Reclaiming History (71 page)

Marguerite is having kittens over the state of her and Marina’s clothes, the lack of clean diapers, and last night’s visit by FBI agent Bardwell Odum, who had shown Marguerite a photograph of an unknown individual. Robert doesn’t want to hear it.

“Mother,” he says, “will you stop talking and hurry up. We have to get you out of here.”
¹⁴¹⁰

Robert simply wants to get them out to his in-laws’ farm in Boyd, Texas, about forty-five miles from Dallas, with as little fuss as possible.
¹⁴¹¹
None of them has any idea what has happened. But his mother won’t listen.

“What’s your hurry?” she asks. “All we have been doing is running from one place to the other. The diapers are wet. And I want you to know how we got here. Mrs. Paine called last night and said that Lee called, and then I was shown a picture of this man—”

“Mother,” Robert says again, his patience wearing thin, “
stop talking
. We have got to get you out of here.”

Robert tells her he is going down to the desk to take care of the bill while they finish packing. Marguerite hands him the fifty-dollar bill given to her by the
Life
representatives. It is just enough to cover the charges.
¹⁴¹²

Robert walks back out to the car, where the two agents have been listening to a Dallas police radio channel. Agent Mike Howard comes over to him.

“Now, don’t get excited, Robert,” he says, “but we’ve just gotten word that Lee’s been shot. It isn’t serious, and they’ve captured the man who shot him.”

The weight of the news pushes Robert up against the side of the car. The only thing that seems reassuring about the news of his brother’s shooting is the calmness in Mike Howard’s voice.

“Where are they taking him?” Robert finally manages to ask.

“Parkland Hospital.”

Robert stares into space a moment, lost in thought.

“What do you want to do now?” Agent Kunkel asks.

“I believe I’ll go to Parkland,” Robert replies. “But I wish you’d take Mother and Marina and the children on to the farm.”

Kunkel suggests that Marina go with him to Parkland, but Robert doesn’t think that will be best. “I’ll find out how serious it is and let you know then,” he says firmly. Robert asks the two agents not to tell his mother or Marina what has happened.

“If they knew,” he says, “I’m sure they’d insist on going to the hospital with me.”
¹⁴¹³

Marguerite and Marina and the children come down to the cars and climb into one with Mr. Gregory and the two agents. Robert gets into his car and heads off for Parkland Hospital. Marguerite demands to know where they are going. “We’re taking you to Robert’s in-laws’ house,” Mr. Gregory tells her.

“No!” Marguerite complains. “You are not taking me out in the sticks. I want to be in Dallas where I can help Lee.”

The Secret Service agents explain that it’s for security reasons, but Marguerite won’t hear of it.

“You can give me security in a hotel room in town,” she whines.

Mr. Gregory has finally had enough of this self-centered woman.

“Mrs. Oswald,” he snaps, “you called me at my home and asked me to come and help you, to provide a place for you to stay, and here I am. Now, if you don’t like it, then I am through with you!”
¹⁴¹⁴

Marguerite is momentarily stunned by Mr. Gregory’s forthrightness. The agents start the car and pull away from the Executive Inn. It isn’t long before Marguerite insists that they need clothes and diapers for the babies. She suggests that they stop in Irving at Mrs. Paine’s house and pick up some of the necessities. The agents radio the FBI dispatcher and learn that a cluster of reporters is staked out in front of the Paine residence. The dispatcher suggests they avoid the media and go to the nearby home of the chief of police of Irving. From there they can telephone Mrs. Paine and have some things brought over. The agents agree and for the moment don’t tell the women why they are making the detour.
¹⁴¹⁵

11:30 a.m.

The ambulance carrying Oswald speeds down Harry Hines Boulevard toward Parkland Hospital.
¹⁴¹⁶
First-aid attendant Fred Bieberdorf has placed an oxygen resuscitator cup over Oswald’s mouth and continues to massage his sternum in the cramped rear bed of the station wagon. Oswald has been unconscious the entire trip and quite still. Beiberdorf thinks he may already be dead. Five blocks from the hospital, Oswald suddenly starts thrashing about, resisting Beiberdorf’s efforts to massage his chest and pulling at the resuscitator cup over his mouth.
¹⁴¹⁷

The ambulance swings around to the hospital’s emergency entrance, the same one President Kennedy was brought to less than two days earlier. A police contingent is already in place and assists the ambulance driver as he backs up to the entrance. A crowd of citizens, reporters, and cameramen are also on hand as Oswald is quickly unloaded and wheeled into the hospital.
¹⁴¹⁸

To Parkland’s assistant administrator, Peter N. Geilich, it looks as though a wave of humanity is coming through the door with the stretcher. Flashbulbs seem to be popping everywhere. He gets a good look at Oswald, dressed in black, his face ashen. The police, besieged by reporters and photographers, set about clearing the emergency area and closing off the hallway.
¹⁴¹⁹

At the suggestion of a Parkland doctor who felt that it would be tantamount to a sacrilege to treat Oswald in Trauma Room One, Oswald is rushed into Trauma Room Two, across the hall from where President Kennedy had been treated.
¹⁴²⁰
Orders are given to clear Trauma Room Two of all unnecessary personnel. An enterprising reporter, Bill Burrus of the
Dallas Times Herald
, evades the sweep for a time by hiding behind a curtain in Trauma Room One across the hall but is eventually discovered and ejected.
¹⁴²¹

Drs. Malcolm Perry and Ronald Jones, who had both worked to save the president’s life on Friday, rush down from the surgical suite and meet the stretcher as it’s wheeled into Trauma Room Two. A battery of doctors and nurses, many of the same faces from Friday’s ordeal, are already there. Dr. Perry makes a rapid assessment of Lee Oswald’s condition. Unconscious and very blue, due to a lack of oxygen, Oswald has no blood pressure. An infrequent, barely audible heartbeat is accompanied by agonal attempts at respiration. Dr. Marion T. Jenkins, an anesthesiologist, immediately inserts an endotracheal tube down Oswald’s throat to facilitate breathing, while Dr. Perry quickly examines his chest. Noting the bullet wound in the lower left part of the chest, Dr. Perry reaches around and feels for an exit wound. He encounters a lump on the right side. The bullet is just under the skin at the margin of the rib. Perry knew at a glance that the bullet had likely traversed every major organ in the abdomen. Detective Leavelle, who is in the room, wants the bullet as evidence and he says that someone, maybe Perry, “pinched the skin and the bullet just popped out in a tray, like a grape seed.” Leavelle realizes that if the bullet hadn’t been stopped by a rib on the right side, it would have automatically gone on to exit Oswald’s body and hit him.
¹⁴²²

The emergency team swings into action, starting resuscitation routines designed to stabilize the patient. Three small venous incisions are performed on each of Oswald’s legs, as well as his left forearm, to introduce fluids. A chest tube is inserted to prevent the left lung from collapsing, and the front of the gurney is lowered to help get blood to Oswald’s heart and brain. The irony is not lost on some that every effort is now being made to save the life of someone who virtually everyone believes extinguished the life of President Kennedy just two days earlier.

Dr. Tom Shires, the chief of surgery at Parkland, and Dr. Robert McClelland enter the room just as Dr. Perry orders Oswald taken to the second floor and prepped for surgery. Perry quickly fills in the chief surgeon.
¹⁴²³

Dr. Shires knows that it will be virtually impossible to save Oswald’s life. Had the shooting happened right outside the operating room, they might have some chance, but Oswald has lost too much blood during the twenty minutes that have elapsed since the shooting. There are no doubt multiple internal bleeding points that will take considerable time to get under control. The tremendous blood loss will result in anoxia, the state of being deprived too long of blood-supplied oxygen, a fatal condition.
¹⁴²⁴

Hospital administrator Steve Landregan manages to get a word with Dr. Shires as he and the other surgeons come out of Trauma Room Two, and he immediately passes it on to the press—Oswald has a gunshot wound in his left side with no exit. He is in extremely critical condition and is being taken immediately to surgery. For the moment, that’s all anyone is willing to say.
¹⁴²⁵

11:34 a.m. (12:34 p.m. EST)

Jackie Kennedy, her two children, and RFK enter the East Room of the White House, where the president’s body lies in state for a private viewing. Jackie had earlier written a letter to her lost husband, and minutes earlier upstairs in the family quarters, she had Caroline, soon to be six years old, write a letter to her father in which she said, “Dear Daddy. We’re all going to miss you. Daddy I love you very much. Caroline.” Then Caroline, holding John-John’s hand, had him scribble up and down something illegible on a separate sheet of paper. Now at the casket, it is opened. “It isn’t Jack, it isn’t Jack,” Jackie thinks, repeating her observation of several hours earlier as she looks at the grotesquely familiar figure before her, happy that the casket had been closed for the rest of the world. She places the three letters, from herself, Caroline, and John-John, along with a scrimshaw (a decorative article carved from whale ivory) and a pair of cufflinks she had given JFK, in the coffin. Bobby, kneeling beside Jackie at the coffin, places a silver rosary his wife, Ethel, had given him at their wedding, and the PT-109 tie clip his brother had given him, next to his brother’s body in the coffin. The coffin is closed, and Jackie and Bobby quietly and slowly leave the room, their minds and souls racked with inconsolable pain.
¹⁴²⁶

11:38 a.m.

At Dallas police headquarters, the public elevator opens onto the third floor and Sergeant Patrick Dean steps off. He’s hoping to find someone in Captain Fritz’s office who can tell him if it’s all right to release to the press the name of the man who shot Oswald. Dean is unaware that the name “Ruby” is already spreading like wildfire through the press corps in the basement below. As soon as Dean steps off the elevator, he encounters Chief Curry and a Secret Service agent.
¹⁴²⁷

“This is Mr. Forrest V. Sorrels, head of the Secret Service in Dallas,” Curry says.

“Here’s my keys. Take him to the fifth floor to interview Ruby.”
¹⁴²⁸

Curry hands Dean a packed key ring, including the one Dean will need to operate the third-floor jail elevator.
¹⁴²⁹
As the two men ascend to the fifth floor, Agent Sorrels wrestles with a dilemma. He knows that before questioning Ruby he should advise him of his constitutional right to remain silent under the Fifth Amendment.
*
However, Sorrels also knows that it is paramount that he find out if Ruby is involved with Oswald in the assassination, or if Ruby has accomplices. Sorrels figures that if he warns Ruby of his right to remain silent, Ruby might not tell him what he wants to know. By the time Dean and Sorrels reach the fifth floor, Sorrels decides not to warn Ruby, believing that at the moment it’s far more important to the Secret Service to determine whether or not Ruby has accomplices, and of critical interest to determine whether or not Oswald and Ruby know each other.
¹⁴³⁰

The elevator doors open onto the fifth floor of the jail and Sergeant Dean and Secret Service agent Sorrels step off. Sorrels surrenders his sidearm to the officer just outside, and they walk over to where three detectives are standing with Jack Ruby, stripped to his shorts.

“This is Mr. Forrest V. Sorrels,” Dean says, introducing the two men.

Ruby stops him.

“I know who he is,” Ruby says. “He’s with the FBI.”

“No, I am not with the FBI,” Sorrels replies. “I’m with the Secret Service.”

“Well, I knew that you were working for the government,” Ruby answers.

“I want to ask you some questions,” the Secret Service man says.

“Is this for the magazines or press?” Ruby asks.

“No, it’s for myself,” Sorrels tells him.
¹⁴³¹

Ruby seems to be mulling over whether he’s going to answer any of Sorrels’s questions. The agent tries to think of a way to make Ruby feel comfortable talking to him. He remembers looking out Assistant Chief Batchelor’s window just before the shooting and seeing Honest Joe Goldstein, a pawnbroker and one of the town’s more colorful characters, across the street. It’s not easy to overlook Goldstein, who’s often seen in his garishly painted Edsel with its plugged .50 caliber machine gun mounted on the top. Honest Joe is well off and generous, always willing to cut prices for a police officer, and a publicity hound to boot. He likes to lend money on oddities, like artificial limbs, just to get his name in the paper—“Honest Joe Goldstein, the Loan Ranger.”

“I just saw Honest Joe on the street,” Sorrels says. “I know a number of Jewish merchants here that you know.” It seems to break the ice.

“That’s good enough for me,” Ruby says. “What is it you want to know?”
¹⁴³²

“Are you Jack Rubin?” Sorrels asks.

“No, it’s Jack Ruby,” the fifty-two-year-old nightclub owner says. “I was born Jack Rubenstein, but had my name changed legally when I came to Dallas.”

In answer to a series of questions, Ruby says he is in the entertainment business, operating the Carousel Club on Commerce Street and the Vegas Club on Oak Lawn. He has an apartment on South Ewing Street in Dallas.

“Jack—why?” Sorrels finally asks.

Ruby is longing to talk, and it all comes tumbling out.

“When this thing happened,” Ruby says, “I was in a newspaper office placing an ad for my business. When I heard about the assassination, I canceled my ad and closed my business and have not done any business for the last three days. I have been grieving about this thing. On Friday night, I went to the synagogue and heard a eulogy on the president. I thought very highly of him.”