Reclaiming History (25 page)

1:06 p.m.

It doesn’t take long for Captain Fritz, Detectives Sims and Boyd, and other police officers to assure themselves that there’s no one hiding on the seventh floor of the Book Depository and no sign that anyone fired at the president from there. The whole floor is one big open space with a few stacks of books here and there, some shelves, and not much else. A storage room in the southeast corner yields nothing but a collection of forgotten desks, chairs, and other office space odds and ends. The windows facing Elm Street are still closed, as they were at the time of the shooting.
⁴⁰⁶

On the sixth floor below, Dallas police officers and deputy sheriffs are systematically searching the entire floor—from the cleared space on the west side, where the new flooring is going down, toward the stacks of boxes that have been piled into rows on the east side.

Deputy Luke Mooney is near the southeastern corner of the floor when he whistles loudly and hollers to his fellow officers.
⁴⁰⁷
He’s inside the sniper’s nest, a roughly rectangular screen of boxes stacked around the southeasternmost window. Anybody sitting or crouching behind them would be completely hidden from anyone else on the floor. Two more cartons on top of each other are right in front of the window. A third box lies closer to the window, resting in a canted position on the windowsill. In the corner, a long, handmade, brown paper bag is bunched up. On the floor, at the baseboard beneath the window, are three spent cartridge casings—“hulls,” as they call them in Texas.

Dallas police sergeant Gerald L. Hill walks over to an adjacent window, sticks his head out and yells down to the street for the crime lab, but fears that no one can hear him over the sirens and crackling police radios. He starts down himself to report the find and meets Captain Fritz and Detectives Sims and Boyd at the freight elevator on the sixth floor. They had heard Mooney’s and Hill’s shouts through the cracks in the floorboards and came down to investigate. Hill tells them he’s going down to the street to make sure the officers know where to send the crime-lab boys.
⁴⁰⁸

Fritz, Sims, and Boyd work their way across the sixth floor over to the southeast corner window, where Deputy Mooney stands and other officers begin to congregate. Mooney tells Captain Fritz that everything is just as he found it. Fritz orders Detectives Sims and Boyd to stand guard and don’t let anyone touch anything until the crime lab can get there, then Fritz turns to the officers present and instructs them to turn the sixth floor upside down. If there’s a weapon here somewhere, he means to find it.
⁴⁰⁹

1:07 p.m.

At the New York Stock Exchange, news of the president’s shooting has brought about a wave of selling that reaches panic proportions, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummets 21.16 points.
⁴¹⁰

1:08 p.m.

Officer J. D. Tippit, probably traveling south on Beckley or southeast on Crawford in the general direction of Jefferson Boulevard in central Oak Cliff, spots Oswald walking on the right side of the street in front of him and sees that he vaguely fits the physical description of the suspect in the Kennedy assassination that he heard over the police radio in his squad car, it having been broadcast over channel 1 at 12:45 p.m., 12:48 p.m., and again at 12:55 p.m.
⁴¹¹
Slowly tailing Oswald from behind, he tried to call the radio dispatcher for a further description of the suspect. “Seventy-eight” (Tippit’s call number, the police district he is assigned to), he says into his radio microphone, but he is not acknowledged by the dispatcher. Seconds later, he calls in “seventy-eight” again, but once again is not acknowledged by the dispatcher, he assumes because of the heavy radio traffic due to the assassination, and he continues to slow-tail Oswald.
⁴¹²
*

1:10 p.m.

At Parkland Hospital, Ken O’Donnell, acting as a stoic messenger between Trauma Room One and Lyndon Johnson, enters the vice president’s cubicle in Minor Medicine.

“He’s gone,” O’Donnell says.

The vice president finds the whole thing hard to believe. A few hours ago he was having breakfast with John Kennedy; he was alive, strong, and vigorous. Now, he is dead.
⁴¹³
Mrs. Johnson turns to her husband, her eyes filled with anger and sorrow, her voice choked with emotion. “
I must
go see Mrs. Kennedy and Nellie,” she says.

Johnson nods and wishes to go with her. Agent Youngblood, however, refuses to let him leave the ward.
⁴¹⁴
Agent Emory Roberts and Congressman Jack Brooks escort Lady Bird Johnson to the hall outside Trauma Room One, where Mrs. Kennedy stands, “quiet as a shadow,” as Lady Bird later remembered. Mrs. Johnson always thought of the president’s wife as a woman insulated, protected, and is now struck by the realization that in this moment she is terribly alone. “I don’t think I ever saw anyone so much alone in my life,” she would later recall. She goes to Jackie, puts her arm around her, and says, crying, “Jackie, I wish to God there was something I could do.” But there is nothing she can do and eventually she slips away.

On the second floor of the hospital, Lady Bird greets her close friend of a quarter century, Nellie Connally. They hug each other tightly, both giving in to tears.

“Nellie, he’s going to be all right.”

“He
is
, Bird,” Nellie says. “He’s going to be all right.”

Mrs. Connally’s eyes well up and Jack Brooks, sensing they’re about to spill over, hands her his handkerchief.

“Oh, he’ll be out there deer hunting at ninety,” he quips.

She dabs her eyes and smiles.
⁴¹⁵

In the corridors below, the Kennedy staff stands numb and stricken. No one seems to be in charge or knows what to do.

Mac Kilduff seeks out Ken O’Donnell.

“This is a terrible time to have to approach you on this,” Kilduff says, “but the world has got to know that President Kennedy is dead.”

O’Donnell looks at him, incredulous. “Don’t they know it already?”

It seems like Kilduff’s been carrying the burden of the death for a hundred years.

“No, I haven’t told them,” Kilduff says.

“Well, you’re going to have to make the announcement,” O’Donnell replies. He thought about the new order of things a moment, then added, “Go ahead, but you’d better check it with Johnson.”

An agent leads Kilduff through the maze of cubicles in Minor Medicine until they round a corner and Mac spots Lyndon Johnson sitting on an ambulance cart, head down, legs dangling. Kilduff swallows hard, “Mr. President…”

Johnson’s head snaps up sharply. It’s the first time Lyndon Johnson has been addressed that way; the first time he
knows
he is the thirty-sixth president of the United States.

Kilduff proceeds to ask Johnson if he can announce President’s Kennedy’s death. Johnson nods yes, then says, “No. Wait. We don’t know whether it’s a Communist conspiracy or not. I’d better get out of here and back to the plane.” Kilduff and Johnson agree that he will not announce Kennedy’s death until after Johnson leaves the hospital.
⁴¹⁶

Ken O’Donnell enters the ward and finds Johnson, frightened and nervous, conferring with the Secret Service agents. Emory Roberts, the ranking agent in the room, jumps up when O’Donnell comes in: “What’ll we do, Kenny, what’ll we do?”

“You’d better get the hell out of here,” O’Donnell replies, “and get back to Washington right away. Take Air Force One.”
*

“Don’t you think it might be safer if we moved the plane to Carswell Air Force Base and took off from there?” Johnson asks.

O’Donnell doesn’t like it. It would take time to get one of the jets from nearby Love Field to the air force base, and the thirty-five-mile drive from Dallas to Carswell would be risky. He suggests that Johnson should head to Love Field and take off for Washington as soon as he gets there.

“How about Mrs. Kennedy?” Johnson asks.

“She will not leave the hospital without the president,” O’Donnell says.

There is no doubt about which president he is referring to. Afraid that the public might view his departure as deserting the Kennedys, Johnson digs his heels in.

“I don’t want to leave Mrs. Kennedy like this,” he says.

O’Donnell tells Johnson that he will stay behind with Mrs. Kennedy until the president’s body is ready to be moved to the airport.

“You take good care of that fine lady,” Johnson says.
⁴¹⁷
*

Secret Service agents are already arranging for a couple of unmarked police cars to spirit Johnson and his party away to Love Field. The agents at the airfield have taken extraordinary measures to secure the area around the two presidential planes, directing local police and airport people to clear all the buildings, hangars, and warehouses of both employees and civilians. It seems bizarre to prepare such a departure for the president of the United States, in his own country, but the fact is, none of them know where the assassin or assassins are, or what they plan to do next.
⁴¹⁸
†

W
illiam W. Scoggins, a forty-nine-year-old cabdriver, eats a sandwich in his taxi and ponders the shooting of the president. He’s just dropped a fare from the airport, and after a brief stop at the Gentleman’s Club, a domino parlor and lunch spot on Patton (on the other side of the street from where Scoggins parked his car, about a half a block south in the direction of Jefferson Boulevard), to watch coverage of the assassination on TV, he returns to his parking spot at the corner of Tenth and Patton. The area is a “scruffy, working-class residential neighborhood of aging frame houses” about four miles from Dealey Plaza. He’s only been there a few seconds when he notices Dallas police car number 10—J. D. Tippit’s squad car—crossing left to right a few yards in front of him as it prowls very slowly eastbound on Tenth Street. Scoggins takes another bite of his sandwich and swigs a Coke.
⁴¹⁹

A woman stands on the corner diagonally across from Scoggins, waiting for traffic to clear so she can cross the street. A pair of work shoes in her hand, Helen Markham, forty-seven, is on her way to catch the 1:15 p.m. bus at the next corner (the corner of Patton and Jefferson), the same one she takes every day to the Eatwell Restaurant on Main Street downtown, where she works as a waitress.
⁴²⁰
She sees “this police car slowly cross [the intersection] and sorta ease up alongside the man.”
⁴²¹

1:11 p.m.

Scoggins watches the police car stop around 120 feet down Tenth Street to his right, and it is then that he also notices a man in a light-colored jacket standing on the sidewalk. The man walks over toward the police car, passing out of Scoggins’s sight behind some shrubs.
⁴²²
Markham has an unobstructed view and sees the man go over to the squad car, lean over, and place his arms on the ledge of the open front window on the passenger side. She observes him “talking to the officer through the open window” and assumes it is a friendly conversation.
⁴²³

Jack Ray Tatum, a twenty-five-year-old medical photographer for Baylor University Medical Center, turns onto Tenth Street from Denver and heads west in his red Ford Galaxie. Tatum’s boss has given him an afternoon off and he’s been spending it running errands and buying a watch and ring for his wife, on a lay-a-way, at Gordon’s Jewelers on Jefferson. Approaching Patton, he sees a squad car driving east on Tenth Street and a young white male “was also walking east, the same direction the squad car was going.” When the squad car pulls over to the curb, he sees the man approaching the squad car on the passenger side. As Tatum drives past, he can see the police officer in the front seat leaning over toward the man, whose hands are crammed into the pockets of his light-gray zipper jacket. He gets the impression they are talking. Tatum wonders why the cop has stopped him.
⁴²⁴
*

Domingo Benavides is in his pickup truck a half-dozen car lengths behind Tatum. The mechanic from Dootch Motors is pretty annoyed with himself. He was on his way to the auto parts store at Marsalis and Tenth to get a carburetor and was damned near there when it dawned on him that he’d forgotten the part number. He’s heading back west on Tenth Street when he sees the police car ahead on the left.
⁴²⁵
(See photo section for diagram of Tippit murder scene with location of Tippit’s car, Oswald, and witnesses.)

1:12 p.m.

Just after Tatum passes the squad car, Helen Markham watches the driver’s door open and the police officer climb out. He doesn’t seem to be in a hurry, and has not drawn his weapon.
†
The officer starts walking toward the front of the car, not keeping his eyes on Oswald but looking down at the ground,
‡
his right hand, like a western sheriff, on his gun butt as the young man on the passenger side puts his hands in his pockets and takes two steps back. Suddenly, the young man pulls a gun out from under his jacket.

BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! Bullets fly across the hood of the car.
⁴²⁶

Scoggins looks up from his sandwich and sees the policeman grab his stomach, then fall.
⁴²⁷
Benavides is almost abreast of the squad car when the shooting erupts. He jerks the wheel hard right, bumps his ’58 Chevy pickup into the curb, and throws himself down on the front seat.
⁴²⁸

Tatum is passing through the intersection of Tenth and Patton when he hears the crack of several pistol shots behind him. He jams on the brakes and turns to look back. The police officer is lying on the ground beside the left front tire of the squad car. Tatum sees a man in a light tan-gray jacket start off in Tatum’s direction, hesitate at the rear of the police car, then step back into the street and fire one more shot, right into the head of the officer on the ground.
⁴²⁹
*

Mrs. Markham is screaming. The man walks calmly away, back toward Patton Street, fooling with his gun.
⁴³⁰

Tatum, realizing the gunman is coming his way, drives off, with an eye on his rearview mirror.
⁴³¹