The Harold Weisberg Archive



11/22[?]/63 [Time not given.] Interview with Mrs. Earlene Roberts regarding Oswald's hasty visit to his room:

"… He rushed in in his shirt sleeves and got a short coat … a short white coat ... he went on back outside in a hurry. When I looked out the window he was standing at the bus stop -- there's a bus stop right outside the door."

"Waiting for a bus?"

"I suppose so, but I didn't see him board a bus."

[From notes taken from The Fateful Hours, KLIF record isued earlier in the year]

11/22/63 Dallas - Just before 7 p.m., Capt. Will Fritz said Oswald had been identified from a police lineup as the man who shot patrolman J. D. Tippett. He said an eyewitness made the identification. AP, 7:51 p.m. CST

11/22/63 Voice of Mrs. Earlene Roberts "[Oswald] rushed in in his shirtsleeves and got a short coat and went back out." Side II, at 89'

Mrs. Roberts: "He come in, got a short white coat and went on back out in a hurry and when I looked out the window he was standing at a bus stop - there's a bus stop here at the door."

Interviewer: "Waiting for a bus?" Mrs. Roberts: "I suppose so, but I didn't see him board a bus." Side II, at 115'

KLIF tape, The Fateful Hours, Transcription

11/22/63 Dallas - A building porter said he took Oswald to the sixth floor in an elevator. When he got out, Oswald asked the porter to send the car back up for him. The porter went to the ground floor to watch the Kennedy motorcade.

After that, Curry said, it is known that Oswald descended and left the building on foot.

… Somehow - Curry doesn't know - Oswald reached the Oak Cliff section, across the Trinity River from downtown Dallas. AP, 1:50 p.m. CST Peggy Simpson

Homicide Captain Will Fritz said Oswald had told police he caught a bus when he left the Depository Building, decided the bus was too slow and switched to a taxicab. He went to his rooming house in Oak Cliff, changed clothing and decided to go to a movie. 3:07 p.m. CST – [Sub for "Somehow ... downtown Dallas"] AP, 3:07 p.m. CST

11/23/63 Dallas - main story of day on Oswald.

City detective Ed Hicks, after intensive investigation of the slaying, drew this picture of the hour surrounding the tragedy:

Oswald was working on the fifth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, the floor from which the shots were fired. A Man working with Oswald said: “Oswald, let’s go see the President."

Oswald replied: “No, you go on down and send the elevator back.”

As Oswald left the building, he was stopped by Dallas police, Oswald told them he worked in the building and was going down to see what was going on.

In the Oak Cliff section of Dallas, some four miles away, Oswald was seen 45 minutes later talking to a policeman, J. D. Tippett. A witness said that suddenly Oswald whipped out a pistol and shot the officer.

Shortly thereafter, police received a tip that a suspicious looking man had entered the Texas Theater on West Jefferson Street, not far from where Tippett had been slain.

Officers surrounded the theater, and then entered. When they spotted Oswald near the react, he pulled out his pistol and pulled the trigger. It failed to go off, and the officers jumped him.

In the scuffle that followed, one patrolman was cut on the face before Oswald was subdued. As they snapped the handcuffs on his wrists, Oswald was heard to say: "It's all over." AP, 1:45 a.m. CST

11/23/63 Dallas - The police chief said that as far as the police know, Oswald does not own an automobile.

The police chief said it was still uncertain how Oswald reached the Oak Cliff section of Dallas.

"He left on foot from the building. Someone said they saw a man pick him up [in a car] but Oswald had a bus transfer slip in his pocket when arrested," Curry said. AP, 11:17 am CST, Peggy Simpson

11/23/63 Dallas - ... Curry said it is known that Oswald descended and left the building on foot.

Within minutes, police broadcast a description of him. AP, 1:50 p.m. CST, Peggy Simpson

11/23/63 Dallas - Kennedy was shot at 12:31 p.m. Mrs. R.C. Roberts, who works at the rooming house, said a friend called her at 12:45 to say the President had been shot.

Suddenly, she said, in rushed Oswald, "on the dead run." "He ran to his room, came running back with a gray zipper jacket and out the door."

He ran toward a bus stop, Mrs. Roberts said. News CB, UPI and AP

11/23/63 Dallas - Police said Patrolman J. D. Tippitt had stopped a man on the street about four miles from the assassination scene. The man later identified as Oswald, drew a gun, shot and killed Tippitt. Then he fled as neighbors notified police.

A few minutes later - about 1:20 p.m. - the cashier of the Texas Theater, five blocks away, phoned police to report a man had run in. A dozen people were in the theater when police arrived and the lights were thrown on. The man jumped up and said, "This is it."

He tried to fire a snub-nosed revolver, but the gun misfired. AP and UPI

11/24/63 Dallas - Oswald was found by police on the second floor of the building shortly after the shooting, calmly opening a soft drink. The policemen drew a gun on him and asked the manager if he knew Oswald. The manager said Oswald was an employee and the police left.

Another policeman let Oswald out the front door of the building after confirming again that he was an employee. AP, 7:58 p.m. CST

11/24/63 Dallas, [11/23] - The first officer to reach the six-story building, Lieutenant Curry said, found Oswald among other persons in a lunchroom. New York Times, Donald Jansen

11/24/63 Dallas - ... Oswald stuck to his story that he left work early at the building from which the shots were fired because he thought it would close in honor of the President. San Francisco Chronicle, UPI

11/25/63 Dallas - Wade: Then a block from the rooming house witnesses saw a police officer motion to him. The officer, J. D. Tippit, got out of his car and came around and Oswald shot him three times.

Then he walked across a vacant lot, ejected three shells, and reloaded the gun. He walked away and went into the Texas Theater. San Francisco Examiner, p. 3, AP

11/25/63 New York - from statement at news conference by Henry Wade: "A police officer, immediately after the assassination, ran in the building and saw this man in a corner and tried to arrest him; but the manager of the building said he was an employee and it was all right. Every other employee was located but this defendant of the company. A description and name of him went out by police to look for him."

[Took bus at Lamar Street, then taxi to Oak Cliff] changed his clothes hurriedly, and left. Three officers saw him shoot Tippett "not in front of the boarding house. I don't have it exact. It's more than a block. It's a block or two." AP

11/25/63 New York - Quote from Wade:

"The next we hear of him is on a bus where he got on a bus at Lamar Street, told the bus driver the President had been shot, the President. [He] told the lady -- all this was verified by statements -- told the lady on the bus that the President had been shot. He said, how did he know. He said a man back there told him. The defendant said, Yes, he's been shot, and laughed very loud."

Reporter: "This was to a lady?"

Wade: "A Lady. He then -- the bus, he asked the bus driver to stop, got off at a stop, caught a taxicab driver, Darryl Click -- I don't have his exact place -- and went to his home in Oak Cliff, changed his clothes hurriedly, and left." AP report of press conference by Henry Wade

11/25/63 Dallas - District Attorney Henry Wade called a news conference [last night] to make public what he said was the complete mass of evidence accumulated to prove Oswald ... was the presidential assassin.

… "Then a block from the rooming house witnesses saw a police officer motion to him. The officer, J. D. Tippit, got out of his car and came around and Oswald shot him three times …" San Francisco Examiner, AP

11/29/63 … The assassin was gone.

But a Negro boy gave police a description of a man who had been seen leaving the building a few minutes earlier. At 12:36, an all-points pickup went over the radio to watch for a "white male, about 5 ft. 10 in. tall weighing 160 to 165 pounds, about 30 years old." Time, The Assassination, p. 24.

12/4/63 Dallas, [12/3] - There has also been speculation over the report that after the President's slaying, Oswald went to his rented room and then walked in the direction of Ruby's apartment.

One person who paced the distance found Oswald would have been seven minutes from the apartment when challenged by Patrolman J. D. Tippet. Oswald, it is alleged, killed the policeman and fled in a different direction.

Oswald's walk in the direction of Ruby's apartment, if so, is not proof that he even knew of such an apartment. New York Times, Donald Janson

12/7/63 Dallas - The assassin dashed to the opposite corner of the building and tossed the rifle behind a stack of boxed basic readers. Then he ran down the rear staircase, stopping at the second floor. AP, 9:39 p.m., Jules Loh

12/7/63 Dallas - Oswald slipped out of the building and into the frightened crowd. He worked his way through the milling mob, went a block north, turned right on Pacific Street and walked briskly for six blocks to Griffin Street.

It was 12:40 p.m.

He tapped on the door of a Marsalis Street bus which was stalled in the traffic. It wasn't a regular stop but the driver, C. J. McWatters, opened the door. Oswald took the third chair from the front on the right. He would get a good view of the scene of the crime as the bus passed Houston and Elm. There were only about five other passengers.

The bus inched ahead a block and at 12:44 p.m. the driver of a traffic blocked car jumped out and ran toward the bus. He wanted to tell somebody, so he told McWatters.

"The President's been shot!"

Oswald said nothing. In a moment he stood up, asked the driver for a transfer and got off. It was 12:46 p.m.

He crossed the street and hurried two blocks south to Commerce Street and jumped into a cab parked at the Greyhound Bus Depot. "Take me to 500 North Beckley," he ordered.

Cabbie William Whaley started on a zig-zag course, trying to escape the traffic. "What the hell you think happened out there?" he said Whaley hadn't heard. Oswald didn't tell him. Neither spoke the rest of the trip.

It was 1 p.m. AP, Jules Loh, 9:39 p.m. CST

12/7/63 Dallas - Jules Loh, in long feature about Kennedy, Oswald and Ruby, says without attribution that Oswald did not talk to anyone after leaving the building, either in the bus or taxi. AP, 9:39 p.m. CST [paraphrase]

12/7/63 Dallas - Back at the Book Depository, manager [R. S] Truly began taking inventory of his employees. Several were missing - outside among the crowd, he supposed. Still, he went to a policeman and told him Lee Harvey Oswald wasn't there. He described the 24-year-old stock clerk.

"Frankly, I don't know why I singled him out," Truly said. "Perhaps because I had seen him shortly before." AP, 9:39 p.m. CST, Jules Loh

12/7/63 Dallas - The police bulletin to pick up Oswald went out at 1:15 p.m. AP, 9:39 p.m. CST, Jules Loh

12/14/63 Lee Oswald slipped out of the building, his absence noticed only after police took a roll call of all building employees. The police then broadcast an alarm: "Unknown white male, 30, slender build, 5-6, 160 pounds, thought to be ,carrying a 30-06 or 30-30 rifle. Saturday Evening Post, Ben H. Bagdikian, p. 26

12/19/63 Police Chief Curry, who was riding in a car just 40 feet ahead of the limousine carrying the President, said he could tell from the sound of the three shots that they had come from the book company's building. Moments after the shots were fired, Curry said, he radioed instructions that the building be surrounded and searched [New York Times, 11/24]. The deployment of 500 officers from his 1,100-man force made fast action possible in the manhunt, he said. National Guardian, Mark Lane

12/19/63 The New York Times [11/23] reported: "About 90 persons' were employed in the Texas School Book Depository and most of them were out watching the President's motorcade when the shots were fired."

… Is it likely that each of the almost 90 employees, most of whom were outside of the building, engulfed in the panic and confusion attendant upon the assassination, could easily and quickly return to his place of employment through the police line, while still on his lunch hour, so that "every other employee was located but this defendant [Wade, AP, 345 ACS, 11/25]. " and the description of the one missing employee radioed at once? National Guardian, Lane Brief

12/19/63 "William Whaley's" log shows that Oswald entered the taxi, after having completed this entire trip, at exactly 12:30 p.m. The shots that killed Kennedy were fired at 12:31 p.m. [No attribution.] National Guardian, Lane Brief

12/21/63 [Detailed analysis of the two main versions of Oswald's movements following the assassination. Time sequence in detail. The New Republic, Seeds of Doubt, by Jack Minns and Staughton Lynd, pp. 11-12 of typed copy.

1/2/64 ... the motorcycle policeman entered the building right after the shooting, and only a few seconds later he and Truly reached the second story landing. At that moment, we are told officially, Oswald was already in the small lunchroom with a Coca-Cola bottle in his hand. This means that, assuming he was the assassin, he had to cross the floor from the window where the shots were fired to the opposite side of the building in order to reach the staircase [after concealing the rifle behind some packing boxes], run down four flights of stairs, walk to the lunchroom, put a dime in th vending machine, and open the bottle. Truly and the motorcycle policeman did not report that Oswald was panting or showed other signs of having been running. ...

... Chief Furry, for instance, in one of his numerous interviews, said on Saturday that Lee Oswald was in the lunchroom -- "among others." But those "others" were never mentioned again. And on Saturday night, when the chief of the Dallas Homicide squad, Captain Will Fritz, indicated that the crime was solved as far as he was concerned.-..."it's a cinch" --he mentioned the fact that Oswald was in the building to support his belief. But Oswald was not alone in the building. …The Reporter, Oswald in Dallas: A Few Loose Ends, Leo Sauvage, p. 24

1/2/64 ... Why wasn't the Texas School Book Depository immediately surrounded and then thoroughly searched? ...

... In any case, Police Chief Jesse E. Curry remarked in a television interview that he had been able to tell by the sound of the firing where the shots had come from, and he added that he had "right away" given orders over his car radio that the building be `surrounded and searched." … Chief Curry, even on Saturday, still saw nothing upsetting in the fact that Oswald had not been arrested when he walked out the front door of the very building that was so efficiently surrounded and searched by the police Chief Curry seemed to think that the fact that Oswald, had been identified as an employee was sufficient explanation. ...

… Then Oswald left the building soon afterwards, nobody even asked him his name. What were the dozens of policemen doing? … For if Oswald was able to leave the building it is clear that others could have left it too. In short, the unbelievable carelessness of the Dallas police has left open a possibility that the assassin was some unidentified person who was also in the building at the moment of the shooting and who left undetected. … The Reporter, Oswald in Dallas: A few .Loose Ends, Leo Sauvage, p. 24

1/3/64 There were 91 employees of the Book Depository Building. According to Truly, almost all of them were outside [staggered lunch hours, 12 to 1:30]. Within 20 minutes it was possible to get all back into the building, with the exception of Oswald. Lane Interview

1/3/64 No attrib. - It turns out there is no Darryl Click. When the press questioned Wade he said that was wrong, he had made a mistake, the man was William Whaley.

To Lane's knowledge there have been no interviews with William Whaley. Lane Interview

2/14/64 At 12:30 that afternoon, just as President Kennedy's car pass by the Texas Book Depository, that same rifle was poked out of a sixth-floor window. A bystander spotted it. "Boy," he said, "you sure can't say the Secret Service isn't on the ball, look at that boy up there in the window with a rifle."

Seconds later, three shots were fired -- and President Kennedy was dead or dying. Lee Oswald lipped out a rear entrance of the building, walked six blocks, returned to Elm and boarded a bus. The bus bogged down in traffic. Oswald got off, walked a few blocks, got into a cab, ordered the driver to drop him on the 500 block of North Beckley -- five blocks beyond his room. He paid the 95¢, fare, gave the driver a nickel tip, hurried to his room, ran out again with a windbreaker. … Time, p. 19

2/21/64 Truly and a policeman ran into the building to the elevators but found they were not running. [Later it was determined that an elevator gate had been left open on a floor above.] Life, p. 80

2/21/64 Oswald came out of the lunchroom a few moments later with a Coke in his hand. A woman switchboard operator saw him and said, "Wasn't that terrible, the President being shot?" Oswald muttered something which she didn't understand. He walked through the office, down the steps to the first floor and out the front door. It was about 12:35. Life, p. 80

3/64 When the motorcade made its turn and started toward the freeway, I heard a sharp cracking noise. At first I thought it was some joker shooting off a firecracker. Within three seconds, there was another report. I look behind me, up at the roof of the building, But I saw nothing.

"Then there was a third shot, again within three seconds, and I saw the President slump, shot. I was certain the shots had come from high up in the building. So I sprinted toward the rear of the book building to cut off an escape route from the back of it.

"Why the back? In law enforcement, identification of the suspect is all-important. If the sniper was a stranger, he would try to escape out the back. If he was an employee and went out the front with the crowd, he always could be identified through routine investigation later. I was certain the sniper was a stranger. It seemed obvious that if he'd been a building employee with enough motivation to assassinate the President, the police would have been informed about him."

Saga, p9 et seq, William W. Turner, [article blaming FBI for not advising Secret Service and Dallas police about Oswald. Quotes Dallas traffic patrolman W. E. Barnett, posted directly in front of it book depository building.]

3/64 The police also named a Mrs. Davis, who said that she saw a man ejecting some shells from a gun while crossing her yard a short distance away from the murder, but she wasn't able to describe him. In his Sunday night press conference District Attorney Wade had said: "Witnesses saw him [Oswald] eject the shells from a revolver and place - reload - the gun." Whoever told the police that he or she saw Oswald reload did them something of a disservice, for this testimony contradicts Captain Fritz, who, having thought at first that Officer Tippit had been killed by two bullets, took care to emphasize to newsmen on Friday afternoon that there had been precisely two empty chambers in the .38 taken from Oswald at the Texas Theater. Commentary: Leo Sauvage

[Were the shells searched for or found?]

3/64 Bob Considine of the Hearst Press ... was told that Oswald had been questioned inside the building "almost before the smoke from the assassin's gun had disappeared." As for me, I have the direct testimony of one of the two witnesses, Mr. Roy Truly. When I asked him whether it had taken a long time for him and the motorcycle policeman to reach the lunchroom, he answered ..."Oh, no! It was as soon as the last shot was fired when I saw the officer come running. As a matter of fact, it was so soon afterwards that I don't believe he was riding in the motorcade. He must have been off his motorcycle, standing nearby. Anyhow, it was right away after the shots. I knew they were shots, but had no idea they were fired from the building. I thought the officer wanted to get to the roof for a better look and I immediately offered to show him how. We ran to the freight elevators in the back of the building because the front elevators do not go beyond the fourth floor, but the two freight cars had both been left somewhere up in the top floors and we took the stairs, the officer ahead of me. When I reached the second-floor landing, the officer was already at the open door of the lunchroom, some twenty or twenty-five feet away. No, I couldn't tell you exactly how much time it took, all, this, but it wasn't long …"

The obvious question, then, is whether there was enough time for Lee Oswald - if he fired the shots from the front window on the sixth floor - to run to the staircase in the back [that is, on the opposite side of the building], hide the gun, and go down four flights of stairs to the lunchroom before the motorcycle policeman and Mr. Truly saw him there, not panting, not looking suspicious, and probably sipping a Coke [which means additional time for getting it out of the vending machine and opening it].

… [the] authorities, by trying too hard to place Oswald in the Elm Street building immediately after the assassination, came close to providing him with an alibi ... Commentary: Leo Sauvage

3/64 The fact of Oswald's presence on the second floor, it should be noted, was first presented to the public as evidence against him.

... I can see only one explanation for the emphasis both Mr. Wade and Chief Curry placed on how soon after the the shots Oswald was seen inside the building, and for the singular statement by Chief Curry - never repeated, but never corrected as a mistake either - to the effect that there were other witnesses to Oswald's presence in the lunchroom besides the motorcycle policeman and Mr. Truly. ... there were no witnesses to testify to the exact time Oswald left the Elm Street building - and since this raised the possibility that he might claim to have left it before the crime, it became important to stress his presence in the building after the shots had been fired. Commentary: Leo Sauvage

3/64 Captain Fritz ... triumphantly announced to press and television that no fewer than six witnesses had seen Oswald there [in the building] shortly before the shooting. One of these witnesses, Captain Fritz said, had invited Oswald to come outside with him to watch the approaching motorcade from the street, and Fritz seemed to attach great importance to the fact that Oswald, after refusing the invitation, had asked that witness to send the freight elevator back up to him.

The chief of the Dallas Homicide Bureau did not explain how a hand-operated freight elevator could be sent anywhere without an operator in it. … Commentary: Leo Sauvage

3/64 On 12/8, the New York Journal American published a "step by stealthy step" account of the assassination …, by Gene Roberts originally published in the Detroit Free Press and then syndicated to various other newspapers across the country. Somewhere in the middle of that story, the following lines appeared:

"The storage room seemed made to order for an assassin. It was cluttered with rows of book cartons, some of them in stacks six feet high. Five depository employees had worked in the storage room until noon, covering its floor with plywood, …”

... But how is it that the police found Oswald's palm print, but no other, on a carton which, it now develops, must have been shifted back and forth during the morning by several different hands? And since it now also appears that Oswald could not, because of the exceptional activity going on there all morning, have used the convenient hiding places of the sixth floor, where did he keep his rifle from sight until noon? When did he take it out from where he had hidden it? How did he get it to the sixth floor window in time for the murder without being seen? Commentary: Leo Sauvage

4/17/64 "... the author contrasts the disregard for law in Dallas with the deep respect for white-collar management. For example, the policeman who confronted Lee H. Oswald in the Texas School Book Depository was assured by the manager that Oswald was an employee and above suspicion. Mrs. Leslie explains: "In Dallas, the training is that management is benevolent and always does good." New York Times, Dallas Public and Private, Warren Leslie, Book Review by Jack Langguth,

5/2/64 Dorothy Kilgallen posed a "mysterious and significant" question ... in her column 4/14: "Why," she wrote, "did Oswald, presumably fleeing from the police after the assassination, approach … J. D. Tippit's car ...? A man who knows he is wanted by the authorities after a spectacular crime does not seek out a policeman, usually, unless he has decided to give himself up … By shooting Tippit, instead of trying to make himself inconspicuous, Oswald put himself in double jeopardy. His act almost guaranteed his arrest. Why? A whodunit fan would infer that the policeman knew something about Oswald that was so dangerous he had to be silenced at any cost, even Oswald's chance at escape and freedom." National Guardian

5/24/64 "Oswald was in the lunchroom on the second floor," Mr. Truly recalled.

"The policeman was a few steps ahead of me and when I got inside the lunchroom the officer was covering Oswald with a gun. Oswald was the only person there.

'"Is this boy all right?' the policeman asked me. 'Yes , he's okay,' I answered. ' He works here.'

"Then the officer and I ran up towards the roof," Mr. Truly continued. "There was one other employee on the second floor at the time, a switchboard operator working in an office across- from the lunchroom.

"She saw Oswald walk in right after we left the lunchroom. He took a Coke from a vending machine and walked out of her office and down one flight of stairs to the street."

There have been claims that Oswald wouldn't have had enough time to walk to the second floor from the sixth floor before the arrival of Mr. Truly and the cop.

"Oh, he had enough time," Mr. Truly said. "At a fast walk he could have covered the four flights of stairs in one minute.

“Chances are he heard us running into the building when he reached the second floor and ducked into the lunchroom.” … New York Journal-American, Who Killed President Kennedy? Who Was the Man in the Doorway?, Alfred Robbins, p. 16-L.

8/12/64 Bob Considine - quotes Marguerite as saying she thinks Tippit gave Lee safe conduct out of the School Depository and then "they" ordered Tippit killed. "I asked who 'they' were and again she said, "Why it's right there before you.'" San Francisco Examiner

9/64 … The police description of Lee Harvey Oswald a 12/22 for the shooting of officer J. D. Tippet [Kennedy?} went out at 12:43 p.m.; Tippet was shot at 1:18 p.m. ...

... The police never asked her [Mrs. Markham] for a description -- although she did tell them that the man was wearing a light gray jacket -- but they arrested Oswald, who was wearing a dark brown shirt, and had been described in the police bulletin as tall, slender, with thin, receding hair. The Dallas police description was claimed to be based on Oswald's absence from a roll call of Book Depository employees -- but there never was a roll call, and if there had been, at least three other employees would also have been missing … The Realist, Paul Krassner attributing to Mark Lane speaking at the Cafe Au GoGo in New York "this month"

10/12/64 The Report mentions that "the front door" and "the rear door" of the Depository were guarded from about six minutes after the shooting. What it omits, however, is that there were four separate "rear doors," all of which were open and only one of which was guarded. No one guarding any one of these doors could see any of the others. This conceivably might be relevant to a question of whether Oswald acted alone. As Shelley [Bill Shelley, Oswald's foreman] told us, "Any one of a thousand different people could have entered or left the building and nobody would have known it." The New Leader, The Other Witnesses, George and Patricia Nash

11/15/64 Dallas - … Threatening phone calls to [A. C. Johnson, Oswald's landlord] warning him "not to talk" got so bad he lost his housekeeper, Mrs. Earlene Roberts, who was afraid someone might bomb the house. He got an unlisted number and nothing has happened since. Oakland Tribune, [AP, Sid Moody]

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