Speaker 1: It's Thursday, November twenty first, nineteen sixty three. Lee Harvey
Speaker 1: Oswald is visiting his wife, Marina, who's living with Ruth
Speaker 1: Payne in Irving, Texas. He and Marina were separated, and
Speaker 1: he had taken a room in a boarding house not
Speaker 1: far from his job at the Texas school Book Depository
Speaker 1: in Dallas. He would normally visit Marina in June on
Speaker 1: the weekends, but this is a Thursday, and it's unexpected.
Speaker 1: President Kennedy and the First Lady will arrive in Dallas
Speaker 1: the next day. Before his arrival, the President became aware
Speaker 1: of a full page ad in the Dallas Morning News,
Speaker 1: an ad paid for by right wing extremists which accused
Speaker 1: him of being soft on communism and essentially calling him
Speaker 1: a traitor. Kennedy mused out loud about how easy it
Speaker 1: would be to assassinate a traveling president. Air Force One
Speaker 1: lands at love Field in Dallas to adoring crowds. As
Speaker 1: the President shakes hands, Jackie is handed a dozen roses.
Speaker 1: It had been raining earlier, but now the clouds have
Speaker 1: parted and the Golden Couple is bathed in sunlight. Camelot
Speaker 1: has arrived in Dallas.
Speaker 2: This is who killed JFK. Sixty years later, what can
Speaker 2: we uncover about the greatest murder mystery in American history?
Speaker 2: And why does it still matter today? I'm your host,
Speaker 2: Solidad O'Brien.
Speaker 1: At this point in our investigation, we've established that there
Speaker 1: were more than three shots fired at Kennedy, and not
Speaker 1: all from behind. We've presented evidence that Oswald, the alleged
Speaker 1: loan shooter, had a connection to the CIA and was
Speaker 1: likely unknowingly being set up for a plan that would
Speaker 1: motivate an invasion of Cuba. We've also established who had
Speaker 1: both the motive and the means to carry out the crime,
Speaker 1: rogue elements of the CIA, anti Castro Cuban exiles, and
Speaker 1: members of organized crime. And there's evidence that notable leaders
Speaker 1: from each of these groups was in Dallas that day.
Speaker 3: A member of the president's security team later told researcher
Speaker 3: Vince Palmara, quote, we were getting all sorts of rumors
Speaker 3: that the president was going to be assassinated in Dallas.
Speaker 3: He then shares these threats with Kennedy that morning.
Speaker 2: Kennedy says back to him, quote, Marty, you worry about
Speaker 2: me too much. The Secret Service told me they have
Speaker 2: everything taken care of. There's nothing to worry about. Okay,
Speaker 2: let's talk specifically about what happened on that day.
Speaker 1: Oswald wakes up not knowing exactly what he's part of,
Speaker 1: but he knows that he's part of something important. Marina
Speaker 1: is sleeping. Before saying goodbye to her, he takes off
Speaker 1: his wedding ring and places it in a cup on
Speaker 1: her bedside table. He whispers to Marina that there's money
Speaker 1: in the dresser, one hundred and seventy dollars, a sizeable
Speaker 1: sum for the Oswalts. Marina goes back to sleep. Oswald
Speaker 1: exits the house and meets Buell Fraser, his coworker at
Speaker 1: the Texas School Book Depository. Fraser would often give Oswald
Speaker 1: a ride to work.
Speaker 4: That morning was unusual.
Speaker 5: Most of the times I would pick lee up walking down
Speaker 5: the sidewalk toward my sister's home.
Speaker 4: All right, have to put up in front of the
Speaker 4: house and blow on the horn. But that morning was different.
Speaker 2: That's Buell Fraser. He was nineteen at the time, and
Speaker 2: we interviewed him in twenty twenty three, sixty years after
Speaker 2: that fateful morning. He remembers it like it was yesterday.
Speaker 5: He walked down the half a block across the street,
Speaker 5: and with it he had a fact. So he goes
Speaker 5: over to my car and he puts a package in
Speaker 5: on the back seat, on the fashion side. And so
Speaker 5: I said, what's in the package?
Speaker 1: Lee?
Speaker 4: And he said, don't you remember we talked about this shoes.
Speaker 5: Today, I'm going to bring some curtain rods to work.
Speaker 5: And I said, that's right, you did tell me that.
Speaker 1: Now the package that Fraser mentions has become something of
Speaker 1: a fascination for JFK researchers.
Speaker 2: Is the package the gun?
Speaker 6: Well?
Speaker 1: I asked Fraser about that. Nobody ever has determined what
Speaker 1: exactly was in that package? Have they?
Speaker 4: To my knowledge? That is correct?
Speaker 5: I have not. What I would like to tell you
Speaker 5: was I have a friend called Josiah Thompson. Josiah has
Speaker 5: Aigan Carno rifle.
Speaker 1: This was the type of rifle Oswald allegedly used to
Speaker 1: kill Kennedy.
Speaker 5: I says, can we measure this rifle? He said absolute.
Speaker 5: So we measured the rifle. We measured to stop, and
Speaker 5: we measured the barrel. There's no way that it would
Speaker 5: fit in the package that was on the backseat of
Speaker 5: my car, right, And so That really made me feel
Speaker 5: good because a lot of people have said I have
Speaker 5: told the truth about that.
Speaker 4: Well, I'm telling you all I know.
Speaker 2: So what was it?
Speaker 1: Nobody knows for sure. All we know is that Oswald
Speaker 1: had a bag that, according to Buell Frasier, wasn't big
Speaker 1: enough to hold even a broken down Carcanell rifle.
Speaker 2: Okay, what happens next?
Speaker 4: So we get into we start to drive off.
Speaker 5: When we get to the parking lot, they gets the
Speaker 5: package out of the back seat, and so he turns
Speaker 5: around and starts walking towards the building where we would
Speaker 5: be working.
Speaker 1: During the course of the day. Did you see Oswald
Speaker 1: at all?
Speaker 5: I did run into him. I know he went up
Speaker 5: to the fifth and sixth floor.
Speaker 1: You saw Lee on the fifth and sixth floor at
Speaker 1: some point.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: It was a pry and it had been a hard way.
Speaker 4: It is a road Jay.
Speaker 1: Nothing about that day would be normal. Let's jump ahead
Speaker 1: a few hours to eleven thirty seven am. Air Force
Speaker 1: one lands at Dallas love Field. The Kennedys arrived to
Speaker 1: an adoring crowd.
Speaker 2: And here is the President of the United States.
Speaker 3: How the crowd is after they're going wild?
Speaker 1: They get into the open limousine and they sit right
Speaker 1: behind Governor Connolly and his wife Nellie. The Secret Service
Speaker 1: car is directly behind them, followed by Vice President Lyndon
Speaker 1: Johnson and Ladybird. They start their ten mile ride through
Speaker 1: the streets of Dallas, with onlookers cheering along the way.
Speaker 1: Nellie Connolly turns back and says, you can't tell me
Speaker 1: that the people of Dallas don't love you, mister President,
Speaker 1: and he says, yeah, yeah, they do. Everybody was happy
Speaker 1: until they turned off Houston Street and onto Elm Street.
Speaker 1: It's now twelve twenty five pm. This is the time
Speaker 1: that the motorcade was scheduled to pass through Dealey Plaza.
Speaker 1: According to the Warren Report, when Oswald was asked by
Speaker 1: the Dallas Police Department where he was when the president
Speaker 1: was shot, he said quote went to the second floor,
Speaker 1: where a Coca Cola machine was located, obtained a bottle
Speaker 1: of Coca cola for lunch.
Speaker 3: Two witnesses also place him there. They say they saw
Speaker 3: Oswald in or near the second floor lunch room around
Speaker 3: the time of the shootings. One witness is a woman
Speaker 3: named Carolyn Arnold, a secretary at the Texas School Book Depository.
Speaker 1: She said that she was on her way out of
Speaker 1: the building around twelve twenty five when she saw Oswald
Speaker 1: in the lunch room.
Speaker 3: She said, quote, he was alone as usual and appeared
Speaker 3: to be having lunch. I do not recall that he
Speaker 3: was doing anything. I just recall that he was sitting
Speaker 3: there in one of the booth seats on the right
Speaker 3: hand side of the room as you go in.
Speaker 2: Okay, Oswald said he was eating lunch, went to the
Speaker 2: second floor. There are two witnesses that place him there
Speaker 2: all around twelve twenty five when the motorcade passes by.
Speaker 2: That seems pretty solid to me.
Speaker 1: Except for the fact that the motorcade was running five
Speaker 1: minutes late. It didn't arrive at Daily Plaza until twelve thirty.
Speaker 2: So if it was Oswald who fired the gun, couldn't
Speaker 2: he have been on the second floor at twelve twenty
Speaker 2: five and then run up to the sixth floor by
Speaker 2: twelve thirty.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go at that for a moment. A man
Speaker 1: is planning to assassinate the president of the United States,
Speaker 1: who was supposed to be arriving at twelve twenty five, Now,
Speaker 1: wouldn't he already be in position at that point? I
Speaker 1: mean not casually sitting in the second floor lunch room
Speaker 1: drinking a coke.
Speaker 3: Marion Baker is a Dallas police officer who was riding
Speaker 3: a motorcycle in the motorcade that just entered Daley Plaza when.
Speaker 1: The shots rang out.
Speaker 3: He said he saw pigeons fly off the roof of
Speaker 3: the Texas School Book Depository, and without hesitation, he hopped
Speaker 3: off his bike and ran into the building. Video shows
Speaker 3: him entering within fifteen seconds of the shooting.
Speaker 1: He immediately runs into Roy Trully, the manager of the building,
Speaker 1: and Trully and Baker start up the stairs.
Speaker 3: They reached the second floor lunch room at twelve thirty
Speaker 3: two pm. Baker confirmed it was ninety seconds after the
Speaker 3: shots were fired.
Speaker 1: And guess who they see sitting in the lunch room
Speaker 1: Oswald with a coke in his hand. Truly tells Baker
Speaker 1: that Oswald works in the building, so they continue past them.
Speaker 1: This is ninety seconds after the shooting.
Speaker 2: Couldn't Oswald have fired three shots then sprinted down to
Speaker 2: the second floor within ninety seconds, where he runs into Baker.
Speaker 1: Well, the Warrant Commission had the same question, so they
Speaker 1: re enacted the time it would take Oswald to go
Speaker 1: from the sixth floor sniper net down to the second floor,
Speaker 1: and they timed that ad around seventy five.
Speaker 2: Seconds, So tight but definitely plausible.
Speaker 1: Sure if you don't allot any time for Oswald to
Speaker 1: wipe down the gun, which he had to have done
Speaker 1: because none of his fingerprints were found on the gun.
Speaker 1: It also does include the time it would take Oswalt
Speaker 1: to hide the gun behind some boxes, which is how
Speaker 1: it was found.
Speaker 3: He would have had to have been in the lunch
Speaker 3: room at twelve twenty five, run up the stairs to
Speaker 3: the sniper's nest, got his rifle into position, fired three
Speaker 3: shots with incredible accuracy, and then wipe the gun clean
Speaker 3: of fingerprints hidden it, then run back down the four
Speaker 3: flights of stairs to the second floor in less than
Speaker 3: ninety seconds.
Speaker 2: So that would be quite the athletic endeavor.
Speaker 1: Officer Baker testified that Oswald seemed and I quote calm
Speaker 1: and collected when he encountered him, and that it didn't
Speaker 1: appear that he had been running. But there is another
Speaker 1: piece of evidence that makes this even more unlikely. Victoria
Speaker 1: Adams worked on the fourth floor of the building, and
Speaker 1: after the assassination, she gave a brief deposition to the
Speaker 1: Warren Commission, and then disappeared. She was afraid of what
Speaker 1: her testimony might mean and she didn't want to get
Speaker 1: sucked up into all the investigations. Decades later, though, a
Speaker 1: researcher named Barry Ernst was able to track her down,
Speaker 1: and between the information that she gave him for his
Speaker 1: book Girl on the Stairs and her Warren Commission testimony,
Speaker 1: some very powerful evidence emerged.
Speaker 3: Adams was on the fourth floor with three female colleagues
Speaker 3: when the President's motorcade drove through Dealey Plaza. They heard gunshots,
Speaker 3: and they watched the President's limo race off. She and
Speaker 3: co worker Sandra Styles ran to the staircase and headed down.
Speaker 1: And what she says next is important.
Speaker 3: She testified that they did not see or hear in
Speaker 3: anyone else on the stairwell at that time until they
Speaker 3: reached the first floor. And yes, it was the only stairwell.
Speaker 2: So Oswald would have had to have used the same
Speaker 2: stairwell to get down to the lunch room.
Speaker 1: Right. So not only would Oswald have to fire three shots,
Speaker 1: clean and hide the gun, he would somehow have to
Speaker 1: manage to go unnoticed by Victoria Adams and Sandra Stiles
Speaker 1: as he raced down the stairs to the second floor
Speaker 1: lunch room. Now you can believe that or the eyewitnesses
Speaker 1: who saw Oswald on the second floor the entire time.
Speaker 2: So you're saying you don't believe that Oswald was even
Speaker 2: on the sixth floor when those shots were fired.
Speaker 1: Well, let me tell you what the Dallas Police chief
Speaker 1: concluded later that day. He said, quote, the physical evidence
Speaker 1: and eyewitness accounts do not clearly indicate what took place
Speaker 1: on the sixth floor of the Texas school Book Depository
Speaker 1: at the time that John F. Kennedy was a set fascinated.
Speaker 3: And when Oswald was later arrested, the police did a
Speaker 3: paraffin test on his cheek. It tests for contaminants from
Speaker 3: gun residue, and the test on Oswald's cheek was negative.
Speaker 1: So my answer is no, I don't think there's any
Speaker 1: evidence that Oswald was on the sixth floor at the
Speaker 1: time of the shooting. Yet everything changes for him once
Speaker 1: those shots were fired.
Speaker 6: Kennedy apparently got ahead, he fell a down in backdat
Speaker 6: of his car.
Speaker 4: When the shots by gad to ring out, people really
Speaker 4: began to.
Speaker 2: Pay That's Buell Fraser Oswald's coworker who drove him to
Speaker 2: work the morning of the assassination. He had stepped outside
Speaker 2: the Texas Schoolbook Depository building to watch the motorcade go
Speaker 2: by and pep up.
Speaker 5: Again to Ron had followed out, and people will cried
Speaker 5: and hollered and screaming at his. One lady come walking
Speaker 5: up and she said they shot the president.
Speaker 4: And I said, what did that woman say? She said,
Speaker 4: they have shot the president.
Speaker 1: It's just after twelve thirty five pm.
Speaker 2: What does Oswald do next?
Speaker 1: Well, according to Fraser, he left the building.
Speaker 4: Alongside the building was Lee himself.
Speaker 1: And what was he doing?
Speaker 5: They just walk all very casually. Then he turned right
Speaker 5: and crossed Elm Street. Someone said something. I turned to
Speaker 5: see he was talking to me, and when I turned
Speaker 5: back I had lost him in the crowd.
Speaker 1: As Oswald walked away from the building, I believe that
Speaker 1: is when he started to realize that something had gone
Speaker 1: wrong and that maybe what Richard K. S. Nagel had
Speaker 1: told him was true, that he was being set up.
Speaker 2: You might remember Nate Goal as the intelligence agent who
Speaker 2: warned Oswald that he was being used by people around him.
Speaker 1: Right now, Daily Plaza is in total chaos. People are
Speaker 1: saying the President is gonna die, and Oswald begins to
Speaker 1: act as though his life is in danger.
Speaker 2: So what does he do.
Speaker 1: He crosses Houston Street and witnesses see him get on
Speaker 1: a bus. But because of all this chaos, the bus
Speaker 1: wasn't moving. It was stuck in traffic. So the same
Speaker 1: witnesses who saw him get on the bus saw him
Speaker 1: get off. And the next thing we know is he
Speaker 1: finds a taxi cab and tells the cab driver to
Speaker 1: take him towards his boarding house. How do we know
Speaker 1: this because the cab driver testified that Oswald told him
Speaker 1: to drop him off a couple of blocks away from
Speaker 1: his boarding house.
Speaker 3: He's obviously concerned or suspicious, trying to hide his tracks
Speaker 3: make sure he isn't being followed.
Speaker 1: At twelve forty five pm, just fifteen minutes after the
Speaker 1: President was shot, the Dallas PD had already rais out
Speaker 1: a description white male five foot ten, one hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty five pounds in his early thirties. And this was
Speaker 1: all based on the account of one man who was
Speaker 1: standing across the street and said he saw a man
Speaker 1: of this description fire a rifle from the sixth floor.
Speaker 2: So now they begin their search for a man who
Speaker 2: roughly looks like Oswald.
Speaker 1: It's now almost one pm. Oswald gets out of the
Speaker 1: cab and walks to the boarding house. The woman who
Speaker 1: runs the boarding house, Arlene Roberts, said that Oswald went
Speaker 1: into his room, grabbed his jacket and hurried out. And
Speaker 1: at some point during that time he grabbed his revolver
Speaker 1: and he left the boarding house and he started walking
Speaker 1: towards the Texas Theater. At one sixteen PM, a Dallas
Speaker 1: police officer named J. D. Tippett is patrolling the area
Speaker 1: near Oswald's boarding house and he sees a man that
Speaker 1: fits the description he received on his radio, and he
Speaker 1: goes over to him. Now, there's a lot of conflicting
Speaker 1: information about this, including from eyewitnesses. Some say Oswald was
Speaker 1: stopped by Tippett. Others say Tippet stop someone else. There
Speaker 1: are even reports that Tippett stopped two people. All we
Speaker 1: know for sure is that Officer JD. Tippett was shot
Speaker 1: four times and killed.
Speaker 2: And it's never been definitely proven who did it.
Speaker 1: Nope. Eyewitness testimony from the incident is all over the place.
Speaker 1: The Tippet murder may be the subject of another podcast.
Speaker 1: But what we do know for sure is what Oswald
Speaker 1: does next. He goes to the movies, the movies. How
Speaker 1: do we know he goes to the movies because someone
Speaker 1: saw him slipping into the now famous Texas Theater without
Speaker 1: paying and they called the police. So now I want
Speaker 1: to ask you a question. Okay, shoot, okay. If you
Speaker 1: were Oswald and you just shot the president of the
Speaker 1: United States and you go into a movie theater to
Speaker 1: lay low for a few hours, where would you sit.
Speaker 2: I would hide in a dark corner somewhere.
Speaker 1: That makes sense. Now to understand, I've been to the
Speaker 1: Texas Theater and it's big, it's its seats around nine
Speaker 1: hundred people. That afternoon there were only twenty people in
Speaker 1: the theater. And now he could go anywhere. So what
Speaker 1: does he do? He sits right down next to an
Speaker 1: eighteen year old boy named Jack Davis. Now, I don't
Speaker 1: know about you, but when I'm in a virtually empty
Speaker 1: movie theater and a stranger comes in, they don't typically
Speaker 1: sit right next to you. They leave you some space.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that would be normal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, But not Oswald. In a nearly empty theater,
Speaker 1: he sits right next to someone that's weird. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: is weird, and it gets weirder. After sitting next to
Speaker 1: this eighteen year old Jack Davis, Oswell gets up and
Speaker 1: he moves across the aisle and he sits down next
Speaker 1: to somebody else, and a few minutes later he gets
Speaker 1: up and he just strolls to the lobby.
Speaker 3: In the lobby, he buys popcorn, and the man selling
Speaker 3: him the popcorn testified that this was at one point
Speaker 3: fifteen PM.
Speaker 2: But we know Tippett was killed at one sixteen he was, so.
Speaker 1: Either Oswald didn't kill Tippett or the popcorn guy is
Speaker 1: way off on his time. Anyway, Oswald goes back into
Speaker 1: the theater and according to researches, he sits down next
Speaker 1: to a pregnant woman.
Speaker 2: What do you think he's doing going from person to
Speaker 2: person to person?
Speaker 1: You know, I think he is looking for his contact.
Speaker 2: His contact.
Speaker 1: The theater could have been a planned meeting spot where
Speaker 1: someone would be waiting to get him to a safe
Speaker 1: house and then ultimately out of Dallas.
Speaker 3: This is straight out of the intelligence operation playbooks. If
Speaker 3: a plan goes wrong, go to your pre arranged meetup spot.
Speaker 3: Except that after sitting next to all these people. None
Speaker 3: of them respond, so he goes to the back of
Speaker 3: the theater and sits there alone. Within minutes, the Dallas
Speaker 3: PD arrives, the lights go on in the theater. The
Speaker 3: officers spot Oswald. Oswald pulls his gun, but before he
Speaker 3: can fire, a struggle ensues. Oswald is subdued. They place
Speaker 3: him under rest, and they put him in a squad car.
Speaker 3: On the way to the police station, one of the officers,
Speaker 3: Paul Bentley, recalled a conversation he had with Oswald. Quote,
Speaker 3: I asked him inside the car on the way to
Speaker 3: city Hall, did you kill our president, to which Oswald replied,
Speaker 3: I haven't shot a damn person. As Oswald arrives at
Speaker 3: the police station, someone asks him if he wanted to
Speaker 3: hide his face from reporters, and he responds, why should I,
Speaker 3: I haven't done anything to be ashamed of. As he
Speaker 3: faces a barrage of questions from the press. There's someone
Speaker 3: in that gaggle whose name you might remember, Jack Ruby.
Speaker 2: It's been a little while since we've heard about him.
Speaker 1: He was that local Dallas nightclub owner and low level mobster.
Speaker 1: Any of the officers would frequent his club. They knew him,
Speaker 1: and they didn't think much of him being there. But
Speaker 1: like we said in our first episode, if you pull
Speaker 1: on the Jack Ruby thread, a lot will come loose.
Speaker 1: In the next episode, we'll give that thread another tug
Speaker 1: and reveal who sent Ruby to take care of Oswald.
Speaker 2: On the next episode of Who Killed JFK?
Speaker 6: He called me about four or five o'clock and asked
Speaker 6: me to go down to the police station and check
Speaker 6: on Watch Security if any there was around Lee, Harvey
Speaker 6: or Wall.
Speaker 2: We take a look at who Jack Ruby really was.
Speaker 5: Every line from Jack Ruby goes back to the mob,
Speaker 5: and the mob kills people who can tell the true story.
Speaker 2: Who Killed JFK is hosted by Rob Reiner and me
Speaker 2: Solidad O'Brien and Our executive producers are Rob Reiner, Michelle Reiner,
Speaker 2: Matt George, Jason English, David Hoffman, and me Solidad O'Brien.
Speaker 2: Our writer is David Hoffman, with research by Dick Russell.
Speaker 2: Our story editors are Rob Reiner and Julie Pineto. Our
Speaker 2: senior producer is Julie Pinneto. Our producers are Tristan Nash,
Speaker 2: Dick Russell, Michelle Goldfein, and Amari Lee. Our editors are
Speaker 2: Tristan Nash, Julie Pinneto, and Marcus de Lauro. Our project
Speaker 2: manager is Carol Klin. Our associate producer is emilse Kiros. Mixing,
Speaker 2: mastering and sound design by Ben la Julier. Research and
Speaker 2: fact checking by Girl Friday and emilse Kiros. Archival audio
Speaker 2: in this episode thanks to Getty Images, Odyssey, Dick Russell
Speaker 2: and Rob Reiner. Business affairs by Hennan Nadea and Jonathan Furman.
Speaker 2: Our consulting producer is rec Zan Galillini. Recorded in part
Speaker 2: at CDM Studio and Fourth Street Recording Studio. Show logo
Speaker 2: by Lucy Quintanilla. Special thanks to Johonig Rose Arsa and
Speaker 2: Dan Storper. If you're enjoying the show, leave us a
Speaker 2: rating and review on your favorite podcast platform. Who Killed
Speaker 2: JFK as a production of Solidad O'Brien Productions and iHeart
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