Parkland (Movie Tie-In Edition)

by Vincent Bugliosi

  “There’s the gun!” Jackson shouts.

  “Where?” the others ask.

  “It came from that window!” he says, pointing at the southeast corner window of the sixth floor.237

  WFAA-TV cameraman Malcolm Couch, hearing Jackson, catches a one-second glimpse of “about a foot of a rifle” barrel being brought back “into the window” on the “far right” of “the sixth or seventh floor.” He snatches his camera up from his lap and starts shooting the window, but there’s nothing more to be seen there, just stacks of cartons.

  The press car rounds the corner onto Elm, and Couch finds his camera’s viewfinder filled with people running in all directions. Dillard, Underwood, and Darnell jump out at the corner, leaving Couch and Jackson to wonder whether they should follow them or stay with the motorcade.238

  James Crawford had thought the first loud sound he heard to be a backfire of a car, but he quickly realized that the quality of the cars in the motorcade would not be the type to have backfires. Then he heard the second sound and began to look around, thinking someone was firing firecrackers. As the report from the third shot sounded, he looked up and saw a very quick, indistinct movement in the southeasternmost window on the sixth floor of the Book Depository Building. It was a profile, somewhat from the waist up, of something light colored, perhaps caused by the reflection of the sun, and what came to his mind automatically was that it was a person having moved out of the window. He also saw boxes stacked up behind the window. Crawford turned to his friend Mary Ann Mitchell, and pointing to the window, tells her, “If those were shots, they came from that window,” but she is unable to see anything. Neither Crawford nor Mitchell saw or was aware of the president being hit and they soon returned to their office to listen to the radio to learn what had taken place.239

  Aftermath Agent Bill Greer pulls the president’s car to the right as he charges the lead car, overtaking it in the cool darkness of the underpass. Chief Curry accelerates the lead car to catch them. As the two cars emerge into the sunlight on the west side of the underpass, Agent Clint Hill, spread over the trunk of the president’s car, looks into the backseat. The sight sickens him. The president’s head is covered in blood, a portion blasted away. Hill can see a chunk with hair on it lying on the seat next to him. There is blood everywhere. Hill looks forward to the jump seats and notices Governor Connally’s chest covered in blood. Only then does he realize that the governor, too, has been shot. But for Hill, the heart-wrenching scene is in the backseat, where Mrs. Kennedy is cradling the president’s head, whimpering over and over, “Jack, Jack, what have they done to you?”240

  Hill looks back to his left rear toward the lead car they are passing and yells as loud as he can, “To the hospital, to the hospital!”241

  The Secret Service follow-up car rockets out of the shadow of the underpass. From the right running board, Agent Paul Landis looks toward the president’s limousine just ahead. He can see Clint Hill lying across the back of the trunk. Hill looks back toward Landis, shakes his head back and forth, and gives a thumbs-down sign with his hand.242 In the follow-up car’s front seat, Agent Emory Roberts picks up the car radio.

  “Halfback to Lawson,” Roberts hollers, “the president has been hit. Get us to the nearest hospital!”

  The Secret Service men in the follow-up car turn back to the vice president’s car trailing a half block behind them and begin waving frantically, motioning the driver to close the gap. Roberts looks over at Agent William McIntyre, who’s clinging to the follow-up car’s left running board, the wind whistling through his hair.

  “They got him! They got him!” Roberts shouts. “You and Bennett take over Johnson as soon as we stop!”

  Roberts eyes Agent Hickey as he waves the AR-15 assault rifle aimlessly.

  “Be careful with that!” he warns.243

  Dallas police officers James M. Chaney and Douglas L. Jackson, the two motorcycle officers who had been flanking the right rear of the president’s limousine, catch up with Chief Curry’s lead car as they accelerate up the entrance ramp leading to Stemmons Freeway.244

  “What happened?” Curry calls out.

  “Shots have been fired,” Chaney shouts.

  “Has the president’s party been hit?” Curry asks.

  “I’m sure they have,” Chaney confirms, as Curry grabs the radio microphone.245

  “We’re going to the hospital!” Chief Curry shouts frantically into his radio transmitter. “Parkland Hospital.* Have them stand by. Get men on top of that there over—underpass. See what happened up there. Go up to the overpass. Have Parkland stand by.”246 But Officer J. W. Foster, who was on the overpass at the time of the shooting, is convinced the shots came from the Book Depository Building, and indeed, he sees some officers running toward the building. He immediately gets off the overpass and runs toward the building, where he will assist in blocking it off.247

  Officer Marrion L. Baker, who had been pretty sure the shots came from the roof of the Book Depository, wheels his motorcycle to a stop at the curb in front of the building. Quickly dismounting, Baker looks to his left and notices people lying on the grass in Dealey Plaza, others rushing to grab their children. A woman near him is screaming, “Oh they shot that man, they shot that man!”248 He turns and runs toward the front steps of the Depository, pushing his way through the spectators crowding the entranceway.249

  Roy Truly, the building superintendent, sees Baker coming and immediately understands that the young motorcycle officer is looking for a way to the roof. Truly follows him up the front steps, through the glass front doors, and into the vestibule, where he finds Baker asking people in the lobby where the stairs are.

  “I’m the building manager,” Truly tells him.

  “Where is the stairway?” Baker asks.

  “This way,” Truly says, pushing his way through another set of double-doors.

  Officer Baker is right on his heels and bumps into Truly’s back when they start to cut through a little swinging door at the call counter. A bolt has slid out of place and keeps the door from opening. Truly frantically fumbles with the latch, pushes the door wide, and plunges diagonally toward the freight elevators at the back of the building, Officer Baker in hot pursuit.250

  The chaos and confusion in the plaza is indescribable. The remainder of cars, motorcycles, and buses that make up the motorcade bunch up at the corner of Elm and Houston, then speed away toward the underpass. People are running every which way. Some who aren’t running lie on the ground in fear. A motorcycle policeman, seeing some people on the ground pointing to the railroad yards, lets his bike fall at the north curb of Elm just east of the Fort Worth road sign and dashes up the grassy slope toward the yards.251 Several police officers and a number of civilians run toward the area of the grassy knoll and retaining wall.252

  The three stock boys on the fifth floor of the Depository peer down at the confusion unfolding below them. With the last shot still ringing in his ears, James Jarman jumps up and moves toward Bonnie Ray Williams and Harold Norman.

  “That’s no backfire,” Jarman says. “Someone’s shooting at the president.”

  “No bullshit!” Bonnie Ray says rising to his feet, still in disbelief.253

  “I think it came from above us,” Norman says. “I’m sure of it.” Jarman and Williams agree.254

  The three stock boys run toward the west side of the building where Jarman yanks a window open so they can see what’s going on below. Jarman can see police officers and people running across the railroad tracks to the west of the building, the area behind the pergola, and the police “searching the boxcar yard and the passenger train.”255

  It doesn’t take long for Jarman to also see the plaster dust in Bonnie’s hair.

  “That shot probably did come from above us,” Jarman concedes.

  “I know it did,” Norman answers excitedly. “I could hear the action of the bolt and the cartridges hitting the floor.”256 Norman is very familiar with the sound of the bolt being pus
hed backward and forward because he has fired a bolt-action rifle before.257

  12:31 p.m.

  In the lead car, Sheriff Decker takes the radio microphone from Chief Curry and identifies himself to the police dispatcher.

  “Go ahead, Dallas One [Decker],” the dispatcher replies crisply. Decker blurts back instructions over the wail of police sirens.

  “Have Station Five [call sign for the sheriff’s radio dispatch room] move all men available out of my department,” Decker says, “back into the railroad yards there in an effort to try to determine just what and where it happened down there, and hold everything secure until the homicide and other investigators can get there.”

  “Ten-four, Dallas One. Station Five will be notified,” the dispatcher says.258

  By now the motorcade is flying at top speed* along Stemmons Freeway, all sirens screaming, past the stunned and puzzled onlookers scattered along both sides of the freeway to see the president. Curiously, the motorcade is still on its planned route, although now, when the cars turn off Stemmons onto Industrial Boulevard, they will pass their original destination, the Trade Mart, and go straight to Parkland Memorial.† In the backseat throughout the ride to the hospital, Jackie Kennedy cradles the president’s head in her lap, bending over him and saying, “Jack, Jack, Jack. Can you hear me? I love you Jack.” As she would later recall, “I kept holding the top of his head down, trying to keep his brains in…but I knew he was dead.”259

  At police headquarters, the dispatcher asks Chief Curry for any information he can give him.

  “Looks like the president’s been hit,” Curry shoots back. “Have Parkland stand by.”

  “Ten-four. Parkland has been notified.”260

  Bob Jackson doesn’t know what happened, or where the press car is going now, or why, only that it is following the rest of the motorcade toward Stemmons Freeway at a high speed. He is still holding his empty camera in his lap. The other one, which is loaded, is still strapped around his neck.261 It all happened so fast he didn’t get a single photograph. If he had only gotten a picture of the rifle barrel in the window, he undoubtedly would have won the Pulitzer Prize for the best news photograph of the year.*

  Journalist Merriman Smith is sitting beside the driver of the press pool car, which puts him in control of the car’s only radio telephone. He grabs it and calls the Dallas bureau of United Press International and tells the bureau operator, “Three shots were fired at President Kennedy’s motorcade in downtown Dallas.” He goes on talking as the press car shoots forward, trying to catch up with the rapidly vanishing motorcade. He has little to add to his one-liner, except to say that there are “no casualties” to report, but the longer he can keep the phone out of the hands of Associated Press reporter Jack Bell, sitting directly behind him in the center of the backseat, the bigger his “beat” of the rival wire service. On an event as big as this, getting the story even a couple of minutes ahead of the competition is a coup. Smith, stalling, asks the bureau operator to read back his dictation. Bell is beside himself, but Smith claims that nearby, overhead electric wires could have caused interference and he has to be sure his news bureau got the story. Bell, by now furious, tries to grab the phone. Smith, hanging onto it, crouches under the dash, while Bell flails at him. When Bell finally gets the phone, it goes dead in his hands.262

  Deputy Sheriff E. R. “Buddy” Walthers and dozens of sheriff deputies are sprinting across the lawn in Dealey Plaza. They were out on the sidewalk on Main Street, in front of the Dallas County Criminal Courts Building, when they heard what sounded like shots. Some run toward the Book Depository Building, but Walthers and others, like Deputy Sheriff Eugene Boone, dash across Houston Street and run toward the grassy knoll area, Walthers going over the stockade fence, Boone the concrete retaining wall, into the train yards and parking area to the rear to search for the gunman.263

  Roy Truly and Officer Baker arrive at the back of the Depository, having crossed the first-floor shipping area, and find that neither freight elevator is there. Truly looks up the shaft and sees that both elevators appear to be on the fifth floor. He punches a nearby button, trying to summon the west elevator. A bell rings, but nothing happens—the elevator gate has been left open on the fifth floor.

  “Turn loose the elevator!” he shouts up the shaft. He punches the button and hollers again. Nothing.

  “Let’s take the stairs!” Baker says, impatiently.

  “Okay,” Truly replies, and in a wink, spins and bolts up the northwest stairwell.264

  Baker draws his service pistol and races up behind him. Truly is already pounding up the flight of stairs leading to the third floor when Baker reaches the second-floor landing. Just as the officer leaves the stairway and steps out onto the second floor, his eyes sweep across the area to his right through the window of the second-floor door, and he catches a glimpse of a man inside, walking away from him. Baker opens the door and runs through the doorway, then sees the man more clearly through a little window in the door to a vestibule that leads to a lunchroom. The man, twenty feet away, continues to walk away from Baker inside the lunchroom. Baker opens the vestibule door and walks through the vestibule about five feet to the door frame of the lunchroom. Leveling his gun waist-high at the man, he commands, “Come here.”265

  The man turns and walks back to within three feet of the officer. He appears calm, expressionless.266

  Meanwhile, Roy Truly, who realizes that the officer is no longer following him, comes back down the stairs to the second floor, hears voices in the lunchroom, and steps into the vestibule behind Baker. He sees that the officer has drawn a gun on Lee Oswald, one of his employees. Oswald doesn’t seem to be excited, overly afraid, or anything. He might be a bit startled, like Truly might have been if someone had confronted him with a gun, but otherwise Oswald’s expression doesn’t change one bit.267

  “Do you know this man?” Baker asks, turning slightly to look at Truly over his left shoulder.

  “Yes,” the building superintendent says, “he works here.”268

  Officer Baker doesn’t waste another second. He doesn’t even bother to look back at Oswald. He brushes past Truly, makes his way back to the stairwell, and continues toward the roof, the building superintendent close behind him.269

  Thomas P. Alyea, a camera-reporter for WFAA-TV in Dallas, is stopped (with his partner, Ray John) at the traffic light located at Commerce and Houston streets listening to Dallas police radio as well as the WFAA commercial radio. He hears a voice (Chief Curry) over the police radio instructing officers to go to Parkland Hospital. He has no reason to associate this with President Kennedy, but twenty seconds or so later he hears newsman John Allen over the commercial radio announce that shots had been fired at the president. Alyea immediately grabs Ray John’s fully loaded camera and three extra cans of film, gets out of the car, and runs toward the intersection of Houston and Elm, filming the emerging, chaotic scene along the way. He notices several people pointing toward the upper floors of the Depository Building and runs inside along with a number of others who appear to be plainclothes detectives. Right behind him is Dallas Morning News reporter Kent Biffle. Biffle with his pencil and pad and Alyea with his camera would end up being the only two newsmen in the building during the period after the shooting. While Alyea starts filming, and Biffle recording on his notepad, the police search for the assassin on the various floors of the building.270

  Newsman Robert MacNeil, of later MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour fame, far down the motorcade in the first press bus, is jolted out of a half sleep by the sound of a shot, but he isn’t sure. Working on three and a half hours of shut-eye, a light breakfast, and then an unwise Bloody Mary on the flight to Dallas from Fort Worth, he has been finding it hard to stay awake. MacNeil was only recently made the number-two man on NBC’s White House detail covering the president’s Texas trip because Sandy Vanocur chose to accompany most of the cabinet on a mission to the Far East.

  From his seat in the bus he has only been catchin
g glimpses of the president’s limousine seven cars ahead, and when he hears two more very distinct explosions, he knows they are shots, and he shouts out, “Stop the bus! Stop the bus!”

  The driver opens the door as he turns the corner onto Elm Street, and MacNeil jumps out. People are down on the grass on both sides of the street, covering their children, and the air is filled with screaming. The sun is so bright it makes his eyes ache. Seeing some people run toward the far end of the grassy slope right next to the railroad overpass, MacNeil dashes after them—they may be chasing the sniper. But he really can’t imagine that the president was hit. It must be some right-wing nut making some kind of crazy demonstration.

  MacNeil climbs up on the bottom ledge of the concrete railroad bridge alongside many other spectators and looks over the top with them. He sees nothing of significance except police searching the area and realizes he had better find a telephone, fast.

  He runs back and into the first building he comes to, the Texas School Book Depository, running into a young man in shirtsleeves coming out whom he would later come to believe may have been Oswald. He asks for a phone. The young man points inside to a man talking on a phone near a pillar. “Better ask him,” he says.

  Inside, MacNeil asks another young man, who steers him to another phone in an office, four of its five lines occupied. Mercifully, he gets through to the radio news desk in New York, but, infuriatingly, is asked to wait. He screams into the phone until Jim Holton comes on the line. “This is MacNeil in Dallas. Someone shot at the president.”