Marina and Lee

by Priscilla Johnson McMillan

  Very politely, the passenger started opening the door and said, “I will let you have this one.”

  “No,” said the lady, “the driver can call me one.”

  The passenger told Whaley he wanted to go to 500 North Beckley. Everything around them was in turmoil, sirens wailing, police cars crisscrossing in all directions. “What the hell,” Whaley said. “I wonder what the hell is the uproar?” The passenger did not volunteer anything. “I figured he was one of these people who don’t like to talk so I never said any more to him.”22

  The man left the cab at the corner of Beckley and Neely. He handed the driver $1 for a 95 cent fare, got out, and closed the door. Whaley later identified his passenger as Lee Harvey Oswald.

  It was about a six-minute walk, or a five-minute trot, to Lee’s rooming house at 1026 North Beckley. He was going to get his pistol and a jacket. He arrived at 1:00 P.M. “Oh, you are in a hurry,” Mrs. Roberts, the housekeeper, said. She was watching television and wanted to talk about the shooting. But Lee did not answer her. He went straight to his room and stayed there three or four minutes. He picked up his pistol and a jacket and was zipping up the jacket as he went out the front door. Just a few moments before, at Parkland Memorial Hospital, President John F. Kennedy had been pronounced dead of a massive injury to the head.

  Back at the book depository, Roy Truly and Patrolman Baker had completed their search. They had looked through every floor except the sixth and had inspected the roof, especially the west side, the direction from which Mr. Truly thought the shots had come.

  As they walked back down to the seventh floor, Baker said: “Be careful. This man will blow your head off.”

  “I think we are wasting our time up here,” Truly answered. “I don’t believe the shots came from this building.”23 But because of the way he had seen the pigeons scatter, Baker thought they did.

  When the two men returned to the first floor, Truly saw policemen in clumps taking down the names of men who worked in the building. He glanced from one group to another and noticed that Lee Oswald was missing. He knew nothing about Oswald—neither that he had been to Russia and had a Russian wife nor that he was a “Marxist.” Lee had told him that he was straight out of the Marine Corps. But Truly had Oswald on his mind because he had seen him just a few minutes before in the lunchroom, and now he was not with the other men.24

  Quietly, he turned to Bill Shelley, Oswald’s supervisor, and asked if he had seen him. Shelley glanced from group to group and said no. Truly picked up a phone and called the warehouse where the job application forms were kept. He obtained Oswald’s full name, an accurate physical description, and his telephone number and address at the Paines’.

  Truly walked over to a chief of the Dallas Police Department, who was standing a few feet away. “I don’t know if it amounts to anything or not,” he said, “but I have a boy missing over here.”

  “Just a minute,” the chief said. “We will tell Captain Fritz.”

  They took an elevator to the sixth floor, where Captain J. W. Fritz, chief of the homicide bureau of the Dallas Police Department, appeared to be occupied by the stairway. Truly told Fritz that he had a boy missing and handed him the slip of paper on which he had written Oswald’s address in Irving, his telephone number, and description.

  “Thank you, Mr. Truly. We will take care of it.”25

  Captain Fritz at that moment knew something Mr. Truly did not know. Three empty brass cartridges had been found by the southeast corner window of the sixth floor. And a rifle had been found near the stairway.26

  Fritz left the building almost as soon as he heard about the missing man. He drove to City Hall to see if the man had a criminal record. And there he got news that a police officer had been shot.

  About 1:00 P.M. Dallas patrolman J. D. Tippit was cruising the Oak Cliff area. Over his police car radio he had heard about the shooting of the president and a description of the suspect, which had been broadcast four times.27 About 1:15, nine-tenths of a mile from the rooming house at 1026 North Beckley, Tippit spotted a man who bore a resemblance to the description. The man was rapidly walking east. Tippit slowed down and drove parallel and very close to the man. The man kept walking. Finally, when the police car was nearly grazing the curb, the man stopped. He leaned into the car, rested his arms on the open window ledge on the far side from Tippit, and the two men exchanged a few words.

  The man stepped back. Meanwhile, Tippit opened his door, climbed out slowly, and walked toward the front of the car. He was at the left front wheel when the other man, who was near the windshield on the right, pulled out a revolver and fired. He hit the patrolman four times, and Tippit instantly fell to the ground, dead. His cap skipped a little onto the street. The gunman started away in a trot, ejecting the empty cartridge cases from his pistol and reloading as he went. It was just after 1:16 P.M.

  An automobile repairman, Domingo Benavides, was parked in his pickup truck fifteen feet away when he heard three shots, watched Tippet fall to the ground, and saw the gunman empty his gun and toss the shells into some bushes as he jogged away. Benavides went to the fallen patrolman and, using Tippit’s radio, reported the shooting to police headquarters. Several other bystanders had also seen the shooting and the fleeing gunman, and by 1:29 P.M. the police radio noted a similarity between the descriptions of the man who had shot Tippit and the suspect in the Kennedy shooting.

  Police cars began to arrive in the area of the Tippit slaying while, eight blocks away, Johnny Calvin Brewer was in his shoe store listening to the radio. The president had been shot, and news now came over the radio that a policeman had been shot in Oak Cliff. Brewer heard sirens approach and, looking up, saw a man duck into the lobby of his store and stand with his back to the street. A police car came close, made a U-turn, and drove off. As the wail of the sirens faded, the man, who looked “scared,” “messed up,” and as if “he had been running,” peered over his shoulder, made sure the police car had gone, then turned into the street and walked a short way to the Texas Theatre. Brewer followed him there. He asked Julia Postal, the cashier, whether she had sold a ticket to the man who had just entered the theater. “No, by golly,” she said. Brewer and the usher checked the exits to make sure that none had been used and then, in the darkness, scanned the audience. They did not see the man they were looking for. Mrs. Postal called the police.

  Shortly after 1:45, fifteen police officers converged on the Texas Theatre, alerted that the suspect in the Tippit shooting might be there. Someone turned up the houselights. Accompanied by several policemen, Brewer stepped on the stage and pointed to the man who had ducked in without paying. He was sitting by himself in the orchestra, near the back, close to the right center aisle. Patrolman M. N. McDonald walked slowly up the aisle. He stopped abruptly when he came to the man and told him to get on his feet. The suspect rose, raised his hands, and said, “Well, it is all over now.” He struck McDonald and reached for his own revolver. He was grabbed by two or three officers, and in the scuffle McDonald wrenched the revolver away. The man cursed as the officers handcuffed him. “I protest this police brutality,” he said.

  As he was being led from the theater, the man stopped, turned, and shouted so that everyone could hear him, “I am not resisting arrest—I am not resisting arrest.” He was driven to police headquarters and arrived in the basement about 2:00 P.M. There were reporters milling around in case a suspect in the president’s murder should be brought in. He was asked if he would like to cover his face as he was taken inside. “Why should I cover my face?” he replied. “I haven’t done anything to be ashamed of.”

  At 2:15 P.M. Captain Will Fritz of the homicide bureau returned to police headquarters from the City Hall office where he had been checking on Lee Oswald, missing from the book depository. He walked up to two of his officers, handed them an address in Irving, and told them to “pick up a man named Lee Oswald.” One of the officers pointed to the man who had just been arrested at the Texas Theatre. “Captain,” he
said, “we can save you a trip. There he sits.”28

  — 37 —

  The Wedding Ring

  Marina awoke on the morning of November 22 with a strained, unhappy feeling. Something had been wrong the evening before: Lee’s asking her to move into Dallas with him so insistently, her refusing, his practically kicking her in bed. There had been something nasty between them.

  But she was soon distracted. Knowing Marina’s fascination with the president and Mrs. Kennedy, Ruth had left the television on when she went out. Marina did not bother to get dressed. She tended to Rachel, gave cookies and milk to little June, and settled down on the sofa to watch the president. She saw him arrive at Love Field and give a speech. Jackie, dressed in a raspberry-colored suit, looked wonderful. Marina watched a rerun of a breakfast Mr. Kennedy had attended in Fort Worth. Somebody gave him a ten-gallon hat, and he seemed to enjoy it.

  Marina was glowing by the time Ruth returned home about noon. She said that it was a pity Ruth had missed the president’s arrival. What a welcome he had had!

  Ruth went into the kitchen to fix lunch, and Marina went to her room to get dressed. The television set was on, and suddenly Marina heard a lot of noise. Ruth ran into the bedroom, very pale, and said that someone had shot at the president. The two women dashed to the living room and stared at the set. There was no picture now, only a newsman reporting what had happened. Marina kept asking Ruth to translate. Was it very serious? Was Jackie all right? Ruth listened closely, then said the president had been taken to the hospital. There was not much news of him yet, but he had been hit in the head.

  They forgot about lunch. Ruth lit some candles, and she and her little girl prayed. Marina went to her room and cried. She wondered what Ruth would think of her crying for a man who was not even her president. She prayed for the president’s life, and also for Mrs. Kennedy, who might be left alone with two children.

  A little later Marina was outside hanging up clothes. Ruth came to join her and told her that the reporters were saying the shots that hit the president had come from the Texas School Book Depository. At that, Marina’s heart “fell to the bottom.”1

  “Is there really anyone on earth but my lunatic husband crazy enough to have fired that shot?” she asked herself. Unlikely and unexplained occurrences suddenly started to drop into place: Lee’s unannounced visit the night before, his shrugging and saying he knew nothing about the president’s visit. Marina hid the fear that had seized her; she did not want to reveal it to Ruth.

  She need not have worried. Ruth was not thinking that way. It had not occurred to her to connect Lee to the crime. She merely thought they knew someone in the building, close to the event, who would give them a first-hand account.2

  Neither Ruth nor Marina had realized that the place where Lee worked was on the president’s route. Ruth knew that the Book Depository had two warehouses, and she was not certain which of them Lee actually worked in. She had copied Lee’s address, 411 Elm Street, three weeks earlier for James Hosty, but she had forgotten it.

  Marina was numb. She left Ruth at the clothesline and went to the house. When she was certain Ruth could not see her, she crept into the garage, to the place where Lee kept his rifle wrapped in paper inside the heavy blanket, a green and brown wool blanket of East German make that he had bought in Russia. Looking for parts to June’s baby bed three weeks earlier, Marina had rolled back a corner of the blanket and spied the rifle’s wooden stock. Now she found the bundle and stared at it. It was lying on the floor, below, and parallel to, a window in the garage. Marina did not touch the blanket, but it looked exactly as it had before. Thank God the rifle was still there, Marina thought, feeling as if a weight had been lifted from her. Yet she wondered if there was really “a second idiot” in Dallas, anyone else crazy enough, besides her husband, even to think of such a deed. And so, in spite of the blanket’s reassuring contours, she was unable to compose herself.

  She was sitting on the sofa next to Ruth when the announcement came over television that the president was dead. “What a terrible thing for Mrs. Kennedy,” Marina said, “and for the children to be left without a father.” Ruth was walking around the room crying. Marina was unable to cry. She could not believe the news. She felt as if her blood had “stopped running.” A little later an announcement came that someone had been captured in a movie theater. No name.

  An hour, or a little less, after the president’s death was announced, the doorbell rang. Ruth went to answer. She was greatly surprised to find six men standing on her doorstep. They were from the sheriff’s office and the Dallas police, they said, and they showed their credentials. Ruth’s jaw dropped.

  “We have Lee Oswald in custody,” one of the policemen said. “He is charged with shooting an officer.”

  It was Ruth’s first clue that Lee might be linked in any way to the events of the day.

  The men wanted to search the house. Ruth asked if they had a warrant. They did not but said they could get the sheriff in person. Ruth told them to go ahead and search.3

  The men could not have been more rude. They spread out all over the house, “turned the place upside down,” Marina recalls, and took everything they wanted, even records and photographs, belonging to both the Oswalds and the Paines. Marina felt like a sleepwalker, and it was hard for her later to remember what she did, or how she managed to move at all. But she was aware that her hands and her feet were cold, and her face covered with cold sweat. She glanced out the window and saw more men standing outside. They were in civilian clothes, and they seemed to be wearing special insignia on the underside of their lapels. Marina was surprised to see so many of them.

  “Your husband is under arrest,” somebody said to her. “It’s probably an accident,” Marina thought. “They’re picking up everyone who has been in Russia, and besides, Lee is always under suspicion.”

  Then came a question: “Does your husband have a rifle?” “Yes,” Marina said in Russian and led them straight to the garage, with Ruth following a translate.

  Ruth, meanwhile, was telling the officers what she believed to be the truth, that Lee did not have a rifle. Whispering rapidly in Russian, Marina corrected her. She told Ruth that Lee did have a rifle, and it was inside the blanket. Forgetting her Quaker faith, her pacifism, her impeccable truthfulness, Ruth stood on the blanket in an instinctive gesture to protect Marina. At the same time, paradoxically, she faithfully translated to the officers exactly what Marina had said to her—that Lee Oswald did have a rifle, and it was inside the blanket.

  The officers ordered her to step off it.

  The blanket looked exactly as it always had, as if there were something bulky inside. As always, it was carefully tied in string. Marina shook all over, trying not to show her fright, as an officer stooped down to pick it up. It hung, limp, on either side of his arm.

  Ruth looked at Marina. She had gone ashen.4

  “So it was Lee,” Marina thought. “That is why he came last night.” For Marina it was again one of those moments when kaleidoscopic and inexplicable occurrences suddenly clicked into place. She knew now why Lee had told her to buy “everything” she and the children needed, why he had left without kissing her good-bye.

  About three o’clock they went back inside the house. At that moment Michael Paine appeared.

  In the cafeteria at Bell Helicopter that noon, Michael had been talking to a co-op student about the character of assassins.5 Just then a waitress came over and told them the president had been shot. Michael considered it a bad joke. Then he noticed a group of people clustered around a transistor radio and went to join them. He was unable to hear anything, but he realized that the waitress had not been joking. He returned to his lab and tuned in to the radio there. Before long the name of the Texas School Book Depository was mentioned. Michael’s heart jumped.

  “Isn’t that where Lee Oswald works?” Michael’s fellow worker, Frank Krystinik, asked.

  “I think so,” said Michael. “He works for that organization.�
��

  “You don’t think it would be him?” Krystinik ventured.

  “No, of course not. It couldn’t be him,” Michael said.

  For the next half hour Krystinik, who had met and talked with Oswald at the ACLU meeting on October 25, kept telling Michael that he really ought to call the FBI.

  Michael resisted. Lee Oswald had been to Russia. He was already a black sheep, Michael thought, and “everybody will be jumping on him.” Michael did not want “to join the hysterical mob in his harassment.” He was, after all, one of the few people who stood in a position of friendship to Lee.

  But Michael was nervous. He was trying to assemble a vibration meter, and his fingers trembled so badly that he was unable to put in the screws. And his efforts at concentration were interrupted constantly by Krystinik, who went on urging him to call the FBI.

  Michael still refused. He knew something about Lee’s beliefs. And he did not, at that moment, see how the act of assassination fitted Lee’s philosophy or “how it was going to forward his causes.” Lee would have to be irrational to do it, and, Michael says, “I didn’t think he was irrational.” On the other hand, Michael knew that in principle Lee was not against violence. And so Michael did not consider such a murder automatically out of the question.

  While Michael was carrying on this inner dialogue, a report came over the radio that shook him a little more. An eyewitness who had seen the assassin in the book depository window reported that the man fired “coolly,” that he took “his jolly good time,” and drew his rifle back inside the window “just as unconcerned as could be.” To Michael it sounded like Lee.

  News reports came over the radio that the police were chasing suspects all over town. Then, less than an hour and a half after the president’s shooting, there was word that a man had been captured in a place called the Texas Theatre, in Oak Cliff, for the shooting in cold blood of a Dallas police officer, J. D. Tippit. The man’s name was Lee Harvey Oswald.