The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy – part 1: On a Sunny Day in Dallas
Reading time: 15 minutes
On the morning of November 22 it had been raining in Dallas, but gradually the weather had improved. On his election tour in Texas, Kennedy would also pay a visit to Dallas, the second largest city of Texas with some 700,000 inhabitants. Having arrived at the airport, Kennedy’s motorcade drove to the building in Dallas where the President was to deliver a speech.
Over the weekend of November 22 to 24, three murders were committed in Dallas. That year, up to this weekend, nearly 100 homicides had been committed in Dallas. The remarkable thing was that the first murder of that weekend was going to be the assassination of President Kennedy, on Friday, November 22, 1963 at exactly 12:30, when he drove in an open car on Dealey Plaza. Forty-five minutes later, police officer J.D. Tippit was also killed. After two days, the third murder would be committed. On the Sunday, 24-year old Lee Harvey Oswald, who had been charged with both murders, was killed by nightclub owner Jack Ruby in the Dallas Police Department, in the presence of 70 police officers. The Dallas Police put up a poor show. And yet, they were so proud of having been able to arrest the murderer of both Kennedy and Tippit within 90 minutes. A remarkable achievement indeed, considering the fact that most of the murders that had been committed in Dallas in 1963, had remained unsolved.
On Monday, November 25, both President Kennedy and Lee Oswald were buried. As there were not enough relatives, Oswald’s coffin was carried to the grave by journalists. On the other hand, President Kennedy’s funeral was televised worldwide. As nine-year olds, my friend and I were crying while watching the broadcast in Drachten (in The Netherlands), in my friend’s grandmother’s home.
Lee Harvey Oswald
If you look for the lemma “Lee Harvey Oswald” on Wikipedia, you will find that he was the assassin of President John F. Kennedy. Wikipedia adheres to the conclusion of the 1964 Warren Report, compiled by the Warren Commission. This Commission had been installed by President Johnson to investigate the murder of his predecessor. For almost 60 years, the Warren Report has been the subject of a heated debate between believers (who defend the Warren Report) and the Report’s critics. This series of blogs explores how the Warren Commission came to regard Lee Harvey Oswald as Kennedy’s assassin.
In 1939, Lee Oswald was born in New Orleans. At the early age of 17, he joined the Marines, obtained his high school diploma and was trained as a radar operator at an American base in Japan. It was remarkable that during his service – at the height of the Cold War and during the aftermath of McCarthyism – Oswald was allowed to immerse himself in Marxism and to learn Russian. His service mates nicknamed him “Oswaldovich”. In the late 1950s, anything that smacked of communism and of sympathy for the Soviet Union, was regarded as suspicious. Especially so, one might say, if a soldier would openly profess such views.
In September 1959, he received honorable discharge from the Navy, and shortly afterwards left for the Soviet Union. For almost three years he lived there and he married a Russian woman, Marina. They lived in Minsk and had a daughter, June. After almost three years, he returned to the United States by boat via Rotterdam, together with Marina and June. He then had several temporary, unskilled jobs in New Orleans and Dallas.
Late September 1963, Marina and June were given temporary accommodation in Irving (a suburb of Dallas) by Ruth Paine, one of their acquaintances. From early October, Oswald would visit them on weekends. During weekdays he lived in lodgings in Dallas. Mid-October 1963, Oswald got a new, temporary job at the Texas Schoolbook Depository, a wholesale schoolbook store. Incidentally, it was from that building that shots were allegedly fired at President Kennedy. At the end of October, their second daughter, Rachel, was born. By the early age of 24, Oswald had experienced a lot and had seen a great deal of the world.
8.00: Arrival at the Schoolbook Depository Building
On Thursday afternoon, November 21, Oswald got a lift to Irving from his colleague, Buell Frazier. The Warren Report states that Oswald intended to get his rifle. Most of his belongings were stored in Ruth Paine’s garage. According to the Warren Report, the rifle was lying there on the ground, wrapped in a blanket. The next morning, Frazier and Oswald drove to work. According to Frazier, Oswald carried a large paper bag, about two feet long. Frazier asked him what was in the bag. “Curtain rods,” Oswald replied. However, both Marina and Ruth thought that Oswald had come to Irving, a day earlier than usual, to make up for an argument he had had with Marina in a telephone conversation earlier that week. Oswald was not given to small talk, so he would never have told Frazier something so private. Having arrived at their destination, Oswald walked over to the Schoolbook Depository Building, while Frazier stayed in the car.
“It was the first time that Oswald had not walked with Frazier from the parking lot to the building entrance.” (Warren Report (p.133)
That is the way the Warren Report describes the scene. However, what really happened was something different. As Frazier told in his hearing before the Warren Commission, he stayed in the car for a few minutes, trying to recharge the battery by letting the engine run. Oswald first waited for him, but then walked on anyway. The Report ignores Frazier’s version, in order to give the impression that Oswald wanted to prevent Frazier from noticing the gun in the paper bag.
According to the Warren Report, the bag Oswald was carrying had contained the disassembled rifle; but if so, the bag would have been a foot longer than Frazier remembered. Although Frazier bravely insisted during his hearing that the bag was only two feet long, the Report concluded that his recollection was incorrect.
In the course of the morning, while he was at work, Oswald is supposed to have assembled the rifle, including the telescopic sight. According to the FBI, this could all be done in two minutes by using a screwdriver. During his hearing before the Warren Commission, an FBI expert noted that if you want to use the telescopic sight, after having assembled the rifle, you would have to sight it in by firing a few shots. Of course, Oswald could not do this, but the Warren Report ignores this issue too.
12.30: In the Texas Schoolbook Depository Building
According to the Warren Report, shots were fired at President Kennedy from a window on the 6th floor of the building. Several witnesses did indeed see someone with a rifle at that window, but it is questionable whether it was Oswald they saw. All morning, a crew had been at work laying a new floor. In order to have enough space for laying the floor, the crew had moved all the boxes of books to one side, quite close to the front windows of the building. The boxes had been placed on top of each other as much as possible. Half a meter of space remained between the windows and the wall of boxes. The windows provided a good view at Elm Street, where President Kennedy’s car was going to drive past. So it was an ideal place for a gunman to do his work without being noticed. This spot would become known as the sniper’s nest. From 12:00 to 12:45 there was a lunch break in the building, so that worked out well with Kennedy’s visit. At 12.25, the motorcade was going to pass the building so that everyone could watch.
However, next to the sniper’s nest, and with only a low wall of boxes in between, a colleague of Oswald’s, Bonnie Ray Williams, was having lunch. According to Williams, he had stayed there until 12.15 or maybe 12.20. So the gunman had had to wait for Williams to leave, or – if he was already there – he must have kept very quiet. Williams said that he had seen nor heard anyone on that floor during his lunch. Only after Williams had left, the gunman could have taken his position. Fortunately for the gunman, President Kennedy’s motorcade was five minutes late: it would not get to the building until 12:30. Then, within six seconds, three shots rang out. Kennedy was shot in the back and in his head and was rushed to Parkland Hospital, but to no avail: at one o’clock he was officially pronounced dead.
12.32: Baker, Truly and Oswald in the Lunchroom
According to the Warren Report, Oswald obligingly left the gun and three casings on the 6th floor, and ran down the stairs. In the lunchroom on the 2nd floor he met a motorcycle officer. Immediately after the first shot and having pulled his motorcycle over, this officer, Marrion Baker, had rushed into the building. Baker had noticed pigeons flying off the roof of the building and he assumed the gunman was on that roof. The building’s manager, Roy Truly, saw him run into the building and ran along with him to show the way.
Baker and Truly first tried to use the elevator, but it was stuck on the 6th or the 7th floor, so Truly pointed out where the stairs were. Together they ran up the stairs, and then Baker saw from the corner of his eye Oswald walking in the 2nd floor lunchroom. Baker approached him with his revolver drawn and asked Truly whether he knew the man. “Yes,” Truly said, “he’s one of my employees.” Whereupon Baker and Truly quickly proceeded upstairs. It was not until a few months later, that the Warren Commission wondered whether Oswald, after having fired the shots, actually had had enough time to meet Baker and Truly in the lunchroom. For this purpose, they carried out a reenactment, which will be discussed in a subsequent blog.
12.33-13.00 Oswald on the Run?
Oswald learned that no more work was to be done that day, so he decided to go home. According to the Warren Report, he was on the run. When Oswald left the building at 12:33, he met two reporters who asked him if whether there was a phone in the building. There sure was, Oswald said, and he showed them the entrance to the building. He then took the bus. When this was declared by the police at the press conference, a cheer went up. This was the first time, the journalists commented, that a criminal had used the municipal bus company as a getaway car.
As the bus made slow progress in the heavy traffic, Oswald took a cab for the first time in his life, which cost him almost a full hour’s pay: one dollar. According to his landlady, Mrs. Roberts, Oswald arrived at his lodgings at about 1:00 in the afternoon. “You are in a hurry” she said to him, and he just mumbled something in return. As I mentioned before, Oswald was not a great talker. He was indeed in a hurry: a few minutes later he had changed clothes and left again. The last time Mrs. Roberts saw Oswald was while he was standing at the bus stop. Oswald’s haste cannot be explained by the fact that he wanted to be in the cinema on time. He arrived there (probably) only 45 minutes later. The walk to the cinema did not take that much time.
13.15: Murder of J.D. Tippit
At about 1.15 in the afternoon (the exact time is unknown), just after getting out of his car to talk to a pedestrian, officer J.D. Tippit was killed. As with the “run down the stairs” the Warren Commission had measured the time it took Oswald to walk from his room to the spot where Tippit was murdered. Here too, Oswald had suspiciously little leeway, but according to the Commission it was theoretically possible. Of course, it made a difference that the exact time of departure from Mrs. Roberts’ house, as well as the exact time of Tippit’s murder were not known. By stretching the interval between the two events and by making Oswald run a little faster, the Commission had managed to get him at the scene on time.
Immediately after Tippit’s murder, the gunman had shaken the shell-casings out of his gun as he walked away. Nice of him to do so: in this way the evidence could easily be found. One of the eyewitnesses found two shells, put them in a cigarette case and gave them to one of the officers. While the officers were searching for the other shells, two women (who had seen the gunman) found a third shell. Late that afternoon, when the police came round to attend a line-up to see whether they could identify Oswald (which they said they could), the two women handed over another shell they had found after the police had left the crime scene. So, the Dallas police did not find any of the four casings themselves. On the afternoon of November 22, a number of lineups were held to see if eyewitnesses could identify Oswald as the gunman. Part 6 of this series will be about these lineups.
14.00: Arrest of Oswald
Oswald’s freedom ended in the Texas Theater, a movie theater. At 1.40 in the afternoon, Johnnie Brewer, a shoe store employee, saw Oswald looking in panic in the shopwindow, while standing with his back to the street, when a lot of police cars, sirens blaring, were passing by. Once the cars had gone, Oswald walked on. According to Brewer, some time ago Oswald had bought something from the store, so he looked familiar, although he did not know his name. Having heard on the radio that an officer had been killed nearby, Brewer quickly went after Oswald. He saw him enter the cinema without buying a ticket. Brewer spoke to the ticket lady (who had not seen Oswald) and told her to call the police because of Oswald’s suspicious behavior. The police very quickly arrived in large numbers. Brewer pointed out to them where Oswald was sitting in the theater and when an officer walked up to him and asked him to stand up, Oswald hit him. Then Oswald “ran his head into the officer’s fist”, as the officer described it later.
Evidence Against Oswald
On the evening and in the course of the night of November 22, Oswald was officially indicted for both the assassination of President Kennedy and the murder of officer Tippit. What evidence was there to plead his guilt? I shall confine myself to the assassination of President Kennedy.
In the first place, the rifle which was found on the 6th floor of the Schoolbook Building, probably belonged to Oswald. According to the Warren Report, the rifle was an Italian rifle, a Mannlicher Carcano. But the two officers who had found the rifle, both said it had been a German rifle, a Mauser. According to the Commission, the officers were mistaken. The FBI failed to check whether there had been any rust in the barrel of the gun. In the words of FBI expert Frazier (not to be confused with Oswald’s colleague):
“I did not examine it for that.” (Hearings of the President’s Commission, volume 3, p.395).
And that is very unfortunate: after all, if there had been rust in the barrel, the gun could not have been fired on November 22 and Oswald could not have committed the murder.
Secondly, the three shell-casings which were found in front of the window on the 6th floor, originated from Oswald’s rifle. But because of the careless way in which the Dallas police handled the shells (they were put in an open envelope without having been marked by the finders), they could have been exchanged later on. The Dallas police, especially in the case of ‘cop-killers’, had on some occasions fabricated their own ‘evidence’. See for an example: Randall Adams, Adams v. Texas.
Thirdly, both bullet fragments found in Kennedy’s car originated from Oswald’s rifle. And so did the virtually intact bullet found on a stretcher (it is not clear which stretcher that had been) in Parkland Hospital. Both Kennedy and Connally (the governor of Texas, who sat in front of Kennedy and who had also been hit), had been taken there. This bullet also originated from Oswald’s Mannlicher Carcano. But because the two fragments, as well as the complete bullet, had been handled rather carelessly, there is no chain of evidence. So it is evident that a mix-up cannot be ruled out.
The nearly prestine bullet, found in Parkland Hospital, has become the subject of a complicated discussion in itself. The Report states that CE 399, the official name of the bullet, had pierced both Kennedy and Connally. One of Connally’s ribs had been smashed and his wrist joint had been pierced. Nevertheless, the bullet appeared to be nearly intact and it had lost practically none of its weight. Hence the nickname given to the bullet by critics of the Warren Report: ‘the magic bullet’.
Conclusion
Assuming that the evidence has not been tampered with (and even though the FBI has not properly examined the rifle), it may well be that Oswald’s rifle was fired that day. But by whom? Oswald’s only acquaintance among his colleagues was the one with whom he had travelled a number of times: Buell Wesley Frazier. Frazier stands up for him in his 2021 autobiography. According to him, Oswald was incapable – as far as he could tell – of harming anyone. (Frazier, Steering Truth, p. 161).
Since late September, the rifle had been laying in Ruth Paine’s garage in Irving, so someone else may have taken the gun out of the garage, secretly smuggled it into the Schoolbook Building, shot President Kennedy, left both the casings and the rifle obligingly on the crime scene and then disappeared. It is precisely for this reason that a thorough and honest re-enactment of Oswald’s alibi was so important. This reconstruction will be discussed in a subsequent blog as an example of the Warren Commission’s approach.
Sources: Warren Report (Washington DC 1964) en Hearings before the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy (Washington DC 1964, 26 volumes); Randall Dale Adams, Adams v. Texas (New York 1991); Buell Wesley Frazier, Steering Truth (2021).
Plan for the next blogs:
Part 2: The Warren Commission and its Critics
Part 3: How (not) to Investigate a Crime Scene
Part 4: Oswald on the Stairs – the Time-Tests Made by the Warren Commission
Part 5: The Paper Bag or the Way in which the Warren Commission Handled Evidence
Part 6: Lineups or the Way in which the Warren Commission Handled Evidence
Part 7: The Interrogation of Lee Harvey Oswald
Further Reading: Still the classic study: Mark Lane, Rush to Judgment (1966). Another classic: Sylvia Meagher, Accessories After the Fact (1967), which reviews the Warren Report critically and in detail. Howard Roffman, in Presumed Guilty (1975), focuses on whether Lee Harvey Oswald was the assassin of President Kennedy (according to him he was not) and is highly recommended as a lucid introduction. This also applies to Flip de Mey’s Cold Case Kennedy. A new investigation into the JFK assassination (2013).
Also: Gerald D. McKnight, Breach of Trust: How the Warren Commission Failed the Nation and Why (2005) investigates the methodology of the Warren Commission and on that basis he exonerates Oswald. Donald B. Thomas, Hear No Evil (2010): 700 pages of thorough analysis, but no easy reading. Two defenders (believers) of the Warren Report: Larry Sturdivan, The JFK Myths: a Scientific Investigation of the Kennedy Assassination (2005) and Victor Bugliosi, Reclaiming History (2007). Allowing for the very extensive list of notes, this book contains no less than 2,500 pages, so know what you are in for.
Finally, the two books by the only surviving researcher who has participated in the heated discussion from the start: Josiah Thompson, Six seconds in Dallas (1967) and Last Second in Dallas (2021). According to Thompson, President Kennedy was also shot from the so-called grassy knoll, a raised piece of land, covered in grass, bordering Elm Street. That is the spot where most people, both police officers and civilians, ran after the shots had been fired. Two gunmen: so one may venture the conclusion that there was a conspiracy.
Translated by Ite Wierenga
