60 Years Ago Today - 22 November 1963

Part 44

Lee Harvey Oswald got up at 6:40 on Friday morning, 22 November 1963. He kissed his two daughters goodbye and left $170 for his wife Marina. Knowing that he would not return, he also left his wedding ring. Marina would not find the ring until that evening after the assassination.

After collecting the brown wrapping paper package containing his sniper rifle, he went to meet the colleague who gave him a ride to work. When the colleague asked what was in the package, Oswald reminded him, “curtain rods for my apartment.” When they got to work, Oswald raced ahead with the package and disappeared into the Texas School Book Depository.

President Kennedy’s motorcade was scheduled to pass in front of the Depository at 12:30 Central Time. A supervisor went up to the sixth floor momentarily a few minutes after 12:00 and was surprised to see Oswald walking along the east side, clipboard in hand. “Boy, are you going downstairs? It’s lunchtime,” the supervisor asks. Oswald replied politely, “No, sir.”

The Three Shots

The President’s motorcade came down Mainstreet to Dealey Plaza, turned right on to Houston Street, and then left onto Elm Street.

BANG… The first shot rang out. The Secret Service was alarmed but confused. The President was fine but was that a motorcycle backfire or a gunshot?

3.5 seconds later … BANG… the second shot rang out. This time the Secret Service SAW the President get hit. Secret Secret Service Agent Clint Hill did what he was trained to do; he leapt off the follow-car and raced forward in a desperate attempt to use his own body to shield the wounded President.

In the passenger seat of the Presidential limousine Agent Roy Kellerman ordered, “We’re hit, let’s get out of here!” But the driver - Agent William Greer - hesitated. Rather than accelerating to get the President out of harm’s way, Greer actually slowed down, evidently trying to give Agent Hill time to catch up.

An excruciating 4.9 second later … one one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand, four one thousand, five one…

BANG… the right side of the President’s head exploded.

Although President Kennedy was not officially declared dead until 1:00 PM, this third shot killed him instantly, a fact that poor Mrs. Kennedy was first to recognize.

Historic Certainty

There may or may not have been other shooters that day in Dealey Plaza. But there is no factual doubt that (1) three shots were fired from the southeast corner window of the Book Depository (2) the second of those shots wounded the President and (3) the third shot killed him.

We know that three shots were fired from that window because these two men heard them: Ray Williams and Harold Norman were on the fifth floor directly below, heard the shots, heard the bolt action of the rifle, and heard the ejection of the shells. A steamfitter named Howard Brennan was standing across Elm Street and provided eyewitness testimony of seeing, “a slender white male, about 30, five foot ten, 165 pounds” fire the third shot from that window. The three shell casings were found underneath the sixth floor widow by Dallas Deputy Sheriff Luke Mooney at 1:06 PM.

The first shot missed completely.

As the National Archives drawings show below, the second shot hit the President in the back, upper right shoulder, exited the lower right throat and went on to hit Texas Governor Connally. You will notice that the entry wound in the shoulder is small and the exit wound in the throat is larger. This shot would not have killed the President.

Below are the National Archives drawings of the fatal third shot. The small entrance wound is in the back of the head. A larger exit wound is in the front above his right eye. (Because this exit wound disfigured the President’s face, the Kennedy Family has prohibited release of those drawings.) The impact of the bullet shattered the right side of the President’s skull.

Some people honestly believe that the shot that killed the President was fired from the Grassy Knoll. As we see in the map of the motorcade route above, the Grassy Knoll was to his right, front, and slightly elevated. If this honest belief were true, there would have been a small entry wound on the upper, front, right side of the President’s head and a large exit wound on the lower, rear, left side of his head. The x-rays of the President’s head show this was not the case

Timeline: 12:30 - 2:02 PM

Relating to Oswald’s attempted escape, it is instructive to understand the factual timeline of key events that afternoon.

- 12:30 Shots are fired at Dealey Plaza.

- 12:31 Dallas Police Officer Marrion Baker momentarily detains Oswald on the second floor of the Book Depository. When the building superintendent Roy Truly vouches that Oswald is a Depository employee, Baker releases him and continues with his search.

- 12:36 Howard Brennan makes his eyewitness report to Dallas Police Officer W.E. Barnett.

- 12:45 Based on Brennan’s description, Dallas Police broadcasts for all its officers to be on the lookout for “a slender white male, about 30, five foot ten, 165 pounds” who shot at the President.

- 12:48 Oswald grabs a cab downtown at the intersection of Commerce and Lamar Streets and heads for the Oak Cliff section of south Dallas.

- 12:48-12:54 Oswald has the cab driver pass by the front of his rooming house so that he can discreetly check for any police activity. Seeing none, he gets out of the cab at the intersection of Beckley Avenue and Neely Street.

- 12:54-1:00 Oswald walks back up Beckley Avenue to his rooming house at 1026 Beckley, checking for police behind him.

- 1:00-1:03 Detecting no police surveillance, Oswald enters the rooming house and is there just long enough to grab his pistol and alter his appearance by changing clothes.

- 1:06 Three shell casings are found by the sixth floor window at the Depository.

- 1:12-1:16 Dallas Police Officer J.D. Tippit spots a suspicious man who fits the description given by Brennan walking east along 10th Street in Oak Cliff. He pulls alongside the man and talks to him briefly through the passenger window. When Tippit exits his patrol car to continue the conversation, the suspicious man pulls out a 38 snub nose revolver and shoots Tippit three times in the chest. The man turns to walk away, thinks better of it, and returns to fire a fourth shot into Tippit’s temple. There are several eyewitnesses to the entire event.

- 1:22 The sniper rifle is found hidden amongst some boxes in the northwest section of the Depository’s sixth floor.

- 1:30 A roll call of Depository employees finds that Oswald is the only one missing.

- 1:12-1:40 Knowing that the area will soon be swarming with police, the killer of Officer Tippit doubles back to the southwest in an attempt to lose himself in the more crowded business area of Jefferson Boulevard. He ducks to the right and changes his appearance again by disposing of his jacket. Then, at 1:40, he makes use of a standard Soviet KGB “escape and evasion” technique, disappearing into a movie house, the Texas Theater.

- 1:50 The movie theater trick doesn’t work that day. Witnesses have courageously followed him, see him duck into the theater, and alert the police. After a short scuffle, the police apprehend Tippit’s killer.

- 1:50-2:00 The police search the killer and find a library card with no photo in the name of Lee Oswald and a Selected Service card with photo in the name of Alex James Hidell. When the police ask what his name is -Oswald or Hidell- the man in custody says, “You figure it out.”

- 2:02 Depository foreman Bill Shelley happens to be at Dallas Police Headquarters providing an affidavit when Tippit’s killer is brought in. Shelley identifies the man in custody as Lee Oswald, the Depository employee who missed the roll call.

Oswald Charged with Tippit Murder

An eyewitness who saw the shooting of Officer Tippit, Helen Markham, was terrified but agreed to view a police lineup of four suspects at 4:30 PM. The moment she saw Oswald she started to cry. “The second one,” she whispered. The police ask, “Second from the left or second from the right?” “Number 2,” she said and then faints. Number 2 was Oswald.

Police conduct a second lineup at 6:30 with two witnesses, Ted Calloway and Sam Guinyard, who did not see the Tippit shooting but heard the four shots and immediately thereafter saw the gunman go by, pistol in hand. They, too, identify Oswald as the gunman.

Based on the witness testimony and Oswald’s possession of the suspect revolver, at 7:10 PM Dallas Police formally charged Oswald for the Tippit murder.

Oswald Charged with Kennedy Assassination

Police conduct a third lineup at 7:50 PM with Howard Brennan, the eyewitness to the third shot who had provided the description of the shooter from across Elm Street. Unfortunately, Brennan could not with certainty identify Oswald as the shooter. Formally charging Oswald with the assassination, therefore, would depend more on the physical evidence which the police were still developing.

Of key interest was the sniper rifle, which had been wiped clean of fingerprints by the shooter. Under questioning at 3:00, Oswald denied he owned any rifle. However, when Dallas Police interview his wife Marina at 3:30 PM, she admits that he did own a rifle and offers to show it to them. Only when Marina led the police into Ruth Paine’s garage did they discover that the rifle was missing. Challenged to explain this discrepancy between his story and hers, Oswald persisted in denying that he owned any rifle.

Under professional interrogation for hours, Oswald struck all the officers involved as intelligent and cool, disciplined and controlled. He was even a bit self-satisfied. He knew to offer details on things that didn’t matter, be vague on things that did matter, and simply deny evidence that contradicted his story. When asked about his trip to Mexico City the previous September, Oswald denied that he had ever been there. He denied that he killed Officer Tippit. He denied that he killed the President.

For a high school dropout, Oswald demonstrated considerable skill in counter-interrogation techniques. All appearances indicated that he had been trained.

The Dallas Police decided to formally charge Oswald for the assassination of the President at 11:50 PM based on the facts that (1) he probably owned the sniper rifle (2) he probably smuggled the sniper rifle into the Book Depository in the brown wrapping paper package (3) he was the only Depository employee to flee the scene after the shooting, and (4) he killed Officer Tippit while attempting to flee.

Note on Oswald’s Attempted Escape

If not for Howard Brennan’s description and Officer Tippit’s alert action, Lee Harvey Oswald would have had at least a twelve hour head start in his escape. Travelling under the alias Alek James Hidell, Oswald would have had time to make it into Mexico. More on that tomorrow.