Reclaiming History (27 page)

Butler kneels next to Tippit’s body and rolls him on his back as Kinsley pulls the stretcher cot from the back of the station wagon. Tippit’s pistol is out of its holster, lying on the pavement near his right palm. Ted Callaway moves the gun to the hood of the squad car, then, with Scoggins and Guinyard, helps the attendants lift the body onto the stretcher. As they do so, the first Dallas police officer to arrive at the murder scene, reserve sergeant Kenneth Croy, pulls up. Butler and Kinsley push the cot into the back, slam the door, and are off in a flash to Methodist Hospital about a mile away.
⁴⁵⁴

1:20 p.m.

Out at Parkland, the hospital’s senior engineer, Darrell Tomlinson, has been manually operating the elevator, shuttling it between the emergency room on the ground floor and the operating rooms on the second floor. Coming down from the second floor, Tomlinson notices that on the ground floor a gurney, which was left in the hallway, has been pushed out into the narrow corridor by someone who may have used the men’s room. There is barely enough room in front of the elevator doors as it is, so Tomlinson pushes the gurney back. As it bumps the wall, Tomlinson hears a “clink” of metal on metal. He walks over and sees a bullet lying between the pad and the rim of the gurney.
⁴⁵⁵

O. P. Wright, personnel officer of Parkland Hospital, has just entered the emergency unit when he hears Tomlinson call to him. Wright walks over and Tomlinson points out the bullet lying on the edge of the stretcher.
⁴⁵⁶
Wright, a former deputy chief of police for the city of Dallas, immediately looks for a federal officer to take charge of the evidence. At first, Wright contacts an FBI agent, who refuses to take a look at the bullet, saying it wasn’t the FBI’s responsibility to make the investigation, in apparent deference to the Dallas Police Department. Next, Wright locates a Secret Service agent, but he too doesn’t seem interested in coming to look at the bullet on the stretcher. Frustrated, Wright returns to the stretcher, reluctantly picks up the bullet, and puts it into his pocket. There it remains for the next half hour or so, until Wright runs into Secret Service agent Richard E. Johnsen, who agrees to take possession of the bullet, which will later become a key piece of evidence in the assassination.
⁴⁵⁷

I
n Oak Cliff, Ted Callaway can hear the confusion and desperation of the police over Tippit’s car radio as they struggle to locate the scene of the officer’s shooting. He lowers his big frame into the patrol car and grabs the mike, “Hello, hello, hello!”

“From out here on Tenth Street,” he continues, “five-hundred block. This police officer’s just shot, I think he’s dead.”

“Ten-four, we [already] have the information,” dispatcher Jackson replies, exasperated. “The citizen using the radio will remain
off
the radio now.” The last thing he needs is some gung-ho citizen tying up the airwaves.
⁴⁵⁸

Ted Callaway climbs out of the squad car and spots his mechanic, Domingo Benavides.

“Did you see what happened?”

“Yes,” Benavides says.

Callaway picks up Tippit’s service revolver.

“Let’s chase him,” he says.

Benavides wants no part of it. Callaway snaps the revolver open—and Benavides can see that no rounds have been fired. Callaway tucks the gun in his belt and turns to the cabdriver, Scoggins.

“You saw the guy, didn’t you?” the former marine asks.

Scoggins admits he had.

“If he’s going up Jefferson, he can’t be too far. Let’s go get the son of a bitch who’s responsible for this.”

In his blue suit and white shirt, Callaway looks like some kind of policeman, or Secret Service agent. Scoggins doesn’t find out until later that he’s simply a used-car manager. They go back to Scoggins’s cab and set off to cruise along Jefferson, the last place Callaway saw the gunman.
⁴⁵⁹

T
wo blocks away, Warren Reynolds and Pat Patterson wonder whether the gunman went into the rear of one of the buildings near Crawford and Jefferson. They’ve been tailing him since he headed west, walking briskly along Jefferson Boulevard. They saw the killer turn north and scoot between a secondhand furniture store and the Texaco service station on the corner.

Eventually, they approach Robert and Mary Brock, the husband and wife employees of the service station, and ask if they’ve seen a man come by. Both say, “Yes.” They last saw him in the parking lot behind the station. Reynolds and Patterson run back and check the parking lot, then the alley behind it. Nothing. He’s escaped. Reynolds tells them to call the police, then heads toward Tenth and Patton to tell the others.
⁴⁶⁰

1:21 p.m. (2:21 p.m. EST)

In Washington, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover calls James J. Rowley, chief of the Secret Service, to offer any assistance. He tells Rowley it has been reported that a Secret Service agent has been killed, but he had not been able to get his name. Rowley states he did not know one of his agents had been killed. Hoover says the information he has is that the shots came from the “fourth floor of a building” and that “apparently a Winchester rifle was used.” The two speculate about who was behind the shooting, Rowley mentioning subversive elements in Mexico and Cuba, Hoover mentioning the Ku Klux Klan.
⁴⁶¹

A
t the Dallas FBI office, Special Agent-in-Charge Gordon Shanklin, a chain-smoker who buys cartons of cigarettes by the grocery bag, is on the telephone with the third in command at FBI headquarters in Washington, Alan Belmont. With his thin hair, glasses, and comfortable attire, Shanklin looks like a rumpled professor, but all the agents understand his nervousness. It isn’t easy to work for J. Edgar Hoover, with his whims and moods. Shanklin tells Belmont that from the information available, it appears the president has died of his wounds and that Governor Connally is in fair condition. He adds that, contrary to prior reports, a Secret Service agent has not been killed in Dallas.

“The director’s specific instructions on this,” Belmont says, “are that we should offer all possible assistance to the Secret Service and local police, and that means exactly that—give
all
possible assistance.”

“Do we have jurisdiction?” Shanklin questions.

“The question of jurisdiction is not pertinent at the moment,” Belmont replies. “The Secret Service will no doubt regard this as primarily their matter, but the essential thing is that we offer and give all possible assistance. In fact, see if the Secret Service wants us to send some laboratory men down to assist in identifying the spent shells found in the Depository.”

“I’ve already made the offer,” Shanklin tells him. “I’ve got our men with the Secret Service, the Dallas police, and the sheriff’s office. I’ve even got a man at the hospital where Mrs. Kennedy is.”

Shanklin fills Belmont in on the latest developments—shots appear to have been fired from the fifth floor of a five-story building at the corner of Elm and Commerce, where a Winchester rifle was reportedly used.
*
Shanklin tells him that the building has been roped off and the Secret Service and police are going through it.

“Has anyone been identified?” Belmont asks.

“No, not yet,” Shanklin answers.

“We’ll send out a Teletype to all offices to check and account for the whereabouts of all hate-group members in their areas,” Belmont tells him. “If you need more manpower down there, let us know and we’ll send it.”

“Okay,” Shanklin says, and hangs up.

Belmont promptly starts working on a Teletype to alert all FBI offices to immediately contact all informants and sources regarding the assassination and to immediately establish the whereabouts of bombing suspects, Klan and hate-group members, racial extremists, and any other individuals who on the basis of information in bureau files might have been involved.
⁴⁶²

1:22 p.m.

The cavernous sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository is crawling with officers looking for evidence. Since the discovery of the sniper’s nest, the search has been concentrated there.
⁴⁶³
They have all heard about the shooting out in Oak Cliff and are tense, jumpy.
Dallas Morning News
reporter Kent Biffle, caught up with the officers involved in the search, wonders whether he risks getting shot by a nervous officer.
⁴⁶⁴

A flashbulb pops in the southeast corner window as crime-lab investigators Lieutenant Carl Day and Detective Robert Studebaker photograph the three spent cartridges lying on the floor of the sniper’s nest. Nearby, Captain Will Fritz of homicide converses with Detectives L. D. Montgomery and Marvin Johnson, who’ve just arrived.
⁴⁶⁵
Across the floor, in the northwest corner, near the top of the back stairwell, two sheriff deputies comb through a stack of boxes for the umpteenth time. Deputy Eugene Boone shines his high-powered flashlight into every gloomy crack, crevice, and cranny, looking in, under, and around the dusty boxes and pallets. Alongside him is Deputy Constable Seymour Weitzman, who has been over this area of the sixth floor twice already, though without the aid of a flashlight. Now the bright beam of light picks up something on the floor stuffed down between two rows of boxes, another box slid on an angle over the top of it. Weitzman crawls down on the floor, as Boone shines the light down into the crevice from the top. They spot a rifle at the same moment.

“There it is!” Weitzman shouts.

“We got it!” Boone hollers to other officers across the sixth floor. It was pretty well concealed from view—eight or nine searchers must have stumbled over it before they found it. Boone checks his watch—1:22 p.m.
⁴⁶⁶

Captain Fritz tells Detectives Montgomery and Johnson to stay with the hulls, while he and Detectives Sims and Boyd walk over to where the rifle has been found. They can see it down among the boxes. Detective Sims goes back to the area of the sniper’s nest and tells Lieutenant Day that they need him, the camera, and the fingerprint dust kit over where the rifle has been found. Detective Studebaker takes another picture of the position of the three empty cartridges lying below the half-open window as Day tells him they’ve got the pictures they need.

Detective Sims reaches down and picks up the empty hulls and drops them into an evidence envelope that Lieutenant Day is holding open. With the empty hulls secured, Day packs up the camera and dust kit and immediately goes to the officers gathering around the rifle near the stairwell in the northwest corner of the sixth floor. As Day leaves, Detectives Montgomery and Johnson start to collect other evidence in the area of the sniper’s nest, including the long, brown paper bag. The bag has been folded twice and is lying to the left of the sniper’s nest window. As Montgomery unfolds it, he and Johnson speculate that it may have been used to bring the rifle into the building.
⁴⁶⁷

Within minutes, Lieutenant Day and Detective Studebaker are photographing the rifle from several points of view. When they’re satisfied they have enough, Fritz carefully lifts the weapon out by its homemade sling. A local TV cameraman records the scene for posterity.
⁴⁶⁸

None of the officers crowding around, many of them gun enthusiasts, are able to identify the rifle positively, although it’s clearly an infantry weapon with a Mauser action. It is stamped “Made Italy,” with a date of 1940 and serial number C2766. Along with some other more arcane markings, it bears the legend “Caliber 6.5” across the top of the rear iron sight. It has the distinctive magazine—designed by Ferdinand Ritter von Mannlicher, who worked on the Mauser bolt action—built on the leading edge of the trigger guard, and capable of holding up to five rounds, or six of a smaller caliber. Day notices that the detachable cartridge clip in the magazine is empty. The rifle has been fitted with a cheap Japanese telescopic sight and an improvised, homemade sling. Whatever the sling came from, it didn’t start out as a rifle sling.

Before the rifle is touched or moved, Captain Fritz has Day photograph the rifle and surrounding boxes. Fritz then gingerly opens the bolt and finds one live cartridge in the chamber, which he ejects.
⁴⁶⁹
The cartridge is printed with the caliber, 6.5 millimeter, and the make, “WW”—symbol of the Western Cartridge Company of Alton, Illinois.
⁴⁷⁰

S
ergeant Bud Owens races his car south on Beckley with passengers Gerald Hill and and Bill Alexander. In Dallas law enforcement at the time of the assassination, two names stood out: Captain Will Fritz, who headed up the Homicide and Robbery Bureau of the Dallas Police Department, and Bill Alexander, the chief felony prosecutor for the Dallas district attorney’s office. Alexander had been with the office for eleven years, had had ten murderers he convicted or helped convict executed at the state prison in Huntsville, and had a 93 percent conviction rate in felony jury trials, above average in his office of twenty-five assistant district attorneys. Both men, though not social friends, liked and respected each other and worked closely on the major homicide cases in Dallas. Both liked their respective bosses, Police Chief Jesse Curry and District Attorney Henry Wade, but viewed them charitably as administrators (though both, particularly Wade, had distinguished careers in their respective departments before leading them) who really didn’t know what the hell was going down in the cases handled by their offices.

Alexander, an infantry captain during the Second World War who saw combat in Italy, to this day wears a “John B. Stetson” hat—“with embroidered lining,” he hastens to add—and carries a .380 automatic underneath his belt on his left side. Perhaps no other incident illustrates the lore of Bill Alexander more than one involving a Dallas con-artist named “Smokey Joe” Smith. It seems that Smith had the practice of reading obituaries and then preying on and swindling the decedents’ vulnerable widows. Alexander did not take kindly to this and started to investigate Smith. One day, word got back to Alexander that Smith was in the Courthouse Café (a popular hangout for court regulars across the street from the courthouse) flashing his .45 and saying he was going to put a few holes in Alexander. There’s always been an element of Texas justice that pronounces the word
justice
as “just us,” and Alexander walked into the busy coffee shop, jerked Smith’s “overfed” body off the counter stool, and with Smith on his knees, put his automatic to Smith’s head and said, “Beg me for your life you no good son of a bitch or I’ll kill you right here.” After first pleading with Alexander, “Don’t kill me. Please put the gun away,” Smith, becoming more brazen when no projectile was on its way, told Alexander, “I’m going to tell the sheriff.” “Well, go ahead and tell that one-eyed, old son of a bitch [Dallas sheriff Bill Decker]. That won’t help you if you’re gut-shot.” Alexander left Smith with this cheerful admonition: “If you ever walk up behind me, I’ll kill you dry.” Smith, in fact, did call Decker, who called Alexander with this friendly advice: “You really shouldn’t talk like that, Bill. Don’t kill him.”