The coffee machine ran out. Policemen dropped coins in it, held paper cups under a spout barely dripping, and kicked the automatic vendor. This was supper time for the Dallas department and there would be no supper tonight. Almost all of the personnel had worked all day and only a few were permitted to leave at 4 P.M. when the next shift arrived. Two deputy chiefs sat in front offices handling phone calls from all over the world. There were newspaper editors, police officers, statesmen, diplomats, and the civic-minded.
Some wanted inside information about the crime and the suspect. Some asked for official statements. Many offered suggestions. One woman, excited, phoned and said: “Part of a chicken sandwich was found on the sixth floor—right? Well, all you have to do is pump Lee Harvey Oswald’s stomach. If chicken comes up, he’s your man.” Some were disturbed. They had seen visions and could solve the crime at once if they could be flown to Dallas. A few excoriated the city and the police department. “If you had properly protected Mr. Kennedy, he wouldn’t be dead.” “You know who killed him—you did.” “Dallas should hang its head in shame.”
On the several floors of police headquarters, men worked harder than ever in the history of the department. Uniformed men and detectives breasted the crowds in the halls to run down a tip, find a witness, do an errand, pick up an item of evidence, or they were en route back into headquarters, bucking the same crowds, reporting in, and getting a fresh assignment which could not be delayed a minute. There was no time to buy a sandwich; it could have been chewed hurriedly if someone had brought it in. The Dallas Police Department was operating like a tentacled octopus with no body; all the legs were waving and threshing, but the effort appeared to be without direction.
The chief sat in his office at the head of the third-floor T. He was a man alone, as though he were too aloof to seek his men or they were too aloof to consult him. He “assumed” that Captain Talbert had the people in the building under control, but no one saw Talbert running to Curry’s office with reports. Will Fritz handled the case as though Homicide were divorced from the rest of the department. Between the interrogations he did not report to the chief with progress or problems. On the fourth floor, Lieutenant Day of the Crime Laboratory had examined the rifle, the bullets, the revolver, the cardboard boxes found adjacent to the sixth-floor window, the blanket which had just arrived from Mrs. Paine’s house, but Chief Curry had very little firsthand knowledge of the findings. Lieutenant Revill of Intelligence had handed in a quick report on FBI Agent Hosty, stating that Hosty admitted knowing about Lee Harvey Oswald as a communist and potential assassin, and Curry had read it through his rimless glasses in silence and locked it in his desk.
Curry left his office and walked back down the corridor to Homicide. The reporters, as always, pressed him for a statement. He offered none. It was barely possible that anyone who was watching all the angles of this case on television might know more about it than the chief. He inched through the taut, sweaty faces and the klieg lights and turned into the glassy section marked Homicide. He could see the prisoner, lips pursed, listening to the questions of Will Fritz, and he could see the other officers, some standing, some sitting, staring at the prisoner waiting for an answer.
Fritz came into the outer office to talk to the chief in private. Curry wanted to know how it was going. At times, the captain of Homicide would blink those eyes like an uncommunicative frog. He was a big man, bigger in his Texas hat. It was apparent to Curry that he was not going to get a detailed report. The captain said he thought he had enough evidence on Oswald to “file on him for the murder of Tippit.” Curry nodded. That would hold the man for a long time. There would be no bail in a first degree murder charge. This would give the Homicide division plenty of time to build a solid case. Fritz may have felt that he owed a little more to the chief. “I strongly suspect,” he said, “that he was the assassin of the President.” This was information which had been imparted to the world hours ago. The conference between the chief and the captain was brief and guarded, almost formal.
Across the hall in Forgery, Detective Rose was on the phone. He was talking to Detective McCabe of the Irving Police Department. “We have Wesley Frazier right here,” said McCabe. “He was found at the Irving Professional Center visiting his father.” Detective Rose was grateful. This kid could be a missing link in the case. McCabe said that Frazier had been arrested. The word hurt. Frazier should have been picked up, or apprehended, but hardly arrested. No one could think of a charge on which to hold him, unless the great big legal basket called “material witness” could be used.
“I’ll leave here right away,” Rose said. “I’m taking Detective Stovall with me.” McCabe told him that the prisoner would be waiting. The two left their office, fighting their way toward the press room and the back elevator, as Curry stalked his way coldly in the opposite direction. In the county building, off Dealey Plaza, one of Sheriff Bill Decker’s deputies noticed a Negro boy standing in the outer office. He asked Amos Lee Euins if he had signed an affidavit. The sixteen-year-old said yes. It was he who had watched the execution of President Kennedy from one of the vantage points in the plaza.
The deputy asked if anyone wanted this boy to remain in the sheriff’s office. Deputies looked around and said no. Typists sat intently behind their machines, taking down the oral testimony of scores of witnesses. Some had seen something. Some thought they had seen something. Day had passed into night and a few refused to sign if a word or a phrase was not quite in context in the affidavit. Copies of the approved affidavits were being delivered to Captain Fritz regularly. His men sorted them and acquainted the captain with a digest of the important ones. Hour by hour, the case against Lee Harvey Oswald began to congeal. If Fritz did not share all of his findings with his superior officer, it is also true that he did not confront the prisoner with them. He might have dealt a more slashing attack on his man, causing him to retreat, to admit, to concede here and there, but the interrogation continued with repetitious questions and, whenever the prisoner felt sensitive to them, he refused to answer and sat staring at the hound dogs who stalked him.
The First Lady crouched in the back of the limousine. On the other side of the seat, silent, sat her secretary, Elizabeth Carpenter. Mrs. Johnson felt cold. The Secret Service agents up front—Knight and Rundle—turned on the heater, but Lady Bird Johnson felt spasms of shivering run through her arms and knees and her teeth chattered. She looked out of the window at the darkness impaled by street lights and all of the wealth of practical sense within her kept saying that this was a bad day; a tragic day; a stunning, horrifying day which she wished could be cast away into the blackness outside, never to return. She was going to have to live with this day, but it would take time. It was as though a blue bolt had fallen on a picnic, and everyone had been frozen into congenial attitudes in death. It was as though no one would ever smile again because, in the ghastly presence of this day, there would never be anything to bring a smile to a friendly face.
There were moments when it seemed not to have happened at all. The mind could not sustain the intensity of shock too long; it short-circuited and, for a brief time, everything was as it had been at noon. It is possible that, with the exception of Mrs. John F. Kennedy, no mind raced over as many despairing trails that night as that of Mrs. Johnson. She was wife and mother to her man, and she meant it when she said, over and over: “Dear God, not this!”
All her life she had been a Texas belle and proud to be one. She had worked as long and as arduously as her husband in the House of Representatives, but success, to her, meant a step closer to home. At any time she was asked about the most lofty post in the nation, Lady Bird Johnson always gave the same answer: “United States Senator from the State of Texas.” In her mind, she could play back every campaign as though it were a motion picture in color; she knew the true friends from the false; she knew the right moves from the wrong. She husbanded her husband as one would a national resource; when he fell with a myocardial infarction, it was this small woman with the brown eyes who sat up nights at Bethesda Naval Hospital listening to the soft hiss of oxygen, watching the rise and fall of the massive chest.
The thing she had to offer, besides love, was scared courage. The brown eyes were frightened, but the brain forced her to remain cheerful, to keep him from being restless. When he left the hospital, she might have entertained a latent hope that the doctors would order him back to the ranch in Texas, to retire from politics. They didn’t. His recovery was splendid. Lyndon Johnson stopped smoking; he cut his drinking down to a casual dinnertime cocktail; his workload increased—he was Democratic Majority Leader of the United States Senate.
The higher he went in life, the further the ranch faded behind him. To Mrs. Johnson, who was also the business head in the family, the ranch was all. The mountains of alien Washington had been climbed. They had the house, several thousand acres of land in the hill country, a television station, some good stocks, some loans owed to banks, and two daughters who would like to see their parents return to Texas permanently. When the political drums began to beat a tattoo for Lyndon Johnson’s nomination for the presidency, in 1959, Mrs. Johnson thought of it as the final accolade for her husband. So, too, did Lyndon Johnson.* He fought hard, at times bitterly, with the inner feeling that the Democratic Party would not offer the nomination to a Texan.
Kennedy won it and offered the vice-presidential nomination to Lyndon Johnson. There was a moment of hesitation on both sides. When Johnson accepted, Kennedy’s palace guard—including his brother Robert—was enraged. The period November 1960 to November 1963 was to be the cruel and cutting part of Lyndon Johnson’s life. President Kennedy used his Vice-President’s services wisely, sending him on many missions to many parts of the world; asking his assistance in getting legislation through the Congress; keeping state leaders in the Kennedy corral. In return, the Kennedy group made Lyndon Johnson the butt of their jokes; they could make him look bad in clannish conferences; some even tried to sabotage his chances of running for Vice-President a second time. The onetime majority leader of the United States Senate was forced to truckle to the junior Senator from Massachusetts.
She had been through it all. Socially, the Johnsons lacked the glitter, the polish, the urbane wit of the Kennedys. At the White House receptions, none of the society columnists pressed to know what Lady Bird was wearing, but everyone was prepared to gasp with pleasure when Mrs. Kennedy appeared. The most protracted hurt of all was that Lyndon Johnson was not emotionally suited to be second man on anyone’s team. Mrs. Johnson knew her husband.
Now what? She rode through this darkest of nights without elation. Her husband had become the President of the United States. He would start pulling all those people together; he would plead; he would give a little to get a little; he would work the late hours acquainting himself with every facet of this awesome post; Vice-Presidents are poorly informed; he would lead because he enjoyed being in front; but was any of it worth the LBJ Ranch? What good could possibly come of leading a nation in an era of chronic tension? What if it broke his health and he had another heart attack?
The car pulled into the drive at 4040 Fifty-Second Street Northwest. There was a crowd outside. A few trucks and cameras were there; these had attracted the neighbors. Mrs. Johnson felt small and alone in the back seat. She thought: “I love this house. I love it. Now we’ll never live in it again.” Under the dome light at the entrance, she saw the slender figure of Luci. Three Secret Service agents stood in the shadows. “Oh, mother!” Luci said. Mrs. Johnson pressed the younger daughter in her arms for a moment. “My school said prayers,” the girl said.
The Elms seemed busy to Mrs. Johnson. She had expected to come home and undress and put on a robe and slippers. She had envisioned a quiet home with few lights on. The street outside was heavy with watchers. She stepped inside with Luci and was surprised to find people standing everywhere. They were personal friends, or co-workers, or people important to the administration. As she nodded and summoned her small smile, Mrs. Johnson realized that this was the way it was going to be. It would never be quiet and peaceful again. Even the ranch would be swarming with Secret Service men and political friends.
Luci was prattling, but her mother did not hear the words. Mrs. Johnson went upstairs with Liz Carpenter. Mrs. Carpenter could summon a moonlike smile at the most abysmal of moments, and this was one. Mrs. Johnson was rubbing her wrists. “How do you feel?” Liz said. Mrs. Johnson reached into a closet for a dressing robe and slippers. “I’m freezing.” she said. “Please turn that set on. We can watch it up here.”
She propped several pillows at the headboard. A great weariness overcame her. There was no sleep in it. Mrs. Johnson phoned Lynda at the University of Texas. She wondered what Luci had been talking about. The television set told the same story over and over. When there was nothing new to tell, the networks fell back on rerunning material already shown. She saw herself getting off the plane with her husband; she saw the motorcade of the morning; there were random shots of people running and falling on grass; the face of a sullen young man in handcuffs being led through a crowd of men in a hall; she heard her husband ask for “your help—and God’s.”
Lynda was saying: “. . . the first thing I did was to go to the Governor’s Mansion to be with the Connally children.” Mrs. Johnson nodded. “That was just right, darling.” Inside the massive fatigue, the mother felt a lift. Her girls had thought of constructive things. One prayed; the other hurried to help Nellie Connally’s little ones. It was good to know that both of her daughters were safe. She made a few calls to close friends. Mrs. Johnson glanced at Mrs. Carpenter. “I don’t know when he’ll be home. But he’ll probably have people with him, and he hasn’t eaten yet.” The First Lady pulled a quilt over her and felt a spasm of shivering.
The Bethesda elevator brought the Kennedy party—the first section of it—to the seventeenth floor. Navy officers in dress blues escorted the group to a special suite of rooms. As in the Hotel Texas in Fort Worth, there was a short corridor. To the right was a well-lighted kitchen. On the left was a bedroom. Farther on was a living room with settees, mirrors, a fireplace, a few ornate chairs, and prints of paintings on the walls. Mrs. Kennedy examined each room. The television set was in the bedroom. Two Secret Service men stood outside the little hall. The rest of the Clan Kennedy would be arriving in groups. There were facilities in the kitchen for making tea and toast; one could also phone the hospital kitchen. There was plenty of time to peel the bloody clothes from the body and to soak in a warm tub. Mrs. Kennedy kept them on, including the gloves.
Now that she was safe from the reporters and cameras, Mrs. Kennedy wanted to do what Mrs. Johnson had done—inquire about her children. She phoned her mother. “He didn’t even have the satisfaction of being killed for civil rights,” she said. “It had to be some silly little communist.” Mrs. Hugh Auchincloss mentioned that the children were safe at her house. Her daughter was puzzled. She had sent no message to have the children taken there. “Mummy,” said Mrs. Kennedy. “My God, those poor children. Their lives shouldn’t be disrupted, now of all times.” She thought about it. “Tell Maude Shaw to bring them back and put them to bed.”
Grand-mère may have thought that Caroline and John were comfortable in her house. Still she would not dispute it. If Jacqueline wanted the babies back in the hurly-burly of the White House, then so be it. It seemed a pity to dress them again and send them back. The phones were replaced on their cradles. Grand-mère may have wondered why her daughter had not asked if the children knew. Perhaps she wanted to tell them herself. In the excitement messages became unreliable. If Jacqueline had not ordered Maude Shaw to bring the children to Georgetown, then maybe she didn’t want the nanny to tell the youngsters about their father.
Mrs. Kennedy left the phone in a daze. Thinking about the children can be, at a time such as this, both a lovely and a heart-wrenching reality. To have them as a valentine from him is solace; to think of the innocents as not having a father, especially two who adored their father, is depressing. She walked into the living room and asked someone to phone Sargent Shriver at the White House. In the family sitting room on the second floor, Mrs. Kennedy said, there was a large-size book on Lincoln. It held a lot of daguerreotypes and line drawings of the funeral of America’s sixteenth President. Tell them, she said, to study those drawings and the lying-in-state in the East Room of the White House. She would like to have her husband’s funeral correspond as closely as possible to Lincoln’s.
On the ground floor, Navy doctors met the Secret Service and two FBI agents in the hall. The casket reposed on wheels. Enlisted personnel tried to move it. Major General Wehle, who had arrived from Bethesda, waved them away. Roy Kellerman and William Greer grabbed handles on opposite sides; General Godfrey McHugh stepped into position to help. So did General Wehle. Valiantly they tried to lift the casket up a short flight of railinged steps to the autopsy room. Collectively they were not strong enough. The enlisted men watched the box teeter from side to side. Silently they moved between the older men and grunted as the burden was lifted over the railing and set upon a trolly. Admiral Burkley and FBI Agents Francis O’Neill and James Sibert followed.
The body was wheeled into a large, square, bright room. It was tiled. Over a table in the center, adjustable lights diffused their beams. To one side, there was a place with eight ports for bodies to slide into a wall in drawers. As the casket stopped next to the table, Special Agent-in-charge Roy Kellerman took a census of personnel. The Federal Bureau of Investigation was also interested.
The senior officer was Admiral C. B. Holloway, commandant of the hospital, who stepped aside as a spectator. Admiral Burkley was the President’s physician. Commander James J. Humes, chief pathologist of the hospital, said that he would conduct the autopsy. Captain James Stoner, Jr., chief of the Bethesda medical school, was an observer. One who would be present soon and who would participate in the work was Lieutenant Colonel Pierre Finck, of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. Commander J. Thornton Boswell, would assist. A medical photographer who would take overhead photos, in color and black and white, was John T. Stringer, Jr. In addition, Lieutenant Commander Gregg Cross and Captain David Osborne, chief of surgery, could be expected to be in and out of the autopsy room, depending upon whether Commander Humes required assistance.
Major General Wehle announced that he was present only to ask when the body would be returned to the White House. He had no desire to remain. If someone could give him an approximate time . . . No one could. No one knew precisely what the injuries were, nor how much time the work would take. There would be photographs of the exterior of the body in different positions; there would be X-rays; there would be oral notations of the doctors of their observations. Then the autopsy would start. It would consist of tracking and diagramming the wounds; examining the wet plate X-rays against the observations of the human eye; the removal of the brain; removal of certain organs in the torso, examinations for grossness, pathology, weighing. There would have to be time for summary conclusions among the doctors.
Roy Kellerman guessed it would take a good part of the night. He also would guess that the body would be returned to the White House in the same ambulance. The family wanted the body to be embalmed here in the autopsy room. That would take additional time. General Wehle thought it best to post a guard of honor at the main entrance of the White House and wait. Kellerman polled eight additional technicians and enlisted personnel in the room; James Ebersole: Lloyd Raihe; J. G. Rudnicki; Paul K. O’Connor; J. C. Jenkins; Jerrol F. Chester; Edward Reed; and James Metzler. And, directly beside Kellerman on a bench, one additional man who was sinking uneasily, almost ill: General Godfrey McHugh. The total, including William Greer and Agent O’Leary, also FBI men O’Neill and Sibert, came to twenty-four. They would not all be present at any one time; this was the aggregate. President Kennedy was not counted.
Commander Humes took charge. He stood under the big lamps in his white coverall and drew on the long rubber gloves. He reminded the men around him that X-rays would be taken and that anyone not actively participating in the autopsy should sit in an adjacent room. Most of the observers could see everything from there without being exposed to dangerous rays. Some men moved. Some did not.
Commander Boswell signaled to the enlisted personnel to open the casket. The locks were unsnapped. The lid was raised. The men looked in. They saw a bloody mummy. The President was wrapped in plastic, in addition to a sheet. The awkward handling of the heavy casket had jogged the body inside. The enlisted men gathered around the casket, and tenderly they lifted the rigid form within the sheet. It was placed face up on the autopsy table. The doctors began to speak their observations; notes were taken.
The doctors began to peel the sheet and plastic away. It stuck against the throat and the back of the skull, and tenderly they lifted the head and cut the material away. Humes waved the enlisted men in, and they lifted the body again and yanked the loose material away. For the first time, they saw John F. Kennedy. He was nude, on his back. It was a lean, well-muscled body. The hair had remained combed, or dressed. There was a ragged-edged wound in the neck, obviously a tracheostomy. The face appeared to be fatter, or more bloated, than expected. The left eye was black and blue. A massive hole appeared in the right posterior of the skull and, without moving the body, it was apparent that some brain tissue was still emerging from the gaping wound.
There were three former Presidents alive: Herbert Clark Hoover, who lived in the Waldorf Towers in New York City; Harry S. Truman, of Independence, Missouri; Dwight D. Eisenhower, of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Hoover was convalescing from an illness. Lyndon Johnson phoned Truman. The men exchanged feelings of shock, and Truman promised the President all the support he might need. Truman was asked to come to Washington; he said he would arrive on Sunday. Johnson said he needed help.
The President saw Juanita Roberts stick her head inside the office. He raised his face inquiringly. She said that a group of Senators and Representatives were in the outer office. Johnson said to ask them to wait. He needed them, too; he needed these men most of all. They had power. Some political honeymoon would have to be hurriedly arranged between the Chief Executive and the Congress. The whole world was watching the United States, and there would have to be unity of purpose on display.
He asked Bill Moyers to handle the phone calls. The lean and taciturn Baptist minister, standing at the side of the big desk, started the next phone call as the President was speaking. Johnson was talking to Dwight D. Eisenhower, and the President offered to send a plane. Eisenhower was a Republican. He understood the importance of consensus and said he and Mrs. Eisenhower would arrive in Washington in the morning. The phone calls were brief and, as Johnson hung up the phone, Moyers handed another transmitter to him.
A call went in for J. Edgar Hoover. The Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation was home watching television. President Johnson said that he wanted a complete investigation and a report on the assassination. He was appointing the FBI to take charge of it, and he was herewith giving Hoover whatever plenary powers he would require to see it through. Hoover called FBI headquarters and ordered twenty agents to fly to Dallas this night. He phoned Gordon Shanklin in Dallas—a man who had forty agents in the area—and informed him that the FBI was now in charge of the federal investigation.
Johnson arose from his desk and strode into the anteroom, where the Republican and Democratic leaders of the Congress waited. The President walked around the group, shaking hands, looking at each man eyeball to eyeball. Some were still stunned. They looked like distraught children, asking guidance from father. The tall Texan leaned against a table and said he was speaking, not as a President, but as “friend to friend.” He needed their help. They knew he needed it.
In a manner of speaking, the tragedy had brought the nation to its knees. Strong leadership would be required, and he was prepared to render it, but without Congress he could do very little. If ever there was a time when they could forswear party labels and criticism, this was the time. He would have a message for the Congress in a couple of days—perhaps Monday or Tuesday—but Johnson wanted their support right now. The honored gentlemen murmured assent. He had nothing special to ask them now. The President returned to Room 274.
It was happening as Mrs. Johnson knew it would. He was “pulling all those people together, pleading; he would give a little to get a little. . . .”
The policeman’s hand smoothed the bus transfer on his desk. Lieutenant Wells had finally traced that little piece of paper. He had known that each driver had his own punch, but the problem of finding out who used a punch shaped like an old-fashioned door key with one crooked tooth had not been easy. The lieutenant studied the piece of paper, and he called Dhority and Brown over. “This bus transfer was found on Oswald,” he said. “It was punched today. The thing may be of no importance, and yet it may turn out to be something we should know about. The bus companies have gone over their records, and they say that this punch belongs to a man named Cecil McWatters.
“Drop over to Commerce and Harwood and wait for a Piedmont bus. They’re sending the driver in on it. Pick him up, find out what you can about when he issued this transfer. See if he can remember who got it. Sometimes a driver doesn’t punch more than one or two in a round trip. If he remembers, I want him to take a look at Oswald in a showup.”
Someone said: “Oswald just came back up from a showup.” Lieutenant Wells shook his head. “He’s available. We may have a half a dozen before this night is over.” Dhority and Brown wanted to know how they would recognize McWatters. “He’ll get off the bus. He’ll be looking for you.”
Across the hall, Lee Harvey Oswald crossed his legs and said he was getting tired of answering questions. “I did not shoot the President,” he said softly. “My wife and I like the President’s family. They are interesting people. I have my own views on the President’s national policy.” He shrugged. “I have a right to express my views. . . .” Thomas J. Kelley, inspector of the Secret Service, was sitting in on the interrogation. He asked several questions. Oswald looked around the room, from face to face, the master rather than the slave, the feared rather than the fearful.
He said he would like to get one thing straight. Questions had been answered all day. He didn’t think it was right to continue unless he had counsel. Captain Fritz reminded the prisoner that arrangements had been made for him to use the phone. Oswald gave him a little smile. He might have mentioned that his collect call to John Abt in New York had been declined. If the police department had returned his thirteen dollars, Oswald could have paid for the call. The cops had given him ten cents. The money was his; there was no reason to impound it. In a way, his rights were infringed. But Mr. Oswald did not mention these matters. He said he still hoped to retain the services of John Abt; failing that, he hoped that the Dallas Civil Liberties Union would help him to get a lawyer.
Captain Fritz sat listening. He could have said: “Use my phone.” Some of the law officers present were qualified attorneys: they could have offered to make the call to Abt; they could have suggested that Oswald be permitted to use his own money to make the call. They could have called the Dallas Bar Association at once and asked for someone to advise Lee Harvey Oswald of his civil rights. No man present was prepared to buck Will Fritz. No one had a desire to help a loathsome creature who might have killed a President with no more motive than to become well known by doing it.
In spite of the recalcitrant attitude of the prisoner, the questioning went on. Whenever he balked, they gave him a rest for a few moments, talked about casual things—family, jobs, Russia—and returned to the crimes he denied as though, this time, the response might be different. No force was used or contemplated; a few officers believed that the deadly monotony of the questions would, in time, crack Oswald’s resolve. To the contrary, it is probable that he enjoyed jousting with the police.
McWatters was brought in to an office on the other side of the hall. The reporters shouted questions at him, but he was as confused as they. Cecil McWatters was a veteran bus driver. All Dhority and Brown told him was that he was wanted in police headquarters to answer some questions. When he saw the crowd and realized that it had something to do with the assassination, he felt frightened.
The cops pointed to a chair and the driver sat. They said that they had a transfer, issued for Lamar Street and marked 1 P.M., and they would like to know if he recognized the paper. He took it in his hands, looked it over carefully, and held the punch hole up to a green-shaded light. “Yes,” he said. “This is my punch.” He dropped it back on the desk. The bus driver picked up a blank sheet of paper, took his metal punch, and squeezed. “See?” he said, holding it up. The marks were identical. No other driver would have a similar punch.
There was a roar of sound from the press in the hall. A detective and a Secret Service man had Howard Brennan by the arm. The man who had sat on the low wall in Dealey Plaza, his tin hat on the back of his head, and had seen the assassin in the window, was a frightened witness. As Mrs. Brennan had pointed out, there was no use running away; the Brennans would be found.
The pipe fitter was a strong man. The nervousness was plain. Forrest Sorrels of the Secret Service introduced him to Captain Fritz in an anteroom. Brennan said he could promise nothing. In fact, he was sure he would not recognize the man he saw with the rifle. He had seen the gun first; the man was dim in the background behind the partly opened window. Once or twice the gunman had leaned forward, so that he was clear in the sunlight, but it had happened so quickly that a man would have to be pretty sure before pointing a finger at anyone. Fritz said he understood. The police didn’t want lies or exaggerations which would not stand up in court.
Brennan was taken to another office. He looked miserable. In the next glass cubicle, the bus driver sat waiting. Two offices away, Ted Callaway, an automobile salesman who had heard shots and had seen a young man running down Patton, also waited. A Negro porter, Sam Guinyard, was patient. He worked at a used car lot at Patton and Jefferson, and he watched a dogtrotting man stick a revolver in his belt and pull his sports shirt outside his trousers to cover the weapon.
Detectives herded the witnesses toward the elevators, through the dense crowd which shouted questions. McWatters told a policeman that the bus transfer was not on the Piedmont line, which he was working this evening. It was the Lakewood line, which he had worked earlier today. He was told that he could draw up an affidavit later, explaining everything.
In the showup room, the witnesses were sitting behind the screen. None knew any of the others, except for Callaway and Guinyard. They worked at the same car lot. A policeman turned lights on and the small space down front was flooded with brightness. Fritz and Sorrels came down with the prisoner and he looked at the same faces of policemen who would be shackled to him. Those who watched his face closely could detect no rancor, no fear. He must have known that, in the darkness out front, witnesses sat staring at him, perhaps ready to point a finger at him and tie him to the Kennedy and Tippit murders.
If this is so, Oswald acted as though he had no cares. He became the number two man in the lineup, and, this time, two unshackled plainclothesmen accompanied the four “prisoners” into the powdery light. Lieutenant Sims conducted the questioning. He asked each man to state his name, his age, his address, where he went to school, whether he drove a car, and, if so, which type. Each was asked to face front; to turn and stand left; turn and stand to the right.
The bus driver studied all six men, even though two were obviously policemen. He found them to be of different ages and sizes, but he recalled issuing a transfer to a woman who wanted to catch a train and a young fellow who left the bus at the same stop. Cecil McWatters was certain that, of all the passengers that day, he could not recall more than a woman and a young man leaving the bus a few blocks east of Dealey Plaza.
He looked surprised as he studied the men on the stage. He leaned toward a detective. “There’s one feller up there is about the size and build of the man who got on my bus and then asked for a transfer and got off.” “Yes?” the detective said. “Which one?” “That second one from this side.” “The number two man?” “If you call it that. But I couldn’t positively identify him. That’s just the size and general complexion.”
Brennan sat next to Captain Fritz. He looked startled. “That one,” he whispered, pointing, “is the closest resemblance to the man in the window.” Fritz was whispering. “You said you couldn’t make a positive identification.” “That second one is the closest,” said Brennan. “Did you do that for security reasons personally, or couldn’t you?” “I did it because I was afraid for my wife and family. Me and my family might not be safe.”
Fritz nodded gravely. “He’s not dressed in the same clothes,” Brennan whispered. “In what way?” Fritz said. Brennan said he didn’t know. The clothes were not the same as he had seen in the window. The pipe fitter was shocked because he knew that he could make a positive identification of Lee Harvey Oswald. He had sincerely believed that he would not be able to recall the fleetingly seen face in that sixth-floor window. He recognized the man and was willing to state that Oswald was “the closest resemblance to the man in the window,” but it would take a long time before Brennan would be ready to admit that he had identified the man at first glance, positively and without doubt.
Officer James Leavelle leaned across Callaway and Sam Guinyard and said: “Take your time. See if you can make a positive identification.” The car salesman smiled. “The short one,” he said. Leavelle continued: “We want to wrap him up real tight on killing this officer. We think he is the same one that shot the President. But if we can wrap him up tight on killing this officer, we have got him.” Callaway left his seat and went to the back of the room. He wanted to see all the men from the distance he recalled earlier in the day.
Coming back, he whispered: “The short one.” “Which one is that?” “The short one—number two.” He pointed to Lee Harvey Oswald. Guinyard nodded vigorously. “That’s the one,” he said. “Same one. I saw him running.” Leavelle asked if he was positive. Both said yes. He asked them to return to his office and furnish a sworn statement. The showup room was dark again.
Six hours after the assassination, the Dallas Police Department had control of the case. The men had worked hard running down leads. There was an element of luck. It was the shoe store manager who told them where to find their man. Without his assistance, Oswald might have sat through the show—perhaps several of them. At night he could have emerged, but he had no place to go. No money to speak of, no refuge.
He could not return to his room. He knew that the police would check every employee of the School Book Depository. It was an automatic move. Ironically Oswald had made certain that he could not survive a police screening. He had spread the word that he was a “pure Marxist” and was eager to explain to anyone what it meant. He was in the newspaper files and the FBI and State Department records as a defector who fled to Russia and tried to renounce his American citizenship. To make himself conspicuously suspicious, he continued to carry his Fair Play for Cuba identification card on his person.
When he faced capture in the Texas Theatre, why did he shout: “It’s all over!” What was all over? Why try to shoot a policeman with scores of them in the aisles ready to gun down such a gunman? Was this a quick exit he had designed for himself? He drew a gun and a hammer clicked. Is this the behavior of a man who is innocent? Is this the behavior of a man who is guilty but is certain that the state has no case against him? Or is this the philosophy of a man who feels that one more murder might bring merciful darkness to him and historic recognition?
The accidental discovery that the prisoner sitting in police headquarters was the missing employee from the Book Depository was of enormous help in redeeming the day for Dallas. For several hours, the police work seemed to be scattered and ineffectual. By 6:30 P.M. all of the loose pieces began to fall together. Two crimes overlapped their focus onto one face: Oswald’s.
Superior officers were so busy that they didn’t have time to assess the work of the men. In the murder of Tippit, they had affidavits from Helen Markham, Callaway, Scoggins the cab driver, Sam Guinyard, and the shoe store manager, Johnny Calvin Brewer. They also had a statement from stout Earlene Roberts, the rooming house housekeeper. They had others from witnesses at the scene of the shooting—sworn statements—which had not yet been typed.
In the Kennedy murder, they had affidavits from a dozen employees placing Oswald on the sixth floor; they had Brennan and Amos Euins pointing the finger at him with a rifle in the window; they had his rifle and his revolver and were tracing the ownership of both to him; they had a palm print taken from a cardboard box in the sixth-floor window; they had a cop who saw him in the second-floor commissary three minutes after the assassination; Roy Truly also swore to this. They had a woman clerk who spoke to him on the way out of the building; there was a bus driver who could identify a transfer; a cab driver who suffered a silent young man to sit up in front with him en route to North Beckley; Earlene Roberts in the matter of rushing in, changing clothes, and rushing out again. There was a statement from his wife that he owned a rifle; Wesley Frazier was ready to swear to a long, thin package called “curtain rods” carried to work that morning. Linnie Mae Randall saw the package, too. The pieces of bullets recovered—from the rifle as well as the revolver shots in Tippit’s body—would be traced to Oswald’s firearms. There were three employees who would testify that all three shots came from over their heads as they stood on the fifth floor, and they would swear that they heard the empty shells bounce on the floor above.
Considering the magnitude of the case and the weakness of motive, Captain Will Fritz and his men had achieved remarkable results within six hours.
A closed road separated the pristine luminosity of the White House from the dismal gray of the Executive Office Building. A bright light from an office in each of the buildings mingled on the old Belgian blocks in the middle of the street. Sargent Shriver sat in Ralph Dungan’s office in the extreme west end of the White House, burying one administration. On the second floor across the street, the light from Johnson’s office poured downward as he brought an administration to life.
In the outer office, Jack Valenti knew that the President was beginning to feel sure of himself, because the orders to “get me Averell Harriman”; “I want to talk to the ranch”; “Let me speak to Shriver” were enunciated patiently. The strident fever was gone from his voice. “Cliff,” the President said to Mr. Carter, “go down the hall and you will find a White House secretary. Ask her for two sheets of White House letterhead and two envelopes.”
He was going to pause in his labors to write personal notes to Caroline Kennedy and John Kennedy, Jr. The mute and welling grief which he had fought all day gained an ascendancy only when the work pace slowed. The new President would tell them how he felt about their father, how proud they should be of him. Lyndon Johnson did not expect that the notes would mean much to the children now; he was thinking that, when the children matured, they might like to know that his successor thought of the Kennedy children on the day that their father had been cut down.
Cliff Carter walked down the high-ceilinged hall. He found the office. A middle-aged woman was sitting behind a silent typewriter. He asked for the two letterheads and the envelopes. Her mouth became firm. “Who are they for?” she said. The Texan said: “President Johnson.” The woman stared at him in disbelief. Then she opened a drawer and took the stationery out. “Goddamn that man!” she shouted. “The President isn’t even cold in his grave yet and he wants to use White House stationery. Goddamn him!”
Carter was a big man with a colorless face. He was big enough to afford good manners in trying situations. He said thank you and departed. The sheets were handed to Mr. Johnson. Carter went on to the next duty without telling the President what had happened. Mr. Johnson wrote the notes and asked that they be delivered to the White House at once. It left him depressed. He sat behind the desk, staring at the blotter. The President was thinking of Mrs. Kennedy. He looked up at Moyers and Carter and shook his head negatively. “I wish,” he said, “that I could reach up and bring down a handful of stars and give them to that woman.”
The doorbell rang and Mrs. Grant opened it. Jack Ruby was back again. He was behind a huge grocery bag. “Here’s twenty-two dollars in groceries,” he said cheerfully. He put them in the kitchen. Eva may have wondered what she was going to do with all these cold cuts and delicatessen salads. Her brother bought cold cuts as some gallants buy flowers. She watched him pick up the phone to call Dr. Coleman Jacobson. Two old friends—Jacobson and Stanley Kauffman—often upbraided Ruby for not attending temple services on Friday nights. He wanted to tell Dr. Jacobson, and Mr. Kauffman, too, that tonight he would attend. He did not want to appear boastful, so his excuse for each phone call was to ask what time services would begin.
Eva, looking at the groceries, murmured: “I never thought in my lifetime I would ever hear of a President being assassinated.” She said that barbarians were running around. She went out into the kitchen and made some scrambled eggs and salmon for her brother. Ruby got off the phone and went out into the kitchen and ate hurriedly and silently.
“Really,” he said to his sister, “he was crazy.” Then he rushed into the bathroom and was swept by waves of nausea. When he came out, Mrs. Grant said: “That lousy commie. Don’t worry, the commie, we will get him.” Her brother wiped his eyes. Eva Grant had watched the story of the assassination unfold on television. She knew more about it than her brother. “This guy could have been sent here to do this,” Eva said. Her brother said: “What a creep!” He had to leave to go back to his apartment and change his clothes. The departure was as abrupt as the arrival. Eva Grant sat alone in her kitchen and finished eating the eggs.
The Secret Service man waited inside the door. “Miss Shaw,” he had said, “I’m sorry but we have to go back to the White House immediately.” The bags had not been unpacked. Mrs. Auchincloss was distressed at parting with the children. The little ones, still in the dining room, were disappointed. “Children,” Maude Shaw said. “Mummy wants us. Caroline, be my bestest friend and help John on with his coat.” The little girl began to play mother. She got the coat and held it. “Come on, John-John,” she said patiently. “Put your coat on. We’re going home again.”
In a few moments, the children punctuated their goodbye kisses with Grand-mère and were driven quickly from the elegant old streets of Georgetown to the broad boulevards of Washington. In the dark, they could see the crowds of people, like deeper shadows, clustered in Lafayette Park. They saw others like ink blots along the White House fence on Pennsylvania Avenue. White House police were asking the people, quietly, to keep moving. In the driveway, flashbulbs winked like giant fireflies, and Caroline said: “What are all these people for?”
The nurse was saddened. “To see you,” she said. The car moved slowly around to the South Grounds. The little party alighted at the Diplomatic Entrance. White House police, in uniform, nodded at the children and Miss Shaw. A Secret Service agent on a portable phone announced that the Kennedy children and nurse were returning to the mansion.
The back of the building was bright with light. Inside, the ushers nodded gravely to the children and tried to look cheerful. In the downstairs lobby, Chief Usher Bernard West, who had served several Presidents, sat on a chair staring blankly at a wall. Men and women were trotting in opposite directions. There was a sound of many murmuring voices, as in a vaulted cathedral. For the first time, Caroline and John paused in their childish flight to look upward at the faces of adults. A secretary stared at them and burst into tears.
The little faces became grave. So much activity at night was unusual. This was their house, the only one they remembered. They had become accustomed to seeing many strange faces in it—walking, sitting, crouching to hug them, faces fine and faces fat and sweaty, some of which became familiar in time, others seen but once. It was an unusual house, but they knew no other existence and therefore the unusual was usual. This was a new experience. Some, whom they regarded as old friends, turned away. One or two wept. Others stared at them and shook their heads. Most people didn’t want to see them.
The party was led across the corridor and up the elevator to the second floor. This, the private section of the mansion, the living quarters of Presidents, was full of people. The girl and the boy looked up at the faces, many of them dear friends, but a search showed no parents. Maude Shaw whispered to a few of these people, and they told her, “She’s expected here soon.”
In the small suite of rooms, Maude Shaw closed the door. The British woman felt more fatigued and more nervous than she remembered. The phone rang and she asked the children to be quiet. It was an usher. He said that Mrs. Kennedy might go to Bethesda first with the President and return later to the mansion. Maude Shaw, far from resenting it, appreciated it. She could get John-John to bed and then have a moment to speak to Caroline.
She undressed John and bathed him and put him in his nighties. The nurse kept reminding herself that the children were good, so good. The phone rang several times. Each message was different from the last. Mrs. Kennedy was on her way to the White House. Mrs. Kennedy expected to be home soon. Mrs. Kennedy might not get home until late. Mrs. Kennedy . . . Mrs. Kennedy . . . Mrs. Kennedy.
A depression engulfed Maude Shaw. She could no longer act the happy playlet of bedtime. There were no stories, no bright promises for tomorrow. As Caroline was bathing happily, the nurse returned to her small room and looked out the front window. The stately trees were still there, dark branches of arteries against the night sky. The people out front seemed to be gathering, as though grief were a vigil of many eyes. In the hall, she could hear running feet; sometimes there were muffled voices.
It was a night of running panic. A bad time. To her, John F. Kennedy was more than a President. He was a magnificent man, a powerful friend. More than anything else, he was a father. More a father, perhaps, than a husband. Maude Shaw knew these innocents as well as anyone. She could not imagine how anyone, in the kindest manner, could inflict such cruel news upon them. John-John might not comprehend, but he would miss the big, affectionate hero who took him on helicopter rides, who teased him and made small man jokes. Caroline would be conscious of the permanence of death. She would understand that the tall, loving man who studied her printed alphabet and who always said in exaggerated surprise: “Caroline! Did you do this?” would not be seen again. She could not rationalize death, but she could understand the permanence of forever.
As the nurse watched them, her spirit became oppressed. They noticed that she did not play with them, so they played with each other—John-John running big skidding circles around the room as Caroline removed the dolls from her pillows. Miss Shaw helped John-John recite his night prayers and tucked him in bed. He would squirm for a few moments and maybe call her on one pretext or another, but then he would fall asleep and, for one more day, he would not know.
She went across the little foyer to Caroline’s room and sat on the edge of the bed as Caroline primly turned down the bedclothes. The big girl, at six, had a special privilege. Every night she was permitted to read a page or two from a child’s book. Miss Shaw took the book from her and began to read. The sound of her voice was unreal, and the tears came.
Caroline looked up from her pillow. The shiny face frowned. The nurse could no longer see the words in the book. “What’s the matter, Miss Shaw? Why are you crying?” The nurse leaned toward the child and placed both arms around the little body. “I can’t help crying, Caroline,” she said, “because I have very sad news to tell you.” “What?” the child asked. Miss Shaw wiped her eyes and began the story of a terrible accident in Dallas. It could be minimized only to a point. When a small voice asks “How badly is he hurt?” the impasse is reached. There is only one way of saying “he died.”
Caroline began to cry. Maude Shaw, having inflicted the involuntary cruelty, sat weeping and patted the child’s hand. She held that hand and kept patting it until fatigue overwhelmed the little girl. She slept.
Halfway between the White House and the Capitol is a huge mocha-colored doughnut called the Department of Justice. The north wing, facing Pennsylvania Avenue, is headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The lights were on. Agents in pairs entered the corner doors on the Ninth and Tenth Street sides. Twenty had already left for Dallas. The FBI was in charge of the federal investigation into the case. Gordon Shanklin, at the Dallas office, and his agents Vincent Drain and James Hosty had been working on it since 12:40 P.M. Shanklin had pulled in agents working on other cases and had put them in Sheriff Decker’s office, in Captain Fritz’s office, at Love Field, in Irving, Texas, and the School Book Depository building.
The Washington office required no special organization. It was ready. Alan Belmont, assistant to Director J. Edgar Hoover, was in command of all the skeins of investigation and evidence. Assistant Director Alex Rosen assigned the agents who would probe the mystery. One man, who worked as liaison in the exchange of common information between the Secret Service and the FBI, was in SS headquarters on M Street. Assistant Director William C. Sullivan was in charge of the internal security aspects—and background—of the suspect, Lee Harvey Oswald. Inspector James Malley took charge of all agents assigned to the case in Dallas.
The IT of the case was intelligence and tact. Except for presidential fiat, the FBI had no right to examine the prisoner, the background of the case, or the evidence. The assassination was not a federal crime. The agents would work gently and inoffensively with the Dallas Police Department. They would be in the same delicate position as the Secret Service men who sat with Captain Fritz, listening to the questions and responses, but seldom asking a question without permission.
Closed-circuit teletypes began to rap out information to field offices all over the United States. New York was listening. So were New Orleans, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, San Francisco, and others. Everything that was learned was put on teletype so that, if anyone in another office could offer assistance, it would be on a return teletype to headquarters in a few minutes. The offices in the long corridors of the building were well peopled that night, and men began the work of sorting information and misinformation.
In the Fire Arms Identification section, Robert Frazier cleared the decks for a long night. He was surprised when an agent walked in. The man was Elmer Todd, and he said he had a bullet given to him by a Secret Service man at Andrews Air Force Base. Frazier asked where it came from. “It fell off a stretcher in Parkland Hospital,” Todd said. The bullet was almost pristine. Frazier smiled down at it rolling in his hand. “The first reports,” he said, “claimed that the gun was a 7.35 Mauser. This is very interesting.” He placed the bullet into a device. “Just as I thought,” he said. “This is not 7.35. It is 6.5 millimeter. Did the Secret Service man know which stretcher it was on?”
“No,” Todd said. “The man who found it thought it came off Governor Connally’s stretcher.” Frazier began his work of examining the bullet scientifically. “Can’t tell who manufactured it,” he said, “without a cartridge case.” He held the back end of the bullet up below a microscope. “It’s not foreign-made,” he said. “This is American.”
The FBI, knowing that it had a small file on Oswald—mainly spot checks in Dallas to make certain that the man who defected to Russia did not get work in a sensitive defense plant—examined the reports and turned them over to William Sullivan, who was building up a skeletonized background on Oswald. He contacted the Central Intelligence Agency to see if they had anything on the suspect. Another man was sent to the State Department, to check their records of Oswald’s read-mission to the United States. Abram Chayes was still in his office, trying to make a digest of this material for Dean Rusk.
The New York office came in on the teletype asking for more information on the ammunition and the gun. They had an idea that they could run down the principal manufacturers of cheap rifles quickly. New Orleans came in, offering a detailed report on Oswald’s arrest for distributing Free Cuba leaflets on the streets; they also had a detailed report on his recent trip to Mexico. Two men, Francis X. O’Neill and James W. Sibert, were making notes at the autopsy.
“I’m going to stop for a minute,” Henry Wade said, as he parked the car beside police headquarters. The district attorney was seldom seen at the municipal building more often than, say, once a year. He had a big air-conditioned office in the county building and a staff of investigators and assistant prosecutors who worked to smooth the wrinkles in criminal cases before Mr. Wade tried them. He was big and shaggy, a type-cast Texan with wild wavy hair with streaks of gray.
He left Mrs. Wade and a couple in the car and walked inside and took the elevator to the third floor. Police who saw him nodded, or smiled, or shook hands and said, “Hello, Mr. Wade. What brings you over here?” He got to the third floor and, big and broad, shouldered the press aside with bantering words. He passed the Homicide office and headed for the office of the chief. His big feet slammed tripods and skidded over black television cables. To all questions, he drawled: “Fellas, I don’t know nuthin’.”
When he achieved the sanctum of the superior officers, he turned right and found Curry sitting at his desk. “How is the case coming along?” the district attorney said. Curry began to speak. Wade listened and asked questions. The prosecutor was beset by an involuntary verdict: he doesn’t know. The big man listened to the little one, but he wasn’t getting the facts he wanted.
The chief opened a desk drawer and gave Wade a memorandum from Detective Jack Revill. It stated what Revill thought that FBI Agent James Hosty had admitted to him about Oswald. The prosecutor refolded it and gave it back to Curry. An old memory popped into Henry Wade’s mind: he recalled that there was a woeful lack of communication between Jesse Curry and Will Fritz.
Over three hours ago, Sheriff Decker had told Wade that the Dallas Police Department had a “good suspect.” If it were true, Henry Wade would have to prosecute the biggest criminal case of the twentieth century. He would like to know how good the case was. “What are you going to do with Revill’s memorandum?” The chief looked up. “I don’t know,” he said. One thing is certain. Chief Curry thought it best not to draw the memo to the attention of the FBI; instead it might have more power if released to the press and television. Certainly it tended to show that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was aware of Oswald and felt that he had the potential of an assassin. As an incidental bonus, it would take the press off the back of the Dallas Police Department and point it toward the FBI.
Down the hall, Captain Fritz suspended the interrogation. Justice of the Peace David Johnston had arrived with a warrant for the arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald on a charge of first degree murder. At his side was a tough and coldly venomous prosecutor, Assistant DA William Alexander. Judge Johnston composed himself, unfolded a document, and read aloud to Oswald that he was being charged with the willful and deliberate murder of Police Officer J. D. Tippit. “I didn’t shoot anybody,” Oswald said. The tone was not belligerent; it was a flat declaration of innocence.
Johnston gave the document to the captain, who scrawled “Will Fritz” across the bottom line. “Didn’t you also shoot President Kennedy?” Fritz said. His tone was a soft bass. Oswald shook his head. “I didn’t shoot anybody.” Mr. Alexander took the signed document for safekeeping at Wade’s office. The justice of the peace said: “I remand you in the custody of the sheriff of Dallas County.” This order should have been executed but wasn’t.
The postal inspector, H. D. Holmes, said that he had a question to ask. Fritz nodded. Holmes reminded Oswald that the records he had in his hand indicated that Oswald had rented Post Office Box 30061 when he was in New Orleans. The prisoner saw no objection to this. He said he had rented the box. The inspector said that the application listed one Marina Oswald and one A. J. Hidell as the only persons, beside Lee Harvey Oswald, who were entitled to take mail from that box.
If the prisoner saw a trap, he pretended not to notice it. “Well,” he said loudly, “so what? She’s my wife, and I see nothing wrong with that, and it could very well be that I placed her name on the application.” The postal inspector and every police officer in the room knew that one of the vital points in the interrogation was to prove that Lee Harvey Oswald and Alex J. Hidell were the same person. The name had appeared on the post office application in Dallas. “I know,” said Holmes softly, “but what about this A. J. Hidell?” Oswald stared down at his handcuffs. He shrugged. “I don’t recall anything about that,” he said.
In the outer office, James Hosty marveled at the number of law officers who could be crowded into Captain Fritz’s fishbowl. It was impossible to count the people in the hall, but the FBI agent made an effort to tally the enforcement men inside. There were three or four Texas Rangers, five or six Secret Service men, four Federal Bureau of Investigation agents, two postal inspectors, six Dallas detectives, a deputy sheriff, and Captain Fritz. These were in adjoining offices measuring ten feet by fourteen. In this standing-room-only situation, Hosty sought Forrest Sorrels, Secret Service agent in charge of the Dallas office.
The FBI man wasn’t aware that his agency had been appointed to press the federal investigation into the assassination, so he assumed that the Secret Service was the dominant body. Hosty said that there was additional information at FBI headquarters which could be furnished to the Secret Service. Sorrels asked, “What?” There were two items which Hosty had in mind, but he did not feel at liberty to reveal them. Liaison between the two organizations was good, so Hosty proposed that Sorrels advise his Washington office to ask for material on Lee Harvey Oswald.
Sorrels thanked him and said he would take care of it. The two items were the contacts Oswald had with the Soviet embassy in Mexico City two months ago and the several letters he had written to the Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C. Down the hall Hosty waited for a public telephone to inform Gordon Shanklin of developments in the case.
The ultimate indignity is not death but what men do to the dead. The man on his back under the lights was nude, defenseless, broken. The gentlemen of science, like white wraiths, moved about the body in the manner of whispering druids. They made small and sometimes indecipherable notes on pads. Commander J. J. Humes and Commander Thornton Boswell joined in a medical ritual of exactitude. There were prescribed steps to be taken in this profound abuse of the body and, if they were carried out precisely, the President of the United States would leave the room as a shell, and the physicians would be able to say with certainty that he had succumbed to a gunshot wound in the head.
Kennedy was measured. He was 72½ inches tall. He weighed: 170 pounds. They looked at his eyes: blue. His hair, they decided, was reddish brown. He was 46 years of age, a male, and the subject of autopsy number A63-272. “The body is that of a muscular, well-developed and well-nourished Caucasian. . . . There is beginning rigor mortis, minimal dependent livor mortis of the dorsum, and early algor mortis.” The left eye was swollen and black and blue, obviously from the shot which hit the right rear of the head and pressed the brain violently forward toward the left optic.
Clotted blood was found on the external ears. The President’s teeth were declared to be “in excellent repair” although there was some pallor of the oral mucous membrane. The doctors were observing. They moved about the body slowly, looking, pointing, noting. There was nothing they missed, from the midline of the head down to the squared toenails. He who would not appear in a country club locker room without a robe and towel was under the merciless eyes of a score of men.
The small diagonal scar in the lower right quadrant of the abdomen was noted. The fact that he had arrived at Bethesda without clothes was recorded. A ragged wound was noted near the base of the larynx. Gently the body was turned over. The posterior was examined. The head wound was gross and obvious. There was a small oval puncture wound between the spine and the right shoulder blade. An inserted probe was stopped by the strap muscles. A frown darkened the faces of the medical priests. How could a missile go in there and (1) not come out in front somewhere; (2) still be inside? The doctors had a mystery. There was a separate small hole in the back of the head.
There was a long vertical scar along the midline of the spine below the lumbar region. The man on the slab had felt that the operation almost killed him. It had not even relieved the steady toothache-of-a-pain which wearied every waking moment; it was the excruciating lightning which he was fond of denying when a well-wisher shook hands and yanked the President toward him. It was the dull ache which rang an alarm bell every time he arose from a chair; this was the moment when he smiled with his teeth and died a little in the eyes.
Strong arms turned him face up again. The doctors had already noted recent violations of the skin. Near the nipples were two incisions, done at Dallas. No hemorrhage and no bruise mark showed; therefore he was probably dead when these were made. Two more were in the ankles. And one in the left mid-arm. Along the front of the right thigh was an old scar which no one but John F. Kennedy would remember.
Skin tone was good. Muscle tone was excellent. And yet one would always have to revert to that massive head wound. The doctors did not want to probe it yet. It was, they decided, best described as a “large irregular defect of the scalp and skull on the right involving chiefly the parietal bone but extending somewhat into the temporal and occipital regions.” This involved the right top of the head and part of the side, almost up to the right temple.
Mrs. Kennedy had expressed it simply: “They shot his head off.” As a result of the bullet which entered the neck, he was leaning forward, falling to his left. A bullet, flying at about two thousand feet per second, had then hit the skull in the right rear portion. This, the third bullet, had exploded the brain, and both brain and bullet had crashed upward through the skull, inducing pressure cracks in all directions. The cerebellum fits snugly inside its case and anything which displaces or engorges it—such as edema or hemorrhage—can cause extensive damage to the brain and, sometimes, death. The 6.5 bullet, once inside, was a tumbling, disruptive force which scattered the dura mater at high speed, giving it sufficient force to find the weakest part of the skull—the fissure cracks—and broke it open with flying bits of bone and hair, also providing an exit for most of the bullet.
The doctors measured the missing area of the skull. It came to a little more than five inches from back to front, about half the head. In addition, there were star-shaped fractures of the skull which radiated across what was left of the cranial bone and down the sides and back. The doctors completed their pre-autopsy examination and called for a radiologist to take X-rays.
Across the room, the men of the FBI—Sibert and O’Neill—made notes. William Greer, a hearty product of County Tyrone, Ireland, a man who always drove President Kennedy’s car and who drew pride from it, felt his stomach sicken. When the shot had been fired, he had heard the sound, as though someone was snapping a dry twig against his ear, and he had heard the echoes carom around Dealey Square, but he had not been able to look back at his distinguished passenger. At Parkland he had attended the beautiful and stricken young lady outside Trauma One and inside, too. There everyone had been so busy, so desperately busy, that Bill Greer had had no time to look for damage to the man he admired.
Now he looked. Now he saw the tan nude body bereft of station or dignity. As he looked at the head, all Greer thought of was a hard-boiled egg with the top sliced off.
Detective Rose of Dallas got out of his car at 835 Irving Boulevard and, with Detective Adamcik, hurried into Irving police headquarters. Their man turned out to be a frightened boy. Detective McCabe had him on a bench in a corner. He was tall and slender, about seventeen years of age, a long-necked boy with a nervous Adam’s apple, big feet and hands, and speech laden with the homely idioms of the clay country of Alabama. Guy Rose was an experienced man. He looked at the kid and felt disappointed. If the assassin had an accomplice, it could hardly be a scared boy.
The first interrogation was brief. The responses were forthright. He knew Lee; drove him home to his wife on weekends and drove him back to the School Book Depository on Monday mornings usually. Lee was a fellow who didn’t talk much, didn’t make friends, brought his own lunch, and never bought anything, not even a drink of coffee or a newspaper. It was funny how he suddenly wanted to come home yesterday, because yesterday was Thursday, see, and he always made it on Friday. He said he wanted to get some curtain rods for his room in Dallas. Oswald was not a fellow you asked many questions.
This morning he had the long package wrapped in brown paper. It was on the back seat of the car. Detective Rose said: “Oswald says that was his lunch.” Well, it couldn’t be his lunch because it was “this long,” said Frazier, holding his hands out in a spread of two and a half to three feet. “This morning, he told me he was going to buy his lunch. I remember because I was surprised. That’s one of the few times he was fixing to buy his lunch.”
The detectives asked Wesley Frazier if he owned a rifle. “Yes, sir,” he said. “I got me a rifle. A good hunting rifle.” “Where is it?” “Home. I can show you if you want to see it.” Where was his car? Detective McCabe said it was left at the Irving Professional Clinic, where Frazier had been picked up. “We brought him here in our car.” Guy Rose said they would all go back and locate that car. He wanted to have a good look at it.
The car turned out to be a ten-year-old Chevrolet. It was well frisked by the police. They even pulled the mats up. The country boy watched. It was difficult for him to comprehend what had happened and what he might have done to bring the wrath of the law upon him. By nature he was obliging and polite. When the police finished their work, they took Mr. Frazier to his sister’s house and went through it carefully.
Linnie Mae Randall helped in every way. The detectives found very little worth bringing to headquarters. Frazier pointed to his .303 rifle, with full clip, and part of a box of hunting ammunition. Rose asked him and his sister to accompany them back to Dallas police headquarters. Captain Fritz would want sworn statements from them regarding their knowledge of Lee Harvey Oswald.
Wesley Frazier shook his head. “The only time he smiled,” he said, “was when I asked him did he have fun playing with the babies.”