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  Praise for Vincent Bugliosi’s Reclaiming History

  “What Bugliosi has done is a public service. This book should be applauded…. A delight to read…. Reclaiming History… is more than a critical analysis [of the Kennedy assassination].… [It is] the literary equivalent of World War I, a kind of trench warfare for the mind.”

  —New York Times Book Review

  “This is quite simply a book that will be read for centuries.”

  —Scott Turow, author of the New York Times #1 bestseller Presumed Innocent

  “Vincent T. Bugliosi in Reclaiming History clearly has written the definitive book on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy…. A voluminous book, encyclopedic in scope, capacious enough not only to include a thorough explanation of the facts…of the JFK assassination, but also to expose the faults and debunk the arguments of the conspiracy community…. From the date of its publication…this stupendous [book] became the seminal work for future JFK assassination studies and essays.

  —The International Criminal Justice Review

  “Reclaiming History is important not just because it’s correct, though it is. It’s significant not just because it is comprehensive—surely, no one will deny that. It is essential, first and foremost, because it is conclusive. From this point forward, no reasonable person can argue that Lee Harvey Oswald was innocent; no sane person can take seriously assertions that Kennedy was killed by the CIA, Fidel Castro, the Soviets, [etc.]…Reclaiming History may finally move these accusations beyond civilized debate…. It is a book for the ages. No serious scholar of the president’s assassination will ever write again on the subject without citing Bugliosi…. [He] is an American master of common sense, a punishing advocate and a curmudgeonly refreshing voice of reason….

  —Los Angeles Times Book Review

  “[Bugliosi has] made a pretty airtight case. [There is] the sense that Bugliosi’s [book] is the final word.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  “Reclaiming History is by far the most accurate and detailed nongovernmental account of the assassination. Bugliosi’s epic book is of great historical significance and should…be the final account of the facts surrounding the assassination. His work is irrefutable. Not only is the book monumental in scope, it is well-written. I…found the account engrossing. It is hard to believe that a work of this length on a well-plowed subject could still be a page-turner.”

  —Richard Mosk, member of the Warren Commission staff, in the Los Angeles Daily Law Journal

  “Reclaiming History presents a stronger case against Lee Harvey Oswald than the Warren Commission Report and a much more compelling one that Oswald acted alone with no conspiracy behind the assassination.”

  —Robert K. Tanenbaum, deputy chief counsel, United States House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations

  “This encyclopedic work is a bargain. Unlike any other book on the assassination ever produced by a single author, Reclaiming History [should] probably be shelved alongside the two massive federal investigations of the assassination.”

  —Wall Street Journal

  “Absent a trial proving [Oswald’s] guilt, Bugliosi has offered the next best thing: a prosecutor’s air-tight brief that leaves no reasonable doubt…. If you read, or even read around in this book and still come to the conclusion that Oswald was part of a conspiracy to kill Kennedy, you are likely to believe that black helicopters have been sent by the feds to enforce the Endangered Species Act…. Bugliosi is right that this case is, and ought to be, closed.”

  —Washington Post

  “The most exhaustive book yet written about the Kennedy assassination, Reclaiming History is a magnificent…achievement…. [Bugliosi] exhilarates the reader with rat-a-tat annihilations of others’ false premises and shaky inferences…. [Reclaiming History] will be a kind of eternal flame…. There is no question that Bugliosi succeeds in scorching the conspiracy theory terrain with ferocious, even definitive, plausibility.”

  —The Atlantic

  “Reclaiming History is Proustian in its conception, scope and design…. Bugliosi’s book, which denies all conspiracies, has the ring of truth—scrupulous, irrefutable truth—and I predict will be the line that historians a hundred years from now will take on this story…. If any one book can make you believe the assassination was performed by Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone…this is that book. Few books are as gripping in their narrative, or as telling in their fine detail. This is a book that will make you weep. Powerfully, Reclaiming History evokes the confusion and awful fatefulness, a feeling of the world ripped asunder, that gripped millions then.”

  —Philadelphia Inquirer

  “Reclaiming History is the final word on the Kennedy assassination. It sets out to recapture the assassination from the conspiracy theorists, and succeeds so triumphantly that only the most demented reader could doubt its conclusions.”

  —Telegraph (London)

  “[Bugliosi is] a prosecutor on a mission, armed with both the sense of moral outrage that wins over juries and the dispassionate ability to keep millions of details straight…. Point by point, fact by fact, Bugliosi demolishes his opponents’ arguments. And yet, even with this incredible detail, the story as well as its teller are compelling.”

  —Legal Times (Washington, DC)

  “With indignation crackling on every page…Bugliosi aims to redress, once and for all, what he sees as an outrageous imbalance between the books that deal with the assassination responsibly and those that do not…. [Bugliosi’s] richly textured book is as engrossing as it is convincing.”

  —Boston Globe

  “What Bugliosi has done is reframe the narrative in such a compelling manner, in such an original writing voice, that he essentially shuts the conspiracy theorists down cold. Reclaiming History is the unrushed version of the Warren Commission Report, with all the wrinkles ironed out…. Bugliosi lays [the Kennedy assassination] out on a legal pad, pros and cons, discrepancies and all, and comes up with what amounts to an airtight prosecution brief.”

  —Oregonian

  “Reclaiming History…sets the record straight forever and always. [Bugliosi] takes apart every single conspiracy theory ever perpetrated.”

  —New York Post

  “Such a tome would seem to be for conspiracy geeks only, were it not written by Vincent Bugliosi, who knows how to construct airtight paragraphs as well as cases. Bugliosi is a very convincing man.”

  —San Diego Tribune

  “Bugliosi whacks the wacky conspiracy theorists and demolishes the arguments of serious writers who have sought to prove that there had to be a conspiracy.”

  —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

  “Bugliosi argues persuasively…. There’s a reward in Reclaiming History for anyone with a passing interest in the topic, and anyone with a yen [for] seeing familiar arguments cross-examined and taken to their logical conclusions by a relentless, take-no-prisoners prosecutor…. A truly massive case against both the basic notion that JFK was done in by a conspiracy, and virtually every major conspiracy theory individually.”

  —San Antonio Express News

  “Compulsively readable…an essential buy for all large public libraries.”

  —Library Journal

  “[A] monumental critique. Bugliosi’s best-selling cachet gains him the audience, his direct, energetic prose keeps it, and his journey through the evidence might sway it. Bugliosi’s study will provoke controversy and debate.”

  —Booklist

  “In Reclaiming History, Vincent Bugliosi identifies and dismantles the conspiracy theories that still abound in discussions of the Kennedy assassination…. Critics, after an obligatory remark on the book’s asto
unding length, generally concede that the author’s exhaustive efforts have paid off, making this weighty tome the encyclopedic source for readers interested in reliving the events of November 1963.”

  —Bookmarks magazine

  “Bugliosi’s Reclaiming History is all-inclusive and unquestionably definitive.”

  —Chicago Sun-Times

  “The ultimate Kennedy assassination conspiracy debunking book. It lays waste to the uncountable conspiracy theories that have sprouted over the years.”

  —Washington Times

  “Bugliosi, the author of the magisterial Reclaiming History, is perhaps better qualified than anyone else to determine if there was a conspiracy in the Kennedy assassination. Reclaiming History is a great book and is the definitive account of the assassination.”

  —Assassinology

  “Reclaiming History is a towering masterpiece, achieving what many experts consider the ‘final word’ on the Kennedy assassination. It is a carefully written reconstruction and exhaustive study of the case.”

  —Mary Whipple, Seeing the World through Books blog

  “The definitive tome on the Kennedy assassination is Vincent Bugliosi’s Edgar-winning Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy.”

  —Peter Canon, Publishers Weekly

  “Reclaiming History is an indispensable and irreplaceable analysis of the facts and theories relating to President Kenney’s assassination. It is truly a book for the ages.”

  —Howard P. Willens, assistant counsel, Warren Commission

  Leading longtime members of the JFK assassination conspiracy community weigh in on Reclaiming History

  “It is likely that [Reclaiming History] will stand forever as the magnum opus of this case…. It is a masterpiece.”

  —Dr. David W. Mantik, Assassination Research Book Review

  “Vince Bugliosi’s masterful Reclaiming History is a devastating knock-out blow to those who, like me, once believed there was a conspiracy in the death of JFK. Bugliosi finishes and completes, in exhaustive and impressive detail, the work of the Warren Commission, the House Select Committee on Assassinations, and, quite frankly, all the other writers who have ever delved into the crime of the twentieth century. It is time to get a life, America: Oswald did indeed kill Kennedy, acting alone. Vince Bugliosi has done what I once thought was the impossible: he has convinced me of this notion. The conspiracy community was able to survive the Warren Commission Report, as well as the Report of the House Select Committee on Assassinations. The question is whether it will be able to survive Bugliosi’s Reclaiming History.”

  —Vince Palamara, Secret Service expert and former JFK conspiracy theorist

  Parkland

  ALSO BY VINCENT BUGLIOSI

  Helter Skelter (with Curt Gentry)

  And the Sea Will Tell (with Bruce Henderson)

  Till Death Do Us Part (with Ken Hurwitz)

  The Phoenix Solution: Getting Serious about Winning America’s Drug War

  Outrage: The Five Reasons Why O.J. Simpson Got Away with Murder

  No Island of Sanity: Paula Jones v. Bill Clinton:

  The Supreme Court on Trial

  The Betrayal of America: How the Supreme Court Undermined the Constitution and Chose Our President (with forewords by Molly Ivins and Gerry Spence)

  Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy

  PARKLAND

  Vincent Bugliosi

  W. W. NORTON & COMPANY

  NEW YORK • LONDON

  Images in this book are not displayed owing to permissive issues.

  Copyright © 2007 by Vincent Bugliosi

  Previously published under the name Four Days in November

  Drawn from an earlier work, Reclaimining History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy (W. W. Norton, 2007)

  All rights reserved

  Printed in the United States of America

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110

  For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact W. W. Norton Special Sales at [email protected] or 800-233-4830

  Production manager: Devon Zahn

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Bugliosi, Vincent

  [Four Days in November]

  Parkland / Vincent Bugliosi.

  p. cm.

  “Previously published under the title Four days in November”—T.p. verso.

  “Drawn from an earlier work, Reclaimining history : the assassination of President John F. Kennedy (W. W. Norton, 2007)”—T.p. verso.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN: 978-0-393-34733-3

  ISBN: 978-0-393-34762-3 (e-book)

  1. Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917–1963—Assassination. 2. Oswald, Lee Harvey.

  3. Conspiracies—United States. I. Bugliosi, Vincent. Reclaiming history. II. Title.

  E842.9.B835 2013

  973.922092—dc23

  2013024350

  W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110

  www.wwnorton.com

  W. W. Norton & Company Ltd., Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT

  To the historical record, knowing that nothing in the present can exist without the paternity of history, and hence, the latter is sacred, and should never be tempered with or defiled by untruths.

  Contents

  Editor’s Note

  Author’s Note

  Parkland

  Abbreviations Used for Citations

  Source Notes

  Bibliography

  Acknowledgments

  Editor’s Note

  Parkland is the closely documented and gripping narrative of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. It covers the shattering event in Dealey Plaza, the futile efforts to save the president’s life, the apprehension and interrogation of Lee Harvey Oswald, his subsequent murder by Jack Ruby, and the funerals of Kennedy and Oswald on the fourth day following the assassination.

  As exciting as this account undoubtedly is—and utterly persuasive of Oswald’s guilt—it is but a part of Vincent Bugliosi’s magnum opus, Reclaiming History, an extraordinary and historic book of a million and a half words that required twenty years to research and write. That book goes beyond the fascinating narrative of events to confront and destroy every one of the conspiracy theories that have grown up since the assassination, exposing their selective use of evidence, flawed logic, and outright deceptions. So thoroughly documented, so compellingly lucid in its conclusions, Reclaiming History is, in a sense, the investigation that completes the work of the Warren Commission. In it, Bugliosi, the nation’s foremost prosecutor, takes on every aspect of the most important murder in American history. No one imagined that such a book would ever be written: a single volume that once and for all resolves, beyond any reasonable doubt, every lingering question as to what happened in Dallas and who was responsible. Bugliosi’s irresistible logic, command of the evidence, and ability to draw startling inferences shed fresh light on this American nightmare. At last it all makes sense.

  Readers who enjoy Parkland, or who have unanswered questions about conspiracy theories and the various investigations of the assassination, will want to consult Bugliosi’s masterwork, Reclaiming History, which has raised scholarship on the assassination to a new and final level, one that far surpasses all other books on the subject.

  —Starling Lawrence

  Author’s Note

  All times noted are derived, when possible, from reliable sources (e.g., Dallas police radio recordings, television videotapes with times on screen). When not, times are inferred from the unfolding events and the totality of witness statements. This methodology is necessary because the time estimates given by, for instance, a single witness would often change every time the wit
ness was interviewed and nearly always be in conflict with those given by other witnesses. All of this, of course, is normal and to be expected. I believe the following chronology to be the most accurate reconstruction to date. Throughout this chronology, the times, unless stated otherwise, are those of Central Standard Time.

  Parkland

  Friday, November 22, 1963

  6:30 a.m.

  Marina Oswald awakens in the dark. This late in November the sun doesn’t rise until seven, even as far south as Irving, Texas. The young Russian woman, born Marina Nikolaevna Prusakova, is still tired from an uneasy night. She and her American husband, Lee, argued the night before, not as intensely as usual, but unpleasantly enough, particularly as they hadn’t seen each other for nearly two weeks. And their newborn, Rachel, awoke twice, as babies will.

  Lee usually woke up before the alarm went off, but this morning he didn’t, sleeping through the sound, and Marina awakened him about ten minutes later. In the other bedroom Marina’s friend Ruth Paine, the owner of the house, is still asleep with her kids.1

  Lee has changed a lot in the two and a half years since Marina first met him at a dance at the Palace of Culture in Minsk, the capital city of the Soviet province of Byelorussia. She was only nineteen then, he was twenty-one and just a few months out of the U.S. Marines. Marina thought him to be very well dressed in his gray suit, white shirt, and white tie.2 When she found out later that he was an American defector to the Soviet Union, it only increased her attraction to him. She still finds him good looking, in some ways even more so since he has been losing weight and some of the babyish plumpness of cheek that made him look a bit like a chipmunk. At five foot nine inches and less than 150 pounds, Lee is rather small of build. But he’s wiry, and his hands and arms are unusually strong. He is hardening into a man, and Marina is still Lee’s woman, despite his crazy imagination. Honestly, some of his ideas would make the cat laugh. He told her not long ago that in twenty years he would be the “prime minister.”