Reclaiming History

by Vincent Bugliosi

  “It’s my understanding that you’re under arrest for the shooting of President Kennedy,” Nichols tells him. “I’m here to see if you need or want a lawyer.”

  “Do you know a lawyer in New York named John Abt?” Oswald asks.

  “No, I don’t,” Nichols says.

  “Well, I would like to have him represent me,” Oswald says in a calm and clear voice. “Do you know any lawyers who are members of the American Civil Liberties Union?”

  “I’m sorry,” Nichols says, “I don’t know anybody who is a member of that organization.”

  “Well, I’m a member of that organization,” Oswald says, “and if I can’t get Mr. Abt, I would like to have somebody from that organization represent me.”

  Nichols can see that Oswald is in full control of his faculties. He is neither belligerent nor does he appear to be frightened or subdued.

  “If I can’t get either one of those to represent me,” Oswald adds, “and if I can find a lawyer here who believes in my innocence…”

  Oswald hesitates for a moment, then continues.

  “…as much as he can, I might let him represent me.”

  “What I am interested in knowing, Mr. Oswald,” Nichols responds, “is do you want me or the Dallas Bar Association to try to get you a lawyer right now?”

  “No, not now,” Oswald replies. “I talked with members of my family this afternoon and they’re trying to get in touch with Mr. Abt.” Oswald adds, “You might come back next week and if I don’t get some of these other people, I might ask you to get somebody to represent me.”

  Satisfied that Oswald knows what he is doing and is aware of his right to counsel, Nichols leaves the cell. As he and Curry climb back into the elevator for the ride back to the third floor, Curry asks if he wants to make a statement to the press.

  “I don’t know,” Nichols says. “I don’t know whether it’s the thing to do or not.”

  “Well, they are going to be right outside the door here,” Chief Curry warns him, “and if you want to say anything this would be an opportunity to do it.” Curry adds, “Incidentally, I am very glad you came up here. We don’t want any question coming up about us refusing to let him have a lawyer. That takes the burden off us.”1164

  6:15 p.m.

  The elevator doors open and they step into a swarm of photographers and cameramen. When the media see who it is, they pack in closer. Chief Curry raises his voice above the ruckus.

  “This is Mr. Nichols, president of the Dallas Bar Association,” Curry announces. “He has been talking to Mr. Oswald and he will make a statement for you if he desires.”

  Flashbulbs pop and microphones are pushed toward Nichols’s face as he suddenly finds himself on live television, wholly unprepared.

  Nichols explains what has just transpired.

  “Did he seem to be in possession of all his faculties? Did he deny the shooting to you?”

  More questions follow until little can be understood. Nichols picks one out of the noise and answers.

  “He appeared to be perfectly rational and I could observe no abnormalities about him at all in the short time that I visited with him,” Nichols says.

  “Do you know anything about John Abt?” someone asks.

  “I don’t know anything about him,” Nichols says.

  “How long did you talk with him?”

  “About three minutes,” Nichols replies.

  “Do you think he can get a fair trial in Dallas?” a reporter asks skeptically.

  “I think he can get a fair trial in Dallas,” Nichols says with assurance.

  “Would you be willing to represent him?” someone asks.

  Nichols’s answer is quick and direct.

  “I do not practice criminal law,” he says, “and I’ve never tried a criminal case so I don’t know the answer to that.”1165

  Lieutenant Robert E. McKinney of the Forgery Bureau appears at the office of Justice of the Peace David Johnston in Richardson, Texas, with a criminal complaint (“Affidavit” number F-155) he’s prepared and signed as an affiant charging Oswald with assault with intent to murder Governor John Connally. Johnston affixes his signature to the complaint and it is officially filed at 6:15 p.m.1166 Oswald will never be arraigned on this charge.1167

  Back in Homicide and Robbery, Captain Fritz picks up the telephone and calls the Identification Bureau on the fourth floor. “Have them bring those pictures down to my office,” he orders.

  They know what pictures he’s talking about—the photographs of Oswald holding a rifle.

  6:24 p.m.

  Under orders from Captain Fritz, Detectives Sims, Hall, and Graves escort Oswald down from his jail cell to the Homicide and Robbery office for another interrogation session. Once again, Oswald is marched through the third-floor corridor. He’s getting good at playing to the crowd of reporters, using their microphones to take jabs at the police department and build sympathy. This time he complains about being denied “the basic fundamental hygienic rights like a shower.”1168

  The smirk quickly evaporates from Oswald’s face as he’s brought into the homicide captain’s office. Three homicide detectives in white Stetson hats stand guard, silently.1169 Fritz walks in, followed by Secret Service inspector Thomas Kelley, FBI agent James Bookhout, and homicide detective Guy Rose, who is carrying an envelope.

  Oswald immediately complains about not being allowed in the last lineup to put on clothing similar to that worn by some of the other individuals in previous lineups.1170 No one says anything. The hostile prisoner braces himself for another onslaught of questions, but Fritz begins slowly with a methodical list of mundane questions designed to relax and settle Oswald down. Oswald is eager to talk about anything that doesn’t pertain to the assassination investigation and eventually softens with the gentle banter. Soon, Oswald is rambling on about how life is better for the colored people in Russia than it is in the United States.1171 Finally, Fritz turns to the business at hand.

  “Now, you told me yesterday that you’d never owned a gun,” Fritz says innocently.

  “That’s right,” Oswald replies. “I never owned a gun.”

  “Okay,” Fritz says, reaching for the envelope Detective Rose has laid on his desk. “I want to show you something.”

  Oswald purses his lips and eyes the envelope the captain is reaching into. Like Houdini pulling a rabbit out of a hat, Fritz suddenly produces an eight-by-ten-inch black-and-white photograph and holds it out in front of Oswald.

  “How do you explain this?” he says.

  The photograph is an enlargement of one found earlier in the afternoon among Oswald’s possessions stored in Mrs. Paine’s garage. After returning to City Hall, and showing it to Captain Fritz, Detective Rose has been working with officers in the Identification Bureau to produce this slightly cropped blowup.1172 Everyone present can see that Oswald is flustered.

  “I’m not going to make any comment about that without the advice of an attorney,” Oswald replies smugly.1173

  “Well, is that your face in the picture?” Fritz asks, pointing at the image.

  “I won’t even admit that,” he sneers.1174

  “That’s not your face?” Fritz asks, scarcely believing that Oswald would deny what is so obvious.

  “No,” Oswald says. “That’s not even my face. That’s a fake. I’ve been photographed a number of times since I got here—first by the police, and now every time I get dragged through that hallway. Someone has taken my picture and put my face on a different body.”

  “So that is your face?” Fritz asks.

  Oswald answers quickly to cover his own contradiction.

  “Yes, that’s my face,” he says, “but that’s not my body. I know all about photography, I’ve worked with photography a long time. Someone has photographed me and then superimposed a rifle in my hand and a gun in my pocket. That’s a picture that someone has made. I’ve never seen that picture before in my life.”1175

  Fritz lays the photograph on his desk.r />
  “We found this photo in Mrs. Paine’s garage, among your effects,” Fritz tells him.

  Oswald rolls his eyes toward the ceiling.

  “That picture has never been in my possession,” he snaps.

  “Wait a minute,” Fritz shoots back, “I’ll show you one you probably have seen.”

  The captain reaches back into the envelope and pulls out a small snapshot, the original photograph used to produce the enlargement. He shows it to Oswald, who squirms.

  “I never have seen that picture either,” he says, defiantly. “That picture’s been reduced from the big one.”1176

  Fritz asks him how that’s so, and Oswald gets into a long argument with Fritz about his knowledge of photography, asking Fritz a number of times whether the smaller photograph was made from the larger or whether the larger was made from the smaller.

  “We made this enlargement from the snapshot we found in the search,” Fritz finally acknowledges.

  “Well, I understand photography real well,” Oswald says arrogantly, “and at the proper time I will show that they’re fakes. Right now, I have nothing more to say about them.”1177

  7:00 p.m.

  In the third-floor corridor outside, reporters scramble toward Chief Curry, who is about to make a statement. He waits for everyone to settle down.

  “The FBI has just informed us,” Chief Curry begins, “that they have the order letter for the rifle that we have sent to the laboratory. They…received it from a mail-order house in Chicago. This order letter has been to the laboratory in Washington, D.C., and compared with known handwriting of our suspect, Oswald, and the handwriting is the same on the order letter as Oswald’s handwriting. The return address on this order letter was to the post office box in Dallas, Texas, of our suspect, Oswald, and it was returned under another name. But it has definitely been established by the FBI that the handwriting is the handwriting of Oswald.”

  The reporters shout questions at once. One can be heard clearly above the others.

  “Was it a recent purchase?”

  “This purchase was made on March the twentieth of this year,” Curry tells them.

  “What about the ballistics test, Chief?”

  “The ballistic test—we haven’t had a final report, but it is—I understand [it] will be favorable,” Curry replies.

  “Is this the development you referred to today as making this case ironclad in your opinion?”

  “This was not what I had reference to earlier,” Curry says.

  “Will you give us an indication of what that is?” a reporter shouts. “Were you referring to the photograph earlier?”

  The media are already aware of the photographs of Oswald holding a rifle found by police in Mrs. Paine’s garage. Curry doesn’t have time to answer the question before another is shouted out.

  “Where did these photographs come from, Chief?” a newsman asks.

  “The photographs were found in his—out at Irving, where he had been staying and where his wife had been staying,” Curry says.

  “Does [the rifle in the photograph] look like the one that you have, that you think is the murder weapon, sir?”

  “It does,” Curry responds.

  “How is he taking this information as it builds up?” someone asks.

  “I don’t know,” Curry says.

  “Chief, just a moment ago he came out…bitterly complaining about being deprived of his citizenship rights because he can’t take a shower. Do you have any comment on that?”

  “I didn’t know he had asked to take a shower,” Curry says. “We have a shower up there where he could take a shower if he wants one.”

  “What was the name under which he ordered the rifle?” a reporter asks.

  “The name—the return—the name on the return address was A. Hidell,” Curry tells them.

  “Do you consider the case shut tight now, Chief?”

  “We will continue to work on it,” Curry replies, “and try to get every shred of evidence that’s possible.”1178

  The chief’s statements set off alarm bells at FBI headquarters. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover can’t believe that Curry is willing to give the press details about the evidence against Oswald. Curry’s comments are being broadcast nationally, and Hoover doesn’t think that cases should be tried in the newspapers. The bureau has a policy of “no comment” until it has a warrant and makes an arrest. Then a release is prepared, briefly stating the facts of the case and the charges. The details of the evidence are kept secret until the case goes to trial. The kind of information Curry is blabbing about would never, under any circumstances, be given out to the press by the FBI. Hoover is particularly incensed that Curry is talking about evidence that is being developed in the FBI’s Washington, D.C., crime lab. Hoover gets Gordon Shanklin, agent-in-charge in Dallas, on the phone.

  “Talk to Chief Curry,” Hoover tells Shanklin, “and tell him that I insist that he not go on the air any more and discuss the progress of the investigation.”

  Hoover has little direct authority over the Dallas police chief. The FBI crime lab furnishes free service to all law enforcement agencies throughout the country. What they do with the FBI’s lab reports, once they’ve received them, is their business. But because of the fact that President Lyndon Johnson has asked Hoover to take charge of the case, Hoover feels justified in asking Curry to abide by his wishes.

  “You tell him,” Hoover adds, “that I insist that he and all members of his department refrain from public statements!”1179

  The IBM computers at the U.S. Postal Records Center in Alexandria, Virginia, have been humming for nearly seven hours now (though state-of-the-art at the time, these computers are a far cry from today’s technology) searching for the original money order used to purchase the assassination weapon. There’s no telling how many man-hours it might take to do a manual search.

  Suddenly, a match is found, and the money order is located.

  The center rushes the original money order by special courier to the chief of the Secret Service in Washington. A handwriting analysis by a questioned-documents expert for the Department of the Treasury shows that the handwriting on the money order is that of Lee Harvey Oswald.1180

  If there is one thing that is now unquestionably certain, it is that Lee Harvey Oswald ordered and paid for the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle that was found on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository Building shortly after the assassination.

  7:10 p.m.

  Secret Service inspector Thomas Kelley is very impressed by Captain Fritz, who has shown great patience and tenacity in his efforts to uncover the truth from Oswald about the rifle photographs. But Oswald remains arrogant and uncooperative. Fritz asks Oswald about some of the places where he’s lived, trying to get him to admit where the pictures were taken. Oswald tells him about one of the places he lived in Dallas, but is very evasive when Fritz questions him about living on Neely Street.1181

  “You never lived there?” Fritz asks.

  “No!” Oswald says, defiantly.

  “You didn’t take any photographs there?” Fritz persists.

  “No!” Oswald snaps back.

  “I’ve got statements from people* who say they visited you when you lived there,” Fritz tells him.

  “They must be mistaken,” Oswald answers.1182

  Fritz can only shake his head in frustration. It is apparent to everyone that Oswald, though shaken by the photographic evidence, has no intention of furnishing any more information about the rifle pictures. After forty-five minutes of trying to pull impacted teeth to get answers, Captain Fritz orders Oswald returned to his cell.1183

  7:15 p.m.

  Detectives Hall, Sims, Graves, and Boyd lead a very hostile Oswald into the bright news lights basking the third-floor hallway.1184 A reporter yells, “Here he comes!” to his colleagues as a live television camera swings around and zooms in on the T-shirt–clad Oswald. Newsmen rush toward him, arms outstretched, microphones searching for a brief statement.<
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  “Did you fire that rifle?” a reporter shouts.

  Oswald is smoldering, his voice finally exploding in anger.

  “I don’t know what dispatches you people have been given,” he roars, “but I emphatically deny these charges!”

  The officers pull him sharply through a doorway into the vestibule of the jail elevator, and out of sight of the live television audience.

  “What about Connally?” a newsman hollers, shoving his microphone into the doorway.

  Like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, another persona seems to slip under Oswald’s skin as his anger suddenly gives way to a gentler side.

  “I have nothing against anybody,” he says, his voice returning to its usual calm state.

  “I have not committed any acts of violence.”1185

  7:20 p.m.

  Marguerite Oswald is in her robe and slippers when there is a knock on the door of the suite at the Executive Inn, where she and Marina are staying.

  “Who is it?” Marguerite says, moving toward the door.

  “This is Mr. Odum,” a voice responds.

  She opens the door a crack to see two FBI agents. They are wet from the pouring rain.

  “Mrs. Oswald,” Agent Bardwell Odum says, “I would like to see Marina.”

  She peers at him through her heavy, black-framed glasses, the door barely open.

  “Mr. Odum, we’re awfully tired,” she says.

  “I just want to show her a photograph,” Odum replies.

  “She’s completely exhausted,” Marguerite pleads. “I am not calling my daughter-in-law to the door. As a matter of fact, she’s taking a bath.”

  Marina isn’t really in the bathtub. Marguerite will say anything right now to get rid of the FBI men.

  “Mrs. Oswald,” Odum says, “let me ask you a question then.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Odum holds up his hand to the crack in the door. Cupped in his palm is a glossy black-and-white photograph, its corners carefully trimmed with a pair of shears. It’s the image of an unknown individual, originally thought to be Oswald, leaving the Soviet embassy in Mexico City in early October 1963. Only the head and shoulders of the man are visible in the photo. The FBI knows that it’s not Oswald, but they wonder if it could be an accomplice.