Reclaiming History (54 page)

There are two barbers, both obviously unaware of Robert’s identity. As one of them begins lathering up Robert’s scruffy face, the barbers engage in a lively discussion of the assassination. One of the barbers has already made up his mind, Lee Oswald killed the president and should be executed immediately.

“Wait a minute,” the barber shaving Robert says. “He may be guilty, or he may not. The only way to find out is to give him a fair trial.”

Robert says nothing, but is so pleased with his barber’s call for a fair trial that he tips him fifty cents. Robert skips breakfast and walks across the street to police headquarters in hopes that he might get in to see the chief of police, or even perhaps the man questioning his brother, Captain Fritz.
¹⁰⁵⁷

A
t the Dallas FBI office, Agent-in-Charge Gordon Shanklin calls his men together for their regular daily briefing. The agents have been arriving in virtual silence for the last half hour, whispering in hushed tones about yesterday’s events. The office has the air of a funeral parlor.

Shanklin, rumpled, sleepless, and exhausted, reviews the events of the night.

“While you’ve been sleeping,” he begins, “there have been some important developments. Last night at about 1:30 a.m., the county prosecutor filed first-degree murder charges against Oswald for the killing of the president. In addition, our agents in Chicago were able to trace the ownership of the rifle found on the sixth floor of the depository to Oswald.”

Shanklin proceeds to outline the assignments for the day.

As the meeting ends, Bardwell Odum, a senior agent on the criminal squad, shows Hosty a surveillance photograph that had been flown up to Dallas in a two-seat navy jet fighter from Mexico City during the night. It was thought to be a photograph of Lee Oswald as he walked out of the Soviet embassy. Hosty takes one look and knows immediately that it isn’t Oswald. Odum asks if it might be an associate of Oswald’s.

“Not so far as I know,” Hosty tells him.

“Well, I’ve been ordered to show this to Oswald’s wife,” Odum says.

“Bard,” Hosty replies, pointing to the background of the photograph, “you can’t show that photo to people outside the bureau. Look, you can see the doorway to the Soviet embassy.” Using a pair of scissors they crop out the doorway so no one will know where the photo was taken. They don’t want the Soviets to learn that the Soviet embassy in Mexico City is under photographic surveillance, something, however, that the Soviets had to assume.
¹⁰⁵⁸

8:00 a.m. (9:00 a.m. EST)

Lee Oswald is roused at eight o’clock for breakfast. It was a short sleep, since it was nearly two when they finally locked him up in his solitary cell. The breakfast is no great treat either, just standard city jail fare, stewed apricots, oatmeal, plain bread, and black coffee. They won’t let him handle a razor, but a jailer shaves him, making him roughly presentable for the long day ahead.
¹⁰⁵⁹

M
eanwhile, in Washington at the White House, high drama is being played out. President Johnson arrives there, presumably to move into the Oval Office. Indeed, he appears at the door of the office of JFK’s longtime secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, and asks her if she would come into the Oval Office with him. “Yes, Mr. President,” she says. He proceeds to tell her that “because of overseas” (a presumed reference to nations abroad concerned about whether the country that led the free world in the cold war was as strong as ever), he needed “a transition,” adding, “I have an appointment at 9:30 [EST]. Can I have my girls in your office by 9:30?” Remarkably, he was giving her a half hour to clear out of the office she had been in for three years. “Yes, Mr. President,” she says quietly.

Lincoln had known that she would have to clear the West Wing of the corporeal evidence of her and her boss’s presence, but she never imagined it was going to be so quick. Returning to her office, she saw RFK, and sobbed to him, “Do you know he asked me to be out by 9:30?” RFK was appalled at Johnson’s insensitivity. “Oh, no,” he said. When he encountered LBJ in the hall shortly thereafter, he told him that crating all of his brother’s belongings out of the Oval Office (some had already been) was going to take time. “Can you wait” to move in? he asked LBJ. It wasn’t he, Johnson replied, that wanted such a quick transition, but his advisers. RFK’s body language let Johnson know he wasn’t too impressed with that answer. Johnson, the most powerful man on earth, had been put in his place by one of perhaps only two people (the other being Jackie) capable of doing so at this moment in time, and he returned, with his people, to the Executive Office Building to conduct the affairs of state. It wouldn’t be until after JFK was buried two days later that LBJ moved into the Oval Office.
¹⁰⁶⁰
However, at LBJ’s invitation, Jackie and the two Kennedy children continued to live in the upstairs presidential quarters until December 7, at which time they moved temporarily into the large and elegant Georgetown home of the aristocratic diplomat Averell Harriman, and LBJ and Lady Bird moved out of their twelve-room mansion into the White House.
¹⁰⁶¹

9:00 a.m.

In Irving, the Paines are having breakfast with Marguerite and Marina Oswald when the two representatives from
Life
magazine, Tommy Thompson and Allen Grant, arrive unannounced with a female Russian interpreter.
¹⁰⁶²

As indicated, Marguerite had decided to take
Life
’s offer to put her and Marina up in a hotel room in Dallas so they could be near Lee. Marguerite was convinced that she would be besieged by reporters anxious to hear the life story of the accused assassin’s mother. Why not rest in comfort in a posh hotel at their expense, she reasoned.
¹⁰⁶³
It doesn’t take long for Marina to get her children dressed and ready to go, packing enough diapers and baby bottles for the day. After all, she expects to return.
¹⁰⁶⁴
*
Marguerite is annoyed at the
Life
photographer, who is snapping pictures, and particularly with Mrs. Paine, who seems to be enjoying the media attention. The clear light of morning hasn’t diminished the bitterness set off by the previous night’s feud between Marguerite and Ruth. Each sees the other as an opportunist, eager to cash in on this unpleasant situation.
¹⁰⁶⁵
Eventually Marguerite and Marina and her two children set off for town, where the
Life
people book them into Hotel Adolphus, right across the street from Jack Ruby’s Carousel Club. Ruth Paine only wishes Marina had taken time to finish her breakfast. She knows it’s going to be a trying day.
¹⁰⁶⁶

L
ife
magazine representative Richard Stolley has been waiting outside Zapruder’s office in his dress factory, Jennifer of Dallas, for about an hour when the short, balding man in glasses arrives carrying a projector. Stolley is glad that the men waiting with him are Secret Service agents and not his competitors.

Zapruder invites them in, sets up the projector, threads the film, darkens the room, and almost apologetically shows it to the small gathering. The tension in the room is incredible and there is no sound except the cranking of the old projector as it clicks away. There is the president’s limousine rounding the corner and everyone knows something awful is about to happen. Suddenly there is a spray of red, a halo of pink mist as part of the president’s head is shot off. A horrific silence envelopes the Secret Service men, whose job had been to protect the man in the film.

Additional journalists from the Associated Press, United Press International, and several other magazines begin arriving. Zapruder shows the film a few more times, each replay revealing more details. When he finishes, the Dallas dressmaker looks ill, then uneasy. The number of bidders has grown in the last few minutes.

Stolley knows that
Life
magazine
has
to have this film, and asks to speak privately to Zapruder. Since Stolley had been the first one to contact him, Zapruder agrees to see him first, ushering Stolley quickly into a cluttered inner office. The press outside shouts that Zapruder shouldn’t make up his mind until he’s heard their offers too. Zapruder wastes no time telling Stolley how he feels. First, he wishes he had never taken the film. Second, now that the film exists, he realizes that it could help financially secure his family’s future; however, he is determined not to let it fall into the hands of unscrupulous exploiters. He describes his worst fear to Stolley—the film being shown in sleazy movie theaters in Times Square, while men on the streets hawk it like some pornographic film. The look on Zapruder’s face reveals his genuine disgust over the thought.

Stolley knows he has to find out if Zapruder understands just what his film is worth.

“Our magazine is just as anxious as you are to give your pictures a respectable display,” Stolley says. “We may even be able to go as high as $15,000.”

Zapruder smiles. He understands.

Stolley mentions a new figure, adding that he doesn’t think the magazine can go higher. Zapruder hesitates, and Stolley goes higher. The negotiations follow this pattern for a few minutes, while the fearful cry of Stolley’s competitors grows louder in the corridor outside.

Finally,
Life
’s reputation, the fact it was the most popular weekly magazine in America, with a circulation in excess of seven million, and Stolley’s assurances that the pictures will not be sensationalized win Zapruder over. Stolley types up a crude contract at Zapruder’s desk and the two men sign it. It calls for a payment of $50,000 for print rights only.
*

Stolley picks up the original film and the one remaining copy.

“Is there a back door?” he asks Zapruder.

Having orchestrated one of the journalistic coups of the century, Stolley slips out and leaves Zapruder to face the press, who are still clamoring just outside his office door for a chance to bid.
¹⁰⁶⁷

Across Dealey Plaza from Zapruder’s office, Postal Inspector Harry Holmes arrives for work at the Terminal Annex Building. As Holmes walks into the lobby, the postal inspector on duty tells him that an FBI agent had phoned to inquire as to how the bureau could obtain an original postal money order, and had been told they would have to get it in Washington, D.C.
¹⁰⁶⁸

Although the FBI already has a microfilmed copy of the money order used to purchase the Carcano rifle, in preparing for trial prosecutors always want the original document. After depositing the money order into its bank account, Klein’s, of course, no longer had the original money order.

9:30 a.m. (10:30 a.m. EST)

In Washington, Commander Humes returns to his office at Bethesda Naval Hospital, having gotten hardly any sleep since leaving the morgue six hours earlier. His early morning was consumed attending his son’s First Communion at the family parish. However, the puzzling problems the three pathologists encountered during the autopsy, particularly the disposition of the bullet that struck the president’s back, has been eating away at him.

Humes telephones Parkland Hospital and speaks to Dr. Malcolm Perry, the surgeon who performed the tracheotomy on the president. Humes explains the problems the pathologists had run into in trying to determine what happened to the bullet that struck the president in the back.

“We surmised that it worked its way out of the wound during cardiac massage,” Humes says.

“Well, that seems unlikely, in my opinion,” Perry replies. “Are you aware that there was a wound in the throat?”

The light flashes on for Humes when Dr. Perry tells him that he performed his surgery on an existing wound there, a small, round perforation with ragged edges.

“Of course,” Humes realizes, “that explains it.”
¹⁰⁶⁹

Suddenly, everything the pathologists had encountered when they explored the chest cavity made sense—the bruise over the lung, the bruised muscles surrounding the trachea. It was obvious. The bullet had exited the throat. Dr. Humes felt a great weight lift from his shoulders. He thanked Dr. Perry and hung up.

Humes figures that the bullet must have struck the president’s back, slipped between the muscles without striking any major blood vessels, passed over the top of the right lung, bruising it, and exited the throat just below the Adam’s apple.
¹⁰⁷⁰

His major dilemma solved, Commander Humes has only to write up the final report. He plans to get started later today, but first he needs some sleep.

10:00 a.m.

Bill Alexander didn’t get home from the search of Joe Molina’s house, and to bed, until around 4:15 in the morning, but by 8:00 a.m. he was down at the DA’s office for a full day of work interviewing witnesses and preparing to take the case against Oswald for Kennedy’s and Tippit’s murders to the grand jury on Monday. At that time he would seek an indictment against Oswald on the murders that would supersede the two existing criminal complaints, and announce that his office would be seeking the death penalty against Oswald. To Alexander’s absolute astonishment he receives a phone call from the Dallas police that Jimmy “Rughead” Martin, a local attorney, was at the police station saying he represented Oswald and presenting a writ of habeas corpus signed by Judge Joe B. Brown with bond set at $100,000. If Oswald could pay the 10 percent premium of $10,000 on the bond, he was entitled to be released on bail! Alexander knew that Judge Brown, being a District Court judge, had the authority to overrule Judge David Johnston, who was only a justice of the peace. “Pissed,” Alexander immediately calls Judge Brown.

“Judge, what in the hell is going on here? We’ve already filed on Oswald for the Tippit and Kennedy murders and Judge Johnston has denied bond and we’re not going to honor your writ.”

Brown immediately backs down, acting as if he didn’t know what had already transpired. He promises to immediately recall his writ, and that was the end of it.
¹⁰⁷¹

R
obert Oswald has been hanging around police headquarters for thirty or forty minutes, and still there doesn’t seem to be any hope of talking with police officials. He figures that since his brother has been charged with the president’s assassination, perhaps the district attorney will be amenable to talking to him. He goes down to the first floor of City Hall and telephones the DA’s office from a pay phone. Assistant DA Jim Bowie answers and tells him that District Attorney Henry Wade isn’t in yet, but is expected any moment.