Justification For Killing (66 page)

Dallas Police Officer Joe
Marshall Smith pulled his pistol from its holster and checks out
the parking lot directly on the north side of the fence behind the
grassy knoll. Prior to the first shot Officer Smith was on foot
patrol duty stationed on the corner of Houston Street and Elm. His
duty was to stop all vehicles heading west toward the triple
overpass. After the shots had been fired, he noticed people lying
on the ground and running up what has become known as the Grassy
Knoll. One woman says she heard gunfire coming from the bushes.
Officer Smith began a thorough search of the bushes but saw no one.
He caught a strong odor of gunpowder and stopped a man who seemed
to be hurrying away from the area of the stockade fence. He
testified to the Warren Commission that he checked the inside of
the cars in the parking lot behind the Texas School Book
Depository. Most were locked he said, but he did not check the
trunks. Officer Smith questioned one man in the vicinity of the
wooden fence who stated he was Secret Service. The man goes so far
as to produce credentials, which resembled the ones the Secret
Service carry. Office Smith allowed him to continue, it was only
later discovered there were no Secret Service on the ground around
Dealy Plaza. All Secret Service men were riding in the motorcade,
and they all traveled with the wounded President to Parkland
Hospital.

Sergeant D. V. Hardley was
assigned as supervisor over the patrol officers between Main Street
and Field Street along the parade route to Main and Houston Street.
His testimony stated the motorcade had turned the corner at Elm and
Houston, and he began walking west on Main toward the triple
overpass when he heard the first shot. He immediately returned to
his motorcycle and drove around the east side of the TSBD where he
ran into some men who said they were Secret Service
agents.

“
Did they identify
themselves?”

“
You mean with badges? No,
they just said they were agents, but I had no reason to doubt their
identity and continued my search.” Believing the shots came from
the roof of the School Book building Sergeant Hardley positioned
himself to guard anyone coming down the fire escape. No one did.
After a few minutes, he returned to the front of the building to
guard the main entrance door.

It is known at least
twenty-nine Secret Service agents were in Dallas this horrific day;
however, it is also known not a single one of them was ever near
the area identified as the ‘Grassy Knoll’ or in the parking area
behind the Texas School Book Depository. The Secret Service stated
unequivocally: there were no agents on foot in the vicinity of
Dealy Plaza before or immediately after the shooting.

Three minutes after the
shooting Oswald left the lunchroom on the second floor and headed
for the main entrance. Oswald will later testify he ran into two
Secret Service agents in front of the Book Depository. The agents
ask the location of the nearest telephone. The men Oswald meet
leaving the Texas School Book Depository are not Secret Service
agents! In fact, the Secret Service will say they had no men on the
ground, in or around Dealy Plaza prior to or after the
assassination.

Oswald will never be asked
which exit he used or whether he had seen another policeman
stationed at the door, and if so, did the officers try to stop him
from leaving or did they attempt to check his identification to
determine whom he was?

Lonnie Joe and Rocky
pretended to use the phone then made their way to the hallway
outside the lunchroom where Rocky leaned against the wall next to
Mr. Roy Trudy’s office. Lou and Bud mingled with the parade crowd
outside on the steps leading into the building.

Deputy Sheriff Roger D.
Craig was standing outside the Sheriff’s Office at the corner of
Houston and Main waiting to the see the parade. He had not been
assigned any official Presidential motorcade responsibilities; he
just wanted to see the President. A few seconds after the motorcade
turned from Houston onto Elm he heard a shot ring out. Being an
army veteran he immediately recognized it as a shot from a
high-powered rifle. Springing into action as a Deputy Sheriff
instead of a private citizen watching a parade he bolted across
Houston and swiftly crossed the grass of Dealy Plaza and arrived at
the Grassy Knoll. He encountered a man, the man’s wife and their
son. They were the Rowlands. Deputy Craig asked Mr. and Mrs.
Rowland to tell him what they had witnessed. Mrs. Barbara Rowland,
looked down at her son Arnold, she asked him to tell the Deputy
what he had just seen. Arnold said he had observed two men, one
with a rifle with a telescope on the 6th floor of the Texas School
Book Depository building. On further questioning, Officer Craig
determined the window where the boy saw the two men. The window was
on the SOUTHWEST corner of the TSBD building. Oswald supposedly
fired from the SOUTHEAST corner window, on the far end of that
building. Arnold Rowland further explained he saw the two men at
least fifteen minutes before the motorcade arrived on Elm Street. A
couple of minutes before the President arrived he glanced back up
to the window, and only one man was seen, the other was gone!
Officer Craig turned the trio over to Deputy Sheriff Lemmy Lewis
the Criminal Investigator for the Sheriff’s department.

Deputy Craig testified at
the time he released the witnesses to Deputy Lewis about ten
minutes had gone by since the sound of the first gunshot. It was at
this time he noticed Deputy Sheriff Buddy Walthers searching the
curb on the south side of Main Street. Officer Craig crossed Elm
and inquired as to the purpose of the search. Officer Walthers said
it had been reported to him someone had found a spot on the curb
where a bullet appeared to have ricocheted. Craig began to assist
Walthers in the search. As they were walking the curb looking for
evidence, Deputy Craig heard a shrill whistle coming from the
western end of the TSBD building. Looking over in that direction,
he saw a man running around the corner of the building toward a
Nash station wagon with a luggage rack on the rear of the top. The
Nash was traveling west on Elm at a slow rate of speed. The driver
was leaning over to his right as if he were searching for someone.
The running man jumped into the station wagon, and it sped off in
the direction of the triple overpass. He thought the make and color
of the station wagon was a light tan or white Nash Rambler. When
questioned as to the running mans description Deputy Craig
testified, “Oh, he was a white male of middle age or older, at
least six feet or taller, something like that; about 180 to 200
pounds; he had medium brown hair; you know like it had not been
combed - you know like he had been in the wind or something - it
was all wild looking; had on... a tan overcoat...,” he said the
driver had short black hair, but couldn’t remember any more about
him.

“
Had you ever seen either
of these two men before?”

“
No, but I didn’t get a
decent look at the driver.”

“
Did you have an
opportunity to see either later?”

“
Yes, around 5:30 I went
to Captain Fritz at the Sheriff’s office and told him what I had
seen. He carried me into a small office with Oswald sitting in a
chair beside the desk.”

“
Do you recognize this
man?”

“
Yes,” said Deputy Craig,
“this is the man I saw running around the building and jumping into
the station wagon.” He was never questioned as to the discrepancy
between seeing the six feet tall “Oswald” running from the building
to the real Oswald’s 5’9” size.

Deputy Sheriff Craig
testified to the Warren Commission, “about ten minutes” had passed
from the first shot to his interview with the Rowland family. Mr.
Belin, the Commission attorney asked, “This would put the time at
12:40 p.m. when you walked across Elm Street to examine the
bullet’s ricochet mark on the Main Street’s south curb and the time
you heard the whistle?” Mr. Belin, asked what he did next, and
Craig answered about moving to the front of the TSBD building and
guarded the front door. He said he was not to let anyone in or out
unless approved by the Captain in charge. “From the time of the
first shot until you took up your post in front of the Texas School
Book building how much time had passed?

Craig answered, for the
record, “I’d say nearly 20 minutes.”

Sometime around the 30th
of November the mother of one of the girls that work at Abraham
Zapruder’s dress factory in the Dal-Tex building, across from the
Texas School Book building, told an FBI interviewer her daughter
and some of the girls at the factory knew Lee Harvey Oswald. They
also knew Jack Ruby. She said her daughter and a few of the other
girls saw Oswald come out of the TSBD and meet Jack Ruby. They said
Ruby passed a gun to Oswald. Her daughter or the other girls have
never substantiated this. Two glaring problems exist with this
woman’s statement: if Ruby passed a gun to Oswald it would not have
been so apparent and besides Rocky Jolliet was following Oswald out
of the building as he walked east to the bus stop on Elm. Rocky
never saw Oswald stop and talk to anyone

Lee Harvey Oswald
unhurriedly pushes his way through the throng of onlookers and
walked down the seven concrete steps of the Texas School Book
building onto the crowded sidewalk adjacent to the corner of
Houston and Elm Street. He appeared to be looking around for
something - first he looked back west toward the spot where the
President had just been assassinated. Next he glanced down Houston
and immediately turned to his left and strolls, again unhurriedly,
across Houston and proceeded east down the north side of
Elm.

Lonnie Joe and Rocky met
at the corner and decided Rocky would follow Oswald on foot and
Lonnie Joe would hurry back to the parking lot at the Stephen
Austin hotel, get their car and drive east on Wood Street to Lamar
Street, a left turn north and he would be at the Greyhound bus
station and in position to wait for Oswald to walk down
Lamar.

Rocky said, “I’m going to
follow Oswald to the corner of Lamar and Elm and stop. I can watch
him get on the bus at St. Paul from there. That should give me
enough distance that he will not observe I am following him. We
know after he gets on the bus he will ride from St. Paul up to
Lamar and get off and walk the two blocks south to the Greyhound
bus station. While the bus is traveling west from St. Paul to
Lamar, I will quickly walk south down Lamar and meet you. I will
walk on the east side of Lamar since Mr. Watley’s Checker cab will
be parked in Stand Number Three on the west side of Lamar a few
feet past the entrance to the bus station.”

“
Sounds good Rocky, I will
position the car on the northeast corner of Jackson and Lamar. From
there, we should have a perfect view of Mr. Watley’s cab and Oswald
when he arrives.”

At about this time, the
interference on the police radio stops. It has been determined the
microphone has been “stuck” open for a total of four minutes;
however, a strange occurrence was reported by several policemen on
duty in the Police Dispatch room about an electronic beeping that
those who understood Morse code said spelled out the word
“Victory.” This has never been ‘officially’ proven, only the words
of the officers present are to be believed.

Another peculiar,
inexplicable occurrence takes place. The telephone system in
Washington, D. C. goes out. In some areas, it is off for upwards of
an hour.

Back in Dallas at
Love Field, Master Sergeant Jonathon Medlock, Chief Steward on Air
Force one was idling the time away until the presidential party
arrives for the return trip to Washington listening to the Secret
Service radio frequency. He heard one of the agents saying, “The
President has been shot!! It is terrible; I believe it could be
fatal. The President needs medical attention immediately. We have
to — ” before Sergeant Rhodes could hear more details for some
inexplicable reason the radio chatter turned into static. The first
thing Sergeant Rhodes though was jamming. During the Korean War, he
had served as a radio operator and recognized radio-jamming
techniques.
Nah,
he thought,
why would someone want
to jam Air Force One?
A few seconds later
he tuned on one of the televisions aboard the Presidential plane
and heard the painful news the President had been shot, this tragic
information was relayed to the pilot Colonel Swindle and his
co-pilot Lieutenant Colonel Lewis Hammonds.

On November 22, at 12:36
p.m., Mr. John McWatters driving the Marsalis-Ramona-Elwood-Munger
bus, known as the Marsalis 1213 run, left the intersection of St.
Paul and Elm, going west on Elm Street - bound for Oak Cliff
(Oswald’s rooming house was located at 1026 North Beckley Avenue in
Oak Cliff). The Dallas Transit Company dispatcher verified the
departure time of Mr. McWatters bus. It had arrived and departed on
schedule from St. Paul and Elm. Heading west on Elm, he stopped at
Griffin Street, he said during testimony with the Warren
Commission, “I come to a complete stop, and when I did, someone
come up and beat on the door of the bus. My bus was about even with
Griffin Street; I was between Field Street and Griffin. This was
the time Oswald boards the bus at a point on Elm St. seven short
blocks east of the TSBD. The bus is traveling west toward Dealy
Plaza, the area from which Oswald has just come. To do this, Oswald
has had to walk, at a brisk pace, seven blocks from Dealey Plaza.
The man got on the bus, fumbled around in his pocket and found
23-cent for the fare, and “he took the third chair back on the
right.” Mary Bledsoe, sitting across from McWatters, in the side
seat, would later identify the later arrival as Lee Harvey Oswald
saying she knew him because he had previously been a former tenant
of hers.