Reclaiming History (49 page)

11:15 p.m.

Robert Oswald finishes his light supper—a ham sandwich and a glass of milk. Perhaps Captain Fritz will finally be free to talk with him, he thinks. Leaving the hotel coffee shop, Robert heads back across the street to City Hall and is taken to Fritz’s office, but again the captain is too busy to see him.
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I
n the lobby of the Plaza Hotel, Gregory Olds, president of the Dallas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, meets with three prominent members of his local organization. Olds rapidly outlines the situation to them as they try to work out a plan. A call to Mayor Cabell seems in order, but Olds comes back to them after a few moments to report that the mayor is busy. They wonder whether he is really busy or just too busy to deal with the ACLU. Olds has learned to deal with disappointment, and he will not be deterred.

“The best thing for us to do,” he tells his fellow representatives, “is to go across the street and talk to the police directly.”
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11:20 p.m.

Chief Curry enters the Homicide and Robbery office and joins District Attorney Wade, Assistant DA Alexander, Judge Johnston, and Captain Fritz in discussions about the evidence against Oswald. “Have we got enough to charge Oswald with the president’s murder?” Curry asks. All are in agreement that there is sufficient evidence to file charges.
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Assistant DA Alexander drafts the language of complaint number F-154, charging Oswald with the assassination. The words are nearly identical to those used in the Tippit murder charge, only the name of the victim is different. When it is completed, Captain Fritz pulls out a pen and affixes his signature to the complaint, then hands the single-sheet document to District Attorney Wade, who adds his own signature. Judge Johnston takes the form, looks at his watch, then accepts the charge by scribbling his own name and title, along with the words “Filed, 11:26 pm, November 22, 1963.”
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*

There is a certain amount of satisfaction felt by all in attendance. The Dallas police have done an incredible, some would even say a near-impossible job over just the last eleven and a half hours. In that short span since the president’s murder, they have apprehended the man they believe is responsible, and amassed evidence against him that is destined to withstand years of intense scrutiny. Despite the thousands of government man-hours yet to come, the basis of the case against Oswald is collected and assembled by the Dallas police in these first crucial hours. It is a feat the world would soon forget.

11:30 p.m.

Captain Fritz instructs Detectives Sims and Boyd to make out an arrest report on Oswald for the president’s murder.
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As they get to work, the discussion in the homicide office turns to evidence in the case. Once again, Chief Curry asks Fritz if they are in a position to release some of the evidence to the FBI for testing. Fritz tells him that he’s got a local gun dealer coming down to look at the rifle to see if he can identify it.
*

“How about after that?” Curry asks. Fritz looks at him, clearly agitated.

“How do we know, Chief, that we can get this evidence back from them when we need it?” Fritz asks. “I don’t think we should let them have it.”

“You know, this is a Dallas case,” Alexander chimes in. “It happened here and it’s going to have to be tried here. It’s our responsibility to gather the evidence and present it.”

Chief Curry is keenly aware that the FBI and Secret Service have no jurisdiction over the case. It’s Dallas’s baby, and it’ll be up to them to see it through to the end. He also knows that it’ll be their fault if something gets screwed up. Still, this isn’t your average, garden-variety murder case. This is an investigation involving the assassination of an American president. Curry feels that his department has to make every effort to cooperate with the federal agencies and let them see what Dallas is doing. Besides, the FBI laboratory in Washington is the best of its kind in the nation and its support could certainly help expedite the investigative process.
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“Chief, I think you ought to let them take it up to Washington and bring it back tomorrow night,” Wade suggests, trying to break the deadlock. “Let them have it twenty-four hours.”
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The group argues some more over whether that is a wise course of action. Finally, an agreement is reached. The Dallas police want two things to ensure an unbroken chain of possession—photographs of everything sent to Washington, and an accountable FBI agent, Vince Drain, to sign for and accompany all of the evidence to and from the nation’s capital.
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Chief Curry calls upstairs to the Identification Bureau and tells Captain Doughty to have Lieutenant Day stop all processing of the rifle and to prepare the rifle, and other key pieces of evidence, for release to the FBI.
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Agent Drain telephones the Dallas FBI office, telling Special Agent-in-Charge Shanklin that Curry has agreed to lend the FBI the evidence. Shanklin notifies FBI headquarters and within ten minutes a C-135 jet tanker and crew are waiting on the runway at Carswell Air Force Base in Fort Worth to fly the evidence to Washington.
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11:45 p.m.

FBI agents Vince Drain and Charles T. Brown sign for and receive the items to be transported to Washington, which include the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, serial number C2766, found on the sixth floor;
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two of the three spent hulls found under the sniper’s nest window
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(the third spent hull
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was retained by Captain Fritz and kept in a desk drawer in his private office
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); one live 6.5 caliber cartridge found in the rifle chamber;
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and the paper sack found near the sniper’s nest window.
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Lieutenant Day scribbles some instructions on a corner of the paper sack found on the sixth floor: “FBI: Has been dusted [for prints] with metallic powder on outside only. Inside has not been processed. Lieut. J. C. Day.”
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The paper sack already had the words “Found next to the sixth floor window gun fired from. May have been used to carry gun. Lieutenant J. C. Day.”
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When Day hands the rifle, the weapon believed by Dallas police to have murdered Kennedy, to FBI agent Drain, he says, “There’s a trace of a print here,” pointing to the trigger housing. The agent says nothing as he takes possession of the rifle.
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The rest of the items are loaded into a box and FBI agents Drain and Brown hustle them down the elevator to the basement and out to their waiting car for the short trip to Carswell.
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11:50 p.m.

Chief Curry, District Attorney Wade, and Captain Fritz step out of the Homicide and Robbery office into the crush of reporters gathered in the third-floor corridor and announce that charges have been filed against Oswald in the assassination of the president.

“We want to say this,” Curry tells them, “that this investigation has been carried on jointly by the FBI, the Secret Service, the [Texas] Rangers, and the Dallas Police Department. Captain Fritz has been in charge.”

The newsmen want to know if Oswald has confessed.

“He has not confessed,” Curry says.

“Any particular thing that he said,” a reporter asks, “that caused you to file the charges regarding the president’s death against him?”

“No, sir,” Curry answers. “Physical evidence is the main thing that we are relying on.”

Asked to name the physical evidence, Curry declines.

“When will he appear before the grand jury?”

Curry doesn’t know, although that would be the next step. “We will continue with the investigation. There are still many things that we need to work on.”

“Mr. Wade, could you elaborate on the physical evidence?”

“Well,” the district attorney tells them, “the gun is one of them.”

“Can you tell us if he has engaged a lawyer?”

“We don’t know that,” Captain Fritz says. “His people have been here but we don’t—”

The homicide captain’s hoarse voice is drowned out by a flood of other questions: Are there any fingerprints on the gun? Can we get a picture of him? Can we get a press conference where he could stand against a wall and we could talk to him? Do you expect a confession from this man?

“No,” Wade says, picking the last question to answer.

“Do you have a strong case?”

“I think it’s sufficient,” Wade replies.

“What is the evidence that links him to the gun?”

“I don’t care to go into the evidence now,” Wade says firmly.
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The three officials huddle to discuss the possibility of showing Oswald to the press. A nearby microphone picks up fragments of the conversation.

“We could take him to the show-up room,” Fritz is heard saying, “and put him on the stage and let him stand up. They couldn’t, of course, interview him from up there, you know, but if you want them to look at him or take his picture—I’m not sure whether we should or shouldn’t.”

“We’ve got the assembly room,” Curry says. “We could go down there.”
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“Speak up!” the reporters shout.

“We’re going to get in a larger room,” Wade tells them, “that’s what we’re talking about here.”

“What about the assembly room?” a reporter shouts.

“Is that all right?” Wade says. “Let’s go down there.”
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Most of the reporters make their way downstairs to the City Hall basement, awaiting Oswald. A few continue to grill Wade as Fritz and Curry slip back into the homicide office.

“Will there be a way to take any pictures?”

“I don’t see any reason to take any picture of him,” Wade replies.

“Of Lee?” a reporter asks, incredulously.

“Yes,” Wade replies.

“Well, the whole world’s only waiting to see what he looks like [now],” the reporter says.

“Oh, is that all,” Wade answers matter-of-factly, “the whole world.”

“That’s all,” the reporter says. “Just the world.”
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NBC national television is shutting down its live coverage on the East Coast, where it’s approaching 1:00 a.m. David Brinkley sums up the feelings of a nation to his dwindling audience: “We are about to wind up, as about all that could happen has happened. It is one of the ugliest days in American history. There is seldom any time to think anymore, and today there was none. In about four hours we had gone from President Kennedy in Dallas, alive, to back in Washington, dead, and a new president in his place. There is really no more to say except that what happened has been just too much, too ugly, and too fast.” The network signs off at 1:02:17 a.m.
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Saturday, November 23

12:05 a.m.

Gregory Olds and three ACLU representatives, wanting to know if Oswald is being denied legal assistance, are not satisfied by the statement to them of Captain Glen King, the administrative assistant to the chief of police, that as far as he knew Oswald had not requested such assistance. Two members of Olds’s group locate and speak directly to Justice of the Peace David Johnston. Johnston assures them that Oswald’s legal rights have already been explained to him and that he had “declined counsel.” They report this back to Olds. Satisfied that Oswald, despite his earlier protests in the third-floor corridor, had probably not been deprived of his legal rights, the men from the ACLU decide to go home for the night.
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I
t’s been dark for hours, and most of Dallas law enforcement would normally be in bed and sleeping by now. But not tonight. In the Homicide and Robbery Bureau, Captain Fritz and Chief Curry confer in hushed tones just outside Fritz’s private office, where Oswald awaits them. Their discussion centers around how to make Oswald available to the press. If Captain Fritz had his way, he’d have cleared the third floor of all reporters a long time ago. To his way of thinking, they’re nothing but a nuisance to the investigation. Dealing with them has been a thorn in his side all day, because there’s only been one way to get Oswald to and from Fritz’s office, and that’s through the crowd of reporters in the third-floor corridor. Every time they move him, Oswald faces a verbal assault from the press. Some of the things they holler at him are provocative, some seem to please him, others aggravate him, but none of them help the interrogation process. In fact, Fritz thinks, he would have been “more apt to get a confession…from [Oswald] if I could have…quietly talked with him.” The constant barrage by the press has a tendency to keep Oswald upset.
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What bothers Chief Curry the most is the beating the city of Dallas, and the police department in particular, is taking in the press. It especially disturbed him to hear a reporter telling a television audience, as he held up a picture of Oswald, “This is what the man who is charged with shooting President Kennedy looks like, or at least this is what he did look like. We don’t know what he looks like now after being in the custody of the police.”
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Of course, Curry knew Oswald wasn’t being mistreated. He himself had checked with Captain Fritz to make sure that Oswald had been given something to eat and wasn’t being subjected to long, drawn-out interrogation sessions. But the comments, no matter how inaccurate, sting just the same. Curry had always maintained very good relations with the local press, and they respected him for it.
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But this is different. The halls are overrun with reporters from all over the world, each one putting Dallas under a magnifying glass. Under the pervasive glare of the world media, Curry feels that he has to defend the city and his beloved department. In no uncertain terms, he wants the press to know that Oswald isn’t being mistreated, which, in his mind, means marching him out to within an arm’s length of the mob of reporters waiting downstairs.

“I’m a little afraid something might happen to him,” Fritz says. “Let me put him on the stage so nobody can get to him.”

“No,” Curry says. “I want him out in front of the stage.”
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