Reclaiming History (34 page)

“I didn’t kill him,” the prisoner snapped back.

“You don’t strike me as the type that does this every day,” Fritz said softly. “Is this the first time you ever killed anybody?”

“Yes, sir, first time” the man answered, without thinking.
⁶⁰²

Captain Fritz is considered to be the finest interrogator on the Dallas Police Force. This time he faces his ultimate challenge. After asking Oswald his “full” name and Oswald replies, “Lee Harvey Oswald,” Fritz begins, as he always does, with casual questions, asking Oswald about where he was from, his background and education, service in the Marines, and so on.
*
His grandfather-like manner almost compels people to talk with him, and in that regard, this young suspect is no different.

“Where do you work?” Fritz asks, getting into the present.

“Texas School Book Depository,” Oswald says without hesitation.

“How’d you get the job?” Fritz asks.

“A lady that I know recommended me for the job,” Oswald replies. “I got the job through her.” Fritz asks about the “Hidell” name found in his wallet, and Oswald says that it was a name he “picked up in New Orleans.”
⁶⁰³

Fritz asks Oswald if he lives in Irving.

“No,” Oswald replies. “I’ve got a room in Oak Cliff.”

“I thought you lived in Irving?” Fritz asks, a little confused. Oswald says, no, he lives at 1026 Beckley. Although he doesn’t know whether the address is North or South Beckley, Fritz and his detectives can tell from Oswald’s description of the area that it’s North Beckley.

“Who lives in Irving?” Fritz asks.

“My wife is staying out there with friends,” Oswald says.
⁶⁰⁴
Fritz steps out into the outer office and instructs Lieutenant Cunningham of the Forgery Bureau, along with Detectives Billy Senkel and Walter Potts, to go out to 1026 North Beckley and search Oswald’s rented room.
⁶⁰⁵
The homicide commander then gathers Lieutenants James A. Bohart and Ted P. Wells and Detective T. L. Baker around him.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do,” Fritz tells them. “Who’s working Officer Tippit’s killing?”

“Leavelle and Graves,” Baker answers.

“Fine, let them stay on that,” Fritz says. “Everybody else will work on the president’s killing.”
⁶⁰⁶
Fritz returns to his office and Oswald.

2:30 p.m.

As federal district judge Sarah Hughes, a kindly faced woman of sixty-seven, climbs aboard Air Force One, someone hands her a three-by-five-inch card on which Johnson’s secretary has typed out the text of the oath of office. Only a few minutes after Barefoot Sanders, the U.S. attorney in Dallas, whose office was just a floor below hers, had left a message for her, she had returned to her office. Her old friend Lyndon Johnson wanted her immediately at Love Field. She knew what that meant. Judge Hughes goes on into the stateroom of the presidential cabin and embraces the president, Mrs. Johnson, and several fellow Texans.

“We’ll get as many people in here as possible,” Johnson says, sending Jack Valenti, Rufus Youngblood, Emory Roberts, and Lem Johns to round up witnesses. “If anybody wants to join in the swearing-in ceremony, I would be happy and proud to have you.”

When O’Donnell comes up from the aft compartment where the casket is stowed, he finds the group around the president sweltering in the increasingly unpleasant air of the small stateroom, a room that can accommodate eight to ten people seated. UPI reporter Merriman Smith, one of two pool reporters on the plane, the other being
Newsweek
’s Charles Roberts, wedges himself inside the door, and for some reason begins counting. There are twenty-seven people in the room. It turns out that Johnson is waiting for Mrs. Kennedy. “She said she wanted to be here when I take the oath,” he says. “Why don’t you see what’s keeping her?”

O’Donnell locates her nearby in the dressing room of the presidential cabin, combing her hair. He tactfully explains that she doesn’t need to take part in the ceremony if she doesn’t feel up to it.

“I think I ought to,” she says. “In the light of history, it would be better if I were there.”

She wonders whether she should take the time to change out of her bloodstained suit. O’Donnell urges her not to go to the trouble.
⁶⁰⁷

2:38 p.m.

Captain Cecil Stoughton, the official White House photographer, records the crowded scene on Air Force One as Judge Hughes reads the oath, from Article II, Section 1 [8] of the U.S. Constitution, with Johnson resting his left hand on top of a Catholic prayer book,
*
his wife on his right, John Kennedy’s widow, her Chanel suit stained with her husband’s blood and her white gloves caked with it, on his left. Mac Kilduff holds a microphone out to catch the words of the swearing-in ceremony on a scratchy Dictaphone.

After the sixty-seven-year-old jurist tells Johnson, “Hold up your right hand and repeat after me,” he says, “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Judge Hughes impulsively adds the formulaic “So help me God”—not part of the prescribed oath—and the president, in a deep voice, repeats it. In twenty-eight seconds, it’s over.
†

The new president then turns to his wife, hugs her around the shoulders, and kisses her cheek. Then he turns to John Kennedy’s widow, puts his left arm about her, and kisses her cheek. As others among the group move toward President Johnson, he seems to back away from any act of congratulation. Instead, he says firmly, “Now, let’s get airborne.”
⁶⁰⁸
In an oath-taking ceremony approaching, in the uniqueness of its setting, the one that Calvin Coolidge took by lamplight in a Vermont farmhouse in 1923, Lyndon Baines Johnson was now the thirty-sixth president of the United States, an office he had dreamed of attaining—he had even run for the office three years earlier, losing the Democratic nomination in Los Angeles to JFK—but not this way.
*

The pilot starts Air Force One’s engines as Judge Hughes, Chief Curry, and Cecil Stoughton, who will not be making the flight to Washington, deplane. Johnson and Lady Bird remain in the stateroom, and Jackie excuses herself, returning to her husband’s casket in the small aft cabin, where Ken O’Donnell, Dave Powers, Larry O’Brien, Brigadier General Godfrey McHugh, and for awhile, Admiral Burkley, will keep her company.
⁶⁰⁹

Jackie sits in the aisle seat, directly opposite the casket, O’Donnell beside her in the only other seat available. When their eyes meet, she begins to cry hard. When she finally regains her composure, she cries, “Oh, Kenny, what’s going to happen?”

O’Donnell knows that she is wondering what is going to happen to all of them now that Jack is dead.

“You want to know something, Jackie?” Ken says. “I don’t give a damn.”

When Admiral Burkley tries to persuade the young widow to change out of her bloodstained clothes, she says quietly, “
No
. Let them see what they’ve done.”
⁶¹⁰

2:40 p.m.

Over in Fort Worth, Marguerite Oswald, Lee’s mother, dressed in her nurse’s uniform, is driving to work at the Hargroves Convalescent Center, listening to the news on the radio of her old, run-down Buick. She had been sitting on the sofa at home watching the television coverage, but had to leave at two-thirty if she wanted to get to work by three. Now, just seven blocks from home, she hears that police have picked up a suspect—Lee Harvey Oswald. Stunned, she immediately turns around and goes back home. She must call Robert Oswald, the younger of Lee’s two older brothers. Robert works for Acme Brick, a Fort Worth company. He travels a lot, but they’ll know how to get in touch with him.
⁶¹¹
She’s also going to call the
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
. She figures there’s a way to turn this into cash. And maybe someone there can give her a lift to Dallas.

Twenty-six-year-old
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
police reporter Bob Schieffer is lamenting the fact that he wasn’t a political reporter covering the biggest story in the world when he picks up the ringing phone on the city desk. A woman wants to know if there is anyone there who can give her a ride into Dallas. “Lady, this is not a taxi company, and besides, the president has been shot.” “I know,” the woman says. “They think my son is the one who shot him.” Schieffer and a colleague, Bill Foster, drive out to Fort Worth’s west side and find Marguerite, waiting for them on the front lawn of her small, white stucco bungalow. The short, pudgy woman in large, dark, horn-rimmed glasses gets in the backseat with Schieffer for the close-to-an-hour trip into town.
⁶¹²
En route, Schieffer is taken aback by Marguerite’s attitude. She not only seemed somewhat mentally deranged but for most of the trip he sensed that she was less concerned about Kennedy’s death and her son’s predicament than she was with herself. She kept railing about the fact that her son’s wife would get all the sympathy but no one would “remember the mother” and that she would probably starve.
*
However, she did cry quietly and her talk was punctuated with sobs. “I want to hear him tell me he did it,” she said at one point. Schieffer never did get around to asking her why she had called the paper for a ride but learned later that she had at one time worked briefly as a governess in the home of Ammon Carter Jr., the owner of the paper, but had been discharged because the children complained that “she was mean.” Schieffer ends up depositing Marguerite in what looked like some kind of interrogation room at Dallas police headquarters.
⁶¹³

R
obert Oswald has not seen his brother Lee for a year and hasn’t even heard from him for about eight months. He had heard the news of the assassination just as he was leaving Jay’s Grill, a steak and seafood restaurant not far from Acme Brick’s new plant in Denton, Texas, where he worked as a sales coordinator linking the marketing and plant departments, scheduling production to meet orders, and following through on customer service.
⁶¹⁴
Now, Robert is back at the office going over some invoices and wondering whether Lee had taken a few minutes off to watch the motorcade. He goes down to the timekeeper’s office to get some of the invoices checked. The receptionist at the front desk has her radio on, and, as he passes by, they both hear a news announcer say the name “Oswald.”

Robert stops. He thought someone had called his name until he realizes that the voice came from the radio.

The announcer repeats the name, this time in full—“Lee Harvey Oswald.”

Robert is paralyzed. “That’s my kid brother,” he says, stunned.

He calls his wife Vada and tells her he will be home shortly, but before he can leave he gets a call from the credit manager at the company’s Fort Worth office.

“Bob, brace yourself,” he says. “Your brother has been arrested.”

“I know. I just heard.”

The credit manager tells him his mother is trying to reach him. Robert calls her and arranges to meet her in Dallas at the Hotel Adolphus later in the evening.
⁶¹⁵

A
t the Terminal Annex Building overlooking Dealey Plaza, a box clerk bursts into the office of U.S. postal inspector Harry D. Holmes to tell him it’s just come over the radio that police have arrested someone named Lee Harvey Oswald for the murder of Officer Tippit.

“I think you ought to know, Mr. Holmes,” the clerk says, “that we rented a box downstairs to a Lee Oswald recently. Box number 6225.” The clerk, who has already retrieved the original box application, dated November 1, 1963, hands it to Holmes and tells the inspector that he can’t recall what the applicant looked like, but he does remember one thing. The man definitely filled out the application himself.
⁶¹⁶

The form lists “Fair Play for Cuba Committee” and “American Civil Liberties Union” in the space for firm or corporation. Under “kind of business” is the word “nonprofit.” No business address is given, but in the space for home address, the applicant has written, “3610 N. Beckley.” This is a variation of Oswald’s actual address, 1026 North Beckley. At the bottom of the form is the applicant’s signature, “Lee H. Oswald.”
⁶¹⁷

Inspector Holmes telephones the Secret Service, who order a twenty-four-hour, round-the-clock surveillance of the box to see if anyone attempts to retrieve mail from it.
⁶¹⁸

2:45 p.m.

Secret Service agent Forrest Sorrels is beginning to realize that getting Zapruder’s film developed is not going to be easy. The amateur movie camera takes 8-millimeter color film, something that neither the
Dallas Morning News
nor their companion television station, WFAA, can handle. Both are set up for 16-millimeter black-and-white newsfilm.

While the WFAA television news department telephones Eastman Kodak Company,
Dallas Morning News
reporter Harry McCormick manages to arrange a live television interview with Zapruder, who provides a graphic description of the shooting to a stunned Dallas audience.

Sorrels is told that the people at Eastman Kodak Company, located near Love Field, have the capability of developing Zapruder’s footage and are standing by right now to assist. Within minutes, the Secret Service agent, with Zapruder, Schwartz, and McCormick in tow, is speeding toward Eastman Kodak in a Dallas police car.
⁶¹⁹

2:47 p.m.

The wheels of Air Force One
*
clear the runway at Love Field as the pilot takes it to an unusually high cruising altitude of forty-one thousand feet, where at 625 mph the great plane races toward Andrews Air Force Base, just outside Washington, D.C., in Maryland. John Fitzgerald Kennedy, in office for 1,037 days, is going home.
⁶²⁰

2:50 p.m.

The basement garage of City Hall is an incredible hive of activity. Police cars swing in and out of the cavernous space, shouts and hollers echo over parked cars, and officers rush frantically about. FBI agent Jim Hosty jumps from his bureau-issued ’62 Dodge and heads for the elevator. Car doors slam to his right as Dallas police lieutenant Jack Revill and several detectives emerge from their autos and head briskly toward him.