Dallas: November, 1963
By early November Lee Harvey Oswald was back in Dallas. He was deteriorating. He was violent toward his wife, had no place to live and was renting a room by the week at a boarding house in city center Dallas. Marina and the baby were staying with her friend Ruth Paine, in the suburb of Irving. Eventually Oswald was able to find a job, perhaps with a reference from Ruth Paine’s husband, at a school book depository in Dealey Plaza filling orders for the area’s schools. It wasn’t great work but it paid $1.25 an hour and Lee took it.
Oswald came and went from the Paine home over the next few weeks, keeping some items in her garage, including his rifle. He sometimes stayed overnight with Marina and the baby on weekends, but for the most part he was absent. We don’t know all that much about Oswald’s movements in the two weeks coming up to the assassination other than that he showed up to work every day and seemed to see Marina and the baby on the weekends.
On Thursday November 21, Oswald asked a coworker who lived in Irving if he could have a ride to the Paine home. He said he needed to get some things and wanted to see his wife and child. The coworker agreed and the two made a plan for him to get a ride back to Dallas with him the next morning, November 22nd.
The coworker picked Oswald up as promised on the morning of the 22nd to take him to work. Oswald had a long, brown paper wrapped package with him, about the size of a rifle. When asked about it, Oswald explained that the package was curtain rods for his boarding house in Dallas. Satisfied, the two men went off to work… it was an exciting day, the President was in town and should be driving right past them at the School Book Depository. Perhaps they might even get a look at him.
Lee Harvey Oswald checked in on time for work that morning. He wasn’t a particularly talkative man anyway, and none of his coworkers noticed anything off about him. He went up to the 6th floor and began filling orders.
At noon his coworkers invited him to join them for lunch downstairs and to see if they could get a glimpse of the motorcade that would be passing by shortly. Oswald declined, but asked them to send the elevator back up. What would have happened if a group of men decided to take their lunch on the 6th floor and watch the motorcade from there? I don’t know. Perhaps there was a back-up plan, but the bolt action rifle was the only weapon available. Killing a group of grown men in order to get a shot at the President wouldn’t have worked.
At any rate, the men did go to lunch and Oswald was alone on the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository at Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963. At 12:25 the motorcade came into sight. It worked its way up Main St, then left on Houston, and was directly head on from the School Book Depository. It was in perfect position for a frontal attack, but nothing happened.
Down below the people cheered and waved at the President. Gov. John Connally said to the President, “Mr. President, You can’t say Dallas doesn’t love you”. The President responded, “No John, you certainly can’t”. The motorcade turned left onto Elm.
At 12:30 three shots rang out, the last one ripping into the President’s skull, killing him in front of a horrified crowd. All hell broke loose. Witnesses frantically pointed police to an open window on the 6th floor of the Book Depository and claimed to have heard shots coming from there. Officials tore into the building and found the manager. Looking for any stranger to detain, they ran into Oswald on the 3rd floor break room and asked the manager if he worked there. The manager confirmed he did and they all charged forward, heading for the 6th floor. Oswald calmly walked down to the ground floor and out the front door.
Oswald walked about a block away and got on a bus that is heading toward his boarding house, but the bus was quickly caught in the traffic around all the confusion. He jumped off the bus, walked another block or two and hailed a cab to take him home.
The murder of JD Tippit (Link)
The cab dropped Oswald off about a block from his boarding house. Once home, Oswald grabbed his Smith & Wesson revolver and a windbreaker. He immediately left, although it is not known where he was planning to go. Approximately one mile from his boarding house, a police car pulled along side him. The time was approximately 1:15, about 45 minutes since the President had been murdered.
Oswald matched a description that had been broadcast on police radio. The description was apparently from a witness who saw Oswald in the window of the Book Depository. It’s also possible that by this time local police had discovered Oswald was the only missing employee from the Book Depository and the description could have come from there.
Officer J.D. Tippit was 39 years old. He was a WWII veteran and saw combat in Europe. He was uneducated and probably an average police officer in Dallas at the time. He was from a tiny town in northeast Texas and was generally well regarded. He had been on the force for 11 years.
A medical photographer, Jack Tatum, who worked for Baylor Medical School witnessed Tippit speaking to Oswald. As Tippit pulled along side Oswald, the pair spoke briefly through the patrol car’s passenger side window. Then Tippit stopped and got out to speak wot Oswald further.
According to Tatum, who witnessed the entire encounter from his vehicle, Lee Harvey Oswald then pulled out his revolver and shot Officer Tippit three times across the hood of the patrol car. Tippit fell into the street on the driver’s side of his vehicle. Oswald then walked around the car and shot Officer Tippit once more in the head, making sure he was dead. Nine independent witnesses then told the Warren Commission that they heard the shots and/or witnessed Oswald flee with his pistol in hand. Tatum has confirmed in multiple interviews that he is sure it was Oswald that he saw shoot Tippit.
Tatum is a completely independent witness, a middle class person, and has no reason to fabricate anything. In truth, if there was pressure for him to lie, it would be on the side of him claiming it was not Oswald, because fame, books, and speaking fees would pour in if he only claimed it was anyone else. His story has never wavered.
The Texas Theater (Link)
After murdering Officer Tippit, Oswald made his way back toward the city center. He ditched his windbreaker which was later found under a parked car somewhere between Tippit’s murder and the Texas Theater. He ended up in a shoe store next door to the Texas Theater on Jefferson Boulevard.
Oswald was acting suspicious enough to draw the attention of a shoe store clerk who then witnessed him sneak into the Texas Theater without paying. The news of the day was all over the televisions and radios at this point, and Oswald matched a description that had been on the radio. I am unable to confirm whether this description was in relation to the President’s murder or Tippit’s, but people were asked to be on the lookout for someone matching Oswald’s description.
The store clerk told the ticket tearer at the theater to call the police and let them know a person who matched the description on the radio had just snuck into the movie theater.
At least 10 police officers answered the call about the man hiding in the Texas Theater, most of whom were already close by at the Tippit murder scene. The police opened side doors in the theater to let in more light and spotted Oswald. They converged on him and subdued him, getting a couple good punches in for good measure. He was cuffed and taken in on suspicion of murdering Officer Tippit. The police at the time made no connection to the murder of the President.
Back at the Station
Oswald was officially taken into custody by Officer Jim Leavelle, who would be his initial interrogator. Leavelle is a fascinating individual. He was actually stationed on the USS Whitney and was present for the attack on Pearl Harbor. He joined the Dallas Police Department in 1950 and retired in 1975. There are many interviews with him and he has been portrayed in a lot of movies about JFK. He died in 2019 at 99 years old. He is widely respected by both conspiracy theorists and debunkers alike as an unimpeachable witness to certain events. He believed that Oswald was the sole perpetrator of the assassination until the day he died, although he enjoyed discussing the topic and agreed that he didn't really know for sure.
Leavelle took Oswald into custody and asked him his name, which he refused to give. Upon searching his wallet, two ID’s were found, one for Lee Harvey Oswald and the other for A. Hidell. Leavelle asked him about this discrepancy and Oswald refused to give any information.
While at the police station, Oswald was questioned about the murder of J.D. Tippit. Leavelle stated that he was a pretty cool customer. He wasn’t panicked, he wasn’t sweating, he seemed to have all his faculties and he definitely wasn’t cooperating. Three years before the Miranda v. Arizona opinion, he wasn’t exactly offered the right to remain silent and a lawyer, either.
At some point during the interrogation, a captain spoke to Leavelle and said he was looking for a man named Oswald who was missing from the Book Depository in connection with the shooting of the President. Leavelle told the captain he had him right there… and Oswald was then officially in custody in connection to the shooting of the President.
Did he do it?
Depending on your source, there was either a ton or very little evidence implicating Oswald. Allow me to dispense with the nonsense and just give you a few facts:
According to several coworkers, Oswald was alone on the 6th floor of the Book Depository just before the shooting.
A man matching Oswald’s description was seen in the window of the Book Depository at the time of the shooting.
Many witnesses said the shots came from the 6th floor window of the Book Depository
Oswald’s rifle, with Oswalds prints on the stock and barrel was found behind some boxes on the 6th floor of the book depository.
Oswald immediately left the building after the shooting. He was the only employee to do so.
When Oswald left Ruth Paine’s house the morning of the murder, he left his wedding ring and approximately $170 on the night stand for Marina. This was likely all his money in the world.
Right after the assassination, Oswald then murdered a police officer in front of a witness.
There is something in criminal law called “totality of the circumstances”. It’s a pretty simple idea that while any one piece of evidence could be explained by a weird coincidence or even malfeasance by the powers that be, that the totality of all of the evidence paints a pretty clear picture of what probably happened.
For example, could the government have planted Oswald’s prints on the rifle? I guess that’s possible… but that doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Oswald was also independently reported to be in the exact spot where the shots rang out. Mixed with all the other evidence… The only logical conclusion one can draw is that he was on the 6th floor and did shoot at the President.
In the following parts of this series, we will get into many theories about the assassination including multiple shooters, CIA connections, mafia connections, the Cubans, the Russians etc. Some of these theories have merit and some are downright convincing, but one thing is pretty clear, Lee Harvey Oswald is not innocent.
All evidence points to him being in that window, with his rifle, and shooting at the President at 12:30 on November 22, 1963. Further, he was seen murdering JD Tippit less than an hour later. I have not seen a single piece of convincing evidence that puts him anywhere else. Whether he did this on his own, or as part of a larger conspiracy, he was definitely there. Lee Harvey Oswald shot the President. Why and who helped are what we will continue to explore.
November 24, 1963
Jacob Rubenstein had been stalking Oswald ever since he got arrested and was publicly linked to the Kennedy assassination. An incredibly eccentric nightclub owner with serious mafia connections, he went by the name Jack Ruby and was well known by many Dallas police officers. He owned a quasi-strip club / night club in Dallas known as the Carousel Club. Jack and his associates will be getting their own part to this series… because there is very real evidence of a mafia connection to the assassination of the President, but I digress.
On Sunday morning, at 11:21 AM, Oswald was handcuffed to Jim Leavelle and it was time for his transfer to another holding facility. Leavelle seemed like a giant next to Oswald in his boots, a tan suit, and his obligatory 10 gallon hat. Oswald had been given a black sweater to cover his dirty white t-shirt.
The pair, literally chained together, walked with a large police escort into the underground parking garage of the Dallas police department. The press was there and was broadcasting the transfer live on NBC. They walked down the steps and toward a waiting vehicle when Jack Ruby emerged from the crowd of reporters with a pistol in his hand. He lunged toward Oswald and got one shot off.
Jim Leavelle instinctually jumped back. The bullet entered the left side of Oswald’s midsection. It tore through his spleen, liver, and kidney. It ripped through his aorta and shattered a couple ribs before resting just under the skin on the other side of his body. It was easily a fatal shot. Oswald let out a grown and immediately collapsed. A swarm of police and press tackled Ruby and quickly disarmed him and arrested him.
There happened to be an ambulance in the garage and the police quickly loaded Oswald into it to take him to Parkland Hospital, to the very emergency room and to the very doctors that treated the President only 45 hours earlier. Like the President, Oswald was likely dead on arrival to the hospital from massive internal bleeding.
Just like that, the only indisputable connection to the murder of the President was silenced forever. There would be no more interrogations. There would be no trial. The narrative that a lone Marxist nut shot the President who was then shot by another lone nut would be the official narrative.
I can tell you this, based on articles in news papers from the time, it didn’t sit any better with people then than it does now.
In the next part of this article series, we will delve into some conspiracy theories. Are there groups that wanted the President dead? Did they have the ability to pull something like this off? What evidence is there that they did so.
That and much more in the following parts of JFK on Line of Fire!
Happy MLK day, everyone… BTW, he was supposedly killed by a lone nut with a rifle too. Lot of coincidences in this stuff…
—Virgil
Interesting! Can’t wait for the next installment.