The Rest Is History - 395. JFK: Hunt for a Killer (Part 4)

Episode Date: December 4, 2023

It’s 12:31pm on Friday 22nd November 1963, and in Dallas, Texas, President John F. Kennedy lies slumped against his screaming wife, half of his head cradled in her hands and his blood spattered across her elegant pink suit and the seats of their car.  Just moments earlier, three shots had rung out from the direction of the Texas Book Depository. Or had they? Who had fired the shots? A single gunman - or more? Just who was the oddly detached, vacant-looking man whom left the building minutes later? Why did he murder a Dallas policeman shortly after the shooting? Was he really Kennedy’s killer, or a red herring, planted by a wider conspiracy? And was he working for the Cubans, the Communists - or the CIA? Join Tom and Dominic as they plunge into the extraordinary drama of 22 November 1963, from the national shock after the president’s assassination to the thrilling hunt to track down his assassin. *Dominic’s book The Fall of the Aztecs is available now from bookshops across the UK - the perfect Christmas present!* Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Hello, welcome to The Rest Is History and we are looking at JFK, his assassination, the aftermath, the conspiracies and Dominic in the last episode. Kennedy was shot, killed and we left the episode on a cliffhanger. A policeman running into the book depository off Dealey Plaza from where the shots had come. Yeah. And meets a blank faced man on the second floor.

And the name of that man, Lee Harvey Oswald. Yeah. Meanwhile, the Kennedys are being rushed to Parkland, the best hospital in Dallas. Absolute trauma, bewilderment, chaos. Do you want to pick up the story where we left it off in the previous episode? I will do, Tom. You said Kennedy's shot and killed. I agree with you. I think Kennedy probably was killed at that moment, but he's not been proclaimed dead so the world does not know that he's been killed and indeed he is technically still alive at the point when the kennedy car so that was especially souped up armor-plated lincoln that we described last time not the first guy in the motorcade because

there are police cars ahead but they all rush to parkland hospital they get there at 12 37 on friday the 22nd of november 1963 so that is seven minutes after the first shot has rung out in Dealey Plaza. It's a terrible scene when they arrive. So John Connolly, the governor of Texas, a bullet has gone into his back. There is blood pouring from his kind of midriff. He is in horrendous pain. His wife, Nellie, who's been in the car with kennedys her thoughts are obviously with her husband rather than with the kennedys um so she's begging the paramedics

to give her husband attention he is lifted onto the stretcher in agony behind as secret service men and so on are sort of piling all around the car jacqueline kennedy is cradling her husband's body and in particular as you said last time in the previous podcast her husband's head kind of holding it together holding it together and she is refusing to move and to leave the car and actually it takes this agent Clint Hill who is the agent who had run up to the back of the car and jumped onto it in the chaos of the assassination he says please please Mrs., we must get the president to a doctor.

And she says explicitly to him, no, Mr. Hill, you know that he's dead. Leave us alone. It's heartrending, isn't it? Because essentially she knows that this is her last chance to be with him, to hold him. Because once he goes into that trauma room, they're going to be cutting him up. She knows he's already dead. Yes. I think it's generally accepted among the

people around the car at that moment that he is dead because seconds later vice president linden johnson's car arrives and secret servicemen are around him and they're already agents already talking about getting the president to safety and by the president they mean lbj exactly yeah kennedy is whisked inside within four minutes minutes, he is in Trauma Room 1, a Parkland hospital, for emergency surgery. The head of emergency services at Parkland hospital is not there. He is away in Galveston, Texas, giving a paper at a conference. Of course, if you are of a particular mindset, you might say that's suspicious. Although, of course, it's hard to see how it could be really arranged, that the conference would be taking place and that he

would be able to give a paper on his specialism at the crucial moment. Anyway, he is away, but multiple doctors pile in. I mean, one of the things about this story is that that room, trauma room one, became absolutely packed very, very quickly as all the different specialists rushed inside. Of course, it's also full of Secret Service agents as well. And is this when the nurse tries to stop Jackie from going in? Yes. There's a kind of shoving match and Jackie forces her way in. She does force her way in. It's total confusion. It's total chaos. So much of the suspicion that has accumulated around these hours, I think, reflects the fact that everybody is in shock.

Nobody knows what's going on. There is no procedure. There is no formula for dealing with something like this. And even if there were, it would fall apart in collision with reality. And it's a trauma in one, but everyone is traumatized. Again, I mean, just sticking with Jackie, the terrible moment where she hands the nurse something and it turns out to be the chunk of her husband's brain. Correct. Yeah. And she's been holding it all this time. Cradling it in her hands, Tom. Yeah, it's a really, it's a horrible, horrible detail. Straight away, they give Kennedy a tracheotomy.

They hook him up to an anesthesia machine. But it is obvious to the doctors from the very moment that he is wheeled in he is dead that there is no hope now meanwhile outside the hospital the dallas police dispatcher has already sent out a description of the suspect based on the multiple eyewitness accounts of somebody at the window, the accounts that have been coming in from people talking to the police in the square. Because all of them pretty much concur, except for one guy who says that it's a black person. That's right. A teenager called Amos Ewan, who says he thinks the shot came from just underneath the top of the Texas Book Depository and probably a colored man, he says.

And at that point, they wrongly identify the floor as the fifth floor because that's where the three black employees had been yes yeah but they also miscount the number of floors beneath the top because he says it's just beneath the top the floor beneath the top of the building is the sixth floor the description of the suspect that goes out is as follows unknown white male approximately 30 slender build height 5 feet 10 inches weight weight 165 pounds. He is reported to be armed with what is thought to be a.30 caliber rifle. So when we get to Lee Harvey Oswald, listeners will be able to make up their own minds how closely that does or does not correspond with Oswald. So the police are searching for this suspect. Meanwhile, back in trauma room one,

15 minutes later, Kennedy's heart finally stops beating. As almost all accounts say, there's no doubt that actually he was dead at the moment that the third shot hit his head. He is proclaimed dead. Catholic priests who have come to the hospital are shown in. They give him the last rites, and one of them says to Mrs. Kennedy, I'm pretty certain that his soul had not yet left his body. Yeah. So this is a valid last sacrament. And so the priests then go out, don't they?

And there are crowds of newspaper men outside. And one of the journalists asks the priest, is the president dead? And one of the priests says, he's dead all right. Yes. And so this is the first confirmation going out to the world that Kennedy is dead. Yeah, and this is a considerable time before it is announced. Officially. Officially, exactly.

Yeah. Back in Dealey Plaza, at 1.06pm, so six minutes after Kennedy is proclaimed dead, the Dallas police officers who have gone up into the depository find, by the window in the sixth floor, what they call a kind of sniper's nest so it's as though somebody has constructed this sort of little base of boxes around the window they find a long brown paper bag the kind of bag that could conceivably store a rifle and they find three spent cartridge casings what they don't find at this point is a weapon. And so they are now scouring the warehouse. Because actually what we haven't said is what the Texas Book Depository

is. It's a private company that provides school books. It's full of boxes of books and kind of shelves and stuff like that. Yeah. It's a kind of mini Amazon, isn't it? Yes. A mini Amazon warehouse. And the people who work in the warehouse, their job, they take orders from the bottom, they go upstairs, they load the books into the elevator, and then they send the elevator down, and then they come down to get the next set of orders. So it's as simple as that. Exactly as you say, Tom, it's a kind of proto-Amazon warehouse. So they are searching the warehouse for the murder weapon. Two minutes later, at later at 108 so with 38 minutes after the shooting a chap called jd tippett a dallas police officer who had once been a paratrooper in the

second world war who had fought at the battle of the bulge who is now working for the dallas pd he is cruising through the suburban oak cliff, which is southwest of downtown Dallas, of the city center. And he sees a man walking along the street, looking very shifty and suspicious, kind of looking over his shoulder and stuff, who in his mind pretty accurately matches the description of the suspect. And he begins to kind of cruise after this guy to kind of tail him along the street. Three minutes later, at 1.11, just past the junction of East 10th Street and South Patton Avenue, an eyewitness sees Tippett pull over and talk to the man through the window of his car, though we don't know what the two of them say.

Moments later, several eyewitnesses see Tippett get out of the car and walk towards the man and it's at that point that this man unidentified at this point pulls out a gun and shoots Tippett dead so this has happened several miles away from where the original Dealey Plaza shooting happened meanwhile back at the hospital, Lyndon Baines Johnson has been told that Kennedy is dead. And he is asked whether or not they should announce it to the press. And he says, no, we don't know whether it's a communist conspiracy or not. So right from the beginning,

and absolutely the top most guy now on the scene is wondering about it. Exactly. And not just him him because 11 minutes later the head of the federal bureau of investigation the fbi j edgar hoover he rings the chief of the secret service james rowley secret service by the way for non-americans it's not like the british secret service secret service is effectively bodyguards it's security for kennedy. The guys who are looking after the president. And they discuss what's just happened. They're obviously in shock like everybody else. Both of them talk about conspiracies. So Rowley from the Secret Service asks, do you think it could be Cuba? Could it be Cubans? And Hoover says, I don't know,

it could well be the Ku Klux Klan. So there we have three of the main conspiracy theories, the communists, Cuba, the Ku Klux Klan, something to do with right-wing extremists. Yeah. It's fascinating that these are people at the very top of American government and their first instinct is to say, well, is this part of a conspiracy? Is this something wider? A minute after the Hoover's had that conversation with the secret service chap at the Texas Depository at 122, the Dallas police officers do find the murder weapon. They find a rifle that has been stuffed underneath some boxes on the sixth floor. It is an infantry rifle with the Mauser action and a cheap Japanese telescopic sight.

So this is less than an hour after the shooting has taken place. They have issued a description of the suspect. They have found the cartridge casings. They have found what they think is the place, and they have found what they believe is the weapon. So kudos to the Dallas police. Absolutely. They're doing their job very well. And very fast.

At the same moment, police are also heading to the scene of the murder of J.D. Tippett, their erstwhile comrade. The radio is also distributing a description of this suspect, a white male, about 30, 5'8", black hair, slender, wearing a white jacket, white shirt and dark slacks. So they are now searching for what could conceivably be a second suspect in an unrelated murder. But it corresponds quite closely to the original suspect alert from the Kennedy shooting.

It does. I think any fair-minded observer would say they are pretty similar descriptions. Back at the hospital, 1.30, so we're switching between different locations. At 1.30, there is a furious, furious row going on about Kennedy's body. Because the Dallas County Medical Examiner has now arrived and he says, under Dallas law, under Texas state law, we have to keep this body for an autopsy the secret service are horrified by this and they say no we have to get back to Washington immediately there is no doubt that the law is on the Dallas County medical examiner's side that Kennedy's body should have stayed in

Dallas for an autopsy and again for people who are suspicious of the official narrative of events, this is very odd and very murky. I think there's a pretty reasonable explanation for it, though, Tom. I presume the explanation is that if Kennedy's body has to stay there, then Jackie will have to stay there. Well, they'll all have to stay there. But particularly Mrs. Kennedy. Yeah.

Because there's this, again, this heart-rending moment where she's, you know, they're about to go and she slips her wedding ring off and puts it on her husband's finger. And then she has this conversation. Did I do the right thing? I wanted to give him something. And an aide answers, you leave it right where it is. And then Jackie Kennedy says, now I have nothing left. Yeah. And you can see the human emotions are a very, very important part of this.

And they tend to get, I guess, washed out of official narratives. They do. I think you're absolutely right, Tom. I think they feel utterly horrified for her. But also, of course, the Secret Service, just professionally speaking, they're desperate to get back to Washington, D.C., to what they see as the safety and security of Washington, D.C. If this is a conspiracy, and if this is, as is perfectly possible in their minds, a conspiracy orchestrated from Cuba, from Moscow, then hanging around in a Dallas hospital with the President of the United States, Lyndon Baines Johnson, is a bonkers thing

to do. They need to get back as quickly as possible. The closest analogy within our lifetimes would be the sense of chaos and confusion and terror that followed the attack on the World Trade Center. People having no idea what's going on at all, but fearing the worst. Exactly right. The idea that at this moment they would say, oh sure, we'll all hang around here for hours. Take as long as you like, do the autopsy. I mean, that's obviously utterly implausible. Everything in their training and in their instincts and common sense is screaming, get on the plane and get back to DC.

But I do think the anxiety, the concern, the pity for Jackie Kennedy is a really important aspect of this. And indeed will be an important aspect when we come to Jack Ruby. Yeah. That, you know, she's still wearing that pink suit. Yeah. She's drenched in her husband's blood. She's obviously traumatized.

And I think that you'd have to have a very harsh heart. Right. Not to think about her. And their children. And the children. Who are back in Washington. The idea that they would say to her, well, Jackie, we'll book you into a holiday inn. Yeah.

You might be here for a few days. I mean, that's obviously utterly unthinkable. Yeah. By the way, one last thing on this the official announcement of the death well i mean i say official the moment that it's broken to the american public is at 1 38 so that's eight minutes after this conversation walter cronkite who is the kind of dean of american broadcasting announces the news to the nation on cbs anyone who's ever seen anything to do with the canada assassination will recognize the footage. He's clearly grief stricken.

He fiddles with his glasses when he says Vice President Johnson will be flying back to Washington. His voice kind of breaks, which is this extraordinary moment. Meanwhile, back in Oak Cliff, a guy who works in a shoe shop on Jefferson Boulevard. Of course, the news has gone around the city. So everybody's in a state of shock he sees this young man walking along the street behaving very weirdly looking over his shoulder as police cars are kind of rushing past him the police are all panning into a library aren't they they are so uh buildings with books in they're a feature of the story yes yeah if you're bookish in texas this is your story yeah johnny brewer the manager of the shoe store he sees this guy

behaving weirdly and then ducking into a cinema the the Texas Theater. And he thinks, what's all this? And he follows this bloke and he says to the ticket seller, did that guy buy a ticket? And she was distracted. She says, no. He says, oh, I think we should call the police the police arrive very very quickly about 1 48 p.m and they go into the cinema at first with tragicomic irony they pull their guns on brewer himself the shoe shop man and he says no it's not me i'm the guy who spotted the suspect tip you off tip you off and he points out a bloke who's sitting three rows from the back they go and they surround this man who looks it has to be said very like the two descriptions that were sent out of the man who shot jd tippett and also the man who people think may have been at the texas book depository they identified that guy and they surround him the guy's reaction the first thing he says is well it's all over now and then suddenly he lashes out there's a scuffle

he's clearly reaching for a gun and the police pile onto him and there's more of a scuffle fighting and so this is when he gets the kind of the bruises and the black eye and the black eye yes exactly so there's all this little fighting on the floor of the cinema they manage to handcuff him and then they drag him outside as they drag him outside he's shouting about his i know my rights kind of thing and shouting this is police brutality this is all terrible there's a mob already assembled outside people don't like cop killers don't forget that's what this guy has been cornered for he's been cornered as the man who shot jd tippett not the man who shot john f kennedy yeah there are people outside shouting hang him all this what a bad guy all this kind of thing and the police bundle him

into the car waiting outside and then off they go the suspect when he's inside the car suddenly seems to calm down he says to them oh has a police officer been killed and they don't reply and then he says i hear they burn for murder and one of the officers says well you might well find out and the guy says well they say it just takes a second to die. Which is a kind of odd thing to say, Tom, if you've been wrongly accused, right? Yes. I think it's a key point to make at this stage.

I've never been arrested by the police for a crime I didn't commit, and nor have I been accused of murder. But if I were and I hadn't done it, I'd be very frightened, of course, and keen, I would imagine, to correct the record, wouldn't you? I think I would, yeah. You would be protesting your innocence at every point. There would be no point at which you were calm, withdrawn, sullen. Start talking about what it would be like to be electrocuted. No, exactly. That wouldn't be the obvious point of conversation, I think. No, no. And if that ever happens, Tom, I mean, I will remind you of these words.

As I go to the chair. Right, exactly. So they take out his wallet and they find two cards in it, one in the name of Lee Oswald and the other in the name of A.G. Heidel. And this is crucial, isn't it? It is crucial. Very important clue. They think it is odd that at this point this guy is showing no emotion whatsoever. This will be a theme that we return to. Less than half an hour later, at 2.15, the news reaches the local FBI that the man

arrested for the shooting of J.D. Tippett is a man called Lee Oswald. And immediately, one of the guys who hears this information is FBI agent James Hostie. I assume that's how he pronounces his second name. He says, I have a file on the Oswalds. And he says to his supervisor, that must be the guy who shot Kennedy. There's no doubt in his mind that that is the guy who shot Kennedy, because as we will see, the FBI have been interested in Oswald because they regard him as somebody on the far left. Now, at the same time, 2.15, the battle for Kennedy's body has finally been won.

So Jackie, the Secret Service, the whole kind of entourage. Well, it hasn't entirely been won, has it? Because as I understand it, basically, LBJ and the security service and everybody have bulldozed their way out and got onto the plane. But the whole time, they're nervous that the Dallas law authorities might come tearing up in their cars and kick up a fuss. That's right. They are. So that's a kind of extra dimension of jeopardy. I mean, it's just what they don't need.

There's going to be an autopsy, but it's going to happen back in Washington, DC. That's the remand of the Bethesda Naval Hospital. Meanwhile, the talk is LBJ must become president. He needs the constitutional authority. And it's agreed he will take the oath of office to become president before they take off. They need a judge to do it. And he says, well, there's this judge called Sarah Hughes, who's an old friend of his, who's a federal judge, a kind of client. So they're waiting for Sarah Hughes to arrive. And she arrives at 2.30 at Love Field.

And eight minutes later, the swearing in ceremony begins unlike any other american history so this is the famous photograph we've all seen the photos if you look across the photo you have lbj in the middle you have to say shocked he looks in a state of total shock utterly hanged dog he has ladybird johnson on one side who looks similarly stricken and you have jackie who looks you know like somebody in a state of complete and utter trauma still in her blood-soaked suit still in the suit still in the pink suit and this tom is two and a half hours since they turned into dd plaza when her husband was still alive. The sheer pace of events. Yeah, it's moving at such a pace, isn't it?

Anybody who has ever been in a sort of very shocking incident or, you know, lost a family member unexpectedly or any of these car crash or any of these kinds of things will know that you feel you've been catapulted into a kind of parallel reality. Yeah. And suddenly the whole world has turned upside down and you're in a state of confusion. But for all this to have happened so quickly and unrelenting pressure, it's just an incredible moment. And the amazing thing about this story is the way that you have two narrative strands going in parallel. You have the horrors of Kennedy's death being taken to the hospital,

and then the matter of high politics. The fact that this is all about the government of the United States of America, the most powerful country in the world. At the same time, out on the streets of Dallas, you have the police investigation. Yes. And again, the speed with which the police conduct their investigation is either very impressive or perhaps very sinister. We will undoubtedly get onto that. But perhaps we should take a break at this point. So LBJ is on the plane with Kennedy's corpse heading back to Washington

and Lee Harvey Oswald has been taken into police custody. And when we come back, we will find out what happens next i'm marina hyde and i'm richard osmond and together we host the rest is entertainment it's your weekly fix of entertainment news reviews splash of showbiz gossip and on our q a we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works we have just launched our members club if you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Hello, welcome back to The Rest Is History. We are

in Dallas. It is the 22nd of November 1963 and Dominic, by now it is three o'clock, two and a half hours after the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. And what are the police in Dallas up to? So already the police, they have the suspect Lee Oswald. They also have a card in his wallet that says AJ Heidel. They've taken him back to police headquarters in downtown Dallas. They have already located the house where he boards in Dallas. So he spends the week in Dallas and then he goes to Irving in the suburbs to see his wife at weekends.

They've located his boarding house in the Oak Cliff area. Within a couple of hours, they're searching the house. It's on North Beckley Street. And so they find lots of books on communism and so on. Loads. They also find James Bond novels, don't they? Yeah. But if you're interested in communism, you might also be interested in James Bond, Tom.

Yeah. You'd be a Cold War-ophile, wouldn't you? Or if you're interested in shooting US presidents, you might be into James Bond. That's true. That's all true. Or if you're into shadowy conspiracies. All of these things. Run by sinister master villains, you might be into James Bond. That's true. That's all true. Or if you were into shadowy conspiracies. All of these things. Run by sinister master villains, you might be as well. Precisely. I think basically everybody likes James Bond in 1963. All right. Except for the new

statesman's reviewer, Paul Johnson. It's the most obscene books he'd ever read. Anyway, that's by the by. The place is full of books on the USSR, on communism. There are pamphlets, there are letters from the Communist Party of the USA, from the Socialist Workers' Party, lots of stuff from the Fair Play for Cuba committee, which is a kind of far left group that is saying that the US has been very hard on Fidel Castro and stuff. They also find a Soviet passport with Lee Harvey Oswald's name and photo. Which, you know, I mean, that must be quite a shock because that's not the kind of thing you normally expect to find in Dallas, is it? No, no, not at all. An American citizen with a Soviet passport. That would have come as no surprise to the FBI. But it would to

the police, would it? Yeah, but to the police. Or would they have been tipped off? No, they probably wouldn't have been. I mean, there's a lot of communication between the FBI and the Dallas police. Even at this stage, they are talking to each other. But of course, an ordinary Dallas police officer doesn't know that Lee Harvey Oswald is a man who has spent time in the Soviet Union and that he's been watched by the FBI and so on and so forth. Just to go back to the James Bond, it is amazing that you have these spy thrillers that seem entirely implausible, that involve Cold War shenanigans. And then you find the guy who is suspected of shooting the President of the

United States with a Soviet pulse ball. I mean, the sense that you are inside a drama, you're inside a script, must have been overpowering, I'd have thought. Well, the further twist to that, Tom, actually, is that the single biggest boost in the sales of the James Bond books was when John F. Kennedy said that he loved reading the In Fleming books. And he named, I think it was From Russia With Love as one of his favorite books. Because he is, of course, precisely the kind of person, a product of World War II, in some ways, sort of culturally quite conservative, that those books are aimed at. He's that sort of person who finds them a fun read.

But the whole thing with this story, I mean, it's the interface between actual events and the way in which the high politics and the drama of the time has been rewritten as fiction. Yeah.

And that this is a kind of a fusion point that will ripple through the decades to come. The relationship of fiction and fact. Yeah, that's a very fair point. Five o'clock, Air Force One finally lands at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, which

is outside Washington, D.C., and it is met there by the slain president's brother, Robert, who is the attorney general in charge of law enforcement. And who has been going hard after the mafia, of course. He has, of course. Talked about that. He had had a call at his house from J. Edgar Hoover to tell him that his brother had been shot and killed. The two men don't get on, do they?

They don't get on at all. Robert Kennedy is totally devoted to his brother. He has subordinated his career to his brothers. He has basically been very happy to be his brother's hard man, to be a bad cop to his brother's good cop. And he, I mean to be his brother's hard man, to be a bad cop to his brother's good cop. And he, I mean, any brother is, of course, would be devastated, but he is stricken to an extraordinary degree. He basically goes into this colossal midlife crisis and depression as a result of his brother's assassination. So he meets the plane. John F. Kennedy's body is taken to Bethesda Naval Hospital for the autopsy. Lyndon Johnson is taken straight to the White House. Dominic, can I just say about LBJ who, I mean, his rap is that he's a hard man,

often very brutal in his personal relations with people. The first thing that he does when he gets to the White House is to write letters to Kennedy's two children. So, dear John, it will be many years before you understand fully what a great man your father was. His loss is a deep personal tragedy for all of us, but I wanted you particularly to know that I share your grief. You can always be proud of him. And then to Caroline, your father's death has been a great tragedy for the nation as well as for you at this time. He was a wise and devoted man. You can always be proud of what he did for his country. I mean, it's very moving, I think. I think it is moving.

Well, LBJ, like a lot of quite hard men, is quite sentimental, I think, in some ways. Now, LBJ afterwards got a terribly bad rap, actually, from the Kennedy court, if you like, because he made changes. He kicked out some people. He kept others. He kicks out the Secretary, doesn't he, straight away? He does. Gives her half an hour to clear her desk. He gets a bad rap and people say he was very insensitive to jackie

he couldn't wait to you know clear out all their stuff and all this kind of thing this is actually not right at all there are lots of accounts of people who say actually on the plane and afterwards he was conscious of the awkwardness of his position and very solicitous of mrs kennedy and when he gets back isn't he reproached? Is it by Bob McKinney? I can't remember. And LBJ accepts it. Yeah.

For pushing things too fast. Yeah. And he kind of reigns back. He's in an impossible position. Tom, whatever he had done. Of course. People would have found things to criticise. I think there is lots to criticise Lyndon Johnson for generally, but his conduct after

the assassination, I think, is for somebody in shock who's been catapulted into this office, as far as he knows, there may be assassins out for him too. I think it's incredibly harsh to criticize him. Unless, of course, he's behind the conspiracy. Unless, of course, he knows something about the conspiracy, which we will come to. In Dallas, Lee Harvey Oswald has been taken to the police station. He is already under interrogation. He's being interrogated by a guy called Captain J.W. Fritz. He's a very impressive seeming man.

Yeah, a very experienced Dallas policeman. Expert interrogator, isn't he? Yeah, very calm. He likes to create a kind of- A bond. Relationship, of course, with the suspect. Yeah. It is obvious right from the beginning to all of the people around oswald that he is put it this way none of them have any doubts they have the right man and

the reason they don't have any doubts is that he doesn't really make much of an effort to protest his innocence so he says i didn't do it but he says it in this kind of sullen withdrawn snarky kind of teenager being rude to his parents kind of way correct everybody i mean the assistant dallas da guy called bill alexander he says what struck me is that oswald always acted like he was in control it was as though everything was rehearsed he was arrogant and defiant with fritz he said i found his whole behavior completely inappropriate to the situation now the thing is if you were tom yes you know when we go on one of our rest is history tours if you with Fritz. He said, I found his whole behavior completely inappropriate to the situation. Now, the thing is, if you were, Tom, when we go on one of our Restless History tours,

if you are unjustly accused, I would not expect you to behave in such a way. I don't expect you to- No, I wouldn't be sulky. No. I'd be sobbing. You'd either be sobbing or you would be furious, wouldn't you? No, I'd be sobbing. Would you? Oh, Tom. I'm a sobber. Okay. Well, I mean, let's hope you never have to.

Yeah, let's hope this is all very academic. Yeah. So as the afternoon becomes the evening, they're still interrogating Oswald, and he is still denying everything. And muttering about his rights, he says he wants a particular lawyer who is associated with the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU. That's in New York, isn't it? Yeah, from New York.

He's got this one particular lawyer. I can't remember the guy's name and they never get through to him and that is all oswald can ever go on about is this one particular guy now meanwhile an unexpected person pitches up at dallas police headquarters and this is a man called jack ruby and jack ruby is a nightclub owner um his original name is jacob rubenstein He's from Chicago. He was born in 1911, so he's in his early 50s. Jack Ruby has an interesting story. He's from a kind of Polish, Orthodox Jewish family. He was one of 10 children, very troubled background. He was a delinquent. His parents had a violent relationship. His mother suffered from poor mental health he was in and out of foster homes he'd

worked as an aircraft mechanic in world war ii but he is by every account an extremely erratic odd hot-tempered very emotional man isn't he he's always crying isn't he tom yeah i mean he really is a sobber yeah so he opens these various nightclubs and sort of strip clubs and things which of course in the run of things they have links you know people to do with organized crime will come to the clubs and he will give them drinks and he will talk to them. As he does to the police as well doesn't he? He loves the police and he's always giving them free drinks. He seems like a kind of detective monke. Yes. There seems to be a kind of intense feeling of identification with the police. Yeah.

And I guess the sense of a path that he can't take. Yeah. Bit like Elvis with Nixon. He'd love a badge. Like Elvis with Nixon. I think that's a nice comparison. Yeah. He loves the glamour of the police and he likes the sort of sense of authority and status

that comes with the police, the camaraderie. He likes to think he's one of the boys what is important to say about jack ruby jack ruby is not part of organized crime organized crime people will go to his clubs he will give them drinks he will chat to them he will be friendly he is the last person that a serious organized crime group would want anything to do with it, because he's going to start crying, shouting. He does things like he takes his top off at inappropriate moments and things.

He's just so eccentric and weird that you wouldn't want to rely on such a man. But against that, I mean, on the more positive side, if you wanted a corned beef sandwich, he'd be your man, wouldn't he? Because he's always bringing people corned beef sandwiches when he hears the news about canada's assassination what is it celery fruit juice a celery tonic tom celery dominic i so i read that and i thought oh that's a sandbrook tipple if ever i've heard one

i wouldn't thank you i don't believe any vegetable should be made into a drink. I don't like vegetable smoothies or anything of that kind. The idea of drinking a bit of celery, it's anathema to me, Tom. It's against all I stand for. He brings it to the police and they all say, oh, this is the best soft drink we've ever had. So the Dallas police would disagree with you. I think they're being kind.

I don't see a Dallas policeman. Maybe I'm stereotyping the police of the great city of dallas and the great state of texas but i don't see them as celery tonic drinkers tom anyway i don't know i think texas i think celery tonic so jack ruby when he hears the news of kennedy's death he bursts into tears everybody says he's in a terrible state he's actually been in a rage anyway because he had seen that advert that we talked about in the last episode in the Dallas Morning News.

Signed by that guy, Bernard Weissman, basically saying that Kennedy was a communist. And that had really inflamed him. He loves the Kennedys. What he's inflamed about is the fact that the guy who signed the advert has a Jewish surname. And he says they're trying to frame the Jews and make us out to be Kennedy haters.

I love Kennedy. Kennedy is the best man in the country. So when he hears that he's dead, he's crying, he's ringing people and all of this. And he hears that the Dallas police have arrested a suspect. And his instinct is, oh, our brave boys. Crack open the celery tonic. I'll take them some corned beef sandwiches, which he does. Unbelievably, I mean, the laxness, I suppose you would say, by modern standards.

He is able to walk right into the police station with all these sandwiches. And he actually, at one point, he's poised to go into Captain Fritz's office, where Lee Harvey Oswald is being interrogated with all these sandwiches and drinks. And somebody says, oh, no, Jack, you can't go in there. So he doesn't go in. But that will give the listeners a sense of what they would now regard, I suppose, as amateurishness, that people are able to just stroll around. But of course, at the time, it doesn't occur to them.

I mean, the press are all packed in and shouting. But also because they haven't lived through the whole JFK shenanigans. Exactly. So they're not alert to all the things that can happen. Exactly. Lost innocence, Dominic. And I think also they're the first generation to live with television and the media age and mass media. And the idea that the news of this can be communicated so quickly

and that people can come piling into the police station. Because it's interesting that people are aware of the kind of the chaos, the misinformation that followed Lincoln's assassination. Yeah. But none of that lives in our imagining. No. Because it's all in faded newsprint. But the Kennedy assassination does.

Because, as you say, it's all on film. It's hurtling around the world. So just to go back to the interrogation of Oswald, by about 9.30 that evening, Captain Fritz, the homicide investigator, who you rightly say, Tom, comes out of this story. I think, unless you think he's part of a conspiracy, I think Captain Fritz is a very impressive person. Well, there is a very suspicious aspect to Captain Fritz. Okay. I know what it is. i know what it is i know what it is and i think if his if his relatives or descendants are listening they will be

you know we will see i mean tom if you go to dallas they'll have you sobbing in their cell that's all i'm going to say well i'm just i'm not going to say i believe it anyway let's park this and carry on with the narrative so captain fritz this, this is what he has. He has Oswald on the sixth floor of the Texas Book Depository a few minutes before the shooting. He has the fact that they have found cartridges, they have found the paper bag, and they have now found the rifle on the sixth floor.

He has the fact that Oswald's wife Marina, who is Russian, says that he owned a rifle. And this looks like the rifle they have. There's a possibility they will have some sort of print on the rifle as it turns out they get a palm print but not fingerprints fritz also knows that oswald is the only employee of the texas book depository who left the building after the shooting and did not return. He also has the fact that Oswald, almost certainly in their mind,

well, indeed, certainly in their minds, is the man who killed Officer J.D. Tippett a little while later. So by 11.20 that night, when he gathers with the attorneys and his men, they are all agreed. They think there is enough evidence to charge Lee Harvey Oswald

with the murder of the president. And a little bit later, they do something absolutely unprecedented. They bring Oswald out to the media as a spectacle in the full glare of the world's media. And this seems an extraordinary thing to do when you are only just building your case. And so this is what, just after midnight? Yeah. But of course, the reason why they do it, as Vincent Bugliosi describes in his book on this, and I think he's absolutely right, is that for the police chief, it is really

important to be open with the world. Yeah. For decades, there have been situations where there have been hard-bitten reporters in dirty Macintoshes. Gumshoes. Yeah, gumshoes, standing around with a battered old bit of pencil and a piece of paper. But they've never had a moment like this with television cameras.

I love the journalist who rushes into the phone box, you know, seconds after the assassination and then just reads things out very, very slowly so that no one else can get into it. That's very gumshoe behaviour. It is very gumshoe behavior it is very gumshoe so they bring oswald out the cameras the flashbulbs are going the cameras are whirring it's actually a bit of a non-event this press conference oswald gives very weak and boring answers and he evades most of the questions and just sort of mutters about his rights and whatever yeah he doesn't know what's going on and all this kind of thing and then the da is

guy called henry wade the district attorney he steps forward he starts talking about oswald and at one point he misnames the fair play for cuba committee which oswald has been connected to he says oh i don't know what it is it's the defense of cuba or something like this and a man shouts out from the back and says no it's it's the Fair Play for Cuba committee. And the guy who does this is Jack Ruby. Yeah. So he's given them his corned beef sandwiches and the celery tonics,

and now he's just been lurking around Ruby in the basement. So he's just feet away from Oswald. And you can see that bit on YouTube where Ruby shouts out, a man shouts out. Anyway, the press conference breaks up. It was all a bit desultory. Ruby goes back home. He's calling people and crying and saying, poor Mrs. Kennedy, her poor children, what

a terrible thing to happen. So he's gone home and he's driving everybody mad. Oswald is held at police headquarters in the cell. LBJ and Jackie are back in Washington DC and there's one more development overnight Tom which is that at four o'clock in the morning the FBI managed to trace the rifle it's a Manlica Carcano rifle and they trace it to a shop called Klein's Sporting Goods in Chicago and it was a mail order rifle. So you would see an advert and you would write in and you would send a money order to get it delivered. And the name of the customer who

had ordered the rifle was A. Heidel of Dallas, Texas. And that is, of course, the second of the two names that was in Lee Harvey Oswald's wallet. So, so many conspiracies, so much to discuss, so far still to go. Don't say that. So, well, I think this must be the first time that we've done two podcasts on a single day. Yeah. And we still have lots more to come because of extraordinary developments, which in turn will feed into the great swirl of conspiracy theories. So we will be continuing this story. If you would like to find out what happens, here are opinions on who really shot JFK.

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