Reclaiming History Page 29

  “Oh, she didn’t understand my name correctly,” he shoots back. “I just left it that way.”670

  Fritz leans back in the chair, “Did you work at the Depository today?”

  “Yes,” Oswald replies.

  “How long have you worked there?” Fritz asks.

  “Since October fifteenth.”671

  “What part of the building were you in at the time the president was shot?” Fritz quizzes.

  “I was having lunch about that time on the first floor,” Oswald says dryly. “We broke for lunch about noon and I came down and ate.”672

  “Where were you when the officer stopped you?” Fritz asks, referring to the story that Roy Truly, the building manager, had told him earlier.

  “I was on the second floor drinking a Coke when an officer came in,” Oswald replies.

  “There’s a soda machine in the lunchroom there. I went up to get a Coke.”

  “Then what did you do?” Fritz prompts.

  “I left,” Oswald says, like it’s nothing.

  “Where did you go when you left work?” the homicide captain asks.

  “I went over to my room on Beckley,” Oswald says, “changed my trousers, got my pistol, and went to the movies.”

  “Why did you take your pistol?” Fritz asks.

  “I felt like it,” Oswald says snidely.

  “You felt like it?”

  “You know how boys are when they have a gun,” Oswald smirks, “they just carry it.”

  “Did you shoot Officer Tippit?”

  “No, I didn’t,” Oswald says. “The only law I violated was when I hit the officer in the show; and he hit me in the eye and I guess I deserved it. That is the only law I violated. That is the only thing I have done wrong.”673

  The answers seem to be coming easy now for Oswald. Like an experienced cross-examiner, Fritz changes the subject abruptly.

  “What did you do during the three years you lived in the Soviet Union?”

  “I worked in a factory,” Oswald says casually.

  “What kind?” Fritz asks as he peers at Oswald through his owlish spectacles.

  “A radio electronics factory,” Oswald answers.674

  “Why did you leave the Depository after the shooting?” Fritz asks, returning suddenly to the present. The questions are coming from all angles now, but Oswald handles the changeups with ease.

  “I went out front and was standing with Bill Shelley,” Oswald tells him, “and after hearing what happened, with all the confusion, I figured there wouldn’t be any more work done the rest of the day, so I went home. The company’s not that particular about our hours. We don’t even punch a clock.”

  “What kind of work do you do at the Depository?” Fritz asks.

  “I fill orders,” Oswald says.

  “Which floors do you have access to?”

  “Well, as a laborer,” Oswald replies, “I have access to the entire building.”

  Oswald explains that the company offices are on the first and second floors and that they store books on the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth floors.675

  “Did you shoot the president?” Fritz asks.

  “No, I emphatically deny that,” Oswald snaps. “I haven’t shot anybody.”676

  A detective opens the door to Fritz’s office and pokes his head in. “Captain Fritz, they’re ready downstairs.”

  “Okay,” Fritz says, rising from his chair, “let’s take a break.”677 Not the best session Fritz has ever had with a suspect, but certainly not the worst, either. Oswald thinks he is being cagey, answering only the questions he thinks he can answer without being caught, but he’s talking too much anyway. Fritz didn’t know a damn thing about him except his name, where he worked, and one of his addresses, but now he already knows quite a bit more, a lot of little details his men can check out—and who knows what they’ll find?

  4:05 p.m.

  Secret Service agent Forrest Sorrels and a small group of fellow agents are waiting in the outer office of Homicide and Robbery when Fritz comes out of his office. Sorrels greets Fritz, whom he’s known for some time.

  “Have you gotten anything out of him?” Sorrels asks the homicide captain.

  “No,” Fritz replies, “he hasn’t made any admissions yet, but I’ll be talking to him again very soon.”678

  Sorrels sees two detectives preparing to escort Oswald out of Captain Fritz’s office.

  “Captain, I’d like to talk to this man when I have the opportunity,” Sorrels says.

  “You can talk to him right now,” Fritz answers, deciding to keep the lineup waiting a few minutes. Fritz makes arrangements to have Sorrels question Oswald in a small squad room tucked behind his private office.679 When Oswald is led in, the cool demeanor is gone, replaced with an arrogant and belligerent attitude.680

  “I don’t know who you fellows are, a bunch of cops?” Oswald asks.

  “Well, I will tell you who I am,” the agent begins. “My name is Sorrels, and I am with the United States Secret Service. Here is my commission book [the Secret Service term for the small leather folder that contains the agent’s ID on top and badge on the bottom].”

  Sorrels holds it out in front of the prisoner.

  “I don’t want to look at that,” Oswald says, holding his head up, refusing to look. “What am I going to be charged with? Why am I being held? Isn’t someone suppose to tell me what my rights are?”

  “Yes, I will tell you what your rights are,” Sorrels replies calmly. “Your rights are the same as that of any American citizen. You do not have to make a statement unless you want to. You have the right to get an attorney.”

  “Aren’t you suppose to get me an attorney?” Oswald asks.

  “No,” Sorrels says.

  “You’re not?” Oswald says with surprise.

  “No,” Sorrels answers, “because if I got you an attorney, they would say I was probably getting a rakeoff on the fee.” A slight smile creeps across Sorrels’s face. He hopes his bit of humor will help loosen the suspect up. But Oswald will have none of it, not finding Sorrels’s attempt at humor amusing.

  “You can have the telephone book and you can call anybody you want to,” Sorrels continues. “I just want to ask you some questions.”

  Sorrels asks if Oswald has ever been in a foreign country. Oswald says that he had traveled in Europe and spent a good deal of that time in the Soviet Union. Then suddenly, Oswald says, “I don’t care to answer any more questions.”681

  With that, the just-started interview is terminated. Fritz instructs his men to take Oswald down to the basement show-up room, then turns to two plainclothes vice squad officers, William E. Perry and Richard L. Clark, waiting to take part in the lineup. Normally, available prisoners are pulled from jail and used in the lineups. But Captain Fritz is afraid that prisoners might try to hurt Oswald, due to the high feeling in Dallas over the assassination of the president. His own office doesn’t have any men the right size to show with Oswald, so he had called down to vice to borrow a couple of their men. Fritz tells Officers Perry and Clark to take off their sport coats, loosen their ties, and generally change their appearance before heading down to the show-up room.682

  4:10 p.m.

  Detectives Sims, Boyd, and M. G. Hall escort Oswald toward the exit that leads out of the Homicide and Robbery office. The door opens and they wade into the crowd of reporters jammed in the corridor outside. Flashbulbs pop incessantly as questions are fired at the prisoner. Oswald raises his manacled fists for the photographers.683 The crowd is shoulder to shoulder, pressing in as the detectives shuffle Oswald twenty-three feet to the jail elevator at a snail’s pace. Reporters, frantic for information, shout questions over each other. The huge TV cameras blocking the corridor manage to catch a few seconds of the young man upon whom the attention of the whole world is now focused. Oswald catches one question from the deafening storm directed at him, “Did you kill the president?”

  “No, sir.” He answers calmly. “Nobody charged me wi
th that.”

  When they arrive downstairs in the basement holdover room, Sims and Boyd search Oswald—remarkably, no one has yet. Boyd finds five live rounds of .38 caliber ammunition in the left front pocket of Oswald’s trousers.

  “What are these doing in there?” the detective asks.

  “I just had them in my pocket,” Oswald says nonchalantly.684

  Detective Sims finds a bus transfer issued by the Dallas Transit Company in his shirt pocket.685 Oswald takes off his silver Marine Corps ring and hands it to Sims.686 Also recovered from Oswald’s pockets are a small white boxtop with the name “Cox’s, Fort Worth” printed on the top; a paycheck stub from American Bakeries dated August 22, 1960; a brass key marked “P.O. Dept., Do Not Dup.” with the number 1126; eighty-seven cents in change; and thirteen dollars in paper money—a five-dollar bill, and eight singles.687

  The telephone rings in Shanklin’s Dallas FBI office. It’s Belmont in Washington. He wants an update.

  “Well, Alan, our agents are interviewing the suspect Oswald,” Shanklin tells him.

  “Hosty and Jim Bookhout, a good criminal agent, are in with the police right now.”

  “If there’s any question that a polygraph might be productive,” Belmont says, “go right ahead and use it. Have you talked with the Secret Service?”

  “They don’t appear to be doing much,” Shanklin replies. “Most of them have gone back to Washington with the vice president.”

  “You should make sure that all possible investigative steps are being taken,” Belmont orders him. “For example, make sure that the gun is checked for fingerprints; determine Oswald’s whereabouts throughout the day; and make sure that the locations where the gun and shells were found is examined carefully.”

  “Well, I think the police have that covered,” Shanklin says.

  “Don’t assume the police are going to handle this properly,” Belmont says. “We must conduct a vigorous and thorough investigation if we expect to get answers.”

  “Right,” Shanklin responds.

  “Now, if you need additional personnel to accomplish that,” Belmont adds, “you should let us know.”

  “Well, if it turns out Oswald is not the person who shot the president,” Shanklin says, “we’re going to need more manpower down here. We should know something very soon.”688

  Returning to his office, Chief Curry finds television trucks all around City Hall, the building itself overrun with newsmen and television cameras, their heavy cables snaking through hallways and offices. The Dallas police have always permitted free movement of the press around City Hall, but they have never been faced with anything like this before, with the national and international press descending on them.

  Chief Curry knows that his men have a suspect in the Tippit killing, possibly in the assassination, and from the reports coming in it seems that everything that can be done is being done. Curry calls the personnel office and requests the file on the officer killed in Oak Cliff.

  Checking the record of the eleven-year veteran patrolman, Curry finds that J. D. Tippit had two previous brushes with death while on the force. Back in April 1956, he and his partner, Daniel Smith, had intervened in a domestic dispute involving a suicidal husband with an icepick. When the two officers moved in to arrest the man, he managed to stab Smith once in the left shoulder and Tippit twice, in the stomach and again in the right knee. Surgeons later found a half inch of the icepick’s tip embedded in his right kneecap. It left him with an occasional slight limp and a much more cautious attitude. Four months later, on September 2, 1956, Tippit and partner Dale Hankins shot Leonard Garland to death at Club 80 in Dallas, after Garland pulled out a semiautomatic pistol, shoved it into Tippit’s face, and pulled the trigger. Garland had failed to remove the safety, and luckily for Tippit, the gun didn’t fire. Tippit and Hankins returned fire, killing the gunman, who turned out to be wanted by the FBI. Tippit (as did Hankins) received a Dallas Police Department Certificate of Merit for his “outstanding judgment and quick thinking.” Bud Owens, Tippit’s immediate supervisor for nearly ten years, vouched for him as a well-liked officer who used good common sense.689

  4:15 p.m.

  Lieutenant Jack Revill, the man in charge of the Dallas Police Department’s Criminal Intelligence Section, dictates a memo to one of the clerks in the Special Services Bureau office. After leaving FBI agent Hosty in the homicide office, Revill had returned to his office and immediately reported the conversation with Hosty to his boss, Captain W. Pat Gannaway, telling Gannaway that Hosty had said the FBI knew all about Oswald before the assassination and knew he was capable of it. If true, this was explosive information. Why hadn’t the FBI told the Dallas Police Department about Oswald before the president came to town? Indeed, why hadn’t they and the Secret Service been watching Oswald?

  “Put it in writing,” Gannaway told him.

  Revill said that he hated to do that. After all, Hosty might have been simply stating his personal opinion.

  “Put it on paper,” Gannaway replied adamantly, “and give it to me and I will take it to Chief Curry.”

  With the help of an office clerk, Revill follows Gannaway’s order:

  On November 22, 1963, at approximately 2:50 PM, the undersigned officer met Special Agent James Hosty of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the basement of City Hall. At that time Special Agent Hosty related to this officer that the Subject was a member of the Communist Party, and that he was residing in Dallas. The Subject was arrested for the murder of Officer J. D. Tippit and is a prime suspect in the assassination of President Kennedy. The information regarding the Subject’s affiliation with the Communist Party is the first information this officer has received from the Federal Bureau of Investigation regarding same. Agent Hosty further stated that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was aware of the Subject and that they had information that this Subject was capable of committing the assassination of President Kennedy.690

  When the clerk hands Revill the typed copy, he reads it over carefully before signing it.

  “Are you sure this is the way you spell assassination?” he asks.

  “Yes, sir,” the clerk replies. “I looked it up in the dictionary.”691

  4:20 p.m.

  Bill Alexander had been in a police squad car parked behind the Texas Theater along with many officers who were watching the backdoor of the theater for a possible escape. When word was received that the Tippit murder suspect was apprehended inside, and was being taken to police headquarters at City Hall, Alexander returned to his office. His old friend, Captain Fritz, was on the phone shortly thereafter, asking Alexander to prepare a search warrant pronto for Oswald’s Beckley apartment. Alexander prepared the warrant and called Justice of the Peace David Johnston, whom he needed to sign the warrant, to meet him at the sheriff’s office for the trip to Beckley. Alexander meets with Johnston and Dallas police detectives F. M. Turner and H. M. Moore at the sheriff’s office, and the four immediately leave for Beckley; Johnston, because of the rush, signed the warrant in the squad car en route to Beckley.692

  4:35 p.m.

  The darkened detail room in the basement, where the officers get their assignments at the beginning of each shift, is full of men, some in uniform, others not. At one end of the room is a narrow stage, about two and a half feet high, screened off from the rest of the room by a one-way black nylon scrim. The stage is hotly illuminated by floodlights overhead and at the floor level, making it easy for the witnesses standing in the darkness to see the suspects through the scrim, but impossible for the suspects to see them in the darkness beyond.693 Detectives Sims, Boyd, and Hall have Oswald in a holdover room next to the stage. They are joined by Officers Perry and Clark, and a jail clerk (a civilian employee), Don Ables, who will appear in the lineup with Oswald. Each of them is handcuffed to the other.694

  Helen Markham, who had been close to fainting before being given ammonia, is brought out of the first-aid room and into the darkened area of the detail room by Dete
ctives Leavelle and Graves. Captain Fritz, Chief Curry, and Detective C. W. Brown join them momentarily.695 Mrs. Markham, who still hasn’t recovered from the shock of seeing the murder, is terribly jittery, and the darkened roomful of policemen isn’t all that reassuring.

  The word is given and Detectives Sims, Boyd, and Hall troop the four men out onto the stage.696 As soon as Oswald comes out, Mrs. Markham feels cold chills run over her and begins to cry.697 The four men come to a stop, each positioned underneath a large number. Left to right, from Markham’s position, the four men are W. E. Perry (under number 1), Lee Harvey Oswald (2), R. L. Clark (3), and Don Ables (4).698

  Though Markham is confident Oswald is the man she saw shoot Officer Tippit, she wants to be sure and whispers to one of the policemen that she wants them to turn Oswald sideways, which was standard procedure anyway. Detective Leavelle tells the men to turn to their right, left, to the rear, then back to the front. Each man is then asked a question or two so that Markham can hear them speak. Leavelle doesn’t ask Oswald his name because Markham might have heard it since the shooting.

  Mrs. Markham can’t forget the way the killer looked at her on Tenth Street—the glassy, wild look in his eyes.

  “The second one,” Markham says.

  The police aren’t sure what she means—second from the left, or the right?

  “Which one?” they ask.

  “Number 2,” she says.

  There’s an immediate stirring of voices in the room, and Mrs. Markham, faint again, falls over.699

  Detectives Sims, Boyd, and Hall march the men off the stage and Oswald is taken back up to Captain Fritz’s office on the third floor.700

  4:45 p.m.

  The unmarked squad car pulls up in front of the rooming house on North Beckley in Oak Cliff and four men, armed with a search warrant, climb out.

  After showing the search warrant to the landlord, Mr. Johnson, Alexander and the detectives enter Oswald’s room. They notice the sagging single bed framed in a metal headboard, and the movable wardrobe, an old blonde oak dresser with missing handles. When they open two dresser drawers, some clothing spills onto the floor. Alexander finds an empty leather holster hanging from a doorknob. A shelf on a wall has some food atop it. The room, Alexander sees, is “messy but not dirty.”701