*On the evening of April 10, 1963, retired Major General Edwin A. Walker, a prominent right-wing figure in Dallas, was shot at through the window of his suburban Dallas home. The bullet intended for him was deflected by the window frame and missed Walker’s head. (See later text.)
*Wade would later tell the Warren Commission, “You just had to fight your way down through the hall through the press…To get into homicide it was a strain to get the door open enough to get into the office” (5 H 218). One problem is that the third-floor hallway was only about 113 feet long and just 7 feet wide (CE 2175; 24 H 848; WR, p.197), and this space was further reduced by all the radio and TV equipment, such as cables and tripods, in the corridor. To compound the problem of all the members of the media and Dallas Police Department mingling or moving about in the narrow hallway, throughout the three days of Oswald’s detention the Dallas police were obligated to continue normal business in all five of its bureaus located along the same hallway. Therefore, many persons, such as witnesses and relatives of defendants, had occasion to visit the third floor on matters unrelated to the assassination. (WR, p.204)
*The total bill for the 255-pound Marsellus 710 coffin from Gawler’s and its accompanying 3,000-pound Wilbert Triune/copper-lined vault is $3,160 (ARRB MD 130, Embalmers Personal Remarks; ARRB MD 134, Funeral Arrangements for John Fitzgerald Kennedy, November 22, 1963, p.1).
*“We wanted to file on him [Oswald] before midnight,” Alexander would later recall. “It just would look better that we got the SOB on the same day he killed Kennedy” (Telephone interview of William Alexander by author on December 12, 2000).
*Alfred D. Hodge, the fifty-five-year-old owner of the Buckhorn Trading Post, was unable to identify the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle or .38 caliber Smith & Wesson revolver as being weapons he had sold (15 H 498, WCT, Alfred Douglas Hodge).
*Why Oswald wasn’t fingerprinted when he was booked into the jail just after midnight is not known.
*The only source for Oswald ostensibly being asleep is author Jim Bishop. However, Bishop does not say who his source was, but the implication is that it was Sergeant Warren. (Bishop, Day Kennedy Was Shot, p.651) Even if it were Warren, Warren may simply have assumed that a physically still Oswald was asleep and called out to awaken him.
*“Someone had neglected to pass the word that the original Lincoln catafalque had been located in the basement of the Capitol building,” and based on a book on the Lincoln funeral that included steel-point engravings, White House carpenters had quickly constructed the replica (Bishop, Day Kennedy Was Shot, pp.486, 548; Manchester, Death of a President, p.437).
*Earlier in the day, Jackie’s mother, Mrs. Janet Auchincloss, had told Maud Shaw, Caroline and John Jr.’s nanny, that she and Jackie felt that Miss Shaw “should be the one to break the news to the children, at least to Caroline,” who was five years old and would be six in a little less than a week. “Oh, no,” Shaw said, “please don’t ask me to do that.” “Please, Miss Shaw,” Mrs. Auchincloss said. “It is for the best. They trust you, and you know how to deal with them. I am asking you as a friend, please. It has to be you.” In writing about the matter later, Shaw does not pinpoint the time she did this, merely indicating it was after she had tucked the children into bed for the night. She says she went into Caroline’s room and started reading to her from one of her books. When Caroline asked her why she was crying, she told her she had “very sad news.” She says, “Then I told her what had happened. It was a dreadful time for us both.” Caroline eventually fell asleep, with Ms. Shaw still petting her. She said John Jr. still did not know and “was really too young [two, though he’d be three in a few days] to understand.” Later, she said, it was decided that Mrs. Robert Kennedy would tell him the best she could. (Shaw, White House Nannie, pp.14, 20–21)
*In fact, Marina Oswald doesn’t return as expected. Ruth Paine won’t see her again until March 9, 1964, the beginning of an estrangement that exists to this day.
*After viewing the copy in New York, Life publisher C. D. Jackson instructed Stolley to purchase all rights to the film, including television and movie rights, for $150,000 paid in six annual installments of $25,000. The agreement was consummated November 25 in the office of Zapruder’s lawyer, Sam Passman. Zapruder asked Stolley not to reveal the fact of the sale because it might intensify the already existing anti-Jewish sentiment in Dallas. Stolley felt that Passman earned his legal fee by suggesting that Zapruder donate the first $25,000 he received for the film to the widow and family of Officer Tippit. Zapruder readily agreed and his donation of $25,000 two days later earned public applause. Zapruder died of cancer in 1970, two years after he received his last payment. (Trask, National Nightmare, pp.146–150; Stolley, “What Happened Next…,” p.262; Wrone, Zapruder Film, p.36)
*This is apparently a reference to the claim of Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig, who told police Friday evening that he saw a man who resembled Oswald get into a station wagon driven by a Negro. Evidence, including a bus transfer and Oswald’s own admissions, proved Craig’s claim to be false. The fact that Curry is still unaware that Oswald took a bus and a cab to Oak Cliff after the shooting, something homicide investigators learned Friday night, demonstrates how little Curry knew about the details of the assassination investigation.
*Quite apart from his unfathomable grief, RFK did not want to attend, finding it difficult to accept that anyone, particularly LBJ, whom he disliked, would be taking his brother’s place, and he showed up five minutes late. As alluded to earlier, Johnson had a deep sense of illegitimacy following the assassination and “desperately needed affirmation.” Though the American public and Congress gave it to him, it was clear to him RFK had not, and in Bobby’s attitude, Johnson felt the rejection of his legitimacy he had feared from others. (Shesol, Mutual Contempt, p.119) “During all of that period,” LBJ would later say, “I think [Bobby] seriously considered whether he would let me be president, whether he should really take the position [that] the vice president didn’t automatically move in. I thought that was on his mind every time I saw him in the first few days. I think he was seriously considering what steps to take” (Tape-recorded interview of LBJ by William J. Jorden, LBJ Library, Austin, Texas; Shesol, Mutual Contempt, p.119).
†Bobby Kennedy agreed to stay on as LBJ’s attorney general, if for no other reason than he didn’t have anywhere else to go, at least in government. His friend Dean Markham warned RFK that to resign could “boomerang,” benefiting Johnson. “Public sentiment will be on his side,” Markham told RFK, “and the feeling will be that he tried to cooperate and work with you, but you didn’t want to.” (Shesol, Mutual Contempt, p.124) After serving as attorney general until September 2, 1964, when he resigned to run for and win the U.S. Senate seat from New York, on March 16, 1968, Kennedy announced his decision to run against Johnson for the Democratic nomination that year, but fifteen days later, on March 31, 1968, Johnson told a stunned nation on national television that he would not seek reelection.
*Not all Americans were accepting of the uninterrupted coverage. All three networks received calls, in the low hundreds, from viewers complaining about the cancellation of their favorite shows and asking when regular programming would be resumed.
†While the rest of the world, including the Soviet Union, eulogized the slain president, Communist China, in sharp contrast, stood virtually alone, Peking not only not offering condolences and eulogies, but defiling, even ridiculing him. The Official New China News Agency did not let up in its attacks on Kennedy and his successor. The Worker’s Daily went so far as to publish a cartoon of Kennedy sprawled face down in blood on the ground, his necktie bearing a dollar sign, with the caption “Kennedy Bites the Dust.” (United Press International, November 25, 1963, p.24)
*Depository employees James Jarman Jr., called “Junior” by friends (3 H 198, WCT James Jarman Jr.), and Harold Norman are believed to be the men referred to by Oswald. Both men ate lunch while on the first floor, but both said they did not have lunch with
Oswald (3 H 188–189, WCT Harold Norman; Transcript of On Trial, July 28, 1968, p.72 [never saw Oswald after around ten in the morning]; 3 H 201, WCT James Jarman Jr.).
*The fact that the card contains a photograph at all is evidence of forgery since a genuine Selective Service card, including the one Oswald had in his wallet at the time of his arrest in his own name, does not include a photograph of the card bearer (CE 801, 17 H 686).
*“Those people [press] were in our way every time we moved that man from my office to the jail and back,” Captain Fritz would later tell the Warren Commission. “We had to push him and pull him through the crowd” (15 H 150).
†But later in the day, Chief Curry does, indeed, identify Molina by name over TV. Indeed, Molina is mentioned over national television on Saturday afternoon as someone who has been a previous subject of U.S. Department of Justice scrutiny as a possible subversive, with the vague implication that, who knows, maybe he could have been involved in the assassination in some way. FBI Director Hoover would later say that there had never been a file on Molina, and he wasn’t even known to the FBI prior to November 22, 1963. Molina’s wife, Soledad, had dropped him off at police headquarters at City Hall at 9:45 Saturday morning, and between then and 5:00 p.m., when the police drove him home after they were satisfied he had no connection to Oswald or the assassination, he was grilled off and on throughout the day by Dallas police detectives as well as the FBI. Though never told he was under arrest, when he once, between interviews, got up to leave, a Dallas police officer blocked his exit and told him to go sit down. Upon returning home, he learned from a horrified Soledad that he had been all over the news, and cast in a suspicious light. When his Book Depository Building employer thereafter started getting crank calls and warnings from some customers that if the company didn’t let the “subversive” working for it go, they would stop doing business with the company, the employer finally let Molina go on December 30, after sixteen years of employment, telling him that automation had required his firing, but he knew better. (6 H 369–371, WCT Joe R. Molina; CE 1937, 23 H 732; CE 2036, 24 H 448–449)
*Actually, Oswald received an honorable discharge from the Marines following active duty, but later received an “undesirable” discharge from the Marine Corps Reserves because of his defection to the Soviet Union (WR, pp.386–387).
*Contrary to his statement, Curry certainly knew where he had learned that the FBI purportedly had prior contact with Oswald—Lieutenant Jack Revill. It was Revill’s memo regarding FBI agent James P. Hosty Jr.’s alleged remarks in the basement of City Hall that had put Curry on alert. And Curry also may have known from Captain Fritz about Hosty’s contact with Oswald’s wife, which came out the previous day in Fritz’s interrogation of Oswald.
*The three other young men in the lineup with Oswald, age twenty-four, were John Thurman Horne, seventeen; David Edmond Knapp, eighteen; and Daniel Gutierrez Lujan, twenty-six (7 H 200, WCT Walter Eugene Potts).
*Oswald’s warning was unnecessary. Truth is, the visitors’ telephones were not tape-recorded by the police (4 H 154, WCT Jesse E. Curry).
*Mrs. Paine attempted to reach attorney John Abt after six o’clock, as Oswald requested, but was unable to get an answer at either number. She testified that she could not recall if she conveyed the results of her efforts to Oswald during a subsequent conversation at 8:00 p.m. Saturday evening. Mrs. Paine made another attempt to reach Mr. Abt at home on Sunday morning, again without success. (3 H 88–89, WCT Ruth Hyde Paine)
*Michael Paine had told Fritz that he and Ruth had visited the Oswalds when they lived on Neely Street. Fritz later determined that the photographs were taken in the backyard at Neely. (CE 2003, 24 H 268)
*Abt testified that he told reporters who called him at his cabin in the Connecticut woods, where he had gone to spend the weekend, that “if I were requested to represent him, it would probably be difficult, if not impossible, for me to do so because of my commitments to other clients.” Abt said he was never contacted directly by Oswald or any member of his family. (10 H 116)
†Normally, except in rare instances, men from Sheriff Decker’s office handle the transfer of prisoners between the city and county jails. Decker testified that the city police handle “maybe one-tenth of maybe 1 percent” of the transfers (12 H 45).
*There actually was no person in protective custody as described in the story. Darwin Payne later stated that the report may have been a distorted reference to Howard Brennan, who had been assured by police that he and his home would be under surveillance by law enforcement. (Hlavach and Payne, Reporting the Kennedy Assassination, p.94)
*There are two jail offices in the police building, one in the basement next to the parking area, the other on the fourth floor.
*See photo section for photo of November 24, 1963, Dallas Times Herald found on the floor at the foot of Ruby’s bed after he shot Oswald. The paper is opened to page A3, the facing page, A2, being the “My Dear Caroline” letter. (CE 2426, 25 H 525; WR, p.355)
†A Dallas police detective, Leonard Mullenax, was shot to death the previous year in a hotel room while working undercover on a drug case. Though Ruby didn’t know Mullenax well, he was sufficiently depressed over it to contribute two hundred dollars to his widow, close his club, and take his strippers with him to the funeral. Because of lack of sufficient evidence, Mullenax’s alleged killer was never prosecuted. (Kaplan and Waltz, Trial of Jack Ruby, pp.66–67; Hall [C. Ray] Exhibit No. 2, 20 H 43)
*In accordance with postal regulations, the portion of Oswald’s application for his post office box in Dallas that listed names of persons other than the applicant who were entitled to receive mail was thrown away after Oswald closed his box on May 14, 1963 (7 H 527, WCT Harry D. Holmes; Cadigan Exhibit No. 13, 19 H 286). But the New Orleans post office did not comply with this regulation, and that portion of Oswald’s application for his New Orleans post office box still existed (7 H 527, WCT Harry D. Holmes).
*Humes completed the autopsy report between 3:00 and 4:00 a.m. EST (1 HSCA 330; ARRB Transcript of Proceedings, Deposition of Dr. James Joseph Humes, February 13, 1996, p.135).
*There is no evidence that the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in New York ever sent Oswald a letter signed by Alex Hidell.
†In fact, Oswald appeared on Stuckey’s television program once, a related radio program once, and was interviewed once by the press in relation to his court appearance.
*Later investigation revealed that Oswald’s encounter was probably with a young, crew-cut WFAA radio newsman named Pierce Allman, who ran into the Depository to telephone the radio station about the shooting. Allman reported encountering a young man on the front steps who pointed toward the telephone inside, although Allman told the Secret Service he couldn’t say for sure whether the man was Oswald or not (CD 354, p.2, Secret Service interview of Pierce Allman on January 29, 1964).
*But Holmes testified that Oswald made it clear that “he was still up in the building” when the shooting started and had “rushed downstairs to go out to see what was going on” (7 H 302, 306).
†Sorrels probably misspoke here since the Warren Commission investigation never came up with a change-of-address card, if there ever was one, for Oswald in New Orleans. Sorrels probably was referring to the portion of the application for Oswald’s post office box in New Orleans that listed “A. J. Hidell” as someone entitled to receive mail through the box.
*As can be seen in the sketch of the layout of the basement in the photo section of this book, looking out from the jail office to the garage basement ahead, there is a traffic lane that starts at the top of the Main Street entrance ramp on the left. The lane descends into the garage basement and continues past the jail office until it exits the basement by way of the Commerce Street ramp on the right. Most of the media are on the far side of the lane behind a railing that runs alongside the lane, their backs to the parking lot behind them, their eyes facing the jail office. To enable those reporters craning their necks behind others to ha
ve a better view, Assistant Chief Batchelor has given permission for them to stand in a semicircle extending from the end of the railing across the bottom of the Main Street ramp. However, on their own, many have also spilled over beyond the railing on the Commerce Street side and are on the jail side of the railing close to the armored truck. (15 H 119–120, 12, H 17–18, WCT Charles Batchelor; 12 H 101–102, WCT M. W. Stevenson; Batchelor Exhibit No. 5001, 19 H 116; 12 H 119, WCT Cecil E. Talbert; CE 2179, 24 H 851; Talbert Exhibit No. 5070, 21 H 668; 15 H 150, WCT John Will Fritz)
Reclaiming History Page 279
