DALLAS POLICE – Kennedys and King Test Site

The Wrong Bus Transfer – Part 1

Why was a bus transfer for the number 23 Lakewood Line found on Oswald if he’d been on a number 30 Marsalis Line bus?

How Did Oswald Get the Wrong Bus Transfer? – Part 1

Will Fritz’s Freudian slip: Why was a bus transfer for the number 23 Lakewood Line found on Oswald if he’d been on a number 30 Marsalis Line bus?

By the Warren Commission’s account, Lee Oswald got on and then off a Marsalis southbound bus – 12:39-12:43 pm – on Elm Street, Downtown Dallas, just before the intersection with Lamar. However, Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig said that approximately 10 minutes after Kennedy was shot (making it 12:40 pm), he saw Oswald running down the slope near the Depository and then getting into a station wagon.

Craig’s affidavit of November 22, 1963, said the man was identical to Oswald, whom he saw again later at 5:18 pm in the office of the head of the Dallas Police Homicide Bureau, Captain Will Fritz, 3 hours after Oswald arrived at City Hall after his arrest at the Texas Theatre.

Craig later testified to the Warren Commission at 2:35 pm, April 1, 1964, before Counsel Belin.

Mr. BELIN – All right. Then, what did Captain Fritz say, what did you say, and what did the suspect say?

Mr. CRAIG – Captain Fritz then asked him about the—uh—he said, “What about this station wagon?”

And the suspect interrupted him and said, “That station wagon belongs to Mrs. Paine”—I believe that is what he said. “Don’t try to tie her into this. She had nothing to do with it.”

And–uh–Captain Fritz then told him, as close as I can remember, that, “All we’re trying to do is find out what happened, and this man saw you leave from the scene.”

And the suspect again interrupted Captain Fritz and said, “I told you people I did.” And–uh–yeah–then, he said–then he continued and he said, “Everybody will know who I am now.”

By that account, Craig and Oswald himself not only ruled out Oswald being on the Marsalis bus but also linked Ruth Paine – the owner of the house in Irving where Marina Oswald lived and Oswald stayed at weekends – to that car.

But Captain Fritz, in testifying to the Warren Commission (Vol IV, p. 202) on April 22, 1964, to Counsel Ball, said this about Craig.

FRITZ. One deputy sheriff who started to talk to me but he was telling me some things that I knew wouldn’t help us and I didn’t talk to him but someone else took an affidavit from him. His story that he was telling didn’t fit with what we knew to be true.’

Given that all of this relates to the afternoon of November 22, 1963, how could Fritz at that time have possibly known what Craig was telling him was not going to help him? Especially as Fritz claims Craig had only started to tell him something, and Fritz’s account of Oswald’s own story–as I show later–was fluid, inconsistent and far from truthful.

This article explores that question. Was Fritz emitting a Freudian slip?

Nothing appearing as evidence on November 22, 1963, provides a basis for Fritz to have dismissed what Roger Craig always maintained. What does appear in the record is a making up and suppression of evidence instead.

I. The Other Witnesses: Cooper and Robinson

Roy Cooper worked for a military aircraft maker, Ling-Temco-Vought (now part of Northrop Grumman). He told the FBI on November 23, 1963, that he saw a Nash Rambler pick up a man running from the direction of the Depository. Cooper said he was driving behind his boss, Marvin Robinson, who nearly collided with it. The vehicle headed under the overpass in the direction of Oak Cliff.

Cooper told the FBI to contact Robinson at home or at the Naval Air Station at Grand Prairie. Cooper was following Robinson to drop a car off at Robinson’s house, 5120 S Marsalis, Dallas. Marvin Robinson was traced and confirmed that in an interview with the FBI the same day, November 23, 1963.

The Commission file for Roger Craig shows that Robinson was scheduled by Commission staff to testify on April 1, 1964, at 2:30 pm to Counsel Ball, simultaneously with Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig. But his testimony does not appear in any records. Attendance was tightly managed. If a witness did not acknowledge the request to appear, by phone call, the Secret Service made contact to ensure it happened.

Robinson had been very easily traced on November 23 via Cooper as they worked at the same air base. Robinson carried on working on aircraft even in retirement near Dallas. He was very much of fixed abode and workplace and appears at the stated address in the City Directory. There is no explanation as to why Robinson did not testify. Or if he did testify, why is that testimony missing from the records? But whatever the case, Josiah Thompson used his FBI report to telling effect in his early book, Six Seconds in Dallas. If one reads the effect that Robinson’s testimony has combined with Craig’s, which Thompson does, then one may be able to ponder the reason for his absence. (Thompson, pp. 242-43)

The Warren Commission’s report dismissed Craig’s story on the basis that Oswald was on the bus at that same time. But the timeline of Fritz’s denial of Craig’s relevance is also important. Fritz, in testifying to the Warren Commission on April 22, 1964 to Counsel Ball, said this:

Mr. FRITZ. He [Oswald] told me that was the transfer the busdriver had given him when he caught the bus to go home. But he had told me if you will remember in our previous conversation that he rode the bus or on North Beckley and had walked home but in the meantime, someone had told me about him riding a cab.

And,

So, when I asked him [Oswald] about a cab ride if he had ridden in a cab he said yes, he had, he told me wrong about the bus, he had rode a cab. He said the reason he changed, that he rode the bus for a short distance, and the crowd was so heavy and traffic was so bad that he got out and caught a cab, and I asked him some other questions about the cab and I asked him what happened there when he caught the cab and he said there was a lady trying to catch a cab and he told the busdriver, the busdriver told him to tell the lady to catch the cab behind him and he said he rode that cab over near his home, he rode home in a cab.

Fritz was misleadingly inaccurate regarding the “someone” in the “meantime”. By cab driver William Whaley’s testimony of March 12, 1964, in Washington, and his affidavit of November 23, the cab lead, and his description of the lady, etc., didn’t appear until the next day, November 23. Whaley testified thus.

Mr. BALL. Later that day did you-were you called down to the police department?

Mr. WHALEY. No, sir.

Mr. BALL. Were you the next day?

Mr. WHALEY. No, sir; they came and got me, sir, the next day after I told my superior when I saw in the paper his picture, I told my superiors that that had been my passenger that day at noon. They called up the police and they came up and got me.

Mr. BALL. When you saw in the newspaper the picture of the man?

Mr. WHALEY. Yes, sir.

Mr. BALL. You went to your superior and told him you thought he was your passenger?

Mr. WHALEY. Yes, sir.

So up to the point when Craig was telling Fritz something, there was nothing to provide any basis to dismiss what Craig was telling him. Indeed, Fritz’s account of Oswald changing his story of how he got to Beckley cannot be true, given that there was no cab revelation that day.

Fritz’s peremptory dismissal of Roger Craig’s story seems to be based on Fritz making up a counter-story that is full of holes and contradictions.

By April 1, 1964, the story that Oswald was identified on the bus was in tatters.

II. The Misidentification of Oswald by the Bus Driver

Without a lead to a cab on November 22, all there was to go on was the bus transfer, which was allegedly found on Oswald at around 4:05 pm on November 22, by Detective Simms, just as Oswald was taken downstairs for his first witness lineup (see later).

The transfer lead involved driver Cecil McWatters and his Line 30 Marsalis bus. However, and counter to what Fritz had said, Oswald originally told him that the bus line wasn’t a route to Oswald’s 1026 N Beckley rooming house. The Marsalis line deviated ¾ mile before that Beckley destination, at the south end of the Houston Street Viaduct.

This is then from the testimony of Detective Dhority taken on April 6, 1964. The lineup referred to is Oswald’s second.

Mr. BALL. What was the first thing that you did that day with respect to the investigation of the President’s assassination?

Mr. DHORITY. Around 6 p.m., Detective Brown and myself went out and got Mr. McWatters from the bus in front of the city hall there and brought him into the lineup and took an affidavit off of him.

Ball then read from that affidavit taken on November 22.

Mr. BALL. What did McWatters say to you?

Mr. DHORITY. He identified him as the man that rode on the bus and said he wasn’t for sure exactly where he picked him up, but he said he believed that he got off shortly after he got on the bus, but after he identified him he went upstairs and looked at a transfer that Detective Sims had took out of Oswald’s pocket, and he positively identified the transfer as his transfer.

Mr. BALL. You took McWatters’ affidavit after that, didn’t you?

Mr. DHORITY. Yes, sir.

Mr. BALL. Right after he had made an identification?

Mr. DHORITY. Yes, sir.

Mr. BALL. Of Oswald?

Mr. DHORITY. Yes, sir.

Mr. BALL. At that time, and I’ll show you a copy of an affidavit by McWatters, and will you take a look at that, please?

Mr. DHORITY. [Examined instrument referred to.]

Mr. BALL. Mr. Dhority, after the showup, did you take the affidavit from Mr. McWatters?

Mr. DHORITY. Yes, I did.

Mr. BALL. Now, in the affidavit here he says he picked up a man on the lower end of town on Elm and Houston and went out on Marsalis and picked up a woman, and then he mentions that as he went out, “This man was grinning and never did say anything. The woman said that it was not a grinning matter. I don’t remember where I let this man off. This man looks like the No. 2 man I saw in a lineup tonight.”.Now, you read that, didn’t you?

Mr. DHORITY. Yes.

But as Ball noted, the positive identification Dhority cited did not accord with what McWatters’ affidavit actually said. Nor did it accord with McWatters’ FBI statement the next day, November 23 (page 6). That FBI statement said.

MCWATTERS stated that he went to the Dallas Police Department on November 22, 1963, and from a lineup picked a man whom he said is the only one in the lineup who resembles the man who had ridden on his bus on November 22, 1963. He stated that this man was LEE OSWALD, but emphasized that he cannot specifically identify him as being on his bus or as being the person who made the remark to the effect that the President was shot in the temple.

He stated he “cannot be sure where this man got off the bus, but he believes it was south of Saner Avenue in Oak Cliff”.

Saner Avenue was near the south end of the Marsalis line, over 5 miles from Elm Street. The bus was scheduled for arrival at the Saner end of the line at 12:58 pm (CE378).

Dhority’s assertions are also discredited by what McWatters testified 25 days earlier to the Commission in Washington on March 12, 1964 (Vol II page 263), immediately after Whaley.

McWatters withdrew any identification of Oswald entirely and said the person he’d seen on the bus was actually Roy Milton Jones, a teenager.

Mr. BALL – Now you realize you were mistaken in your identification that night?

Mr. McWATTERS – That is right.

Mr. BALL – As I understand it, neither then nor now are you able to identify or say that you have again seen the man that got off your bus to whom you gave a transfer?

Mr. McWATTERS – No, sir; I couldn’t. I could not identify him.

Milton Jones was traced at the Commission’s request. On March 30, 1964, he told the FBI (CE2641) that the bus was held up by police boarding it on Elm Street for almost an hour and said he got off at Marsalis@Brownley at 1:45 pm. That is one block south of Saner Avenue and hence chimes with McWatters’ account. But given that is where the bus should have been circa 12:56 pm, the bus was 50 minutes late.

All of McWatters’ police and FBI statements were silent about the delay and the police boarding causing it. But Milton Jones’ account can be corroborated on time. The Dallas Morning News of 28 November 1963, reported.

“The cashier of the Texas Theater immediately called the police – who had just sped en masse to a false alarm at the Dallas Library branch on Jefferson, further to the east. The police sirens wailed again. Oddly enough it was at the library that McWatters, the bus driver who, unknowingly, had Oswald as a passenger earlier, had his second brush with fate. His bus pulled up at the intersection as a swarm of 10 or 15 police cars zeroed in on the library, *I couldn’t imagine what was going on” said McWatters. “Little did I know!“.

That false sighting of Oswald at the library at Marsalis and Jefferson appears on the patrol radio around 1:30 pm. The bus should have been there at 12:50 pm (CE378), thus it was at least 40 minutes late. That would make a late arrival at Saner of 1:40 pm. Thus corroborating what Milton Jones told the FBI.

Milton Jones told the FBI that he and McWatters talked about those events on Monday, November 25, when Milton Jones was back on the bus again.

Milton Jones also revealed to the FBI that McWatters told him the DPD had questioned him until 1:00 am the next day.

Seven hours is a long time to hold a witness who hadn’t actually made a positive identification of Oswald. But it would be consistent with trying to turn things into “evidence”.

Nevertheless, Oswald was charged on November 22, 1964, for the murder of Officer JD Tippit by relying on McWatters and the bus story as the explanation for how Oswald could have gotten to 1026 N Beckley to then get to the Tippit murder scene.

Given the discrepancies on the person, the time and the place, then the story of the bus transfer must also be in doubt.

Rather than incriminating Oswald, the transfer actually incriminates the police. The transfer supposedly found on Oswald was not for Line 30 Marsalis, but Line 23 Lakewood.

III. THE BUS ROUTE, TIMES AND THE TRANSFER

The Line 30 Marsalis route McWatters was driving was also known as Marsalis-Munger. It was confirmed by the foreman at the bus company, Mr. JE Cook (McWatters file page 8). Munger is a district north of Downtown, as well as an intersection towards Lakewood on Gaston Avenue. He said the sign would have been set for “30 • Marsalis – Union Station” and set the signs for that for FBI photographs for the Commission.

McWatters, in testifying to the Commission, said that he was scheduled for that run from 11:52 am until 2:27 pm, when he then switched lines.

The bus schedule (CE378) shows that Marsalis Line 30, 1213, started its crosstown schedule at 12:11 pm from Ellsworth/Anita (Lakewood), Gaston Avenue (a long road running south to Downtown), Elm Street (Downtown), Houston Street (Dealey Plaza), North and South Marsalis Avenue (Oak Cliff), with a scheduled end at Ann Arbor (Saner district), at 12:58 pm.

The turnaround schedule (heading to Munger) was to be back at Lakewood at 2:11 pm, then ending at Gaston@Paulus 2:20 pm, which leads to the bus transfer ticket.

A bus transfer is a form of ticket issued when a passenger breaks a journey, enabling a follow-up journey on another connecting bus line, without paying another full fare. According to McWatters’ Warren Commission testimony, a passenger had to give a reason for getting a transfer.

The Commission photograph of the transfer 004459 supposedly found on Oswald, which appears as CE383-A, is blurry to read, but the one on the left is a color one via John Armstrong.

Drivers were given books, each containing 50 transfers preprinted for the date. The first transfer was torn off and left at the depot as the receipt for taking that book. The photo on the right is transfer 004451. The 1963 Dallas transfer states it was valid “within 15 minutes from the time indicated on the first point of intersection or transfer point for connecting lines”.

The transfer had punches for relevant boxes, except for the time, which was cut. The same ticket company, Globe Ticket Co, still exists and still sells cutters and punchers. Comparing these two transfers shows how CE381-A was cut back to the first possible time, 1:00 and punched PM. Whereas, a horizontal cut at the foot would be 12:45.

Transfers were charged at much less than full fare. Given that an incentive to tamper would be to extend to a later time to create a cheap ride, then the cutting system is tamper-proof. All later hours and minutes are cut off. The Dallas transfer above has a list of 17 bus lines. Each Dallas bus line had a name and number. (See page 12 of this Ford Presidential Library document) This later Dallas Bus map still tallies with the routes on the Globe transfer described above.

A review of the names and numbers of the 17 bus lines shows that routes are not systematically named for the ends of the lines, which would require two names. Instead, for the transfers, the Dallas lines were named unsystematically on the basis of any road or district of prominence on the line, e.g., 22 Beckley, 15 Ramona, and 30 Marsalis are names of middles and not ends of bus lines. Downtown was the start of the Beckley line. Lakewood is the district where the Ramona line and the Marsalis line started/ended. But Lakewood was also the name of a line itself. Its route – 23 – is shown in the FBI dossier (page 90, top right). It ran from the Lakewood district and terminated at Downtown, Union Station, and returned to Lakewood.

A punched hole would indicate the relevant bus line. As did boxes indicating direction of travel “NSEW”, North, South, East and West, so that a passenger could not skip paying for a return ticket by doubling backward.

But the Dallas transfer did have a “Shopper” box which, if punched, did enable someone who had asked for that form of transfer to get a return bus ride – once they had spent more than a dollar in a participating store. McWatters said that at that time of day, transfers were usually used by elderly people shopping.

These lines crossed the Trinity River into Oak Cliff, thus,

Marsalis bus Line 30. Also known as “Munger”. The one Oswald was supposed to have boarded and then disembarked from. That ran from Lakewood, along Gaston through Downtown on Elm, over Houston St Viaduct along North and South Marsalis ending at Ann Arbor/Saner and back.
Ramona bus Line 15. That shared the same Downtown route as Marsalis until over the river, where it branched off Marsalis, to Ramona, ending at Singing Hills.
Elmwood Line 42. That ended south of the river at Elmwood (not to be confused with Ellwood) and has no relevance here.
The Beckley bus Line 22. That started Downtown, crossed the Trinity River on the Commerce Viaduct and went down North and South Beckley to Kiest and back. That would have been the direct bus for Oswald to go to work at the Depository from his 1026 N Beckley rooming house.
Other buses running along Beckley, Belmont Line 1 and Skillman Line 20. CE2694.

The above-cited lines are all visible on the CE381-A transfer.

The ticketing system Dallas used was widespread in the USA. The Reading Bus Co ticket, for example, is explicit on the ticket that the convention was that a punch indicated the line the journey had started on.

That is consistent with wording on CE381-A stating 15-minute validity “for connecting lines”. Plural. Meaning any lines connecting with the one disembarked from and punched for. A passenger transferring on Elm from any one of Beckley, Marsalis, Elmwood, Skillman, Bellmont or Ramona would have – at least – the five other lines to choose to transfer to.

IV. The Question about the Wrong Punch

The transfer, which appears as CE381-A, is punched not for the Marsalis • 30 line but the Lakewood • 23 line. The Lakewood line in either direction would be of no use to Oswald – nor anyone else – heading to Oak Cliff. Counsel Ball asked McWatters why CE381-A would be punched for [Line 23] “Lakewood”.

McWatters gave the Commission a convoluted story about punching the hole next to “Lakewood [23]” as Lakewood was an end of the Marsalis [30] route. He said in the following (my square brackets).

“Going that way, while at Marsalis, I would punch the Lakewood when I would leave Marsalis coming toward Lakewood [hence northbound], I would have Lakewood on the front of my bus [hence also northbound] but I would punch the transfer Marsalis.”

This is patently absurd. Firstly, he merely described northbound journeys in a different way but punched inconsistently. Secondly, even if he had his own system of punching “Lakewood” as a destination, it couldn’t possibly be a destination from a stop on one-way Elm Street for a Line 30 Marsalis bus heading south towards Marsalis.

McWatters seems to be trying to find excuses for punching a transfer for the Lakewood Line 23 when he was driving the Marsalis 30 Line, and as per the photograph above, with “30 Marsalis” on the sign.

McWatters’ account of him being called to the police department for the lineup chimes with Dhority above. McWatters was only shown the – problematic – Lakewood Line 23 transfer after he had attended the Oswald lineup.

Mr. Ball. Now, you were called down to the Dallas police department later, weren’t you?

Mr. McWatters. Yes, sir.

Mr. Ball. What day was it?

Mr. McWatters. It was on the same day, the 22d.

Mr. Ball. 22d. Do you know how they happened to get in touch with you, did you notify them that you——

Mr. McWatters. No, sir; I didn’t know anything to that effect.

Mr. Ball. Did they come out and get you?

Mr. McWatters. They come out and——

Mr. Ball. What did they ask you?

Mr. McWatters. Well, they stopped me; it was, I would say around 6:15 or somewhere around 6:15 or 6:20 that afternoon.

Mr. Ball. You were still on duty, were you?

Mr. McWatters. Yes, sir.

Mr. Ball. Still on your bus?

Mr. McWatters. I was on duty but I was on a different line and a different bus.

Mr. Ball. What did they ask you when they came out?

Mr. McWatters. Well, they stopped me right by the city hall there when I come by there and they wanted me to come in, they wanted to ask me some questions. And I don’t know what it was about or anything until I got in there and they told me what happened.

Mr. Ball. What did they tell you?

Mr. McWatters. Well, they told me that they had a transfer that I had issued that was cut for Lamar Street at 1 o’clock, and they wanted to know if I knew anything about it. And I, after I looked at the transfer and my punch, I said yes, that is the transfer I issued because it had my punch mark on it.

It is perplexing how the police could have deduced Lamar. There is no reference to Lamar on the transfer. Ball picked up on that, with McWatters then confirming it was impossible.

Mr. BALL – If this transfer was issued around the Lamar area or St. Paul–Elm area, is there any place that you could punch and show that particular location?
Mr. McWATTERS – No, sir.

McWatters then undermined his own assertion of Lamar with this.

Mr. Ball. When you got to the police station that day did they show you a transfer?

Mr. McWatters. Yes, sir.

Mr. Ball. What did you tell them about the transfer?

Mr. McWatters. Well, I recognized the transfer as being the transfer that I had issued.

Mr. Ball. How did you recognize it?

Mr. McWatters. By my punch mark on it.

Mr. Ball. And what about the line?

Mr. McWatters. The line?

Mr. Ball. Lakewood.

Mr. McWatters. The Lakewood punch on it, and where it was punched and Lakewood with my punch mark on it.

The purpose of a transfer is to convey information to a different driver on the bus that the holder chooses to board next. A system needs consistency and understandability for passengers as well as drivers. What McWatters was saying is inconsistent and incomprehensible.

Click here to read part 2.

October 1, 2025

Larry Crafard – The Leads the Warren Commission Lost – Part 2

Even Commission lawyers Burt Griffin and Leon Hubert had suspicions about the tall tales of Larry Crafrard and, among other things, his incredible journey from Dallas to Michigan.

Larry Crafard – The Leads the Warren Commission Lost – Part 2

By John Washburn

LEAD V

Crafard’s alibi for November 22

Crafard, when interviewed by the FBI on November 29, 1963, claimed he was sleeping at the Carousel Club during Kennedy’s assassination on November 22. He stated he overslept and was awakened by a phone call from Armstrong at 11:30 am and then again in person between 12:30 and 12:45 pm.

With Ruby detained for Oswald’s murder, Andrew Armstrong managed the Carousel Club. An African American who handled the bar and cash takings, Armstrong was interviewed by FBI Agents Lish and Wilson on November 25, 1963 (CE5310-A). His testimonies are consolidated as CE5310 A-G here.

That first interview focused on Jack Ruby, his reactions to Kennedy’s assassination, and a list of club employees. Crafard was not mentioned.

Agent Lish (CE5310-B) visited Armstrong again that day, and Crafard was of interest, likely after Patterson’s lead. The second interview revealed Crafard had left on Saturday, and his whereabouts were unknown. But Armstrong found and handed over Crafard’s notebook, entered into evidence as CE5230. A typewritten transcript of it was made on November 27, which is on file but not included in the Commission’s evidence.

FBI Agents Peggs and Zimmerman then made a third visit on November 26 (p.288 WC files, no exhibit). Because Armstrong had found a letter from Crafard’s cousin, Gail Cascadden, which listed her address as Box 303, Harrison, Michigan. Page 288 includes the notebook transcription and a typed copy of Gail’s letter. It was that letter which enabled the FBI to trace Crafard to rural Michigan, where he was found on November 28.

Only on January 23, 1964, to Agents Sayer and Clements (CE5310-G), did Armstrong provide an alibi for Crafard regarding November 22, 1963. But Armstrong did not then (nor ever) mention Crafard’s claim of being awakened at 11:30 am.

Armstrong’s improbable journey

Armstrong lived at Dixon Circle, Dallas, over 4 miles due east from Downtown.

Armstrong testified on April 14, 1964, that his regular working hours were from 1:00 pm to 1:00 am, and he typically left home at noon to catch the bus from Dixon Circle to Downtown. That would have been the 12/50 bus route along Scyene Road (Dallas City bus map). Armstrong said that he usually unlocked the club just before 1:00 pm and stocked the refrigerator so that the beers would be cold later in the day.

In his January 23, 1964, FBI statement, Armstrong said that on November 22, 1963, he boarded a bus near his home at 11:53 pm, arrived at Main and Akard at 12:25 pm, missed the motorcade, but saw it was west at Main and Lamar before walking to the Carousel, arriving at 12:30 pm. The Carousel Club was on Commerce near Field, one block south of Field and Main. It would be a 2–3-minute walk from Main and Field to the Carousel.

He said he took his jacket off and went to the men’s room. When he left there, he said he was curious about hearing sirens and hence got a transistor radio and listened to KLIF Dallas. Then he heard the President had been shot and tried to wake Crafard, but Crafard did not wake. He listened for two minutes more, then heard the President had gone to Parkland. Then he woke Crafard.

He said that 15 minutes later, Ruby called from the Dallas Morning News and asked, “Had he heard the news?” He then said if “anything happens to Kennedy, the club will close.” He carried on listening until the announcement that Kennedy was dead at 1:30. He said Ruby arrived at 1:45-2:00 pm. Ruby said “what a terrible thing,” and the club would close for 3 days. Ruby made calls. Then he heard the announcement of the death of Tippit. (CE5310-G p320.)

If Armstrong was on a westbound bus on Main Street, missing the motorcade but still seeing part of it further down (by his description, three blocks down), then there is a very narrow time window in which his arrival can have occurred.

The Motorcade – running 5 minutes late – entered Main Street at Harwood (at City Hall) at 12:25 pm and was at Field and Main at 12:27 pm, Main and Houston at 12:29, and Kennedy was assassinated on Elm at 12:30 pm.

If Armstrong was on a bus ahead of the motorcade, he would have observed the entire event. So, to have just missed it, Armstrong would have had to have arrived on Main immediately after the motorcade had, approximately 12:26 pm. But when he testified to the Commission, he claimed to have arrived at the Carousel at 12:15-12:20 pm. That places him at least 5-10 minutes ahead of the motorcade, and he wouldn’t have missed any of it.

Further, if Armstrong could get from Dixon Circle to Main Street on a noon bus that could get him to the Carousel that quickly, then, on a normal working day, he would be arriving over half an hour too early for his 1:00 pm arrival. Added to which a noon bus from Dixon Circle would be hard pushed to arrive on Main in 20 minutes, even in normal day traffic conditions.

But Armstrong then undermined his account even further. He testified he got up at 9 am, took the noon bus to see the parade, and stopped at Moore’s Barbers on the way. Merely adding the haircut time would have made it impossible for him to reach Main Street until well after 12:30 pm.

The Dallas City Directory shows there were two Moore’s Barber Shops, 1124 S Haskell and 1125 Stonewall. Both of those were several blocks north of the Scyene bus route, a ten-minute walk. That detour would add an extra 20 minutes.

This is what Armstrong said to the Commission about the barbers.

Mr. HUBERT. And you got to the club about what time?

Mr. ARMSTRONG. It must time been about 12:15-12:20, or something like that, because when I got downtown I could see portions of the parade, you know, like I got off of the bus at Main and Field- at Main and Akard, I’m sorry, which is the usual stop, I always get off at Main and Akard, and further down you could see portions of the parade, but I felt that I had missed the parade I didn’t realize that I had missed the parade until I was in the barber shop and thought, well, maybe I’ll get downtown, I said to myself, and I will see some portion of it, but when I got downtown I was surprised to see that the parade had moved forward – further down.

Anyone who’d left home at noon and intended to stop by the barbers shouldn’t have been the least bit surprised. With the motorcade scheduled for 12:20 pm on Main, he could not have made it.

Crafard and the sleep story

Hubert asked Armstrong if he had called Crafard to wake him up (Crafard’s 11:30 am call claim). Armstrong said no and added that he didn’t usually wake him even if he was asleep upon arrival.

Armstrong’s account of the events at the Carousel Club was also inconsistent. On January 23, 1964, he told the FBI that he went to the restroom when he heard sirens and learned of the assassination via a transistor radio. He ran to wake Larry, found the door open, but despite his efforts, Larry fell back asleep. Armstrong then returned to the restroom without waking Larry.

Gary DeLaune, a news anchor at KLIF radio in Dallas, Texas, was the first to break the news at 12:40 pm. CBS-TV, with sound only, started at 12:45 pm. WFAA Dallas started live TV at 12:45 pm with Bill and Gayle Newman, the closest civilian eyewitnesses to the fatal shot to Kennedy’s head.

Armstrong then said he heard further reports, and 2 minutes later, he went to wake Larry up, and this time, Larry got up and dressed.

That places Armstrong in the restroom from 12:15 pm to 12:40 pm on one account (for the Commission) and 12:30 pm-12:40 pm on the other (for the FBI).

However, Armstrong’s inconsistent and impossible ‘alibis’ for Crafard were blown apart by Crafard himself when he testified in Washington on 8^th, 9^th and 10^th April 1964. WC Vol XIV.

Crafard was actually an early riser.

Mr. HUBERT. Do you drink much?
Mr. CRAFARD. Very seldom. I drank, I think, three or four different times while I was there that I drank a beer or two, that was all.
Mr. HUBERT. So that your heavy sleep on the morning of the 22d couldn’t be attributed to the fact that you had a hangover?
Mr. CRAFARD. No.
Mr. HUBERT. Or that you were suffering from any overindulgence in alcohol?
Mr. CRAFARD. No, sir.
Mr. HUBERT. You don’t take any kind of sleeping pills or anything like that?
Mr. CRAFARD. No, sir.
Mr. HUBERT. So this was just normal sleep?
Mr. CRAFARD. Yes.
Mr. HUBERT. And his call failed to wake you?

Mr. CRAFARD. I left the 23d of November, I believe it was.
Mr. HUBERT. What were your hours there?
Mr. CRAFARD. Any hours. I would just get up, I usually got up about 8 o’clock in the morning and I would be lucky if I would get to bed before 3:30, 4 o’clock.
Mr. HUBERT. How come you would get up so early?
Mr. CRAFARD. Get the club cleaned up.
Mr. HUBERT. Wasn’t there a man to help?
Mr. CRAFARD. I took care of that mostly myself

Mr. CRAFARD. If I started cleaning up at 9 o’clock I would be finished by 11:30.

Mr. HUBERT. In other words, you had 2 1/2 hours?

Mr. CRAFARD. Yes.

Mr. HUBERT. Were you then usually free?

Mr. CRAFARD. No. Jack would come in about 11:30 and be there 2 or 3 hours. After he left I had to stay there and answer the phone.

Mr. HUBERT. What was the purpose of keeping you around the club after your cleanup job was over?
Mr. CRAFARD. So far as I understand just mostly answer the phone.
Mr. HUBERT. Were there many phone calls to be answered?
Mr. CRAFARD. There was quite a few that would come in–generally, usually, people calling in, would start calling in about 1 o’clock for reservations.

The cold beer story

Then, contrary to Armstrong’s account of leaving home at noon on November 22, 1963, Crafard’s testimony put Armstrong arriving at the club at 9:30 am.

Mr. CRAFARD. Andy woke me that morning. He come in early. Andy always put the beer in and he come in early to do that so that he could have the rest of the day off.

Mr. HUBERT. What time did Andy come in?

Mr. CRAFARD. I think it was about 9:30 or something like that.

Mr. HUBERT. Came in personally?

Mr. CRAFARD. Yes. He was there when the President was shot.

Mr. HUBERT. Were you asleep when he came in?

Mr. CRAFARD. I was asleep when he came in.

Mr. HUBERT. Did you waken up when he came in?

Mr. CRAFARD. I didn’t wake up—Andy woke me up and told me that the President had been shot.

There seems to be some confusion here. And Hubert should have clarified it. Because if Armstrong came in that early, he could not have told Crafard about the JFK murder. Jack Ruby did little to help.

Ruby on June 7, 1964, told the Warren Commission party at the jail, regarding his actions when he was at the Dallas Morning News: “I could have called my colored boy, Andy, down at the club. I could have-I don’t know who else I would have called, but I could have. Because it is so long now since my mind is very much warped now.”

If Crafard was at the club and Armstrong was having a half day, then Ruby would have expected to have called Crafard. Did Ruby think that Crafard was not going to be there?

Crafard didn’t even sleep at the club towards the end

Stripper Karen Carlin ‘Little Lynn’, who testified before Hubert on April 15, 1964 (WC Vol XIII), said Crafard did not sleep at the club. She said she worked at the Carousel for 2 months before the assassination, to the end of December 1963, and she worked 7 days a week.

Mr. Hubert. Do you remember a man that stayed there and slept on the premises?

Mrs. Carlin. No; I don’t know of anyone that did. Andrew was the only one I knew that ever spent the night there, and that was just because he would say so the next evening. He said, “I am tired.” He said, “I had to stay here all night.”

Mr. Hubert. I might add that this man Larry’s full name was Curtis Laverne Crafard.

Mrs. Carlin. Yes. That was a little young boy, the one that worked the lights.

Mr. Hubert. He stayed on the premises?

Mrs. Carlin. Yes. But he stayed next door most of the time. I know he was sleeping there for a while, but Jack put a stop to it.

Mr. Hubert. You mean Jack wouldn’t let him sleep in the club?

Mrs. Carlin. Jack didn’t like him sleeping there, because there was too many things gone.

Mr. Hubert. Then he made him go next door?

Mrs. Carlin. He went next door. I don’t know who was next door or what it was next door, but he went next door.

Mr. Hubert. But what you heard was that this man had, Crafard, Curtis Laverne Crafard had been staying on the premises, but that Jack had put a stop to it and made him move to some place next door, but you don’t know which next door?

Mrs. Carlin. Yes.

Mr. Hubert. Who did you hear this from?

Mrs. Carlin. It was from Larry. He was taking care of the dogs or something.

Mr. Hubert. He told you he had to move out?

Mrs. Carlin. Yes.

Mr. Hubert. Out of the premises altogether?

Mrs. Carlin. No. He just said, “I am going to have to move. I can’t stay here. I don’t know where I am going to get the money, but I am going to have to move.”

Mr. Hubert. That must have happened just before the assassination of the President?

Mrs. Carlin. Yes. After that I didn’t see Larry no more.

Mr. Hubert. So to your knowledge he never did actually move, but just said he was going to have to move, and he informed you that Jack had told him he would have to move?

Mrs. Carlin. Yes.

Mr. Jackson. When you say move, you mean move out at night and not sleep there?

Mrs. Carlin. Yes.

Mr. Hubert. That is what I meant, to move next door, I think is what you meant?

Mrs. Carlin. Yes.

(The Jackson who interjected was her attorney.)

In her FBI statement of November 26, 1963, taken at the Carousel Club to agents Peggs and Zimmerman (Tuesday) CE5318, Carlin said that she’d last seen Ruby at the club the night before the assassination.

By all that, Carlin didn’t see Crafard at the club after he’d moved out of it, and that was before the assassination.

“Next door”, may have been the Colony Club. Crafard’s not being at the Carousel Club would be due to his working at the Vegas Club near Lucas B&B, which is where he was seen by Mary Lawrence, as confirmed in Crafard’s November 28, 1963, FBI statement. But Crafard, when he testified, left out any mention of working at the Vegas Club before the assassination.

Mr. CRAFARD. I have tried to think of what I was doing before, the night before [the assassination], a couple nights before, or something like that. I don’t recall anything out of the ordinary.
Mr. HUBERT. If it was the ordinary, then I suppose it would have been that the club closed up at its usual hour.
Mr. CRAFARD. As far as I recall, yes.
Mr. HUBERT. And you were still sleeping there?
Mr. CRAFARD. Yes; I was still sleeping there.
Mr. HUBERT. So you would have gone to sleep?
Mr. CRAFARD. Yes, sir.
Mr. HUBERT. And then I suppose Ruby would have wakened you?
Mr. CRAFARD. Andy woke me that morning. He come in early. Andy always put the beer in and he come in early to do that so that he could have the rest of the day off.

Was Armstrong trying to give Crafard an alibi? But in doing so, Armstrong got tied in knots and created a highly improbable travel time scenario for himself, which Crafard himself seemed confused about.

Armstrong testified at Ruby’s trial in March 1964 and told the Warren Commission he spoke with Crafard, who also testified for Ruby, in a courtroom corridor. That brief interaction likely did not give them time to align their stories.

Crafard and the TV

Crafard claimed to be watching TV after the assassination. Hubert tested him.

Mr. HUBERT. It was a Dallas station or a Fort Worth station?
Mr. CRAFARD. It is one there they call the Dallas-Fort Worth, WWTV12, I think it is.
Mr. HUBERT. KLRD, is that what it is?
Mr. CRAFARD. I don’t know what station it is. I am not sure whether it was WWTV.
Mr. HUBERT. How long did you stay there watching?
Mr. CRAFARD. We turned it up real loud where we could hear it and then listened to his radio, too, where we would hear both of them.
Mr. HUBERT. Go ahead, what happened next?
Mr. CRAFARD. I don’t recall exactly what was said except the fact that the President had been shot.
Mr. HUBERT. How long did you continue to watch it?
Mr. CRAFARD. We watched it right up until–most of the day, I think, we had the television on there, then, most of the day.

A remarkably vacant memory for some very eventful testimony by, for example, Bill and Gayle Newman, taking up much of the coverage.

In CE2430, a very late interview with the FBI on August 27, 1964. Crafard stressed that he was with Ruby when they both heard of the death of Tippit – by name – and the death of Kennedy.

However, Kennedy’s death was announced at approximately 1:35 pm by TV and around 1:25 pm by radio. There was no announcement of the death of Tippit by name before Oswald’s arrest at the Texas Theatre at 1:50 pm. Indeed, by 2:00 pm, the DPD radio tapes show that Tippit’s wife had not been told.

Whereas Armstrong in his FBI interview of January 23, 1964 CE5310-G says, correctly, that the name of Tippit didn’t appear until after the official announcement of the death of Kennedy. He said Ruby arrived 15-20 minutes after the official announcement of that, and then made one or two phone calls in about 5 minutes. It was after this, when KLIF mentioned the names of Tippit and Armstrong, he said that Ruby told him he knew Tippit. There is no mention of Crafard.

LEAD VI

Crafard and the police badge

There is also this detail in Karen Carlin’s FBI statement,

“She said that LARRY attempted to impress her by showing her a badge and telling her that he was a policeman.”

In my “Death of Tippit article, I suggested that Tippit was waiting at Gloco, the end of the Houston Street Viaduct, to pick up whoever was on the Beckley bus, acting out the narrative that it was the way Oswald was making a getaway from Downtown. When Oswald most likely had actually been driven to the Theater in a Rambler.

It is also important to remember why Karen Carlin was asked to testify. She was a key witness for the official line that it was her telephoning Ruby for her wages that caused him to be at Western Union opposite City Hall at 11:15 am on November 24 (Sunday), where he then happened on the transfer of Oswald.

However, she actually said two things contrary to that line. She testified that Ruby said on Saturday, November 23, 1963, “I don’t know when I will open. I don’t know if I will ever open back up. And he was very hateful.”

That seems to suggest premeditation by Ruby, perhaps having an inkling of the consequences of what he was going to do next, to Oswald.

Also, when she testified to the Commission, she said that Ruby had said to her on the telephone on the morning of November 24 (she in Fort Worth, he at his apartment on South Ewing), “Well I have to go downtown anyway”.

Ruby himself, when he testified after his trial, said. “So my purpose was to go to the Western Union–my double purpose but the thought of doing, committing the act wasn’t until I left my apartment.”

Having a ‘double purpose’ in going to Western Union also indicates premeditation.

LEAD VII

The incredible journey. How did Crafard get to Michigan?

Crafard said he took Routes 66 and 77, passing by Oklahoma City, St Louis, MO, then the outskirts of Chicago, IL. From there to Lansing, MI, Mount Pleasant and then Clare, MI, where he arrived at 9:00 pm on Monday, November 25, and stayed with his cousin, Clifford Roberts. A total distance of 1,282 miles.

Crafard said that the 59-hour trek began when he decided to leave Downtown Dallas at 11-11:15 am on November 23 (Saturday). He had only $7 on him, he was carrying two bags, and he walked 15-18 blocks until he hitched a ride.

Remarkably, he said the first ride was from a person he knew from the State Fair, but did not know his name.

Mr. HUBERT. Did you walk there?
Mr. CRAFARD. I walked out about 15 or 18 blocks, I think it is, and a guy I had met out at the fair picked me up. He saw me.
Mr. HUBERT. Did you arrange for him to pick you up?
Mr. CRAFARD. No; he was going by, he saw me, and he recognized me.
Mr. HUBERT. What is his name?
Mr. CRAFARD. How’s that?
Mr. HUBERT. What is his name?

Mr. CRAFARD. I don’t remember what his name is. He worked out there for a while. I never did know his name. I don’t think he knew my name. He recognized me as having worked out there.
Mr. HUBERT. You were on the highway hitchhiking at that time?
Mr. CRAFARD. That’s right.
Mr. HUBERT. Did you have a bag?
Mr. CRAFARD. Yes.
Mr. HUBERT. How large was it?
Mr. CRAFARD. It was a regular satchel and I had another bag

Hubert elsewhere displayed incredulity about the tale of rides and the fact that Crafard said he had $7 on leaving Dallas. But he still had $3 left when he left Clare on Tuesday to go to Harrison. –This was to visit his aunt Esther Eaton and cousin Gale Cascadden – where he stayed the Tuesday night and then hitched to Kalkaska (another 85 miles) to stay with his sister Cora Ingersoll, Wednesday night. It was there that he was traced by the FBI, and he was interviewed on the 29^th ( the day after Thanksgiving), in the morning at nearby Bellaire, MI.

Assuming that the first ride from Dallas was around noon, with Crafard saying he arrived in St Louis around 6:00 am on Sunday, then that was 705 miles in 18 hours, averaging 39 mph.

Then he said he did St Louis to the Chicago outskirts. I measure that distance as Country Club Hills, where the road bears to Michigan, at about 284 miles. He told Hubert he arrived there at 2 pm on Sunday. That’s 8 hours, averaging 35.5 mph and the whole Dallas to Chicago journey averages 37.6 mph. After that, his description of getting from the Chicago outskirts to Clare breaks down as: to Lansing, 212 miles, then Mount Pleasant, 69 miles and then Clare, 16 miles, arriving 9 pm, Monday.

That’s 31 hours, averaging 9 mph. Had he averaged 35 mph, he could have done it in 8 hours. But Crafard did not describe any long stops, sleepovers, or waits for lifts. He described near continuous travel. Hubert picked up that the final 16 miles from Mt Pleasant to Clare, according to Crafard, took 12 hours.

Mr. HUBERT. Then there is some mistake in timing of about 12 hours.

Mr. CRAFARD. That is what I was saying. I’ve lost some time there

Mr. HUBERT. It may be that you are making a mistake, Larry. Let’s see if we can’t refresh your memory from the time you got that last long hitch that took you to Mount Pleasant because you remember getting to Mount Pleasant at night, about 8:30.

Mr. CRAFARD. Yes.

Mr. HUBERT. And that, you say, is a run of what–about 5 hours, 6 hours?

Mr. CRAFARD. I don’t believe it would take that long.

Mr. HUBERT. So if you got there at about 8:30 at night, then either you didn’t get any hitches for a long period of time, or else something else happened.

Mr. CRAFARD. I’m just trying to—-

Mr. HUBERT. Because you told us, and if it is not so, why we want you to correct it. Everybody can make mistakes.

Mr. HUBERT. You said that you picked up this ride at a point 60 miles outside of Lansing and into Mount Pleasant prior to dawn on the 25th. Now, maybe that is wrong. Maybe you got that ride late in the day. Let’s put it this way. Was that a continuous ride straight on?

Mr. CRAFARD. It carried me straight on through to Mount Pleasant.

Mr. HUBERT. Did you stop at all?

Mr. CRAFARD. Not that I can recall. It isn’t that long a run across there.

Mr. HUBERT. Did you stop for lunch or anything of that sort?

Putting all into context. Crafard got from Dallas to the Chicago end of Lake Michigan in 1 day 2 hours, 77% of the distance. But he took 1 day, 7 hours to travel 23% of the trip, within Michigan itself. Hubert spotted that the most egregious time discrepancies occur from when he said he missed Chicago by bypassing it.

Mr. HUBERT. He didn’t take you through Chicago?

Mr. CRAFARD. No; I bypassed most of Chicago.

Mr. HUBERT. How did you do that?

Mr. CRAFARD. On a couple alternate routes.

Mr. HUBERT. With hitchhikers?

Mr. CRAFARD. Different rides.

Mr. HUBERT. Different rides?

Mr. CRAFARD. Yes.

Mr. HUBERT. How many?

Mr. CRAFARD. I got three or four different rides in Chicago.

Mr. HUBERT. With these several rides around Chicago, bypassing it, how long did it take you to get around Chicago?

Mr. CRAFARD. Probably 2 or 3 hours.

Mr. HUBERT. And these were all short ones?

Mr. CRAFARD. Yes.

We can almost see Hubert raising his eyebrows.

When did Crafard hear Ruby had shot Oswald?

Ruby shot Oswald on live TV at 11:21 am on Sunday. By Crafard’s described journey, Oswald was shot when Crafard would have been heading to Chicago; then he had 3-4 rides bypassing it, then he took the one to Lansing. That is 5-6 rides, with the opportunity to hear the radio news of the big story, or any of the drivers commenting on it if they’d already heard it.

Earl Ruby testified (Vol XIV) that he heard at noon that day, whilst on a phone call, that Oswald had been shot. He turned on the radio and, within 10 or so minutes, learned that his brother Jack had done it.

Therefore, anyone first hearing of the shooting after 12:30 pm on Sunday, November 24, 1963, would know that Oswald was shot, and Ruby had done it. To know the former but not the latter could only have occurred early, between 11:21 am and 12:30 pm.

So, when did Crafard say he heard that Oswald was shot, and Jack Ruby was the person who did it?

Mr. HUBERT. When did you first hear that Oswald had been shot?
Mr. CRAFARD. I had heard that Oswald had been shot Sunday evening.
Mr. HUBERT. Where?
Mr. CRAFARD. It must have been while I was getting through Chicago.
Mr. HUBERT. Where did you hear that?
Mr. CRAFARD. Over the radio.
Mr. HUBERT. What radio?
Mr. CRAFARD. The car radio.
Mr. HUBERT. Did you know that Ruby had done it?
Mr. CRAFARD. No; I didn’t find out who had done it until the following Monday, the following morning, Monday.
Mr. HUBERT. Where did you find that out?
Mr. CRAFARD. I heard that over the radio.
Mr. HUBERT. As a matter of fact, Larry, I suppose all of those cars you were in had radios, didn’t they?
Mr. CRAFARD. A lot of people don’t listen to the radio when they are riding like that. That was the first I’d heard of it—was Sunday evening, the first I heard Oswald had been shot.
Mr. HUBERT. Sunday afternoon, wasn’t it?
Mr. CRAFARD. How is that?
Mr. HUBERT. You said it was while you were working your way through Chicago.
Mr. CRAFARD. Yes.
Mr. HUBERT. Which took you two or three different cars; about 2 hours or so?
Mr. CRAFARD. Yes.
Mr. HUBERT. It was in one of those that you heard it?
Mr. CRAFARD. Yes.
Mr. HUBERT. There was no announcement that Ruby had done it?
Mr. CRAFARD. I don’t believe so, because I didn’t know Ruby had done it until Monday morning.
Mr. HUBERT. How did you find that out?
Mr. CRAFARD. I heard that over the news.
Mr. HUBERT. In a car?
Mr. CRAFARD. Yes.
Mr. HUBERT. During the night when you were driving from Chicago to Lansing, during the period from 5 in the afternoon to about midnight, didn’t you hear any radio announcements about any of this matter?
Mr. CRAFARD. No.
Mr. HUBERT. Did that car have a radio in it?
Mr. CRAFARD. I believe so.

Crafard tried to extract himself from that muddle by changing the time he said he was ‘passing’ Chicago to Sunday evening. But in doing so, he created another problem for himself by claiming he didn’t know it was Ruby who shot Oswald until Monday. Clearly, if Crafard had only found out Sunday evening that Oswald was shot, then that news would have also informed him that Ruby did it. After all, Ruby was very well known within the DPD.

I suggest the reason for the inconsistencies and likely deceptions — which Hubert was having problems with — is because Crafard didn’t bypass Chicago in a hitched ride. He was taken to Chicago itself, and he stayed overnight on Sunday. This was more likely a camouflaged getaway. I would also suggest that Crafard was going to meet someone there clandestinely.

Because his story did not add up, Crafard was questioned again in the morning of April 10, and put his time of his arrival in Chicago 20 hours later to late morning Monday 24^th.

Mr. GRIFFIN. On that basis, what time would you say that you arrived in Chicago?
Mr. CRAFARD. It probably would put me in Chicago sometime Monday, about 10:30 or 11 o’clock in the morning.
Mr. GRIFFIN. When you arrived in Chicago, then you knew that Ruby had killed Oswald?
Mr. CRAFARD. Yes.
Mr. GRIFFIN. And what time did you arrive in Lansing, Mich.?
Mr. CRAFARD. I believe it was about 6:30 or 7 o’clock Monday evening.
Mr. GRIFFIN. When you arrived in Chicago did you make any effort to call any of the Rubensteins?
Mr. CRAFARD. No.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Did that occur to you?
Mr. CRAFARD. No; that arrival in Lansing would have been about 3:30 or 4 o’clock. It would have been a couple hours earlier.

Despite the ‘correction’ of 20 hours, his times are still all over the place, and he created no reason to know Oswald was shot without knowing Ruby did it. Griffin was rightly suspicious that Crafard was meeting people in Chicago.

The Man he recognised – with no description

In that session, when Crafard was asked more about the man, he said he recognised him from the State Fair, and who drove him out of Dallas. But he couldn’t say whether he had hair, or was bald, or wore glasses or not.

Mr. GRIFFIN. How old would you say this man was?
Mr. CRAFARD. I would say he was probably in at least his middle forties, more likely in his late forties.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Was he bald or did he have hair?
Mr. CRAFARD. I don’t really remember.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Was he a graying man or what color was his hair?
Mr. CRAFARD. I don’t remember that either.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Do you remember if he wore glasses?
Mr. CRAFARD. No.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Do you remember what kind of a car he owned?
Mr. CRAFARD. I believe he had a Chevy. I am not sure.
Mr. GRIFFIN. How would you describe his physical build, anything remarkable about it?
Mr. CRAFARD. No; not that I could think of.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Was he a thin man?
Mr. CRAFARD. He was about medium build for a man his age and height.

A question arises as to why Crafard held to the only $7 story, a point of detail that seems, again, improbable. I can only conclude that having little money was essential to the central story he’d hitchhiked, whilst also ruling out the possibility he’d used public transportation. Travel by public transport could invoke a search for witnesses, and would firm up the times.

The lone fish journey does serve a purpose: it distances him from a team effort. From all that I outlined above, it is more likely that Crafard didn’t hitchhike at all. In my view, he was driven to Chicago and then told to lie low with relatives in remote Michigan, with the hitchhiking story as a cover.

Having been asked how Crafard knew the route to Michigan from Dallas without a map, he said he’d done it previously, but then gave an irrelevant answer about a prior hitch to Sacramento and Bakersfield with his wife and two babies. That led to more questions about why Crafard’s wife wanted to take her 2 babies (one his, one by a prior marriage) hitchhiking.

It’s impossible to stitch most things Crafard said to make something sensible out of it. But this was the man who was deceptive about getting to Dallas, the dates when that was, and clung to a dubious story about what he was doing on November 22.

But the Warren Commission Final Report stated:-

“An investigation of Crafard’s unusual behavior confirms that his departure from Dallas was innocent.”

And,

“Although Crafard’s peremptory decision to leave Dallas might be unusual for most persons, such behavior does not appear to have been uncommon for him. His family residence had shifted frequently among California, Michigan, and Oregon. During his 22 years, he had earned his livelihood picking crops, working in carnivals, and taking other odd jobs throughout the country.”

That conclusion avoids the fact that Hubert and Griffin exposed Crafard’s account as being full of bizarre improbabilities that seem like cover stories. Working for the FAA in Nevada is excluded from that summary, as was his regular presence in Dallas.

Whoever drafted those assertions wasn’t reflecting the underlying evidence.

Click here to read part 1.

July 25, 2025

Larry Crafard – The Leads the Warren Commission Lost – Part 1

Did Ruby employee Larry Crafard impersonate Lee Harvey Oswald in the lead up to the JFK murder? And did the Warren Commission seriously consider this?

Larry Crafard – The Leads the Warren Commission Lost – Part 1

By John Washburn

This article focuses on Curtis LaVerne “Larry” Crafard. Crafard had worked for Jack Ruby from mid-October 1963 at the Carousel and Vegas clubs. Ruby purportedly recruited him from a fairground.

Crafard said he left Dallas late on the morning of November 23, 1963. This would be Saturday, the day after the assassination. He said he did not take his wages owed. He stated that he hitchhiked 1,175 miles to Clare, Michigan. Crafard’s departure was before Ruby had shot Oswald on Sunday, and hence before Ruby was in the spotlight.

In my prior articles for K&K I postulated that Crafard had a role in the assassination of Kennedy, not as an assassin but impersonating Oswald as part of a frame. An element of that being to act out a fake getaway for Oswald, by getting a downtown bus to Oak Cliff. With Oswald himself having been duped into going to the Texas Theater in a station wagon where he was to be eliminated.

With that, I assumed things went wrong when Tippit, who was supposed to intercept and protect Crafard’s movement once in Oak Cliff, got cold feet and had to be eliminated. Crafard then had to be taken off the bus and then act out an impromptu part at the Tippit murder scene to make it appear Oswald had done it. It was the mishaps around that which meant Oswald was not killed at the Theater.

To examine whether that supposition is supportable, Crafard’s movements need to be addressed over an extended period of time, with particular attention to November 22, 1963 itself.

LEAD I

Crafard was mistaken for Oswald

A Commission memorandum from Counsels Leon Hubert and Burt Griffin on March 6, 1964, preparing for interviews in Dallas in April 1964, speculated that Curtis Laverne “Larry” Crafard, an employee of Jack Ruby, was used as a look-alike imposter to set up Oswald as a ‘patsy’. What evidence had accumulated for them to think that impersonation might be an issue?

There had been several reported sightings of Oswald at the Carousel Club in October/November 1963. Hence, indicating a pre-assassination link to the club’s owner, Jack Ruby.

But any mystery about such sightings should have gone away after a memorandum from Naval Intelligence, not released until September 2017, which dealt with what Robert “Bob” Kermit Patterson, 23, ex US Navy, told the Resident Agent “RA” of Naval Intelligence, Dallas at 13:30 hours on November 26, 1963 (Tuesday).

Patterson co-owned Contract Electronics, 2533 Elm St, Dallas, and was taken to the FBI that same day, CE2830. Patterson said that he had seen Ruby with Oswald in his shop about two weeks prior to the 26th.

He said the person had a tattoo on his right forearm, was wearing tight-fitting blue jeans and no jacket, 5’8”-9” tall, 150 lb. He said his colleagues Donald Stuart and Charles Arndt were of the same view. He said Ruby had discussed matters concerning his club and its sound systems. Patterson was shown photographs of six different men and picked out Oswald. Patterson described a 4 by 5-inch notebook and said the names of Stuart and Patterson were added into it by the person on the instruction of Jack Ruby so that Ruby could issue them with passes for the club.

From getting that lead at lunchtime on November 26, the FBI made several visits to the Carousel Club. It took just six hours for the FBI to establish that Crafard was being mistaken for Oswald, and to issue a request that Crafard be traced, interviewed and photographed.

That request appears in an FBI teletype message of November 27, 1963. (The term “DASH VICTIM” in the teletype is code for the killing of Oswald.). A short account of that also appears in “the Taylor Memorandum” of November 27, 1963 (Wednesday), where Rear Admiral Taylor, Director of the Office of Naval Intelligence, wrote to Admiral McDonald about the Patterson lead.

A memorandum from CIA officer (later Director) Richard Helms of February 24, 1964 to Hubert and Griffin also said that “Crafard fled Dallas area Saturday. November 23, located in rural parts of Michigan November 28”. (Unpublished WC, Andrew Armstrong file, page 331). ‘Fled’ is not a word to describe someone leaving in normal circumstances.

The FBI traced Crafard to Michigan via his cousin, Gale Cascadden. She lived in rural northern Michigan (her mother was the sister of Crafard’s father). She said to the FBI on December 16, 1963, that he seemed uninterested in the fact that Ruby had shot Oswald. She also said she and her parents did not understand why Crafard had left Dallas. When she asked him why he’d left, she said he changed the subject. (CE 2429).

However, none of that information from Naval Intelligence, nor the teletype, appears in Commission files.

Absent that information from Naval Intelligence, the only route from published Warren Commission records to deduce that Kermit Patterson was the prime lead is to note the similarity between Patterson’s account of November 26, 1963 (Tuesday) in CE2830, and Crafard’s FBI statement of November 28, 1963 (Thursday), taken at Bellaire, Michigan CE5226. The photographs taken of Crafard appear as CE 451, 453 to 456.

In that statement, Crafard gave examples of what he did for Ruby, he said:

…on a few occasions during the daytime, he would accompany RUBY around the Dallas area.” “On another occasion, approximately three weeks ago, he went with RUBY when RUBY checked about some sound equipment for the club. This was at an electronics company in about the 2200 or 2300 block of Elm Street. They were there ten or fifteen minutes and did not purchase anything. this occasion he, CRAFARD, was wearing a suit and he feels they were there at about 3:00 PM or 4:00 PM.”

Patterson in Dallas on November 26, 1963 (Tuesday) had therefore described a situation which aligned with Crafard’s FBI statement of November 28, 1963 (Thursday) in Michigan, and vice versa.

Donald Stuart was interviewed by the FBI on November 27, 1963, and confirmed a similar situation. But he was less certain that the person was Oswald. An FBI record of some of Ruby’s personal effects has passes duly recorded for Donald Stuart, pass number #170, and Robert Patterson #171. Thus, by Tuesday, November 26, 1963, the investigating authorities had information to attach to the mystery of some of the Oswald sightings – including at the Carousel Club.

Mistaken identity, as opposed to false identity, is not uncommon. But what is inexplicable, unless there was something to cover up about Crafard looking like Oswald, is that all other people who came forward afterwards with similar leads were ruthlessly discredited by the Dallas Police and the FBI.

The sightings reported by Litchfield, Kittrell, Crowe, Lawrence, Friedman and Jarnagin

Griffin and Hubert noted in their Memorandum to Rankin of March 6, 1964, that Wilburn Litchfield told the FBI on December 2, 1964 – CE3149 – that in early November 1963, at Ruby’s Carousel Club, he’d seen a man who said he was from California in a V-necked sweater, ‘sloppily dressed’, 5’7”-5’9” who looked like Oswald.

Litchfield had been playing poker on November 24, 1963 (Sunday). He said that he and his associates saw Ruby shoot Oswald on TV, which triggered his memory of seeing Oswald at the Carousel.

Litchfield didn’t say it was Oswald; indeed, he said the person had acne scar pockmarks on the right side of his chin. That doesn’t fit Oswald. But that does match Crafard, who had also been brought up in California. Hubert and Griffin even recognised, in their joint memo of March 6, 1964, that although the DPD tried to discredit Litchfield, the facts stacked up.

“It is also known that an employee of Ruby, Larry Crafard, closely resembles Oswald. Litchfield’s story checks out, moreover in other significant details including the description of a man resembling Alex Gruber of Los Angeles, California who is known to have visited Ruby at the Carousel during the period to which Litchfield refers.”

Litchfield did have a criminal record. Associates of his (CE2889) confirmed what Litchfield said, but the FBI report said that one associate had said Litchfield was a “con man”. But so what, given that his story checked out?

The ‘sloppy’ dress also matches Laura Kittrell’s evidence (see part 3 of my K&K Death of Tippit article). She said that Oswald himself on October 4, 1962 “looked very military as neat as a pin” and was “trim, energetic, compact and well-knitted” but the second person she saw on October 22, 1963 presenting himself as Oswald behaved badly and said he was “a trifling, shirtless, good-for-nothing lout who sprawled oafishly over his chair”. Thus, in her case, that was an active impersonation of someone purporting to be Oswald.

William Crowe was a ventriloquist who did a memory man act with the stage name of ‘Bill DeMar’.

He said he told a newsman he had been at the Carousel Club and saw a man who looked like Oswald, who worked for Ruby at the club. His story broke that day – November 22, 1963 – with the Associated Press agency. He was then interviewed by the FBI in Dallas that same day (page 5 of the Commission file for Crowe).

He said he had performed at the Carousel Club in early November 1963 and asked 20 members of the audience to call the name of an object, so he could then relay them back by memory.

He said that after seeing Ruby shoot Oswald on TV, he went to the Carousel Club within the hour, as he was concerned about his equipment stored there. He said he saw a newsman and a television man also trying to gain access, given the shooting of Oswald.

Thereafter he said he’d been misquoted, and only said the person looked like Oswald. He also said he’d been on stage with lights shining in his eyes. In testifying to the Commission on 2 June 1964, before Hubert, Crowe was shown photographs of Oswald and Crafard. He stated it was a possibility that the man he saw was Crafard.

Crowe was being discredited as late as June 1964 for being an attention seeker wanting to promote his memory act – CE2995.

Even CBS reporter Dan Rather (later to be CBS evening news anchor) got dragged into it. KRLD Dallas on November 24, (Sunday) reported that Rather had seen Oswald at the Carousel Club. The Crowe file, held by the Warren Commission, on page 42 has a note of June 11, 1964, setting out how Dan Rather was interviewed by agents after the KRLD report.

Dan Rather stated that he went to the Carousel Club after Ruby had shot Oswald. He came across Crowe trying to get into the Carousel Club to get his personal effects. Crowe told Rather that he’d seen Oswald there.

Page 50 has the FBI testimony of Pauline Churchill, manager of the Shady Oaks Motel, Dallas, dated June 12, 1964. She confirmed Crowe was staying at the motel and rushed into her office within 15 minutes of Ruby shooting Oswald to tell her it had happened. Dan Rather and Churchill thus vouched for the spontaneity of Crowe. But Rather said (CE3101) that he thought Crowe was making it up.

Waitress Mary Lawrence told the FBI on December 6, 1963, that she had served Oswald and Ruby together at the Lucas B&B café, Downtown Dallas, at around 2:15 am on the morning of the assassination. A few days after, she received an anonymous telephone call “telling her to get out of town or she would die”.

When shown a photograph of Oswald, she said the person she saw had a small scar near his mouth on the right or left-hand side. The FBI Bellaire report states that Crafard had a small scar on his lip. So, Litchfield and Mary Lawrence, rather than trying to make up a story to fit with it being Oswald, did the opposite by describing scarring that Oswald didn’t have.

An internal DPD memorandum and a more comprehensive record described her as a compulsive liar. The police memo was used to discredit her on the basis that Jack Ruby was banned from there and hence could not have been seen there.

But Gloria Fillmon told the FBI on December 17, 1963, CE2379, that she had worked for three weeks in November 1963 as a champagne girl at the Carousel Club. She left because Ruby wanted her to be a stripper. She said a day or two before the assassination, at 3 am, Jack Ruby, Crafard, and she had eaten at Lucas B&B, Ruby and she picking up Crafard on the way. Hence, Ruby likely was not banned. Making that even more probable is that Lucas B&B was at the junction of Oak Lawn and Bowser. It was next to the Vegas Club, Ruby’s other outfit. The neon tower sign is still there.

Crafard’s November 28, 1963, FBI interview (CE5226) states that he worked on the evening of November 21, at the Vegas Club, and went with Jack Ruby to Lucas B&B at 2:30 am on November 22, just as Mary Lawrence said.

If that weren’t enough corroboration. He also said he went there with Ruby and a woman called “Gloria” at around 3:45 am on November 21, just as Gloria Fillmon said. Hence, DPD and the FBI were calling people liars for saying things for which the DPD and the FBI had had parallel evidence to corroborate and had known the cause of since Patterson’s lead of November 26, 1963.

Bob Barrett and James Bookhout of the FBI, on December 26, 1963, followed a lead (CE2991) from the incarcerated Jack Ruby, who said Edward Rocco of Cabaret Magazine, who had been a visitor to the club, could be mistaken for Oswald. Ruby obviously knew Oswald’s appearance, given that he’d shot him from close range in the abdomen.

Rocco was a photographer who had stayed a week in Dallas to take photographs of the Club. Rocco led the FBI to Terry Friedman. Friedman was interviewed by the FBI on July 1, 1964 (CE2991) when he said Rocco had shown him a photograph of the Carousel Club, and Friedman said he thought a person in the front row was Oswald. Out of all of that blossomed numerous photographs of the Carousel Club, included in CE5303.

The Commission did not publish the photographs in another exhibit ‘Exhibit 5212’, but the Mary Ferrell Foundation now has. The reason they were not published was given as their “questionable taste and negligible relevance”. Questionable taste by ’60s standards is correct. Negligible relevance is not. What Exhibit 5212 contains are several photographs showing Larry Crafard, wearing a suit, seated in the front row at the Carousel Club.

Therefore, Ruby’s false lead regarding Rocco being the Oswald look-alike still led to an outcome, the photographer was traced, and the photographs were obtained. Ultimately, Ruby revealed for posterity the photographic proof that it was Crafard who could be mistaken for Oswald. Was Ruby dropping clues deliberately?

LEAD II

An attorney saw ‘Oswald’/Crafard at the Carousel Club on 4 October 1963 discussing a plot to kill Governor Connally.

Carroll Jarnagin was a criminal law attorney; CE2821 is his FBI report of December 6, 1963, the day after he had written a letter to Hoover. He asked to be kept anonymous. That report merely calls him “Witness”.

The report said that on October 4, 1963 (Friday), he’d been using the phone booth at the back of the Carousel Club and overheard Jack Ruby talking to Oswald. The matter being discussed was a contract to kill the Governor of Texas, John Connally. He said he then ended his call to eavesdrop on what else was being said.

Jarnagin had contacted Hoover directly in his letter of December 5, 1963, as he wanted to avoid local press publicity. A good reason for that was that he was an attorney in the criminal justice system and was dating a stripper, Shirley Maudin.

The DPD put him through a polygraph test on March 2, 1964, which he failed, having been taken by Officer Paul Bentley (who had also been at Oswald’s arrest). Bentley was the chief polygraph examiner for the DPD and concluded Jarnagin had made the story up and had been intoxicated at the club. The DPD and Hoover concluded he was an attention seeker.

But that just begs more questions. Why would someone seeking attention end his letter to Hoover asking not to be identified? Why not simply test whether he was yet another person who had actually seen Crafard? Why would someone seeking to raise attention regarding the assassination of the President talk about a plot to kill Connally instead?

People who are intoxicated tend not to remember very much from that time. A tribute piece in a newspaper on his death does say he dedicated his last 14 years to working with Alcoholics Anonymous. Whether he was an alcoholic in 1963 is not known. But alcoholics tend to have a high tolerance of alcohol and don’t necessarily display symptoms of drunkenness.

The FBI file, which has information to discredit him, states that Shirley Maudin, on December 9, 1963, said that he wasn’t drunk. Jarnagin appears to have been treated in the same way that Kittrell, Crowe, Litchfield and Lawrence were.

DA Henry Wade knew Jarnagin personally, and in his Warren Commission testimony of June 8, 1964 (WC Vol V), Wade went out of his way not to discredit him too much and avoided using his name.

Mr. Wade. I didn’t use him as a witness [in the Ruby trial] and after giving him the polygraph I was satisfied that he was imagining it. I think he was sincere, I don’t think he was trying–I don’t think he was trying to be a hero or anything. I think he really thought about it so much I think he thought that it happened, but the polygraph indicated otherwise.

Had Jarnagin attended Ruby’s trial, his evidence would have been discussed in open court. He may also have encountered Crafard himself, who gave evidence in person at that trial as a character witness for Ruby.

In his letter of December 5, 1963, Jarnagin also claimed the man he thought was Oswald was called H. L. Lee. But Oswald was alleged to use the alias of Alek Hiddell, and the alleged room booking at 1026 N Beckley was O. H. Lee.

As my article on that subject for K&K, “Oswald, Beckley and the Tippit wallet”, sets out, there was a Herbert Leon Lee staying at 1026 N Beckley. The FBI, tracking of telephone calls from the telephone box opposite 1026 N Beckley, was in an FBI report (page 23) dated December 9, 1963.

Therefore, rather than embellishing facts gained as an ordinary member of the public after the event, Jarnagin was coming up with accurate information that was not widely known.

Two questions emerge from that. How could Jarnagin, in raising ‘H.L. Lee’ on December 5, 1963, have picked at random the name of someone who was at the very place Oswald had stayed at – 1026 N Beckley? How could Jack Ruby have known on October 4, 1963, that an HL Lee would be associated with 1026 N Beckley? A place that Oswald only moved into on October 14, but whose housekeeper was the sister of Ruby associate Bertha Cheek.

This, from a Dallas Police report, set out more of what Jarnagin said.

“The man who asked to see Jack Ruby is dressed in a tan jacket, has brown hair, needs a haircut, is wearing a sport shirt, and is about 5’ 9” or 10” in height, his general, appearance is somewhat unkempt, and he does not appear to be dressed for night clubbing.”

A tan jacket has come up before. This, from my “Death of Tippit” series of articles, is from Dallas Morning News reporter Jim Ewell. He had arrived at the Tippit murder scene and wrote.

“There was another police car there as they were examining a jacket next to the curb which had apparently been located by one of the policemen after Oswald had thrown it down as he ran toward Jefferson. I had a jacket just like it. I remember it as being a light tan windbreaker. I was with Westbrook as we all went over to examine the jacket because it was the only tangible thing we had at the moment that belonged to the killer. In fact, I held the jacket in my hands. I remember that they were talking about a water mark on it that was obviously made by a dry cleaning shop”.

A post from Education Forum member Gil Jesus shows that the discarded jacket described and presented in monochrome photographs as CE162 as gray, was in fact tan. My Death of Tippit article for K&K also sets out how the evidence submission document, had a strip strategically placed so as to obscure that it was Captain Westbrook who found it. That document also described that tan jacket as gray. Thus, Jarnagin’s detail of a “tan jacket,” matches a jacket found that Captain Westbrook incorrectly reported as gray.

The jacket is by Maurice Holman of California, and Litchfield had said the person he saw was raised in California. The jacket Crafard was wearing when photographed in Michigan also appears similar. Jarnagin also said that the person said he had been hitchhiking. Oswald’s history has no evidence of hitchhiking. Crafard’s story did.

The possibility that Crafard was talking to Ruby about killing Governor Connally appears to have been a step in a very inconvenient direction.

Lead III

Crafard ‘s tall tales about when he arrived in Dallas, and his work after he left the military.

Crafard portrayed himself as an easy come, easy go, itinerant hitchhiker acting as a barker for “How Hollywood Makes Movies” (HHMM), a side show at the October Texas State Fair, Dallas, which ran until it flopped. He then went to work for Jack Ruby at the Carousel Club before leaving on November 23, 1963.

Crafard, in his November 28, FBI interview, said Bob Craven ran HHMM and employed him, and HHMM accounted for him being in Dallas on October 15, living in a tent, and that he stayed with its replacement, a rock and roll show, until approximately October 30, still living in a tent. He said he then moved to work with Ruby on November 1, having first met Ruby on or about October 21. However, Crafard’s story sits alongside conflicting accounts of others regarding the dates involved.

Robert Craven, a co-producer of HHMM, confirmed to the FBI on November 27, 1963 (Wednesday) that the show ran from October 5 to October 15, with the troupe arriving on September 29, presumably for stage set up and rehearsals. CE1534.

The Craven interview makes no mention of Crafard, but the interview was before Crafard was found from the Patterson lead. (Unfortunately, the FBI record is truncated at the end.)

October 4 would be too early for Jarnagin, or anyone, to have seen Crafard as an employee of Ruby at the Club. But Jarnagin didn’t describe an employee, but an unkempt visitor wearing a tan jacket.

HSCA Vol 9-3G page 1093 has a timeline for Jack Ruby. That states the State Fair opened on October 5, and Ruby visited the side show 3-5 times that day. It states HHMM closed on October 15, 1963, and on October 20, the State Fair closed. It also states Crafard was building a cloakroom at the Carousel Club using lumber from the failed HHMM side show that day.

Andrew Armstrong, the barman at the Carousel Club, testified he met Crafard when the HHMM show closed and borrowed equipment was returned to the club by Armstrong and Crafard, Crafard showered at the club and moved in.

An FBI document CE2348 has information regarding Marvin Gardner’s, the show’s electrical technician, interview on November 29, 1963 (Friday).

Gardner said HHMM ran from October 5, 1963, to closure on October 15, 1963. He said the performers and producers left town on the 16^th. He said Crafard was a barker working outside the tent, and when the show folded, Crafard worked outside the tent where a rock and roll show took its place.

Crafard’s true timeline

Crafard, in his first FBI statement on November 28, put his working for HHMM as October 15 rather than October 5. He said he worked for Ruby from November 1, but there is evidence he was actually working at the Carousel from October 16.

With the true timeline, it is possible that what Jarnagin saw on October 4, 1963, was Crafard meeting Ruby, as the fair and show were already in town, both commencing the next day.

Crafard was also deceptive about his activities from when he left the military in November 1959. Crafard testified on 8, 9 and 10 April 1964 in Washington, before Hubert and Griffin. This is from April 8, when he describes his short time in the military.

Mr. CRAFARD. I was in Fort Ord for 2 months and then I went to Presidio, San Francisco, where I was stationed at an air defense school for a period of 2 months and then I was assigned to D Battery, 2d Missile Battalion, San Francisco Defense Organization. From there I went to Germany in April of 1959. I was transferred to Germany to Deisley Kersne, and I was stationed with the D Battery, 2d Missile Battalion there. I stayed there until November of 1959 then I was transferred back to the United States where I was discharged November 10, 1959.
Mr. HUBERT. How long did you serve altogether?
Mr. CRAFARD. Thirteen months

Crafard then described staying with his sister in Michigan for 7 months (which takes things up to July 1960) working casually in pulp wood cutting. He then went to his father’s in Dallas, Oregon, for fruit picking for a month, then a cannery for six months and then, worked with carnivals.

For 1961, he described various fairground jobs, and he extended his account up to 1962, with casual work in California and Dallas, Oregon (as opposed to Dallas, Texas).

But this remarkable question was then posed, which blew that apart.

HUBERT. Now, we have some information that you worked for Federal Aviation Agency through July and October of 1960 in Los Angeles?
Mr. CRAFARD. Yes; in Los Angeles–I believe they were out of Los Angeles, where I worked for them that was over in Nevada.
Mr. HUBERT. What kind of work did you do?
Mr. CRAFARD. Surveyor’s assistant. I had forgotten I had worked for them.

Nevada isn’t Oregon. A surveyor’s assistant for the FAA isn’t fruit picking.

Hubert then sprung this on him.

Mr. HUBERT. Do you remember working for the Teer Plating Co., Dallas, Tex.

Mr. CRAFARD. Yes. Let’s see, I believe it was, I am not certain of that.

Mr. HUBERT. That was between April and June of 1961, was it not?

Mr. CRAFARD. I believe so. The way I have traveled around, I had a lot of jobs I even forgot about almost.

Teer Plating was based on Wyche Boulevard in Dallas, between Love Field Airport and Parkland Hospital. The places in Dallas where Kennedy had arrived and then departed from life. Making it all the more strange that Crafard hadn’t remembered that, given the significance of those places on November 22, 1963.

Capping all of that, it wasn’t until Hubert then brought up that Crafard had also been in Dallas, Texas in 1961 working for Ablon Poultry that Crafard revealed that he was married, and had met his wife in Amarillo, Texas, in 1961.

Mr. HUBERT. Did you ever work for Ablon Poultry Co.?

Mr. CRAFARD. Yes, sir; that was after I was married.

Mr. HUBERT. That was where?

Mr. CRAFARD. In Dallas, Tex. At that time I was residing at the Letot Trailer Park with my wife and family.

Mr. CRAFARD. I was married June of 1962.

Mr. HUBERT. So your wife lived with you for some time in Dallas, Oreg.?

Mr. CRAFARD. For about 6 months we was living in Dallas, Oreg., from June 10 until I believe in December.

Mr. HUBERT. Where were you married?

Mr. CRAFARD. I was married in Dallas, Oreg.

Mr. HUBERT. Where was your wife from?

Mr. CRAFARD. Originally from Texas.

Mr. HUBERT. Where did you meet her?

Mr. CRAFARD. I met her in Amarillo, Tex.

Mr. HUBERT. When? How long before you married?

Mr. CRAFARD. I believe it was in 1961.

Mr. HUBERT. What part of 1961?

Mr. CRAFARD. In the spring, I believe, it would have been in March of 1961.

Crafard’s approach on each occasion he was caught out is interesting. Rather than doubling down, he gives in. He seems to be confident in knowing he can get away with it.

The HSCA timeline also sets out that Crafard was in Dallas from March 10, 1963, and from March 21 was at Ablon Poultry and Eggs.

Meyer Ablon was interviewed by the FBI on December 20, 1963, and that interview appears as CE1275. Ablon was an associate of Ruby and had also owned the Chateau Nightclub, Dallas. Ablon Poultry and Eggs was on Canton Street at the Farmers Market, 7/10th mile from the Carousel Club.

The story that Crafard was mainly in Oregon after leaving the military was not an accurate one.

LEAD IV

Crafard didn’t hitch to Dallas or arrive with the State Fair. He was driven from Memphis by a staff sergeant of an airbase.

How Crafard got to Dallas in October 1963 also has irregularities

Mr. CRAFARD. I traveled to Dallas, Tex.

Mr. HUBERT. How did you travel?

Mr. CRAFARD. With a friend of mine, Mickey Spillane.

Mr. HUBERT. Mickey who?

Mr. CRARARD. Mickey Corday.

Mr. HUBERT. How do you spell the last name?

Mr. CRAFARD. C-o-r-d-a-y.

Mr. HUBERT. How did you travel?

Mr. CRAFARD. Traveled down in his car.

Mr. HUBERT. Where is he from, do you know?

Mr. CRAFARD. I don’t know where his home is.

Mr. HUBERT. Did you know him prior to this time?

Mr. CRAFARD. I had seen him prior to this time and heard of him prior to this time.

Mr. HUBERT. I mean it wasn’t a hitchhike?

Mr. CRAFARD. No, sir; I met him at the fairgrounds in Dallas, Tex., or in Memphis.

Crafard appears to be playing Griffin with the ‘Mickey Spillane’ (a character from detective fiction). Hubert was astute in breaking the hitchhiker narrative. But also, how can Crafard have met the man who took him on a 9-hour drive to Dallas fairgrounds, at the Dallas fairgrounds?

The fair that came to Dallas in late September 1963, opening on October 5, had come from Midway, Texas. But if Crafard was driven from Memphis, TN. Midway is not on the route.

Greg Parker and Mark Groubert writing in an article have identified that a Michael Cordray was a staff sergeant at Carswell Air Force Base in Fort Worth (which is 30 miles from Dallas) and specialized in B-52s and radar systems. The US Air Force had used B-52s in sonic boom tests conducted in Nevada.

Despite his efforts to camouflage his jobs and locations, Crafard’s job history mirrors Oswald’s—low-level positions mixed with roles involving military connections that might require clearance.

Click here to read part 2.

July 23, 2025

The Threats to Kill Oswald – Part 2

Were the threats to kill Oswald genuine, or were they part of a secret plan to get the Dallas Police to improve their protection of the defendant, who was loudly proclaiming his innocence?

The Threats to Kill Oswald – Part 2

By Paul Abbott

With Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry’s gross incompetence; his lack of regard for due diligence and caution when it came to the handling of Lee Oswald’s security, we must still ask – how legitimate were the ‘committee’ threats against Oswald? The ‘committee’, on whose behalf they were being made, has never been identified. To speculate: which organization would feel so strongly about avenging President Kennedy’s murder? Presumably, they would either have had the membership or resources and motivation in Dallas at the time to mobilize there come Saturday night / Sunday morning.

Of course, we must bear in mind that Dallas at the time, on account of its heavy, often extreme right-wing climate, was perceived as being the most worrisome of cities that President Kennedy’s tour included that weekend. And with the Democrat Kennedy’s reputation there for being bad for business and soft on communism considered, to the point of being accused of ‘Treason’, are we to suppose that there was an equally extreme organization, to quote Vernon Glossup, that was neither left or right leaning, who felt so strongly about Kennedy’s murder to the point of threatening the life of his accused assassin? It is doubtful.

One final, but simple point on the ‘committee’ front is that, from the moment of Oswald’s arrest to the morning of his transfer, there was never any record or reports of a large, angry group gathered along the streets of Dallas. No trace of an angry-mob type ‘committee’ anywhere in Dallas that weekend, let alone on November 24, which seems to indicate we can pretty much call the ‘threats’ from a ‘committee’ dubious.

With the ‘committee’ aspect discounted, what about the caller at least? There is sufficient evidence to substantiate that at least two calls were made that morning. However, the caller/s did not identify themselves nor the organization they were representing, so it literally could have been anyone. The wording attributed to the threat makers by Glossup and Newsom at the FBI, and McCoy at the Sheriff’s Department is interesting and almost verbatim in some parts to each other, particularly with reference to the reason the caller said he was warning of the threat…to ensure no one in the Sheriff or Police departments got injured. Of course, this could be attributed to Glossup’s notes made during the call and the resulting memo passed on to Newsom when calling the Sheriff’s Department and alerting the DPD about it. But neither item ever surfaced, so we can only take Glossup and Newsom’s word for it. Nonetheless, the DPD was not contacted by the threat makers directly, so just how sincere was the caller/s regard for their safety as well?

Let’s not forget another interesting detail present in both Glossup and the second of McCoy’s calls from the threat makers… that when both first took the call, the caller sounded like they handed the receiver to another man who then warned of harm to Oswald. It’s an odd detail that lends an almost absurdly stage-managed/manufactured slant on it all.

Could one or both of the callers have been Jack Ruby? If so, was he making such a call to sabotage an order or assignment that he did not want, or was he getting cold feet? It’s an interesting and viable theory that many researchers subscribe to.

One person largely overlooked, but was central to the whole threat episode, of course, was FBI Special Agent Milton Newsom. He was not present when the clerk, Vernon Glossup, received the first call from the threat makers. This seems odd: for the ranking agent on duty not to be present at that particular moment. Where was Newsom at 2 am? It’s not like it was during the daytime, and therefore there was a greater likelihood of his being in a meeting or out in the field. Wherever he was, he wasn’t far as he seemed to get word of the threat from Glossup and act on it quickly by contacting both the Sheriff and Police departments.

Perhaps most curious about Newsom was the fact that it was he, and only he, who took the only statement of Deputy McCoy, and the first of Captains Frazier and Talbert for the FBI regarding the whole threat episode. Talk about tying a neat bow on the recording of an event that he was involved in from the start!

We also have reason to question Newsom on this front because William Frazier, during his testimony to the Warren Commission, disputed literally most of his statement attributed to him by Newsom. For example:

Newsom’s statement had Frazier saying that it was Vernon Glossup who rang him to advise of the threat received by him on Oswald’s life.
- Yet Frazier said it was Newsom who called the DPD and spoke to him.
Newsom’s statement also quoted Frazier as saying that plans to transfer Oswald to the County Jail may be changed in view of the threat.
- Frazier told the Warren Commission that he would not have said this because he did not know what the plans were to transfer Oswald, therefore, he did not know how they might be changed.
Newsom’s statement also quoted Frazier as saying Oswald’s planned transfer had been publicized primarily as a form of cooperation with the press and news agencies.
- Frazier also denied making this statement to Newsom.

Bear in mind, Frazier’s statement, like McCoy’s and Talbert’s, was barely one page long and consisted of a few paragraphs each. With the above considered, the only portion of his statement that Frazier could confirm as correct was how he (Frazier) mentioned that the DPD had not received any threats and that he was advised that the Sheriff’s office had received a similar threat call.

Compared to the three-page statement he submitted to Sheriff Bill Decker, C.C. McCoy’s statement attributed to him by Newsom barely lines up. It too attributed McCoy as saying that plans to transfer Oswald to the County Jail at 10:00 am had been made public through news releases. Unfortunately, McCoy did not testify on the matter, so we do not have any record of him denying or confirming Newsom’s accuracy in his statement.

What we do know is that both Glossup and Milton Newsom continued to work for the FBI in Dallas until at least the late 1970s. The only other part that Newsom played in the assassination investigation was the handling of the Bronson film of President Kennedy’s shooting. In fact, the death notice of Newsom in 2012 stated that he was a 30-year veteran of the Bureau. Vernon Glossup had even worked his way up to Special Agent status and by all reports is still alive. It is a loss to history that both were not subjected to more scrutiny about the threat matter. Unless Mr. Glossop would be willing and able to provide any further details after all these years, we are only left to speculate on him, Newsom and their conduct, in light of Oswald’s fate.

Threading the Threat Needle

If the phone call threats on Lee Oswald’s life were not legitimate from either a committee or an (unidentified) individual vengeful against him but merciful for the FBI, Sheriff and Police departments, all we are left with are pieces to speculate on their origin and purpose.

Let me propose something that might seem outlandish at first glance: the threat phone calls were staged by either Milton Newsom or someone doing so on his orders. Why? He did so to apply pressure on the DPD and, after the fact, manipulate witness statements to further discredit the police.

Context:

In his Saturday morning statement, Curry inadvertently accused the FBI of either not knowing of someone like Lee Harvey Oswald and therefore not warning them of his presence in Dallas ahead of President Kennedy’s visit, or knowing of him but not warning them. With its association with Oswald confirmed, to what length did the FBI know of or use Oswald? And how concerned were they that weekend of being implicated by association for the president’s assassination? While Oswald was still alive, they were rendered officially helpless as killing the president was not a federal crime at that time. They would have had more of a stake investigating Oswald if he had shot a postman.

What we must also consider is that the longer the weekend went with Oswald in police custody at City Hall, the more outrage and controversy were being stirred. For the most part, the scenes filmed and reported on by the media were chaos. Oswald, despite looking unkempt, calmly pronouncing his innocence, asking for legal assistance, and protesting the lineups he was in, provided a clear perception that the Dallas authorities barely had a handle on the situation. And an assortment of officials, including District Attorney Henry Wade, Chief Curry and Captain Fritz, providing updates on the investigation into Oswald did not help either. Doing so attracted the ire of people like J. Edgar Hoover and President Johnson, who were, fairly, worried that Oswald’s defense could argue for a mistrial on the grounds that he could never have received a fair trial thanks to the early opining of police and legal officials.

Motivation:

If the Dallas Police Department was out of its depth, with little help and steady guidance from Chief Curry, perhaps the FBI saw an opportunity to exploit this by creating a situation that would really highlight the point – something that would only add to the pressure already heaped on the DPD: a serious threat to Lee Oswald’s life. Such a scheme could be hatched locally with literally nothing to lose and everything to gain for the FBI. It would be the ultimate acid test to see what Chief Curry and his DPD would do. Perhaps the intent was to scare the DPD into actually getting with the program and ensuring Oswald’s security by transferring him sooner rather than later. That’s the best-case scenario because, given his Saturday afternoon statement to the press of when Oswald’s transfer would take place and his reputation for maintaining a closeknit relationship with them, it was more than a safe bet that Curry would remain to his word … even in response to a ‘credible’ threat and not budge on moving Oswald. Recall that Curry is on record as telling his beloved press mid-morning on Sunday that Oswald could have been transferred overnight in light of threats received on his life. But it did not happen because, Curry said, he didn’t want ‘to cross you people.’

What was the desired outcome? Aside from assuring Oswald’s safety by being transferred early, regardless of how the DPD responded, I think the underlying intent was to completely undermine Curry and the DPD so as to both minimize any more backlash on the FBI from his comments on Saturday morning and to position itself as the ideal body to step in at the right time to competently investigate President Kennedy’s assassination. With control and oversight of the overall investigation, the FBI would be in a position to cover its own tracks in terms of their association with Lee Oswald and protect itself against the likely catastrophic fallout it would attract. Like the fact that Oswald was an informant for the FBI. Which would have been a disaster for J. Edgar Hoover.

How:

I think it was as simple as at least two threatening phone calls being made on behalf of a conveniently nameless, purposeless organization that was neither right nor left leaning by a person who also remained nameless. And despite saying they were warning of the threat out of concern for the welfare of FBI, Sheriff and DPD personnel, the threat makers did not bother calling the police to warn them. It was all too easy to make up and do so in such a way that could not be traced back to the FBI. Perhaps the DPD were not called for fear of the call somehow being traced or the voice being recognised. If Newsom was behind it, why risk it when all he had to do was either make or have a call phoned into the FBI (if one was made at all)? From there, Vernon Glossup would have wittingly or unwittingly cooperated in the charade by providing a memorandum to Newsom to make the whole episode official. At that point, Newsom could have made or had someone make two ‘threat warning’ calls to the Sheriff’s Department whilst he, in an official capacity, would call the Sheriff and DPD. That is all it could have taken to whip up the storm that followed that morning.

Wrapping everything up neatly, as it were, Newsom could have easily positioned himself on behalf of the FBI to take the statements of the two other people pivotal to the threat response – McCoy and Frazier – to cement the narrative. And in doing so, sink a final boot into the Dallas Police Department by misquoting both men to implant a damning reference of Oswald’s transfer being publicized.

Evidently, the FBI’s stake increased once Oswald was killed because his murder effectively ended the Dallas Police investigation into him. What soon followed was the infamous Belmont memo on November 24^th, which mandated that the country be convinced of Oswald’s guilt in killing President Kennedy alone through a report submitted by the FBI. Essentially, with Oswald dead and the DPD out of the picture, with no other suspect to investigate any further, the ball was handed firmly to the FBI to control the narrative. Because the FBI very quickly, yet momentarily, came to sit at the center of the investigation on the back of Oswald’s murder.

Johnson and Warren Wrap it all Up.

President Lyndon B. Johnson would establish the Warren Commission on November 29^th, which was essentially a high-level PR piece that would ‘review and evaluate’ the findings of the FBI’s investigation into President Kennedy’s assassination and Lee Oswald’s sole guilt. This was because Johnson was concerned that a single report from the FBI would not be enough to prevent a ‘rash of investigations’ that would amount to a ‘three-ring circus’ that would steer away the public from the desired Oswald-lone nut narrative.

Chief Justice Earl Warren was approached directly by Johnson to head up the commission. Warren originally said no, but when Johnson countered him by putting forth information he had received from Director Hoover about a ‘little incident in Mexico City’, Warren tearfully agreed.

Just what exactly Johnson used to pressure Warren with has been speculated about ever since. Some have interpreted this reference to be some kind of sordid or salacious piece of blackmail that Hoover had procured on Warren and paid it forward to Johnson. I disagree – I think it was more like the information that FBI-contact/asset Washington Star reporter, Jerry O’Leary, happened upon when in Dallas covering the aftermath of the assassination. I have laid this episode out in another article, but essentially, Jerry O’Leary (who was later named as an asset within the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird) met with a CIA contact of his in Dallas who was an ‘unimpeachable’ source who told him that Oswald returned from Mexico with five thousand dollars in cash. Instead of publishing a story on this stunning revelation, O’Leary promptly reported it to the FBI, who took it straight up to the State Department and the White House. The implication was that either the Soviets or Cubans were behind the president’s murder and that such information could be the catalyst for all-out war with the Soviets. The Warren Commission was formed with sitting senators and representatives such as Hale Boggs, Gerald Ford and Richard Russell, as well as Washington powerhouses in John McCloy and Allen Dulles. Surely enough the Commission would submit its findings that Lee Harvey Oswald was solely guilty of killing President Kennedy and police officer J.D. Tippit on November 22^nd and anything contrary to these conclusions was either ignored or manipulated. War against the Soviet Union and Cuba was averted, but the truth behind President Kennedy’s murder, his accused assassin’s intelligence links and Oswald’s own suspicious murder have remained enduring mysteries. We can now add to this mosaic the momentary influence the FBI had when it came to ‘investigating’ the Kennedy assassination and ponder what it did to cover its own tracks when it came to its proven association with Lee Oswald.

Click here to read part 1.

July 20, 2025

The Threats to Kill Oswald – Part 1

Paul Abbott revisits a tangent from the first edition of his book, ‘Death to Justice – The Shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald’, involving the threats to kill Oswald before his eventual murder on Sunday, November 24^th, 1963.

The Threats to Kill Oswald – Part 1

By Paul Abbott

The incarceration of Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged killer of President John F. Kennedy and Police Officer J.D. Tippit, and his mistreatment at the hands of the Dallas Police across the weekend of November 22^nd has been well established. But the matter of the alleged threats made against his life over the course of the night before his murder at the hands of Jack Ruby has largely been glossed over in the broader scheme of things. But just how they unfolded and were responded to has largely withstood any in-depth scrutiny ever since.

The Curry Storm

At approximately 11.30 am on Saturday, November 23^rd, Jesse Curry, the Dallas Police Chief, was in his office on the southwest corner of the Third Floor of Dallas City Hall. Seated opposite him were a group of reporters, including the Associated Press’ Peggy Simpson and NBC’s Tom Pettit. It was one of the many occasions that weekend where he would hold court with the members of the press – to the point where he would be directed to stop doing so by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and President Lyndon Johnson across that weekend. Curry’s regard and synergy with the press were legendary and certainly a theme throughout his tenure as chief. In fact, in early 1958, he issued a memorandum to all Dallas police personnel essentially instructing them to provide the media with as much access and assistance as possible. Basically, he regarded them as a PR arm for the department and at that time, with the reputation that Dallas had for crime and corruption, it was clearly a mitigation strategy on his part.

During Curry’s mini press conference with Simpson, Pettit and others, an interesting exchange took place:

Curry: (to persons unknown) … They say he.. he said he was a communist…

Pettit: Hey Chief, did the FBI or your department have him (Oswald) under surveillance prior to yesterday?

Curry: No, sir, we didn’t have knowledge that he was in the city.

Pettit: Did the FBI?

Curry: I understand that they did know he was here and that they interviewed him … oh … a week or two ago.

Pettit: Did they warn you of his presence in the city?

Curry: No, they had not.. at the time .. until yesterday.

Pettit: Do you think they should have?

Curry: Well, they usually do. They keep us informed. If we don’t have knowledge of it, they usually liaise with us… usually let us know when these communist sympathizers or subversives come into the city. And why they hadn’t got round to informing us of this man, I don’t know.

This frank exchange would be widely reported and circulated, sparking the wrath of the FBI hierarchy up to and including Director Hoover. The implication of course being that Chief Curry was deflecting all blame on the FBI for failing to detect and stop the communist Oswald and prevent the November 22^nd killings. In fact, what Curry was saying to Pettit was completely reasonable. And evidently correct, as the FBI was monitoring Oswald at the time, and they did not alert the DPD to him prior to President Kennedy’s arrival. What followed was an effort by the FBI to mitigate any fallout from Curry’s statement by having Special Agent in Charge in Dallas, Gordon Shanklin, contact Curry and have him retract what he said to Tom Pettit. A summary memo from the FBI’s Cartha De Loach shows that Shanklin was successful in doing this and that Curry even apologized and said that he did not ‘mean to place any blame on the FBI’. The damage control continued with the FBI using their proven media contact on the ground, the Washington Star’s Jerry O’Leary, who was in Dallas to cover events that weekend, to also get in touch with Chief Curry and ‘make him go on record regarding the falsity of his allegations’.

All of this resulted in Curry speaking to another group of reporters (including Tom Pettit) out in the hall on the Third Floor of City Hall just after 1 pm that same day. He led with the following statement:

There has been some information that has gone out. I want to correct anything that might have been misinterpreted or misunderstood. And that is regarding information that the FBI might have had about this man (Oswald). I do not know… if and when the FBI has interviewed this man. The FBI is under no obligation to come to us with any information concerning anyone. They have cooperated with us in the past one hundred percent. Any time there’s any information that they feel that might be helpful to us, they have always come to us. Uh.. last night someone told me.. I don’t even know who it was, that the FBI did know this man was in the city and had interviewed him. I wish to say this. Of my knowledge, I do not know this to be a fact and I don’t want anybody to get the wrong impression that I am accusing the FBI of not cooperating or withholding information because they are under no obligation to us but have always cooperated with us one hundred percent. And I do not know if and when they have ever interviewed this man.

While this episode started and ended within a couple of hours, I think it has been totally overlooked and underestimated in the scheme of things. Think about it…with all of the world focusing on him, his police department and their handling of the man suspected of killing President Kennedy, the Dallas Chief of Police publicly acknowledged that his department was usually alerted by the FBI about people like Lee Oswald (‘communist sympathizer / subversive’) but they were not in Oswald’s instance. It remains a shocking admission.

No wonder the FBI was quick to act in response to Curry’s initial statement. The implications were doubly negative for them. If they did not know about a ‘communist sympathizer or subversive’ in Oswald, it was a massive oversight on their part that would rightly bring their competence into question. On the other hand, if they did know about Oswald, why did they not alert the DPD to his presence in Dallas? The implication would transcend just incompetence. Thankfully for us, the subsequent years have proven that the FBI was well and truly aware of Oswald, and was monitoring him, so this question, I think, lies at the center of a lot of the intrigue around Lee Oswald, his framing for the November 22^nd killings and his own murder.

What is clear in the Curry matter is that the FBI instantly threw all of its efforts into mitigating any blame it would receive for Oswald and the events of November 22^nd, as well as asserting itself as being in control. This is a crucial point to keep in mind for the rest of this article.

Come the latter hours of that Saturday, the media that had engulfed Dallas City Hall to cover Oswald’s incarceration were starting to dissipate. This was because it had been purported that Oswald had been charged with Kennedy’s murder, so their assumption was that there would be fewer and fewer opportunities to see and ask him any questions. The broader implication being that he would soon be moved to maximum security at the County Jail.

The matter of transferring Lee Oswald from the City Hall to the County Jail was something that was still only notionally being discussed across the DPD hierarchy that afternoon. In ordinary circumstances, the transfer of a prisoner from City Hall, or any police station, to the County Jail, where they would await sentencing, was the responsibility of the local sheriff. The principle being that the sheriff would present at the police premises the necessary paperwork to take custody of the prisoner from that moment on. Only in extraordinary circumstances, which the weekend of November 22^nd clearly presented, would this protocol ever be deviated from. However, in a subsequent statement that he gave, Dallas Sheriff Bill Decker testified to not being notified by the DPD of any plans or intent they had for them (the DPD) or the Sheriff’s Department to facilitate Oswald’s transfer to the County Jail. In fact, he only found out his information on this front through members of the media.

And examining the statements of Chief Curry and his captain for the Homicide and Robbery Bureau, J.W. Fritz, who had Oswald in custody, shows that the transfer had not been discussed between them at any great length.

From Curry’s perspective, he was being asked the question by the media about the transfer, so he in turn asked Fritz if he thought he’d be done with his questioning of Oswald that (Saturday) afternoon, so he could be transferred. Fritz said that he still needed more time, which was his right, as it was much easier to interrogate a suspect at City Hall than at the County Jail. Between the two, it was generally agreed that Oswald would stay another night at City Hall for further questioning and be transferred the next morning. On this, Curry duly told the press that Oswald would be transferred the next day at 10 am:

Over the years, this point has been muddled as Curry telling reporters that if they were at City Hall by 10 am on the Sunday, they won’t have missed the transfer. But using articles) published that weekend, it was clearly reported that Curry stated the transfer would begin at 10 am. (Abbott, Death to Justice, p.363

As Saturday evening turned into night, Dallas City Hall quietened down to a near state of normalcy, with there only being a handful of reporters staying around in case Oswald was instead transferred that night. We are now able to examine the alleged threats to Lee Oswald’s life in the early hours of Sunday, November 24^th, on behalf of a ‘committee’.

Below is a list of the people who had firsthand, evidential dealings with receiving and acting upon the threats:

Police Chief Jesse Curry – DPD
Sheriff Bill Decker – Sheriff’s Dept.
Captain William B. Frazier – DPD
Captain J.W. Fritz – DPD
Vernon R. Glossup (civilian clerk) – FBI
Deputy C.C. McCoy – Sheriff’s Dept.
Special Agent Milton L. Newsom – FBI
Captain Cecil E. Talbert – DPD

Using statements and quoting specific points that each of these people provided to either the FBI or the Warren Commission, we can piece together a chronology when it comes to the receiving and handling of these threats.

Threat Timeline:

At the County Jail, Deputy Sheriff C.C. McCoy was working the night shift which consisted of taking phone calls from all manner of citizens, near and far, who were calling to do anything from express their condolences to warning of a group of ‘fourteen thousand negroes’ who were coming to town to get ‘this bunch’ straightened out. Also on duty were fellow personnel by the names Kennedy, Watkins and ‘Virgil’.

At approximately 2:00 am, McCoy even received a call from Sheriff Bill Decker. During this call, he and Decker discussed when Oswald’s transfer would take place and that it should be while it was still dark. They even speculated when it became light (6:30 am or 6:45 am) and agreed that McCoy would call Decker back at 6 am to see about getting Oswald transferred before first light.

At 2:15 am, McCoy received another call. This time it was from a man who, according to a statement he later provided, ‘talked like a w/m (white male) and he stated that he was a member of a group of one hundred and that he wanted the Sheriff’s office to know that they had voted one hundred per cent to kill Oswald while he was in the process of being transferred to the County Jail. And that he wanted this department to have the information so that none of the deputies would get hurt.’ McCoy said ‘The voice was deep and coarse and sounded very sincere and talked with ease. The person did not seem excited like some of the calls that had received running down this department, the police department and the State of Texas.’ McCoy said that he had his colleague, ‘Virgil’, listen to part of the call.

At 2:30 am, civilian clerk for the Dallas FBI office, Vernon R. Glossup, received a call from an unknown male who also spoke in a calm voice and asked to talk to the man in charge. According to his own statement, Glossup said he ‘told the caller that the SAC (Special Agent in Charge) was not present at that time and asked if someone else could help him. The caller then said, “Wait a minute,” and apparently turned the phone over to another man. I am not certain there were two different voices; however, the tone of the unknown caller’s voice changed somewhat at this point. The voice at this point was calm and mature in sound, and this person stated as follows: “I represent a committee that is neither right nor left wing, and tonight, tomorrow morning, or tomorrow night, we are going to kill the man that killed the president. There will be no excitement, and we will kill him. We wanted to be sure and tell the FBI, Police Department, and Sheriff’s Office, and we will be there and will kill him.” With that, the caller hung up. Glossup transcribed the call in a memorandum for Special Agent Milton L. Newsom, who contacted the Sheriff’s Department at 3:00 am to see if they too had received any such calls. Newsom then called the Police Department at 3:30 am to ask the same and advise of the threat that Glossup had received.

Sheriff Deputy McCoy concurred that he received a call from Newsom and that he merely asked if ‘we’ (the Sheriff’s Department) had received any calls threatening Oswald’s life. McCoy said that he had, so Newsom instructed him to contact Dallas Police ‘and give the same information to them.’ According to his statement, McCoy did call the Dallas Police Department but could only recall that he ‘talked to someone in Captain Fritz’s office.’ McCoy stated that he was told by a member of the DPD that they (Dallas Police) hadn’t received any threatening phone calls.

Still with McCoy and his statement, he ‘received one other call regarding the transfer of Oswald, and when I answered the telephone, a male voice asked if this is the Sheriff’s office, and I said that it was. He said, “Just a minute,” and then another male voice stated that Oswald would never make the trip to the County Jail. McCoy said he could not determine whether or not this was the same voice that called earlier on behalf of a ‘committee’.

At City Hall, Captain William B. Frazier was the ranking officer on duty there that night. He testified to the Warren Commission of being contacted by FBI Agent Milton Newsom between 3:00 am and 3:45 am. He quoted Newsom as telling him that he (Newsom) ‘received a threat from some man to the effect that a group of men of 100 or 200’, Frazier said he couldn’t recall exactly, ‘were going to attempt to kill Oswald that day sometime. That he (the caller) didn’t want the FBI, Dallas Police Department or the sheriff’s office injured in any way. That was the reason for the call.’

To somewhat corroborate McCoy’s account, in the same testimony for the Warren Commission, Frazier said he spoke to someone with the surname of, or similar to, ‘Cox’ or Coy’ from the Sheriff’s Department. Frazier testified that he wasn’t clear on the time of the call, but he and McCoy discussed Oswald’s transfer and that McCoy told him that Sheriff Decker recommended that it be brought forward. And if so, there could be two supervisors from the Sheriff Department on hand at the County Jail to receive Oswald.

Frazier said that he next called Captain Fritz at his home to tell him of the threats against Oswald and that he would need to be transferred. Fritz told him it was Chief Curry’s decision to make, as he wanted Oswald transferred in the morning. However, when Frazier tried to also reach Curry by phone at home, the line was out of order.

At around 6:00 am, McCoy called Bill Decker as agreed and told him who was on duty and how they could carry out Oswald’s transfer if required – including hiding Oswald down in the footwell of the car. He was told by Decker to hold off on any plans until he spoke with Captain Fritz.

At 6:15 am, Frazier was at the end of his shift and about to be relieved by Captain Cecil E. Talbert. In the handover, Frazier said that he advised Talbert of the threat situation with Oswald and that both Sheriff Decker and Agent Newsom were anxious to transfer him.

According to Talbert’s statement for the Warren Commission, he must have been advised of the issue to reach Curry, as he said that he got the telephone company to put a buzzer on his phone line to determine if the line was faulty. It was, so he sent a squad car to Curry’s house to brief him on the situation and have him call City Hall… if he could.

Despite the issues with his phone, Curry soon called Talbert back at City Hall and was briefed on the threats. All Curry did was instruct Talbert to tell Newsom and Decker that he would contact them when he was in his office between 8:00 am and 9:00 am later that morning.

With all of the above told, no more was done to address the threats to Lee Oswald.

As the morning rolled on, the transfer at least had some planning put toward it. Once Curry and Decker decided between them that the DPD would facilitate the transfer, it was decided that Oswald would be taken in an armored truck for the twelve-block journey to the County Jail. Acting on orders from Curry, Deputy Chief Batchelor contacted a local armored car company, and they sent two people carrying armored trucks to City Hall’s Commerce Street ramp exit.

At the last minute, at approximately 11:15 am, Fritz recommended that Oswald instead be placed in the back of an unmarked squad car and that it follow behind the armored car, which in turn would be empty and a decoy. His justification for this was that if there was an attack launched on Oswald during the transfer, a vehicle such as an armored car would be too awkward to maneuver and evade. With that, the transfer finally got underway with a group of detectives and Fritz leaving the Third Floor with Oswald – and the rest is tragic history. Jack Ruby was able to access the basement and be in a position to shoot, and ultimately kill, Oswald when he and his escort emerged into the basement and were walking to the car.

While there are clear gaps in some of the timings and accounts around the threats response (for example, McCoy’s statement does not include any mention of speaking to Decker after he had both received and received word of the threat calls), it is clear that there was some effort by he and the DPD’s Frazier to bring about Oswald’s transfer early to pre-empt any threat against his life. The roadblocks were Captain Fritz and Chief Curry.

When first told of the threats by Frazier, Fritz basically put his hands up and said, ‘Not me, not my call.’ What any competent leader within a hierarchy ought to have done, in this instance, was say, ‘It is the Chief’s call… so try and reach him to find out. If you can’t reach him, call me back because we’d best still get the transfer underway.’

However, if Jesse Curry’s phone line was not a factor and he was reached by Frazier, it would not have made a difference. We can be sure of this because he scuttled any chance to respond accordingly when he instructed that Newsom and Decker be told that he would arrive at City Hall in a couple of hours’ time. That was it. That was how he responded to the word of the threats. There was no action to effect an earlier transfer there and then. If he did decide to do something about it, Curry wouldn’t have had to do much other than give the approval. Between his personnel, and perhaps a quick phone call by him to Sheriff Decker, Oswald’s early and safe transfer would have been incredibly easy to carry out.

The burning question is why Curry didn’t want to have Oswald transferred at that point in time? At 10:20 am later that morning, when speaking to reporters, Curry not only mentioned the threat made to Oswald overnight, he also said that he could’ve been transferred early as a result but he (Curry) chose not to because he didn’t want to go back on the original time he told the press (Abbott, Death to Justice, p.112). Apparently, it was as simple as that. On top of it all, Curry actually laid out to the reporters that Oswald would be transported to the County Jail in an armored car. Talk about infuriating!

Having uncovered just how the verifiable threat episode involving the FBI, Sheriff and DPD took place, in Part Two, we will analyze this episode in the context of the furor that Chief Curry started with his candidness on the morning of Saturday when speaking with the press and how the FBI ultimately took the early lead in investigating President Kennedy’s assassination.

Click here to read part 2.

July 20, 2025

Oswald, Beckley and the Tippit Wallet, Part 2

John Washburn concludes his essay on when the police arrived at 1026 Beckley, why they covered up the early time of arrival, and how they knew Oswald was there.

Oswald, Beckley and the Wallet, Part 2

By John Washburn

Would Dallas Police make things up?

There are no leaps of faith here if dishonesty – and worse – in the Dallas police in 1963 isn’t a presumption but a fact.

As late as 1973, DPD Officer Darrell Lee Cain shot 12-year-old Santos Rodriguez while conducting live round Russian roulette on him and his 13-year-old brother in an attempt to force a confession from them.

This piece from Warren Commission apologist David Von Pein assumes that all Dallas Police could be trusted.

“But do people like Jim DiEugenio actually want to believe that the Dallas Police Department, after having found a wallet on 10th Street that some conspiracists think was planted there by either the DPD or somebody else, would have NOT SAID A WORD about finding Oswald’s wallet in any of their police reports?”

Unfortunately, the answer to this question is yes.

There’s a very good reason why a wallet planted prematurely might disappear and be hushed up, i.e., if it messed up the planting of evidence at 1026 N. Beckley by a small clique within the DPD, which had then caused regular officers to search 1026 N. Beckley and find nothing in Oswald’s actual room.

Once the Katzenbach Memorandum was acted upon as a political objective, the DPD, FBI, and all other agencies had not merely carte blanche to cover up but a command to do so. Hence, the post-event pressure on Earlene Roberts. As a result of pressure on FBI agents and the rest of the investigatory establishment.

The Von Pein position is lacking in political context as well as evidence.

Anyone who reads the evidence in the Warren Commission report properly will find discrepancies in timings, obscured events, Freudian slips, over-embellishment of accounts, and stories that lack basic credibility.

Belin, in particular, had a habit of interrupting at the very point someone was saying something that would now be described as “off-message”.

I set out in my Death of Tippit articles at Kennedys and King to show how muddled and full of fancy were the accounts of Sgt. Gerry Hill, Captain William Westbrook, and Reserve Sgt. Croy, as to how they got to the Tippit murder scene, and then the Texas Theater. I show the placing of a strip over an evidence report, which masked that Captain Westbrook had found a ‘gray’ jacket after 1:30 pm, which police radio reported as found around 1:20 pm as a white jacket. Also, Westbrook’s exhibit in monochrome appears gray, but a color version shows tan.

I also set out on K&K to show that the police tapes were altered, including a fake call at 12:45 pm, which covered up the fact that Tippit had been at the Gloco filling station.

Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade stated this to the Commission, Volume V, regarding Captain Fritz, the head of homicide for the DPD.

“I don’t know what the relations-the relations are better between Curry and Fritz than between Hanson and Fritz, who was his predecessor. But Fritz runs a kind of a one-man operation there where nobody else knows what he is doing. Even me, for instance, he is reluctant to tell me, either, but I don’t mean that disparagingly. I will say Captain Fritz is about as good a man at solving a crime as I ever saw, to find out who did it but he is poorest in the getting evidence that I know, and I am more interested in getting evidence, and there is where our major conflict comes in.”

There’s another term for ‘solving’ crime without sufficient evidence. It’s called fitting people up. Particularly serious in a state with the death penalty.

The searches, and full or not full

Officers, at that stage, looking for someone on the run, having shot a police officer and discarding an Eisenhower jacket whilst running away would have information and incentive to search any room occupied by any young man who could fit that description, which is just what Arthur Johnson described (Vol. 10, p. 305).

Mr. Belin. Well, let me backtrack a minute, now. How soon after you got home did the police come—approximately?

Mr. Johnson. I’d say within 30 minutes.

Mr. Belin. All right. 30 minutes after you got home, the police came. And what did the police say to you?

Mr. Johnson. They asked if—uh—we had anyone by that name living there.

Mr. Belin. By the name of Lee Harvey Oswald?

Mr. Johnson. Yes.

Mr. Belin. And what did you tell them?

Mr. Johnson. We told them, “No.”

Mr. Belin. All right. And then what did they say?

Mr. Johnson. Well, they wanted to see the rooms. They had described his age, his build, and so forth, and we had two more boys rooming there. Uh—and my wife was going to let them see the rooms.

Mr. Belin. Your wife was going to let them see the rooms that you had—and you had a total of 17 roomers, I believe you said?

Mr. Johnson. Well, no. I don’t know just how many roomers we had. We have 17 bedrooms—but I don’t know just, at that time, how many roomers we had.

But, anyway, we had a couple of boys around his age that had moved in just a few days before, and, so, she was going to let them see their rooms.

There is clearly a sensitivity about his wife letting them see the rooms. Which I assume is provoked by the warrant issue. There was also another distraction and a leading question from Belin, stating, “You had 17 roomers”. That was misrepresenting what Arthur Johnson had earlier (page 302) stated: that they hadn’t been fully booked in the last six months.

BELIN. About how many people do you have that room there?
Mr. JOHNSON. Well, when it’s full, we have 17.
Mr. BELIN. Has it been full within the past 6 months at all, or not?
Mr. JOHNSON. No, no, it hasn’t
Mr. BELIN. By the way, how long have you been married, Mr. Johnson?
Mr. JOHNSON. Seventeen years.
Mr. BELIN. You’ve been married 17 years?

Gladys Johnson said it hadn’t been full in October 1964. Arthur did with the above, emphatically. “No, no. It hasn’t”. Belin changed the subject by asking inanely how long the Johnsons had been married, as if he were a chat show host.

But Belin also made a logical error regarding the math. If the official line was correct, for the place to be full, if “Room 0” was taken, then there would have been 18 roomers. That isn’t merely full, it’s overfull. Oswald would then come back when one had moved out, making it overfull again. Neither of the Johnsons testified fully, let alone overfully.

Having said what he said above, Arthur Johnson then indicated the searches had already progressed.

Mr. Belin. All right. And then what happened?

Mr. Johnson. Well, I saw his picture on television and I hollered at them and told them. They were out in the back, started around the house to the—uh—basement where these boys room. The bedrooms are all in the basement. And they were going back there.

And—uh—I just called them and told them, I said, “Why, it’s this fellow that lives in here.”

Mr. Belin. You told them that you had seen the picture of this man on television?

If I am correct in my assumption that the lack of a warrant was used as a lever to make up a story, then this exchange is evidence of it. Johnson seems to be describing a search of the rear annex as well as the basement. If officers in hot pursuit arrived even as late as 2:00 pm, then police arriving at 3:00 pm after the arrest of Oswald wouldn’t have hampered the search, which started over an hour earlier.

Note, Belin also made yet another inane interjection, repeating what Johnson had said, rather than challenging what Johnson was saying.

Earlene Roberts, in this exchange, revealed more irregularities in several ways.

Mr. BALL. After he left the house and at sometime later in the afternoon, these police officers came out, did they?

Mrs. ROBERTS. Well, yes.

Mr. BALL. And they asked you if there was a man named Lee Oswald there?

Mrs. ROBERTS. Yes.

Mr. BALL. And you told them “No”?

Mrs. ROBERTS. Yes.

Mr. BALL. Then what happened after that?

Mrs. ROBERTS. Well, he was trying to make us understand that—I had two new men and they told me-Mrs. Johnson told me, “Go get your keys and let them see in” I had gone to the back and they still had the TV on, and they was broadcasting about Kennedy.

Just as I unlocked the doors Fritz’ men, two of them had walked in and she come running in and said, “Oh, Roberts, come here quick. This is this fellow Lee in this little room next to yours,” and they flashed him on television, is how come us to know. Mr. BALL. Then you knew it was the man?

Mrs. ROBERTS. Yes; and I come in there and she said, “Wait,” and then again they flashed him back on and I said, “Yes, that’s him-that’s O. H. Lee right here in this room.” And it was just a little wall there between him and I.

Mr. BALL. That was the first you knew who it was?

Mrs. ROBERTS. Yes, because he was registered as O. H. Lee.

Mr. BALL. Did you ever know he had a gun in his room?

Mrs. ROBERTS. No; I sure did not.

The line “Go get your keys and let them see in.” with “as I unlocked the doors”, goes entirely against the line Room 0 was only of interest only after Fritz’s officers arrived at 3:00 pm and only accessed with a warrant after 4:30 pm.

But she also revealed there were the officers who first arrived, asking for Lee Oswald, then ‘two new men’ with the unlocking of doors, and then the Fritz men, who were Potts and Senkel, arriving at 3:00 pm.

But if the police did turn up looking for Lee Harvey Oswald and she really did have a current guest called Mr. OH Lee, and there was already a description of a young man who looked like him it wouldn’t take a TV appearance much later for “oh it’s O.H. Lee”, to trigger the connection with Room 0, the small room next to hers without a lock.

But that is just what Potts described.

Mr. POTTS. 1026 North Beckley.
Mr. BALL. What happened when you got there?
Mr. POTTS. We got there and we talked to this Mrs.–I believe her name was Johnson.
Mr. BALL Mrs. A. C. Johnson?
Mr. POTTS. Mrs. Johnson and Mrs. Roberts.
Mr. BALL. Earlene Roberts?
Mr. POTTS. Yes; and they didn’t know a Lee Harvey Oswald or an Alex Hidell either one and they couldn’t–they just didn’t have any idea who we were talking about, so the television–it is a rooming house, and there was a television—-
Mr. BALL. Did you check their registration books?
Mr. POTTS. Yes, sir; we looked at the registration book–Senkel, I think, or Cunningham–well, we all looked through the registration book and there wasn’t anyone by that name, and the television was on in the living room. There’s an area there where the roomers sit, I guess it’s the living quarters–it flashed Oswald’s picture on there and one of the women, either Mrs. Roberts or Mrs. Johnson said, “That’s the man that lives here. That’s Mr. Lee—O.H. Lee.” She said, “His room is right here right off of the living room.”
Senkel or Cunningham, one of them, called the office and they said that Turner was en route with a search warrant and we waited there until 4:30 or 5 that afternoon. We got out there about 3.
Mr. BALL. You waited there in the home?
Mr. POTTS. We waited there in the living quarters.
Mr. BALL. You did not go into the small room that had been rented by Lee?
Mr. POTTS. No; we didn’t–we didn’t search the room at all until we got the warrant.
Mr. BALL. Who brought the warrant out?
Mr. POTTS. Judge David Johnston.

It’s one thing for one detective not to spot “Lee” if he was in the register, as OH Lee, or Lee Harvey Oswald, but for all three detectives to miss it as well? It doesn’t end there.

Arthur Johnson testified he’d spotted Oswald on TV. But Potts testified he was there when “one of the women” spotted Oswald on TV. Roberts testified “she” (Mrs. Johnson) saw Oswald on TV whilst Roberts was “unlocking doors” with police officers.

There is a pattern of indicating doors were almost unlocked and almost opened. Any belief in the story that they were watching TV at 1026 N. Beckley for the “oh, it’s OH Lee” moment also has to contend with this memo from Hubert and Griffin of March 6, 1964, to Rankin.

“Her [Earlene Roberts’] failure to notify the police of Oswald’s residence at the N. Beckley address. (Mrs. Johnson apparently called the police from a different address immediately upon seeing Oswald’s picture on TV but Roberts who was watching TV at the N. Beckley address, did not).”

With that, the TV part of the story collapses as well.

When was the OH Lee name made up? If so, when?

None of the attending parties on 22 November 1963, with the warrant at 4:30 pm, referred to OH Lee.

The testimony of Fay Turner, Vol VII, taken at 2:30 pm on April 3, 1964, made no mention of OH Lee. He actually referred, as did Earlene Roberts in her 5 December 1963 affidavit, to Lee Oswald.

Mr. TURNER. Well, Detective Moore was in the office. He and I got a car and drove down by the, back down to the sheriff’s office, and when we got there, Judge Johnston and one of the assistant district attorneys, Bill Alexander, was standing on the front steps waiting for us, because someone got ahold of him by phone and told them I was on the way.
Mr. BELIN. Was that Detective H.M. Moore?
Mr. TURNER. Yes, sir.
Me r. BELIN. Then what did you do?
Mr. TURNER. We went on over, the four of us–me, Detective Moore, Judge Johnston, and Mr. Alexander–went over to 1026 North Beckley where this Lee Oswald had a room in it.
Mr. BELIN. You went over there on November 22?
Mr. TURNER. Yes, sir.

Turner not only failed to refer to OH Lee, but he also used the emphasis “this Lee Oswald”. By 3 April 1964, Oswald was known globally as Lee Harvey Oswald.

Belin seems to have picked up on that slip and responded with yet another irrelevant change of the subject. It’s plainly obvious Turner is talking about the day of the assassination. Furthermore, Fay Turner was accompanied to 1026 by Officer Henry Moore; his testimony, Vol. VII, taken at 11:00 a.m. on April 3, 1964, again made no mention of OH Lee.

The same goes for the Judge, David L Johnson, who arrived at 1026 with Turner, Moore and Deputy DA Bill Alexander. He made no mention of OH Lee when he testified on 26 June 1964, Volume XV. It would be a highly relevant point of law to search the room of someone registered under a different name from that on the warrant. Alexander did not testify.

Earlene Roberts didn’t use the term OH Lee in her December 5, 1963, FBI affidavit. The comprehensive index of names which appear in FBI statements has hundreds of references, but the only reference to ‘OH’ Lee is for her statement. But in that affidavit, she said she took the reservation. In her Commission testimony, she had said Roberts did it. The affidavit makes no reference to any of the events at 1026 on 22 November.

Arthur Johnson is listed in the Earlene Roberts file, in a memorandum from Norman Redlich as making an FBI report to Agent “Gamberling” (Gemberling) on 30 November 1963, which refers to OH Lee., But that record seems to be missing. The Redlich memorandum refers to Arthur Johnson telling the FBI on seeing Oswald on TV, which runs counter to Warren Commission testimonies and the reports of police officers Potts and Senkel–which omit the FBI–only referring to Johnson telling the police at 1026.

So, by Monday, 25 November 1963, the name OH Lee had only appeared in the incident reports of Potts and Senkel and the FBI statement of Gladys Johnson.

The Potts and Senkel statements are far from contemporaneous. They are undated, are typed as one document and refer to Ruby shooting Oswald. That dates them to late 24 November at the earliest.

The Dallas Morning News made no mention of OH Lee on November 22, 23, or 24. Things stayed that way until April 1, 1964, when parties came to testify. By which time Roberts and Arthur Johnson had used it, and Gladys Johnson brought the slip but not the register, having changed her story about who had taken the booking.

Was Oswald even using an alias at 1026?

There are two possibilities. Oswald was registered at 1026 in his real name, or he was not.

To me, the best indication that he did use his own name is the fact that the name in the planted wallet was Lee Harvey Oswald. Then there is what I have set out above, which includes the phone call to Gladys Johnson from her daughter as Oswald was being arrested.

The only other evidence for an alias is Ruth Paine saying she called 1026 and asked for Lee Harvey Oswald, and they didn’t know who he was. But why give her the phone number if he was there under a false name? His daughter was born on 20 October 1963 whilst he was living there. A good reason to be contactable.

Why would the name OH Lee be made up? That’s simple, it would create a cover story for why those officers who first attended had not looked in the right place the first time around.

A benefit of pretending Oswald was using the name OH Lee is that it also creates smog, given that there was an unconnected Herbert Lee who had moved out. It seems to have confused Gladys Johnson when she testified. In short, there are no consistent accounts of who saw what and when, and who said what to whom. The only consistency is the irregularity.

Why did Earlene Roberts leave overnight?

The Warren Commission file makes clear that Griffin and Hubert not only didn’t believe Roberts but saw her as a potential conspirator. The result of the March 6, 1964, memorandum was that her testimony was delayed. It was meant to be April 1, 1964, the same day as the Johnsons.

Roberts disappeared from her employment at 1026 in the middle of the night, according to the testimony of Gladys Johnson. She put that departure as Saturday, 6 March, which is interestingly the same day as the Griffin and Hubert meeting and memorandum. That delay seems to have been covered by a pretext – in Gladys Johnson’s testimony – that she didn’t reply to the Commission request to attend as the Johnsons didn’t know where to send it.

To set Oswald up, with a visit by an imposter whilst he was already at or on the way to the Texas Theater by Rambler, and to enable evidence planting would need minor complicity from one person at 1026. Two extra keys. Is that what Earlene Roberts did for her sister, Bertha Cheek, as a favor for Jack Ruby? Neither woman would need to know what it was for.

For all the pressure put on Earlene Roberts, one fact seems to relieve her of any guilt. She revealed, by 29 November 1963 (Friday), what appears in this DPD note: she saw car 207 and heard it toot at the time the man she thought was Oswald was in the house. She said she was certain, as she knew the officers who used car 170 and wanted to check whether it was them. She had been a PBX telephone operator, a job that requires fast acting and a facility with numbers.

Who were the officers who first attended and searched Oswald’s room?

By exclusion, from my prior articles, it couldn’t have been any of the parties at the Texas Theater for the arrest of Oswald. That rules out Hutson and Baggett, who I believe were clean, plus Hawkins, McDonald, CT Walker, Westbrook or Hill. It would rationally be officers at the Tippit murder scene.

According to my prior articles, corrupted officers from the Tippit murder scene, bar Croy, are accounted for in the group at the Texas Theater, and corrupt officers would know that searching the room pre-emptively was a problem. Croy’s behavior cannot be explained from 12:30 pm to 2:00 pm. He said he drove one block from the Texas Theater at the time of Oswald’s arrest there. Was it his job to plant evidence in Oswald’s room, only to find that other police had already searched it?

According to Bill Simpich, Croy got the wallet from an unknown person, gave it to Sgt. Owens, gave it to Westbrook, who showed it to Agent Barrett. After the wallet was videotaped, it went back to Westbrook’s custody.

Officer Poe, who appears entirely regular in his behavior and statements, not least as he is relevant to the proof that Jerry Hill was lying (below), also said he was at the Texas Theater.

That leaves Officer Jez, his partner. This article on K&K by Jack Myers states.

“Before his death, Dallas Police Sergeant Leonard Jez was asked to comment on the presence of Oswald’s wallet at 10^th & Patton. Jez had been one of several officers officially present at 10^th & Patton, and whom Lt. Croy could not recall. Jez verified the existence of the wallet at the murder scene, he had seen it with his own eyes.

“Don’t let anybody bamboozle you,” stated Jez flatly. “That was Oswald’s wallet.” “

I note Warren Commission apologist Dale Myers has said he did not believe Jez. But I am more concerned with Myers not commenting that it is Sgt. Hill, Captain Westbrook and Sgt. Croy, who are not believable.

By DPD patrol radio, Jez and Poe arrived first at the Tippit murder scene. Then, inside a minute of that, Officer Owens arrived, who said he carried Westbrook and Deputy DA Bill Alexander. But Jerry Hill said he arrived with Owens and was talking to witnesses when he saw Poe’s car pull up. An impossibility if Hill had arrived with Owens.

I note Dale Myers was given access to particular DPD officers in his work to prove Oswald killed Tippit. But I find considerable overlap between those Officers with gross inconsistencies in their accounts and those he interviewed. Thus, Myers seems to dismiss other officers’ accounts, whilst not dealing with the many problems with those he was given access to.

My personal conclusion is that Hill arrived in the same car 207 he’d left City Hall in to arrive at the Tippit murder scene, having delivered a decoy for the ambush of Tippit, via 1026 N Beckley. Thus, it was the decoy Roberts saw at 1:00 pm, not Oswald. Westbrook took car 207 back to the depository and then arrived again with Stringer and reporter Jim Ewell. Westbrook then made pointless patrol radio calls around 1:30 pm, which served to indicate he’d only then arrived. However that is betrayed by the fact – which he went to great lengths to cover up – that Westbrook discovered the fugitive’s jacket just before 1:20pm, called out on the radio by another officer.

Further, this DPD record of June 1964 states “his records further indicated that Patrolman JM Valentine was the sole occupant of car Number 207 on November 22, 1963”. But that’s demonstrably false. By the account of reporter Jim Ewell, he arrived at the Depository building with Valentine and Hill. TV footage shows Hill getting out of that car with “207” on its door.

A small clique of Officers, perhaps complicit in the impromptu murder of Tippit, would obviously have a position to protect. Officer Jez would not.

Click here to read part 1.

June 18, 2025

Oswald, Beckley and the Tippit Wallet, Part 1

John Washburn explores the evidence that the authorities knew who Oswald was and that he was at the Beckley Street rooming house way before the official story says they knew it. In addition, they were there much earlier also.

Oswald, Beckley and the Tippit Wallet, Part 1

By John Washburn

Some researchers have suggested Lee Harvey Oswald did not live at 1026 N Beckley, the rooming house owned by Arthur and Gladys Johnson, with a live-in housekeeper, Earlene Roberts. Roberts is the sister of Bertha Cheek, a business associate of Jack Ruby.

I have enumerated a quantity of false testimony and falsified documents in my prior articles for this site. And with no presentation to the Warren Commission of the guest register for 1026, I find that not an unreasonable position. The only paper evidence presented of his residing there is this slip of paper presented as an Exhibit with the name “OH Lee” and the words “OUT” and “Room 0”. However, I set out here why I believe Oswald was living at 1026 N Beckley, but not in Room 0.

In doing that, I set out the necessity for a story being manufactured, whilst the components of that story do not match the facts. Something which recurs in the Kennedy and Tippit cases. All that is needed to establish that the official line was untrue is a careful read of Warren Commission testimonies and affidavits.

“Room 0”

Room 0 was a minuscule room off the TV room of 1026 N. Beckley. Designed to be a closet-library with sliding doors and no locks. It had a bed in it because the housekeeper used it for her grandchildren if they came to stay.

The normal rooms at 1026, numbered 1-17, were located in an annex over a garage, two on the first floor by the living quarters, and the rest in a basement. The place is now a registered monument.

The official line was that Oswald:

was staying in “Room 0” from 14 October 1963 until 22 November because the place had been full when he was looking for a room.
was using the name “OH Lee”

And the police said they:

didn’t arrive at 1026 until 3:00 pm, 22 November, after Oswald was arrested and held at City Hall
needed a picture of Oswald to appear on TV after 3:00 pm for the connection with “OH Lee” to be made, and thence Room 0
didn’t search any rooms in 1026 other than Room 0

The search is the only part of the account that is true. Room 0 wasn’t searched until after 4:30, as a warrant was obtained, which was attended by a judge, the deputy DA Bill Alexander, and Detectives Turner and Moore.

The “OH Lee” paper slip – no register – and not full

There was a guest register for 1026, as owner Gladys Johnson said so in testifying on 1 April 1964. Volume X.

Mr. BALL. How many tenants did you have in October last year?
Mrs. JOHNSON. You know, I’m sorry I didn’t bring my register. I couldn’t tell you exactly; I imagine I had about 10 or 12.
Mr. BALL. Was it full?
Mrs. JOHNSON. No; I don’t–I most always have vacancies.
Mr. BALL. You do?
Mrs. JOHNSON. I have had more even since this happened.

With that, she destroyed the line that Oswald had to take the room he took because all of the 17 normal rooms were taken.

This is the exchange from the point she handed over the slip with OH Lee on it.

Mr. Ball. We will make a picture of this and give it back to you.

Mrs. Johnson. May I have something to erase this November 13, 15—I got that wrong, anyway. I was looking at the calendar and this, I was thinking it was November 13 that he left—he left my place on a Wednesday before this assassination on Friday.

Mr. Ball. That was the last time you saw him?

Mrs. Johnson. Yeah; the last time I saw him was on a Wednesday but my housekeeper seen him on a Friday morning right after this assassination, he came by the house hurriedly.

Something else is amiss. She said, “he left – he left my place”, but Ball in his follow-up replaces the definite proposition that he’d checked out, with the possibility she merely didn’t see him.

Gladys had another document with her, which she first offered to erase, and she then referred to dates that don’t appear anywhere on the O H Lee slip. Or anywhere else in her testimony.

She appears to be backtracking, having let another cat out of the bag. She was referring to someone who checked out on Wednesday, 13 November 1963, not someone she last saw on Wednesday, 20 November. The only thing keeping her testimony on track is Ball helping it along.

On the Education Forum, Bill Simpich has adduced evidence that there was a guest, Mr Herbert Leon Lee. That is supported by the FBI tracing calls made from the payphone at the gas station opposite 1026 to the Lee household in Shreveport. He appears to have been a genuine person (b 1941, d 2009). The FBI records show calls were made before Oswald moved in.

Different room – searched too soon?

I propose that Oswald did live at 1026 N Beckley, and Herbert Lee was an unconnected person who moved out on November 13, 1963. However, I propose that neither Oswald, Herbert Lee, nor anyone else was using Room 0.

I conclude the story of Room 0 had to be made up because Oswald’s actual room had been searched by regular officers very soon after Officer Tippit was shot, but nothing was found in it. Because the evidence intended to be planted in Oswald’s room – communist literature and a gun holster – hadn’t been planted by then. If all guest rooms were already searched, there would only be one solution: to pretend he’d been in the only place not searched.

That may seem a bizarre thing to say 60 years on. But no more bizarre than proposing that an ex-Marine, in his early 20’s was living in a minuscule room (1/3 of the size of the ones for rent), with sliding doors and no locks, opening into communal areas, with a connecting door to the bedroom of the 58 year old housekeeper Earlene Roberts. Now hidden by a curtain.

As for Oswald: He was supposed to be of low intelligence on the one hand, whilst on the other had managed to learn fluent Russian from a Russian guide. It’s that account that is preposterous.

That story gets worse with the additional excuse that when normal rooms did become available, he decided to stay in it regardless.

timbush1 1

In CE2830, Floyd DeGraffenreid – a resident at 1026 – said he only saw Oswald no more than 4-5 times and mainly in the TV room. But if Oswald was in that small room, he would be conspicuous every time he was in and out. The small room is little more than a closet of the TV room.

The time problem – masking the first searches

The official line was that the register was examined for the name Lee Harvey Oswald, but the room was not searched until after 4:30 pm. And only then because Oswald’s face had appeared on TV, because he was using the false name OH Lee. But OH Lee is merely the converse of LeeHO. It wouldn’t be difficult to make the connection with only 10 or so guests: Face on TV or no face on TV.

Any police turning up with 1) a description of the person of interest running from the Tippit murder scene, and 2) the name Lee Harvey Oswald, would have at least two rooms of immediate interest, Oswald’s as well as recent guest Herbert Lee. But it is clear from various testimonies that the first round of police arrived much earlier than 3:00 pm, closer to 1:45 pm. That was before Oswald was arrested at the Texas Theater at 1:50 pm, arriving at City Hall after 2:00 pm.

The earlier police came as a result of the shooting of Officer Tippit. This is from the testimony of Arthur Carl Johnson, Gladys Johnson’s husband, taken on 1 April 1964:

Mr. BELIN. Could you describe how you came to find out that this man had another name other than O. H. Lee?
Mr. JOHNSON. Well, it was when the officers came looking for him.
Mr. BELIN. When was this?
Mr. JOHNSON. Uh–after Tippit was shot, the police—-
Mr. BELIN. This would have been on November 22, 1963.
Mr. JOHNSON. Yes.

Belin–with that interruption by stating the obvious–was changing the subject, stopping what else was going to come out.

But the time of day does emerge from what followed. Note the CBS radio announcement at approximately 1:25 pm of Kennedy’s death was earlier than the television announcement of approximately 1:35 pm (CST). The earlier radio time can be verified because BBC TV London was ahead of US television, getting the news out live at 7:27 pm GMT (1:27 pm CST) as it monitored live radio transmissions globally.

Mr. BELIN. He [a person Downtown] had heard over the radio that the President had been shot?
Mr. JOHNSON. Yes.
Mr. BELIN. And then, did you turn on your radio?
Mr. JOHNSON. Yes. We don’t have one there in the place, so we went out in the car and sat there in the car and listened.
Mr. BELIN. All right. And was it while you were sitting in the car that you heard that the President had died?
Mr. JOHNSON. Yes; we didn’t leave until we–it was announced that he was dead.
Mr. BELIN. How soon after that announcement did you leave?
Mr. JOHNSON. I’d say 5 minutes.
Mr. BELIN. All right. Then, how long did it take you to get to 1026 North Beckley?
Mr. JOHNSON. It takes us about 5 minutes.
Mr. BELIN. So that about 10 minutes after you heard on the radio that the President had been shot, you arrived with your wife at 1026 North Beckley?

And Gladys Johnson said:

“So I came from the restaurant, I guess 1 or 1:30, and these officers were there 1:30 or 2, something like that, anyway, it was after this assassination, and as I drove in, well, the officers were there and they told me that they was looking for this character and I told them I didn’t think I had anyone by that name there but we went through the register carefully two or three times and there was no Oswald there and I had two new tenants, rather new tenants, so we had carried them around the house to show them and we was going to start in the new tenants’ rooms and my husband was sitting in the living room and seen this picture flash on the television and he said, “Please go around that house and tell him it was this guy that lived in this room here” and it was O. H. Lee.

Earlene Roberts, in her 5 December 1963 affidavit for the FBI, said this:

“Oswald went out the front door. A moment later I looked out the window. I saw Lee Oswald standing on the curb at the bus stop just to the right, and on the same side of the street as our house. I just glanced out the window that once.

“I don’t know how long Lee Oswald stood at the curb nor did I see which direction he went when he left there.

“About thirty minutes later three Dallas policemen came to the house looking for Lee Harvey Oswald. We didn’t know who Lee Harvey Oswald was until sometime later his picture was flashed on television. I then let the Dallas policemen in the room occupied by Lee Oswald. While the Dallas police were searching the room two FBI agents came in.”

By that, the Dallas police arrived around 1:35 pm, and were asking for Lee Harvey Oswald, a person she refers to as “Lee Oswald”. She made no mention of OH Lee. The room was searched, and the FBI was there too. There is no mention of the judge or the DA with the warrant (which occurred around three hours later), and warrants are not needed in cases of hot pursuit.

There is then her Warren Commission testimony, Vol. VI.

Mr. BALL. Can you tell me what time it was approximately that Oswald came in?
Mrs. ROBERTS. Now, it must have been around 1 o’clock, or maybe a little after, because it was after President Kennedy had been shot-what time I wouldn’t want to say because…
Mr. BALL. How long did he stay in the room?
Mr. ROBERTS. Oh, maybe not over 3 or 4 minutes-just long enough, I guess, to go in there and get a jacket and put it on and he went out zipping it.
Mr. BALL. You recall he went out zipping it-was he running or walking?
Mrs. ROBERTS. He was walking fast-he was making tracks pretty fast.
Mr. BALL. Did he say anything to you as he went out?
Mrs. ROBERTS. No, sir.
Mr. BALL. Did you say anything to him?
Mrs. ROBERTS. Probably wouldn’t have gotten no answer.

Johnson again:

BELIN. Had this man, O. H. Lee, was he there when you got there?
Mr. JOHNSON. No; he had been there–just–uh–before we got home.
Mr. BELIN. Did Mrs. Roberts tell you that he had?
Mr. JOHNSON. She told us that he come in and got a–uh–little coat or something and just walked in his room and right back out the door.

All of that is a significant departure from the official line that the police arrived at 3:00 pm.

The disappearing wallet at the Tippit murder scene

The thing that needs to be factored in, which can explain these anomalies, is the discovery of a wallet that can be seen in WFAA footage of the Tippit murder scene. This footage, the “Reiland film”, shows the wallet being examined with Sgt. Croy and Captain Westbrook present.

The Reiland footage was shot between 1:30 pm and 1:45 pm at the latest. In my Death of Tippit article, I put the coverage of the wallet as shown in the film as around 1:35 pm. Since it was before Westbrook headed to the Texas Theatre for the arrest of Oswald, but after the TV crew had been filming searches on East Jefferson just before 1:30 pm.

The drive from the Tippit murder scene to 1026 would be around 3 minutes.

If that wallet contained the 1026 Beckley address, and the name “Lee Harvey Oswald”, then conscientious officers could and should have headed there in less than 5 minutes of it being ‘found’.

The police at the Tippit murder scene not only had the description of someone who looked like Oswald running from that scene, but a person similar to that had been seen by Earlene Roberts entering and leaving 1026 around 1:00 pm. Added to which, the person running from the Tippit murder scene ditched a jacket, and Roberts had seen the man she described as Lee Oswald putting one on.

It wouldn’t need a photograph on television at some point after 3:00 pm to hone in on possible people of interest at 1026. There were 17 rooms and only 10 or so guests.

The wallet disappeared from the police record and only reappeared publicly when people spotted it in the Reiland footage in the 1990s.

What went wrong

I believe the wallet is essential to understanding what really went on at 1026 in the afternoon of 22 November 1963.

If that wallet was planted prematurely – meaning it was planted in an improvised rush to set Oswald up for the impromptu killing of Tippit at 410 E. 10th – then the disastrous consequences of that would then require unpicking.

That disaster was a search of Oswald’s actual room, by regular police officers in hot pursuit from 410 E 10^th, where nothing unusual was found. Likewise, other rooms.

By that scenario, conspirators and complicit elements of the Dallas Police would be so far down the road of setting up Oswald as a patsy that they had to have him living there with the incriminating evidence.

That would require a clean-up operation,

covering up that regular officers had been there,
the control of 1026 by ‘irregular’ officers so that items could appear in Room 0, the only room not searched,
creating a fictional reason why Oswald was in Room 0,
creating a reason why it took so long to identify Oswald being in Room 0 (the OH Lee false name invention),
delaying the search of Room 0 until it could be searched with something to find,
creating a story/pretext to coerce Earlene Roberts and the Johnsons into an alternative account.

False lead

Warren Commission Counsels Leon Hubert and Burt Griffin did not believe the Dallas Police sent by Captain Fritz (see incident reports of attending officers W.E. Potts and B. L. Senkel) could have arrived at 1026 at 3:00 pm, having been sent from City Hall at 2:40 pm, after Oswald’s arrest, without some form of prior knowledge.

That was because the official story was that the lead to 1026 N Beckley did not come from Oswald. It occurred after the Dallas City police and Dallas County Sheriff (jurisdiction over the County of Dallas as well as the City of Dallas) had arrived at the Oswalds’ lodgings at Ruth Paine’s house in Irving after 3:30 pm. Ruth Paine said she only had a telephone number for Oswald.

The police and sheriffs then used the telephone company to trace the address.

Ruth Paine also made the odd statement, “I was expecting you,” when the police and sheriffs arrived. When asked why she expected them, she said that Lee Oswald had worked at the scene of the shooting. (Testimony of Officer Guy Rose (8 April 1964).

But his name hadn’t been released, nor had a photograph. She had been watching TV. It is unlikely that Oswald’s face had appeared on her TV by then. What the Commission missed–and unfortunately, Hubert and Griffin did not interview Roberts and the Johnsons–is that the doubtful reason for Potts and Senkel arriving at 3:00 was not the only irregularity. And in fact, Gladys Johnson had told her daughter prior to 2:00 PM that the FBI and Dallas Police had already been at Beckley looking for Oswald. (Sara Peterson and K. W. Zachry, The Lone Star Speaks, p. 175)

Warrants

Oswald was still alive until Sunday, November 24th. From the perspective of the Johnsons and Roberts on late Friday, 22 November, he would face trial. And they all would believe Oswald did it.

I propose that complicit police officers could use a technical argument to get those people to go along with the fiction that Oswald was in Room 0. Because it was the only one that hadn’t been searched without a warrant.

Warrants are not required when police are in hot pursuit. Warrants are required for searches after a suspect is arrested. That distinction wouldn’t be known by many members of the public.

This – invented by me – phrase might work as simple pressure with a bit of guilt, too.

“We have a problem. Mrs Johnson and Mrs Roberts in giving access without a search warrant have prejudiced the evidence we did find in Mr.Oswald’s room. We therefore need to say we found it in the small room, which wasn’t searched, until after we had obtained a proper warrant. A minor technicality. We will also need to say we didn’t look in that room because he was using the name OH Lee. By the way we must not mention we searched any other rooms as we didn’t have a warrant.”

There was clearly something wrong with what the Johnsons and Roberts were saying. They weren’t very good at lying. Understandable if they were being fed a story to tell without all of the reasoning behind it.

Roberts was clearly getting pressure from all directions.

Mr. BALL. Why to your sorrows?

Mrs. ROBERTS. Well, he was registered as O. H. Lee and I come to find out he was Oswald and I wish I had never known it.

Mr. BALL. Why?

Mrs. ROBERTS. Well, they put me through the third degree.

Mr. BALL. Who did?

Mrs. ROBERTS. The FBI, Secret Service, Mr. Will Fritz’ men [Dallas Homicide] and Bill Decker’s [County Sheriff].

As well as pressure on her from at least four agencies, her answer seems to have a Freudian slip.

Wish she’d not known what? Everyone knew Kennedy and Tippit were killed. Worrying about what name Oswald used when he registered in the overall scheme of things is trivial.

Surely the sorrow and hassle were from him being there for six weeks, having supposedly murdered the President and a police officer.

Unless there wasn’t a false name, but she was pressured to go along with it as an invention.

But in her 5 December 1963 affidavit for the FBI, she didn’t show any anxiety about the name OH Lee, as she didn’t even refer to it. She indicated she knew him as Lee Oswald, but refers to the police looking for Lee Harvey Oswald. Not using one’s middle name is not using a false name.

Why was the guest register never presented as evidence? I suggest that it is obvious. Not only would it show that 1026 hadn’t been full. It would show Lee Oswald registered in his own name.

From examination of testimonies, there are so many areas of sensitivity, time inconsistency, over-embellishment, non-sequiturs and Freudian slips in the testimonies of Roberts, Arthur and Gladys Johnson, that everything about the official story falls over.

The “OH Lee” alias is now an established part of the Oswald as a lone shooter narrative. But the Dallas Morning News of 23, 24, and 25 November 1963 makes no mention of it.

That suggests that the story didn’t need to exist publicly until after the Katzenbach Memorandum of 25 November 1963, which gave the covert objective of the Warren Commission as,

“The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin; that he did not have confederates who are still at large; and that evidence was such that he would have been convicted at trial.”

The rest of this article examines, in the light of the above, just how badly the official line plays out in testimonies taken by Counsel Belin and Ball.

A particular issue is whether rooms were opened or not with keys – relevant to the warrant matter. But alas, Room 0 doesn’t have a lock. The library it was designed to be didn’t need one.

(Part 2 coming soon)

Click here to read part 2.

June 17, 2025

The JFK Files Volume II: Pieces of the Assassination Puzzle

Jeff Meek is the only American journalist writing a regular column on the JFK case. This is his second collection of his work on important subjects like Gaeton Fonzi and Jim Gocheanaur.

The JFK Files Volume II: Pieces of the Assassination Puzzle

By Jeffrey Meek

Jeffrey Meek is the only writer I know who is allowed to pen a regular column on the JFK case. He writes for the Hot Springs Village Voice newspaper. He has now published his second collection of articles from that paper and added two long essays he wrote for the new version of George magazine. I have previously reviewed his first collection on this site. (Click here for that critique https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/the-jfk-files-pieces-of-the-assassination-puzzle)

The main title of this anthology is The JFK Files, Part 2. This second collection leads off with an interview of the late Jim Gochenaur. People who have watched Oliver Stone’s JFK Revisited will know who Jim was. Jim was interviewed by the Church Committee. As the witness says here, and he said to Stone off-camera, that interview transcript went missing. When he arrived in Washington, he was first interviewed by staffers Paul Wallach and Dan Dwyer, and then by Senator Richard Schweiker himself. Schweiker, of course, made up half of the subcommittee running the inquiry into the JFK case for Senator Frank Church. The other half is Senator Gary Hart.

What makes that loss even odder is that the man he was interviewed about, Secret Service agent Elmer Moore, was also brought in for an interview. The transcript of that interview is available. Jim met Moore back in early 1970 in Seattle when he was doing an academic assignment concerning the JFK case. The following year, he went to visit Moore in his office. Moore agreed to talk to him about his Secret Service inquiry into the JFK case, which began about 72 hours after Kennedy was killed. But he would only speak to him on condition that he took no notes or made no tapes, and he understood that if anything he said appeared in public, Moore would deny it. (p. 5)

Since most of this site’s readers have seen Stone’s documentary, I will not repeat the things that Jim said on camera for this review. There are some things that Stone and I did not cover in that interview (we did that one jointly). For example, Jim told Jeff that Moore considered George DeMohrenschildt—nicknamed The Baron–a key player in the case. But unfortunately for Moore, he could not get access to him once President Johnson put the FBI in charge of the investigation. Moore also told Jim that he could not understand why Captain Will Fritz did not make a record of his questioning of Oswald, since he knew that there were two stenographers on hand for the Dallas Police. (p. 6). Moore also had a print copy of one of the infamous backyard photographs of Oswald with a rifle and handgun. Jim noted that one could easily see a line through Oswald’s chin. I don’t have to inform the reader why that is of central importance.

Jim was also interviewed by the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). Strangely, that was only a phone interview. Even though the HSCA lasted much longer than the Church Committee and was a direct investigation of the JFK case, the Church Committee was chartered with only inquiring about the performance of the FBI and CIA for the Warren Commission. But further, Jim said they were more interested in another acquaintance he made in Seattle, namely, former FBI agent Carver Gayton. Gayton had told him that he knew James Hosty–whom he met after the assassination. The former Dallas agent told Carver that Oswald was an FBI informant. (p. 11) This action by the HSCA is odd since Jim always insisted that Moore was a more important witness than Gayton was. This two-part interview with Jim Gochenaur is one of the volume’s three or four high points. Made all the more important and poignant since Jim has passed.

II

Another interesting interview that Jeff did was with a man named Lee Sanders. Sanders was on the Dallas Police force at the time they were participating in a reconstruction of the assassination. This was for the acoustics testing that the HSCA did towards the end of their term. Sanders was involved with crowd and traffic control during a five-day assignment. Live ammunition was being used in these tests. (p. 49)

Sanders said that the DPD’s best marksman, a man named Jerry Compton, took part in the tests. He and an FBI sharpshooter took their shots from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. Between test firings, Compton would come down out of the building. Sanders overheard Compton say that they were having problems repeating what the Warren Commission said Lee Oswald had done. As Meek writes, “The scuttlebutt from other officers was that there must have been other shooters.” (p. 49). Sanders then added, “We just didn’t think that one guy could have done this. We didn’t say that in public because it wouldn’t have been good for your career, not if you wanted to stay in good stature with the department.”

Meek interviewed former Commission counsel Burt Griffin about his 2023 book, JFK, Oswald and Ruby: Politics, Prejudice and Truth. As an interviewing journalist, Meek is rather merciful with Griffin. His technique was to let him burn himself. Griffin tells Jeff that Jack Ruby shot Oswald out of anti-Semitism. He wanted to be seen as an avenger due to the infamous black bordered ‘Wanted for Treason’ ad in the papers. That was signed by a Bernard Weissman. This is Griffin’s money quote about Jack Ruby: “He was convinced at the time, and for the rest of his life, that antisemites were involved, with the goal being to blame the Jews for the president’s assassination.” (p. 56) Griffin properly labels this as his conclusion. He then adds that Jews were being blamed for the attack on General Walker in April of 1963. He then states, “So, antisemitism was an important factor in Dallas at the time.”

Griffin then continues in this nonsensical vein by saying that there is no evidence that anyone else was involved in the JFK assassination except Oswald. He then adds the antique adage that the Commissioners always use: that the Commission’s goal was to locate a conspiracy. And if he could have done so he would have had an acclaimed political career. Meek does not say if he giggled during these comments. I assume he did not. His goal was to keep Griffin spouting these absurdities, which Griffin did by using Howard Brennan as a reliable eyewitness to the assassination.

Something puzzling comes up next. It appears to be Griffin who surfaces the fact that the Commission has Jack Ruby entering the basement through the Main Street ramp. The book says that Sgt. Patrick Dean was the head of security, and Dean said no, Ruby did not come down that ramp. ( Meek, p. 57) But if one reads the Warren Commission volumes, one will see that it was Dean who was the first person to say that Ruby proclaimed he did come down the Main Street ramp. And this was right after the shooting. This information is also contained in Paul Abbott’s recent book about the shooting of Oswald by Ruby. (Death to Justice, pp. 226-27) In fact, Abbott implies that Dean might have manufactured this quote by Ruby since, initially at least, no one else heard it. It did not catch on as a cover story for the DPD until November 30^th. (ibid) In fact, according to one disputed journalistic account, Dean even said he saw Ruby come down the ramp, which was not possible. (Abbott, p. 229).

But here it states that Dean said that Ruby did not come down that ramp. It was then this dispute that caused a blow-up between Griffin and Dean. (Meek, p. 57). But yet in Seth Kantor’s book on Ruby he has excerpts from some of Griffin’s contemporaneous memos. This is what one of them says:

If Dean is not telling the truth concerning the Ruby statement about coming down the Main Street ramp, it is important to determine why Dean decided to tell a falsehood about the Main Street ramp. (p. 288)

In that memo, Griffin wrote that he thought Ruby came in some other way. And that Dean, who was responsible for security that day, “is trying to conceal his dereliction of duty.” In fact, Griffin even theorized that Dean “simply stated to Ruby he came down the Main Street ramp.” Evidently, through the intervening decades, something got lost in translation or dissipated down the memory hole.

III

One of the most fascinating tales in the book was not directly told to Meek. He relates it from an MSNBC show in 2013, an interview with HSCA staffer Christine Neidermeier. She said there was a lot of pressure for the committee to downplay any talk about conspiracy. It also became clear that it was going to be difficult getting straight answers from the CIA, and to a lesser extent, the FBI. (p. 69)

She then related that she got a call from a man she thought was an FBI agent. Because he seemed to know everything she had told another agent. One of the things she said was that she leaned toward the conspiracy verdict since the HSCA could not duplicate what Oswald did in their rifle tests. The caller then revealed that he knew all about her classes at Georgetown, and also some of her friends. He then said that, with such a bright future ahead of her, maybe she should rethink her position. Niedermeier said this call rocked her back on her heels.

Three other highlights of the book are interviews by Meek with Morris Wolff, Dan Hardway and Marie Fonzi.

Wolff was a Yale Law School graduate who was employed by Attorney General Bobby Kennedy in his Office of Legal Counsel, where he worked on civil rights, and also contributed to the famous Peace Speech at American University. (Meek, pp 74-75) According to Morris, he was also a bicycle messenger between the AG and the president when Bobby wanted to get around J. Edgar Hoover. After JFK was killed, Bobby suggested that he go over to the staff of moderate Senate Republican John Sherman Cooper. According to Morris, when Cooper served on the Warren Commission, he was strongly opposed to the Single Bullet Theory. (p. 71)

The interview with Dan Hardway was for a three-part review of the investigations of the JFK case by the federal government. HSCA staffer Dan tells Jeff that, at first, he and his partner Ed Lopez were stationed at CIA headquarters and allowed to have almost unrestricted access to requested files. That changed in 1978 when Scott Breckenridge, the main CIA liaison, told the HSCA that they were bringing in a new helper, namely George Joannides. George was coming out of retirement. And he assured the HSCA that he had nothing to do with the JFK case back in the sixties. (p. 150)

As most everyone knows, this was false. Joannides was a CIA propaganda officer who was instrumental in running the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil (DRE) faction of anti-Castro Cubans in New Orleans. And they had many interactions with Oswald in the summer of 1963. It was around the arrival of Joannides that Dan and Ed were moved out of the CIA offices and into a new building with a safe, and then a safe inside the larger safe. They would now have to wait for files and would get them with missing sentences. They would then have to turn over both the files and their notes into the safe at night. This might indicate that the pair were getting too close to Oswald’s association with the CIA and what really happened in Mexico City, which were the subjects they were working on.

IV

The closing three-part essay is an exploration of the life and career of the late Gaeton Fonzi. It is greatly aided by the extensive cooperation Meek had with his widow, Marie. Gaeton Fonzi began as a journalist, first for the Delaware County Daily Times and then for Philadelphia magazine. It was his meetings in Philadelphia with first Vince Salandria and then Arlen Specter that got him interested in the JFK assassination. After consulting with Vince, he was prepared to ask Specter some difficult questions about the Single Bullet Theory, which was the backbone of the Warren Report. Fonzi was troubled by Specter’s halting replies to his pointed questions. (pp. 172-73). He then wrote an article about this for Philadelphia called “The Warren Commission, The Truth and Arlen Specter.”

In 1972, Gaeton moved south to Florida. He began working for Miami Monthly and Gold Coast. In 1975, he got a phone call that would have a great impact on his life and career. Senator Richard Schweiker was from the Philadelphia area and had apparently heard about Fonzi’s article about Specter. He and Senator Gary Hart now made up a subcommittee of the Church Committee. Their function was to evaluate the performance of the CIA and FBI in aiding the Warren Commission. Schweiker was inviting Gaeton to join as chief investigator, which he did.

In only one year, that committee made some compelling progress. The combination of their discoveries and the broadcast showing on ABC of the Zapruder film helped cause the HSCA to be formed. Fonzi continued his work there and was hot on the trail of CIA officer David Phillips. That pursuit actually began under Schweiker. And when the HSCA began, the first Deputy Counsel on the Kennedy side, Robert Tanenbaum, went to visit the senator. After a general discussion, Schweiker asked Tanenbaum’s assistant to leave the room. The senator then opened a drawer and pulled out a folder made up largely of Fonzi’s work. He handed it to Tanenbaum and said, “The CIA killed President Kennedy.” (click here https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/robert-tanenbaum-interviewed-by-probe) That file is what got Fonzi the job with the HSCA.

As we all know, once Tanenbaum and Chief Counsel Richard Sprague were forced to resign, the writing was on the wall for that committee. And Fonzi did a very nice job outlining this in his memorable book, The Last Investigation. That book was presaged by a long article Fonzi did for Washingtonian magazine, which had a significant impact on the critical community. (p. 174) Fonzi clearly implied in both the article and the book that the findings in the HSCA report were not supported by the research that the committee conducted. When the Assassination Records Review Board ordered the HSCA files declassified, this was proven out in spades.

A column that Meek apparently got a lot of reaction to involved an interview with this reviewer. It was about John Kennedy’s evolving foreign policy views from 1951 until his death. This included his visit to Saigon and his signal 1957 speech on the Senate floor about the French crisis in Algeria. (p. 103) No speech Kennedy made up to that time elicited such a nationwide reaction as the Algeria address. The Africans now looked to Kennedy as their unofficial ambassador. Meek follows through on this with the Congo crisis: how Kennedy favored Patrice Lumumba, while Belgium and the CIA opposed him. This was at least partly the cause of Lumumba’s death in January of 1961, about 72 hours before Kennedy was inaugurated.

There are two essays that I find problematic. The first is with Antoinette Giancana, daughter of Chicago Mafia chieftain Sam Giancana. As I have been at pains to demonstrate, the Mob had nothing to do with either Kennedy’s primary win in West Virginia or the result in the general election in Illinois. Dan Fleming proved the former in his important book Kennedy vs Humphrey, West Virginia, 1960. He conducted extensive interviews and found no evidence of any Mafia influence on anyone. And he also outlines three official investigations of that election, on a state level, on a federal level, and one by Senator Barry Goldwater, which all came up empty. As per Illinois, Professor John Binder did a statistical study showing that, in the wards controlled by Giancana, not only did the results not show his support for Kennedy, they indicated the contrary: that he might have discouraged voting for candidate Kennedy. That essay first appeared in Public Choice, and it has been preserved at Research Gate.

The second essay I find problematic is the one dealing with the whole Ricky White/Roscoe white imbroglio from the early nineties. In August of 1990, Ricky White was presented as the son of the Grassy Knoll shooter, namely Roscoe White. Roscoe was also supposed to have killed Patrolman J. D. Tippit. Meek bends over backwards to be fair to Ricky White. I will not take up space to deal with all the problems with this story. But for a contrary view, I include a link to Gary Cartwright’s 1990 article critiquing this concept. (https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.7560/711990-014/html?lang=en)

All in all, Jeff Meek has done some good work. We are lucky to have him toiling in the vineyards of the JFK case oh so many years afterwards. I hope he keeps it up.

May 5, 2025

District	Officer/s	Reason for leaving district
21	D.P. Tucker and C.R. Graham	TSBD
22	LL Hill	TSBD
23	BE Barnes	Parkland

70s to 90s	Lt. Fulgham	Out of State
70s	Sgt. CB Owens*	TSBD
71-75	Wise, Cox and Sebastian	Allocated bike duties
76	HH Horn	TSBD
77	WE Smith	TSBD
78	JD Tippit	In 108 and 91
79	BW Anglin	TSBD
80s & 90s	Sgt. HF Davis	Open question
81-82	JL Angell	In 91
83-84	RL Gross	Went to Trade Mart
85-86	RW Walker	Remained
87	RC Nelson	In 108
88-89	Not known	Not known
91-92	WD Mentzel	In 91
93-94	HM Ashcraft	TSBD
95-96	MN McDonald/TR Gregory	TSBD
97-98	Not known	Not known
108-109	OH Ludwig	Allocated to guard hotel

Tag: DALLAS POLICE

The Depleted Patrols in Dallas on November 22, 1963

How Did Oswald Get the Wrong Bus Transfer? – Part 2

How Did Oswald Get the Wrong Bus Transfer? – Part 1

Will Fritz’s Freudian slip: Why was a bus transfer for the number 23 Lakewood Line found on Oswald if he’d been on a number 30 Marsalis Line bus?

Larry Crafard – The Leads the Warren Commission Lost – Part 2

By John Washburn

LEAD V

Crafard’s alibi for November 22

LEAD VI

Crafard and the police badge

LEAD VII

The incredible journey. How did Crafard get to Michigan?

Larry Crafard – The Leads the Warren Commission Lost – Part 1

By John Washburn

Crafard was mistaken for Oswald

An attorney saw ‘Oswald’/Crafard at the Carousel Club on 4 October 1963 discussing a plot to kill Governor Connally.

Crafard ‘s tall tales about when he arrived in Dallas, and his work after he left the military.

Crafard didn’t hitch to Dallas or arrive with the State Fair. He was driven from Memphis by a staff sergeant of an airbase.

The Threats to Kill Oswald – Part 2

By Paul Abbott

Threading the Threat Needle

The Threats to Kill Oswald – Part 1

By Paul Abbott

The Curry Storm

Oswald, Beckley and the Wallet, Part 2

By John Washburn

Would Dallas Police make things up?

The searches, and full or not full

When was the OH Lee name made up? If so, when?

Was Oswald even using an alias at 1026?

Why did Earlene Roberts leave overnight?

Who were the officers who first attended and searched Oswald’s room?

Oswald, Beckley and the Tippit Wallet, Part 1

By John Washburn

“Room 0”

The “OH Lee” paper slip – no register – and not full

Different room – searched too soon?

The time problem – masking the first searches

The disappearing wallet at the Tippit murder scene

What went wrong

False lead

Warrants

The JFK Files Volume II: Pieces of the Assassination Puzzle

By Jeffrey Meek

II

III

IV