JFK Assassination: Day 3

The birth of the crackpot conspiracy industry actually occurred on this day fifty years ago, when Jack Ruby shot and killed Lee Harvey Oswald at the Dallas Police Station. Millions upon millions of us remember this which happened at around noon eastern time, 9 a.m. Pacific, and it was unforgettable. It was the first murder ever broadcast in American television history.

Although Ruby, himself a disturbed individual, thought himself a hero for killing JFK's and Tippit's killer, by silencing Oswald forever and denying him a trial, he started all of this bullshit about a conspiracy surrounding the assassination itself and a conspiracy surrounding Ruby's part in it. An Oswald trial would have stopped any belief in it, and his conviction and likely execution would have ended speculation once and for all. We wouldn't have the Stone/Garrison groupies to deal with these days. The "researchers" would have had to find another line of work. Sadly, though, it was not to be.

Ruby was tried and sentenced to death, but he died of cancer just a little over three years later, early in 1967.

Other events during Day 3 included a mass and the funeral cortege to the Capitol building, where JFK lay in state for the public to pay their respects. Literally hundreds of thousands of people did.

This is where it gets almost unbearable for anybody who remembers the assassination. The initial reports were traumatic enough, but then the reality sinks in. When you see Jackie Kennedy and the two children, John, Jr. and Caroline, and especially how little those kids were, it's almost too much.

I don't know how much of it I will be able to stand to watch.

Video:

link

Enough is Enough

After all these years, the "theory" Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone shooter in the JFK/Tippit killings isn't a "theory" at all but FACT. Unfortunately, this hasn't stopped the conspiracy industry to peddle more nonsense about "why" JFK died that fateful day in Dallas 50 years ago tomorrow.

Oswald's brother Robert says enough is enough:

But the facts are there. … What do you do with his rifle? What do you do with his pistol? What do you do with his general opportunity? What do you do with his actions? To me, you can’t reach but one conclusion. There’s hard physical evidence there. True, no one saw him actually pull the trigger on the president but … his presence in the building was there. What he did after he left the building is known: bus ride, taxi ride, boardinghouse, pick up the pistol, leave, shoot the police officer. Five or six eyewitnesses there. You can’t set that aside just because he is saying, “I’m a patsy.” I’d love to do that, but you cannot. …

He did not and would not talk to any of the interrogators about anything of substance. Anytime they brought anything up that pertained to the assassination of the president and the shooting of the police officer, he knew nothing about it. He would talk about anything else. He had the presence of mind then to do that.

[To those who say,] “He didn’t own a rifle.” We know he owned a rifle. You’ve got all kinds of documented evidence. They’ve gone to the extreme measures to prove that he owned that rifle. You’ve got the backyard picture. They’ve got the original negative. They’ve got the camera. You’ve got all the physical evidence that ties together.

If it was any other murder case other than the president of the United States, it would have been resolved right then. Consequently, people left it wide open. It’s good that people raise questions and say, “Wait a minute, let’s take a second look at this.” But when you take the second look and the third and the 40th and the 50th, hey, enough’s enough. It’s there; put it to rest.

People just need to give it up.

With Friends Like Lee Harvey Oswald...

There are times when you think you know a person, but you later discover you never really knew that person at all.

I wouldn't be a bit surprised if Oswald had a death wish. He had a crappy job with few prospects, had a marriage on the outs, and had more than his share of psychological problems. Mix those in with easy gun access and ample opportunity and you get a presidential assassin.

On the Saturday morning after Kennedy was killed, I was sitting in my small apartment in Norman when a Secret Service agent and the local chief of police arrived and took me some 20 miles down I-35 to Oklahoma City for questioning. As we drove, I began telling them about how I met Oswald, the evenings driving around Fort Worth, the Dallas Russians and how a college kid got caught up with an accused assassin. After they escorted me into a nondescript conference room in a downtown building, the agents homed in on the question of the day, which, of course, has lingered over the past 50 years: Did I think Oswald worked alone or was part of a larger conspiracy? I told them simply that, if I were organizing a conspiracy, he would have been the last person I would recruit. He was too difficult and unreliable.

Over the years, despite public-opinion polls, many others have agreed. The opening of formerly secret archives in Russia indicate that the K.G.B. didn’t want to recruit Oswald. Cuban intelligence officers, a K.G.B. agent or two, Mafia bosses and even C.I.A. officers (including, supposedly, members of Nixon’s “plumbers” team) have somehow been tied to Oswald’s actions that day, but it’s difficult to understand how these conspiracy theories would have worked. Oswald, after all, fled the Texas School Book Depository by Dallas’s notably unreliable public-transportation system.

Nobody wanted Oswald, but he figured he would make a mark on history anyway and die a martyr to whatever nutball cause he believed in. He did make a mark on history but was no martyr.

Obituaries

Country singer Jerry Reed, 71, has died of emphysema complications.
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Voice announcer Don LaFontaine, 68, from illness complications.
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Newsman Ike Pappas, 75, witnessed the shooting of JFK killer Lee Harvey Oswald (note I don't say alleged because he did do it), has died of complications of heart disease.

He was with CBS News until he was laid off in 1987.

Here is a recording of his Oswald report:

Those Who Escorted

Oswald during the hours following one of the darkest moments in American history remember:

During one interrogation on Friday – the evening of the assassination – Mr. Sims left Oswald's presence to take a phone call.

The caller was an old acquaintance: a local nightclub owner by the name of Jack Ruby.

"He said he was down at Sol's Turf Bar and he said, 'I got 30 sandwiches made up and some drinks.' He wanted to bring them down in case we didn't have time to get something to eat," Mr. Sims recalled.

Now retired, Mr. Boyd, 80, lives in Navarro County.

Mr. Sims declined Ruby's offer. Later that weekend, they would have occasion to talk again.