Parkland (Movie Tie-In Edition)

by Vincent Bugliosi

  The Bethesda Naval Hospital morgue is stark and spotless. It was newly renovated just four months earlier. They enter an anteroom equipped with eight refrigerated lockers labeled “Remains.” To their right is a swinging-type double-door, with glass panels, that leads to the main room where the autopsies are performed. The tiled autopsy room is lined with equipment specialized for postmortem work: scales, a sterilizer, a washing machine, and a power saw. Situated near the center of the room are two eight-foot-long, stainless-steel autopsy tables, their tops perforated with hundreds of drain holes that feed into pipes set in the floor. Against one wall, on a two-step riser, is a small gallery section that contains a short tier of bleacher-style benches, enough for thirty to forty medical students and young doctors to observe autopsies being performed. This night, the students and young doctors are absent.744

  The casket team rolls the casket through the doors into the autopsy room and veers to the left, where they come face-to-face with Drs. Humes and Boswell and several other Bethesda personnel dressed in surgical garb, who direct the team to move the casket next to autopsy table number one.745 Major General Wehle orders his aide, Richard Lipsey, “not to leave the body for any reason,”746 as Lieutenant Sam Bird’s casket team takes up guard duty outside the two entrances to the autopsy room, with the assistance of a detachment of marines.747

  5:57 p.m.

  Detectives Stovall, Rose, and Adamcik march Michael and Ruth Paine and Marina Oswald and her two small children up to the third floor to Homicide and Robbery’s outer office. They are unaware that Lee Oswald sits a few feet away, behind the closed venetian blinds of Captain Fritz’s private office. It is near bedlam in the homicide office, full of the noise of incoming telephone calls and constant traffic. Within a few minutes, the detectives move them to the Forgery Bureau office next door, to get away from the congestion of homicide.

  After getting the Paines and Marina Oswald settled and calling for an interpreter, Detectives Stovall and Rose turn their attention to locating Wesley Frazier. If for no other reason than that he had driven Oswald to work that day and his present whereabouts are unknown, Frazier has become a suspect. Although they’d been told that Frazier was at Parkland Hospital visiting his ailing father, it takes the detectives nearly forty-five minutes to determine that he is actually at the Irving Professional Center, a medical facility. The detectives telephone the Irving Police Department and make arrangements for Frazier to be arrested.748

  6:16 p.m.

  In the fourth-floor crime lab, Lieutenant Carl Day examines the rifle carefully, looking for fingerprints that the gunman might have left behind. Captain Fritz walks in and tells Day that Marina Oswald has arrived* and is downstairs in the Forgery Bureau office.

  “I want her to look at the gun and see if she can identify it,” Fritz says. “But there’s an awful mob down there. I don’t want to bring her through that crowd. Can you bring the rifle down there?”

  “I’m still working with the prints,” Day replies, “but I think I can carry it down there without disturbing them.”

  In a minute, Day is ready and the two of them make their way downstairs. When they get to the third floor, Day hoists the rifle high over his head and wades into the throng of reporters, who shout questions, “Is that the rifle? What kind is it? Who made it?”

  Day says nothing as Fritz clears the way to the Forgery office. They step inside and close the door, shutting out the maddening noise. Marina Oswald is there, holding an infant daughter. Ruth and Michael Paine sit nearby with Detectives Senkel and Adamcik and Russian interpreter Ilya A. Mamantov.749

  Lieutenant Day shows Marina the rifle as Fritz asks through the interpreter whether this is the rifle her husband owns. Marina says it looks like it, they both have dark wood, but she can’t be sure. She only saw the stock and can’t remember if it had a telescopic sight. To her, all guns look the same.750

  As the two detectives prepare to take affidavits from Marina Oswald and the Paines, Captain Fritz and Lieutenant Day push back into the sea of reporters in the outer hall. Fritz heads back to his office, while Day, rifle again lofted over his head, slowly makes his way toward the elevators that will take him and the weapon back to the crime lab.

  At the corner of Commerce and Harwood, two detectives wait patiently for Piedmont bus number 50. Just a few minutes earlier, the bus transfer found in Oswald’s pocket was traced to the driver of that bus, Cecil McWatters. The detectives have orders to intercept the bus and bring the driver to City Hall. When it arrives as scheduled, McWatters is shocked to find that two potential passengers are, in fact, police. They tell him they want to ask him a few questions and escort the befuddled bus driver into police headquarters. Once inside, they show him the bus transfer found in Oswald’s pocket.

  “Do you know anything about this?” they ask.

  McWatters surely does. He’s absolutely positive that he issued the transfer, number 004459, on the Lakewood run about one o’clock that afternoon, give or take fifteen minutes. Each driver has a distinctive punch mark, registered with the company, and McWatters recognizes the crescent shape mark as one made by his hand punch. He even takes his hand punch out of his pocket and punches a sheet of paper to prove it. McWatters also remembers that he only gave out two transfers on that run, both at the same stop, the first to a lady and the second to a young man who got off right after her.751

  6:20 p.m.

  Captain Fritz enters the homicide office where Detective Jim Leavelle informs him that downstairs he’s got two eyewitnesses from a car lot near the Tippit shooting who are ready to view Oswald in a lineup.

  “Good,” Fritz tells him. “Have the bus driver take a look at him too.”

  Detectives Sims, Boyd, and Hall lead Oswald out of the office and wade into the madhouse of reporters in the outer corridor. As the door closes behind them, Fritz walks over to Jim Allen, a former assistant DA now in private practice, and Secret Service agent Forrest Sorrels. The agent tells Fritz that he has a witness he has talked to and that he would very much like for him to get a chance to see Oswald in a lineup.

  “That’ll be fine,” Fritz says.

  Sorrels turns to Secret Service agent William Patterson and asks him to track down Howard Brennan and bring him to City Hall.752

  6:30 p.m.

  The lights are dim in the back half of the basement detail room at Dallas police headquarters in anticipation of the second lineup police are about to conduct. Ted Callaway, the manager of Dootch Motors in Oak Cliff, one of his porters, Sam Guinyard, and bus driver Cecil McWatters wait nervously as police make the last-minute preparations. Detective Leavelle leans over toward Callaway and speaks in hushed tones.

  “When I show you these guys, be sure, take your time, see if you can make a positive identification,” Leavelle says. “We want to try to wrap him up real tight on killing this officer. We think he is the same one that shot the president. But if we can wrap him up tight on killing this officer, we have got him.”753 Callaway steps to the back of the detail room so he can view the lineup from a distance similar to the distance from which he had seen the gunman on Patton Street. When everything is ready, Detectives Sims, Boyd, and Hall march the shackled men onto the brightly lit stage—the same men, in the same order as the first lineup.754 As soon as Oswald comes out, Callaway recognizes him. No doubt about it. Detective Sims puts the men through the routine—turn left, face forward, then answer a few brief questions so the witnesses can hear them speak.755 Detective Leavelle walks over to Callaway, “Which one do you think it was?”

  “He’s the number 2 man,” Callaway says firmly.

  Sam Guinyard agrees. Number 2 is the man he saw run past him while he was waxing and polishing a station wagon.756

  Bus driver Cecil McWatters is less certain. There’s one man in the lineup, number 2 (Oswald), who is about the same height, weight, and complexion as the person who got on his bus, but he tells the police he cannot make a positive identification.757

  As the four m
en are led off stage, Detective Leavelle takes Ted Callaway and Sam Guinyard up to the crime lab on the fourth floor, where they both identify the light gray Eisenhower-style jacket found in the parking lot behind the Texaco station as the one the man they saw was wearing.758

  6:35 p.m. (7:35 p.m. EST)

  At the Bethesda Naval Hospital morgue, autopsy pathologists Drs. Humes and Boswell open the bronze casket and find the naked body of John F. Kennedy wrapped in a bloody sheet labeled “Parkland Hospital,” lying on a heavy-gauge clear plastic sheet, placed there to prevent the corpse from soiling the satin interior of the coffin. An additional wrapping, soaked in blood, envelops the president’s shattered head.759 Paul K. O’Connor and James Curtis Jenkins, student lab technicians in charge of the admission and discharge of morgue bodies, lift the body out of the casket and place it on the autopsy table, where the bloody wrappings are removed.760* In spite of his training, Dr. Humes is still shocked by the sight of the president’s body. His eyes are open, one lid hanging lower than the other. His mouth is also open, in sort of a grimace, his hands are knotted in fists, and there is a ghastly head wound. Still, the well-known facial features are intact and Dr. Humes can’t help but think that apart from the horrible head wound, John Kennedy, who is only a few years older than he is, looks perfectly normal. In fact, at a little over six feet and 170 pounds, Kennedy was “a remarkable human specimen,” he would later put it, who “looked as if he could have lived forever.”761 Humes shrugs off the moment of hypnotic shock and fascination, reminding himself there is a lot of work to do.

  Several of the nearly two-dozen people in attendance,† particularly the military officers in command of the naval hospital, retreat to the benches in the gallery as Drs. Humes and Boswell begin an initial examination of the body.762 In addition to the cutdowns (i.e., small incisions for the insertion of tubes) on the arms, ankles, and chest, Dr. Humes notes a tracheotomy incision in the throat. The body is then rolled briefly onto its side and Humes notes a bullet wound in the president’s right upper back. As they complete the initial examination, Admiral Burkley reminds the pathologists that the president’s brother and wife are waiting upstairs and that they should expedite the autopsy procedure.

  “They’ve captured the guy who did this, all we need is the bullet,” Burkley tells them.

  Drs. Humes and Boswell disagree. They feel a complete and thorough autopsy is needed. A discussion ensues, one that Burkley ultimately wins—for the moment.763

  Dr. Humes requests that all nonmedical personnel leave the autopsy room and retire to the adjacent anteroom so that X-rays and photographs of the body can be made.764 At Humes’s instruction, medical photographer John T. Stringer Jr. begins taking photographs of the body from a variety of angles in both color and black-and-white, being careful to bracket the exposures* of the large (four-by-five-inch) images.

  As soon as the photographs are complete, John H. Ebersole, assistant chief radiologist at Bethesda Naval Hospital, begins taking X-rays of the president’s skull, with help from X-ray technicians Jerrol F. Custer and Edward F. Reed. Unlike the autopsy photographs, which will not be developed until after the autopsy is completed, the X-rays, which see what the eye cannot, are developed in the hospital’s fourth-floor lab and returned to the morgue a quarter of an hour later for viewing.765

  6:40 p.m.

  Assistant Dallas DA Bill Alexander pushes through the crowd in the third-floor hallway of Dallas police headquarters.

  After completing the search of Oswald’s Beckley room, Alexander had returned to his office and, believing there was more than enough evidence to conclude that Oswald had murdered Officer Tippit, filled in the blanks on State of Texas Form No. 141, a form denominated an “AFFIDAVIT” but referred to by all in Texas as a criminal complaint. In clear hand printing, he charged that Oswald “did…voluntarily and with malice aforethought kill J. D. Tippitt [sic] by shooting him with a gun.” Gathering up some additional blank affidavits, Alexander beats a path over to police headquarters.

  Now, Alexander raps lightly on Captain Fritz’s private office door and steps in. Fritz is grilling Oswald as a few Dallas police officers stand against the wall, their eyes fixed on the homicide captain’s prey. “What struck me about Oswald,” Alexander, who did not take part in the questioning, says, “is that even under the circumstances he found himself in, he was in control of himself and acted like he was in control of the situation. It was almost as if everything he said had been pre-rehearsed by him. He was quite skillful in deflecting questions, often answering questions with other questions. He was very arrogant and defiant with Fritz. I would say his whole behavior was completely inappropriate to the situation. You ought not to be ugly to the man [Fritz] who has the option to prosecute you.” Alexander said that Fritz was very courteous with Oswald, as he always was with all defendants. “I was very pissed off at Oswald because of his having killed Kennedy and Tippit, but even if he was only in there for spitting on the sidewalk, I was so infuriated with him for his insolence to Fritz [someone, Alexander says, he had feelings about almost like those he had for his father], I felt like beating the s—out of him. Oswald didn’t know this. I kept my composure. But I didn’t like that little son of a bitch.”766

  Not too far into this latest round of questioning, Oswald suddenly says he doesn’t want to talk any further without first talking to a lawyer. “You can have an attorney anytime you like,” Fritz tells him.

  “I’d like Mr. [John] Abt, in New York, to represent me,” Oswald says. “He represented people who were charged with violating the Smith Act.* I don’t know him personally, but that is the lawyer I want. However, I don’t have any money to call him.”

  “That won’t be a problem,” Fritz replies. “Just call collect. We allow all prisoners to use the phone.”

  Fritz tells the two detectives present to be sure that Oswald has a chance to use the telephone.767†

  Alexander nods to Fritz that he wants to talk to him privately. The homicide captain instructs the Dallas detectives to take Oswald out to the little holding room off Fritz’s office, while Fritz and Alexander remain behind.

  “I’ve got the complaint for Oswald on shooting Officer Tippit,” Alexander says, knowing that the Dallas police have more than enough to file charges. Although he doesn’t need Fritz’s approval to file the complaint, he seeks his support. “I’m ready to go when you are.”‡

  Fritz nods in agreement. Indeed, the evidence is already substantial in the Tippit case. They tick it off to each other. They know Oswald took a bus to his room in Oak Cliff—they found the transfer he was issued. His landlady can testify that he came in about one o’clock, changed clothes, and left a couple of minutes later in a big hurry. He admits he picked up his pistol at the room. They have an eyewitness to the Tippit shooting, Mrs. Helen Markham, who identified Oswald in a lineup. Two other eyewitnesses—Ted Callaway and Sam Guinyard—who saw Oswald running from the scene also picked him out of a lineup. He resisted arrest at the Texas Theater, attempting to shoot the arresting officer. And the revolver he had in his possession at the time of his arrest is the same caliber as the one used to kill Officer Tippit.

  “All in all, that’s a lot of good evidence,” Fritz says.768 A call is put in immediately to have Justice of the Peace David Johnston come to police headquarters for the arraignment of Oswald on the Tippit murder charge.

  6:50 p.m.

  Across the hall from Captain Fritz’s office, Lieutenant T. P. Wells answers the telephone. The caller is Barbara Davis, an eyewitness in the Tippit murder case, who says her sister-in-law, Virginia Davis, found a .38 caliber shell in their yard after police left this afternoon. “Okay, we’ll be right out,” the lieutenant tells her. He hangs up and instructs Detectives C. N. Dhority and C. W. Brown to drive out to Oak Cliff and retrieve the shell.769

  Secret Service agent Forrest Sorrels informs Captain Fritz that eyewitness Howard Brennan has been located and is at police headquarters now and ready to view Oswald in a
lineup. “I wish he would have been here a little sooner,” Fritz tells Sorrels. “We just got through with a lineup. But we will get another one fixed up.”770 Fritz stops Detectives Brown and Dhority as they head out the door and instructs them to bring the Davis women back with them, get a statement, and arrange for them to also view Oswald in a lineup.771

  7:00 p.m. (8:00 p.m. EST)

  At Bethesda Naval Hospital, Humes and Boswell, followed by a flock of FBI, Secret Service, and navy personnel, retreat to a small alcove within the autopsy room and snap the newly developed X-rays of the president’s head up on a light box. Thirty or forty white specks can be seen scattered throughout the right hemisphere of the brain, like stars in a galaxy. These dustlike metallic particles mark the path of the missile as it passed through the right side of the skull. The largest fragment of metal, still much too small to represent any significant part of a whole bullet, lies behind the right frontal sinus. The next-largest fragment is embedded in the rear of the skull.772 Humes figures that he can probably retrieve the two larger fragments but is beginning to wonder if it might be a good idea to have an expert in wound ballistics present during the autopsy. He and Boswell confer briefly away from the group. Humes mentions the offer of assistance made by the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP) and suggests they take it. Boswell agrees and suggests they contact Lieutenant Colonel Pierre A. Finck, chief of the Wound Ballistics Pathology Branch of the AFIP, whom Boswell had worked with before.773 Boswell remembers him as sharp, hard-working, and a top-notch forensic pathologist.774 Humes is convinced and places a telephone call to Finck’s home, asking the pathologist to come to the Bethesda morgue at once.775