Reclaiming History

by Vincent Bugliosi

  As the evening wears on, the ropes around the coffin are moved inward to allow more people to circle it at the same time. The flow of humanity widens into a river, seemingly endless. Edward P. Morgan describes the atmosphere as a “mood of mutinous, somber sadness.”1472

  2:25 p.m.

  Secret Service agent Mike Howard delivers the two Oswald women to a rear entrance at Parkland Hospital. All his attempts to dissuade them from going there have been stubbornly rejected by the voluble Marguerite. The agents escort the Oswald women and children into the freight entrance, where they are met by Nurse Doris Nelson and taken to the Minor Medicine and Surgery room near the emergency entrance.

  “I’ll have the doctor come in and talk to you,” she tells them, and leaves to inform the medical examiner, Dr. Earl F. Rose, that they are there.

  The hospital staff has already cleared and prepped the X-ray Department down the hall so that the family can view the body there. Under Dr. Rose’s supervision, Oswald’s body is placed on a hospital gurney and wheeled down from the second-floor operating room to the X-ray Department under heavy police guard. Nurse Nelson and several police officers help drape the body with sheets for viewing, while Dr. Rose heads down the hall to talk with the family.1473

  Two nurse’s aides attend to the babies while Marina and Marguerite, and their Secret Service escorts, follow Dr. Rose into the room near emergency.1474 For some reason, no one thinks to go to the volunteer office and get Robert Oswald, or even inform him that his mother and sister-in-law are in the hospital.

  “Now, you know,” Dr. Rose warns them, “that Texas law says that we have to have an autopsy on the body.”

  “Yes, I understand,” Marguerite says. She is sure that Marina, who was a pharmacist in the Soviet Union, understands as well.

  “I understand that you wish to see the body,” Rose continues. “Now, I will do whatever you ladies wish. However, I will say this. It will not be pleasant. All the blood has drained from him, and it would be much better if you would see him after he is fixed up.”

  “I am a nurse,” Marguerite says. “I have seen death before. I want to see my son now.”

  “I want to see Lee too,” Marina cries.

  With that, Dr. Rose leads them down the hall into the X-ray Department and closes the door. Lee Oswald’s body is lying under a sheet, his face visible. Several Dallas police officers are standing nearby.

  Marina approaches the body and, to Marguerite’s astonishment, pulls open his eyelids.

  “He cry,” Marina whimpers in broken English. “He eye wet.”

  “Yes,” Dr. Rose replies softly.1475

  Marina wants to see the wound that had killed him. She has to see it. She reaches out to lift the sheet away and someone grabs her arm and stops her. She leans down and kisses her husband. His flesh is cold. “In Russia,” she thinks to herself, “it wouldn’t have happened. They would have taken better care of him.”1476

  Marguerite doesn’t touch the body, but sees enough to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is her son. She leaves the room with a parting shot for the police officers.

  “I think some day you’ll hang your heads in shame,” she says. “I happen to know, and know some facts, that maybe my son is the unsung hero of this episode. And I, as his mother, intend to prove this if I can.”1477

  Down the hall, Robert Oswald waits in the purchasing agents’ office, where the Secret Service has moved him in anticipation of seeing Lee’s body.1478 Soon, Marguerite, who is quite upset, and Marina, who has a look of shock about her, are brought down to join Robert.1479 Marguerite, who believes Lee was an agent of the U.S. government, suggests to Robert that he should be buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington.

  “Oh, Mother, forget it,” he tells her.1480

  The Oswald children are brought in and reunited with Marina. Chaplain Pepper asks that the hospital staff bring something for Marina to drink as she has had nothing all day and is trying to nurse the baby. The staff complies and brings in a tray of coffee.

  Secret Service agents announce that they are leaving the case and that the Dallas police will be in charge of protecting the Oswald family. However, a few minutes later, after receiving orders to stay with the Oswalds until further notice, the agents tell them that they will continue to provide protection services.1481

  Marguerite asks to speak to Chaplain Pepper in private. They adjourn to a side room and she tells him that she believes her son was an agent of the U.S. government and wants to have him buried in Arlington Cemetery.

  “I would like you to talk to my son Robert,” she says. “He does not listen to me, never has, ever since he joined the Marines. I don’t know how the public will take the news that the FBI helped a Marxist, but I think my son should be buried in Arlington. Will you talk to Robert about it?” Marguerite rambles on in some detail about it, although she never really explains why she thinks Lee is an agent. She tells Pepper that financially she is in very poor straits and that she wants him to speak to Robert about having Lee buried in the national cemetery.1482

  2:45 p.m.

  Meanwhile, Mr. Geilich, Parkland’s assistant administrator, is at the morgue entrance trying to get permission for Robert to view his brother’s body. Rebuffed by the police, Geilich tells the Secret Service agents, who insist that Geilich return to the morgue and ask the medical examiner directly. “Under no circumstances can anyone else view the body,” Dr. Rose tells him, after being called to the morgue entrance. “The legal requirements of family identification have been met and I’m not going to let anyone else in to view the body.”

  In fact, Dr. Rose has already begun taking a series of postmortem photographs of the corpse. Mr. Geilich returns and tells the Secret Service agents, who ask him to break the news to Robert since they would have to be with the family for the next several days and don’t want to increase tensions. Geilich is relieved to find Chaplain Pepper in an adjoining room already telling Robert the medical examiner’s decision. In a few minutes, Robert emerges and seems composed for the first time since hearing of his brother’s death.1483

  The Secret Service agents have two cars brought around to the freight entrance, but two-dozen photographers and reporters guessed right and are waiting for them.

  “Do you have any comments?” they shout at the family as the agents hustle them into the cars. “Do you have anything to say?”

  One of the photographers is nearly run over as the cars pull out at top speed.1484 Several reporters jump into two waiting taxicabs and try to catch up. They nearly do, even though the two Secret Service cars are traveling at high speed. The agents with Robert Oswald radio the Dallas police and ask for assistance. Within minutes, four Dallas police cars appear, roar up behind the taxicabs, and force them to the side of the road. The two Secret Service cars bearing the Oswalds quickly disappear out of sight.1485

  2:50 p.m.

  On the fifth floor of Dallas police headquarters, following a meeting with attorney Tom Howard, FBI agent C. Ray Hall and Jack Ruby once again face each other across a table set up in the maximum-security cell block.

  “Tell me about this morning, Jack,” Hall says. “What did you do?”

  “I left my apartment at about ten o’clock,” Ruby replies, “and drove to the Western Union office at the corner of Main Street and the North Central Expressway. Before I left home, I put my revolver, a .38 caliber Colt, in my right coat pocket. After parking my car, I went into the Western Union office and sent a twenty-five-dollar money order to one of my employees, Karen Bennett. She had requested it. Sometime after sending the telegram, I entered the basement of City Hall.”

  “From which side?” Hall asks.

  “From the Main Street side,” Ruby replies.

  “Did you use a press badge?” Hall asks.

  “No,” Ruby says.

  “Did you help bring in a camera or press equipment?”

  “No,” Ruby says again. “I really don’t want to say exactly how I got in, what time
, or anything like that, but I will say that no one helped me in any way to get into the building.”1486

  “Then what happened?” Hall asks.

  “When Oswald was brought out through the door,” Ruby says, “I pulled my revolver and shot him. Believe me, I didn’t plan to shoot him when I went into the basement.”1487

  “Then why did you bring your revolver with you?” Hall asks.

  Ruby refuses to say.1488

  “Did you talk to anyone about shooting Oswald?”

  “No, I didn’t,” Ruby answers.

  “Did you make any telephone calls to anyone about it?” Hall persists.

  “No.”

  “Did you tell anyone directly or indirectly that you intended to shoot Oswald?” Hall asks.

  “No,” Ruby says again, “I made no plans to shoot Oswald. If he had confessed to shooting the president, I probably would never have even shot him.”

  “Why is that?” Hall asks.

  “Because I think he would have been convicted in court,” Ruby says, “but since he hadn’t confessed, I was afraid he might be turned loose.”

  After a moment, Ruby says, “You know, hundreds of people probably had thought about doing what I did, but I knew that no one would do anything about it. Although, I must say, after I shot him, I wondered if I’d been a sucker.”

  “You acted alone then?” Hall asks.

  “I was not involved in any conspiracy with anyone,” Ruby replies. “No one asked me or suggested to me that I shoot Oswald.”

  “It was simply a compulsive act?” Hall asks.

  “That’s right,” Ruby says.1489

  3:15 p.m.

  Amid a crush of reporters, Jack Ruby is escorted by detectives through the third-floor corridor to the Homicide and Robbery Bureau in a scene eerily reminiscent of those played out by Oswald over the past two days.1490

  Captain Fritz, Secret Service agent-in-charge Forrest Sorrels, and Judge Pierce McBride await Ruby in Fritz’s office. McBride reads a complaint signed by Captain Fritz to Ruby advising him that he is charged with shooting and killing Lee Harvey Oswald with “malice aforethought.” A capital offense, no bond is set. Ruby is to remain a prisoner.1491

  As Judge McBride leaves the room, Captain Fritz tells Ruby he would like to ask him some questions.

  “I don’t want to talk to you,” Ruby answers. “I want to talk to my lawyers.”

  “Do you have an attorney?” Fritz asks.

  Ruby says that he might get Tom Howard, Fred Bruner, Stanley Kaufman, Jim Arnton, or C. A. Droby to represent him1492 and that he’s already been advised by Mr. Howard.1493 Captain Fritz asks a couple of questions about Ruby’s legal name change and the prisoner begins to relax.

  “If you’ll level with me,” Ruby tells him, “and you won’t make me look like a fool in front of my lawyers, I’ll talk to you.”1494

  In answers to Fritz’s questions, Ruby says he bought his Colt revolver at Ray’s Hardware and Sporting Goods store in Dallas, and that his roommate was George Senator. When the subject gets to Oswald, Ruby calls him a “Red.”

  “Do you think the Communists were behind the assassination?” Fritz asks.

  “No, I think Oswald was alone in what he did,” Ruby replies.

  “How did you know who to shoot?” Fritz asks.

  “I saw Oswald in the show-up room Friday night,” Ruby tells him. “I knew who I was going for.” Then Fritz asks Ruby point-blank, “Why did you shoot him?”

  “I was all tore up over the president’s killing,” he says. “I built up a grief, and I just felt terribly sorry for Mrs. Kennedy and I didn’t want to see her have to come back to Dallas for a trial.”1495

  The answers are coming quicker now. Secret Service agent Sorrels notices that Ruby is considerably more composed than he was when Sorrels questioned him shortly after the shooting.

  “How did you get down in the basement?” Fritz asks.

  “I came down the Main Street ramp, from outside,” Ruby answers.

  “No, you couldn’t have come down that ramp,” Fritz argues, “because there was an officer at the top and an officer at the bottom,* so you couldn’t have come down that ramp.”

  Ruby senses a trap of some kind.

  “I am not going to talk to you any more,” he says. “I’m not going to get into trouble.”1496†

  Ruby doesn’t say any more about how he got into the basement, but he does continue to talk to Captain Fritz, covering much of the same ground he did in previous interviews with the Secret Service and FBI agents. Ruby reiterates that the shooting of Oswald was due to a buildup of grief; that Saturday night he had driven around and that people were in nightclubs laughing and no one seemed to be in mourning; that he saw eulogies for the president on television and saw his brother Bobby Kennedy; that he had read about a letter that someone had written to “Little Caroline”; and that all of this had created a moment of insanity.

  Ruby tells Fritz that he has a fondness for the police department, that he knows the Dallas Police Department is wonderful and that his heart is with them and that he had hopes that if ever there was an opportunity for participation in a police battle that he could be part of it with them. At one point he looks at Captain Fritz and says, “I don’t want you to hate me.”1497

  For the most part, Ruby is cooperative. Some of Fritz’s questions, however, are either met by a quick “I will not answer that,” or ignored all together. When Fritz asks him when he first decided to kill Oswald, Ruby simply talks about something else.1498

  It doesn’t take long for the interrogators to figure out that Jack Ruby is a colorful character. Agent Sorrels later wrote that at one time during the interrogation, Ruby asked Fritz, “I would make a good actor, wouldn’t I?”1499

  4:00 p.m.

  Homicide detectives escort Jack Ruby past reporters and back to the jail elevator, where he is returned to his fifth-floor jail cell to face additional questioning from FBI agent C. Ray Hall.1500 A few minutes later, Captain Fritz steps through the homicide office door and faces the press.

  “Captain, is there any doubt in your mind that Oswald was the man who killed President Kennedy?” a reporter asks.

  “No, sir,” Fritz says, “there is no doubt in my mind about Oswald being the man. Of course, we’ll continue to investigate and gather more and more evidence, but there is no question about it.”

  “Is the case closed or not, then, Captain?”

  “The case is cleared,” Fritz says, “but we’ll be anxious to find out more about it—all we can find out.”

  “Captain, was anyone else connected with Oswald in the matter?”

  “Well, now, not that I know of,” Fritz replies.

  “Did Jack Ruby say why [he shot Oswald], Captain?”

  “Some of those things I can’t answer for you,” Fritz says. “And he, of course, has talked to his attorney, and there are certain things he didn’t want to tell me. He did tell me that he had built up a grief. Those are his words, ‘built up a grief.’”

  “Captain, what excuse [is there for] letting him get that close?” someone finally asks.

  “What excuse did he use?” Fritz asks back.

  “No, what excuse do you all have, you know, that he got that close?”

  Fritz can’t believe the nerve of some people.

  “I don’t have an excuse,” he snaps.1501

  4:30 p.m.

  FBI agent C. Ray Hall resumes his questioning of Ruby in Ruby’s fifth-floor jail cell. Agent Hall asks Ruby to relate the events leading up to his shooting of Oswald.

  “After I heard that the president had been assassinated,” Ruby says, “I put signs in both my clubs, saying that they’d be closed until after the funeral on Monday. I didn’t think anyone would be dancing until then.” But as it turned out, they did, Ruby notes, clearly at a loss to understand how.

  “That night,” Ruby continues, “I went to the synagogue and heard Rabbi Silverman tell the assembly there that the assassination should mak
e them better people. After services, I went to a delicatessen and had some sandwiches made up to take over to the Dallas Police Department. I called homicide detective Richard Sims and told him I knew how hard the police were working and that I wanted to bring some sandwiches down, but Sims said they had already eaten. So, I called radio station KLIF to see if they wanted them but I couldn’t raise anyone on the phone.”

  Ruby explains that he went to the police station to see if he could get the control booth phone number from one of the KLIF reporters there. Ruby says he was in the hall when Oswald was taken to the assembly room late that night. He remembers that Oswald mumbled something as he went past him. After the midnight press conference, Ruby says he returned home, where he watched coverage of the assassination on television and read the newspapers.

  Ruby tells Hall that on Saturday morning, November 23, he went down to Dealey Plaza and talked with Dallas police officer Jim Chaney, who was on duty there. Chaney had been one of the motorcycle escorts riding alongside the presidential limousine when the shots were fired.

  “Then, what did you do?” Hall asks.

  “I went home, watched television, and cried a great deal,” Ruby tells him.

  “Why?” Agent Hall asks.

  “Because President Kennedy was my idol,” Ruby says, his voice straining, “and it grieved me that this nut Oswald had done such a thing that brought so much grief to the people of Dallas and people all over the world.”

  Ruby says that on Saturday night he called Tom O’Grady, a friend and former member of the Dallas Police Department, and talked with him about the president’s death.

  “Did you talk about shooting Oswald?” Hall asks.

  “No,” Ruby says, “such a thought hadn’t occurred to me at that time.”1502

  Agent Hall asks Ruby for a more detailed account of his activities, and the names of any other persons he has been in contact with during the past few days, but Ruby declines to do so.1503

  Ruby does say that many grievances built up inside him until he reached the point of insanity. He says he was upset over the advertisement placed by Bernard Weissman that appeared in the Dallas Morning News the day of the assassination.