The Girl on the Stairs

by Barry Ernest

  15. Wise interview. Why wasn’t Ruby present when the presidential limousine passed by that Friday afternoon? This was someone who, during that weekend and in front of many people, openly cried at the mere thought of the president’s death. His regard for Kennedy and his wife was so deep-seated, he said, that he became enraged at the mention or sight of the accused assassin. He ultimately was willing to sacrifice his own life for the sake of revenge. And yet, only a few blocks away and conducting business that easily could have waited, Ruby chose not to spare a few minutes to stroll up and see his beloved First Family.

  16. CD 5, 40. The Commission, already aware of the frequency with which the FBI, Secret Service, and even David Belin himself had clicked a stopwatch for the express purpose of resolving important timing issues, chose to ignore this one involving Miss Adams.

  17. Mrs. Davis told the FBI, “I, along with others, started to move forward in the direction of the President’s car, but after moving about fifteen feet I turned and returned inside the Depository Building” (22H642). Following the shots, Molina “moved from my position on the steps in the direction of where the Presidential car was proceeding,” he told the agency. “I remained outside for a few moments and then went back inside” (22H664).

  18. See Sawyer Exhibit A (as shown in 21H392).

  19. Staff Working Papers, Liebeler, Wesley J. The comment was made in Liebeler’s “Memorandum re Galley Proofs of Chapter IV of the Report,” under the subheading “Oswald’s Actions in Building After Assassination,” 12.

  20. Ibid. Liebeler’s revision was submitted too late for any changes to be made. The opening two sentences regarding Miss Adams were thus left to read as originally written on page 154 of the Warren Report.

  Chapter 14

  1. In hindsight, I see that this line must have greatly amused Salandria.

  2. From handwritten notes made during a personal interview with Salandria, August 20, 1968.

  3. Harold Weisberg, letter to author, September 30, 1968.

  4. WR, 87-88.

  5. CE 386 (as shown in 16H977).

  6. CE 385 (as shown in 16H977).

  7. CD 107, Part One, 2. The actual report regarding the hole locations reads as follows: “The hole in the back of the coat is positioned approximately 53⁄8” below the top of the collar and 13⁄4” to the right of the middle seam. The hole in the shirt back is located in the same relative area, being 53⁄4” below the top of the collar and 11⁄8” to the right of the middle.” See CD 205, 153.

  8. Ibid.

  9. Ibid.

  10. 5H62. According to the FBI’s laboratory analysis, “Spectrographic examination of the fabric surrounding the holes in the back of the coat and shirt revealed minute traces of copper. No bullet metal was found in the fabric surrounding the hole in the front of the shirt” (CD 205, 153-54).

  11. 5H61.

  12. Office Files of Staff, J. Lee Rankin.

  13. CD 107, Part One, 2.

  14. Ibid., Part Three, Exhibits 59 and 60.

  15. CE 393 and 394 (in 17H23-26) show the president’s coat and shirt respectively but are not distinct and do not contain enlargements of the actual bullet holes or pinpoint the exact locations of those holes in the clothing as do the FBI photographs.

  16. 2H365.

  17. Ibid., 366. It is interesting to note that at this point in his testimony, Humes hints that the Commission’s drawing of the president’s neck wound may not be faithful to its actual position and that photographs taken during the autopsy “would be more accurate as to the precise location.” Those autopsy pictures were never shown to him.

  18. Ibid.

  19. Ibid. See also 17H28.

  20. 7H495.

  21. Hudson Exhibit 1 (as shown in 20H183). A much better copy of the Willis photograph appeared later in Groden, 20.

  22. CE 2112 (as shown in 24H542).

  23. CE 1024 (as shown in 18H760).

  24. WR, 111.

  25. 2H143.

  26. CD 7, DL 100-10461.

  27. Ibid.

  28. 2H93.

  29. Ibid., 103.

  30. CE 397 (as shown in 17H45). Marginal notes on the face sheet do indeed give measurements for this wound that are in agreement with the higher location shown in CE 386. I found Sylvia Meagher’s words interesting: “It is hard to understand why those measurements were recorded in the margin—recorded only for this particular wound but not for other wounds, scars, or incisions, and written in heavier ink than the other notations found on the same diagram.” See Sylvia Meagher, Accessories After the Fact (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967), 140-41.

  31. Norman Redlich, memorandum to J. Lee Rankin, April 27, 1964. Office Files of Staff, Norman Redlich.

  32. Ibid.

  33. Ibid.

  34. Ibid.

  35. Ibid.

  36. Ibid.

  37. WR, 97.

  38. Ibid. See also CE 887 (as shown in 18H86).

  39. Ibid.

  40. Ibid.

  41. CE 886 (as shown in 18H85). In the picture published in the Bantam Books edition of the Warren Report (October 1964, inside front cover), a dotted line runs between the two stand-ins, indicating the path a bullet would have taken based on the location of the chalk marks on both men. The line shows the bullet emerging from the president’s chest rather than his throat.

  42. WR, 97.

  43. CE 903 (as shown in 18H96). See also Groden, 125. In the Groden example, you can clearly see that the trajectory rod is now above the chalk mark on the Kennedy stand-in’s coat.

  44. 6H20.

  45. Certificate of Death, Pres. John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 1.

  46. Ibid., 2.

  47. Many years later, I would ask Weisberg why the damaging death certificate had not been destroyed in the first place. He told me it was a federal crime to tamper with evidence, especially of this magnitude, and he felt that the only alternative was to “hide” it somewhere within the existing massive volumes of documentation, where it would most likely not be discovered by an ordinary researcher.

  48. In a memorandum “To File” dated March 18, 1977, then acting counsel and director of the House Select Committee on Assassinations Richard A. Sprague wrote that an attorney representing Burkley had contacted him to say his client “had never been interviewed and that he has information in the Kennedy assassination indicating that others besides Oswald must have participated.” The attorney said that he was calling Sprague with Burkley’s consent and that Burkley had agreed to talk with Sprague in Washington. Unfortunately, and as a result of continuing pressure from his superiors, Sprague resigned his position two weeks later. Two HSCA staff members finally interviewed Burkley in January 1978. Based on an affidavit signed by Burkley in November 1978, that interview was routine in nature and concerned only the general duties Burkley performed during that fateful weekend. No mention was made of the death certificate or the information he claimed to possess regarding a possible conspiracy. (See JFK Collection: HSCA RG233.) Burkley died of pneumonia on January 2, 1991, in Los Angeles. He was eighty-eight.

  49. Weisberg traveled to the Archives the next day and found the death certificate exactly where I told him it was. He announced the discovery in his next book, Post Mortem, self-published in 1975. The delay from 1969 to 1975, Weisberg explained to me, was caused by his lengthy attempts to get his manuscript commercially published and the fact he “did not want to cause any sensationalism” by publicly releasing the death certificate separate from his book. He further said he had no fear of someone else finding it, due to its nearly concealed location. President Kennedy’s death certificate now has its own file at the National Archives (Group 272, Entry 52, Folder 15).

  Chapter 15

  1. CD 5, 70.

  2. See Jesse Curry, JFK Assassination File (Dallas: American Poster and Printing, 1969), 72.

  3. 22H635.

  4. CD 5, 41.

  5. WR, 134. See also CE 142 (as shown in 16H513).

  6. See, for example, Studebaker Exhib
its A-J (as shown in 21H643-49).

  7. Ibid., 647.

  8. 3H286.

  9. See, for instance, the testimony of Dallas Police members Gerald Hill (7H65) and J. B. Hicks (7H289).

  10. See also Craig’s testimony in 6H268.

  11. 7H103.

  12. 7H98.

  13. Ibid., 102.

  14. 4H267.

  15. WR, 135.

  16. Ibid., 134. The Report also neglected to mention that Frazier, the closest observer of the bag, was quoted on more than one occasion describing it as being completely different from the one said to have been used by Oswald: in a November 29 internal FBI memo as “definitely a thin flimsy sack like one purchased in a dime store” (FBI #62-109060-1111) and in a December 1 FBI report as “a light brown thin crinkly paper bag of the type used by five and ten cent stores” (FBI #62-109060-1253). The FBI would note as well that when Frazier was shown the paper sack for identification purposes at Dallas Police headquarters on the night of the assassination, he described the bag Oswald carried as “a flimsy, thin consistency” and said the sack being displayed by police that night “had never been seen by him before.” The FBI continued, “He also said that this sack was definitely not the one he had observed in possession of Oswald the morning of November 22, 1963” (FBI File No. 89-43-1390).

  17.WR, 136.

  18. 4H81.

  19. Ibid. During his testimony, Agent Stombaugh also provided a comical and self-incriminating aside to the Commission’s steadfast contention that Oswald pilfered paper from the Depository for the sole purpose of using it to fashion a rifle container:

  Stombaugh: When I looked at the bag and examined it, it struck me as being a homemade bag such as I could make. Occasionally I will have a need for something like this at home. Therefore, I will take some brown paper and a strip of tape home with me. Then when I get home I will fold the tape—fold the paper rather—in the shape I need—and to seal it up I will tear strips of the sealing tape from the little piece I have. (4H75)

  The Commission attorney questioning Stombaugh chose not to pursue the agent’s confession.

  20. 4H97.

  21. Ibid.

  22. Ibid., 98. Cadigan was queried along these lines as the result of a March 23, 1964, internal memo to Eisenberg from Commission attorneys Ball and Belin, in which that team suggested that questions be asked regarding the lack of rifle markings on the inside of the bag: “Do the markings on the bag permit a conclusion that a rifle was carried in this bag?” Ball and Belin wrote. “The FBI report, Document 5, page 165, reads ‘the inside surface of specimen Q-10 [the paper bag] did not disclose markings identifiable with the rifle.’ Does the absence of such markings compel the conclusion that the rifle was never carried in that bag? If the rifle had been carried in that bag would the rifle probably have left markings on that bag?” (Joseph Ball and David Belin, memorandum to Melvin A. Eisenberg, 2.)

  23. See CE 2974 (as shown in 26H455). The description came from J. Edgar Hoover.

  24. WR, 135. See also 4H93.

  25. CD 5, 129.

  26. FBI teletype from Dallas to New Orleans, File No. 100-10461-4653, March 23, 1964. The Commission had made the request to the FBI on March 20.

  27. CD 205.

  28. Ibid.

  29. Tim would write in a January 31, 1970, letter that his show with me “was the best program I’ve ever had.” This was not bad, considering he also had as guests one night members of the local chapter of the John Birch Society and a soothsayer who could predict the future.

  Chapter 16

  1. Harold Weisberg, letter to author, March 10, 1970.

  2. The opening chapter to Ford’s Portrait of the Assassin (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1965) contained details of the rumor Oswald may have been a government agent, a bombshell that up to that point had remained behind closed doors during the Warren Commission’s investigation.

  3. David Belin, November 22, 1963: You Are the Jury (New York: Quadrangle/The New York Times Book Co., 1973).

  4. Ibid., 269.

  5. Ibid., 270.

  6. 6H340-41.

  7. 6H331.

  8. Belin, 271.

  9. Fifteen years later, Belin wrote Final Disclosure: The Full Truth About the Assassination of President Kennedy (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1988). This time, Miss Adams, a staple in the author’s other evaluations, would not be mentioned at all.

  10. Belin, November 22, 1963, 271. In the book’s foreword, Harrison E. Salisbury, no newcomer to overstatement himself, described what he termed “the Belin study” as being “meticulous, precise and all-embracing.” Ibid., xiii.

  11. “Goodnight America,” ABC Television, March 6, 1975.

  12. See Hosty’s explanation of the incident in his autobiography, Assignment: Oswald (New York: Arcade, 1996), 60. Hosty said the note was merely an admonishment, telling him to come to Oswald directly with any questions regarding Oswald’s return from Russia rather than continue to bother his wife at the Paine residence. Hosty considered the letter to be “no big deal” (Hosty, 29).

  13. WR, 327. See also CE 18 (as shown in 16H64 and 5H112).

  14. Fidel Castro was present in Dealey Plaza during the assassination, if one chooses to believe the photograph on the April 7, 1992, front page of a grocery-store tabloid called the Sun. A blowup of a man standing along Elm Street, moments after the shooting began, reveals an obviously elated Castro watching as his archenemy is hit by an assassin’s bullet. The same picture was published in the twenty-six volumes (21H781), but the man identified by the Sun as Castro is not present. Had the Warren Commission secretly cropped him out, fearing public reprisal if it were known he was there? My judgment was that one couldn’t expect credibility from a paper that enticed readers of the same issue with other such leading stories as “Top Model Has 73-inch Bust And Earns $10G A Day” and “Face On Mars Is UFO Beacon.”

  15. HSCA open hearings, September 11, 1978. See also HSCA, vol. 2, 209-10.

  16. Ibid. See also HSCA, vol. 2, 279.

  17. Ibid. See also HSCA, vol. 2, 282. General Walker, an outspoken anti-communist and member of the John Birch Society, had been relieved of his military command by President Kennedy in 1962 for distributing right-wing literature to subordinates. On April 10, 1963, someone fired a shot at Walker as he sat in his home in suburban Dallas. Oswald was later linked to the crime.

  18. HSCA open hearings, September 21, 1978. See also HSCA, vol. 3, 614 and 641.

  19. Ibid. See also HSCA, vol. 3, 615.

  20. Ibid., 617. He couldn’t have gotten far. When Oswald was arrested, his pockets held only $13.87 in cash (CE 2003, 289, as shown in 24H345). This was odd for a man who supposedly had the foresight to plan his murderous deed in advance and left his wife $170 in cash before departing for work on the morning of the assassination. Author Albert H. Newman would come up with a better idea. In his book, The Assassination of John F. Kennedy: The Reasons Why (New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1970), Newman would assign Oswald the classic quality of tenacity: that the escaping assassin didn’t require much money since he was on his way to a bus ride that would take him to the home of General Walker, where he could complete the job he had so miserably failed at more than seven months earlier (47-49).

  21. HSCA open hearings, September 22, 1978. See also HSCA, vol. 4, 9.

  22. Ibid. See also HSCA, vol. 4, 12.

  23. 5H120-29.

  24. HSCA open hearings, September 22, 1978. See also HSCA, vol. 4, 121. McCone had remained similarly mute when he appeared with Helms in front of the Warren Commission (5H120-29).

  25. Ibid. See also HSCA, vol. 4, 160.

  26. HSCA open hearings, September 25, 1978. See also HSCA, vol. 4, 467.

  27. On September 4, 1976, six months before his death, De Mohrenschildt handwrote a two-page letter to George Bush, who was then director of the CIA. Opening with “Dear George,” he asked Bush to help “bring a solution into the hopeless situation I find myself in.” He continued, “My wife and I find ou
rselves surrounded by some vigilantes; our phone bugged and we are being followed everywhere.” Referring to his recently completed manuscript titled “I Am a Patsy! I Am a Patsy!” he went on to say he had “tried to write, stupidly and unsuccessfully about Lee H. Oswald and must have annoyed a lot of people—I do not know.” And he asked Bush to “do something to remove this net around us.” He promised, “This will be my last request for help and I will not annoy you any more.” On CIA letterhead, Bush replied three weeks later with a “Dear George” letter of his own, saying the delay on his end was due to the time it took “to explore thoroughly the matters you raised.” He unfortunately could not offer the help De Mohrenschildt sought. “However, my staff has been unable to find any indication of interest in your activities on the part of Federal authorities in recent years. The flurry of interest that attended your testimony before the Warren Commission has long since subsided. I can only speculate that you may have become ‘newsworthy’ again in view of the renewed interest in the Kennedy assassination and, thus, may be attracting the attention of people in the media.” (CIA Document 104-10322-10242.)

  28. According to a February 28, 1964, FBI document, De Mohrenschildt would enter into a relationship with Oswald only after being assured by that agency that Oswald was “completely harmless.” How the FBI knew this was not mentioned. (See FBI File No. DL 105-632.)

  29. HSCA open hearings, September 25, 1978. See also HSCA, vol. 4, 468.

  30. HSCA open hearings, September 8, 1978. See also HSCA, vol. 1, 414-15.

  31. Ibid. See also HSCA, vol. 1, 503-5.

  32. Ibid. See also HSCA, vol. 1, 502.

  33. Mack would humbly tell me years later that his calculations regarding when he felt gunfire had occurred on the tape were off by one minute from the timing ultimately established by the Committee. Therefore, he said, he could take credit only for being the first to introduce the theory that the assassination had been recorded.