JFK & the Unspeakable: Why He Died & Why It Matters (126 page)

“We did not resume using this number (107) until February, 1964.” Ibid.

[
425
].
Warren Report
, p. 165.

[
426
]. Ibid., p. 166.

[
427
]. Ibid., p. 178.

[
428
]. Warren H. “Butch” Burroughs interview,
The Men Who Killed Kennedy, Part 5, “The Patsy,”
produced and directed by Nigel Turner. The History Channel.

[
429
].
WCH
, vol. 7, p. 15.

[
430
]. Butch Burroughs tried to explain to the Warren Commission why Lee Harvey Oswald, on entering the theater, must have gone directly up the stairs to the balcony. If so, it was impossible for Burroughs to see his entry from the concession stand. Burroughs said he was in the process of counting stock candy and putting it in his candy case: “if he had came around in front of the concession out there, I would have seen him, even though I was bent down, I would have seen him, but otherwise—I think he sneaked up the [balcony] stairs real fast.” Burroughs knew that, if he had not seen Oswald come in, he must have gone immediately up the balcony stairs on entering the theater. Ibid. Julia Postal, the ticket-seller for the Texas Theater, also tried to explain this logistical fact in her Warren Commission testimony: “You can go up in the balcony and right straight down, those steps come back down, and that would bring you into [the orchestra seating]. He wouldn’t have to go by Butch at all.”
WCH
, vol. 7, p. 13.

[
431
]. Author’s interview of Warren H. “Butch” Burroughs, July 16, 2007.

[
432
].
Warren Report
, pp. 6-7.

[
433
]. Jack Davis interview by Jim Marrs, fall 1988,
Crossfire
, p. 353. Author’s interview of Jim Marrs, January 14, 2006.

[
434
]. Jack Davis interview by John Armstrong,
Harvey & Lee
, p. 841.

[
435
]. Warren H. “Butch” Burroughs interview by Jim Marrs, summer 1987,
Crossfire
, p. 353. Author’s interview of Jim Marrs, January 14, 2006.

[
436
]. Burroughs interview by Marrs,
Crossfire
, p. 353. Author’s interview of Burroughs, July 16, 2007.

[
437
]. Ibid. It is possible the pregnant woman gave Oswald the sign he seemed to need, confirming that she was the contact he was seeking. He apparently sat by her longer than he did by anyone else. It was she, not he, who got up and left. Burroughs said of her, “I don’t know what happened to that woman. I don’t know how she got out of the theater. I never saw her again.” Marrs, ibid.

[
438
]. Davis interview by Marrs,
Crossfire
, p. 353.

[
439
].
WCH
, vol. 3, pp. 298-99.

[
440
]. Myers,
With Malice
, pp. 172-73.

[
441
].
WCH
, vol. 3, pp. 299.

[
442
]. Warren Commission member Senator John Sherman Cooper was especially puzzled by Officer McDonald’s circuitous way of approaching the suspected murderer and questioned him closely about it.
WCH
, vol. 3, p. 303.

[
443
]. Ibid., p. 300. Also
WCH
, vol. 7, pp. 32, 39.

[
444
]. Author’s interview of Burroughs, July 16, 2007. Butch Burroughs is a man of few words. When asked a question, he answers exactly what he is asked. Burroughs told me no one had ever asked him before about a second arrest in the Texas Theater. In response to my question, “Now you didn’t see anybody else [besides Oswald] get arrested that day, did you?” he answered, “Yes, there was a lookalike—an Oswald lookalike.” In response to further questions, he described the second arrest, that of the “Oswald lookalike.” Ibid. Because Butch Burroughs saw neither Oswald nor his lookalike enter the Texas Theater, each must have gone directly up the balcony stairs on entering. Oswald crossed the balcony and came down the stairs on the far side of the lobby. There he entered the orchestra seats and began his seat-hopping, in apparent search of a contact. His lookalike sneaked into the theater at 1:45 p.m. and, like Oswald, went immediately up the balcony stairs. By the time Burroughs witnessed the Oswald double’s arrest, he had also come down the balcony stairs on the far side of the lobby, either on his own or already accompanied by police who had been checking the balcony.

[
445
]. Ibid.

[
446
]. Ibid.

[
447
]. Ibid.

[
448
]. In the data base of the JFK Records Act at the National Archives, there is no record of Bernard Haire. Archivist Martin F. McGann to James Douglass, July 20, 2007.

[
449
]. In a photo taken about 1:50 p.m., November 22, 1963, that shows people gathering around the police cars in front of the Texas Theater, Bernard Haire can be seen at the edge of the crowd, leaning on a parking meter and trying to see. Photo by Stuart L. Reed; on p. 68, Myers,
With Malice
.

[
450
]. Bernard J. Haire interview by Jim Marrs, summer 1987.
Crossfire
, p. 354.

[
451
]. Ibid.

[
452
]. Dallas Police Department Homicide Report on J. D. Tippit, November 22, 1963. Reproduced in
With
Malice
, p. 447 (emphasis added).

[
453
]. Letter from Detective L. D. Stringfellow to Captain W. P. Gannaway, November 23, 1963, Dallas City Archives. Cited in
Harvey & Lee
, p. 871 (emphasis added).

[
454
]. Reporter Seth Kantor jotted down in his notebook Oswald’s November 22 remark, “I’m just a patsy,” and the time he made it: 7:55 p.m. Kantor Exhibit 3,
WCH
, vol. 20, p. 366.

[
455
]. FBI Memorandum by Dallas Special Agent Charles T. Brown, December 14, 1963. Warren Commission Document 205. JFK Record Number 180-10108-10231.

[
456
]. Author’s interviews with Wes Wise, October 31 and November 13, 2005.

[
457
]. Bill Pulte interviews with Mack Pate, October 1989. Notes and map from Bill Pulte/Gary Shaw interview with Mack Pate, October 10, 1989. I am grateful to Bill Pulte for alerting me to these interviews and to Gary Shaw for sharing with me his records of them.

[
458
]. Wes Wise citing mechanic T. F. White, “The Wise Allegation,” in “Oswald-Tippit Associates,” Staff Report of the House Select Committee on Assassinations (March 1979),
Appendix to Hearings,
p. 38.

[
459
]. Ibid. Mack Pate identified the vehicle T. F. White had spotted in the El Chico parking lot as a 1961 red Falcon in his October 10, 1989, interview with Gary Shaw and Bill Pulte.

[
460
]. HSCA Memorandum from Andy Purdy to Bob Tanenbaum, February 19, 1977, p. 3. JFK Record Number 180-10108-10134.

[
461
]. Wise interviews, October 31 and November 13, 2005.

[
462
]. Wise interview, November 13, 2005.

[
463
]. Wes Wise retold the story of his encounter with Jack Ruby in a book he published in 2004, co-authored with three other Dallas newscasters who also covered the Kennedy assassination. Bob Huffaker, Bill Mercer, George Phenix, and Wes Wise,
When the News Went Live: Dallas 1963
(New York: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2004), pp. 125-26.

[
464
]. Ibid., p. 126.

[
465
]. Ibid.

[
466
]. Wise interviews, October 31 and November 13, 2005.

[
467
]. Wise interview, October 31, 2005.

[
468
]. Wise interviews.

[
469
]. Ibid.

[
470
]. Report by FBI Special Agent Charles T. Brown, Jr., December 14, 1963. JFK Record Number 180-10108-10237.

[
471
]. Report by FBI Special Agent Charles T. Brown, Jr., December 14, 1963. JFK Record Number 180-10108-10235.

[
472
]. “Castro Says C.I.A. Uses Raider Ship,”
New York Times
(November 1, 1963), p. 1.

[
473
].
Harvey & Lee
, p. 872.

[
474
]. “Rockwell Collins, Inc. Company Timeline,” www.collinsclubs.com/history/
timeline.html. At the Rockwell-Collins merger in 1971, Art Collins, the founder of Collins Radio, was named president and board chairman of Rockwell International. Ibid.

[
475
]. HSCA interview with Carl Amos Mather, March 20, 1978, p. 4. JFK Record Number 180-10087-10360.