Reclaiming History (67 page)

“I don’t care to discuss that with you,” Oswald replies sharply.
¹²⁹⁹

The homicide captain turns back to the issues of evidence.

“I understand you were dishonorably discharged from the Marine Corps—”

Oswald bristles noticeably and cuts him off.

“I was discharged
honorably
,” Oswald snaps. “They later changed it because I attempted to renounce my American citizenship while living in Russia. Since my change in citizenship did not come to pass, I wrote a letter to Mr. Connally, who was then secretary of the navy, to have this discharge reversed, and after a considerable delay, I received a very respectful reply in which Mr. Connally stated that he had resigned to run for governor of Texas, and that my letter was being referred to the new secretary. I’m still waiting.”

Some reporters had been speculating that Oswald’s intended target was Governor Connally, rather than the president. But Captain Fritz doesn’t detect any animosity toward the governor in Oswald’s voice.
¹³⁰⁰

“Lee, we found a map in your room with some marks on it,” Fritz says, shifting subjects. “What can you tell me about those marks? Did you put them on there?”

“Oh, God!” Oswald says, rolling his eyes. “Don’t tell me there’s a mark where this thing happened?”

No one says anything.

“What about the other marks?” Oswald says. “I put a lot of marks on that map. I was looking for a job and marked the places where they were interviewing.”

Oswald explains that he has no transportation and either walks or rides a bus and that he was constantly looking for work. He says that as he got leads he would chart them on the map to save time in traveling.

“Why was there an X at the location of the Book Depository?” Fritz asks.

“Well, I interviewed there for a job,” Oswald replies. “In fact, I got the job. That’s all that map amounts to.”
¹³⁰¹

11:00 a.m.

In the basement jail office, Captain Frank Martin and a posse of detectives walk up to assist in the security measures, having just come down from the third-floor Juvenile Bureau.
¹³⁰²
They’re there only a moment when someone hollers, “The armored trucks are here!”

Assistant Chief Batchelor heads up the Commerce Street exit ramp and after a quick inspection of the vehicles, he decides that the larger truck, with room for two guards, is better suited for the mission. There wasn’t sufficient clearance for the truck to be taken to the bottom of the ramp, and the driver believed that because of the truck’s weight, if he parked the truck on the incline, when he started to pull out he might stall the truck on the ramp. It was decided to leave the truck at the top of the ramp, the front wheels on the sidewalk on Commerce Street, and the rear wheels on the incline of the ramp.

“That’s fine,” Batchelor tells the driver, and points out the car that he will be following when they get ready to leave. There is very little room for anyone to squeeze by the truck—a foot to two feet on either side is all. It’s effectively plugging the ramp.
¹³⁰³
Batchelor then opens the back of the truck to make sure it’s clean. An empty Nehi soft-drink bottle rolls out and pops as it shatters on the concrete. The sound causes a commotion among the reporters at the bottom of the ramp. What was that? A shot? A group of them break toward the armored truck to see what happened.
¹³⁰⁴

On the third floor, time is growing short, and Captain Fritz makes one more attempt to shake Oswald’s story.

“Lee, why did you go to Irving to visit your wife on Thursday night instead of Friday, like you normally did?” the homicide chief asks.

“I learned that my wife and Mrs. Paine were giving a party for the kids,” Oswald tells him, “and that they were going to have a house full of neighborhood kids there. I just didn’t want to be around then. So, I went out Thursday night.”

“Did you bring a sack with you the next morning?”

“I did,” Oswald says.

“What was in the sack?” Fritz asks.

“My lunch.”

“How big of a sack was it?” Fritz asks. “What was its shape?”

“Oh, I don’t recall,” Oswald replies, tiring of the cat-and-mouse game. “It may have been a small sack or a large sack, I don’t know. You don’t always find one that fits your sandwiches just right.”

“Where did you put the sack when you got in Wesley’s car?” Fritz questions.

“In my lap,” Oswald says, “or possibly on the front seat next to me. That’s where I always put it because I don’t want it to get crushed.”

“You didn’t put it in the backseat?” Fritz asks.

“I didn’t put any package in the backseat,” Oswald says vehemently.

“Wesley Frazier says that you brought a long parcel over to his house and put it in the backseat of his car,” Fritz tells him. “Do you deny that?”

“Oh, he must be mistaken,” Oswald claims, “or else thinking about some other time when he picked me up.”

“Didn’t you tell him you had curtain rods?” Fritz asks.

“Absolutely not!” Oswald snaps. “I
never
said such a thing.”
¹³⁰⁵

Captain Fritz asks Oswald again where he was at the time of the shooting.

“When lunchtime came,” Oswald says, “one of the Negro employees invited me to eat lunch with him, and I said, ‘You go on down and
send the elevator back up
and I will join you in a few minutes.’” He said that before he could finish what he was doing, all the commotion surrounding the assassination took place, so he said, “I just went on downstairs” to “see what it was all about.” On the way, he says, he stopped to get a Coke, and before he could proceed on his way out of the building, “a police officer stopped me” to ask some questions, but “my superintendent stepped up and told the officer that I am one of the employees of the building. So, he told me to step aside for a little bit and we will get to you later. Then I just went out the front door and into the crowd to see what it was all about.”
¹³⁰⁶

Postal Inspector Holmes notices that Oswald didn’t say what floor he was on at the time of the shooting, or whether he had taken the elevator or stairs down.
*
He also wonders why Oswald left the scene and how he got away, but figures that Fritz had covered these areas in a previous session.
¹³⁰⁷
What Holmes doesn’t realize is that Oswald, like thousands of guilty people before him who incriminate themselves by telling inconsistent stories, has changed his story significantly.

Shortly after his arrest, Oswald told Fritz that at the time of the shooting he was eating lunch on the first floor. Also, that he
had gone up
to the second-floor lunchroom to get a Coke when he was stopped by Officer Baker and the building superintendent, Roy Truly. Now, Oswald was
admitting that he was on an upper floor of the Depository when the shooting occurred
and was on his way down to the front door when he was stopped.

Through the venetian blinds, Captain Fritz can see Chief Curry milling about impatiently in the outer office. Finally, the chief raps lightly on the door and opens it a crack.

“We’ll be through in a few minutes,” Fritz tells him.
¹³⁰⁸

Curry closes the door and the questioning continues, with Dallas Secret Service agent-in-charge Forrest Sorrels and Fritz returning one final time to Oswald’s use of the name A. Hidell at his post office box in New Orleans and elsewhere.

“Now, you say that you have not used the name A. Hidell,” Sorrels says, “but you show the name on this change-of-address card
†
as a person entitled to receive mail at this address. If you don’t know anyone by the name Hidell, why would you have that name on this card?”

“I never used the name of Hidell,” Oswald says, dodging the issue.
¹³⁰⁹

The door to Fritz’s office opens again, and this time Chief Curry steps inside.
¹³¹⁰
Although no words are spoken, it’s clear that he wants the interrogation to come to an end. But Captain Fitz, following up on Sorrels’s question, once again asks Oswald, “Lee, do you know anyone by the name of A. J. Hidell?”

“No,” Oswald says.

“Have you ever used that name as an alias?” Fritz presses.

“No!” Oswald insists. “I never used the name and I don’t know anyone by that name.”

“What about the draft registration [Selective Service] card we got out of your wallet showing the name A. J. Hidell?” Fritz fires back.

Oswald boils over.

“I’ve told you all I’m going to about that card!” Oswald flares. “You took notes! Just read them for yourself, if you want to refresh your memory. You know as much about it as I do.”
¹³¹¹

That’s it. There’ll be no more from Oswald, at least until after the transfer. Both Fritz and Sorrels plan to question Oswald further in the days ahead. Captain Fritz and Chief Curry huddle briefly, whispering in hushed tones, then step out into the outer office to confer in private.
¹³¹²

Secret Service inspector Kelley tells Oswald that the Secret Service is responsible for the safety of the president, and that as soon as he has secured counsel, the Secret Service is very anxious to talk with him to make sure that the correct facts are being developed regarding the assassination.

“I would be glad to discuss your proposition with my attorney,” Oswald says, “and after I have talked with one, you can discuss it with me or my attorney, if my attorney thinks that it is a wise thing to do. But, at the present time, I have nothing more to say.”
¹³¹³

I
t’s around eleven by the time Jack Ruby starts to leave his apartment to send Little Lynn her money. He tells George he’s also going to take Sheba down to the club, and he puts his revolver in his right coat pocket. He normally carries it in his right trouser pocket because he doesn’t want to get his coat out of shape.
¹³¹⁴
In the fifteen-minute-or-so drive downtown on the Thornton Expressway, Ruby listens to his car radio but doesn’t hear anything that informs him Oswald hasn’t yet been moved. He decides to go by Dealey Plaza once again to see the wreaths there, and takes the Industrial Street turnoff to Main, where he takes a right and proceeds past the Criminal Courts Building. He is surprised to see a crowd gathered outside the county jail on the other side of rope barricades since he had heard Oswald was going to be moved to the county jail at ten, and it’s now well past eleven. But as he passes City Hall, he notices quite a crowd there too, so he figures maybe they haven’t moved Oswald yet and he makes an illegal left turn into a parking lot across the street from the Western Union office on Main, just one block away (at the end of the same block and on the same side of the street) from police headquarters. Leaving Sheba in the car, he takes his keys and locks the trunk—there’s over eight hundred bucks in cash in a grocery bag in there, half of it in five-dollar bills. He then puts the trunk key and, oddly, his billfold, with all of his identification in it, in the glove compartment of his car, a 1960s Oldsmobile. Leaving the car itself unlocked, he walks across the street to Western Union. In addition to the gun, he’s carrying more than two thousand dollars in cash, wads of it, bundled in rubber bands, stashed in every pocket. He often carries the cash from the Carousel around with him for a couple of days, sometimes as long as a week, and there’s almost always money in the trunk of the car, particularly by Sunday night, when he has to make the payroll.
¹³¹⁵

11:05 a.m.

With the armored truck in place, Captain Jones walks back down the ramp to the basement jail office, where he meets the men who have come down from the Juvenile and Forgery Bureaus, as well as the Burglary and Theft Bureaus. He instructs them to form a line on each side of the passageway leading from the jail office to the ramp and parking area so that Oswald and his escorts will have a protective lane to pass through on their way to the armored car once they emerge from the jail office. Altogether, there are around seventy members of the Dallas Police Department in the basement to make sure there are no problems.

“Don’t allow anyone into this area,” Captain Jones barks over the noise of the basement garage. “Do not allow the press to approach or even attempt to converse with the prisoner. And don’t allow anyone to follow the caravan until after it’s left the basement. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir,” a chorus of officers answers. Jones than commands the media horde, “Do not speak to the prisoner as he is led from the building.”
¹³¹⁶
*

Of course, few newsmen plan to heed the captain’s order.

“I’ll go let them know we’re ready,” Chief Stevenson says to Batchelor as he heads for the elevators.
¹³¹⁷

On the third floor, Captain Fritz and Chief Curry are discussing the transfer plans in the outer office of the Homicide and Robbery Bureau. A small group of investigators surrounds them—Postal Inspector Harry Holmes, Secret Service agent-in-charge Forrest Sorrels, Lieutenants Rio S. Pierce and Richard E. Swain, and Detective Jim Leavelle.
¹³¹⁸

“Are you ready for the transfer?” Curry asks.

“When the security downstairs is ready, we’re ready,” Fritz replies.
¹³¹⁹

Curry tells Captain Fritz that everything is ready, that an armored truck is in position at the Commerce Street ramp and will transport the prisoner to the county jail. But Fritz suddenly shakes his head.

“Chief, I don’t think it’s a good thing to try to move him in that money wagon,” he tells Curry. “I don’t think it’s a good idea at all. For one thing, we don’t know the driver or anything about that wagon, and if someone tries to take our prisoner, we should be in a position to be able to cut out of the caravan, or to take off, or do whatever is necessary to protect him. That heavy money wagon will be too awkward in that kind of a situation. I would prefer to transfer him in an unmarked car.”
¹³²⁰

Curry can see the merit to his plan and isn’t about to argue with Fritz.

“Well, okay,” Curry says, “but we’ll still use the armored car as a decoy and let it go right on down Elm just as we planned and if anyone tries to take the prisoner away from us, they’ll find themselves attacking an empty armored car.”
¹³²¹