Reclaiming History Read online

  “I strongly suspect that he was the assassin of the president,” Fritz says. As Curry leaves, Fritz reads over and signs complaint number F-153 charging Lee Harvey Oswald with the murder of Officer J. D. Tippit. Bill Alexander also affixes his signature to the complaint and a minute later files it—not with the clerk of the court, but by merely handing it to Judge Johnston.776

  7:10 p.m.

  Detectives Sims, Boyd, and Hall march Oswald back into Captain Fritz’s private office. The door closes behind them, stifling the noise of the outer office. Oswald faces Captain Fritz, Bill Alexander, David Johnston, and at least one FBI agent.777

  “Mr. Oswald, we’re here to arraign you on the charge of murder in the death of Officer J. D. Tippit,” Judge Johnston says.

  “Arraignment!” Oswald snarls. “This isn’t a court. You can’t arraign me in a police station. I can only be arraigned in a courtroom. How do I know this is a judge?”

  Alexander thinks the suspect “is the most arrogant person” he has ever met and tells him, in no uncertain terms, to “shut up and listen.” Oswald complies, but not before snapping back, “The way you’re treating me, I’d might as well be in Russia.”778

  Johnston opens the complaint form and tells Oswald that he is charged in the complaint with having “unlawfully, voluntarily, and with malice aforethought killed J. D. Tippit by shooting him with a gun” earlier that day.779

  Oswald mumbles a stream of sarcastic, impudent little things.780

  Johnston advises Oswald of his constitutional right to remain silent and warns him that any statement he makes may be used in evidence against him for the charges stated. “You’ll be given the opportunity to contact an attorney,” Johnston says as he completes the formalities. “Bond [bail] is denied on this capital offense. I hereby remand you to the custody of the sheriff of Dallas County, Texas.”781 In most states, the defendant pleads guilty or not guilty to the complaint at the time of the arraignment. In the few situations where he declines, the court enters a plea of not guilty for him. But in Texas, even to this day, a defendant is not even asked to plead to the complaint, and Oswald did not plead not guilty to the charge of murder against him.782

  7:15 p.m.

  Robert Oswald walks into Dallas City Hall at the Harwood Street entrance (106 South Harwood), where one enters the headquarters of the Dallas Police Department. Robert, intending to go to the third-floor Homicide and Robbery Bureau, mistakenly takes an elevator to a different floor and approaches a police officer who is eating supper out of a paper bag at his desk.

  “Could you tell me where I could find the officer in charge of the homicide division?” he asks. “I’m Robert Oswald, Lee Oswald’s brother.”

  The officer’s expression changes immediately. He jumps up, dropping his sandwich on the desk, mumbles a few words, then regains control and says, “Let me call Captain Fritz.”

  After leaving his office in Denton, Texas, earlier in the afternoon, Robert had driven home and told his wife Vada that he planned to drive to Dallas and that she should take their children to her parents’ farm outside Fort Worth, where they would be safe. He was worried about someone retaliating against anyone who knew Lee.

  Robert then called the Acme company office in Fort Worth and told them of his plans to go to Dallas, and they told him that the FBI had been out there looking for him and wanted him to contact them. He arrived at a quarter after five at the Federal Building and spent the next two hours being interviewed by Dallas FBI agents interested in finding out what he knew about his brother’s recent activities. Robert couldn’t help them much, he hadn’t seen Lee since the previous November. When he asked to see Lee, an agent said, “We don’t have any jurisdiction over your brother,” and tells Robert he’ll have to go to City Hall and speak to Captain Will Fritz in the Homicide and Robbery Bureau of the Dallas Police Department. Now, Robert waits to see the man in charge.

  The officer finally puts the phone down. He can’t get through, so he offers to take Robert up to the third floor. As they wait for an elevator, Robert reaches into his hip pocket for a handkerchief. The officer flinches. Robert senses what the officer is thinking and freezes—then slowly withdraws his hand clutching the handkerchief. Robert suddenly realizes just how tense the situation is in Dallas.783

  District Attorney Henry Wade marvels at the amount of reporters—it seems like three hundred—who have managed to shoehorn themselves into the small, narrow third-floor corridor outside the Homicide and Robbery office. Wade was on his way to dinner with his wife and some friends when he decided to stop by police headquarters to see how the investigation was progressing. He fights his way through the press and into the homicide office, where he learns from his assistant, Bill Alexander, that they had filed on Oswald for the Tippit murder.784 Shouldering back through the crowd, he makes his way to the administrative offices, where Chief Curry sits behind his desk.

  Wade is not surprised that Curry knows so little about how the case is coming. Relations between Fritz and Curry are better than they were with Curry’s predecessor, but Fritz, as usual, is determined to run his own one-man show.

  Wade himself has no power at all over the police. Under the city charter, the police are responsible to the city manager, not the district attorney. All of Wade’s assistant prosecutors—Bill Alexander in particular—work closely with the police, but his office has no authority over them. For the moment, Wade and Curry are equally helpless.

  Chief Curry slides Jack Revill’s memo (the one saying the FBI had advance knowledge that Oswald was “capable of committing the assassination”) across the desk to the district attorney.

  “What do you think about that?” Curry asks.

  Jack Revill is, to Wade’s mind, one of the brightest of the young Dallas police officers, but his memo is highly disturbing.

  “What are you going to do with it?” Wade asks.

  “I don’t know,” Curry replies.785

  Even in the midst of the catastrophe it’s a bombshell. Curry knows that the security of the president depends not just on the Secret Service, which has the primary responsibility, but on the closest possible cooperation between the Secret Service and the FBI as well as local police authorities. Revill’s memo suggests that someone wasn’t playing ball, and both men know that a firestorm of public recrimination between the FBI and the Dallas Police Department is not the kind of press the city fathers are going to want to see. Wade is an astute politician. He knows that the press and public will be looking around for someone to blame. Historically, relations between the FBI and local police have never been easy, and this won’t make them any easier.

  Although the chief of police doesn’t have to stand for reelection as Wade does, his position is scarcely less political. The son of a Dallas policeman who became a Baptist preacher, Jesse E. Curry attended police school without pay to get on the force during the Depression, then worked his way up through the ranks, finally becoming chief in January 1960, less than four years ago. He played a key role in the integration of the Dallas public schools in the fall of 1961, demonstrating his talent for careful advance planning. He works long and hard and is proud of his department, constantly fretting about the lack of manpower—1,123 men covering a vast area and a population of over half a million—and adequate equipment. Most of his men, finding it tough to live on their $370-a-month base pay, are moonlighting. Even Curry’s annual salary is only $17,500—after twenty-seven years with the department.786

  Curry is reluctant to make waves, careful of his relationship with city officials. He’s even more sensitive, as is Wade, to the desires of the real powers in the city, the Dallas Citizens Council—the elite group of business and social leaders who largely control the city’s destiny, and who always have the city’s image in mind. Perhaps that is why Curry hasn’t moved forcefully to control the melee of pressmen and their din, wanting to demonstrate to the worldwide press that the Dallas Police Department is willing to cooperate to the fullest extent, even under conditions
of dire emergency. There’s little question that the assassination has put Curry under a tremendous amount of pressure, from all sides.

  At the moment there is little Wade can do to console the police chief.

  “I’ll see you later,” Wade tells him and heads out for dinner.

  Robert Oswald follows the police officer as he leads him through the dense crowd of reporters on the third floor. No one is paying attention to either one of them, even though the officer occasionally bellows, “Where’s Captain Fritz?” Finally, someone points toward the end of the corridor. The two men squeeze through the crowd until they come face-to-face with Captain Fritz. The homicide captain looks coldly at Robert after the officer whispers an introduction.

  “I’m tied up right now,” Fritz says, “but I do want to talk with you later. I think your mother is still here.” Fritz tells the officer to take Robert down to where Mrs. Oswald is waiting.787 (This is the only meeting Robert Oswald has with Fritz, who never gets around to questioning him.)

  The two men make their way back through the crowded hallway and enter the Burglary and Theft Bureau, where Robert finds his mother along with two Fort Worth Star-Telegram reporters and two FBI agents. “I see you found me,” Marguerite Oswald says, rising from her chair.

  The FBI men have barely finished introducing themselves when Mrs. Oswald interrupts and asks to speak to her son alone. The agents show them to an empty office. As soon as they enter the room, Marguerite leans toward him and whispers, “This room is bugged. Be careful what you say.” The comment annoys Robert, but doesn’t surprise him. All his life Robert has heard his mother talking about conspiracies, hidden motives, and the maliciousness of others, and has long since discounted most of what she says.

  “Listen,” Robert says to his mother, not bothering to lower his voice, “I don’t care whether the room is bugged or not. I’d be perfectly willing to say anything I’ve got to say right there in the doorway. If you know anything about what happened, I want to know it right now. I don’t want to hear any whys, ifs, or wherefores.”

  His words don’t seem to register. As Robert learned by the time he was four years old, Marguerite has the ability to block out whatever she doesn’t want to hear. Apparently forgetting her own words of warning about the room being bugged, she sets out her belief that Lee, whatever he had done, was carrying out official orders. Ever since his defection to Russia, Marguerite has been convinced that Lee is some sort of secret agent, recruited by the U.S. government while in the Marine Corps, and thereafter sent on mysterious and dangerous missions.788

  But there is something else about his mother now that gives Robert a sickening feeling. It is evident to him that his mother is not really crushed at all by the terrible charges against Lee. If anything, he senses she seems actually gratified at the attention she’s receiving. She has always had an inflated sense of her own ability and importance, a trait reflected in her son Lee. But her quarrelsome nature and limited work skills have created instead a life of obscurity. Now, she seems to instantly recognize that she will never again be treated as an ordinary, unimportant woman.789

  7:28 p.m.

  FBI agent Manning C. Clements steps into the homicide office and spots fellow agent James Bookhout. Clements has been at police headquarters since one o’clock when, under instructions from his supervisor, he had offered the assistance of the FBI in the investigation of the president’s assassination. For the last several hours he has been acting as a liaison, relaying instructions to the other agents on the premises.790

  Clements approaches Bookhout and asks if anyone from the bureau has gotten a detailed physical description of Oswald, and more importantly, questioned him in depth about his background. Bookhout tells him no (though Captain Fritz has obtained some background information on Oswald), and suggests that Clements do it. Clements seeks out Captain Fritz and asks if there is any objection to his interviewing Oswald to get this information.

  “I’ve got no objection,” Fritz says.

  Clements enters Captain Fritz’s office and finds Oswald seated and two detectives—Hall and Boyd—standing guard nearby.791

  The FBI agent introduces himself, shows Oswald his credentials, advises him of his right to an attorney, and explains his purpose for being there. Oswald is slightly haughty, but cooperative. Clements proceeds to elicit biographical information from Oswald—date and place of birth, height, weight, and other personal data. He then turns to the obviously fictitious Selective Service card found in Oswald’s wallet.

  Clements can tell the card is a fake because of the photograph mounted on it, something not contained on an authentic Selective Service card, and the number of obvious erasures made in typing the information on it. Besides, the card is in the name of “Alek James Hidell,” but bears Oswald’s photograph.792

  Asked about the purpose of the card, Oswald refuses to answer.

  Ten minutes into the interview, the door to the office opens and Detective Sims tells the agent that Oswald is needed downstairs.793 They lead Oswald once again out into the crush of reporters. Flashbulbs pop and questions are hurled in waves at the prisoner as reporters press in. As the detectives struggle to move Oswald toward the jail elevators, Oswald seizes the moment to exploit his situation.

  “These people here have given me a hearing without legal representation,” Oswald, referring to his arraignment, says into a microphone shoved in his direction.

  “Did you shoot the president?” a reporter asks.

  “I didn’t shoot anybody,” Oswald replies. “No, sir.”794

  7:30 p.m. (8:30 p.m. EST)

  At the Bethesda Naval Hospital, a hot white light illuminates the hands of the two pathologists huddled over the body of the late president. In the interests of time, Dr. Humes decided not to wait for Lieutenant Colonel Finck to arrive at Bethesda. Instead, he and Dr. Boswell set about the task of recovering the two largest bullet fragments seen in the X-rays of the president’s skull. The hole in the right side of the head was immense (over five inches in its greatest diameter), making access to the brain relatively easy. Portions of the skull, literally shattered by the force of the bullet, fall apart in the hands of the two pathologists as they try to reach the minute fragments behind the right eye and near the back of the skull.795 Both are recovered, placed into a glass jar with a black metal top, and turned over later in the evening to FBI agents for transport to the FBI laboratory.796* To remove the brain, Humes and Boswell use a scalpel to extend the lacerations of the scalp downward toward the ears. Normally, a saw would be used to cut the skullcap and remove the brain. Here, the damage is so devastating that the doctors can lift the brain out of the head without recourse to a saw.797 The left hemisphere of the brain is intact, while the damage to the right one is massive.798

  Just as the brain is fixed in formalin for further study, Lieutenant Colonel Finck walks into the autopsy room wearing military pants and a green scrub suit.799 The three autopsy surgeons begin an examination of the president’s head wound. What is immediately obvious to all three is a small oval-shaped hole in the back of the president’s scalp. Peeling the skin away from the skull, the doctors find a corresponding but larger hole in the bone beneath the scalp. From inside the skull, the area surrounding the hole is cratered. From the outside, the skull bone around the hole is smooth. The surgeons recognize the wound to the backside of the head as having all the characteristics of an entrance wound.800

  After taking photographs of the outer layer (“table”) of the skull at the entrance wound, the photographer, John Stringer, positions himself at the head of the table. It is difficult to properly illuminate the inside layer or table of the back of the skull, in order to record the cratering effect the doctors have observed, so the doctors hold the head up slightly while Stringer snaps several exposures looking down into the cranial cavity.801

  As to the massive hole on the right side of the president’s head, it is presumably the result of the bullet exiting the head, although no specific exit po
int in the margins of the defect is discovered.802

  7:45 p.m.

  FBI agent James Hosty pulls out of the police garage and heads back toward the Dallas FBI field office. Oswald’s words still resonate in his head, “Oh, so you’re Hosty. I’ve heard about you. You’re the one who’s been harassing my wife!” Hosty couldn’t help but think of the two visits he had paid Marina Oswald, the two visits that Oswald was clearly referring to. Hosty hadn’t given the visits, or Lee Oswald for that matter, a lot of thought. Oswald was, after all, only one of the forty or fifty cases that made up his normal caseload.

  Hosty had remembered reading a front-page article in the Dallas newspapers in 1959 about a former marine, Lee Oswald, who had defected to the Soviet Union. The article also grabbed the attention of Fort Worth FBI agent John Fain, who opened the case file in an effort to determine if Oswald posed any national security risks. In early June 1962, the Dallas newspapers ran another article, this time reporting that Oswald was returning to the United States with a Russian bride. Fain interviewed Oswald twice, in June and August of 1962, and the following month, after concluding that Oswald was not a security risk, closed the file on Oswald. Hosty inherited all of Fain’s case files.

  Because Hosty had reviewed Marina’s records at the Immigration and Naturalization Service office in Dallas for Fain, he had an uneasy feeling that she could possibly be a Soviet intelligence agent, and decided to try to locate the Oswalds, particularly after learning that Lee Oswald had subscribed to a U.S. Communist paper after Fain closed the file. But they had left no forwarding address when they moved from the last address he had on them, Neely Street in Dallas. He later learned they had moved to New Orleans, and shortly after being informed months later by the New Orleans FBI office that the Oswalds had disappeared from New Orleans, Hosty’s Dallas office received a communiqué that Oswald, while in Mexico City in early October 1963, had visited the Soviet embassy there and spoken to one Valeriy Kostikov, a vice counsel at the embassy.