Murder Tales: The JFK Conspiracies Read online

  Whilst Vice President Johnson had been ensconced safely in his own room, Jackie Kennedy had been left by herself in a hospital corridor. She was obviously in shock; she was caked in her husband’s blood, and still had small dollops of her husband’s brain hanging from a bangle that was clasped around her wrist. In the trauma room; second year surgical resident Charles J. Carrico was the first doctor to examine President Kennedy, he discovered that the President had no pulse and no blood pressure, the President was quite clearly beyond help. Neurosurgeon, Dr. Kemp Clarke, assessed President Kennedy’s head wound and realised that there was little of the President’s brain left for him to try and save; the President’s entire right hemisphere was missing. Dr. Clarke’s colleague, Dr. Malcolm Perry, surmised from the President’s wounds that, ‘A bullet struck him in front as he faced the assailant’. Dr. Charles Baxter took note of the bullet wound in the President’s throat; before it was forensically obliterated to perform a tracheotomy. Dr. Baxter determined that the throat wound was ‘an entry wound’ made by ‘a small calibre weapon’. Despite the hopelessness of the situation; President Kennedy was given a blood transfusion, CPR and a dose of steroids. This was more complicated than it sounded, against Secret Service regulations Parkland Memorial Hospital had not been informed in advance what the President’s blood-type was, so they had to waste precious minutes carrying out tests to determine this simple fact. As the doctors battled valiantly yet vainly to try and save the President, Secret Service agent Clint Hill was beginning to act rather irrationally, and in a manner that disturbed and distressed the medical professionals. Hill was stood in the centre of the trauma room, pacing up and down in front of Kennedy’s body like a caged animal, ‘wild eyed’, waving around a primed .38 calibre pistol which was ready to fire. Eventually Head Nurse, Doris Nelson, had enough of Hill’s threatening behaviour; she turned to Hill and snapped, ‘Whoever shot the President is not in this room!’ Clint stirred at the nurse for a moment, and for a second Nelson believed that Hill was actually about to shoot her, but instead Clint simply turned and stormed out of the room.

  Outside the trauma room as Clint Hill stormed off down the corridor in his impotent anger, the man who had been driving the Presidential limousine, Robert Greer, sought out Jackie Kennedy. Upon seeing the First Lady, Greer began to weep and babble in a breathless torrent of guilt filled angst, ‘Oh, Mrs Kennedy, oh my God! Oh my God! I didn’t mean to do it, I didn’t hear, I should have swerved the car, I couldn’t help it! Oh, Mrs Kennedy, as soon as I saw it I swerved the car. If only I’d seen it in time!’ Jackie Kennedy showed her true magnanimous and caring character, she took Greer in her arms and held him tightly, holding his head to her shoulder where he began to sob uncontrollably, her compassion; and any forgiveness that needed to be given implicit in the gesture.

  Back in Dealey Plaza; the Dallas Police put out an all points bulletin stating that more men were required in the area, Dallas Police Captain William Fritz had ordered that the Texas School Book Depository was to be sealed off and no one other than law enforcement officials were to be allowed in or out of the building. The police also put out a description of a possible suspect, ‘An unknown white male, approximately thirty, slender build, height five feet ten inches, weight one hundred sixty-five pounds, reported to be armed with what is believed to be a .30 calibre rifle’. The Dallas Police have never been able to fully explain the source of this rather detailed description of the shooter.

  Officer J. D. Tippit responded to the call for assistance at Dealey Plaza, informing the dispatch officer that he would make his way there, but instead he found himself being ordered by the dispatcher, Murray Jackson, to proceed to central Oak Cliff and ‘stand-by for any emergencies’ in the area. This to Tippit seemed mighty peculiar, there had been no incidents reported in Oak Cliff that day, and there was nothing outstanding that needed police attention there, nevertheless Tippit complied with the command; and headed four miles in the opposite direction to Dealey Plaza to central Oak Cliff.

  By 12.47 p.m. the doctors were ready to admit defeat and declare President Kennedy dead, but Jackie Kennedy would not allow them to declare the President gone until his last rites had been read to him by a Priest. So Father Oscar Huber from the nearest Catholic church; the Holy Trinity, was called and asked to attend Parkland Memorial Hospital. As a result of the doctors not wanting to upset the First Lady in her earnest belief that the President should hear the last rites being read to him, they bent the rules and placed the President’s death slightly later than it should have been; at 1.00 p.m. Jackie could go on believing that President Kennedy heard the final prayers for him, and perhaps she could find some little solace in this.

  12.48 p.m. Lee Harvey Oswald hired a taxicab that had been parked in front of the Greyhound Bus Station; a nexus of escape from Dallas only five blocks from Dealey Plaza. As the driver, William Whaley, was about to drive off, an old lady attempted to flag the taxi down. Oswald, for a man attempting to flee the scene of a high profile murder, acted peculiarly magnanimously, he opened the car door of the taxi and went to step out, informing Whaley that the old lady could have the cab instead. The old lady, realising that the cab was already taken, refused the kind offer, and stated that she would wait for the next available cab. Whaley drove Oswald across town to 500 North Beckley, several blocks down the road from where Oswald currently lodged.

  At 12.49 p.m. a roll call of Texas School Book Depository staff was called, at this point Roy Truly realised that Lee Harvey Oswald was missing; Truly duly informed the gathering army of police officers and Sherriff’s Deputies; that Oswald was missing, and that he matched almost exactly the description of the potential shooter.

  At 12.50 p.m. Robert ‘Bobby’ Fitzgerald Kennedy, the President’s younger brother, The Attorney General, and believed by many on Capitol Hill to be the second most powerful man in the country after his brother, lounged by his swimming pool eating a sandwich; at his home in Hickory Hill, Virginia. When his telephone rang and he answered it; he found himself cursing inside, it was J. Edgar Hoover, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a man that both the Kennedy brothers deeply loathed. They tolerated Hoover because they knew him to be politically dangerous, a dirty fighter who was believed to have in his possession what amounted to blackmail files on everyone who counted in Washington. Yet instinctively Bobby knew that something was wrong, for Bobby knew that Hoover loathed him as much as he loathed Hoover, and in the four years he’d been Attorney General, Hoover had never once placed a personal phone call to Bobby Kennedy, despite Bobby being Hoover’s boss. ‘The President’s been shot. I think it’s serious. I’ll call you back when I find out more’. Hoover had made the announcement bluntly, with little care for Bobby’s personal feelings. Bobby was stunned, his hand clamped around his mouth as Hoover simply hung up the phone and left Bobby to stagger to a nearby seat, like a physical punch had been delivered to his gut. Bobby later told his closest friends that he believed Hoover had actually enjoyed telling him that his brother had been shot. Shortly after, the Director of the CIA, John McCone, arrived at Bobby Kennedy’s house, and was shown up to the library. Neither of the men knew how bad President Kennedy’s injuries were; and so a short debate arose as to whether Bobby should fly to Dallas. As the pair had this conversation the telephone rang again. Bobby answered the phone, as McCone looked on; the colour drained from Bobby’s face, for a moment it looked like the veneer of composure would break away and a flood of emotion would surge forward. Instead Bobby calmly placed down the receiver, looked McCone coldly in the eyes, and uttered the terrible words in ‘the tone of a man aghast’; ‘He’s dead’. After a few minutes silent grieving Bobby issued his first order in the absence of his brother, to lock all his brother’s papers away and let no one have any further access to them until he could vet them.

  At 12.58 p.m. Lee Harvey Oswald arrived at his lodgings at 1026 North Beckley Avenue. As Oswald rummaged around in his room, his landlady, Earlene Roberts, witnessed a poli
ce car pulling up outside the house, beep its horn once, and then drive away quickly. The only police car officially in the area at the time was the one being driven by J. D. Tippit. Moments after the police car had pulled away from the house, Oswald, having changed his shirt and put on a new jacket, left his lodgings once again. Earlene Roberts then watched as Oswald made his way towards the corner of Zang and Beckley.

  Back at the Texas School Book Depository, Thayer Waldo of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported that a rifle had been found on the roof of the building. Indeed reporter Ernest Charles Mentesana recorded video footage of police officers standing on the fire escape leading to the roof; proudly holding aloft the rifle allegedly found on the roof of the building. This rifle had no sling, no scope and protruded 7 to 8 inches past the stock, very different to the Mannlicher Carcano which was eventually produced in evidence as the assassin’s rifle. Later when asked to explain this discrepancy, the Dallas Police stated that the media report and the footage must be a mistake, that there was no record of a rifle being found on the roof of the Texas School Book Depository. The news footage, however, still stands as testimony to this mistruth.

  At roughly the same time as the gun was allegedly found on the roof of the Texas School Book Depository, Marina Oswald’s friend and housemate Ruth Paine received a collect call from her husband, Michael Paine. The couple were unaware as they spoke; that the telephone operator was still on the line listening in to their call. Michael Paine stated that he was sure that Lee Harvey Oswald had killed the President, but that he did not feel Oswald was ‘responsible’, he then added cryptically, ‘We both know who is responsible’. Overhearing such a conversation in the wake of the President’s shooting; the operator reported the conversation to the FBI. Significantly this conversation took place before Lee Harvey Oswald had officially been linked to the assassination in the media.

  At the Texas School Book Depository; further discoveries were being made, Deputy Sheriff Luke Mooney was on the sixth floor when he discovered a pile of boxes strangely stacked in a crude semi-circle around the window in the south-east corner, a veritable hidden nest. Behind the boxes, on the floor in front of the window that overlooked Dealey Plaza, lay three spent shell casings, evidently ejected from a rifle.

  Despite President Kennedy having now being declared legally dead, Vice-President Lyndon Johnson was still in the dark as to the President’s condition, he did not know that now, by default, he was potentially the most powerful individual in the world. He was ignoring the advice to get back on Air Force One and fly back to Washington, Johnson wanted to know President Kennedy’s condition; and he wanted to be told by one of Kennedy’s closest advisors, a man named Kenny O’Donnell. In the end Johnson did not get his way, it was Secret Service agent Emory Roberts who broke the news of President Kennedy’s passing to Johnson, and as a result of this ridiculous posturing on behalf of the Johnson and Kennedy camps, both of whom hated each other, Johnson did not find out that Kennedy had been declared dead for a full ten minutes after the event. Despite this Johnson still didn’t leave the hospital, he sat like a petulant child in the waiting room, waiting for one of the Presidents grieving friends to come and tell him personally that the President had died. Johnson saw this as O’Donnell showing some ghoulish mark of respect for his friend’s successor. O’Donnell finally got up the nerve to go and speak to Johnson five minutes later, so officially, Johnson claimed he wasn’t informed of President Kennedy’s death until 1.15 p.m.

  1.10 p.m. Officer J. D. Tippit observed a man walking east along 10th Street just past its junction with Patton Avenue; the individual matched the description of the Presidential shooter. Tippit pulled his car up alongside the man and asked him to stop. The man walked over to Tippit’s car and casually lent into the window of Tippit’s vehicle as he spoke to Tippit. The man was then seen stepping away from the door as Tippet stepped out of the car. As Tippit began to walk around the front of his patrol-car, the suspect unexpectedly pulled a revolver from his jacket; and shot Officer Tippit three times in the chest. Tippit fell to the ground. The killer then stepped forward, stood over the prone Tippit, and fired one more bullet into Tippit’s head, execution style, before then fleeing back toward Patton Street. The killer had been seemingly careless; twelve people had witnessed the shooting, several of whom would later go on to positively identify Lee Harvey Oswald as the killer. Jack Tatum stopped his car a little way down the road; after hearing the first volley of gunfire, he turned around just in time to see the killer pace over to Tippit and fire the fatal headshot, Tatum would tell the police in his witness statement, ‘Whoever shot Tippit was determined that he shouldn’t live, and he was determined to finish the job’. After murdering Tippit; the killer began to walk towards Tatum’s car, Tatum panicked and sped away. The closest witness to the slaying, Domingo Benavides, had been sat in his pickup truck; directly opposite the murder site. He waited until the killer had fled before stepping out of his truck; and rushing over to Tippit’s side to help him. There was nothing Benavides could do, Tippit was clearly dead. Nevertheless Benavides suddenly had a flash of brilliance that under any other circumstances might have saved Tippit’s life, he entered Tippit’s patrol car, and used the police radio to call for help. Benavides was then joined by another witness, Helen Markham. Then the occupier of the house nearest to the killing, Frank Cimino, ran out into his driveway, Helen Markham turned to Cimino and hollered for him to call for the police.

  Meanwhile the killer was racing up along Patton Street, two of the witnesses to the killing, Warren Reynolds and B. M. Patterson; had bravely given chase. The killer dashed into the forecourt of a Texaco gas station; and began to hide behind the parked cars. It was a stupid manoeuvre for the second the killer attempted to make a break for it he would be sure to be seen. Then a stupid blunder saved the cop killer from immediate capture. Police Officer C. T. Walker mistook a local man for the cop killer. Adrian Hamby certainly had similar physical attributes to Lee Harvey Oswald, and Hamby had been seen running pell-mell into the local library, which to Walker seemed suspicious. The library was three blocks from the Texaco garage, on East 500 Block, Walker put a call out for backup; and as a result no police cars were in the area of the Texaco garage for Reynolds or Patterson to gain the attention of and ask for help.

  Back at the Texas School Book Depository, Deputy Sheriffs Roger Craig and Luke Mooney continue their search of the sixth floor of the depository, tightly wedged behind some boxes of books in the north-east corner of the building; they discovered a rifle, which they initially mis-identified as a .7.65 Mauser. Pretty soon the story began to be leaked to the press that a second rifle had been discovered in the Texas School Book Depository. It was further misreported that this second Mauser rifle has been discovered on the stairwell of the fifth floor. Then reports of a third gun being found in the depository were given to the press, this time a British Enfield 303. The press started to believe and report that someone had hidden a small arsenal of weaponry throughout the depository that day, leaving the police to fall back onto a position of official denial, only one weapon had been found, the Mauser on the sixth floor.

  Back in Oak Cliff; an ambulance had arrived for Officer Tippit, this had not arrived from a local hospital, but a local funeral home. Clayton Butler and Eddie Kinsley loaded the dead body into the back of their van and drove it off to the local Methodist Hospital; before the police had even arrived at the scene. When Police Officer Westbrook did arrive some minutes later he found a piece of evidence that did more than anything else to incriminate Lee Harvey Oswald in the murder of J. D. Tippit, Oswald’s wallet. It was surmised that this had fallen out of Oswald’s pocket as he was fleeing the scene. Oswald would later protest that the wallet had been planted, as he had left his with his wife that morning.

  At around 1.20 p.m. press secretary for the Presidential Dallas trip, Matthew Kilduff; approached Johnson and was the first person to call Johnson; Mr President; he asked if he could be allowed to make an official
announcement about President Kennedy’s death. Johnson refused Kilduff permission. Johnson announced that the President’s assassination could be a communist plot to destabilise the government, and that he should leave the hospital before any announcement was made. At 1.26 p.m. Johnson duly left Parkland Memorial Hospital with his wife; and Rufus Youngblood.

  1.28 p.m. The ambulance carrying J. D. Tippit arrived at the Dallas Methodist Hospital; Officer Tippit was declared Dead on Arrival. Unlike the President; there was no vain and valiant battle by the doctors to save his already clearly expired life.

  1.30 p.m. Back at Parkland Memorial Hospital, Seth Kantor, a news reporter for the Dallas Times Herald, who had been in the motorcade press bus, met a source he had previously used for several stories, a local nightclub owner and low level thug by the name of Jack Ruby. Ruby said to Kantor, ‘Isn’t this a terrible thing’, then he asked Kantor, ‘Should I close my place for the next three nights, do you think?’ Kantor told Ruby that the gesture would be a nice mark of respect for the President, before making his apologies and moving on to the more pressing business of attending the press conference Matthew Kilduff had just called. Kantor entered the hospital teaching room where the worlds press waited, and a few moments later Matthew Kilduff stepped before them and informed the agitated reporters that President Kennedy was indeed dead. Kilduff was immediately asked if Vice President Johnson had taken the Presidential oath, Kilduff announced that Johnson hadn’t yet officially been sworn in as President. The press demanded to speak to Johnson, and Kilduff was left floundering when the press became heated at the news that Johnson had seemingly disrespectfully left the President’s side so soon after his slaying. After the conference Kilduff took himself off from the eyes of the worlds press, and sat quietly in one of the doctor’s offices that were currently vacant, he was observed weeping, and muttering to himself, ‘Oh that man’s head, oh, his head’.