Standing before Johnson is the judge.
Several feet behind them, in the rear of the plane, lies the body of John F. Kennedy.
After the swearing-in ceremony, Jackie sits down in a seat next to the coffin as the long ride home begins.
* * *
It is Sunday morning, November 24. The nation is devastated by the assassination of John F. Kennedy and is riveted to the television with depressed fascination as events unfold. Jackie Kennedy is now out of sight, privately mourning her husband’s death. So the eyes of America turn to Lee Harvey Oswald. The assassin has become infamous since Friday, particularly after telling a crowd of reporters, “I’m just a patsy.”
That impromptu midnight press conference at Dallas police headquarters was surreal. Reporters were allowed to physically crowd the handcuffed Oswald. Many in Dallas, and across America, are so infuriated by JFK’s death that they would gladly exact revenge. Yet the Dallas police do little to shield Oswald.
One of those enraged is Jack Ruby, who worked his way into the press conference unmolested, with a loaded Colt Cobra .38 in his suit coat pocket.
The lack of security around Oswald continued throughout the press conference. He told reporters that the police were after him only because he had lived in the Soviet Union. He denied shooting the president. His tantalizing words “I’m just a patsy” hung in the air, suggesting that he was some sort of scapegoat.
To some, those words brought to mind another such incident, thirty years earlier.
On February 15, 1933, in Miami, Florida, Giuseppe “Joe” Zangara emptied a .32-caliber handgun at President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Zangara missed his target, instead hitting and killing Chicago mayor Anton Cermak. The trial was amazingly quick, and Zangara was executed by the electric chair just five weeks later.
There are some who insist that Roosevelt was not the intended target. Instead, they believe that the point all along was to kill Cermak, as part of a Mafia conspiracy.
In mob slang, Zangara was a “patsy”—someone whose guilt was set up to advance a crime coordinated from behind the scenes.
Lee Harvey Oswald’s public statement that he is a patsy fuels the flames that John Kennedy’s death is part of a greater conspiracy.
* * *
There are still Americans who believe Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone in killing John F. Kennedy. Some came to this belief thanks to Oswald’s comments and J. Edgar Hoover’s insistence that there was a conspiracy. Even Bobby Kennedy believed that Oswald did not act alone.
The world will never know the answer.
After saying just a few words to the press on Sunday morning, Lee Harvey Oswald is led through the basement of the Dallas Police Department to a waiting armored car, where he will be transferred to the county jail. In actuality, the armored car is a decoy—for security measures, Oswald will be led to a police car instead.
A crowd of journalists watches a handcuffed and smiling Oswald as he makes his way down the corridor, his right arm handcuffed to the left of Detective J. R. Leavelle.
Between forty and fifty journalists and more than seventy policemen are waiting as Oswald is brought out. Three television cameras roll.
“Here he comes!” someone shouts as Oswald emerges from the jail office.
The newsmen press forward. Microphones are thrust at Oswald and questions shouted. Flashbulbs pop as photographers capture the moment for posterity.
Oswald walks ten feet outside the jail office, on his way to the ramp where the police car is waiting.
Suddenly, Jack Ruby emerges from the crowd to Oswald’s left. He has come back to see Oswald for a second time, and once again he carries a pistol. Known to policemen and reporters, Ruby had no problem getting close to the perp walk, even though there is absolutely no reason for him to be there.
Ruby has left his dog waiting in the car. But he is an impulsive man, fond of spontaneously beating drunks who make passes at the strippers in his club. He is so devastated by Kennedy’s assassination that friends have found him crying. Now, enraged by Oswald’s smiling presence, Jacob Rubinstein ensures that he will never see his dog again. He moves fast, aiming his gun at Oswald’s abdomen, and fires one shot. The time is 11:21 A.M.
Jack Ruby is set upon by police. Lee Harvey Oswald slumps and is immediately transported to Parkland Hospital. After arriving, he is placed in Trauma Room Two, right across the hall from the emergency room where John Kennedy spent the final minutes of his life. At 1:07 P.M., forty-eight hours and seven minutes after JFK’s death, Lee Harvey Oswald also dies.
But unlike Kennedy, Oswald is not mourned.
By anyone.
27
JANUARY 14, 1964
ATTORNEY GENERAL’S OFFICE, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Jackie Kennedy sits in a simple leather club chair before a roaring fire. The flag of the United States can be seen over her left shoulder. Her eyes, once so bright and playful, are dull. She wears black. Across from her as the cameras roll, are Bobby and Teddy Kennedy, there to offer moral support. Bobby, in particular, has become a surrogate parent to Caroline and John, and a constant companion to Jackie.
