At Bethesda, the work continued. The morticians did not finish until after three A.M. on Saturday, November 23, but once they had, Jackie could take the president’s body home to the White House.
Jackie got in the gray navy ambulance and sat next to her husband’s coffin. Robert Kennedy joined her and sat on the floor. Clint Hill followed Jackie. The driver, Bill Greer, the Secret Service agent who had driven the presidential limousine in the motorcade in Dallas, was behind the wheel. The ambulance and a small motorcade left Bethesda at 3:56 A.M., making its way down Wisconsin Avenue to Massachusetts Avenue, then to Twentieth Street on its way to the White House. In the middle of the night, those in the motorcade were surprised to see people standing vigil on the sidewalks and cars pulled over along the route. The presidential casket team was in the last car of the motorcade. Lieutenant Sam Bird turned around and saw “hundreds of automobiles following us, bumper to bumper as far as the eye could see, their headlights flashing.” Impromptu as it was, this was the slain president’s first funeral procession, the first of several in the days to come. At the White House, the lights were on, and the staff was waiting. Across the street, in Lafayette Park, crowds assembled.
Taz Shepard, Kennedy’s naval aide, telephoned from the White House to the U.S. Marine Corps barracks at Eighth and I streets. He spoke to the duty officer: “Break out the Marines. The Commander in Chief has been assassinated, and I want a squad at the White House double-quick. You better move!”
At the barracks, a contingent of Marines awoke, donned their dress blue uniforms in record time, and arrived at the White House in seventeen minutes. Flaming torches illuminated their path as they marched through the gate and onto the White House grounds. They were in place before the ambulance carrying the president’s body arrived. At 4:34 A.M. (EST), a military honor guard carried the coffin up the steps of the portico, through the hall, and into the East Room, where the body of Abraham Lincoln had once lain in repose.
It was the first public clue about what kind of funeral Jackie Kennedy had in mind. She watched the honor guard carry her husband into the East Room. This eerie scene, unfolding in silence in the middle of the night, was sad but touching in its simplicity.
JACKIE KENNEDY was exhausted. She had been awake for more than twenty hours. She needed rest. The president had been assassinated almost fifteen hours ago. In the morning, she would have much to do and many decisions to make. For now, she went upstairs to the family suite on the second floor of the White House. There in the privacy of her bedroom, she undressed, removing her suit, stockings, and other garments, stained by the tragedy she had suffered that day.
By this time, it was five A.M. Under normal conditions, the Executive Mansion would be dark and almost empty at this hour. But tonight a military honor guard in the East Room stood watch over a dead president through the night. Every guest bedroom was occupied by Kennedy family members or close friends. Jackie’s mother, at her daughter’s insistence, slept in the president’s bedroom. The president’s children had been put to bed hours ago knowing that their father was dead but without the comfort of seeing their mother. Cabinet members, military officers, and friends of Jackie roamed through the halls, held quiet conversations, took catnaps on furniture, ate sandwiches, or tried to do something. Some planned for the day to come. Others tried to record their memories of the day that had been.
President Kennedy lies in repose in the East Room of the White House.
(courtesy of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum)
One of them, Charlie Bartlett, had introduced young Jack and Jackie all those years ago at a dinner party at his home. He was present at the beginning. Now he was here at the end. He found some White House stationery and began to write:
We had a hero for a friend—and we mourn his loss. Anyone, and fortunately there were many, who knew him briefly and over long periods, felt that a bright and quickening impulse had come into his life. He had uncommon courage, unfailing humor, a penetrating, ever curious intelligence, and over all a matchless grace. He was our best. He will not be replaced, nor will he be forgotten, for in truth he was a kind of cheerful lightning who touched us all. We will remember always with love and sometimes, as the years pass and the story is retold, with a little wonder.
The journalist Mary McGrory hosted a dinner party at her apartment: “We’ll never laugh again,” she told her guests.
One of them, Daniel Patrick Moynihan said: “Oh, we’ll laugh again, Mary. But we’ll never be young again.”
Soon McGrory would compose her tribute to Kennedy. Like most members of the press, she loved him. “He brought gaiety, glamor, and grace to the American political scene in a measure never known before. That lightsome tread, that debonair touch, that shock of chestnut hair, that beguiling grin, that shattering understatement—these are what we shall remember. He walked like a prince and talked like a scholar. His humor brightened the life of the Republic . . . shown his latest nephew in August, he commented, ‘he looks like a fine baby—we’ll know more later.’ When the ugliness of yesterday has been forgotten, we shall remember him, smiling.”
JACKIE KENNEDY awoke in her bedroom at the White House. She had slept only a few hours. Had it really happened? Or had it all been just a nightmare? It was real. At eight fifteen on the morning of Saturday, November 23, she met with her children to talk to them about their father’s death. The night before, she had not told Caroline and John the awful news. She knew she would not arrive home before their bedtime, so Jackie’s mother deputized the children’s beloved nanny, Maud Shaw, to tell them. Shaw did not want to do it and begged to be relieved of the responsibility of telling two young children their father was dead. In the end, she agreed to do it.
At 10:00 A.M. on the twenty-third, Jackie attended a private mass in the East Room for the president’s friends and family. Elsewhere in the White House, staff members were already busy cleaning out the Oval Office in the West Wing. A tearful Evelyn Lincoln, John Kennedy’s personal secretary since his years in the Senate, gathered papers and personal mementoes from his desk. It was all happening so fast. A pair of JFK’s famous rocking chairs was removed at 1:31 P.M., loaded onto a handcart, and rolled across a driveway to the Old Executive Office Building, an annex of the White House. A photograph of them, one turned upside down and stacked upon the other, became a symbol of the rapid transition.
There was a lot of grumbling among some of President Kennedy’s staffers about the new president. A number of officials had advised Johnson to occupy the presidential office at once as a symbol of the continuity of government, and he had done so. Johnson’s actions caused Kennedy staffers to murmur that it was unseemly and in poor taste for the new president to move into the White House so quickly. But the Oval Office is in the West Wing, which is in a separate building that is connected to the main house by a colonnade.
Lyndon Johnson had not moved into the White House, which contained the historic rooms as well as the president’s private living quarters. Johnson was emphatic that Jackie and her children should continue to live there as long as she wished. Mary Todd Lincoln had stayed on in the White House for more than a month after her husband’s assassination, and Lyndon Johnson believed that Jackie Kennedy, and not he, should decide when she should move out. He vowed to give her all the time she needed. But she already knew that she did not want to remain for long.
As Jackie’s plans for the funeral evolved, she decided her husband should be buried at Arlington National Cemetery, the historic graveyard established during the Civil War on General Robert E. Lee’s estate, across the Potomac River from the White House. Thousands of soldiers from the Civil War, World War I, World War II, and the Korean War had been buried there. Arlington was also the site of the famous Tomb of the Unknowns.
Just before two o’clock on Saturday afternoon, Jackie departed the White House with a small entourage that included three of the president’s siblings: his brother Robert and two of his sisters, Jean Smith and Patricia Lawford. Others followed in separate cars. On the way to Arlington, the motorcade stopped at the Pentagon to pick up Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. It was cold and raining when Jackie Kennedy arrived at Arlington Cemetery to inspect the proposed site for her husband’s grave. It was a lovely spot of ground in front of the old Lee mansion, and it enjoyed a panoramic view of Washington. Jackie remembered that when John had visited this spot a few months before, he said it was so beautiful that he could stay there forever. After fifteen minutes, she nodded her approval. “We went out and walked to that hill, and of course you knew that was where it should be,” she said.
IN DALLAS, Lee Harvey Oswald woke up on Saturday, November 23, after his first night in police custody. The previous day, detectives had discovered his loaded rifle, the empty paper bag, and the three spent cartridge cases at the Book Depository. They never found any curtain rods there. Soon, through the unique serial number stamped into the weapon, the FBI would discover records proving that Oswald had ordered it by mail from a sporting goods store in Chicago. They found the order form and also the postal money order Oswald had used to pay for the rifle. The FBI also traced the purchase of the pistol he had used to shoot J. D. Tippit.
After Oswald’s arrest, detectives subjected him to a total of twelve hours of questioning. He was surly, defiant, arrogant, defensive, and self-pitying. He talked a lot, but unfortunately, the Dallas Police Department failed to make tape recordings of those grueling, extensive conversations detectives had with him on November 22 and in the days that followed. He admitted nothing. He actually seemed to enjoy the attention as he toyed with the Dallas police, FBI, and Secret Service interrogators. Oswald insisted he was innocent. He denied shooting President Kennedy or Officer Tippit. He claimed he did not even own a rifle.
At 10:35 A.M. on Saturday, November 23, Oswald was brought to Captain Fritz’s office, and the questioning continued.
“Lee, tell me what you did when you left work yesterday.”
He said he rode a bus to his rooming house. When he got off he got a transfer and used it to take another bus to the theatre where he was arrested. A policeman took the transfer out of his pocket at that time. But that wasn’t true. After Oswald got off the bus, he took a taxi to Oak Cliff. There was no reason for him to lie about taking a cab—it would have been a harmless admission. And the police did not discover the transfer until later. Perhaps he was tired. Or not thinking clearly.
Fritz asked if he brought curtain rods to work on the morning of the assassination.
“No.” Oswald spoke the truth.
Fritz repeated the question.
Oswald denied it again.
Was he sure, Fritz asked, that he did not place a long package on the back seat of Wesley Frazier’s car, and then carry the package into the Book Depository?
Oswald said he didn’t know what he was taking about. Two lies. He had carried a long package, and he had not brought any lunch.
Oswald denied having a conversation with Wesley Frazier about curtain rods or taking them into the Depository.
“I didn’t carry anything but my lunch,” he insisted.
And he did not tell Frazier that he was in the process of fixing up his apartment.
Or that the reason for his visit to Irving on the night of November 21 was to obtain some curtain rods from Mrs. Paine.
“No, I never said that.”
Fritz asked Oswald if he ate lunch with anyone on November 22.
Oswald said he ate with two “colored boys.” One was named “Junior” and he could not remember the name of the other one. He said he had a cheese sandwich and an apple, which he got at Mrs. Paine’s house before he left.
Another lie, and one easy for Fritz to disprove.
Fritz asked Oswald to tell him more about the Paines. What was Marina’s living situation? What did Lee know about Mr. Paine?
Did he keep any of his belongings at the Paine residence?
Oswald said that some of the things he brought back from New Orleans in September were in Ruth Paine’s garage—two sea bags, and a few boxes of kitchen articles.
And, Fritz suggested, a rifle?
Oswald denied ever storing a rifle in Mrs. Paine’s garage.
Fritz asked Oswald what friends or relatives of his lived nearby and whether he’d ever had any visitors at his rooming house on Beckley Street. Then the detective returned to the rifle.
He asked if Oswald had ever ordered guns through the mail.
Oswald said he had never ordered guns, and did not have any receipts for any. There was that verbal and logical tic again. If Oswald had no receipts, he implied, then that must be proof that he had ordered no firearms.
“What about a rifle?” Fritz asked.
Oswald said he did not own a rifle, nor had he ever possessed one.
Fritz pressed him. If he never ordered a gun or purchased a gun then where did he get the pistol he had in his possession at the time of his arrest?
Oswald admitted he bought it about seven months ago but refused to answer any more questions about the revolver or any other guns until he talked to a lawyer.
Oswald told Fritz he was wasting his time.
According to one witness to the interrogation, Oswald could not resist showing off his knowledge and superiority. “Oswald stated that at various times he had been thoroughly interrogated by the FBI . . . that they had used all their standard operating procedures . . . their hard and soft approach . . . their buddy system.” Oswald boasted that he was familiar with all types of questioning and would not make any statements.
Fritz figured he could keep Oswald talking anyway if he asked him to elaborate on his beef with the FBI.
“What do you mean by that?”
Oswald said that the FBI was abusive and impolite when they spoke to Marina three weeks ago. The agents were obnoxious and had frightened her.
Fritz’s next question probed for a motive.
“What do you think of President Kennedy?”
“I have no views on the president. My wife and I like the president’s family. They are interesting people. I have my own views on the president’s national policy. I have a right to express my views but because of the charges, I don’t think I should comment further.”
Oswald knew where the detective was going and wanted to foreclose any hint of motive. Oswald insisted that he had nothing against John Kennedy personally.
“I am not a malcontent; nothing irritated me about the president.”
Oswald refused to submit to a polygraph examination.
He said he would not take one for the FBI in 1962, and he would not do it now for the Dallas police.
Fritz confronted Oswald with one of two Selective Service cards that he carried in his wallet at the time of his arrest. The card, in the name of Alek James Hidell, was signed in that name. In Russia, “Alek” was Marina’s nickname for her husband. The card also carried the photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald. But authentic U.S. military Selective Service cards did not use photographs, so this card was an obvious forgery.
Oswald refused to admit whether he signed the card with the name Hidell.
He conceded that he carried the card but refused to say for what purpose.
Fritz allowed Secret Service inspector Thomas Kelley to ask a question.
Kelley wanted to know if Oswald watched the parade yesterday.
No, he had not.
“Did you shoot the president?”
Oswald said no.
“Did you shoot the governor?”
No. He claimed that he did not even know that Connally had been shot.
That might have been true. Oswald had been isolated from other prisoners and had not been allowed to watch television or see newspapers. Unless a policeman, FBI agent, or Secret Service agent had told Oswald about Connally’s wounds, Oswald would not have known he had shot him too. If Oswald replayed the assassination in his head, he might have wondered how he had managed to shoot a man he had never had in his sights.
Captain Fritz ended this round of questioning.
WHILE JACKIE Kennedy was selecting a grave site for her husband, Marina Oswald was allowed to meet with her husband for the first time since the assassination. She had not seen him for about thirty hours—enough time for him to ruin their lives. Marina was afraid—afraid that her husband had finally gone and done something crazy, that he had actually murdered the president of the United States and a policeman. And having grown up in a totalitarian state, she was afraid the United States government might imprison her or deport her to the Soviet Union. Worse things than that have happened to innocent people in Communist countries who had any connection to enemies of the state.
At 1:15 P.M. (CST), Marina and her mother-in-law were taken to the fourth-floor visiting room. Her husband appeared in front of her. They could not embrace because a glass partition separated them. She had to stand—there was no chair where she could sit. They picked up the telephone handsets and began speaking in Russian. Lee glanced at his mother.
“Why did you bring that fool with you? I don’t want to talk to her.”
“She’s your mother. Of course she came,” Marina said. “Have they been beating you?”
“Oh no. They treat me fine. Did you bring Junie and Rachel?”
“They’re downstairs. Alek, can we talk about anything we like?”
“Of course, we can speak about absolutely anything.” Oswald believed the police were recording their conversation. He hoped his sarcasm served to warn Marina of the danger.
“They asked me about the gun.”
“Oh, that’s nothing.”
“I don’t believe that you did that. Everything will turn out well.”
“Oh sure, there’s a lawyer in New York who will help me. You shouldn’t worry. Everything will be fine.” Lee tried to reassure her. “Don’t cry. There’s nothing to cry about. Try not to think about it. And if they ask you anything, you have a right not to answer. You have the right to refuse. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
Lee and Marina began to cry. He must have known his life with Marina and the children was over forever. He had destroyed it. At best, he would spend the rest of his life in prison. At worst, he would be put to death in the electric chair, probably within a year. A few years earlier, Marina was an unsophisticated Russian teenage girl who found herself smitten with a minor immigrant celebrity who sweet-talked her into marriage and then into leaving her family and immigrating to America. But life here was not what he promised, and he was not the man he had pretended to be. Life with him had been hard, bitter, and poor.
Now, after she had entrusted him with her life and had borne him two children, his unstable nature had taken him on a quixotic psychological journey that had climaxed in the murder of the president of the United States. As the wife of the accused assassin, she was fast becoming the most notorious woman in America.
If Lee Oswald had any sense of the enormity of what he had done to her—setting aside for a moment the crime he had committed against the president—he gave no sign of it now. He remained calm and spoke as though nothing had happened, as though he was in jail for a traffic offense or a shoplifting charge.
“You have friends. They’ll help you,” Lee told her. “If it comes to that, you can ask the Red Cross for help.” That was the same advice he had given her in his note before he set out to assassinate General Walker. “You mustn’t worry for me. Kiss Junie and Rachel for me.”
“I will,” Marina said. “Alka, remember that I love you.”
“I love you very much. Make sure you buy shoes for Junie.”
Neither one of them realized this would be their last meeting. Marina and Lee would never see each other again. But she did not need to see him again to reach a conclusion about his guilt. Lee was too calm. He spoke vaguely. He did not complain of mistreatment by the authorities, and that was not like him. He was always a complainer, and now he sputtered no outraged proclamations of his innocence. When Marina looked into her husband’s eyes, she knew, as she later told investigators, that he had killed the president.
AT 1:07 P.M., a few minutes before Lee and Marina began their reunion, District Attorney Henry Wade gave an impromptu interview to the press on the fourth floor of the city jail. He boasted that he was going to put Lee Harvey Oswald to death.
“Mr. Wade, do you expect to call Mrs. Kennedy or Governor Connally . . . in this trial as witnesses?”
“We will not, unless it’s absolutely necessary, and at this point, I don’t think it’ll be necessary.”
“How soon can we expect a trial?”
“I’d say around the middle of January.” That was in just seven or eight weeks.
“Has Mr. Oswald expressed any hatred, ill will, toward President Kennedy or, for that matter, any regret over his death?”
“He has expressed no regret that I know of.”
“It’s rumored that perhaps this case would be tried by a military court because, of course, President Kennedy is our commander in chief.” In the spring and summer of 1865, a military court of nine judges tried eight of John Wilkes Booth’s alleged co-conspirators in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the attempted murder of Secretary of State William Seward. That court sentenced four of the defendants to death, and they were hanged.
Wade was skeptical.
“I don’t know anything about that. We have [Oswald] charged in the state court, and he’s a state prisoner at present.”
“And will you conduct the trial?”
“Yes sir. I plan to.”
“In how many cases of this type have you been involved, that is, when the death penalty is involved?”
“Since I’ve been district attorney we’ve asked—I’ve asked the death penalty in twenty-four cases.”
“How many times have you obtained it?”
“Twenty-three.” In Wade’s mind, Oswald was as good as dead. Putting aside the assassination of the president, Wade knew he would get an easy conviction in the murder of Officer J. D. Tippit. That crime alone would send Oswald to the electric chair. He would be lucky to live out the year of 1964.
At 2:05 P.M., Captain Will Fritz followed Wade’s comments with some of his own. Later it became notorious as the “cinched” interview.
“Captain, can you give us a resume of what you now know concerning the assassination of the president and Mr. Oswald’s role in it?”
“There is only one thing that I can tell you without going into the evidence before talking to the district attorney. I can tell you that this case is cinched—this man killed the president. There’s no question in my mind about it.”
“Well, what is the basis for that statement?”
“I don’t want to go into the basis. In fact, I don’t want to get into the evidence. I just want to tell you that we are convinced beyond any doubt that he did the killing.”
“Was it spur of the moment or a well-planned, long thought-out plot?”
“I’d rather not discuss that. If you don’t mind, please, thank you.”
“Will you be moving him today, Captain? Is he going to remain here?”
“He’ll be here today. Yes, sir.”
FINALLY, AT 3:37 P.M., Robert Oswald was allowed to see his brother, in the same room where Lee had met with Marina.
“This is taped,” Oswald warned Robert.
“Well it may be or it may not be.”
Robert noticed the cut above Lee’s eye.
“What have they been doing to you? Were they roughing you up?”
“I got this at the theater. They haven’t bothered me since. They’re treating me all right.”
“Lee, what the Sam Hill is going on?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? Look, they’ve got your pistol, they’ve got your rifle, and they’ve got you charged with shooting the president and a police officer. And you tell me you don’t know? Now, I want to know just what’s going on.”
“Don’t believe all this so-called evidence.”
Robert stared into Lee’s eyes, searching for answers.
Lee shut him down. “Brother, you won’t find anything there.”
“Well, what about Marina? What do you think she’s going to do now, with those two kids?”
“My friends will take care of them.”
Oswald told Robert his daughter June needed shoes. “Junie needs a new pair of shoes.” It was incredible, surreal. Lee was under arrest for a double homicide, and his mind was distracted by the trivial subject of footwear for a toddler.
“Don’t worry about that. I’ll take care of that.”
Robert asked about an attorney and offered to get one for his brother.
“No, you stay out of it.”
“Stay out of it? It looks like I’ve been dragged into it.”
Lee said he doesn’t want a local attorney. He wants Abt from New York.
Robert prepared to leave. “I’ll see you in a day or two.”
“Now, you’ve got your job and everything,” Lee warned him. “Don’t be running back and forth all the time and getting yourself in trouble with your boss.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Robert assured him. “I’ll be back.”
Lee said good-bye. “All right. I’ll see you.”
The Oswald brothers would never meet again.
DALLAS POLICE paraded Lee Harvey Oswald many times before newspaper reporters and television cameras. In a crowded hallway, they allowed him to make several public statements that were filmed and broadcast across the country. Oswald played dumb.
“I really don’t know what this situation is about,” he told reporters, “except that I am accused of murdering a policeman. I know nothing more than that.” Oswald said he wanted a lawyer. “I do request that someone . . . come forward and give me legal assistance.”
When a reporter asked him point-blank, “did you shoot the president?” Oswald gave an odd, wordy, and indirect reply: “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.”
The prosecutor discussed the case against Oswald in front of reporters and pronounced him guilty. At one point, Oswald raised his handcuffed hands and, for several seconds, clenched his right fist into what appeared to be a Communist salute. Photographs and videos captured the moment. Another time, Oswald complained to journalists that his “fundamental hygienic rights” were being violated because the police would not allow him to take a shower. He told reporters he had a cut above his eye because a policeman had hit him. He asked for a lawyer several times, but the police and prosecutors ignored him. A policeman walked through a crowded hallway holding Oswald’s rifle above his head like a cheap bowling trophy.
The Dallas Police Department allowed its headquarters to deteriorate into a carnival-like spectacle. Shouting, pushing reporters packed the halls and, like jackals, became frenzied whenever the police teased them with a glimpse of their prisoner. “Oswald, did you shoot the president?” yelled one journalist during one of these brief, impromptu hallway interviews.
“I didn’t shoot anybody sir,” he replied. “I haven’t been told what I am here for.”
When another reporter shouted the same question, Oswald said, “No, they’ve taken me in because of the fact that I lived in the Soviet Union.” Then Oswald claimed, “I’m just a patsy,” by which he meant that he was the fall guy for whoever committed the crime.
Oswald admitted just one thing. When asked whether he was in the Book Depository at the time of the assassination, he said yes. “I work in that building . . . naturally, if I work in that building, yes sir,” he was there. But he denied everything else.
When a third reporter asked if he was the gunman—“Did you fire that rifle?”—Oswald uttered an emotional denial. “I don’t know the facts you people have been given, but I emphatically deny these charges!” Oswald’s denials did not surprise the detectives. Experienced policemen knew that most murderers denied their guilt.
There was no proper security at police headquarters. No one checked IDs or searched the journalists who crowded the hallway. What explains the incompetence of the police when they had Oswald in their custody? The wild atmosphere was shameful. The answer is simple: police officials wanted to curry favor with the journalists from all over the country who had descended upon Dallas. The assassination had stained the city’s and its police department’s reputations. There was disturbing talk that the people of Dallas shared some kind of collective guilt for the murder. The police wanted the reporters to say good things about Dallas, so they gave the press free rein. It was a fateful decision that impeded their investigation and put Oswald’s life in danger.
ELSEWHERE IN Dallas on November 23, word had gotten out about Abraham Zapruder’s home movie. He had already been interviewed on a local television station. Journalists desperate to purchase the rights to his film went to his office to meet with him. He had locked up the film overnight. He hoped to sell it for a lot of money, and soon he would.
BACK AT the White House, after Jackie returned from Arlington Cemetery, she remained in seclusion. Aside from the morning mass, she participated in no other events that day. She received only a few visitors—close friends and family. She needed to gather her strength for the ordeal that lay ahead. In two days, on Monday, November 25, she had to be ready to preside over two events that would test her body and soul.
The first was her husband’s public funeral. With meticulous attention to detail, Jackie Kennedy threw herself into planning the event. With Abraham Lincoln’s funeral as her inspiration, researchers had set to work. They uncovered historical details that had been forgotten since the Civil War, including the exact way that the White House entrances and East Room chandeliers had been draped in mourning with ribbons of black crepe paper.
Then, after the funeral, Jackie had to prepare for a second event. On Monday night she would host a birthday party for her son, John Jr. In two days, on the day of his father’s funeral, he would be three years old. Jackie would not hear of canceling the party.
ON THE afternoon of Saturday, November 23, at 4:45 P.M., President Lyndon Johnson read to the nation over live radio and television his proclamation of a national day of mourning for President Kennedy.
To the people of the United States: John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 35th President of the United States, has been taken from us by an act which outrages decent men everywhere. . . . Now, therefore, I, Lyndon B. Johnson, President of the United States of America, do appoint Monday next, November 25, the day of the funeral service of President Kennedy, to be a national day of mourning throughout the United States. I earnestly recommend the people to assemble on that day in their respective places of divine worship . . . and to pay their homage of love and reverence to the memory of a great and good man.
On the night of Saturday, November 23, reporters begged Police Chief Jesse Curry for a tip on when Oswald would be transferred from the jail in City Hall to the County Jail about a mile away. They were tired. Most of them had been covering the story from about one P.M. Friday, through the middle of the night, and then all day Saturday into the evening. They wanted to leave so they could take a break and rest, but they worried that the prisoner would be moved in the middle of the night when they were gone and that they would miss out on the story.
The chief told them it was safe for them to leave—and promised that the suspect would not be moved tonight. “I think if you fellows are back here by ten o’clock in the morning,” Curry said, “you won’t miss anything.”
Curry then conferred with Captain Fritz about the timing.
“What time do you think you will be ready tomorrow,” Curry asked.
Fritz said he did not know exactly when.
“Do you think about ten o’clock?”
“I believe so.”
Curry stepped out of Fritz’s third floor office to talk to the press to confirm that Oswald would be moved tomorrow morning. “I believe if you are back here by ten o’clock you will be back in time to observe anything you care to observe.”
Asked if Oswald had admitted killing the president, Curry said no.
“I don’t think we’ve made any progress toward a confession.”
“You don’t think so? ”
“No.”
“Why are you so pessimistic about a confession?”
“Well, you know we’ve been in this business a good while, and sometimes you can sort of draw your own conclusions after talking to a man over a period of time. Of course he might have a change of heart, but I’d be rather surprised if he did.”
A reporter asked about security.
“Will you transfer him under heavy guard?”
“I’ll leave that up to Sheriff Decker. That’s his responsibility.”
“The sheriff takes custody of him here?”
“Yes, that’s all I have, gentlemen, thank you.”
ALL THROUGH the day of November 23, and into the night, the body of John F. Kennedy lay in repose at the White House.
THE DEATH threats against Oswald began after midnight on Sunday, November 24.
Then at 2:30 A.M., an anonymous man called the Dallas FBI office and warned, “I represent a committee that is neither right nor left wing, and tonight, tomorrow morning, or tomorrow night, we are going to kill the man who killed the president. There will be no excitement and we will kill him. We wanted to be sure and tell the FBI, police department, and Sheriff’s Office and we will be there and we will kill him.”
The night man at the office who had taken the message informed an agent, Milton L. Newsom, of the threat. When Newsom called the Dallas County sheriff’s office to report it, Deputy Sheriff C. C. McCoy said he had received a similar call. The two messages were almost identical, except the caller to the sheriff’s office claimed he spoke on behalf of a secret group of about one hundred people “who have voted to kill the man who killed the president.”
The purpose of the call was to warn the sheriff’s office in advance so no deputies would get hurt when Oswald was shot to death tomorrow. McCoy called Sheriff Bill Decker at home to alert him to the threats.
Agent Newsom also called the Dallas Police Department and reported the threats to Captain William B. Frazier. At 5:15 A.M., Frazier called Captain Will Fritz at home, who told him to notify Chief Curry.
In the meantime, Deputy Sheriff McCoy had reported the threats to Sheriff Bill Decker, who became alarmed. He told McCoy to call the Dallas police and tell them he wanted Chief Curry to call him right away. McCoy made the call and told Frazier to have Curry call Decker.
Then McCoy conveyed a more urgent message. Decker thought the Dallas Police should drive Oswald over to the county jail right now. That way, the transfer will be over before the reporters—or potential assassins—can gather at City Hall.
But Frazier could not reach Chief Curry on the phone. When Captain C. E. Talbert showed up for duty at 6:15 A.M., Frazier brought him up to date. Talbert reached the assistant chief of police, who told him to send men to Curry’s house. Around 7:30 A.M., Talbert also called FBI agent Newsom, the man who, more than four hours ago, first spread word of the threats. Talbert said that Chief Curry would not be in the office until 8:00 or 9:00 A.M.
Newsom was worried. He asked about the transfer plans.
Talbert was nonchalant. He said he did not think there would be any effort to sneak Oswald out of the city jail because the police wanted to maintain good relations with the press. The media had set up extensive coverage to cover the transfer, and he did not think that Chief Curry would want to “cross” the media.
BEFORE OSWALD went anywhere that morning, Captain Will Fritz wanted to see him for one last time. After two days of trying, Fritz knew he could not break Oswald’s willpower, frighten him, or trick him into confessing. Oswald was too cool and collected for that. Yes, he had exploded in occasional flashes of anger and frustration, but he always reeled himself back in to a state of calm. He was unflappable. Not even the sight of his wife or brother weakened him or compelled him to confess.
This Sunday morning was Captain Will Fritz’s last chance to speak freely with Oswald before he was transferred from the city jail, before he got a lawyer (who would no doubt advise his client not to say another word to the police), and before the next stage of the case, when the grand jury, the prosecutor, and the trial would claim center stage. There was already plenty of evidence. Indeed, the first-day evidence alone was enough to indict Oswald and put him on trial. District Attorney Henry Wade did not need a confession. He could get a conviction without one.
Fritz was sure Oswald was guilty. But the old detective wanted the psychological satisfaction of hearing it from Oswald’s own lips. And he wanted to know, why? This was the most notorious case of Fritz’s career, but the legendary lawman had failed to break the president’s assassin. There was one form of leverage Fritz had not used. He could have threatened to deport Marina, and to take her children away from her (at least the one born in the United States). But that kind of threat was for the federal authorities, not Fritz, to make.
Fritz showed Oswald one of the “backyard” photographs of him holding the rifle he claimed he never owned. The detective hoped that once Oswald saw this undeniable proof, he might confess.
Oswald said he had never even seen the photograph. “I know all about photography . . . that is a picture that someone else has made. I never saw that picture in my life.” Again, he denied any involvement in or knowledge of the Kennedy or Tippit shootings.
“The only thing I am here for is because I popped a policeman in the nose in a theater on Jefferson Avenue, which I readily admit I did, because I was protecting myself.”
Fritz turned the questioning over to Postal Inspector Harry D. Holmes. The U.S. Post Office had been researching the identity of the person who rented the post office box to which Klein’s Sporting Goods shipped the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle.
Holmes asked if Oswald had a post office box in Dallas.
“Yes.”
Box 2915. Oswald said he had rented it at the main post office a few months before moving to New Orleans. He explained that he rented it in his own name and only he and his wife had access to the box.
Oswald had just admitted the rifle that killed the president was shipped to his post office box.
Holmes asked him to confirm that no one else received mail in that box. He was struck by Oswald’s response. “He denied emphatically that he had ever ordered a rifle under his name, or any other name, nor permitted anyone else to order a rifle to be received in this box . . . he denied that he ever . . . bought any money order . . . to [pay] for such a rifle.”
“Well,” Fritz asked, “have you shot a rifle since you have been out of the Marines?”
Oswald said no.
“Do you own a rifle?” Fritz asked again.
“Absolutely not! How can I afford a rifle? I make $1.25 an hour. I can’t hardly feed myself.”
Inspector Holmes wanted to ask about the Dallas post office box again.
“Did you receive mail through box 2915 under the name of any other than Lee Oswald?”
“Absolutely not.”
“What about a package to an A. J. Hidell?”
“No!”
“Did you order a gun in that name to come here?”
“No, absolutely not!”
“Had it come under that name, could this fellow have gotten it?”
“Nobody got mail out of that box but me, no sir.”
AT ABOUT 10:20 A.M. on Sunday, while Captain Fritz and others conducted their latest interrogation of Oswald, Chief of Police Curry gave a hallway press conference. On Saturday night he had already told reporters the approximate time his men would transport Oswald to the County Jail on Sunday. Now he even revealed what special methods he would employ to keep his prisoner safe from harm.
“Chief, you say that you’re going to take him . . . in an armored car. Have you ever had to do this with another prisoner?
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Is it a commercial-type truck, the kind that banks use?”
“Yes, sir.”
“[The] threats on the prisoner’s life . . . did they come in right through the police switchboard?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have details on all of them?”
“No.”
The reporters wanted to know if the police had discovered any accomplices. Did anyone help Oswald?
“This is the man, we are sure, that murdered . . . assassinated the president.” But Curry did not go so far as to deny the possibility of a conspiracy.
“To say that that there was no other person that had knowledge of what this man might do, I wouldn’t make that statement because there is a possibility that there are people who might have known this man’s thoughts and what he could do, or what he might do.”
But has he confessed? the reporters yearned to know.
“Does he show any signs of breaking—to make a clean breast of this . . . to tell the truth about what happened?”
“No, sir, there is no indication that he is close to telling us anything.”
The journalists kept questioning Curry, but he had nothing more to say.
INSIDE FRITZ’S office, Holmes asked Oswald about a third post-office box, one he rented in Dallas after he moved back to the city from New Orleans. What business did he list on the application? None, Oswald claimed. Then why, Holmes asked, did he state on the rental application that his business was the Fair Play for Cuba Committee and the American Civil Liberties Union?
“Maybe that’s right,” Oswald conceded.
Holmes asked why he did that.
“I don’t know why.”
Fritz asked about Oswald’s involvement with the FPCC, and if he was in contact with its New York office.
“Yes, I wrote to them, and they sent me some Communist literature and a letter signed by Alex Hidell.”
Hidell! That was the name on the card the police found in Lee’s pocket, and the name authorized to receive mail at his New Orleans post-office box. Oswald said he never knew Hidell and never saw him in New Orleans.
Inspector Kelley asked Oswald if he believed in what the FPCC stands for.
“Yes, Cuba should have full diplomatic relations with the United States. There should be free trade with Cuba and freedom for tourists from both countries to travel within each other’s borders.”
Oswald denied that he had moved to Dallas to start an FPCC chapter there. He was telling the truth.
Kelley wondered if Oswald’s motive was connected to Cuba.
Did Oswald think that Cuba would be better off now that President Kennedy was dead?
Oswald said he doubted that the attitude of the U.S. government would change. Lyndon Johnson belonged to the same political party, and, Oswald concluded, “His views would probably be largely the same as President Kennedy.”
Fritz asked the same question Oswald answered on the New Orleans radio shows. “Are you a Communist?”
“No, I am not a Communist. I am a Marxist, but not a Marxist-Leninist.” Oswald said he was a “pure Marxist.”
Fritz had no idea what Oswald was talking about. “What’s the difference?”
“It would take too long to explain,” Oswald said, implying that Fritz lacked the sophistication to understand what he was talking about.
Fritz coaxed him to elaborate.
“Well, a Communist is a Marxist-Leninist, while I am a true Karl Marxist. I’ve read just about everything by or about Karl Marx.” Oswald’s boasts that he was a Marx scholar were absurd.
Oswald said he was an avid reader of Russian literature, “whether it’s Communist or not.”
Secret Service agent Kelley asked if Oswald subscribed to any Russian magazines or newspaper.
“Yes, I subscribe to the Militant. That’s the weekly of the Socialist Party of the United States.”
Oswald had a question for Kelley. “Are you an FBI agent?”
“No, I’m not. I am a member of the Secret Service.”
Oswald revealed when he was standing in front of the Depository, about to leave, a young crew-cut man rushed up and said he was from the Secret Service, showed him a book of identification, and asked where the phone was.
Oswald pointed him toward the pay phone in the building, and he started toward it, and then Oswald left.
Fritz allowed Kelley to continue the questioning. The clock was ticking. Soon Oswald would be gone, taken to the County Jail.
Fritz switched to a subject guaranteed to infuriate Oswald, the circumstances of his parting with the Marine Corps. Fritz said he understood that Oswald had been dishonorably discharged. Oswald cut him off.
“I was discharged honorably.” It was changed later because he attempted to renounce his American citizenship while living in Russia. Because he never changed his citizenship, he wrote a letter to secretary of the Navy John Connally to have this discharge reversed, and after considerable delay, he received a “very respectful” reply in which Connally stated that he had resigned to run for governor of Texas, and that his letter was being referred to the new secretary.
Fritz asked about a map that was found in Oswald’s room at the boardinghouse.
“Lee, we found a map in your room with some marks on it. What can you tell me about those marks? Did you put them on there?”
“My God!” He knew what Fritz was implying, that the map was evidence that he had planned the assassination in advance. “Don’t tell me there’s a mark near where this thing happened?” Oswald remembered that he marked the location of the Texas School Book Depository on the map. But he offered an innocent explanation.
“What about the other marks? I put a number of marks on it. I was looking for work and marked the places where I went for jobs or where I heard there were jobs.”
Fritz was skeptical. He asked why was there an X at the location of the Book Depository.
“Well, I interviewed there for a job, in fact, got the job. Therefore the X.”
This time Oswald spoke the truth. He had used that map to plot out his route when he went from place to place in search of employment. The X that he penned in front of the Depository did not foreshadow the assassination. On November 22, he had already worked there for several weeks. Why would he need to highlight on a map the place where he already had a job?
It was 11:00 A.M. in Dallas. Soon Oswald would be taken to the basement garage of City Hall and driven to the County Jail.
Captain Fritz asked Oswald one more time about the hours preceding the assassination.
Why did he go to Irving to visit his wife on Thursday night instead of Friday, like he normally did?
“I learned that my wife and Mrs. Paine were giving a party for the children, and that they were having in a house full of neighborhood children there [on Friday], and that I just didn’t want to be around at such a time.” So, he went out Thursday night.
What about the next morning, Fritz asked. “Did you bring a sack with you.”
“I did.”
“What was in the sack?”
“My lunch.”
“How big of a sack was it? What was its shape?”
“Oh, I don’t recall, it may have [been] a small sack or a large sack. You don’t always find one that just fits your sandwiches.”
Oswald knew that Wesley and his sister had already told the police all about his large paper bag. He tried to discredit the accuracy of their recollections by creating ambiguity about its size.
Fritz pursued the subject, asking where Oswald put the sack when he got into Frazier’s car.
“In my lap, or possibly in the front seat beside to me, where I always did put it because I don’t want it to get crushed.”
He denied putting any package in the backseat.
Fritz told Oswald that Wesley Frazier says that he brought a long parcel over to his house and put it in the backseat of his car.
“Oh, he must be mistaken, or thinking about some other time when he picked me up.”
Fritz asked Oswald to tell him again where he was in the Depository at the time of the assassination. The detective was curious to see if Oswald would tell the story in the same way he had during a prior interrogation.
Oswald said that when lunchtime came he was working on one of the upper floors with one of the black employees who said “come on let’s eat lunch together.” Oswald told him, “you go ahead, send the elevator back up to me and I will come down just as soon as I am finished.”
But, Oswald explained, before he went down the assassination happened. Then, “when all the commotion started, I just went on downstairs.” He stopped in the second-floor lunchroom to get a Coke, and it was there, Oswald said, that he encountered a policeman. “I went down, and as I started to go out and see what it was all about, a police officer stopped me just before I got to the front door, and started to ask me some questions.”
At that point, “My supervisor told the officer that I am one of the employees . . . so he told me to step aside. Then I just went on in the crowd to see what it was all about.”
Oswald had just committed a huge mistake. On November 22, he told Captain Fritz that during the assassination, he was eating his lunch on the first floor of the Depository and then he went up to the second floor to buy a Coke. Now, two days later, he told a different story. In this new version, Oswald did not go down to the first floor to eat his lunch. Instead, he never ate lunch at all. Now he says the assassination and all the “commotion” happened before he had a chance to go down to the first floor and eat his lunch.
At first, it might sound like a trivial distinction. What difference did it make if Oswald was going up or down to the second floor to buy that Coke? Only this.
Oswald had just confessed that he was not on the first floor of the building when the president was shot. He had shattered his own alibi. Now he said “no” without realizing the significance of what he had just admitted: that he was somewhere else at 12:30 P.M. on November 22, 1963.
During the assassination of President Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald was not on the first floor. He was somewhere else inside the Texas School Book Depository. He was on one of upper floors. And he was alone.
And with that admission, he revealed something else. After the shooting, he did not go up the stairs. He ran down them.
It had taken Fritz almost two days and several rounds of interrogation to get to this moment, but Oswald had slipped up at last. The suspect had placed himself alone on one of the upper floors of the building from which the president was shot. Given several more hours of questioning, Fritz might be able to coax Oswald into making more mistakes and admissions.
Fritz heard a knock on his door. It was Chief of Police Jesse Curry. It was time to transfer the prisoner to the County Jail. “We’ll be through in a few minutes,” Fritz said.
Secret Service agent Forrest Sorrels asked Oswald about the mysterious Alex Hidell.
“I never used the name of Hidell,” Oswald responded.
Fritz asked him if he knew anyone by the name of A. J. Hidell.
“No.”
Oswald also denied ever using that name as an alias.
“No! I never used the name, and I don’t know anyone by that name, and never had heard of that name before.”
Fritz asked again about the fake selective service card bearing Oswald’s photo and A. J. Hidell’s name.
“I’ve told you all I’m going to about that card. You took notes, just read them for yourself, if you want to refresh your memory. You have the card. You know as much about it as I do.” Oswald was vehement on the subject of Hidell. Despite the incriminating evidence of the card he kept in his wallet, he would not admit that he used the name under which he ordered the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle.
It was time to go.