The Secret Service agents wanted to remove the president’s body from Parkland and take it to Air Force One. A local official had other ideas. Earl Rose, Dallas County medical examiner, told agent Roy Kellerman that the corpse could not be removed until after an autopsy was performed in Texas.
Kellerman rebuffed him. “My friend, this is the body of the President of the United States, and we are going to take it back to Washington.”
“No,” Rose said, “that’s not the way things are. When there’s a homicide, we must have an autopsy.”
Forget it, Kellerman told him. “He is the President. He is going with us.”
Rose would not back down. “The body stays.”
The Secret Service agent was furious. “My friend, my name is Roy Kellerman. I am Special Agent in Charge of the White House Detail of the Secret Service. We are taking President Kennedy back to the capital.”
Earl Rose was not impressed. “You’re not taking the body anywhere. There’s a law here. We’re going to enforce it.”
Admiral George Burkley, the president’s physician, joined the argument, telling Rose that they could not keep Mrs. Kennedy waiting.
Rose snapped at him. “The remains stay.”
Burkley was now as angry as Kellerman. “It’s the President of the United States!”
“That doesn’t matter,” Rose said. “You can’t lose the chain of evidence.”
A justice of the peace, who had the authority to overrule Rose, showed up. He was not sympathetic. “It’s just another homicide, as far as I’m concerned.”
That was the tipping point. Agent Kellerman cursed the official and announced that “we’re leaving.” Ken O’Donnell backed him up. “We’re leaving now. Wheel it out!”
At 2:08 P.M. (CST), the agents began to roll the coffin through the emergency room to the white hearse waiting outside. They pushed aside Rose, the justice of the peace, and a local cop. The dispute almost broke out into a fistfight. As much as JFK’s Irish mafia, the agents on his detail had grown to love him. They would stand for no more delays. They marched right past the state officials, out the door, and to the hearse. John Kennedy’s loyalists had no way of knowing that they had made a serious mistake. Their obstructions and the resulting failure to conduct an autopsy in Dallas within a few hours of the murder would come to haunt the history of John Kennedy’s assassination for the next fifty years. The intense display of emotions by Kennedy’s grieving staff and Secret Service detail at Parkland Hospital, although understandable, served the nation poorly, and would, in time and for decades to come, create widespread suspicion and mistrust about the facts of the assassination and encourage many wild theories about the murder.
WHEN LEE Oswald left his boardinghouse, he started walking. By coincidence, a Dallas policeman driving his car through the neighborhood spotted Oswald walking on the sidewalk. The police officer, J. D. Tippit, knew the president had been shot and had heard over his car radio at 12:45 P.M. (CST) a physical description of the suspect obtained from witnesses, especially Howard Brennan, who had seen the man in the Book Depository window. The radio transmission was brief: “Attention all squads, the suspect is reported to be a white male, approximately thirty, slender build, 5 feet 10 inches, weighs 165 pounds, reported to be armed with what is thought to be a thirty-caliber rifle. No further description at this time or information.”
Oswald matched it in a general way, so Tippit decided to pull over to the curb and have a word with him. The thirty-nine-year-old policeman stopped the car and called out to Oswald through the open passenger-side window.
Oswald stopped walking and approached the vehicle. In a casual way, he leaned on the top edge of the passenger door, looked inside, and conversed with Tippit. They spoke for less than a minute. No one knows what they discussed. Witnesses who saw the encounter were too far away to overhear the exchange. Whatever Oswald said, it must not have satisfied Tippit, because he swung open his car door and got out. When he stood up in the street, he did not reach for his holster and place his hand on the butt of his revolver. He must have concluded that Oswald was not dangerous. Tippit started to walk around the front hood of his car, toward the curb where Oswald waited for him.
A moment later, at 1:15 P.M. (CST), Oswald pulled his revolver from his jacket pocket, aimed it at the policeman’s chest, and opened fire. He had taken Tippit by surprise and shot him three times before the policeman could even draw his own pistol. Tippit collapsed to the ground. Oswald paused, and then walked over to the wounded policeman. Disabled, helpless, Tippit was still alive. Then Oswald pointed his pistol at the helpless officer, took aim, shot him in the head, and killed him.
This was a dirty killing. Yes, Oswald had already committed a horrible crime—he had murdered the president of the United States. But he had done it from a distance. The rifle was an impersonal, antiseptic weapon that allowed Lee to remain detached from the ugly reality of his crime. Oswald did not have to look Kennedy in the face before he shot him. He did not see the wounds he inflicted on Kennedy and Connally. He did not have to look into the backseat of the car at the blood and brains. And he did not see the surprised, eyes-wide-open stare his third shot had frozen on the president’s face.
But now, an hour later, Lee Harvey Oswald committed murder of another kind—up close and personal. He had spoken to J. D. Tippit. When he leaned on the top edge of the passenger side door, he had bent down and chatted with the officer; he was close enough to the policeman to smell him. Oswald had looked him in the face. Then, when Tippit stepped out of the car, Oswald had shot him at close range. Not just once, to disable Tippit and then flee. Not twice, to keep him down. Three times in the chest, to kill him. Oswald was close enough to hear Tippit’s reaction to being shot.
But the policeman refused to die at once. As Tippit lay dying on a city street, his lungs emitted a gurgling sound. He could not speak or call out for help. He no longer had the strength to grasp his revolver, raise his arm, and shoot his assailant. Oswald stepped across the curb and into the street. He walked over to the fallen policeman. Half an hour ago, Tippit was home having lunch with his wife. Now he was bleeding to death on a Dallas street. But not quick enough for Oswald. The assassin was in a hurry. He could not wait for the cop to die.
Now he did something truly depraved. Oswald stood over Tippit and contemplated his victim. He was at point-blank range. Oswald raised his arm and pointed the barrel of his revolver at Tippit’s head. For the fourth time—once more than he had needed to kill President Kennedy—he squeezed the trigger, and put a bullet through J. D. Tippit’s brain. He walked away, swung open the cylinder of his revolver, pulled out the four empty cartridges, and tossed them on the ground. It was more evidence against him for the police to recover later.
Several witnesses saw Oswald either shoot Tippit or flee the scene. One man heard him mutter “poor dumb cop” or “poor damn cop” as he fled. Some of them followed him, and then, from a safe distance, began chasing him. Less than one hour after the assassination of President Kennedy, but without knowing they were in pursuit of the president’s killer, a small posse of several citizens was chasing Lee Harvey Oswald through the streets of Dallas.
As he ran, Oswald loaded four fresh bullets into his pistol and pushed the cylinder into firing position. He was ready to kill again.
WHY DID Oswald murder Tippit? Did the officer believe he matched the description of the suspect broadcast by the police dispatcher? Did Oswald appear nervous, evasive, or suspicious? Did Tippit threaten to take him in for questioning? The only logical reason for Oswald to murder a police officer was to avoid immediate arrest. Or maybe Oswald just panicked. It was a rash and foolhardy thing to do. Several witnesses could identify him as a cop-killer. As soon as they reported the shooting, the whole neighborhood would be crawling within minutes with police officers and detectives hunting for him. The Tippit shooting dramatically reduced Oswald’s chances of escape.
If Oswald had not killed Tippit, he would have had more time to carry out his escape. He had not yet been identified by name as a suspect in the assassination of the president. It would have taken time for the Secret Service and Dallas police to obtain a roster of all Book Depository employees and then conduct a roll call to discover if any of them were missing from the premises. Once they discovered Oswald’s absence, they would have sent men to his boardinghouse; they would discover that he had already been there and gone. Then, within a few hours, they would have discovered strange things about him—his discharge from the Marine Corps; his interest in Russia, Cuba, and Communism; and his defection to the Soviet Union and return to the United States.
Buell Frazier would tell them about the curtain rods that morning, and he could lead them to Ruth Paine’s house and to Oswald’s Russian-born wife, Marina. Also, once they found the rifle, they could begin tracing its serial number to the place that sold it and to the name of the person who bought it. That would also take time. Enough to give him at least a couple hours, and maybe more, as a head start. If Oswald was lucky, the authorities might not name him as a suspect or show his picture on TV until late that afternoon or the evening. The newspapers might not even print his name and photograph until the next morning.
But Oswald destroyed all of that advantage. Not until he killed a policeman did he become the object of a furious manhunt. Back at the Book Depository, the Dallas Police, FBI, and Secret Service were still trying to fit the pieces together. No one had pursued Oswald after he left the building. No one had been searching for him. But now, forty-five minutes after he had strolled away from the Book Depository, Oswald was running for his life.
LYNDON JOHNSON waited aboard Air Force One for the hearse carrying Kennedy’s body to arrive at the airport. He was already aboard the plane before the Kennedy entourage left the hospital at 2:08 P.M. (CST). Some of Johnson’s political advisers were urging him to fly back to Washington right away and leave Mrs. Kennedy behind to catch Air Force Two, the vice presidential jet, later in the day. Rufus Youngblood agreed. Nothing was more important than protecting the life of the new president. The best way to do that was to get Lyndon Johnson back to the capital as soon as possible. If this was a conspiracy, and if LBJ was the next target, he needed to get out of Dallas.
In one of his first acts as chief executive, he decided they would not fly back to Washington immediately and abandon Mrs. Kennedy in Dallas. Because she refused to leave without her husband’s corpse and because Johnson refused to depart without her, he ordered Air Force One to wait. All of them would fly back together. Johnson also decided that he would take the oath of office on the ground in Dallas before the plane took off.
At Parkland, JFK’s agents wheeled his coffin to the hearse. Jackie refused to be separated from her husband, so she sat in back, next to the casket. Clint Hill and two military officers sat with her. Three Secret Service agents, including the driver, sat in front. The modest motorcade—the white Cadillac hearse followed by four cars—from the hospital to the airport was not as grand as the one that had left Love Field for downtown Dallas just two hours ago. During the ride, Admiral Burkley got Jackie’s attention. He offered her two of the red roses from her bouquet. They were in perfect condition. “These were under, were in his shirt,” he told her. They had broken off the bouquet during the mayhem in the presidential limousine. She put them in one of the pockets of her pink suit.
Secret Service agents and members of President Kennedy’s staff carry his casket aboard Air Force One.
(Cecil Stoughton, courtesy of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum)
The hearse drove onto the field. At the airport, Kennedy’s aides and Secret Service agents carried the heavy burden up the stairs of an airline ramp and onto the plane. They could barely lift it—it weighed eight hundred pounds, not counting the added weight of the president’s body. Then it would not fit through the airplane door—it was too wide. To make the coffin narrower, they had to break the carrying handles off its sides so they could push it onto the plane. They secured it in a small cabin near the back, where some seats had been removed to accommodate it.
Although the coffin was now on board, Lyndon Johnson did not want Air Force One to depart Dallas until he took the oath of office and was sworn in as the thirty-sixth president of the United States. Johnson, a Texan, had summoned an old friend, a local federal district court judge named Sarah T. Hughes, to rush to Love Field to swear him in. This was all a great bit of historical drama, because in fact the swearing in was a formality to confirm what had already happened. Johnson did not need to take the oath in order to assume the office—by authority of the United States Constitution he had already become president upon the death of his predecessor.
But Lyndon Johnson wanted to take the oath at once as a symbol of the continuity of the American government. A president might die, but democracy would live. And he wanted the ceremony photographed to transmit that symbol around the world. A White House photographer, Captain Cecil Stoughton, was aboard the plane. He loaded two cameras with film and planned in his head where he and the new president should stand in the cramped cabin to create the most solemn and impressive photograph. The image would convey that Johnson was now in charge of the government.
WQMR got word of what was about to happen. “Just to show you how swiftly action is taken, as it was upon the assassination of President Lincoln, Johnson—Lyndon Johnson—is expected to be sworn in aboard an airliner, before flying back immediately to the nation’s capital. So, possibly, at this very instant as we are speaking, Vice President Lyndon Johnson is becoming the president of the United States aboard an airliner.”
By tradition, when a president took the oath of office, he stood alone, raised his right hand, and repeated the words of the oath spoken to him by the chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. On November 22, Lyndon Johnson had something else in mind. He wanted two people standing by his side. One was his wife, Lady Bird. The other was Jackie Kennedy. It was a bold and, in the opinion of some of President Kennedy’s staffers, an outrageous and offensive request. How could a woman widowed just hours ago, under the most horrible of circumstances, be expected to pose for pictures? Johnson realized that his request demanded sensitivity, delicacy, and tact.
Before he became vice president, when he was a United States senator and held the powerful post of majority leader, he was renowned for his legendary skill at persuading other people to do what he asked. But it was one thing to strong-arm a fellow politician in a backroom deal over a piece of legislation in Congress, and quite another to handle the bereaved and beloved First Lady of the United States, who was still in a state of shock after seeing her husband murdered in front of her eyes. LBJ sensed he could not delegate this request to others. He would have to appeal to Jackie himself.
Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson went to Jacqueline Kennedy’s private compartment to offer their condolences. “Dear God, it’s come to this,” said Lady Bird. Jackie said she was grateful her husband did not die alone: “Oh, what if I had not been there. Oh, I am so glad I was there.”
Lady Bird asked her if she would like to change into fresh clothes. No, the new widow replied, “I want them to see what they have done to Jack.”
Then LBJ broached the awkward subject. “Well—about the swearing in,” he said.
Jackie indicated that she understood: “Oh, yes, I know, I know. What’s going to happen?”
Johnson explained that he had summoned a federal judge to administer the presidential oath aboard Air Force One before the plane flew back to Washington. LBJ wanted her standing by his side. It was for history. Believing she had agreed, Johnson left her alone to compose herself until Judge Hughes arrived.
More than one person suggested to Jackie that she change clothes. Her suit, white gloves, and stockings were caked with dried blood—the bright red, wet blood spilled two hours ago had, after exposure to oxygen, solidified and taken on a darker color. Each time someone asked her, the more adamant she became. “Everybody kept saying to me to put a cold towel around my head and wipe the blood off.” But she defied them. No, she insisted, she would not change. “I want them to see what they’ve done,” she repeated more than once.
To prepare for the swearing-in ceremony, she retired to her small bathroom. There, she said, “I saw myself in the mirror; my whole face was spattered with blood and hair . . . I wiped it off with Kleenex . . . then one second later I thought, why did I wash the blood off? I should have left it there, to let them see what they’ve done. . . . If I’d just had the blood and caked hair when they took the picture . . . I should have kept the blood on.”
EVERYTHING WAS ready for the swearing in. But Johnson was still waiting for Jackie. He did not want to proceed without her. Johnson spotted two of Kennedy’s aides and said, “Do you want to ask Mrs. Kennedy if she would like to stand with us?” They hesitated. “She said she wants to be here when I take the oath,” the new president told them. “Why don’t you see what’s keeping her?”
Ken O’Donnell went to Jackie, who told him, “I think I ought to. In the light of history, it would be better if I was there.”
She emerged from her room and entered the cabin where Lyndon Johnson, Judge Hughes, the photographer, and a number of the passengers awaited her. Merriman Smith was on the plane as a pool reporter and watched the scene unfold. “The large center cabin was dark, all shades drawn, members of the Kennedy staff sitting around, some staring straight ahead, some crying softly.”
Cecil Stoughton had started taking pictures of the scene even before Jackie walked in. Then she appeared. Smith saw it all. “Mrs. Kennedy walked down the narrow corridor from her bed chamber and into the lounge. She was dry eyed, but her face was a mask of shock.” Her appearance startled everyone—they had assumed she would change into a fresh outfit. Then Johnson held her hand. The gesture struck Smith: “Like a man might lead a small child, Johnson took her hand and led Jackie to a place at his left side.” LBJ told her, “This is the saddest moment of my life.” Lady Bird Johnson stood at her husband’s right. Stoughton raised one of his cameras, and then, as Judge Hughes read the oath and Johnson repeated it, the photographer took several shots before switching to his second camera. The only other sounds in the cabin were the clicking shutters of the cameras.
Lyndon Johnson being sworn in aboard Air Force One before it departs Dallas.
(Cecil Stoughton, courtesy of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum)
Jackie’s appearance horrified Stoughton, who aimed his lens high to crop out the lower part of her body to hide the bloody skirt and stockings.
At 2:38 P.M. (CST), Johnson raised his right hand and was sworn in as the thirty-sixth president of the United States. It took less than a minute for him to speak the words: “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. So help me God.”
Lyndon Johnson had already been president for almost two hours, but when the oath was done, his presidency officially began. And Stoughton had taken what remains, to this day, perhaps the most iconic, riveting, and harrowing photographs in all of American history.
After the swearing in, Jackie returned to the back of the plane, to the casket, where she found Ken O’Donnell, Larry O’Brien, and Dave Powers. She sat down and began to weep. “Oh, it’s happened.”
Lyndon Johnson gave an order: “Now, let’s get airborne.”
Before Air Force One left Dallas, Stoughton hurried off the plane with his cameras and film. It was his job to rush to develop the pictures so they could be published in the evening newspapers throughout the country.
Within a few minutes, Air Force One hurtled down the runway and took flight for Washington.
BY THE time Oswald made it to a commercial district on West Jefferson Boulevard, he had lost the people who had followed him from the Tippit murder scene. For now, he was safe. But then he made a mistake. When he heard a police siren, he turned his back to the street and pretended to study a display of footwear behind the plate-glass windows of a shoe store. That attracted the attention of the manager, Calvin Brewer. Oswald seemed furtive and suspicious. He watched Oswald and followed him down the sidewalk. Then, at 1:40 P.M., Oswald ducked inside a movie theater at 231 West Jefferson, sneaking past the ticket seller’s window without paying for admission. He took a risk when he hid inside the Texas Theatre. If anyone had followed him there, one telephone call would summon a dozen police cars to the scene. Police departments were, and still are, relentless in pursuing a criminal who has shot one of their own. Even if Oswald had evaded his pursuers, his failure to buy a movie ticket might provoke theater employees to call the police to report a nonpaying customer. Either way, Oswald could find himself trapped inside a building with no escape.
Someone had followed Oswald. It was the shoe-store manager. He had tracked him to the theater. When he saw Oswald duck inside, he persuaded employees there to call the police.
Oswald had murdered John Kennedy less than an hour and a half ago. Now he sat in the darkness of a theater watching a matinee showing of a movie about World War II titled War Is Hell. The theater was nearly empty. A few men occupied scattered seats. Oswald sat near the back.
Oswald did not enjoy the movie for long. Several police cars pulled up in front of the theater, and detectives ran inside toward the screen and climbed onto the stage. The houselights went on, and a witness identified Oswald. As officers rushed him, Oswald shouted, “This is it!” Others heard him say “Well it’s all over now.” He punched one policeman in the face, then he reached for his pistol. He was eager to kill more cops. One of them grabbed his arm and tried to twist the revolver out of his hand. Another punched him. Another whacked him in the head with the butt of a shotgun.
Overpowered, Oswald gave up. “Don’t hit me anymore. I am not resisting arrest!” Then he shouted, “I protest police brutality!” As the police tried to drag Oswald out of the theater he yelled, “They’re violating my civil rights!”
In the lobby, he spotted a TV camera and shouted, “I want my lawyer. I know my rights. Typical police brutality. Why are you doing this to me?”
At 1:50 P.M. (CST), one hour and twenty minutes after the president had been shot, Oswald was in custody. But his captors did not know the importance of their prisoner. They were not sure they had caught Kennedy’s killer—although they had their suspicions—but they were convinced they had just apprehended the cold-blooded murderer of Officer Tippit.
At 1:52 P.M., they shoved their prisoner into a car and drove him to police headquarters at City Hall, a building not far from the Texas School Book Depository.
In the car, Oswald demanded, “What’s this all about? I know my rights. I don’t know why you are treating me like this. Why am I being arrested? The only thing I’ve done is carry a pistol in a movie.” Oswald added, “I don’t see why you have handcuffed me.”
One of the detectives said, “You’ve done a lot more. You have killed a policeman.”
“Police officer been killed?” Oswald asked. “I hear they burn for murder. You fry for that.”
“You might find out,” a policeman replied.
“Well,” Oswald countered about the electric chair, “they say it just takes a second to die.”
Oswald kept refusing to identify himself, so a policeman pulled the wallet out of his pocket and searched it for identification. He found a library card bearing the name of Lee Oswald. Then he found another document with the name A. J. Hidell, one of Oswald’s aliases.
When the car arrived at the City Hall garage, the police advised their suspect that he might want to turn his face away from the journalists and TV cameras waiting for him there. He was defiant: “Why should I hide my face? I haven’t done anything to be ashamed of.”
LEE HARVEY Oswald was about to face the first of several police interrogations. He would be pitted against a savvy homicide detective, Will Fritz, a department legend and veteran master of extracting confessions. He would become the suspect’s principal interrogator in what would become a multiday game of cat-and-mouse with the chatty assassin.
Good cops had good instincts. From his first encounter with Oswald, Fritz’s intuition told him this was the man who had murdered the president. In the hours ahead, Dallas police, FBI, and Secret Service would not be the only ones allowed to question him. Others who had no business doing so, who could help spoil the legal case against Oswald, would soon have access to him too.
By 2:00 P.M., the arresting officers at the Texas Theatre had brought Oswald to police headquarters. When detectives took him into an interrogation room, a man there recognized Oswald at once. It was Bill Shelley, foreman at the Texas School Book Depository. He was there giving an affidavit to a policeman. Shelley told the police, “Well, that is Oswald. He works for us. He is one of my boys.”
Oswald said his name was “Hidell.” In his wallet, one piece of identification said his name was Hidell, and another said it was Oswald.
A detective asked which name was real.
“You find out,” Oswald replied.
At 2:20 P.M. on Friday, November 22, Oswald was moved to the office of Captain Fritz. The Dallas district attorney, Henry Wade, had jurisdiction over the Tippit case, as he did over all murders in Dallas. Even when it became obvious that Oswald was also a suspect in the murder of President Kennedy, Wade and the Dallas police retained control of Oswald. No federal statute made killing a president a federal crime, so the U.S. attorney and the FBI had no power to seize Oswald from the custody of the Dallas Police Department.
Detective Elmer Boyd asked Oswald why he had a bruise above his eye.
“Well,” Oswald explained, “I struck an officer and the officer struck me back, which he should have done.”
Oswald was playing contrite for now. Captain Fritz entered the office and, by 2:30 P.M., the first interrogation of Oswald had begun. It would be the first of four.
Fritz asked for his full name.
“Lee Harvey Oswald.”
Fritz asked where he worked.
“Texas School Book Depository,” Oswald said.
Fritz wanted to know how he got the job.
Oswald told him that a lady he knew recommended him for the job, and that he got it through her.
Fritz was a master of the conversational style of interrogation. He wanted to warm Oswald up with a series of routine questions to get him talking.
Why, the detective asked, did he possess a card that identifies him as “Hidell”?
It’s just a name that “[I] picked up in New Orleans.”
The employment records of the Book Depository said Oswald lived in Irving.
No, Oswald said, he lived on Beckley in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas.
Oswald added that his wife was staying with friends in Irving. This is the first the police had heard about the Dallas rooming house. The place might be filled with evidence. Fritz sent officers to North Beckley Street to search Oswald’s room.
Soon two FBI agents arrived to join the questioning. One was James Hosty, the special agent who had called on Marina Oswald a few times after she and Lee had moved to Texas. Those visits had infuriated Lee. Now, he and Hosty were meeting for the first time.
“Oh, so you’re Hosty, the agent who’s been harassing my wife!”
“You have the right to remain silent,” Hosty advised him.
Oswald had remained calm while Captain Fritz questioned him. Now Oswald was enraged, screaming and cursing at Hosty. What was the story, Fritz wondered, between Oswald and this FBI agent?
“My wife is a Russian citizen who is in this country legally and is protected under diplomatic laws from harassment by you or any other FBI agent.” Oswald was out of control. “The FBI is no better than the Gestapo of Nazi Germany! If you wanted to talk to me, you should have come directly to me, not my wife.”
The angry exchange between Oswald and Hosty alarmed Fritz. Just when the homicide detective was having a calm chat with his prisoner and getting to know him, the FBI barged in and infuriated Oswald. It would be tough to question him now. Fritz wanted to know what was going on. What did Oswald mean by “accosted”?
“Well, he threatened her. He practically told her she’d have to go back to Russia. He accosted her on two different occasions.”
Oswald was so angry about the visits that after they happened, he dropped off an anonymous menacing letter for Hosty at the local FBI office, warning that unless the special agent stopped bothering Marina, he would take action against the FBI.
Oswald’s hands were cuffed behind his back. He told Fritz he wanted the handcuffs removed. That might be dangerous. Oswald was a suspect in the murder of a policeman. And he had tried to shoot more cops at the Texas Theatre. Free of the cuffs, he might spring from out of his chair, tackle one of the detectives or special agents, and grab for a gun. Fritz settled on a compromise, telling his men to remove the cuffs and recuff Oswald’s hands in front of his body.
“Thank you, thank you,” Oswald said.
To Hosty, he said, “I’m sorry for blowing up at you. And I’m sorry for writing that letter to you.” Now that Oswald appeared to have calmed down, Fritz hit him with his first serious question.
“Do you own a rifle?”
“No, I don’t.”
Asked if he had ever seen a rifle in the Texas School Book Depository, Oswald said that he had seen one there two or three days before the assassination and that Roy Truly and some men were looking at it.
Oswald was trying to implicate the manager of the Book Depository in the assassination.
“Did you ever own a rifle?” Fritz repeated.
“I had one a good many years ago. It was a small rifle . . . but I have not owned one for a long time.”
Hosty interrupted Fritz’s line of questioning and asked Oswald if he had ever been to Mexico.
“Sure. Sure I’ve been to Mexico. When I was stationed in San Diego with the Marines, a couple of my buddies and I would occasionally drive down to Tijuana over the weekend.”
Fritz jumped back in. He did not want the FBI agent to take the interrogation off track or anger Oswald. He asked Lee if he had a Russian wife, if he had ever been to Russia, and for how long. Oswald answered all the questions. Then Fritz asked whether he had owned a rifle in Russia.
“You know you can’t own a rifle in Russia. I had a shotgun over there. You can’t own a rifle in Russia.”
Hosty interrupted with another question. “Mr. Oswald, have you been in contact with the Soviet embassy?” Oswald’s blood started boiling again.
“Yes, I contacted the Soviet embassy regarding my wife. And the reason was because you’ve accosted her twice already!”
Hosty continued. “Have you ever been to Mexico City? Not Tijuana. Mexico City . . . have you ever been to Mexico City?”
“No! I’ve never been there. What makes you think I’ve been to Mexico City? I deny that!”
Captain Fritz told Oswald to calm down. It was obvious to Fritz that allowing the FBI agent to question the suspect was counterproductive. Whenever the police detective soothed Oswald and got him talking, Hosty provoked him.
“Okay,” Fritz said, “let’s take break.”
AT THE Paine house, Ruth and Marina watched television coverage of the assassination. News reports that the shots were fired from the Book Depository troubled Marina, but the presence in the garage of what she assumed was the rifle still rolled in its blanket had calmed her. If she still had the rifle, that meant it could not have been Lee. Soon the police, following up Depository employment records, drove out to Ruth’s house. When they arrived, the screen door was closed but the front one was open. They could see Marina sitting in the living room watching television. Ruth Paine invited them in.
They wanted to speak to Marina. They asked her if her husband owned a rifle. “Yes,” she answered. They began to search the premises.
“When they came to the garage and took the blanket,” she thought, “well, now, they will find it.”
Then it happened. One of the policemen reached down to pick up the blanket and its contents. It sagged in his hand. “They opened the blanket but there was no rifle there.” Until this moment, Marina did not know the rifle was gone. She could guess where it was now.
Marina was devastated. “Then, of course . . . I knew that it was Lee.” So that’s why he had come to Mrs. Paine’s one day early.
IN THE rear of Air Force One, Jackie Kennedy sat next to her husband’s coffin during the entire flight back to Washington, D.C. Top aides to John Kennedy took turns visiting her at the back of the plane, where they reminisced and told stories of happier days. They did not want her to mourn alone. Dave Powers told stories about the president’s trip to Ireland that June. Ken O’Donnell said, “You know what I’m going to have, Jackie? I’m going to have a hell of a stiff drink. I think you should too.” He offered to make her a scotch. “I’ve never had a scotch in my life,” she replied. Godfrey McHugh said that didn’t matter. “Now is as good a time as any to start.” Jackie acquiesced and downed two. It was the beginnings of an Irish wake. Ken O’Donnell remembered how this day had begun. “You know what, Jackie? Can you tell me why we were saying that this morning? What was it he said at the hotel? ‘Last night would have been the best night to assassinate a President.’ Can you tell me why we were talking about that?”
Surrounded by the men who would miss Jack the most, Jackie was overcome with emotion. “You were with him from the start and you’re with him at the end.”
During the flight, passengers divided into two camps, those who had served President Kennedy, and those who worked for Lyndon Johnson. For the duration of the flight, an uncomfortable tension filled the air. Some Kennedy aides had never liked LBJ, whose chief nemesis had been the president’s own brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy. Some of President Kennedy’s staffers were snobs who believed that Johnson, who had attended a teacher’s college in Texas, not an elite, Ivy League university as many of them had, was their social and intellectual inferior. Behind his back, they called him “cornpone” and mocked him as a crude country hick from the Texas Hill Country.
In truth, Johnson was a master politician with a record of important achievements. Johnson’s earthiness was a mask that often concealed his sophisticated grasp of events and his keen understanding of the minds and behavior of others. Without Johnson as his vice presidential running mate in 1960, it is unlikely that John Kennedy would ever have been elected president in the first place. In their anguish, some Kennedy staffers now resented Johnson for becoming president. In fact, on November 22, Lyndon Johnson acted with grace and dignity. He did the best he could under the most trying of circumstances.
Forty thousand feet below the jet carrying home the body of John Kennedy and the new president, Lyndon Johnson, was a stunned nation grieving its fallen leader. By midafternoon, almost everyone in America knew about the assassination. On the flight back, Jackie Kennedy began to plan her husband’s funeral. Before she was done, she would oversee the biggest, most majestic public funeral in American history since the death of Abraham Lincoln ninety-eight years earlier.
IN DALLAS, at 3:40 P.M. (CST), Captain Fritz returned to his office and continued to question Oswald.
“I asked him why his wife was living in Irving and why he was lving on Beckley.”
His wife, Oswald explained, was staying with Mrs. Paine, who is trying to learn Russian. Marina teaches her, and Mrs. Paine helps her out with the baby.
“How often do you go out there?” the detective asked.
“Weekends.”
Why didn’t Lee stay at Mrs. Paine’s full-time? Fritz wanted to know.
Oswald said that he didn’t want to stay there all the time because Ruth Paine and her husband did not get along too well.
Fritz asked Oswald some questions about his schooling, his background, and whether he owned a car. No, he had no car, Oswald said. Then Fritz asked about his Marine Corps service.
“Did you win any medals for rifle shooting in the Marines?”
“The usual medals,” said Oswald, admitting that he had received an award for marksmanship.
It was part of Fritz’s interrogation style to shift from one subject to another, unrelated one, to keep a suspect off balance and never allow him to get too comfortable. He did that now.
“Lee, why were you registered at the boarding house as O.H. Lee?”
It was the landlady’s fault, said Oswald. “The lady didn’t understand me.” He just left it that way.
Another of Fritz’s tactics was to ask a suspect a question he already knew the answer to, and which the suspect could answer truthfully without incriminating himself. Observing how a suspect behaved while he was telling the truth would help Fritz intuit when he was telling a lie. He asked a series of the easy questions now.
Did he work at the Depository today?
Oswald said yes, and that he had worked there since October 15.
Fritz asked what part of the building he was in at the time the president was shot.
Oswald claimed he was having lunch on the first floor. They broke for lunch about noon, and he came down and ate.
“Where were you when the officer stopped you?”
On the second floor drinking a Coca-Cola. There’s a soda machine in the lunchroom there. Oswald said he went up to get a drink.
Fritz asked what Oswald did after the president was shot. He said he left the building.
And where did he go?
Oswald said he went home to his room on Beckley. He was telling the truth. “I took the bus and went home, changed my clothes, and went to a movie.”
That was an odd thing to do, Fritz thought. Who goes home to get a pistol before going to the movies?
Why did he do that?
“ ’Cause I felt like it.”
“Because you felt like it?”
“You know how boys do when they have a gun, they just carry it.”
Now Captain Fritz slipped in a real question.
“Did you shoot Officer Tippit?”
It was not a silly thing for the detective to ask. He was a master at questioning murder suspects, and Oswald would not have been the first one he had lulled into confessing his crime. Fritz hoped Oswald would make it easy for him.
No, Oswald said. “The only law I violated was in the show: I hit the officer in the show, and he hit me in the eye and I guess I deserved it. That is the only law I violated. That is the only thing I have done wrong.”
Fritz asked Oswald what he did in the Soviet Union, and Lee told him he worked in an electronics factory. The detective jumped back to the assassination.
Why did Oswald leave the Depository after the shooting?
“Shortly after the president was shot . . . I figured with all the confusion there wouldn’t be any more work to do that day.”
Fritz asked him what kind of work he did there. Oswald explained that he filled orders. What floors, Fritz continued, did Oswald have access to? The detective might have been curious to see if Lee would lie about the sixth floor. But Oswald was nonchalant.
“I was just a common laborer,” he said, and “as a laborer, I have access to the entire building.” Oswald told Fritz that the books were kept on the third through sixth floors. So he went to all the floors. Including the sixth.
It was time, Fritz decided, to ask another zinger of a question.
“Did you shoot the president?”
It did not work. Oswald was not ready to admit anything.
“No, I emphatically deny that.”
A detective walked into Fritz’s office to tell him that some Secret Service agents, including Forrest Sorrels, were waiting to speak with him. Fritz terminated the interrogation and went to see them.
The first round of Fritz’s interrogation of Oswald had not gone badly. No, Oswald had not blurted out a confession. But the police detective had already learned several things about the suspect. Foremost, Oswald would talk to Fritz. It became obvious that he was a man who liked to talk. He was not one of those people who, once in custody, would clam up and refuse to say a word. He had not even demanded a lawyer before conversing with Fritz. Oswald was calm and arrogant. His disdain for the authorities oozed from his voice, facial expressions, and body language. But he could lose control when needled by an FBI agent.
Agent Hosty had gotten under Lee’s skin and caused him to lose his temper. Fritz concluded that he, and not the FBI or the Secret Service, should remain Oswald’s principal interrogator. Too much direct interaction between Lee and the men from those federal agencies might be counterproductive and ruin the trust that the wily old Texan cop was trying to build with Oswald. After decades on the job, Will Fritz had a sixth sense about innocence and guilt, and truth and deception.
And Oswald had already told several lies. He claimed he did not own a rifle, had never been to Mexico City, had not registered at the boardinghouse under a false name, had eaten lunch that day on the first floor of the Book Depository, and had not shot President Kennedy.
Forrest Sorrels asked Captain Fritz if Oswald had confessed. No, Fritz said, but the interrogation was far from over. Sorrels said he would like to talk to the suspect at some point. How about right now?, Fritz offered. The detective led the Secret Service agents to a room behind his office, and then had Oswald brought in. Oswald stiffened at the sight of them.
“I don’t know who you fellows are, a bunch of cops.”
Sorrels gave Oswald his name and showed him his identification.
“I don’t want to look at it.” Oswald was defiant. “What am I going to be charged with? Why am I being held here? Isn’t someone supposed to tell me what my rights are?”
“Yes, I will tell you what your rights are,” Sorrels said. “Your rights are the same as that of any American citizen. You do not have to make a statement unless you want to. You have the right to get an attorney.”
Oswald asked, “Aren’t you supposed to get me an attorney?”
Sorrels said no, but informed Oswald that he was free to be represented by the attorney of his choice. “I just want to ask you some questions,” Sorrels continued. He got Oswald talking about his time in the Soviet Union, but Lee became impatient. “I don’t care to answer any more questions.” This round of interrogation was over.
ABOARD AIR Force One, Johnson worked the phone. There was one call he dreaded to make. It was to President Kennedy’s mother, Rose. “What can I say to her?” he asked Lady Bird. Then he spoke to Rose Kennedy: “I wish to God there was something I could do.” She replied, “We know how much you loved Jack and how Jack loved you.” LBJ was uncomfortable and wanted to get off the phone as soon as possible. “Here’s Lady Bird,” he said as he handed the phone to his wife. “Oh, Mrs. Kennedy,” she said, “we must all realize how fortunate the country was to have your son as long as it did.” Rose Kennedy did not want to linger on the phone any more than the Johnsons did. She ended the call, “Goodbye, goodbye.” Then he called political allies and congressional leaders. He wanted to meet with some of them tonight, and more tomorrow.
IN DALLAS, Captain Fritz had wanted to send Oswald downstairs for a lineup. Now was as good a time as any to do it. At 4:10 P.M., three detectives escorted Lee out of the Homicide and Robbery office and into the hall filled with reporters, photographers, and a television camera. No one had been searched. Anyone in that hallway, outraged by the president’s murder, could pull a pistol from a pocket or a camera bag and shoot Oswald. But they were satisfied to fire questions at him. “Did you kill the president?” one reporter shouted.
“No, sir,” Oswald said. “Nobody charged me with that.”
It was a classic Oswald response, one that harked back to his New Orleans radio interviews. That August, when asked whether he had tried to renounce his American citizenship, Oswald evaded the question and did not give a direct answer. Instead, he said people who renounced their citizenship were not allowed to reenter the United States. Since he was back in the country, wasn’t it obvious that he had not renounced his citizenship? Of course it was a lie. He had attempted to do that very thing as soon as he had arrived in the Soviet Union.
Now, in police custody, Oswald had just exhibited the same verbal and logical tic. Did he kill President Kennedy? He evaded the question. Isn’t the fact that he had not been charged with that crime proof that he did not commit it? An innocent man asked if he has just murdered the president of the United States will likely respond, “Hell no!” Oswald’s evasive response of “Nobody charged me with that” is his hallmark liar’s “tell.”
When the detectives got Oswald to the basement, they searched him. They found in his left pants pocket five bullets for his .38-caliber revolver. “What are these doing in there?” an incredulous detective asked. It was obvious that since his arrest Lee had not undergone a proper search. Of the bullets he was nonchalant. “I just had them in my pocket.” On his person the detectives also discovered his bus transfer, a few insignificant documents, and thirteen dollars and eighty-seven cents.
IT WAS dark when Air Force One landed at Andrews Air Force Base outside the nation’s capital at 6:05 P.M. (EST). Crowds of mourners had flocked there to watch the jet land and to see Kennedy’s flag-draped coffin removed from the plane. It was not unlike the scene earlier that day when the president landed at Love Field in Dallas. This time the crowd did not cheer. Silence ruled. Television cameras broadcast live coverage of the event. Robert Kennedy, members of the cabinet, and senior government and military officials stood and watched.
The president’s brother rushed to the plane and boarded it through a front door. He ran down the aisle, brushing past everyone in his path, including the new president. There was only one person in the world Bobby wanted to see, and she was at the back of the plane, sitting by a flag-draped coffin. They found each other and embraced.
“Hi Jackie, I’m here,” was all he could say.
The American people were about to get their first look at Jackie Kennedy since the assassination almost five hours ago. A rear door on the plane opened. An elevated platform was put in place to receive the coffin. Then Jackie Kennedy appeared in the doorway. Standing next to her was her brother-in-law, Robert Kennedy. The image was confusing. He had not been in Dallas, so how was it that he was exiting Air Force One with Jackie?
All across the country, millions of people staring at their television screens gasped when they saw the bloodstains on her clothing. Jackie had still not changed out of the clothes she had worn in Dealey Plaza. She wanted Americans to see her pink suit. She wanted them to bear witness to the bloodstains on her jacket, skirt, and stockings. On television screens, as she walked to the navy ambulance, viewers saw that her legs were smeared with copious amounts of blood. She wanted to sear these images into the collective memory of the American people so that they would never forget. It worked. To this day, decades after the assassination, the mere sight of an image of her in that suit triggers flashbacks in the minds of every person who remembers November 22, 1963.
President Lyndon Johnson strode toward the lights, microphones, and cameras. This time Jackie Kennedy did not stand beside him as he made his first public statement as the new president: “This is a sad time for all people. We have suffered a loss that cannot be weighed. For me, it is a deep, personal tragedy. I know the world shares the sorrow that Mrs. Kennedy and her family bear. I will do my best. That is all I can do. I ask for your help—and God’s.”
On the night of November 22, President Johnson composed two handwritten letters. They were not orders to important U.S. government officials or communications to world leaders. Instead, LBJ addressed them to the two children who had lost their father. “Dear John,” he began his note to Kennedy’s son, “It will be many years before you understand fully what a great man your father was. His loss is a deep personal tragedy for all of us, but I wanted you particularly to know that I share your grief—You can always be proud of him.”
To the dead president’s daughter he wrote: “Dearest Caroline—Your father’s death has been a great tragedy for the Nation, as well as for you at this time. He was a wise and devoted man. You can always be proud of what he did for his country.”
IN DALLAS, another plane departed Love Field after Air Force One had taken off. It was the C-130 cargo plane that had ferried the president’s Lincoln Continental limousine to Texas. Secret Service agents had driven the car from Parkland Hospital back to Love Field. At the hospital, an agent removed the two flags—one bearing the presidential seal and the other the American flag—that had hung from the flagpoles on the hood during the motorcade. He handed them to Kennedy’s secretary, Evelyn Lincoln.
Upon the car’s arrival in Washington, agents drove it to the White House garage, where it was hidden from view. Color photographs taken of it there reveal bloodstains on the two-tone blue leather upholstery. The agents in Dallas had not been able to wash away all the blood.
FROM ANDREWS Air Force Base, President Kennedy’s body was not yet ready to go home to the White House. First, accompanied by Jackie, a navy ambulance took him to Bethesda Naval Hospital, across the Maryland border from Washington. There would be an autopsy to document the official cause of death. Kennedy had been a naval officer, so Jackie, even before Air Force One had touched down, chose Bethesda Naval Hospital.
When Jackie entered the hospital, she was taken to a waiting room on the seventeenth floor. As she settled in for a long night, the president’s brother Robert told her that a suspect had been arrested for her husband’s murder.
“They think they found the man who did it,” the attorney general said. “He says he’s a Communist.”
Jackie was aghast, and she said to her mother, who had joined her in Bethesda, “He didn’t even have the satisfaction of being killed for civil rights. . . . It’s—it had to be some silly little Communist.”
IN DALLAS, at 7:40 P.M. EST, (6:40 P.M. CST) the “little communist” was back in Captain Fritz’s office for more questioning. He asked for the lawyer John Abt.
At 7:10 P.M. CST, Oswald was brought before a judge to be charged with a crime. Judge David Johnston told him, “Mr. Oswald, we’re here to arraign you on the charge of murder in the death of Officer J.D. Tippit.”
“Arraignment! This isn’t a court. You can’t arraign me in a police station. I can only be arraigned in a courtroom. How do I know this is a judge?”
Alexander told him to shut up.
“The way you’re treating me, I’d might as well be in Russia.”
At 7:28 P.M., Oswald was questioned for ten minutes by federal agents, then was led out into a hall crammed with reporters.
“These people here have given me a hearing without legal representation.”
“Did you shoot the president?”
“I didn’t shoot anybody, no sir.”
In front of the cameras, Oswald remained evasive and did not give a direct answer. The reporter did not ask him if he had shot anybody. He asked if he had shot John F. Kennedy. But Oswald would not speak the words, “No, I did not shoot the president.”
At 8:30 P.M. (CST), Oswald was back in Fritz’s office for more questioning.
Fritz asked if he kept a rifle in Mrs. Paine’s garage in Irving.
Oswald said he did not.
The detective asked if he brought one with him when he came back to Dallas from New Orleans.
Oswald denied it.
“The people out at the Paine residence say you did have a rifle, and that you kept it out there wrapped in a blanket.”
“That isn’t true.”
Fritz was closing in on Oswald. He tried again.
“You know you’ve killed the president, and this is a very serious charge.”
“I haven’t killed the president.”
Nonetheless, Fritz reminded him, the president “had been killed.”
Oswald retorted that the people will forget that within a few days, and there will be another president.
AT BETHESDA the president’s casket was placed on a cart and wheeled to the room where pathologists and technicians waited to examine him. The autopsy commenced at 8:00 P.M. (EST). Attendants removed his body from the casket, laid him on a table, and unwound the plastic wrapping. They photographed his face, which had been undamaged by the bullets, and his head, which had been ravaged by one. They photographed his neck wound, then rolled him over to photograph his back wound. Then they made X-rays of his skull. Doctors did not need to saw off the top of his head to recover what remained of his brain. They just reached into the wound and extracted it. After examining it, they sealed it in a stainless-steel container with a screw-top lid.
Hours passed, but Jackie Kennedy, still waiting on the seventeenth floor, refused to leave or to sleep.
IN BETHESDA, after the pathologists finished their work, the morticians arrived to prepare the president for burial. Not knowing whether Mrs. Kennedy would choose an open- or closed-coffin viewing before the funeral, the undertakers prepared the president’s corpse for an open-coffin viewing. They closed his eyes and sealed them shut. They concealed the tracheotomy incision that the Dallas doctors had made in his neck. Then they labored on their most difficult task, reconstructing the side of John Kennedy’s skull that the fatal bullet had blown open. A White House courier brought a selection of eight of the president’s suits, four pairs of shoes, plus shirts and ties for the morticians to dress him.
IT WAS close to midnight, November 22. Almost twelve hours since the assassination. As surgeons cut open President Kennedy’s corpse, Lee Harvey Oswald was giving a press conference in a hall in the Dallas police station. It would later become known as the famous midnight press conference.
“I was questioned by a judge without legal representation.”
“Well, I was questioned by a judge. However, I protested at that time that I was not allowed legal representation.”
“During that, ah, that, ah very short and sweet hearing. Ah, I really don’t know what this situation is about. Nobody has told me anything except that I am accused of, ah, of murdering a policeman. I know nothing more than that and I do request that, ah, someone to come forward, ah, to give me legal assistance.”
“Did you kill the president?” one of the journalists in the crowd asked.
Again Oswald denied his guilt. “No, I have not been charged with that. In fact, nobody has said that to me yet. The first thing I heard about it was when the newspaper reporters in the hall asked me that question.”
It was a classic Oswald verbal evasion, followed by a lie.
“You have been charged,” one of the reporters told him.
“Sir?” Oswald replied. He seemed surprised.
“You have been charged,” the reporter repeated.
The expression on Oswald’s face changed in an instant, to an appearance of stunned despair. He lowered his head and bit his lip. The reporters kept firing questions.
“What did you do in Russia?”
“How did you hurt your eye?”
Oswald did not answer. Another reporter called him by name.
“Oswald, how did you hurt your eye?”
“A policeman hit me.”
LEE HARVEY Oswald’s first official press conference had lasted six minutes. It was odd that the prime suspect in the murder of the president of the United States was giving a press conference at all. Oswald was taken back to his cell, only to be called out again for a second fingerprinting session. Then, late in the night, Oswald was given a paraffin test to determine if he had fired a gun.
“What are you trying to do, prove that I fired a gun?” he said to the man performing the test.
“I’m not trying to prove anything. We have the test to make, and the chemical people at the lab will determine the rest of it.”
Oswald told him that he was wasting his time and that he did not know anything about the murders.
At 1:35 A.M., Lee Harvey Oswald was roused from his cell and taken to see a man on the fourth floor of city hall. It was Judge Johnston again, who had arraigned him earlier for the murder of Officer J. D. Tippit. This early-morning summons could mean only one thing, and Oswald knew it.
He greeted the judge with sarcasm. “Well, I guess this is the trial.”
“No sir,” Johnston said. “I have to arraign you on another offense.”
The judge spoke in the formal language of the law. “Lee Harvey Oswald, hereinafter styled Defendant, heretofore on or about the twenty-second day of November, 1963, in the County of Dallas and State of Texas, did then and there unlawfully, voluntarily, and with malice aforethought kill John F. Kennedy by shooting him with a gun against the peace and dignity of the State.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. That’s the deal is it?”
Johnston reminded Oswald of his right to an attorney.
“I want Mr. John Abt of New York,” the defendant said. He was told again that he would have the opportunity to contact the lawyer of his choice.