The Rest Is History - 396. JFK: The Second Assassin Strikes (Part 5)

Episode Date: December 5, 2023

“Jack, you son of a bitch, don’t do it!” Just hours after President Kennedy’s assassination, in the full glare of the world’s media, the Dallas police are confident they have solved the case. They have found the murder weapon, and are poised to charge their chief suspect, a strange loner called Lee Harvey Oswald. But as they prepare to move him to the county jail, one local businessman has other ideas. As they are leading Oswald into the station garage, an eccentric nightclub owner Jack Ruby steps forward. And as he aims his pistol at Oswald’s chest, the course of American history is about to take another dizzying turn … Join Dominic and Tom as they trace the footsteps of two erratic nobodies, Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby, in the days before Kennedy’s assassination, leading up to the critical moment on 24th November when the two men finally came face to face, changing both of their lives and the course of the investigation forever… *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. There is a certain amount of satisfaction felt by all in attendance. The Dallas Police have done an incredible, some would even say a near impossible job over the last eleven and a half hours. In that short span since the President's murder, they have apprehended the man they believe is responsible and amassed evidence against him that is destined to withstand years of intense scrutiny. Despite the thousands of government man hours yet to come, the basis of the case against Oswald is collected and assembled by the Dallas police

in these first crucial hours. It is a feat the world will soon forget. That is Vincent Bugliosi in Parkland, his account of kennedy's assassination and three days that follow it and it is his judgment on the performance of the dallas police on the 22nd of november the day that kennedy is shot but dominic we have now reached the 23rd of november so it's the day after kennedy's assassination and i mean i know the bugleji has spent years and years investigating this so but i'm sure that listeners would like to know whether you concur with his judgment on the performance of the dallas police do you feel qualified to pass judgment on it tom regular listeners to the rest of Cistern will know that we feel qualified to pronounce all kinds of historical fields of inquiry.

And this is no different. There is one thing I would certainly quibble with Vincent Bugliosi on there. He says they had compiled evidence which is destined to withstand decades of scrutiny, the truth of the matter is that actually for decades, that evidence has been pulled apart, reinterpreted, twisted, questioned, undermined. And although I agree with him that the Dallas police worked remarkably competently and efficiently, actually, to apprehend a suspect, to compile a case, to put together the evidence and so on and so forth the fact of the matter is that what happens in the next couple of days means that all of their work will be produced put in a kind of shadow put in a shadow exactly so i actually i think he's being unduly you know to write as though this is a an open shut case and there's nothing to be asked about it is to miss the fact, willfully miss the fact, that for tens and tens of millions of people, there are always questions about this. Now, whether those questions are justified is a different matter.

I guess the salient fact, though, is that he is pointing out that, you know, within less than a day, the Dallas police have compiled this case against the man they think is guilty of shooting the president. So what do they know at this point about Oswald's movements before the assassination? Have they kind of looked into that? Have they drawn up a picture of what his movements might have been? They have, of course. So this is the kind of picture they have. They know that Oswald, who had previously spent time in the Soviet Union, is married to a Russian woman called Marina, and that she lives in Irving, which is kind of suburban metropolitan fringes of Dallas. And she's with a Quaker, isn't she? Called Ruth Payne. Who is very interested in Russian.

She's a Russian teacher. Yes, exactly. That's how they become friends. They know that Oswald usually visited his wife in Irving at the weekends, but very unusually. Well, the only time I think. Exactly. Had visited her on a Thursday during the week. Had left his rented accommodation in Oak Cliff, Dallas to go out to Irving to see his wife. They know because she has told them that he left his wedding ring behind. Again, it's weird, isn't it? These parallel stories. So Jackie taking her ring off and

leaving it on her dead husband's finger, the symbolism of it all. They know that he left early on the Friday morning with a long package wrapped up in brown paper to get a lift from a neighbour called Wesley Frazier into Dallas to work. And that when Wesley Frazier asked Lee Harvey Oswald what he is carrying, Lee Harvey Oswald said, curtain rods. They know that he arrived at the Texas Book Depository at 7.52 in the morning, which is on the corner of Houston and Elm overlooking Dealey Plaza, as we said. And unusually, again, he walked away from Wesley Fraser as they walked away from the car with his package. He kind of went off to the book depository.

They know that he spent the morning working at the book depository, that he went up and down between the different floors, that he spent time on the sixth floor from where they think the shots were taken. They know that at 12 o'clock, half an hour before Kennedy was assassinated, he was seen on the sixth floor by one of his bosses, that some of the others were going downstairs for lunch, that he did not go downstairs for lunch, and that he asked for the elevator gate, that's the gate on the lifts, to be closed. Then there was a blank, but they know that at 12 31 this police motorbike officer marion baker went into the texas book depository looking for the suspect and that he and the superintendent

bumped into lee harvey oswald the superintendent said oh it's fine i know him he works here and the lee harvey oswald then left the building was gone from the building no later than about 12 35 he is the only employee of the texas book depository to have left the building no later than about 1235. He's the only employee of the Texas Book Depository to have left the building after the assassination. They know that at 1239, he caught a bus going west on Elm Street, and he was seen by somebody on the bus who knew him looking kind of, she said, scruffy and kind of distracted and a bit wild-eyed. They know that at 12.46, because of course in the chaos following the assassination, there's all kinds of traffic jams and congestion and sort of confusion.

They know that Oswald got off the bus and unusually did something that he never normally did because he doesn't have very much money at all, that he hailed a cab that took him to Oak Cliff. Then he got out of the cab, then he went home, changed his trousers, and that's what brought him to the attention of Officer Tippett. And they know, you know, there was no doubt in their minds that Oswald is the man who shot Officer Tippett

and then fled without buying a ticket into this... Into the movie theatre. Movie theatre where he was subsequently arrested. And that, of course, he fought the police and tried to pull a gun when they arrested him. By Saturday morning, Fritz has also caught Oswald out in two lies. Now, for an experienced investigator like Captain Fritz of the Dallas Police Department, he knows that unless the circumstances are very unusual, somebody who has been falsely accused does not generally tell small lies because it's not in their interest to do so. Unless, you know, you're trying to cover up something else in your life, the chances are that you will tell the truth because you know beyond any doubt, because you know you didn't do it, you know that the truth will exonerate you. Oswald has already told two lies.

He's lied about whether or not he brought any curtain rods to work. Of course, if they are just curtain rods, what's the issue? Yeah, there is no gain to him in lying about it. And secondly, he has denied that he's ever bought a gun. And then of course they say to him, well, what about your revolver? Oh yeah, well, that's not a gun. And when they say to him, the mail order gun in the name of A. Heidel, he denies anything about it. Now, if Oswald had bought the gun perfectly innocently, if it's not the murder weapon, if he had not shot Kennedy, there is no reason again for him to lie about this because of course, gun ownership in Texas is hardly unusual. So the police that morning, Saturday morning, they are in no doubt whatsoever that Oswald is the man.

And what about the kind of the justice system? Are they convinced by the evidence? Do they go public with it? Totally convinced. The DA, Henry Wade, at one o'clock that afternoon, he goes to the press. The press is still there, by the way. Of course they are. It's a really important point, Biss, when we get to Jack Ruby.

The press is still there. Great hordes of them in the police headquarters in downtown dallas and dominic it's fair to say also that of course this is generating international as well as merely american interest and that already particularly in europe and actually particularly in france i gather all kinds of conspiracy theories are starting to circulate in a way that they're not openly in America at this point. Yeah. So in France, lots of people are saying it's a conspiracy. The French papers, for example. Don't forget the United States has had quite disobliging coverage in European papers for a couple of years because of civil rights. So there's been a heavy emphasis in European papers

on the racism of the South, the abuse demonstrators martin luther king put in prison in birmingham all of that kind of stuff so as soon as kennedy is shot a lot of the european press say oh america is crazy it's full of crazy people and conspirators and so this also is part of the context for it that they are aware that they have to present a watertight case because the eyes of the world as well as of amer America are on them. Absolutely. It's why they are so open with the press, because it is so important to them that there not be a hint of suspicion about this. So one o'clock that afternoon, the district attorney, Henry Wade, he tells the press, he says, we have the suspect, he's been charged,

we expect a trial in mid-Januaryuary and I will be asking for the death penalty. So about 15 minutes after that, Oswald's mother, Marguerite, and his wife, Russian wife, Marina, are shown in to see him. His mother's a terrible woman, isn't she? She is. Yeah. She's a bad mother, I think it's fair to say. Very, very self-centered. It's all about her. Very self-centered and incredibly flaky. Marina, of course, this very young Russian who he met in Minsk. Who doesn't really speak English. She is totally out of her depth and bewildered by the whole thing. But here is what is really interesting. They go in and they have this very desultory conversation. He asks about the kids

and stuff like this. Marina, at this point, believes her husband is guilty. Because he's not protesting. Because she knows him. She knows what a spiky, difficult, anti-authority, sort of aggressive man Lee Oswald is. And when she sees him sullen, all of this this she thinks this is very weird she knows that if he were innocent he would be shouting and roaring about his rights and protesting and having to be dragged in and out and all of this thing and when she sees him react like this she thinks he's guilty now the other person who comes along that afternoon is his brother robert robert similarly finds Lee's demeanor very peculiar. He is disturbed by it

because he says that his brother is like a robot just answering questions mechanically, not showing any emotion, not doing what Robert hoped he would be doing, which is saying, they've got the wrong man. You've got to get me out of here. You've got to get me a lawyer. It's as though Lee's not really interested. The president of the Dallas Bar Association comes along and he says, do you want my help in finding you a lawyer? People are actually bending over backwards to try and make sure this all runs properly. He too says, I found Lee Harvey Oswald very calm, not frightened, not angry, just impassive, unreadable. And also he just wants this weird lawyer in New York, doesn't he? John Abt.

Yes. He keeps saying, I need this guy Abt who he's read about, a sort of civil liberties lawyer. And the Dallas people say, well, we'll get you a good lawyer down here. We'll find you a lawyer. No, no, no. I must have this guy. By evening, there were two more developments in the case, both of which seemed to the police to confirm what they already believe.

One is they have found a money order for the rifle, the money order that Mr. Heidel used to buy it from Chicago, and the money order handwriting, the analysis shows that this is Lee Harvey Oswald's handwriting. Secondly, they find a photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald in the backyard of his home with a rifle and two communist papers. And it seems to be the same rifle. And they showed the photograph to Oswald and Oswald says, that's not my face. It's a fake face. They've put somebody else's face on top of my body. And now there's been lots of discussion about this ever since this features in Oliver Stone's film, JFK. I think the general consensus now is that this is not a fake photograph. There's been very, very detailed analysis of it in the last few years,

which suggests that it is actually an authentic photograph. It doesn't mean that he did it, by the way. But this is clearly his defense, isn't it? The idea that he's being set up. So when he'd been taken out to the press conference, he'd said, I'm a patsy. And this, again, is the phrase that will appear in Oliver Stone's film, JFK, and so on. This is what he's saying. He's being framed. He's being set up. Well, he explicitly says in the patsy thing, he says, they're framing me because I didn't know I spent time in the Soviet Union, which he did, which we will come to later on in this series. So the police, as far as they are concerned, there is no doubt in their mind now. He spends one more night in custody, the night of Saturday, the 23rd of November.

Of course, what he doesn't know, what nobody knows is that this is the last night of his life. Overnight, the police have a series of death threats against Lee Harvey Oswald. That is standard again. That is not unusual. That is perfectly normal in this circumstance. And they have already decided, obviously, they're going to transfer him to the county jail. They're not going to keep him at police headquarters for the next two months or something. But they know they will have to do it with absolutely maximum security.

You know, they're not naive. They're not idiots. So at nine o'clock, the chief of police actually tells his supporters, nine o'clock on Sunday morning, he tells his subordinates, I want an armored truck. I will go personally to lead the kind of caravan of vehicles. I want police reinforcements. I want motorbikes in case there are crowds trying to storm the truck

and get Oswald out and lynch him i also want he says i want the police to do an absolutely thorough search of the basement of the building we'll be bringing him out through the basement onto this ramp and loading him onto the truck you know the nothing at all can go wrong but the assumption is that the police station itself is secure right yeah i think so that no one is likely to get into the police station itself is secure, right? Yeah, I think so. That no one is likely to get into the police station who isn't a member of the police. Well, they have security. I mean, they're not going to be letting lots of people come in.

What they don't allow for is the fact that the actual arrangements around the transfer will be so chaotic that for a single moment they will take their eyes off this ramp. For Lee Harvey Oswald, that will be a single moment, they will take their eyes off this ramp for Lee Harvey Oswald. That will be a fatal moment. Because of course, the gentleman that we've already mentioned, Jack Ruby, he is very, very upset about Kennedy's. He's very, very traumatized, isn't he? By the notion that if Oswald pleads not guilty, that Jackie Kennedy might be subpoenaed and have to come to Dallas.

That's right. And he's very upset about the thought of what this would do to her emotional state and what it would do to the children. And he's working himself up into a lather about this. So Jack Ruby is obviously, he's not the only person in America, in Texas, or indeed in Dallas, who has been deeply affected by President Kennedy's death. And he's not the only erratic and eccentric person, but he's an important erratic and eccentric person for reasons that obviously everybody knows. He has spent the whole of Saturday in this sort of what Vincent

Bugliosi describes as impulsive frenetic activity. He's closed his clubs out of respect. He's been going to his clubs. He's been ringing people up. He's gone to look at the wreaths at Dealey Plaza. And people have seen him there crying, Tom. And it's not just Pugliese who's saying this. I mean, it's people who are with him at the time. So there's this guy, George Senator, who's sharing his apartment. And he realizes that Jack is very, very, very disturbed. So he says he had a sort of stare look in his eyes.

I don't know how to describe it. I don't know how to put it in words. I mean, maybe that's retrospective, but I suspect not. No. Lots of people say that Jack Ruby was behaving very impulsively and erratically on the Saturday. The thing about going to Didi Plaza and being seen crying, I mean, the one thing I will say, I don't want to anticipate too much, is if you believe, as many people do, that Jack Ruby has mafia links and has been employed by organized crime to eliminate Lee Harvey Oswald so that he won't talk. I mean, there are a couple of issues here. One is, why would you allow Lee Harvey Oswald to spend days, hours and hours with Fritz being interrogated? Yeah, being interrogated. But but secondly it would seem an implausible choice

of assassin to eliminate the assassin to have your assassin spend the weekend going around the city crying ringing people up talking to everybody about what he's going to do yeah so as you say he's obsessed by this thing about the trial he reads a report in the Dallas Times Herald that says there is a possibility, if the trial is held in Dallas, that Jackie Kennedy will have to come back to Dallas in due course to testify as a witness. He is horrified by this. He thinks this is awful. But he also sees an open letter, a very kind of, I think it's pretty moving. Some people, I suppose, might find it mawkish. I don't. I think it's very, very moving. An open letter from a Dallas resident to Caroline Kennedy, Kennedy's daughter, from a guy who says, I took my two daughters out of school so they would see your mummy and daddy when

they visited Dallas. And he says, we saw them and they looked so happy. And your daddy looked at my youngest and eldest daughter and he waved to them. And I thought of you. And I thought, what a lovely guy he obviously was. looked at my youngest and eldest daughter and he waved to them and i thought of you and i thought what a lovely guy he obviously was and then he says you know it's such a terrible thing that has happened to you but i wish we could help you you'll have so many friends though god loves you god loves little girls you can absolutely see how this would hit someone as emotional and overwrought

as ruby in the solar plexus. Exactly. Ruby reads this letter. It's published as an open letter. The kind of thing, Tom, that as we know is often published in the wake of tragedies. Yeah. He reads this letter. He cracks. And by his own account, this is the moment he thinks, I am a Jew and we have been downtrodden and people say we are weak and all this.

Because it's a Jew who had written that letter that had been printed in the Dallas newspaper. Saying that Kennedy was a traitor. That Kennedy was a traitor. And so he wants to stand up and show that Jews are tough, is it? What's the phrase he uses? Jews have guts. That's what he says. I want to show the world that a Jew has guts. However, before Jack Ruby shows the world that he has guts, he has something even more pressing to do. He has to go into town to the Western Union office because he needs to send one of his strippers some money. And so that, I think, is where we should leave him on that exciting cliffhanger. How big's the queue going to be?

Is he going to get there? Is he going to be able to do it in time? I think it reflects well on him. Don't you? He's quite a paternalistic employer, isn't he? He is. Yeah. And just to kind of, we haven't had much English engagement in this, and we're a patriotic

podcaster, just to mention that one of his strippers is actually English. So... Yeah, Kay Coleman, I think it was, wasn't it? Yeah. So anyway, this is by the by. Well, that's nice, Tom. Nice to have an English element to the story. So the tension is building.

Will Jack Ruby get the money off in time? Will he get to the police station in time? What is going to happen? We will reveal all after the break. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. We'll reveal all after the break. episodes and early access to live tickets head to the rest is entertainment.com that's the rest is entertainment.com hello welcome back to the rest is history it is 11 17 on the 23rd of November 1963 and on Main Street, Dallas, Jack Ruby is filling out a Western Union money order for a stripper. Yes. Two minutes later, back in the police station, a handcuffed Lee Harvey Oswald is being taken

by his police escort down an elevator to the basement. Dominic, what happens next? Right, so the basement has been searched, totally searched. There are 70 policemen stationed in the basement for security. The plan, however, has changed. The original plan was they would take Oswald to the county jail in an armoured truck. The plan now is that the armored truck will attract so much attention that they will actually take him in an unmarked police

car and they will use the armored truck and the cavalcade as a kind of decoy it's actually Tom I have to say a pretty good plan given the amount of attention that would be paid to the armored truck so they're taking Oswald down in the elevator and then they'll lead him through the office and he will be taken towards the basement garage and he will be loaded into the car the basement is full of reporters television cameras cameramen photographers all of this stuff so the place is rammed actually meanwhile as you, a very short walk away on Main Street, Jack Ruby has got to the front of the queue at the Western Union office. There was one person ahead of him in the queue. Had there been more, he would not have been there in time. This is a problem, I think, if you believe that Jack Ruby is a hired, paid, professional assassin.

But who was that person, Dominic, ahead of him in the queue? Well, I mean, Tom, I don't... Come on, you've got to get on top of the case. I don't know, but I think the queue would be the line, as our American listeners would call it. It's surely a hard thing to fix, right? I mean, you don't know who's going to be standing there in the line. Anyway.

But if it's a mafia boss or it's someone from the X-Files or a Cuban exile, I mean, you don't know who's going to be standing there in the line. Anyway. But if it's a mafia boss or it's someone from the X-Files or a Cuban exile, I mean, you know. Right, right. So at 11.19, as you said, Oswald is in the elevator going down to the basement. At 11.20, the police are moving the cars and the trucks into position outside the basement garage at the end of this ramp now because of the change of plan there's just a bit of faffing around with the trucks and the cars if you're really fascinated by this truck-based faffing you can read probably thousands of websites about it but basically they're reversing some cars moving others it's a slight bit of confusion not massive confusion, though. Truck-based faffing.

But they are distracted. In that sense of distraction, Jack Ruby, who has just left the Western Union office, who's basically walking past the Dallas police headquarters, as he has done so many times with his corned beef sandwiches and celery tonics, he walks up the ramp and into the basement. And I think there is a claim that one person saw him and shouted, oh, stop, but it was too late. He was in.

At the same moment that he walks into the basement, the elevator doors open and Lee Harvey Oswald and his guards, he's flanked by two detectives, Detective Lavelle and Detective Graves. They step out of the elevator into the jail office. They move past the desks into the garage. They're blinded temporarily by the TV lights that have been set up. And as they come into view, the press surge towards them. And one of the press, a guy called Ike Pappas from CBS, they're all shouting, Mr. Oswald, Mr. Oswald.

And he shouts, do you have anything to say in your defense? And it is at that moment that a man lunges out of the crowd holding a gun in his right hand. I mean, everybody who's ever had a smidgen of interest in this story will have seen the clip, I'm sure. Right away, multiple policemen see that it's Jack Ruby. Somebody shouts, Jack, you son of a bitch, don't do it. And Ruby fires. He fires a shot directly into Lee Harvey Oswald's stomach. Then the police pile on him.

Right away, I mean, Ruby obviously doesn't deny it. Well, he'd be hard-pressed, he wouldn't he? He'd be very hard pressed. I mean, he's literally just shot in front of the full glare of the world's media. The world's fresh. Yes, he has. And he says, I hope I kill that son of a bitch. It'll save everybody a lot of trouble. Which, I mean, is very ironic because he's now absolutely set people down a whole succession of rabbit holes with that. He has indeed. So they drag Lee Hovey Oswald's body back into the jail office and a detective i think his name is combest is over him oswald is losing blood very rapidly and the guy says to us what is there anything you want

to tell me is there anything you want to say now then he doesn't does it and he doesn't say a word and then he passes out now as with the Kennedy assassination, they move incredibly quickly to get Oswald to Parkland Hospital. He is there within minutes. And they think about taking him into trauma room one, don't they? And then they think that that would be disrespectful. They do. Because that's where Kennedy had been taken. So they move him into trauma room two. But two of the same doctors who had worked on Kennedy also work on Oswald. And they are, of course, very conscious of the irony of this. But they're doing their job professionally.

It's obvious, by the way, there is a moment when they think he might pull through. Because his brother, Robert, he comes and a doctor comes out and says he'll be all right. Yeah. But the issue is he's lost so much blood. Now, this is a story in which ironers are piled on ironers at the very moment that oswald is bleeding to death in trauma room two in the white house in washington jacqueline kennedy robert kennedy and the two children are just being shown into the east room of the white house to see john f kennedy's body lying in state so this is before tom it will be moved to the rotunda of the Capitol for the public to

pay their respects. So this is a private moment. Jackie gives him two farewell letters from the children. They'd all had tie clips made with PT-109, which was the torpedo boat that had been sunk by the Japanese in the Second World War. And which had given him a terrible damage to his spine that had necessitated the wearing of the corset. Exactly. So they put that in and then they closed the casket. Oswald back at the hospital, they're working desperately on him, but at 1.07 PM, that's two days and seven minutes after John F. Kennedy was declared dead, Lee Harvey Oswald is declared dead. And meanwhile, is Ruby, is the interrogation already beginning? Yes, they've been interrogating Ruby and he's basically said the whole thing. I mean, he's only got one thing to say and he said it. So he has said, when I saw Mrs. Kennedy was going

to have to appear for a trial, I thought to myself, why should she have to go through this ordeal for this no good son of a bitch? I'd read about that letter to little Caroline. I had been to the Western Union office to send a telegram. I had to do it. I had to show the world that a Jew has guts. And later on, he says the same thing to the FBI. But Dominic, I think the thing he says that kind of basically sums up not just his motivation, but Oswald's, and I suppose in a sense, Kennedy's as well. I wanted to be something, something better than anyone else. That sense of wanting to make a mark, perhaps it's true of all three men in very different ways. Yeah, that's a nice point, actually, Tom.

So John F. Kennedy had been raised by his father to be so competitive and to believe that he could make a mark on the world, as of course he did. You know, he's a bright guy. He has a sense of service and of, you know, leaving an imprint on society. Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald, in their different ways, are very damaged men. They have none of Kennedy's assurance, his brains, his charisma, his charm. Contacts, his background.

Yeah, and they have none of his other advantages. You're absolutely right. And these are two men who have totally failed to make a mark and are very conscious of it. And now they do. I mean, most of us, Tom, learn to live with the fact that we won't be ranked among the great men of history. But both Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald. They've made their mark. Here we are talking about them. They have made their mark, but they were men who were

conscious of their own failure, I think, right up to the last moments of their lives. So that is a terrible blow for the Dallas Police Department. I mean, it is a blow to their public reputation from which they arguably never, ever recovered. I mean, it is a blow to their public reputation from which they arguably never, ever recovered. I mean, it must be humiliating for people associated with law enforcement in Dallas that the one place in that city, this huge, booming Texan city, the one place that everybody visits

is a reminder of their failure. That, first of all, they didn't protect the president, not that there's much they could have done, to be fair. And secondly, that the assassin was himself shot in their custody yeah two days later i think having read parkland that the police do actually come out of it incredibly well i mean my sense was that they were all corrupt hopeless incompetent the fake sense that i had but actually i pretty impressed with the investigation yeah i'll tell you the other thing i was impressed by was the sheer range of names

that the police officers have i very much enjoyed deputy chief blumpkin right and then there's a special agent floyd boring and one thing the uh the episode certainly wasn't was boring well that's that's true so i just throw that out Well, there's definitely this quality about this whole story, Tom, of the Great American Novel, isn't there? Yeah, there really is. Of a huge panoramic range of people with ludicrous names. You wouldn't believe it. Yeah.

And of course, lots of people don't. No, they don't. But Dominic, before we come to the theories about what happened, whether there was a conspiracy, if there was a conspiracy, who might have been behind it? Let's round off the narrative of these four terrible days. So we're now on the 25th of November. This is the day that is scheduled for JFK's funeral, but it's also going to be a day of two other funerals, isn't it? It is. And this was, of course, the day, Tom. It was kind of you know marked ringed in um kennedy's diary because they wanted to be back for their son john jr's birthday actually they have the birthday party i mean

it's an extraordinary detail very human detail that they still have the birthday party because they feel they don't want to deny the little boy his party they want to give him a sense of normality so kennedy's funeral was held in st matthew's cathedral the catholic cathedral in washington and then of course he was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. I don't know, just to mention before this, there had also been a service in the White House, which was a Catholic service. And this was the first ever Catholic service to be held in the White House. Is that right? The first Catholic service. We talked last week, didn't we, about the sense of controversy about the first Catholic president. I mean, no one's really questioning it.

No one's complaining about that now. No one's complaining about that now. No one's complaining about it now. So both the Kennedy family and the Johnson family march in the procession, as do 22 international presidents, 10 prime ministers, kings, queens, emperors. Tom, you were very keen to get a British element in. Good. Prince Philip is there. Well, the queen can't because she's pregnant with Prince Edward.

So good to get Prince Edward in as well. Ah, right. Your great patron. Yeah. I know you're a big fan of Prince Edward because he once said he'd heard of you or something like that, isn't it? Or he commended you on your book. He said he'd very much enjoyed Rubicon. So anyway, I'm glad we got less into the Kennedy story. Prince Edward who pretended to have read Tom's book.

Anyway, move on. So it's always somebody, at these great international occasions and funerals, there's always somebody who shouldn't be there. And that's generally the British Prime Minister. So in the case of our late Queen, Tom, it was Liz Truss, very demeaningly for Britain. And the funeral of President Kennedy was Sir Alec Douglas Hume. So the one post-war Prime Minister who nobody remembers.

I remember him because he was in Wisden He was a very good cricketer He was a very good cricketer So I'm glad we got Rube Connan and we got cricket Which I wasn't expecting to achieve before we began this episode And the leader of the Labour Party, Harold Wilson, is also But also, Dominic, it's the first foreign live event to be covered on Soviet TV Is it? That is a fact

The great concern, actually, the security concern Is not just attacks on the Kennedy and Johnson family Soviet TV. Is it? That is a fact. The great concern, actually, the security concern is not just attacks on the Kennedy and Johnson family, but President de Gaulle marches in the procession, and he's such a tall man that he really stands out. And everybody's very worried because the OAS, Yeah, of course. The sort of Algerian- Have they sent a jackal? Have they sent the jackal to eliminate him? Yes, that's a big concern at the time,

that Algerian terrorists, sorry, when I saygerian terrorists i mean of course french sort of right-wing nationalist terrorists who do not want to surrender their position in algeria so there are a million people lining the route there are 175 million people watching on tv and the two moments all of our american listeners will surely recognize are there's the spectacle of this horse called black jack it's the symbol of a fallen leader so this huge black horse it's riderless and in the stirrups are two empty boots reversed i don't really know where that comes from but it's a obviously a very spectacular kind of demonstration of loss regret for the lost leader yeah and the other is the heart-rending moment of um john jr age three on his birthday in his little suit saluting his

father's casket so you know we often say in britain we're the only people that do these things well but the americans do this brilliantly on this sort of very moving moment and there are two other funerals as you say there's a funeral just outside fort worth at the rose hill cemetery which is the funeral of lee harvey oswald and it's been really difficult haven't it for robert his brother to find a place that would accept his body he keeps ringing round and they say no we're not going to have him can't get any priests of all the oswald's i mean i actually feel really sorry for robert yeah i feel sorry for marina as well but they they're dragged into this situation as say, nobody gives them any house for him. And

the priest they eventually book is a Lutheran. He doesn't even turn up. He lets them down, doesn't he? They get to the cemetery. The cemetery say to them, look, you can do it, but you must tell everybody that it was already arranged and booked. In other words, you can't say that we allowed you to do it after we knew of the assassination. And there are so few people that the reporters have to carry the coffin, those reporters who've been sent to cover it. But the funeral that actually I find really moving

is the funeral of the one man who's always forgotten the other victim, which is J.D. Tippett, the policeman. Shot by Oswald. Yeah, his funeral took place at Beckley Hills Baptist Church in Dallas. There were 1,500 people there, 700 uniformed policemen went. And he had a $7,500 life insurance policy, which obviously wouldn't be very much for his family to live on. And they got loads and loads of donations.

American footballers, the Detroit Lions, every member of the team sent money. New York stockbrokers, a guy called Walter Annenberg, who was a newspaper mogul and kind of political donor. Yeah, he was ambassador to London, wasn't he? He was indeed. Yeah. And Nixon. Yeah. And Palm Springs, big house. I've been to it. Have you? Oh my word, Tom, that's a great bit of name dropping. So he paid off their mortgage, the Tippett's mortgage. In total, they were sent $650,000. Such was the wave of sort of sympathy for the Tippett family. Both Robert Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson made time to call Tippett's widow and to say how sorry they were. And Jacqueline Kennedy sent her a gold framed photo and said, there is another bond that we share. We must remind our children all the time what brave men their fathers were. So very moving. Lump in the throat.

Yeah, very lump in the throat moment, Tom. So that's the narrative. Now, of course, the question, which we haven't really... We've kind of hinted at it, haven't we? I mean, we have told you about the police case and what police think happened. We haven't told you what other people think happened or actually, Tom, what you and I think happened. So that is yet to come.

So we are five episodes into this epic survey of JFK, his assassination and the aftermath of the assassination. But we have the whole question of who might really have killed him. Was it Lee Harvey Oswald operating alone? Was he perhaps part of a broader conspiracy? Was he, as he had claimed to be, a patsy? So we will be back trying to answer those questions. You'll get them no matter what. But if you don't want to wait, you can go to therestishistory.com where you can join the Rest is History Club and get immediate access. But whichever way you choose to go, I hope that you will join us again for the conclusion of this extraordinary story.

Thank you very much, Dominic, for, you know, tour de forces, the phrase, and there's more to come. So we'll see you very soon. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment

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