The Mammoth Book of Celebrity Murders (58 page)

Oswald had by now left the building, heading into Elm Street via the front door. Banging on the door of a passing bus he managed to gain entry and travel a short distance before the bus became
ensnared in traffic, largely caused by the chaos following the shooting. Jumping off the bus he then flagged down a taxi and made his way back to the rooming house he had been using, getting out of
the taxi a few blocks short of his destination, with the intention of collecting a pistol and a jacket and then disappearing. Leaving the house he walked along the road, waiting for a while at a
bus stop before walking on again. The streets were now crawling with officers, all of whom knew the description of the man who had allegedly killed the President; it was quite by chance therefore
that patrolman J.D. Tippit spotted Oswald at the intersection of Patten Avenue and Tenth Street and pulled in to talk to him. Once he was sure the man matched the description given, Tippit climbed
out of the patrol car and joined Oswald on the sidewalk. Not having pulled his own gun first, he was allegedly met by Oswald with his .38 already drawn and was shot dead there in the street.
Thirteen people witnessed the shooting of Officer Tippit and identified Oswald as the culprit – the question of whether Oswald was indeed the shooter appeared to have been answered. He
emptied his revolver at the scene and reloaded. Knowing he was now his own identikit picture, he struggled to stay out of view. Leaving his jacket in the parking lot of a nearby petrol station he
headed away, bobbing in and out of shop doorways to avoid the constantly passing patrol cars, eventually finding refuge in the Texas Theatre. Unfortunately he drew attention to himself by avoiding
payment and the manager called the police. To his surprise the police arrived in larger numbers than he had expected, pouring into the cinema and scouring the seats with their flashlights. It was
officer M. N. McDonald who spotted the hiding Oswald, sat low in his seat at the rear of the theatre. Approaching him he asked Oswald to stand, but instead he punched McDonald and drew his gun. In
the struggle that followed McDonald was able to wrestle Oswald to the ground, at which point other officers moved in to help conclude the arrest.

News of the president’s death had spread fast and the crowds who now gathered outside the Texas Theatre were of the opinion that the police had arrested the assassin inside. On his removal
to the waiting patrol car the crowds began chanting for Oswald’s death, even though at this point the police were unaware of the link to Kennedy’s murder – as far as they were
concerned they were making the arrest in connection with officer Tippit’s death. Oswald had succeeded in eluding the police for a mere hour and 20 minutes.

Once in custody Oswald was quickly linked to the assassination of Kennedy and although he was never officially charged because the arraignment hearing was interrupted, it was generally accepted
that he had pulled the trigger whilst knelt at the sixth-floor window of the school repository building. Oswald however denied both of the murders and intriguingly referred to himself as a
“patsy”, a comment that fired the imaginations of those who believed the assassination was a conspiracy. Since that point there have been many suggestions as to who the conspirators
were: communists, Republican right-wingers, the Mafia and even Lyndon B. Johnson himself, as the individual who won the presidency through the tragedy.

A famous person can be murdered for a variety of reasons, including the simple act of making the perpetrator more famous themselves. When a president is murdered there is the added dimension of
politics, reprisals from groups of individuals with something to lose from a particular policy decision, such as large-scale criminal activity that is likely to be curtailed due to an
administration’s focus on their particular brand of crime. So which could have spurred Lee Harvey Oswald to commit what history recalls as the most terrible individual murder of the last 40
years?

It is not the purpose of this chapter to examine in detail the concept of the President’s assassination as being the act of conspirators. However, it is important to note some of the
peculiar facts that have emerged since that fateful day, facts that question the notion that Oswald acted alone or that he was involved at all. For justice to be dispensed fairly, those who have to
consider the facts must do so without any preconceived ideas, without any prejudice and without the pressure to provide a result which will suit the public’s needs. There is no doubt at all
that the public’s and the media’s opinion was heavily in favour of Oswald being a lone gunman, a crazy communist sympathizer who had planned to escape to Cuba after the event.

But we should briefly consider the following observations in relation to the events that day. When the initial shot rang out it has been asserted that the first bullet entered the
President’s back somewhere between his shoulder blades, exiting through his neck. The official investigation after the assassination concluded in the Warren Commission that this same bullet
then hit Governor Connally in his shoulder, exiting at the front and then struck him in the wrist before finally lodging itself in his thigh. This became known as the “single bullet
theory” or the “magic bullet”, as it had to enter and exit a human body five times, changing direction on each occasion in order to achieve this end result. To change direction
the bullet would have had to strike bone and in doing so it would have lost most of its velocity. One must also consider the angle at which Oswald was meant to have shot the President: he was on
the sixth floor, shooting down at about a 60-degree angle, it is therefore surprising that the bullet should head down into the President’s back and yet emerge from his throat, a significant
change of angle once inside the body.

At the time of the shooting many spectators believed that the shot rang out from the rear of the area now famously referred to as the “grassy knoll”, directly adjacent to the
President’s car. In archive film footage shot at the time, spectators can be seen looking over their shoulders at the fence at the top of the “grassy knoll”, where a shadowy
figure can be seen prior to the shooting and then disappearing directly afterwards. There were many who headed for that fence in order to assist in the capture of the gunman, but who were stopped
by individuals displaying secret service credentials, yet the secret service denied having agents in that area.

Other witnesses claim to have heard a shot coming from the front of the motorcade, possibly from the vicinity of the underpass. Were all these people right? Were they simply picking up the
gunshot sound nearest to them? Certainly shots were heard coming from high up on the repository building. It has emerged since that police walkie-talkies did pick up multiple gunshot reports,
supporting the claim that there was more than one gunman operating from around the assassination zone.

Further confusion surrounds Oswald’s disposition when the police arrived. He was passed by Officer Baker and was seen drinking a coke with his boss on the second floor of the building.
Officer Baker arrived at the rear door of the building within one minute of the shooting, and had to take the stairs to the sixth floor as the lift was not in operation. How could Oswald have
dashed to the lower floor, got a cola from the drinks machine and been stood with his boss, without any sign of exertion?

When other officers arrived at the repository building they examined the gun and all three confirmed that it was a German Mauser, but later two of them changed their minds and claimed that it
was in fact a Mannlicher Carcano rifle, a completely different weapon. The third officer however stood firm, refusing to concede the gun was anything other than a Mauser; he was subsequently run
off the road by an unknown person and shot.

When Kennedy arrived at the Parkland Hospital the medical staff wrote in their report that the wound in the President’s neck was in fact an entry wound, suggesting a shot from the front of
the motorcade, not from the repository building which lay to the rear of the vehicles. The wound in the President’s back being the exit wound, normally the larger of the two, now makes more
sense. The hospital had every reason to recall these facts as the doctors took the decision to use the bullet hole as part of the tracheotomy procedure. The Warren Commission later concluded that
the larger hole on the President’s neck was of the size it was because it was the exit wound, not because of the work the doctors had carried out.

The footage of the President being shot shows his head being thrown backwards and the matter that is thrown off is also spraying towards Jackie and the rear of the car. Again this would be
consistent with a shot hitting from the front, however, the Warren Commission concluded that the President’s head movement was caused by a spasm, at the moment of being shot. It becomes
easier to see why the public’s trust in the Warren Commission was significantly less than total and why the conspiracy theory continues to be supported.

And last but not least in this complex story is the simple fact that Oswald himself was shot dead by local bar owner, Jack Ruby, as the police were transferring him to another jail. The public
waiting outside the jailhouse cheered as news broke that Oswald had been shot. For a moment Ruby was a hero, the man who shot the assassin – many people even believed that Ruby should be
given some sort of a medal, certainly not any form of a reprimand. But soon questions began to emerge – supposing Ruby had not shot Oswald in a revenge attack for the President’s
murder; what if he had shot him to prevent him from talking? There was Oswald’s own description of himself as being a “patsy”; now he was dead anything further he might have said
was lost for ever.

Oswald’s background was more complex than his seasonal job at the Texas School Book Repository building. He was in fact allied to the CIA and had been on missions to Russia, acting as a
Soviet sympathizer. Documents relating to his service record have emerged to confirm this and there is evidence to suggest that he was expecting to be sent on another mission, this time to Cuba, at
the time of the shooting. Could it be that Oswald’s history was in some way his undoing? To many people, including the Warren Commission, Oswald’s Russian forays were proof positive of
his communist sympathies.

Other facts that have emerged since the conclusion of the Warren Commission indicate that Oswald, along with two other unidentified individuals, had made enquiries at a Dallas airfield to hire a
small aircraft a couple of days before the President’s murder. The aircraft’s owner was suspicious that the trip they intended to take was to Cuba and declined to do business with the
trio. A few days later the front pages of America’s newspapers carried the photograph of Oswald, the man he identified as being at the airfield that day. Was this just another part of an
elaborate plan to further implicate Oswald, to conclude in the public’s mind that he was indeed a communist? Or worse, was this one element of the plot meant to implicate Fidel Castro, the
Cuban dictator, in the assassination of the President. It would be an easy plot to believe – there had after all been bad history between the two men over the Bay of Pigs invasion and the
Cuban missile crisis. There were many senior government officials who would have preferred to blast Cuba into submission when they had the opportunity but instead had to back down when the crisis
was over.

There is no doubt that had Oswald ever gone to court he would have lost his case and been sentenced to death. The country wanted revenge and they had their eyes firmly on the man in custody.
Although there were many doubts expressed over the findings of the Warren Commission, most Americans believed that they could implicitly trust their own government. Many of the facts that have
emerged since that time, and which paint an entirely different picture of the events unfolding on that November day, did so decades after the actual event and would have come too late to have been
of any use to Oswald.

Oswald was saved the prospect of a trial in which he would have had the steepest of hills to climb, vilified from the moment the news broke. He was instead found guilty of being the lone gunman,
by virtue of the findings of the Warren Commission, the official government investigation team set up by the newly inaugurated President, Lyndon B. Johnson. The Commission, which was set up on 29
November 1963, carried out its investigations in total privacy – even at the time of writing the majority of the files associated with the investigation are yet to be released; some will be
kept out of the public domain until 2030, fuelling further speculation as to what is hidden in those top secret government files.

Jack Ruby therefore is the only character in this whole event who ever went to court. Born to Polish immigrants and of the orthodox Jewish faith, Ruby entered the world in June 1911, to a large
family, with four older siblings and three younger. The Ruby household did not enjoy great wealth and it is generally thought that Ruby was somewhat deprived. He struggled at school and was
considered to be a delinquent, at times being moved out of the family home to spend brief periods with foster parents. His early move to paid employment fell short of being impressive as well,
initially selling horse-racing tip sheets before moving on to work for a scrap collectors’ union.

However it was bars, night-clubs and strip joints where Ruby eventually found permanent employment. Ruby arrived in Dallas in 1947 and jointly managed the Singapore Supper Club with his partner
Eva Grant. When Grant moved to the West Coast she left Ruby in full control of the club, whose main concern was to sell beer to its patrons and provide basic dance hall facilities. The club was
positioned in a rough area of Dallas and the name just didn’t seem to sit well with the local clientele so he changed it to the Silver Spur Club. In 1952, borrowing $3,700 from a friend, Ruby
then purchased the Bob Wills Ranch House with a partner and ran it as a Western-style night-club. What should have been a burgeoning business, however, soon ran into financial difficulties as Ruby
found it difficult to maintain the interests of both outlets and eventually lost both. Depressed at his misfortune he sank into depression and basically locked himself away in his hotel room for
the next four months.