The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy – part 6: Problems of Oswald’s Alibi

Reading time: 7 minutes

Reading guide: Together with the captions, the pictures provide the essence of the story

Dallas – Friday, November 22, 1963

At half past twelve on a Friday afternoon, President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. Sitting in the back of a car, he was hit by several gunshots. It was not immediately clear where the shots had come from. Police officers ran up a grassy knoll bordering a parking lot and a rail yard.

Almost instantly, officers also entered the seven-story Texas School Book Depository building from which the shots had allegedly been fired. A number of textbook publishers had  their books stored on the top four floors, while their offices were on the lower floors. Approximately 50 employees worked in the building. Some of them were ‘order fillers’: they walked the floors with order lists to find the requested books. One of them was Lee Harvey Oswald, who had been working there for about a month.

Half an hour after President Kennedy’s assassination, on the 6^th floor of the building, Dallas police discovered an empty space surrounded by book boxes (later known as the ‘sniper’s nest’), where three rifle casings lay on the floor. It was assumed that President Kennedy had been shot from this place. A few minutes later a rifle was discovered, also hidden behind stacks of boxes. The next day, it appeared that the gun belonged to Lee Harvey Oswald.

Marrion Baker looking for the gunman in the Texas School Book Depository building

Motorcycle officer Marrion Baker was the first officer to run into the School Book Building. He had noticed pigeons flying off the roof of the building, which had apparently been disturbed by the shots. Baker assumed the gunman was on that roof. Since this was a matter of seconds, he rushed together with the building’s manager Roy Truly, straight into the building and ran up the stairs. And who did he encounter on the second floor? It was Lee Harvey Oswald, of all people, the owner – as he later on turned out to be – of the rifle that was to be discovered on the 6^th floor an hour afterward.

That same afternoon (after he had been arrested for the murder of police officer J.D. Tippit) Oswald stated in the course of the interrogation that he was having lunch in the ‘domino room’ on the first floor. The domino room was frequented mainly by colored employees. In 1960’s Texas segregation was still quite common. During their lunch break employees often played dominoes, hence the name. An opponent of segregation Oswald often had lunch there too. That is why he admired President Kennedy, given his civil rights policies.

Oswald was a loner, he did not mingle with the other employees, but often had lunch in the domino room while reading a newspaper. In the course of the interrogation, Oswald stated he went to the lunchroom on the second floor to get a bottle of Coke from the vending machine. According to Oswald, just when he had grabbed his bottle of Coke, Baker came rushing in. That afternoon, Dallas Police failed to ask Oswald by what route he had supposedly reached the lunchroom. It was immediately assumed Oswald was the perpetrator and that he had rushed down the stairs at the back of the building from the 6^th floor to reach the lunchroom a few seconds before Baker and Truly arrived there.

But if Oswald had actually been in the domino room, it is apparent that he must have taken the stairs next to the building’s main entrance. Those stairs went no further than the second floor and via a long corridor he could reach the lunchroom (see Fig.2). 

If Officer Baker had not rushed into the building, looking for the gunman, Oswald would have had no alibi anyway. By half past twelve, both the domino room and the lunchroom were deserted: most of the employees had gone outside to watch Kennedy’s motorcade. Some of the employees preferred to watch the motorcade from the windows facing Elm Street. No one had seen Oswald around that time. Apparently Oswald himself had not watched the motorcade. We do not know why he had not because Dallas Police did not ask him that question.

A matter of seconds

The Warren Commission (the official commission who investigated Kennedy’s assassination)  reconstructed the route of Baker and Truly took and found that it had taken them 75 seconds to reach the lunchroom. The question now is whether Oswald (descending from the 6^th floor by the stairs at the back of the building) would have been able to reach the second floor lunchroom in time, before Baker and Truly did. If it had taken him longer than 75 seconds, he would not have been able to reach the lunchroom in time via the back stairs. After all, he would then have arrived in the lunchroom after Baker and Truly. Or rather, he would have encountered them on the stairs to the third floor. In that case, because he was actually encountered in the second floor lunchroom, he must have used the stairs on the first floor to the right of the building’s entrance. In that case he would have had an alibi and would not have been able to kill President Kennedy.

The Warren Commission also figured out the time it would have taken Oswald to get from the sixth-floor window (from which Kennedy allegedly was shot) to the lunchroom. The outcome ranged from 74 to 78 seconds. Compared to Baker and Truly’s 75 seconds, the difference is a matter of seconds. But according to the Warren Commission, the reconstruction of the route of Baker and Truly had not taken into account a number of delaying factors. As a result, they must have needed more time than 75 seconds. Hence, the Commission argued, Oswald would have been able to arrive at the lunchroom on time (i.e., earlier than Baker and Truly). And since it was his gun that was discovered on the 6^th floor, the outcome seemed obvious: Oswald was the perpetrator.

Oswald’s alibi and the 6^th floor investigation

Still, it’s worth taking a closer look at the time it took Baker and Truly, as well as Oswald, to reach the lunchroom. How to shed more light on that? In his book Cold Case Kennedy, Flip de Mey tried to do just that, and he clearly shows that this is not a simple matter. In his reconstruction, the time of Baker and Truly on the one hand, and Oswald’s time on the other hand, remain too close together to provide Oswald with an alibi.

For clarity’s sake we have to critically examine the re-enactments carried out by David Belin, one of the staff members of the Warren Commission. Did it really take Baker and Truly more than 75 seconds on November 22, as the Commission claims? That is the subject of two subsequent parts of this series. And how much time would it really have taken Oswald to get from the 6^th floor window (from which the shots had allegedly been fired) to the 2^nd floor lunchroom? Did the Commission’s reconstruction also take into account any delaying factors for Oswald? The 6^th floor was occupied by stacks of heavy book boxes that may have delayed Oswald. To determine that, we need answers to two important questions. In the first place: how easily could Oswald emerge from his “sniper’s nest” with the gun in hand? And secondly: did it take him a long time to hide the gun? To put it differently: what did the 6^th floor look like at half past twelve on Friday afternoon,  November 22? The investigation on the 6^th floor, conducted by Dallas Police, may provide the answers: the subject of the next three parts of this series.

Sources

Literature: Warren Report, p. 148-153; De Mey, Cold Case Kennedy (2013) p. 336-362.

Hearings Warren Report: Roy Truly (3H 212-241 – March 24, 1964); Marrion Baker (3H 242-270 – March 25, 1964).

Source fig. 4: (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth49480/m1/1/?q=Texas%20School%20Book%20Depository: University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Dallas Municipal Archives.

Plan for the next parts of this series

• part 7: Dallas Police investigation of the 6^th floor of the Texas School Book Depository building, November 22-25, 1963. (scheduled release date: November 2024)
• part 8: Falsified Photo’s and the adventures of the three casings (December 2024)
• part 9: Discovery of the rifle on the 6^th floor. (January 2025)
• part 10: Warren Commission’s reconstruction of the time it would have taken Baker and Truly to reach the second floor lunchroom. (February 2025)
• part 11: Reconstruction of the actual time it must have taken Baker and Truly to reach the lunchroom on the second floor lunchroom. (March 2025)
• part 12: Reconstruction of the time it must have taken Oswald to get from the 6^th floor to the lunchroom.
• part 13: Discovery of the paper bag (in which the rifle had allegedly been carried by Oswald) on the 6^th floor.
• part 14: The missing hour: Oswald at the police station in Dallas between 2 and 3 o’clock on Friday afternoon, November 22, 1963.
• part 15: Interrogation of Oswald on November 22, 23 and 24, 1963.

Translated by Ite Wierenga