Parkland (Movie Tie-In Edition)

by Vincent Bugliosi

  In the morgue, the casket team, under the leadership of First Lieutenant Samuel R. Bird, conducts a small ceremony placing the American flag on the casket.1033 Finally, as a last sign of respect for the commander in chief, the Secret Service agents who have been present all night carry the casket out to the loading dock and toward the navy ambulance.1034 The marines who have been guarding the Bethesda morgue this night snap to attention and salute as the casket passes.1035 After the president’s body is secured in the ambulance, the Kennedy entourage emerges from the rear of the hospital. Mrs. Kennedy and the president’s brother Robert are helped into the rear of the ambulance. Jackie sits on a jump seat next to the coffin; Bobby crouches on the floor beside it. The others enter a bevy of limousines assembled near the loading dock.1036

  Before leaving, Admiral Burkley turns to autopsy pathologist Jim Humes.

  “I would like to have the [autopsy] report, if we could, by 6:00 p.m. Sunday [November 24] night,” he says.1037 Humes nods, in agreement.

  Before the three pathologists leave the morgue, they confer on how to handle the task. It’s obvious to them that a committee cannot write it. One person will have to take charge and the others can critique and refine the final language. Commander Humes volunteers to write the initial draft. They plan to meet again in Admiral Galloway’s office on Sunday morning (November 24) to finalize the autopsy report.1038

  In a few minutes, under very heavy security, the procession of cars makes its way at thirty miles an hour over the 9.5 miles toward the northwest gate of the White House.1039 An impromptu escort of hundreds of cars, driven by ordinary citizens, trails the procession as it slips silently through the streets of Washington in the early-morning darkness. Those in the official cars look out the windows and see ordinary men of every color on their way to work standing at attention as they pass, caps held over their hearts.1040

  At the White House, the six members of the casket team reassemble at the rear of the navy ambulance, which has pulled up close to the portico steps. They seem to be straining as they carry the casket into the White House foyer. Their commander, Lieutenant Bird, steps up quickly and slides his hands under the back of the heavy casket. A soldier in front of him whispers, “Good God, don’t let go.” They shuffle across the marble floor, past Marine honor guards, and into the East Room, where the casket is placed on a replica of the catafalque on which Abraham Lincoln’s coffin rested.* As soon as the pallbearers step back, a Roman Catholic priest moves toward the casket and instructs an altar boy to light the candles that surround the catafalque. The priest sprinkles the coffin with holy water, kneels, and quietly reads from Psalm 130: “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord; Lord, hear my voice!” At the end of the brief ceremony, the honor guards are inspected and posted at parade rest, near the casket.

  Air Force Brigadier General Godfrey McHugh and Secret Service agent Clint Hill stand momentarily alongside the casket in the hushed and cavernous East Room. It is so quiet they can hear each other breathe. An usher comes up to Agent Hill and informs him that Mrs. Kennedy, who had gone to her room, will come down shortly and would like the casket opened for a few minutes. The flag is removed from the coffin in anticipation of her arrival and the casket lid unsealed, though kept closed. In a moment, the First Lady appears, escorted by Bobby Kennedy. Several members of Kennedy’s inner circle are also present, bunched together at one end of the room. Jackie looks exhausted, still wearing her “strawberry dress” caked with the president’s dried blood. General McHugh orders the honor guards to leave the room. The men do a quick about-face and start to leave, when Mrs. Kennedy pleads, “No, they can stay.” The guards freeze in place, their backs to the coffin. As the First Lady steps to the side of the casket, the lid is opened. She stands gazing for a moment upon her husband’s face, then turns to Secret Service agent Clint Hill, the one who had sprung to her aid seconds after the shots, and asks for a pair of scissors. He gets them for her. She reaches in and snips a lock of the president’s hair. She then turns away, saying “It isn’t Jack.”

  When Jackie silently leaves the room, “the rest of us followed,” presidential aide Arthur Schlesinger would later recall. As Jackie, exhausted, mounts the stairway and makes her way for the night to her second-floor room,* the group of Kennedy intimates stand awkwardly outside the East Room, waiting for Bobby Kennedy to direct their next move. Bobby, his cheeks damp with tears, turns to them and asks them to come back in and take a look at the body. He wants to settle the issue of an open casket before he retires, as he had promised the First Lady he would do when they were standing together beside the catafalque. “Jackie wants it covered,” he tells them.

  RFK had not been able to bear looking at his brother at that time, but now, for the first time, he does. Of the seven who view the remains, including Secretary of State Robert McNamara, Schlesinger, and Nancy Tuckerman (Jackie’s social secretary), only two believe the president is presentable. The rest are appalled at the waxen figure.

  “Don’t do it,” Bill Walton, a family friend, pleads.

  “You’re right,” Bobby says. “Close it.”1041

  Bobby turns away and goes upstairs to the Lincoln bedroom with Charles Spalding, a close friend of both Kennedy brothers.

  “There’s a sleeping pill around somewhere,” Spalding says.

  “God, it’s so awful,” Bobby says, sinking onto the bed. “Everything was really beginning to run so well.” He is exhausted, but composed. Spalding finds a sleeping pill, hands it to him, and steps out of the room. As he closes the door, he hears Bobby break down.

  “Why, God?” he sobs.1042

  3:00 a.m.

  Alexander and his people have just concluded their search of Joe Molina’s home, and Molina had been cooperative throughout. “We really searched his home, up and down, not finishing until around three in the morning,” Alexander would later recall. “We found nothing to connect him to Oswald or the assassination.” But after a conference in Molina’s kitchen, the searchers agree that they should interrogate Molina further, and ask him whether he’d prefer to come with them down to police headquarters at that time, or come on his own in the morning. Molina opts to go back to bed and says he’ll see them in the morning.1043

  4:00 a.m.

  Mitchell Scibor, general operating manager of Klein’s Sporting Goods in Chicago, looks up from one of the company’s two microfilm machines at waiting FBI agents. It has taken nearly four hours, but he has found it at last—the order form for the rifle with serial number C2766.1044

  This particular Mannlicher-Carcano was among those advertised in a number of magazines under catalog number C20-T750, which indicates that it was sold with a four-power telescopic sight,1045 the sight purchased separately by Klein’s from Martin B. Retting Company in Culver City, California, and mounted on the rifle at Klein’s by gunsmith William Sharp.1046 The rifle-scope assembly was then placed in a sixty-inch corrugated cardboard box,1047 and readied for shipment. The retail price was $19.95, plus $1.50 for shipping and handling.1048

  Although the original order form or coupon for the C2766 rifle was routinely destroyed, Klein’s microfilmed records include a picture of the original order form or coupon clipped from the February 1963 issue of American Rifleman magazine and its accompanying envelope, postmarked March 12, 1963.1049 Enclosed with the order was a U.S. Postal Money Order, number 2, 202, 130, 462, for the total amount, $21.45.1050 The order had been processed by Klein’s on March 13, 1963, and shipped via parcel post on March 20, 1963.1051 The customer had filled out the coupon and envelope in his own hand. The name is “A. Hidell” and the address is “P.O. Box 2915” in “Dallas, Texas.”1052

  The FBI agents look at each other knowingly. They know from bureau reports that Lee Harvey Oswald was carrying identification in that name at the time of his arrest.

  Jack Ruby leaves Harry and Kay and proceeds to the Dallas Times Herald, where he delivers the twistboard to Arnold Clyde Gadash, a thirty-four-year-old printer whom Jack has known for y
ears. The twistboard regularly sold for $3.98, and Jack had promised it to Gadash for $2.00, but since he kept him waiting so long for it, he gives it to Gadash. Gadash can see that Ruby, who takes out a black-bordered ad that his club will be closed that evening and Sunday evening, is very upset and emotional about the assassination, and Ruby brings up the Weissman ad with him, saying, as Gadash notices Jack’s eyes watering, “The son of a bitch [Weissman] is trying to put the blame [for the assassination] on the Jews…Poor Mrs. Kennedy—Jackie and the kids,” Ruby says emotionally. Other employees, some of whom know Ruby, are nearby and he temporarily starts to feel better by regaling them with stories of how close Oswald had come to him at City Hall and how he had corrected the district attorney, Henry Wade, at a press conference, intimating he was in good with the DA. He tells them he had seen Oswald being interviewed, that he looked like “a little weasel” and had “a smirk on his face.” Gadash asks Jack to show him how the twistboard exerciser works, and though Jack really doesn’t want to get into the hilarity of frolicking when he’s so upset about the president’s death, he gets on top of the board and gives a demonstration for Gadash and the other employees.1053 God knows they can all use a good laugh.

  At four-thirty Jack goes home and rouses George Senator from a sound sleep.

  Senator has been staying at Jack’s place for the past couple of months. A fifty-year-old World War II veteran, Senator has worked at more jobs than he can remember, mostly as a salesman, mostly without a lot of success. Ten years ago he was working out of Atlanta, selling women’s apparel, when his boss said, “George, we are releasing a couple of men in Dallas and we want you to go to Dallas.” George didn’t want to, but the boss said, “George, you are going.” He went. His wife didn’t want to go either, and she didn’t. A couple of years later they divorced. She kept the kid.

  For a long time he lived mostly in motels, and for a period he shared rent with a couple of other guys who weren’t doing well enough to afford places of their own. There were some long stretches when he wasn’t employed at all, but the guys let him stay on because he was cooking and doing odd jobs for them. Soon after George first came to Dallas, in 1955 or 1956, a friend took him to the Vegas Club, where he met Jack Ruby, and after that they bumped into each other from time to time. In February or March of 1962 Jack sensed that George wasn’t doing too well and invited him to move in with him for a while, over on Marsalis Avenue. George tried to hold up his end, cooking sometimes when Jack was home, but after five or six months he got a chance to go into the postcard business with the Texas Postcard & Novelty Company and he moved in with a fellow named Stan Corbat on Maple Avenue. He had been getting along fine with Jack, but he knew that Jack really liked to live alone. And Jack’s place is too messy for George. Jack’s clean in his person, but if he finishes reading a newspaper or something like that, it goes right on the floor.

  At Corbat’s, George had to sleep on the couch until he really started to get into selling postcards, and he and Stan were able to take a two-bedroom apartment on South Ewing. George told Jack about how great the building was, and within a week Jack moved into apartment 207, right next door to Corbat and George’s 206. Then in August, Corbat got married and moved out, leaving George with all of the rent to pay on the apartment. George tried to stick it out for two months, but coming up with that much rent, at $125 a month, was too much of a struggle. Eventually, in late October, he moved in with Jack again into Jack’s extra bedroom, which Jack had always kept available for anyone who needed a place to stay for a night or two, including homeless strippers at his club. They call George a “sales manager” at Texas Postcard, but his draw is only $61.45 a week, so the move was a terrific break for George because Jack didn’t even ask him to share the rent. George occasionally helps Jack out at the club, running the lights or taking in the cash at the door, mostly on Fridays and Saturdays, but sometimes he will pop up during the week too.

  George would be glad to cook regularly for Jack, but Jack is a funny guy about his food and George just can’t cook it right for him. If George doesn’t broil something just right, Jack complains. If he makes him eggs, he has to worry about the butter because Jack’s always on some diet, and George finally got tired of it and said, “Make your own eggs.” George doesn’t even eat breakfast, just grabs a cup of coffee downtown once he’s up and about. He can’t get over Jack’s habit of putting two grapefruits, skin and all, through the wringer in this machine he has, and then drinking the juice, his number one thing when he wakes up—sometimes in the middle of the afternoon.1054

  Now it’s the middle of the night and Jack is hollering and shaking him to wake up. He’s all upset about that Weissman ad and some sign he saw saying “Impeach Earl Warren.” He insists that George get up and get dressed. “You will have to get up, George. I want you to go with me.”

  It’s a bit much at four-thirty in the morning, but George is truly grateful for Jack’s many kindnesses to him, and he is always ready to do anything he can for Jack. As he is getting his clothes on, Jack calls Larry Crafard, the drifter kid Jack has been letting sleep in a backroom in front of his office at the club in return for answering the phone, helping to clean up, serving as a part-time bartender, and doing other odds and ends. There is no set salary, but any time Crafard needs a couple of bucks, he puts a draw slip in the till and takes some cash. It isn’t a regular job, but Larry Crafard isn’t choosy. Since getting out of the army four years ago he has often been unemployed, and the dozens of jobs he’s had, from fruit picker to poultry butcher, to carney roustabout and barker (in fact, he met Jack while working at the Texas State Fair the previous month), lasted days or weeks rather than months. He doesn’t believe this job is going to last much longer either. “Larry, get up, get dressed, and get the Polaroid with the flashbulbs and meet me downstairs. I’ll be right down,” Ruby commands. The camera is for taking pictures of the customers when they dance with the girls, and Larry has worked it a couple of times.

  Larry had just dressed and got the film and bulbs and was starting to get the camera when he gets a call from the parking garage next door telling him that Jack is already there and to hurry up.

  They drive over to the corner of Hall and the North Central Expressway, and sure enough, there it is, a poster about three feet by four, pasted right up on the side of a building, with a photograph of Warren with the legend “Impeach Earl Warren.”

  They all get out of the car and Jack has Larry take three pictures of the sign with the Polaroid. It’s all a mystery to Larry, since he’s never heard of Earl Warren, and the conversation between Jack and George isn’t all that enlightening. It strikes Larry as funny that Jack suddenly seems more excited about this billboard than he is about the assassination. Jack says, “I can’t understand why they want to impeach Earl Warren. This must be the work of the John Birch Society or the Communist Party,” two polar opposites politically.

  After Larry takes the photos Jack wants, they stop for coffee at Webb’s Waffle Shop on the ground floor of the Southland Hotel, located just a few blocks from the Carousel. Jack knows all the all-night places. At this predawn hour, the coffee shop is almost empty. He picks up a paper abandoned on the counter and reads the Weissman ad again. Jack is very suspicious about the coincidental appearance of the ad and the Warren billboard just when the president was coming to Dallas. He thinks there’s a connection. Even the post office box numbers are close—1792 for the Weissman ad and 1757 for the billboard, though the latter is in some town in Massachusetts. Larry finds the conversation hard to follow, what with Jack rereading aloud the Weissman ad in the News from a newspaper someone left behind, and breaking off to show the Polaroids to the guy at the counter. Jack wants to go to the post office to see what he can find out about the Weissman ad. To Larry’s relief, they drop him back at the club first.1055

  At the Dallas post office Jack and George find a box with the number for the Weissman ad, 1792, and there’s a lot of mail in there. Jack presses the buzzer and asks
the night clerk, “Who bought this box?”

  “I can’t give you any information,” the clerk tells them. “Any information you want, there is only one man who can give it to you and that is the postmaster of Dallas.”

  George realizes that Jack is very, very disturbed. He has seen Jack hollering in those sudden outbursts of anger that he seems to forget about within seconds—George is well used to them—but this is completely different. “He had sort of a stare look in his eyes,” George would later say. “I don’t know how to describe it. I don’t know how to put it in words,” and it was nothing George had ever seen before in Ruby. When Jack talks about the president’s family, he has tears in his eyes. George has known Jack for around eight years and it’s the first time he has seen tears in his eyes. “Gee, his poor children and Mrs. Kennedy,” he says over and over again. “What a terrible thing to happen.” George sees that Jack is “deeply hurt” about the president’s death, and although everyone George knows is grieving Kennedy’s death, with Jack “it was worse.”

  The day is beginning to lighten by the time they get home from the post office, around 6:30 in the morning. Jack, back in the apartment, starts to cry “out loud.” When he wasn’t crying, Senator says “he looked like he was out in space.” Jack calms down to watch a review of Friday’s events on television for a while with George, but after a quarter of an hour they call it a day and turn in.1056

  7:00 a.m.

  Robert Oswald is already moving about after a sleepless night in the Statler Hilton Hotel’s uncomfortable rollaway bed. After taking a shower, he waits in the lobby for the hotel drugstore to open. He hadn’t brought a comb or toothbrush when he came from Denton, so he picks the personal items up and returns to his room to comb his hair. Rather than buy a razor and shaving cream, he decides to wait until the hotel barbershop opens and go there.

  There are two barbers, both obviously unaware of Robert’s identity. As one of them begins lathering up Robert’s scruffy face, the barbers engage in a lively discussion of the assassination. One of the barbers has already made up his mind, Lee Oswald killed the president and should be executed immediately.