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December 27, 2023 23 mins

We revisit November 22nd, 1963, through the eyes of Lee Harvey Oswald. Through expert testimony and first-hand witnesses, we follow Oswald, starting with his strange behavior the evening prior to the shooting and ending with his famous declaration – “I’m just a patsy.”

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Speaker 1 (00:05):
It's Thursday, November twenty first, nineteen sixty three. Lee Harvey
Oswald is visiting his wife, Marina, who's living with Ruth
Payne in Irving, Texas. He and Marina were separated, and
he had taken a room in a boarding house not
far from his job at the Texas school Book Depository
in Dallas. He would normally visit Marina in June on

(00:26):
the weekends, but this is a Thursday, and it's unexpected.
President Kennedy and the First Lady will arrive in Dallas
the next day. Before his arrival, the President became aware
of a full page ad in the Dallas Morning News,
an ad paid for by right wing extremists which accused

(00:49):
him of being soft on communism and essentially calling him
a traitor. Kennedy mused out loud about how easy it
would be to assassinate a traveling president. Air Force One
lands at love Field in Dallas to adoring crowds. As
the President shakes hands, Jackie is handed a dozen roses.

(01:12):
It had been raining earlier, but now the clouds have
parted and the Golden Couple is bathed in sunlight. Camelot
has arrived in Dallas.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
This is who killed JFK. Sixty years later, what can
we uncover about the greatest murder mystery in American history?
And why does it still matter today? I'm your host,
Solidad O'Brien.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
At this point in our investigation, we've established that there
were more than three shots fired at Kennedy, and not
all from behind. We've presented evidence that Oswald, the alleged
loan shooter, had a connection to the CIA and was
likely unknowingly being set up for a plan that would
motivate an invasion of Cuba. We've also established who had

(01:59):
both the motive and the means to carry out the crime,
rogue elements of the CIA, anti Castro Cuban exiles, and
members of organized crime. And there's evidence that notable leaders
from each of these groups was in Dallas that day.

Speaker 3 (02:17):
A member of the president's security team later told researcher
Vince Palmara, quote, we were getting all sorts of rumors
that the president was going to be assassinated in Dallas.
He then shares these threats with Kennedy that morning.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
Kennedy says back to him, quote, Marty, you worry about
me too much. The Secret Service told me they have
everything taken care of. There's nothing to worry about. Okay,
let's talk specifically about what happened on that day.

Speaker 1 (02:47):
Oswald wakes up not knowing exactly what he's part of,
but he knows that he's part of something important. Marina
is sleeping. Before saying goodbye to her, he takes off
his wedding ring and places it in a cup on
her bedside table. He whispers to Marina that there's money
in the dresser, one hundred and seventy dollars, a sizeable

(03:09):
sum for the Oswalts. Marina goes back to sleep. Oswald
exits the house and meets Buell Fraser, his coworker at
the Texas School Book Depository. Fraser would often give Oswald
a ride to work.

Speaker 4 (03:24):
That morning was unusual.

Speaker 5 (03:27):
Most of the times I would pick lee up walking down
the sidewalk toward my sister's home.

Speaker 4 (03:34):
All right, have to put up in front of the
house and blow on the horn. But that morning was different.

Speaker 2 (03:42):
That's Buell Fraser. He was nineteen at the time, and
we interviewed him in twenty twenty three, sixty years after
that fateful morning. He remembers it like it was yesterday.

Speaker 5 (03:53):
He walked down the half a block across the street,
and with it he had a fact. So he goes
over to my car and he puts a package in
on the back seat, on the fashion side. And so
I said, what's in the package?

Speaker 1 (04:11):
Lee?

Speaker 4 (04:13):
And he said, don't you remember we talked about this shoes.

Speaker 5 (04:16):
Today, I'm going to bring some curtain rods to work.
And I said, that's right, you did tell me that.

Speaker 1 (04:22):
Now the package that Fraser mentions has become something of
a fascination for JFK researchers.

Speaker 2 (04:29):
Is the package the gun?

Speaker 6 (04:30):
Well?

Speaker 1 (04:31):
I asked Fraser about that. Nobody ever has determined what
exactly was in that package? Have they?

Speaker 4 (04:39):
To my knowledge? That is correct?

Speaker 5 (04:41):
I have not. What I would like to tell you
was I have a friend called Josiah Thompson. Josiah has
Aigan Carno rifle.

Speaker 1 (04:51):
This was the type of rifle Oswald allegedly used to
kill Kennedy.

Speaker 5 (04:56):
I says, can we measure this rifle? He said absolute.
So we measured the rifle. We measured to stop, and
we measured the barrel. There's no way that it would
fit in the package that was on the backseat of
my car, right, And so That really made me feel
good because a lot of people have said I have

(05:18):
told the truth about that.

Speaker 4 (05:19):
Well, I'm telling you all I know.

Speaker 2 (05:22):
So what was it?

Speaker 1 (05:24):
Nobody knows for sure. All we know is that Oswald
had a bag that, according to Buell Frasier, wasn't big
enough to hold even a broken down Carcanell rifle.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
Okay, what happens next?

Speaker 4 (05:37):
So we get into we start to drive off.

Speaker 5 (05:40):
When we get to the parking lot, they gets the
package out of the back seat, and so he turns
around and starts walking towards the building where we would
be working.

Speaker 1 (05:50):
During the course of the day. Did you see Oswald
at all?

Speaker 5 (05:55):
I did run into him. I know he went up
to the fifth and sixth floor.

Speaker 1 (06:00):
You saw Lee on the fifth and sixth floor at
some point.

Speaker 3 (06:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (06:05):
It was a pry and it had been a hard way.
It is a road Jay.

Speaker 1 (06:12):
Nothing about that day would be normal. Let's jump ahead
a few hours to eleven thirty seven am. Air Force
one lands at Dallas love Field. The Kennedys arrived to
an adoring crowd.

Speaker 2 (06:27):
And here is the President of the United States.

Speaker 3 (06:30):
How the crowd is after they're going wild?

Speaker 1 (06:33):
They get into the open limousine and they sit right
behind Governor Connolly and his wife Nellie. The Secret Service
car is directly behind them, followed by Vice President Lyndon
Johnson and Ladybird. They start their ten mile ride through
the streets of Dallas, with onlookers cheering along the way.
Nellie Connolly turns back and says, you can't tell me

(06:55):
that the people of Dallas don't love you, mister President,
and he says, yeah, yeah, they do. Everybody was happy
until they turned off Houston Street and onto Elm Street.
It's now twelve twenty five pm. This is the time
that the motorcade was scheduled to pass through Dealey Plaza.

(07:18):
According to the Warren Report, when Oswald was asked by
the Dallas Police Department where he was when the president
was shot, he said quote went to the second floor,
where a Coca Cola machine was located, obtained a bottle
of Coca cola for lunch.

Speaker 3 (07:33):
Two witnesses also place him there. They say they saw
Oswald in or near the second floor lunch room around
the time of the shootings. One witness is a woman
named Carolyn Arnold, a secretary at the Texas School Book Depository.

Speaker 1 (07:46):
She said that she was on her way out of
the building around twelve twenty five when she saw Oswald
in the lunch room.

Speaker 3 (07:53):
She said, quote, he was alone as usual and appeared
to be having lunch. I do not recall that he
was doing anything. I just recall that he was sitting
there in one of the booth seats on the right
hand side of the room as you go in.

Speaker 2 (08:07):
Okay, Oswald said he was eating lunch, went to the
second floor. There are two witnesses that place him there
all around twelve twenty five when the motorcade passes by.
That seems pretty solid to me.

Speaker 1 (08:20):
Except for the fact that the motorcade was running five
minutes late. It didn't arrive at Daily Plaza until twelve thirty.

Speaker 2 (08:28):
So if it was Oswald who fired the gun, couldn't
he have been on the second floor at twelve twenty
five and then run up to the sixth floor by
twelve thirty.

Speaker 1 (08:38):
Okay, let's go at that for a moment. A man
is planning to assassinate the president of the United States,
who was supposed to be arriving at twelve twenty five, Now,
wouldn't he already be in position at that point? I
mean not casually sitting in the second floor lunch room
drinking a coke.

Speaker 3 (08:57):
Marion Baker is a Dallas police officer who was riding
a motorcycle in the motorcade that just entered Daley Plaza when.

Speaker 1 (09:04):
The shots rang out.

Speaker 3 (09:05):
He said he saw pigeons fly off the roof of
the Texas School Book Depository, and without hesitation, he hopped
off his bike and ran into the building. Video shows
him entering within fifteen seconds of the shooting.

Speaker 1 (09:17):
He immediately runs into Roy Trully, the manager of the building,
and Trully and Baker start up the stairs.

Speaker 3 (09:24):
They reached the second floor lunch room at twelve thirty
two pm. Baker confirmed it was ninety seconds after the
shots were fired.

Speaker 1 (09:32):
And guess who they see sitting in the lunch room
Oswald with a coke in his hand. Truly tells Baker
that Oswald works in the building, so they continue past them.
This is ninety seconds after the shooting.

Speaker 2 (09:45):
Couldn't Oswald have fired three shots then sprinted down to
the second floor within ninety seconds, where he runs into Baker.

Speaker 1 (09:51):
Well, the Warrant Commission had the same question, so they
re enacted the time it would take Oswald to go
from the sixth floor sniper net down to the second floor,
and they timed that ad around seventy five.

Speaker 2 (10:05):
Seconds, So tight but definitely plausible.

Speaker 1 (10:09):
Sure if you don't allot any time for Oswald to
wipe down the gun, which he had to have done
because none of his fingerprints were found on the gun.
It also does include the time it would take Oswalt
to hide the gun behind some boxes, which is how
it was found.

Speaker 3 (10:24):
He would have had to have been in the lunch
room at twelve twenty five, run up the stairs to
the sniper's nest, got his rifle into position, fired three
shots with incredible accuracy, and then wipe the gun clean
of fingerprints hidden it, then run back down the four
flights of stairs to the second floor in less than
ninety seconds.

Speaker 2 (10:45):
So that would be quite the athletic endeavor.

Speaker 1 (10:48):
Officer Baker testified that Oswald seemed and I quote calm
and collected when he encountered him, and that it didn't
appear that he had been running. But there is another
piece of evidence that makes this even more unlikely. Victoria
Adams worked on the fourth floor of the building, and
after the assassination, she gave a brief deposition to the

(11:11):
Warren Commission, and then disappeared. She was afraid of what
her testimony might mean and she didn't want to get
sucked up into all the investigations. Decades later, though, a
researcher named Barry Ernst was able to track her down,
and between the information that she gave him for his
book Girl on the Stairs and her Warren Commission testimony,

(11:34):
some very powerful evidence emerged.

Speaker 3 (11:37):
Adams was on the fourth floor with three female colleagues
when the President's motorcade drove through Dealey Plaza. They heard gunshots,
and they watched the President's limo race off. She and
co worker Sandra Styles ran to the staircase and headed down.

Speaker 1 (11:54):
And what she says next is important.

Speaker 3 (11:57):
She testified that they did not see or hear in
anyone else on the stairwell at that time until they
reached the first floor. And yes, it was the only stairwell.

Speaker 2 (12:07):
So Oswald would have had to have used the same
stairwell to get down to the lunch room.

Speaker 1 (12:13):
Right. So not only would Oswald have to fire three shots,
clean and hide the gun, he would somehow have to
manage to go unnoticed by Victoria Adams and Sandra Stiles
as he raced down the stairs to the second floor
lunch room. Now you can believe that or the eyewitnesses
who saw Oswald on the second floor the entire time.

Speaker 2 (12:36):
So you're saying you don't believe that Oswald was even
on the sixth floor when those shots were fired.

Speaker 1 (12:42):
Well, let me tell you what the Dallas Police chief
concluded later that day. He said, quote, the physical evidence
and eyewitness accounts do not clearly indicate what took place
on the sixth floor of the Texas school Book Depository
at the time that John F. Kennedy was a set fascinated.

Speaker 3 (13:01):
And when Oswald was later arrested, the police did a
paraffin test on his cheek. It tests for contaminants from
gun residue, and the test on Oswald's cheek was negative.

Speaker 1 (13:12):
So my answer is no, I don't think there's any
evidence that Oswald was on the sixth floor at the
time of the shooting. Yet everything changes for him once
those shots were fired.

Speaker 6 (13:33):
Kennedy apparently got ahead, he fell a down in backdat
of his car.

Speaker 4 (13:38):
When the shots by gad to ring out, people really
began to.

Speaker 2 (13:43):
Pay That's Buell Fraser Oswald's coworker who drove him to
work the morning of the assassination. He had stepped outside
the Texas Schoolbook Depository building to watch the motorcade go
by and pep up.

Speaker 5 (13:56):
Again to Ron had followed out, and people will cried
and hollered and screaming at his. One lady come walking
up and she said they shot the president.

Speaker 4 (14:09):
And I said, what did that woman say? She said,
they have shot the president.

Speaker 1 (14:16):
It's just after twelve thirty five pm.

Speaker 2 (14:20):
What does Oswald do next?

Speaker 1 (14:22):
Well, according to Fraser, he left the building.

Speaker 4 (14:25):
Alongside the building was Lee himself.

Speaker 1 (14:28):
And what was he doing?

Speaker 5 (14:30):
They just walk all very casually. Then he turned right
and crossed Elm Street. Someone said something. I turned to
see he was talking to me, and when I turned
back I had lost him in the crowd.

Speaker 1 (14:45):
As Oswald walked away from the building, I believe that
is when he started to realize that something had gone
wrong and that maybe what Richard K. S. Nagel had
told him was true, that he was being set up.

Speaker 2 (14:58):
You might remember Nate Goal as the intelligence agent who
warned Oswald that he was being used by people around him.

Speaker 1 (15:05):
Right now, Daily Plaza is in total chaos. People are
saying the President is gonna die, and Oswald begins to
act as though his life is in danger.

Speaker 2 (15:16):
So what does he do.

Speaker 1 (15:17):
He crosses Houston Street and witnesses see him get on
a bus. But because of all this chaos, the bus
wasn't moving. It was stuck in traffic. So the same
witnesses who saw him get on the bus saw him
get off. And the next thing we know is he
finds a taxi cab and tells the cab driver to
take him towards his boarding house. How do we know

(15:38):
this because the cab driver testified that Oswald told him
to drop him off a couple of blocks away from
his boarding house.

Speaker 3 (15:46):
He's obviously concerned or suspicious, trying to hide his tracks
make sure he isn't being followed.

Speaker 1 (15:52):
At twelve forty five pm, just fifteen minutes after the
President was shot, the Dallas PD had already rais out
a description white male five foot ten, one hundred and
sixty five pounds in his early thirties. And this was
all based on the account of one man who was
standing across the street and said he saw a man

(16:13):
of this description fire a rifle from the sixth floor.

Speaker 2 (16:17):
So now they begin their search for a man who
roughly looks like Oswald.

Speaker 1 (16:22):
It's now almost one pm. Oswald gets out of the
cab and walks to the boarding house. The woman who
runs the boarding house, Arlene Roberts, said that Oswald went
into his room, grabbed his jacket and hurried out. And
at some point during that time he grabbed his revolver
and he left the boarding house and he started walking
towards the Texas Theater. At one sixteen PM, a Dallas

(16:48):
police officer named J. D. Tippett is patrolling the area
near Oswald's boarding house and he sees a man that
fits the description he received on his radio, and he
goes over to him. Now, there's a lot of conflicting
information about this, including from eyewitnesses. Some say Oswald was
stopped by Tippett. Others say Tippet stop someone else. There

(17:11):
are even reports that Tippett stopped two people. All we
know for sure is that Officer JD. Tippett was shot
four times and killed.

Speaker 2 (17:21):
And it's never been definitely proven who did it.

Speaker 1 (17:24):
Nope. Eyewitness testimony from the incident is all over the place.
The Tippet murder may be the subject of another podcast.
But what we do know for sure is what Oswald
does next. He goes to the movies, the movies. How
do we know he goes to the movies because someone
saw him slipping into the now famous Texas Theater without

(17:46):
paying and they called the police. So now I want
to ask you a question. Okay, shoot, okay. If you
were Oswald and you just shot the president of the
United States and you go into a movie theater to
lay low for a few hours, where would you sit.

Speaker 2 (18:05):
I would hide in a dark corner somewhere.

Speaker 1 (18:07):
That makes sense. Now to understand, I've been to the
Texas Theater and it's big, it's its seats around nine
hundred people. That afternoon there were only twenty people in
the theater. And now he could go anywhere. So what
does he do? He sits right down next to an
eighteen year old boy named Jack Davis. Now, I don't
know about you, but when I'm in a virtually empty

(18:28):
movie theater and a stranger comes in, they don't typically
sit right next to you. They leave you some space.

Speaker 2 (18:36):
Yeah, that would be normal.

Speaker 1 (18:37):
Yeah, right, But not Oswald. In a nearly empty theater,
he sits right next to someone that's weird. Yeah, it
is weird, and it gets weirder. After sitting next to
this eighteen year old Jack Davis, Oswell gets up and
he moves across the aisle and he sits down next
to somebody else, and a few minutes later he gets
up and he just strolls to the lobby.

Speaker 3 (19:00):
In the lobby, he buys popcorn, and the man selling
him the popcorn testified that this was at one point
fifteen PM.

Speaker 2 (19:07):
But we know Tippett was killed at one sixteen he was, so.

Speaker 1 (19:12):
Either Oswald didn't kill Tippett or the popcorn guy is
way off on his time. Anyway, Oswald goes back into
the theater and according to researches, he sits down next
to a pregnant woman.

Speaker 2 (19:25):
What do you think he's doing going from person to
person to person?

Speaker 1 (19:29):
You know, I think he is looking for his contact.

Speaker 2 (19:32):
His contact.

Speaker 1 (19:33):
The theater could have been a planned meeting spot where
someone would be waiting to get him to a safe
house and then ultimately out of Dallas.

Speaker 3 (19:41):
This is straight out of the intelligence operation playbooks. If
a plan goes wrong, go to your pre arranged meetup spot.
Except that after sitting next to all these people. None
of them respond, so he goes to the back of
the theater and sits there alone. Within minutes, the Dallas
PD arrives, the lights go on in the theater. The

(20:04):
officers spot Oswald. Oswald pulls his gun, but before he
can fire, a struggle ensues. Oswald is subdued. They place
him under rest, and they put him in a squad car.
On the way to the police station, one of the officers,
Paul Bentley, recalled a conversation he had with Oswald. Quote,
I asked him inside the car on the way to

(20:24):
city Hall, did you kill our president, to which Oswald replied,
I haven't shot a damn person. As Oswald arrives at
the police station, someone asks him if he wanted to
hide his face from reporters, and he responds, why should I,
I haven't done anything to be ashamed of. As he
faces a barrage of questions from the press. There's someone

(20:47):
in that gaggle whose name you might remember, Jack Ruby.

Speaker 2 (20:52):
It's been a little while since we've heard about him.

Speaker 1 (20:55):
He was that local Dallas nightclub owner and low level mobster.
Any of the officers would frequent his club. They knew him,
and they didn't think much of him being there. But
like we said in our first episode, if you pull
on the Jack Ruby thread, a lot will come loose.
In the next episode, we'll give that thread another tug

(21:18):
and reveal who sent Ruby to take care of Oswald.

Speaker 2 (21:26):
On the next episode of Who Killed JFK?

Speaker 6 (21:30):
He called me about four or five o'clock and asked
me to go down to the police station and check
on Watch Security if any there was around Lee, Harvey
or Wall.

Speaker 2 (21:41):
We take a look at who Jack Ruby really was.

Speaker 5 (21:45):
Every line from Jack Ruby goes back to the mob,
and the mob kills people who can tell the true story.

Speaker 2 (21:57):
Who Killed JFK is hosted by Rob Reiner and me
Solidad O'Brien and Our executive producers are Rob Reiner, Michelle Reiner,
Matt George, Jason English, David Hoffman, and me Solidad O'Brien.
Our writer is David Hoffman, with research by Dick Russell.
Our story editors are Rob Reiner and Julie Pineto. Our

(22:18):
senior producer is Julie Pinneto. Our producers are Tristan Nash,
Dick Russell, Michelle Goldfein, and Amari Lee. Our editors are
Tristan Nash, Julie Pinneto, and Marcus de Lauro. Our project
manager is Carol Klin. Our associate producer is emilse Kiros. Mixing,

(22:39):
mastering and sound design by Ben la Julier. Research and
fact checking by Girl Friday and emilse Kiros. Archival audio
in this episode thanks to Getty Images, Odyssey, Dick Russell
and Rob Reiner. Business affairs by Hennan Nadea and Jonathan Furman.
Our consulting producer is rec Zan Galillini. Recorded in part

(23:02):
at CDM Studio and Fourth Street Recording Studio. Show logo
by Lucy Quintanilla. Special thanks to Johonig Rose Arsa and
Dan Storper. If you're enjoying the show, leave us a
rating and review on your favorite podcast platform. Who Killed
JFK as a production of Solidad O'Brien Productions and iHeart

(23:23):
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