A Cruel and Shocking Act: The Secret History of the Kennedy Assassination (108 page)

Dallas Morning News
reporter Hugh Aynesworth interviewing Marina Oswald, while daughter June Oswald plays on the floor.

Admiral George Burkley, the White House physician, insisted that military pathologists hurry Kennedy’s autopsy at Bethesda Naval Hospital on the night of the assassination.

The autopsy-room pathologists: Navy Commander James Humes, M.D. (
center
), was in charge of the autopsy, assisted by Navy Commander J. Thornton Boswell, M.D. (
left
) and Army Lieutenant Colonel Pierre Finck, M.D. (
right
). Humes’s decision to destroy the original autopsy report and his notes would spark conspiracy theories that he was trying to hide something.

Secret Service Director James Rowley would face some of the commission’s harshest questioning after admitting that he had not disciplined agents in the Dallas motorcade who had gone out drinking the night before.

FBI special agent James Hosty in Dallas would find his career derailed because he had Oswald under surveillance at the time of the assassination and had failed to detect the threat he posed.

Marguerite Oswald often appeared to delight in her celebrity. Smiling, she talks with Dallas Judge Joe B. Brown, who oversaw the trial of Jack Ruby for her son’s murder.

She retained New York lawyer Mark Lane, who quickly established himself as a leading critic of the Warren Commission, to represent her.

During her trip to Washington to testify for the first time before the commission, Oswald’s young widow, Marina, was joined by her business manager, Jim Martin, whose private relationship with Marina would come under scrutiny by the commission.

Oswald’s older brother, Robert, is shown in Washington on February 20, 1964, after finishing his testimony before the commission.

Marina Oswald, shown in Washington for testimony before the Warren Commission, said she was convinced that her husband had killed the president and that he had acted alone.

Marina’s friend Ruth Paine, shown in Washington with her estranged husband, Michael; the Paines became entangled in the investigation.

George de Mohrenschildt, a Russian-born oil engineer who tried to help the impoverished Oswalds, said he broke off his friendship after Marina Oswald openly mocked her husband’s sexual performance.