Reclaiming History (73 page)

“Get in and interview Ruby,” Shanklin orders.

Hall slips the phone back into the cradle, returns to the police chief’s office, and requests permission to interview Jack Ruby.

“Of course,” Curry replies, and asks a uniformed officer to take Agent Hall up to Ruby’s fifth-floor jail cell, immediately. When he arrives, Hall finds Ruby in the same block of maximum-security cells where Oswald had been imprisoned. The jailer, K. H. Haake, opens the outer door that leads into a small corridor in front of the three cells. There is a table and some chairs there. Detective T. D. McMillon is seated on one of them. A few minutes later, Detective Barnard Clardy joins him. Agent Hall enters the maximum-security block and sees Ruby sitting alone in the center cell, clad only in shorts. Like Oswald, the cells on either side are empty.

Ruby is led out of the cell and told to sit down at the table. Agent Hall sits across from him and introduces himself.

“Be advised, Mr. Ruby,” Hall tells him, “that you do not have to make any statement. You have the right to talk with an attorney before making any statement. Any statement you do make could be used against you in a court of law.”
¹⁴⁴⁵

Ruby tells him he understands. With that, Agent Hall begins to question the prisoner in his search for answers as to why Ruby shot Oswald.

“When were you born?” Hall asks.

“March 25, 1911,” Ruby says. “In Chicago.”

Under a string of questions during a long interview, Ruby tells the FBI man of his childhood in Chicago, how he grew up on the west side, how he was hustling refreshments at rodeos and sporting events and scalping tickets as soon as he was old enough. He says he drifted to California in the mid-1930s and sold tip sheets at the race track and subscriptions to the Hearst newspapers to get by. A year later he returned to Chicago and, with the help of attorney Leon Cooke, became secretary/treasurer of the Scrap Iron and Junk Handlers Union. Two years later, his life came crashing down when Cooke was shot and killed during an argument at a union meeting. Ruby says he often uses “Leon” as his middle name, as a tribute to the man he admired so much.

In early 1940, he quit the union and drifted east, where he hawked punch boards at area factories until he was drafted in 1943. He served state side in the Army Air Corps as a mechanic and was honorably discharged three years later at the rank of private first class. He returned to Chicago and helped his brother Earl with a mail-order business and then moved to Dallas in 1947 to help his sister open the Singapore Club, a nightclub. After a brief return to Chicago, Ruby says he eventually settled in Dallas and struggled to stay in the nightclub business. By the late 1950s, Ruby had owned or had an interest in several nightclubs, all failures except one, the struggling Vegas Club, which his sister Eva still operates. In 1960, with financial help from his brother Earl, and Bull Pen restaurant owner Ralph Paul, Ruby bought the Carousel Club on Commerce Street in Dallas.

Ruby says that through the years he has become personally acquainted with many Dallas police officers.
¹⁴⁴⁶

12:50 p.m.

Robert Oswald’s head is a dull, numbed mass of confusion. He has learned little about his brother’s condition since arriving at Parkland twenty minutes ago. It took ten minutes just to get past two Secret Service agents, who, for whatever reason, wouldn’t let him inside. Eventually, they escorted him to the hospital’s volunteer office, but only after frisking him for a concealed weapon. How ironic, Robert later thought. If only they had done this to the man who had slipped into the City Hall basement.

The hospital is swarming with police officers and Robert waits to be told where to go to get a report on Lee’s condition. A Secret Service agent comes into the room and says, “Robert, he’s going to be all right. Don’t worry about it.” It’s not much, but it’s the first clear report he’s heard since the shooting and it sounds reassuring. Robert finally begins to relax and starts chatting with Secret Service agent John Howlett, who seems willing to help him pass the time.
¹⁴⁴⁷

Upstairs, Dr. Shires’s operating team has managed to stop the massive bleeding in Oswald’s abdomen. The doctors take a moment to determine how to best go about repairing the damage done by Jack Ruby’s bullet. They realize that clamping the aorta has stopped the bleeding, but it’s also preventing blood from flowing to the kidneys, a hazardous situation if prolonged. They decide that this major artery must be repaired immediately in order to restore blood to the kidneys and the lower portion of Oswald’s body.

Suddenly, Dr. Jenkins reports that Oswald’s heart is weakening. The pulse rate abruptly drops from 85 to 40, then seconds later, to zero. Dr. Perry reaches in and feels the aorta. No pulse. The tremendous blood loss has set the stage for irreversible shock and cardiac arrest. Dr. Perry grabs a knife, opens the left side of the chest, and reaches in to massage the heart. It is flabby, dilated, and apparently contains little blood. Perry vigorously massages the organ and manages to obtain a palpable pulse in the blood vessels feeding the neck and head, but he’s unable to get the heart to pump on its own. Calcium chloride and then epinephrine-Xylocaine are injected directly into the left ventricle of the heart, causing fibrillation, an uncontrolled twitching of the heart muscles, but no heartbeat. They hit Oswald with 240, 360, 500, and finally 700 volts of electricity, but still no heartbeat. A thoracic surgery resident hands Dr. Perry a cardiac pacemaker, which he quickly sews into the right ventricle of the heart, hoping to artificially induce the heart to pump. The pacemaker creates a small, feeble, localized muscle reaction but no effective heartbeat. After a frenzied, almost instinctual struggle, Dr. Jenkins calls a halt. Oswald’s pupils are fixed and dilated, there is no retinal blood flow, no respiratory effort, and no effective pulse. They have done everything they know how to do and it isn’t enough. Oswald is dead. It is seven minutes after one o’clock, almost exactly two days after Kennedy expired.
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1:00 p.m.

Dallas detectives Guy Rose, H. M. Moore, and J. P. Adamcik arrive at the Marsala Place Apartments, where Ruby lives, to search his unit, but the search warrant has an apartment number on it other than number 207, Ruby’s apartment, and the manager won’t open the door to 207 until after Rose calls Joe B. Brown Jr., the Oak Cliff judge who had the original warrant, and Brown comes out to correct the error. The detectives examine everything in the apartment, find nothing of evidentiary value, and leave Ruby’s apartment around 2:00 p.m. without taking anything with them.
¹⁴⁴⁹

1:16 p.m.

Parkland’s assistant administrator, Peter Geilich, dashes up the stairs to the second-floor operating room to get more news for the press he has corralled into the hospital’s makeshift pressroom. As he gets there, Dr. Shires and the other members of the surgery team are coming out the door and tell him the news. Geilich sees Dr. Malcolm Perry among the group and can’t help thinking that Perry has certainly been in the thick of things over the last few days. Geilich grabs Dr. Shires by the arm.

“The press wants to talk to you,” he says. “We have promised them that you would make a statement as soon as you came out of surgery.”

Dr. Shires looks down and sees that he is covered in blood. He slips into the doctors’ locker room and puts on a clean lab coat. Then, he and Mr. Geilich make their way down to the classroom-turned-pressroom to face the live television cameras.
¹⁴⁵⁰

“Is he alive, Doctor?” a voice asks from the battery of reporters and cameramen crowding around.

Dr. Shires shakes his head, “No, he has died.”

“Let Dr. Shires make his statement, please,” hospital administrator Steve Landregan pleads.

“When did he die, Doctor?”

“He died at 1:07 p.m.,” Dr. Shires replies, “of his gunshot wounds he had received.”

Shires fields dozens of questions regarding Oswald’s final moments, his condition when he arrived at the hospital, the damage caused by the bullet, and the names of the other doctors in attendance during surgery.

“Did you first inform his relatives of the death before you came here?” one reporter asks.

“No, I came right here from the operating room,” Shires tells him.
¹⁴⁵¹

In the volunteer office down the hall, Secret Service agent John Howlett picks up the telephone and listens intently as Robert Oswald looks on. After thirty seconds or so, Howlett says, “Would you repeat that?”

His tone of voice fills Robert with dread.

Howlett hangs up and starts around the desk toward him.

“Robert,” he says, “I’m sorry, but he’s dead.”

Robert slumps in his chair, crushed by the intolerable weight of the news. His hand rises to his face, but it can’t cover the sobs that follow.
¹⁴⁵²

Agent Howlett is trying to locate the other Oswalds by telephone through the Dallas police radio system when Geilich comes in and asks Robert whether he wants to talk to the press.

“No, no, not at this time,” Robert sobs. “Can I see my brother?”

Geilich calls Jack Price, the county hospital administrator, to see if he can arrange for Robert to see his brother’s body.

“Most certainly,” Price tells Geilich, “let them have whatever we give any other patient’s family.”

Geilich checks with the operating room supervisor, Audrey Bell, who says it’s not a good idea to bring Robert up to the operating room, which is a mess. The body, she says, will be taken to the morgue within ten or fifteen minutes. Geilich hangs up the phone.

“It’ll be a few minutes, Mr. Oswald,” Geilich tells him. “The hospital chaplain is in the next room. Would you like to see him?”

Robert nods. Geilich leaves for a moment and returns with one Chaplain Pepper. He and Robert speak quietly for a moment, then pray together.
¹⁴⁵³

The office door opens and Secret Service inspector Thomas Kelley barges in with several other agents. Kelley looks at Robert’s tear-stained face.

“Well, what do you expect?” Kelley says. “Violence breeds violence.”

The coldness of his remark cuts to the bone.

“Inspector,” Robert replies, “does that justify anything?”

Kelley leaves the room without answering.
¹⁴⁵⁴

1:20 p.m.

En route with the Secret Service to the farm of Robert Oswald’s in-laws, Marguerite mentions that Marina’s two little babies are all wet, that there are no clean diapers for them, that she and Marina have no change of clothing for themselves, and so forth. Marguerite insists that they turn the car around and go by Ruth Paine’s house to pick up what they need. Since the Secret Service learned there were many reporters and people at the Paine residence, they stop at the home of the Irving chief of police. Outside the chief’s home now, Marguerite waits in the car with Marina’s children and Secret Service agent Mike Howard. Marina is inside with Agent Kunkel and Peter Gregory, making arrangements on the phone with Ruth Paine to have some clothes and diapers picked up and brought over from Ruth’s house nearby.
¹⁴⁵⁵
(Irving police are already at Mrs. Paine’s home to ferry the items from her house to the police chief’s house at the time Marina called.)
¹⁴⁵⁶

The Secret Service men hid the fact that Lee had been shot until they arrived at the police chief’s house several minutes ago. They realized then that the chief’s wife was sure to have the television on and that the Oswalds would find out soon enough. When the car rolled to a stop in front of the house, Agent Howard turned around and bluntly told Marguerite, “Your son has been shot.”

“How badly?” Marguerite asked, stunned.

“In the shoulder,” the agent told her.

Now, the radio on the front dash crackles to life. Agent Howard picks up the microphone. “Go ahead,” he says. Marguerite can’t quite make out what is being said.

The agent mashes the radio microphone button. “Do not repeat. Do not repeat.”

Marguerite can tell that something has happened.

“My son is gone, isn’t he?” she asks.

Howard doesn’t answer.

“Answer me!” Marguerite demands. “I want to know. If my son is gone, I want to meditate.”

“Yes, Mrs. Oswald,” Agent Howard tells her, “your son has just expired.”

Howard can’t keep Marguerite from getting out and going into the chief’s house.

“Marina,” she cries out, “our boy is gone.”

Marina already knows. Peter Gregory had told her moments before.
¹⁴⁵⁷

The two women weep as the agents watch replays of the shooting on the television, which has been turned around so the women can’t see it. The chief’s wife brings the women coffee as they sit on the sofa.

“I want to see Lee,” Marguerite insists.

Marina joins in, “Me, too, me want to see Lee.”

The chief and Peter Gregory both tell her, “It would be better to wait until he is at the funeral home and ready to view.”

“No,” Marguerite persists, “I want to see Lee now.”

Marina is equally stubborn, but the agents have real concerns for their safety. To pacify them, Agents Howard and Kunkel take them back to the car and start for the hospital, all the while trying to convince them to turn back.

“Mrs. Oswald,” Mike Howard says as he drives, “for security reasons it would be much better if you would wait until later on to see Lee, because this is a big thing.”

“For security reasons,” Marguerite retorts, “I want you to know that I am an American citizen, and even though I am poor I have as much right as any other human being. Mrs. Kennedy was escorted to the hospital to see her husband. And I insist on being escorted and given enough security so that I may see my son too.”

Agent Howard doesn’t bother to argue with her anymore.

“All right, we’ll take you to the hospital,” he says. “But I want you to know that when we get there we will not be able to protect you. Our security measures end right there. The police will be in charge of your protection. We cannot protect you.”

“That’s fine,” Marguerite replies. “If I’m to die, I will die that way. But I am going to see my son.”