The Day Kennedy Was Shot (40 page)

Sergeant Jerry Hill stood guarding his man. Reporters in the hall asked to see the pistol which allegedly killed Officer Tippit. Hill held it up by the butt as photographic flashbulbs lit the scene. He asked Detective T. L. Baker if he wanted to take the gun; Baker said: “No. Hold onto it until later.” Hill said that this was the suspect in the Tippit shooting and did Baker want Hill to make up the arrest sheet or would the Detective Bureau do it.

Captain Will Fritz walked in and said to Rose and Stovall: “Get a search warrant and go out to 2515 Fifth Street in Irving. Pick up a man named Lee Oswald.” Sergeant Hill said: “Captain, why do you want him?” Fritz was a man of lean words and few interruptions. He stared at the sergeant through his glasses and said: “He's employed at the Book Depository and he was missing from a roll call of employees.” Hill pointed to the prisoner: “We can save you a trip,” he said. “There he sits.”

Fritz looked at the quarry and was unimpressed. It required a moment to comprehend that this young fellow was a possibility as the man responsible for Tippit's murder and the President's, too. This was going to be an interesting afternoon. In another office Charles Givens, a Book Depository employee, was staring through the walls of glass and said: “Hey, there's Lee Oswald.” A friendly policeman leaned out in the hall where reporters were waiting and said: “He's Lee Oswald, a suspect in the Tippit murder.”

There were venetian blinds in the office of Captain Fritz. They were lowered. The big man glanced at the messages and reports on his desk. There was nothing that couldn't wait. He asked for the prisoner to be brought in. He ordered Detectives R. M. Sims and E. L. Boyd to remain with him until the Oswald matter was cleared up. Oswald came in and complained about the handcuffs. “Fix them in front of him,” Captain Fritz said. Oswald sat on a chair at the corner of the desk, the shackled hands now on top.

Someone was drawing up a list of items found in the prisoner's pockets, so Captain Fritz took his time with the young man. When he got the list, his eyes ran down it slowly:

Fritz, like some policemen, can detect a complicated matter from a distance. The nineteen items added up to two persons who were possibly one, with overtones of communism or a communistic plot, in addition to evidence which pointed to this man as a possible double murderer. The captain did not know how smart the fellow was; he would know in a moment. He left his desk and asked a policeman to get a superior officer to start collecting eyewitnesses to the Tippit murder in headquarters. If any two of them could pick this man out in a lineup, it would be enough to hold him on suspicion of homicide and give everybody time to start unraveling the assassination from the murder.

At a door, a policeman whispered to Fritz: “I hear this Oswald has a furnished room on Beckley.” Fritz blinked his owlish eyes and went into the room. He had noticed that the hall outside was beginning to look crowded with reporters and photographers. Policemen moving from one office to another had to step gingerly over long black cables which snaked the length of the hall. Technicians were bringing a heavy-duty cable up from a generator down in the street. It was being hauled up the outside wall.

The situation in Dallas began, at this point, to go out of control. Press relations was not a function of Captain Will Fritz, but he was not blind to the increasing number of reporters and photographers choking the hall of the third floor. The police department had a press relations man, Captain Glen D. King. He was a personable officer who realized that, while he had the law on his side, the press had the last loud word on theirs. His office adjoined Chief Curry's, and King was responsible to Curry. It was a pleasant situation, so long as the captain worked for a man who was afraid of the press and what it could do to him. King could go to Fritz or Jack Revill, the newly appointed lieutenant in charge of police intelligence, and get the latest information on any story and release what he thought was proper and discreet. Fritz remained aloof from it. He ran his Homicide and Robbery Division as though it was an entity unto itself.

Fritz decided that he did not want a stenographer to take notes while he questioned this prisoner. Nor did he desire a tape recorder. The first order of business would be to find out what kind of a fish he had in the net, who he was, where from, how clever and, most of all, how tough. There was a time, not too long ago, when the first order of business would have been for a couple of young detectives to rattle the prisoner around a locker room to still the stubbornness and develop some cooperation. Those days were past. Fritz had to match wits with his prisoners, frequently a tiresome game of listening to obvious lies hours on end.

He sat with a sigh. “All right, son,” he said. “What's your name?”

The crew of
Air Force One
monitored the Secret Service. They had heard the walkie-talkies discuss an unannounced departure from Parkland Hospital. Colonel Swindal ordered the crew to unscrew two double seats adjacent to the rear entrance of the plane and to secure them in the tail. The box containing the President's remains could be carried up there and lashed
to eyebolts in the floor. He called the tower and asked for taxi instructions. They gave him wind, barometric setting, clearance on Runway 31, and a handoff to Fort Worth FAA after passing the outer perimeter.

He didn't start an engine. A Secret Service agent came forward and told the crew that the Johnson party was already aboard and the Vice-President was waiting for Mrs. Kennedy. A generator truck stood below, whining at the nose of the air giant, but the crew engineer did not turn the air conditioning on. The captain of
Air Force Two
was told to open his hatches. Some luggage came from his plane and was carried by hand to
Air Force One.
Whoever was in charge was confused, because he began to take some of the Kennedy luggage from
Air Force One
and place it on
Two.
The pilot of the press plane asked for instructions and was told that no one knew the plans of the press. He was to remain on the stand for instructions.

Swindal was told by the tower that a small plane was en route from Austin with a “V.I.P.” for Johnson. Could the private plane have clearance to pull up alongside
AF-1
? Swindal asked who was on the little plane. No one seemed to know. Then the plane, still en route, caught the question and said: “Bill Moyers.” Permission was granted. Moyers was a young assistant to Johnson, an ordained Baptist minister who was not yet thirty years old and was associate director of the Peace Corps.

Richard Johnson, of the Secret Service, watched the casket roll up the hospital corridor like a box of laundry. He was approached by O. P. Wright, a hospital policeman, who handed an expended bullet to him. “The Secret Service may want this,” said Mr. Wright. Johnson rolled it around in the palm of his hand. “Where'd you get it?” he said. Wright explained that there were some carts, used ones, standing between the restroom and the elevator. This one had rolled off a cart. “It may have come
from the President's cart.” It couldn't. Mr. Kennedy's cart remained in Trauma One until after his body had been prepared for the trip. The body had been lifted from that table to Oneal's funeral carriage. “I also found rubber gloves and a stethoscope on that cart.” the cop said.

Johnson slipped the bullet into his pocket. He had been told to get on the follow-up car to the airport. There was no time for further conversation. He thanked the man and started out. Back in Trauma One, Miss Bowron studied the antiseptic brightness of the room—ready now for another effort to save another life—and she reached into her pocket. She had the President's watch. She ran through the corridors, holding it ahead, the gold band dull with dry blood, and gave it to a member of the party. At the same time, Doris Nelson found a blue coat. In it was an envelope marked “cash” and a card labeled “Clint Hill.” They, too, were returned. It was the jacket Clint Hill had tossed over the dead President's face.

On the National Broadcasting Company network, Tom Whalen intoned: “The weapon which was used to kill the President and which wounded Governor Connally has been found in the Texas School Depository on the sixth floor—a British .303 rifle with a telescopic sight. Three empty cartridge cases were found beside the weapon. It appeared that whoever had occupied this sniper's nest had been there for some time.”

The casket was moving fast now, except for the sharp turns leading back to the emergency entrance of the hospital. Vernon Oneal was pulling; two of his men pushed from behind. Jack Price, administrator of the hospital, ran ahead asking everyone to please step aside. Everyone did, except the priest, who had arrived late. He held up a hand to stop the casket and suggested that he say some prayers over it. “Not now!” an agent yelled hoarsely, and the body kept moving. Price touched the top of it. He didn't know why, but he had to do it. He told himself it was a sort of final salute.

An attendant held the door open and the gleaming casket emerged into the sunshine. A few uniformed nurses stood outside the door, under the eaves, weeping. A doctor at a third-floor window glanced once and turned his back to the scene. Tom Wicker of
The New York Times
stood near some parked cars watching. Larry O'Brien and Kenny O'Donnell, hanging onto silver handles, had their heads down. They were weeping. Some of the White House staff stood near the back of the white Oneal ambulance, mouths and eyes agape, not believing.

Mrs. Kennedy came out into the sunshine, a portrait of despair. The hat was gone. The pink suit was splashed with blood. The stockings, askew, stuck to the legs with dry blood and brain matter. The white gloves were darkened with deep stains. The face, the immaculate face, was almost wild-eyed, whether with fear that they might take him away again or with the crashing waves of reality which come in steady tandem to all who grieve or whether the emotions were cracking under the repeated cruelties—no one knows. The doctors had offered her sedation several times; one even offered to help her clean the blood from her person. She preferred to taste death at the side of her husband, and, at 2:05
P.M.,
her knees were beginning to knock without control, her fingers trembled, her brain might not endure one more brutality.

Nor was O'Donnell certain that they were going to be able to steal the body of the President of the United States from officious Dallas. He urged Vernon Oneal to hurry. The mortician asked the Secret Service if they were going to the mortuary. They said yes, yes. Suddenly, the flight from Parkland Hospital became more precipitous than that of Lyndon Johnson. Men were running for cars; motors were starting; police were trying to line up as escorts and were told to “get the hell out of the way.”

No one paused to reason. Roy Kellerman ordered Agent Andy Berger to get behind the wheel of the ambulance and drive to Love Field. Mr. Oneal wanted to know why he was not per
mitted to drive his own hearse, and he was told to stand aside. Kellerman tried to get Mrs. Kennedy in beside the driver, but she insisted that she would sit in the back “beside my husband.” Doctor Burkley got in the back and helped her up and in. The third person, Clint Hill, got inside and slammed the back doors.

Agent Stewart Stout got in front. Roy Kellerman ran around the ambulance to make certain that the right people were inside. Then he told Kenneth O'Donnell and Lawrence O'Brien to take the next car and, privately, head for Love Field and
Air Force One.
Audrey Riker, who worked for Oneal, ran up to the driver's side of the ambulance and said: “Meet you at the mortuary,” and Berger nodded: “Yes, sir.”

The ambulance left the parking area fast. It moved across the service road to Harry Hines Boulevard and Berger hit the siren to clear the traffic. Roy Kellerman was on the radio, telling the agents at Love Field to permit an ambulance and one following car through the fence. After that, shut it to everyone and seal it off. In the back, Clint Hill watched behind and saw Oneal and his assistants make the turn—the wrong way to get to the mortuary. They were following, but they were behind O'Brien and O'Donnell and the agents in the second car.