Reclaiming History (63 page)

“Mr. Gregory, I can’t say who I am,” she tells him when he answers, “but you know my son and you know my daughter-in-law, and I am in trouble, sir.”

“I’m sorry,” Mr. Gregory says, “but I won’t talk to anybody I don’t know.”

“I would rather not tell you who I am,” she replies, “but I shall identify myself by saying I am one of the students in the Russian class in the library.”
¹²¹³

Mr. Gregory recognizes the voice of Mrs. Oswald.

“You know my son real well,” she adds.

Gregory realizes for the first time who the woman caller is.

“Oh, you are Mrs. Oswald,” he says, sitting up in bed.

“Mr. Gregory, I need your help,” she confesses. “The reporters, the news media are badgering me.”

This is a lie, of course. But Marguerite has learned to twist the truth to suit her own ends.

“My daughter-in-law Marina and I are at the Executive Inn in Dallas, stranded,” she continues. “I wonder if some of your friends, or you, could provide a place for me to hide from them.”

To Peter Gregory, it sounds as if Marguerite is crying on the telephone, although he finds it hard to believe that Mrs. Oswald cries easily. Still, he’s not entirely unsympathetic.

“I’ll tell you what I will do, Mrs. Oswald,” Gregory says. “You stay where you are and I promise you that I will come to see you sometime today.”
¹²¹⁴

In fact, Peter Gregory already knows where Marina and Marguerite Oswald are. Secret Service agent Mike Howard had called him on Saturday and asked him to come out to the Executive Inn and translate an interview with Marina. He hadn’t done it because it turned out that his services weren’t necessary—the interview didn’t take place.

As soon as Gregory hangs up the telephone, he calls Agent Howard, who lives just north of Fort Worth, and reports his conversation with Mrs. Oswald.

“Well, that’s fine,” Howard tells Gregory, “we’ll find a hiding place for Marguerite and Marina Oswald and the babies.” He offers to come by Gregory’s house in forty-five minutes to an hour or so and they can go over to the Executive Inn together.
¹²¹⁵

8:05 a.m.

Chief Curry pulls his car into the basement garage at City Hall, parks, and heads for the elevators that’ll take him upstairs to his office, where he meets Assistant Police Chief Charles Batchelor and the assistant police chief in charge of investigations, M. W. Stevenson, to discuss the Oswald death threats, the word of which had spread quickly through the police department. The men discuss security precautions that might thwart such an attempt. They even discuss the possibility that a detective or some police officer might be so emotionally charged that he tries to make some move against Oswald. They agree that the men assigned to the basement security detail should be men they know to be emotionally stable.
¹²¹⁶

8:17 a.m. (9:17 a.m. EST)

Cardinal Cushing, presiding over a pontifical mass in Boston, says, “The world stands helpless at the [president’s] death.” He speaks of the “unprecedented sorrow” and that “millions lament in a silence which will never be broken.”
¹²¹⁷

9:00 a.m.

Detective Jim Leavelle, along with Detectives Dhority and Brown, has already run over to the Statler Hilton Hotel after receiving a tip from the hotel security officer that a man who said he represented a California munitions company had checked in. The detectives determine very quickly that there is nothing to be concerned with. Such is the tension and concern in Dallas this Sunday morning.
¹²¹⁸

The Dallas police may believe Oswald is the ultimate scum, but they have to make sure he is protected so he can stand trial for murdering the nation’s president.

Across town, Postal Inspector Harry Holmes pulls up in front of a church with his wife and daughter. All the way there, Holmes has been thinking about the whirlwind of events that have driven him to near exhaustion. On the seat next to him is a folder with the postal documents he’s been busy gathering on Oswald all weekend. He figures on running them over to Captain Fritz later that day. As his wife and daughter climb from the car, Holmes suddenly has a change of heart.

“You know, I think I’ll run down and see if I can help Captain Fritz with anything,” he tells his wife. She knows that look in his eye, and she knows there’s no use talking to him about why he should spend Sunday with his family at church services. She agrees to find a ride home with friends. Holmes spins the family car around and heads downtown.
¹²¹⁹

9:10 a.m.

At Dallas police headquarters, Chief Curry calls Captain Fritz’s office and asks when he’ll be ready to have Oswald transferred.

“We’ll be talking to him shortly,” Fritz says. “I suppose we’ll be ready around ten o’clock.”
¹²²⁰

“Fine,” Curry says. He hangs up and dials Sheriff Decker. The two decide that since the Dallas Police Department is investigating the case and also has a lot more manpower, it would be better to depart from protocol and have the police, rather than Decker’s boys, transport Oswald to the county jail.
¹²²¹

Curry hangs up the telephone, tells Deputy Chief Stevenson and Assistant Chief Batchelor that their office will be moving Oswald, and asks, “What do you think about getting an armored truck?”

“I think I know where I can get one,” Batchelor replies, telling Curry that he knows the vice president of Armored Motor Car Service, an outfit that serves the Fort Worth–Dallas area. Curry nods his approval. The three discuss a possible route and settle on leaving the jail office in the basement
*
via the Commerce Street exit ramp, taking Commerce to the Central Expressway, north on Central to Elm, west on Elm to Houston, and south on Houston to the entrance to the county jail. It’s decided that Chief Curry’s car will lead the caravan, followed by a car of detectives, the armored car, another car of detectives, and Batchelor and Stevenson in the rear car.
¹²²²

Batchelor returns to his third-floor office and looks up the home number of the armored car company’s vice president, Harold Fleming, in the city directory. When the phone rings, Fleming is shaving, getting ready for church. Batchelor makes a pitch for the use of an armored truck.
¹²²³
Fleming replies that he has two that he can send down—one large, one small—and the police can take their pick once they see them.

“I’ll need them here about ten o’clock,” Batchelor says.

“I’ll call you as soon as I can arrange a couple of drivers,” Fleming responds.
¹²²⁴

Downstairs, in the police garage, Captain Cecil Talbert notices a crowd beginning to build just outside the Commerce Street exit, apparently in anticipation of the transfer. To avoid the chaos of a last-minute security check, Talbert, who is a captain of a patrol division and not assigned to any security detail for Oswald’s transfer, takes the initiative to begin securing the basement area of City Hall against anyone or anything that could pose a threat to Oswald. He orders Lieutenant Rio S. Pierce to pull three squads from each of the three outlying police substations and four from the central station; then, using two-man squads, they are to search the basement area, clear it, and keep it cleared of everyone but authorized personnel. He also moves three tear gas grenade kits into the basement, just in case a large threatening crowd storms the jail entrance for a good old-fashion lynching.
¹²²⁵

Lieutenant Pierce assigns Sergeant Patrick T. Dean to be in charge of the security detail in the basement garage, to be assisted by Sergeant James A. Putnam. Pierce, apparently, didn’t tell Dean who was supposed to conduct the search, but Dean commandeers thirteen reserve officers (including their captain, Charles Arnett) who were congregated in the police assembly room, and together with himself, Putnam, Officers L. E. Jez and Alvin R. Brock, they proceed to empty everyone out of the basement garage, including other officers and members of the media who had already started to wait there.
¹²²⁶
Dean’s group searches the entire garage basement, including the air-conditioning and heating ducts, even the trunks of the cars that are in the basement.
¹²²⁷
Other than four hunting rifles in the squad cars of officers who were going deer hunting, nothing is found.
¹²²⁸
Two doors that would give ingress into the basement garage, one just east of the Commerce Street exit ramp, the other in the interior parking area of the garage just north of the adjacent elevators (a service elevator is nearby), are also checked and seen to be locked. In addition to Dean’s assigning officers to cover every door or other possible entryway into the basement garage, Dean assigns Officer R. E. Vaughn to the Main Street entrance ramp leading down to the basement garage and Officer B. G. Patterson to the Commerce Street exit ramp.
¹²²⁹
Sergeant Putnam assigns Officer A. R. Brock to cover the elevator area.
¹²³⁰
Dean then lets the press and any other authorized personnel back into the garage.
¹²³¹

On the third floor, Captain Fritz turns to Detectives Leavelle, Graves, and Dhority and orders them to bring Oswald down for further questioning.
¹²³²

9:30 a.m.

George Senator doesn’t even know what time it is when he hears Jack Ruby get up and go to the bathroom, always his first stop when he awakens for the day, but it’s probably around 9:30. George himself has been up since eight or so. He notices that Jack looks a little worse than the day before and was “even mumbling, which I didn’t understand.” Jack turns on the TV, which is carrying the preparation for the elaborate state funeral of the president. Over Jack’s breakfast of scrambled eggs and coffee (George only had a cup of coffee) George notices that Jack had “this look about him that didn’t look good.” It was almost as if he was “in shock.”
¹²³³

The previous day, Saturday, was almost a carbon-copy extension of the day before for Ruby, who continues in his grief over the assassination and in his impulsive, frenetic activity with respect to it. The morning got off to a bad start when around 8:30 a.m. Crafard awakens Ruby with a phone call from the club to say he needs dog food for Ruby’s dogs he’s taking care of for Ruby at the club. Jack chews Crafard out royally for wakening him after only two hours’ sleep, but he doesn’t go back to bed again. (Crafard, not appreciating Jack’s vitriol, gathers his meager belongings, takes from the till the five dollars Ruby owes him, and begins hitchhiking to Michigan to visit his sister.)
¹²³⁴

Ruby turns on the TV to hear a rabbi eulogizing about Kennedy that here was a man who fought in the war, went to every country, and had to come back to his own country to be shot in the back.
¹²³⁵
When a stripper calls Ruby around noon to find out if the club will be open that night, he tells her no. She notices his voice is shaking, as he talks about the “terrible” events of yesterday.
¹²³⁶
With Ruby leaving his apartment shortly after 1:00 p.m., there is irreconcilable confusion as to the chronology of his movements that Saturday afternoon, irreconcilable to the point where no one, at this late date, will ever know for sure what the chronology was. But the conflict is only as to the sequence. With one exception (see endnote), everyone agrees that Ruby went to all the places mentioned. Each separate view has its advocates, but the confusion is so great that each view is itself internally inconsistent. The following is one view.

After leaving home, Ruby drives downtown to his club, the Carousel. Stopping by the Nichols garage next door to the club, where he and Carousel customers park their cars, he uses the garage phone to call someone and advises that person, in the presence of the garage attendant, Tom Brown, where he could find Chief of Police Jesse Curry. He then tells Brown that two men would probably be coming to the club to see him and to inform them that the club would not be open that night.
¹²³⁷
Garnett “Claud” Hallmark, the parking-lot manager, overhears Ruby in a separate call talking to a newsman about having heard that Oswald was going to be transferred to the county jail that afternoon and telling the newsman that he’d be there. Ruby tells Hallmark, “I am acting like a reporter.”
¹²³⁸

On the other end of the line is Dallas radio station (KLIF) announcer Ken Dowe. Dowe hardly knows Ruby, but Ruby says, “I understand they are moving Oswald over to the county jail. Would you like me to cover it, because I am a pretty good friend of Henry Wade’s and I believe I can get some good news stories.” Dowe, who needs all the help he can get, says “Okay.”
¹²³⁹
The word, incorrect, had gone out to some that Oswald was going to be transferred at 4:00 p.m.
¹²⁴⁰

Ruby then proceeds to Sol’s Turf Bar and Delicatessen a few blocks away at 1515 Commerce Street. It is around 2:00 p.m. when Frank Bellocchio, a self-employed jeweler who had known Ruby casually for seven or eight years, sees Ruby near the back of Sol’s. Bellocchio had been seated at the bar with a friend, Tom Apple, discussing the assassination. It is Bellocchio’s position that the city of Dallas is responsible for the assassination, but his friend, Apple, disagrees. Bellocchio leaves his seat at the bar and approaches Ruby and they get into it on the cause of the assassination, Bellocchio taking from his pocket a folded copy of the full-page ad taken out in the
Dallas Morning News
the previous day by Bernard Weissman. Bellocchio was confused by Ruby’s response. On one hand, Bellocchio said, Ruby, who was very upset about the ad, said he had learned that there was no person named Bernard Weissman, and that the ad was probably taken out by a group trying to stir up racial problems. Bellocchio “assumed” that Ruby meant arousing feelings against the Jews, and it was this group, not Dallas, that was responsible for the assassination. But then Ruby takes two of his “Impeach Earl Warren” photos out of his pocket to show Bellocchio, from which Bellocchio felt that Ruby was taking the contrary position that Dallas was responsible. “He seemed to be vacillating between the two sides…He seemed to be very incoherent,” Bellocchio said. Bellocchio asks Ruby for one of the two copies of the Earl Warren impeachment photo but Ruby refuses to give him one, Bellocchio saying he “believed” Ruby said something about the photos being “some sort of a scoop” for him and he wanted to see that the right persons got the photos.
¹²⁴¹