Whenever he could, Oswald steered his interrogators toward politics, and he appears to have talked more freely to Hosty than to anybody else. The views he espoused, his choice of Abt, which the policemen failed to understand since they had no idea who Abt was, together with the fact that his last two letters had been written to the Communist Party and the Soviet embassy in Washington, are a clue to what was in Oswald’s mind. Once again, as when he had shot at General Walker, he was trying to establish himself as a hero of the left. Just as at that earlier time, in April, he had in his mind a list of fantasy constituents, people and organizations with which he had been corresponding: the Worker, the Communist Party, the Militant, the Socialist Workers Party, the Soviet embassy and government, and the FPCC, and he hoped they would come to his aid.
Only one of the old constituents was missing, or rather, was distinctly less important in November than he had been in April, and that was George de Mohrenschildt. Not that Oswald had forgotten de Mohrenschildt. He had listed his name twice on job applications the previous month, and on one he had written after the name de Mohrenschildt, “best friend.” De Mohrenschildt still mattered to Oswald, but he appears no longer to have been what he was before, the person for whose approval, above that of everyone else, Oswald had done the deed. He was still a constituent, but a lesser one now.
Not that any of Oswald’s “constituents” approved what he had done or would have come to his aid. Indeed, they hardly knew who he was. They were constituents only in Oswald’s head, and he knew little more about them than he had conjured up in his imagination.
As willing as he was to expatiate about politics to his interrogators, Oswald denied having killed anyone. He had not shot “any of them,” he said, adding that he did not know Governor Connally had been hit, a way of saying, perhaps, that he had not been aiming at Connally—he had been aiming at someone else.
As for the president, while giving hints, in his own way, as to the truth, Oswald outwardly, and steadfastly, denied killing John F. Kennedy. He and his wife, he said, liked the president and his family—“they are interesting people.” He had his own ideas about national policy and doubted that American policy toward Cuba, for example, would change as a result of the assassination. Anyway, Oswald said, “In a few days people will forget, and there will be another president.”
After their visit with Lee on Saturday afternoon, Marina, Marguerite, and the children were moved from the Hotel Adolphus to the Executive Inn Motel, near Love Field. That evening Marina dealt in her own fashion with the bothersome photographs of Lee. She removed them delicately from her shoe, tore them in two, placed them in an ashtray, and lit a match to them. She was unaware that other copies had been found by the police among their belongings in the Paines’ garage. Lee had already been confronted with enlargements at the police station. Adding to his other lies, he said he had never seen the photographs before, admitting that they showed his face but with a different body.
Marina thought of one more thing. She telephoned Ruth that night, explained carefully where Lee had left his wedding ring, and asked Ruth to keep it for her.
Ruth’s telephone rang one more time that night. It was 9:30, and once again it was Lee. But this time, unlike his two calls in the afternoon, he was speaking Russian. He did not ask Ruth if she had reached Abt. He appeared to have only one thing on his mind. It was, “Marina, please,” the same abrupt words in which he had always asked for her.
Ruth explained that Marina was not staying with her. Lee was incensed. He asked Ruth to convey a message to Marina, in strong terms, that he wanted her at Ruth’s. As Ruth understood it, he wanted Marina in a predictable place, wanted to know her whereabouts every second, so that she would be available to him at any moment he might try to reach her.
That night at the Dallas Police Department, Chief Jesse Curry decided to move his prisoner to the county jail the next day. His decision was in keeping with the police department’s practice of transferring prisoners who have been charged with felonies from the city to the county jail. A Secret Service agent, Forrest Sorrels, asked Curry to make the transfer at an unannounced hour, possibly during the night. Curry, however, wanted to accommodate the press. No definite time was announced for the transfer, but he told waiting reporters that they would not miss anything if they were there by ten in the morning.
On Sunday, November 24, at 11:10 A.M., after another interrogation that lasted longer than expected, Oswald was ready to be transferred. But the shirt he had been wearing when he was arrested had been sent to a crime lab in Washington, and he had on only a T-shirt. Some hangers with his clothing were handed in to Fritz’s office, and the officers selected what they considered the best-looking shirt for him to wear. Oswald was adamant. No, he said, and insisted on wearing a black pullover sweater with jagged holes in it. He was now dressed, as he had been in the photographs taken by Marina, all in black—black trousers and a black sweater. Fritz then suggested that he wear a hat to camouflage his looks. Once again, as he had done on entering the jail two days earlier, Oswald refused. He would let the world see who he was.
Accompanied by Captain Fritz and four detectives, Oswald was taken to the basement of the police station where he was to step into a waiting car. The basement and the ramps leading out of the building were crowded with reporters and cameramen, three television cameras, and nearly a hundred policemen. Oswald reached the basement at 11:20 A.M. and was promptly led to the exit.
A few minutes earlier, Jack Ruby, carrying $2,000 in cash and a .38 caliber revolver, entered the Western Union office on Main Street, a block from the police department. At 11:17 he sent a money order for $25 to one of his nightclub strippers in Fort Worth, left the Western Union office, and headed for the police department. He walked down the Main Street ramp toward the basement without impediment. Because of his demimonde life, Ruby was known to some of the officers, and he was not even noticed. Everyone was straining to see Oswald.
Someone shouted, “Here he comes!” Along with Captain Fritz and the four detectives, Oswald walked through the door toward the car that was waiting for him. At 11:21 A.M. Jack Ruby stepped out of the crowd and fired a single, point-blank shot into Oswald’s abdomen.
At 10:30 that morning Robert Oswald met two Secret Service agents at a Howard Johnson’s motel halfway between Dallas and Fort Worth. The Secret Service had recruited Peter Gregory, Marina and Lee’s first Russian-born friend in the United States, to act as interpreter, and the four of them drove to the Executive Inn Motel, where Marina, Marguerite, and the children had spent the night. Marguerite appeared to be unhappy, and Robert decided to move them all to a farm owned by his wife’s parents outside Fort Worth. It also occurred to him that they might be safer there.
As he was loading their belongings into his car, one of the Secret Service men came up to him. “Now, don’t get excited,” he said, “but we’ve just gotten word that Lee’s been shot.”
Robert did not tell Marina or his mother what had happened. He asked the Secret Service men to drive them to his in-laws’ farm and left immediately for Parkland Hospital.
Marina and Marguerite had been promised a visit with Lee. So when they and the children left the motel with the Secret Service agents and Peter Gregory, they thought they were going to the county jail. But the agents said that they could not go right away and drove them around for what seemed to Marina to be hours. Then one of the men told them that Lee had been shot. The normally voluble Marguerite was silent. Marina asked whether Lee’s wound was serious. The agents said no. They were listening to the car radio. Finally, they told Marina that it was serious and that Lee had been taken to the hospital.