Reclaiming History

by Vincent Bugliosi

Dallas detectives Guy Rose, H. M. Moore, and J. P. Adamcik arrive at the Marsala Place Apartments, where Ruby lives, to search his unit, but the search warrant has an apartment number on it other than number 207, Ruby’s apartment, and the manager won’t open the door to 207 until after Rose calls Joe B. Brown Jr., the Oak Cliff judge who had the original warrant, and Brown comes out to correct the error. The detectives examine everything in the apartment, find nothing of evidentiary value, and leave Ruby’s apartment around 2:00 p.m. without taking anything with them.1449

  1:16 p.m.

  Parkland’s assistant administrator, Peter Geilich, dashes up the stairs to the second-floor operating room to get more news for the press he has corralled into the hospital’s makeshift pressroom. As he gets there, Dr. Shires and the other members of the surgery team are coming out the door and tell him the news. Geilich sees Dr. Malcolm Perry among the group and can’t help thinking that Perry has certainly been in the thick of things over the last few days. Geilich grabs Dr. Shires by the arm.

  “The press wants to talk to you,” he says. “We have promised them that you would make a statement as soon as you came out of surgery.”

  Dr. Shires looks down and sees that he is covered in blood. He slips into the doctors’ locker room and puts on a clean lab coat. Then, he and Mr. Geilich make their way down to the classroom-turned-pressroom to face the live television cameras.1450

  “Is he alive, Doctor?” a voice asks from the battery of reporters and cameramen crowding around.

  Dr. Shires shakes his head, “No, he has died.”

  “Let Dr. Shires make his statement, please,” hospital administrator Steve Landregan pleads.

  “When did he die, Doctor?”

  “He died at 1:07 p.m.,” Dr. Shires replies, “of his gunshot wounds he had received.”

  Shires fields dozens of questions regarding Oswald’s final moments, his condition when he arrived at the hospital, the damage caused by the bullet, and the names of the other doctors in attendance during surgery.

  “Did you first inform his relatives of the death before you came here?” one reporter asks.

  “No, I came right here from the operating room,” Shires tells him.1451

  In the volunteer office down the hall, Secret Service agent John Howlett picks up the telephone and listens intently as Robert Oswald looks on. After thirty seconds or so, Howlett says, “Would you repeat that?”

  His tone of voice fills Robert with dread.

  Howlett hangs up and starts around the desk toward him.

  “Robert,” he says, “I’m sorry, but he’s dead.”

  Robert slumps in his chair, crushed by the intolerable weight of the news. His hand rises to his face, but it can’t cover the sobs that follow.1452

  Agent Howlett is trying to locate the other Oswalds by telephone through the Dallas police radio system when Geilich comes in and asks Robert whether he wants to talk to the press.

  “No, no, not at this time,” Robert sobs. “Can I see my brother?”

  Geilich calls Jack Price, the county hospital administrator, to see if he can arrange for Robert to see his brother’s body.

  “Most certainly,” Price tells Geilich, “let them have whatever we give any other patient’s family.”

  Geilich checks with the operating room supervisor, Audrey Bell, who says it’s not a good idea to bring Robert up to the operating room, which is a mess. The body, she says, will be taken to the morgue within ten or fifteen minutes. Geilich hangs up the phone.

  “It’ll be a few minutes, Mr. Oswald,” Geilich tells him. “The hospital chaplain is in the next room. Would you like to see him?”

  Robert nods. Geilich leaves for a moment and returns with one Chaplain Pepper. He and Robert speak quietly for a moment, then pray together.1453

  The office door opens and Secret Service inspector Thomas Kelley barges in with several other agents. Kelley looks at Robert’s tear-stained face.

  “Well, what do you expect?” Kelley says. “Violence breeds violence.”

  The coldness of his remark cuts to the bone.

  “Inspector,” Robert replies, “does that justify anything?”

  Kelley leaves the room without answering.1454

  1:20 p.m.

  En route with the Secret Service to the farm of Robert Oswald’s in-laws, Marguerite mentions that Marina’s two little babies are all wet, that there are no clean diapers for them, that she and Marina have no change of clothing for themselves, and so forth. Marguerite insists that they turn the car around and go by Ruth Paine’s house to pick up what they need. Since the Secret Service learned there were many reporters and people at the Paine residence, they stop at the home of the Irving chief of police. Outside the chief’s home now, Marguerite waits in the car with Marina’s children and Secret Service agent Mike Howard. Marina is inside with Agent Kunkel and Peter Gregory, making arrangements on the phone with Ruth Paine to have some clothes and diapers picked up and brought over from Ruth’s house nearby.1455 (Irving police are already at Mrs. Paine’s home to ferry the items from her house to the police chief’s house at the time Marina called.)1456

  The Secret Service men hid the fact that Lee had been shot until they arrived at the police chief’s house several minutes ago. They realized then that the chief’s wife was sure to have the television on and that the Oswalds would find out soon enough. When the car rolled to a stop in front of the house, Agent Howard turned around and bluntly told Marguerite, “Your son has been shot.”

  “How badly?” Marguerite asked, stunned.

  “In the shoulder,” the agent told her.

  Now, the radio on the front dash crackles to life. Agent Howard picks up the microphone. “Go ahead,” he says. Marguerite can’t quite make out what is being said.

  The agent mashes the radio microphone button. “Do not repeat. Do not repeat.”

  Marguerite can tell that something has happened.

  “My son is gone, isn’t he?” she asks.

  Howard doesn’t answer.

  “Answer me!” Marguerite demands. “I want to know. If my son is gone, I want to meditate.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Oswald,” Agent Howard tells her, “your son has just expired.”

  Howard can’t keep Marguerite from getting out and going into the chief’s house.

  “Marina,” she cries out, “our boy is gone.”

  Marina already knows. Peter Gregory had told her moments before.1457

  The two women weep as the agents watch replays of the shooting on the television, which has been turned around so the women can’t see it. The chief’s wife brings the women coffee as they sit on the sofa.

  “I want to see Lee,” Marguerite insists.

  Marina joins in, “Me, too, me want to see Lee.”

  The chief and Peter Gregory both tell her, “It would be better to wait until he is at the funeral home and ready to view.”

  “No,” Marguerite persists, “I want to see Lee now.”

  Marina is equally stubborn, but the agents have real concerns for their safety. To pacify them, Agents Howard and Kunkel take them back to the car and start for the hospital, all the while trying to convince them to turn back.

  “Mrs. Oswald,” Mike Howard says as he drives, “for security reasons it would be much better if you would wait until later on to see Lee, because this is a big thing.”

  “For security reasons,” Marguerite retorts, “I want you to know that I am an American citizen, and even though I am poor I have as much right as any other human being. Mrs. Kennedy was escorted to the hospital to see her husband. And I insist on being escorted and given enough security so that I may see my son too.”

  Agent Howard doesn’t bother to argue with her anymore.

  “All right, we’ll take you to the hospital,” he says. “But I want you to know that when we get there we will not be able to protect you. Our security measures end right there. The police will be in charge of your protection. We cannot protect you.”

  “Th
at’s fine,” Marguerite replies. “If I’m to die, I will die that way. But I am going to see my son.”

  Gregory turns and glares at Marguerite sitting in the backseat.

  “Mrs. Oswald, you are being so selfish,” he snaps. “You are endangering this girl’s life, and the life of these two children.”

  Marguerite is appalled that he would speak to her, a mother who has just lost a son, in that tone. It also ruffles her feathers that he is thinking of Marina’s well-being, and not hers. She sees Mr. Gregory as another “Russian” sticking up for her Russian daughter-in-law, and it bothers her. “These Russian people are always considering this Russian girl,” she thinks. “What about me?”

  “Mr. Gregory, I am not talking for my daughter-in-law,” she finally says. “She can do what she wants. I am saying, I want to see my son.”

  “I, too, want to see Lee,” Marina says, somewhat diffusing the tension in the car.1458

  Inside the rotunda, cameras rove over the statue of Abraham Lincoln as television commentator Edward P. Morgan puts into words what millions of Americans are feeling as they watch Jack Kennedy’s family pay their last respects: “It is not the great solemn grandeur but the little human things that are almost too hard to bear…”

  Suddenly, the network abruptly cuts into the flow of images with a bulletin: FLASH…LEE HARVEY OSWALD IS DEAD.

  Morgan comments to his colleague, Howard K. Smith, “You keep thinking, Howard, that this is a dream from which you will awake—but you won’t.”1459

  1:29 p.m.

  The third-floor hallway at Dallas police headquarters has been packed with reporters for nearly two hours, awaiting a statement from Chief Curry. Unlike the previous two days, the corridor leading to the administrative offices is blocked by three uniformed police officers standing shoulder to shoulder.

  When Chief Curry finally emerges from his office, he passes through the crowd without a word. The look on his face says everything. The press follows him down to the assembly room, where Curry takes a position at the front of the room. There is a scramble and a slight delay as cameramen and television crews get their equipment set up. Curry stands waiting, the very picture of dejection.

  When the press is ready, Curry steps to the battery of microphones assembled before him.

  “My statement will be very brief,” he says. “Oswald expired at 1:07 p.m.”

  “He died?” one addled reporter in the back of the room asks.

  “He died,” Curry repeats, “at 1:07 p.m. We have arrested the man. The man will be charged with murder.”

  Curry then identifies the man as Jack Rubenstein and tells the media he goes by the name of Jack Ruby.

  When the press start asking questions about Ruby, Curry responds firmly, “I have no other statements to make at this time,” and promptly leaves the room.1460

  Seth Kantor, a Scripps-Howard reporter in the assembly room, later writes, from his tape-recorded impression of what has transpired, “The boner of the Dallas Police Department [in failing to protect Oswald] would rank now with the building of the Maginot Line by the French to keep the Germans from marching into their country during World War II, when the Germans merely went around the thing. Remember the picture of the Frenchmen crying in the streets of Paris then? Only the tears were missing from the tragedy on Curry’s face.”1461

  “Up until Oswald was shot,” Dallas police sergeant Gerald L. Hill said, “we were smelling like a rose. Within a short period of time, street cops, sergeants, detectives, patrolmen, and motorcycle officers had caught the man who had killed the President of the United States, had lost an officer in the process, and had managed to do so without the FBI, Secret Service, or any of the other glory boys. Nobody could have faulted us for anything at that point.”1462

  1:58 p.m.

  The metal door clangs open as a uniformed jail guard steps into the narrow corridor of the fifth-floor maximum-security block where FBI agent C. Ray Hall is interviewing Jack Ruby. “There’s an attorney downstairs who wants to talk with Mr. Ruby whenever he’s available,” the jailer says.

  “He’s available right now,” Hall says, then turns back to face Ruby. “Jack, why don’t you go down and talk with him and we’ll continue this when you get back.”

  The police give Ruby his clothes back and he gets dressed.

  With Agent Hall and Detectives McMillon and Clardy in tow, Ruby is led down to the fourth-floor jail office and into a room where he confers privately with attorney Tom Howard, an old acquaintance who had represented him in the past. Their meeting lasts four minutes.1463

  When Ruby comes out, Detective McMillon asks Dr. Fred Bieberdorf, who had returned from Parkland Hospital, to take a look at Ruby to see if he had any complaints or injuries as a result of the scuffle in the basement garage.

  “I’m okay,” Ruby says, taking off his suit coat. He shows Dr. Bieberdorf a few bruises on his right arm and wrist and assures him that they aren’t bothering him.

  “I have a great deal of admiration for the Dallas police,” Ruby says. “They only did what they had to do. They didn’t hurt me more than was necessary, no more than what I would expect. They were just doing their job and doing it very well.”

  In a few minutes, the doctor finishes the examination and Ruby is returned to his fifth-floor cell, where he is again stripped to his shorts, and FBI agent Hall resumes his questioning.1464

  2:11 p.m. (3:11 p.m. EST)

  Less than an hour after the eulogies ended in the rotunda of the Capitol on Sunday afternoon, the District of Columbia police reported that a serious problem was developing as people surged toward the Capitol building. The original plan called for closing the rotunda to the public at nine Sunday evening, but no one dreamed there would be such an incredible multitude of people who would show up for the opportunity to pay their final respects to the president, each allowed a maximum of thirty seconds of meditation at the president’s casket. The decision is ultimately made to keep the rotunda open all night to accommodate the crowds.1465*

  For the millions watching television at home, both in America and around the world via satellite, there is little relief from the images of people streaming into the rotunda. As has been the situation with all three networks since the assassination, there are no breaks for commercials or indeed for any of television’s routine news, weather, or sports reports. To relieve the monotony there is little but endless replays of earlier events, although by now many viewers have seen the clips several times. With the constant regressions and recyclings of black-and-white footage, time seems to loop back on itself, becoming both fluid and petrified. Saturday afternoon exists in the same frame with Friday morning and Sunday evening. When time does advance, it does so in tiny, almost imperceptible increments. Early this morning the cameras caught a glimpse of the president’s mother, Rose Kennedy, emerging from a church in Hyannis Port. At half past three in the afternoon she was briefly seen again, this time with her daughter Eunice Shriver and son Ted as they left Hyannis Port for Washington and tomorrow’s funeral. An hour later the cameras’ view shifted to Dulles International Airport to cover the arrival of France’s head of state, General Charles de Gaulle, where he was met by Secretary of State Dean Rusk and a crew of State Department officers who will be on hand all evening to receive an unprecedented inflow of dignitaries—King Baudouin of Belgium, Chancellor Erhard of West Germany, Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, President Eamon De Valera of Ireland, and an English delegation including Prince Philip, Sir Alec and Lady Douglas-Home, the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, and Harold Wilson and Jo Grimond, heads of the British Labour and Liberal parties.1466

  Nearly a hundred nations have sent representatives—usually several—to form the largest assembly of ruling statesmen ever gathered in the United States, probably anywhere, for any event. Even the Soviet Union, which plans to broadcast the funeral in its entirety on state-run television, sends its first deputy premier, Anastas I. Mikoyan. The UN contingent includes Secretary-General U Thant, Dr
. Ralph Bunche, and seven others. The European Coal and Steel Community sends two, the European Economic Community and Euratom one each, while the Vatican is represented by the Most Reverend Egidio Vagnozzi, archbishop of Myra and an apostolic delegate. Thirty state governors, twenty Harvard professors, and three Roman Catholic prelates arrive and scatter to their various destinations without any notice from television at all.1467

  Among the televised arrivals there are a sprinkling of special programs. A memorial concert by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, quickly organized and conducted by Leonard Bernstein, is broadcast, as well as “Largo” and “Requiem” performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra.1468

  No one really knows how much the television coverage is costing the networks and local radio and television stations. The three networks normally earn a total of about fourteen million dollars each night alone from the sale of advertising during prime time, but when the revenues lost to hundreds of local stations is added in, the cost to the industry altogether could run to one hundred million dollars.1469

  Although the waning day had been almost cloudless, it was cold and windy, the temperature dipping to thirty-nine degrees at midnight, but neither the cold nor the prospect of the long ordeal ahead daunt very many. As late as eleven o’clock, the line of people, several abreast, is still nine miles long.1470 Everyone is there, toddlers as well as the elderly and infirm. Men and women on crutches and in wheelchairs wait as long as fourteen hours in the bitter cold. People accustomed to being driven to the Capitol entrance in limousines rub shoulders with those who have come by city bus, but they seem united in a single outpouring of grief. However controversial the young president had been to some just two days before, everyone is equally grieved at his passing and draws sustenance from being so tangibly a part of the vast multitude sharing their feelings. Here and there guitarists keep spirits up with folk songs, including the president’s favorite, “Won’t You Come Home, Bill Bailey?” There are spirituals like “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” and songs from the burgeoning civil rights movement like “We Shall Not Be Moved.” Some weep, some pray, almost all ask themselves and others, “Why?” The sheer senselessness of it all remains incomprehensible, indigestible, unbearable.1471 In a way, not really believable.