W. Norton, 2007), author Vincent Bugliosi does just that after chastising “conspiracy theorists” for having the audacity to use such a dubious witness. Yet in his follow-up book on the same subject, Bugliosi defends a similar mistake made by Sgt. D. V. Harkness, who reported over the police radio that a shot “came from the fifth floor of the . . . Depository.” In a footnote, Bugliosi justifies that miscue by saying, “Harkness’s error is understandable in light of the fact that in 1963 the Depository’s first-floor windows were covered with decorative masonry. Persons unfamiliar with the building could easily mistake the second floor for the first, third for the second, and so on—making the sixth floor appear as if it were the fifth floor. This is apparently what Harkness did during these initial confusing moments.” See Bugliosi, Four Days in November (New York: W. W. Norton, 2007), 80.
12. Mrs. Walther is probably referring to the children of witnesses William and Gayle Newman, who were standing on the north side of Elm Str
eet near the knoll. Immediately upon hearing gunshots, the couple pulled their children to the ground and covered them with their own bodies.
13. WR, 165.
14. Ibid.
15. My time tests were conducted on March 30, 1968.
16. WR, 165.
17. Ibid.
18. From handwritten notes made during a personal interview with Mrs. Donald R. Higgins, March 30, 1968.
19. The Texas Theatre must have had a penchant for war flicks: when Oswald was arrested there, the movies Cry of Battle and War Is Hell were playing.
20. From handwritten notes made during a telephone interview with Jones, March 30, 1968.
21. Lane, 56.
22. From handwritten notes made during a telephone and personal interview with Brehm, March 30 and into the wee hours of March 31, 1968.
23. Brehm’s name was added to an accumulating number of witnesses never summoned to Washington to testify or even questioned in Dallas during the Commission’s on-site investigation. His name was known, however. On the day of the assassination, he appeared on local television and was quoted in the city’s evening newspaper. The FBI also interviewed him at length on November 24, 1963 (see FBI File No. DL 89-43, 28-29).
Chapter 9
1. CE 1281 (as shown in 22H395).
2. From the testimony of Anne Boudreaux, 8H36-37.
3. CE 3067 (as shown in 26H653-54).
4. Ibid., 652.
5. Ibid., 655. Coincidentally, Jack Ruby once operated a club in Dallas called the Silver Spur, which closed its doors to the public in the mid-1950s. He also was part owner of the Sovereign Club, before changing its name to the Carousel Club.
6. Ibid., 656.
7. Ibid.
8. I had to wonder exactly when Mrs. Kauffman, having been interviewed by the FBI twice in one day and providing obviously conflicting stories, found the time to give the matter “considerable thought” and whether her change of mind occurred as the result of her husband coaching her against becoming involved.
9. CE 3067 (as shown in 26H656).
10. Ibid., 657.
11. Ibid., 657-59.
12. Margaret K. Hoover, letter to author, April 25, 1968.
13. Gary Schoener, letter to author, June 10, 1968.
14. Ibid., June 17, 1968.
15. As time went by, several others would report damage to envelopes they received from me, and I too would occasionally observe similar problems with letters addressed in my name. In each and every case, the mail mischief involved correspondence regarding the JFK assassination.