Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot Part 36

Thus Dallas officials won't let John Kennedy's body leave the state of Texas until an official autopsy has been performed. The Dallas medical examiner, who has now arrived at Parkland, will not budge on this matter.

Veteran Secret Service special agent Roy Kellerman, who has now taken charge, is livid. "My friend," Kellerman makes it clear to Dallas medical examiner Dr. Earl Rose, "this is the body of the president of the United States and we are going to take it back to Was.h.i.+ngton."

"No. That's not the way things are," Rose replies. "Where there is a homicide, we must have an autopsy."

"He is going with us," Kellerman tells Rose.

"The body stays," insists the medical examiner, an upright man fond of wagging his finger in people's faces.

Meanwhile, Lyndon Johnson and Air Force One are stuck on the ground because of this legal wrangling. Jackie Kennedy won't leave without JFK's body, and LBJ won't depart without Jackie, fearing he would be considered insensitive if he did.

The argument now becomes an old-fas.h.i.+oned Texas standoff-a physical showdown between the Secret Service, Dr. Rose, and members of the Dallas Police Department. There are forty men present. Pus.h.i.+ng and shoving break out. The Secret Service is determined to have its way, but the Dallas police won't back down. Finally, Kennedy's close friends Kenny O'Donnell and Dave Powers order Secret Service agents to grab JFK's coffin and bull their way through the police. "We're getting out of here," O'Donnell barks as the undertaker's cart on which the casket rests is rolled toward the exit door. "We don't give a d.a.m.n what these laws say. We're leaving now!"

The president's body is loaded into Vernon Oneal's 1964 white Cadillac hea.r.s.e. Jackie Kennedy sits in the rear jump seat, next to her husband's body. Clint Hill and other agents jam themselves into the front seat. Bill Greer is still inside the hospital, but Roy Kellerman isn't waiting for him. Secret Service special agent Andy Berger takes the wheel and races for Love Field at top speed. As he watches the hea.r.s.e peel out, Vernon Oneal wonders aloud how and when he's going to be paid.

There is no stopping when the Cadillac reaches the airport. Tires squealing, Special Agent Berger races the hea.r.s.e onto the tarmac, ignoring the signs reading "Restricted Area" and "Slow-Dangerous Trucks." He speeds past the Braniff and American Airlines hangars, oblivious to all dangers until the hea.r.s.e screeches to a halt at the back steps leading up to Air Force One. Kennedy's friends and bodyguards then personally manhandle the six hundred pounds of coffin and president, banging it off the stairwell leading up into the plane and tilting the casket at awkward angles. They load the body onto Air Force One through the same rear door John Kennedy stepped out of three hours earlier. That moment was ceremonial and presidential. This moment is morbid and ghastly.

Jackie Kennedy waits until her husband's body is on board before climbing up the steps. The inside of Air Force One is like an inferno; the air-conditioning has been off for hours. The blinds are down, and the cabin is dark out of fear that more a.s.sa.s.sins are on the loose and will shoot through the plane's windows. Yet Lyndon Johnson insists on being sworn in before Air Force One leaves the ground. So it is that the Kennedy staff and the Johnson staff stand uncomfortably next to one another as federal judge Sarah Hughes, who was personally appointed to the bench by LBJ and now has been hastily summoned to the presidential jet of which John F. Kennedy was so fond, administers the oath.

"Do you, Lyndon Baines Johnson, solemnly swear..."

"I, Lyndon Baines Johnson, solemnly swear..."

LBJ stands tall in Air Force One. To his left, still wearing the bloodstained pink suit, is Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy. The former First Lady has not changed clothes. She is adamant that the world have a visual reminder of what happened to her husband here.

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 a.s.sa.s.sination 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 a.s.sa.s.sin 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 s.h.i.+eld 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 bas.e.m.e.nt 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 pa.s.ses at the strippers in his club. He is so devastated by Kennedy's a.s.sa.s.sination 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.

JANUARY 14, 1964.

ATTORNEY GENERAL'S OFFICE, WAs.h.i.+NGTON, 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.

When her husband died eight weeks ago, Jackie Kennedy had no place to go-protocol mandated that she move out of the White House immediately, which also meant an end to Caroline's special schooling and John's fondness for riding in Marine One. Jackie was hardly penniless, but actually had little cash to her name, a circ.u.mstance that will continue until JFK's will is sorted out.

Jackie's whole life was John Kennedy, and even now she sometimes forgets that he's dead. She is filming this spot, which will be shown in movie theaters across the nation as a newsreel, because she wants to give thanks for the tremendous outpouring of warmth from the American people. She's received more than eight hundred thousand letters of condolence. "The knowledge of the affection in which my husband was held by all of you has sustained me," Jackie says firmly to the camera, "and the warmth of these tributes is something we shall never forget."

Jackie's words are scripted, and she reads from cue cards. But they are her own words, chosen specifically to evoke heartfelt emotion. The same American people who elevated a president and his wife to movie star celebrity status have not forgotten Jackie in her time of need. And while she is no longer the First Lady, Jackie Kennedy carries herself with the full weight of that t.i.tle as never before.

But looks are deceiving: privately she aches, compulsively chain-smoking Newport cigarettes and biting her fingernails to the quick. Her eyes are constantly red-rimmed from crying.

Jackie pauses several times during the filming to catch her breath or flutter her eyes to keep the tears at bay. "All of you who have written to me know how much we all loved him, and that he returned that love in full measure," she tells the world.