Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy (77 page)

No effort apparently was made by the Commission to determine where
this stretcher came from. Some researchers believe it may have held
Kennedy's body while in the emergency room. But this is doubtful since
Kennedy's body remained on his stretcher until the Dallas casket arrived
about 1:40 P.M. At this time, his body was placed in the casket and the
stretcher was stripped of sheets and rolled across the hall to Trauma Room
2, according to Nurse Diana Bowron. Since Tomlinson claimed to have
discovered a bullet at this same time and two nurses reported placing
Kennedy's empty stretcher in Trauma Room 2, it is virtually impossible to
believe that the hallway stretcher carried the President.

Today it seems more likely that this stretcher was used in the treatment
of two-year-old Ronald Fuller, who entered the Parkland emergency room
at 12:54 P.m. with a bad cut on the chin. The child's mother, Mrs. Ross
Fuller, years later told the Dallas Morning News what happened:

I was watching the President's parade on television when they announced he had been shot. I knocked over the bottle of soda pop I was
drinking and it broke into pieces. My little boy Ronnie fell on it and
started bleeding badly. My husband and I ran to the car and headed for
Parkland with the baby. When we reached Harry Hines Boulevard,
traffic was at a standstill. I told my husband I couldn't just sit in the car
like that [and that] I was going to take the baby in on foot. Then I
jumped out of the car. [While running] . . . a man came up and asked if
he could help. He saw the blood and he thought we'd been shot the
same way the President had.

Mrs. Fuller finally reached the Parkland emergency room and handed her
son to medical personnel. Then she fainted. She recalled:

When I came to, they told me Ronnie was all right. They were sewing
him up. Then they told me the President was dead. It happened in the
cubicle right next to us. The doctor said I was living a part of history.

The Fuller child was briefly placed on a stretcher and his cut was treated
with sutures and gauze packs, which could have been left behind on the
cart.

Considering both the condition-bloody sheets, instruments, sterile packsand the location of Fuller's stretcher-the child originally was placed on a
stretcher in the same hallway leading to Trauma Rooms 1 and 2-it is
most likely this stretcher on which the bullet was found.

Tomlinson said a second stretcher was on the elevator-perhaps the one
that carried Connally to the second-floor operating room-and that he
pulled it out and placed it near the first stretcher. Specter designated the
stretcher pulled off the elevator as stretcher A and the stretcher already in
the hall near the elevator as stretcher B.

After making a few trips in the elevator, Tomlinson said someone-a
doctor or an intern-moved one of the stretchers away from the wall so he
could enter a men's restroom. Tomlinson told Specter as he pushed the
stretcher back up against the wall to clear the hallway: "I bumped the wall
and a spent cartridge or bullet rolled out that apparently had been lodged
under the edge of the mat." "And that was from which stretcher?" asked
Specter. "I believe that it was B," replied Tomlinson.

Later in his testimony, Specter tried to shake Tomlinson's recollections.
Specter asked: "And at the time we started our discussion, it was your
recollection at that point that the bullet came off of stretcher A, was it
not?" "B," quickly responded Tomlinson.

Finally, after Specter continued to confuse the matter by telling Tomlinson
that he had identified stretcher A during a Secret Service interview, the
hospital worker said:

I really don't remember. I'm not accustomed to being questioned
by the Secret Service and the FBI and by you and they are writing down
everything, I mean. . . . I'm going to tell you all I can, and I'm not
going to tell you something I can't lay down and sleep at night with
either.

From Tomlinson's testimony, it appears more than likely that the stretcher
holding the bullet did not belong to Connally. However, the Warren
Commission stated definitely: "A nearly whole bullet was found on Governor Connally's stretcher at Parkland Hospital after the assassination." It
was this bullet-Commission Exhibit 399-that became the foundation of
the single-bullet theory of the assassination. It has also become known as
the "magic bullet."

Tomlinson turned the bullet over to Parkland's chief of security, 0. P.
Wright, who gave it to Secret Service agent Richard Johnsen.

Interestingly, Wright was the father-in-law of Dallas police sergeant
Patrick T. Dean, the officer blamed by the Warren Commission for
allowing Jack Ruby into the police department basement just prior to the
slaying of Oswald. Dean's mother-in-law, Mrs. O. P. Wright, was director
of nursing at Parkland and on duty when Kennedy was being treated.

Neither Wright nor Agent Johnsen were interviewed by the Warren
Commission-perhaps because, in later interviews with researchers, neither man could positively identify CE 399 as the bullet found that day.

In fact, during a 1966 interview with author Josiah Thompson, Wright-a
professional security officer-picked a pointed-tipped bullet shape as more
nearly like the bullet discovered at Parkland. He rejected round-nosed
bullet shapes similar to CE 399. Tomlinson, likewise, selected a pointed
shape as resembling the bullet he found.
- - - -- - - - - - - --

The whole bullet matter becomes even more clouded when the possibility of substitution and planting is considered. The hallway in which both
stretchers A and B were left unattended was a public corridor. Although
the Warren Commission apparently never considered that CE 399 may
have been planted on one of the stretchers or later substituted for the found
bullet, these possibilities find favor in the minds of most assassination
researchers.

This
possibility
that
the
bullet
was
planted
is
especially
strong
since
the
evidence indicates that the stretcher containing the bullet belonged to
neither Kennedy nor Connally.

Adding to this suspicion is the presence of Jack Ruby at Parkland
Hospital while Kennedy's body was still there.

Veteran newsman Seth Kantor told the Warren Commission that he
encountered Jack Ruby at Parkland Hospital about the time Kennedy's
death was publicly announced at 1:30 P.M. Kantor said he and Ruby even
shared a brief conversation. Kantor recognized Ruby, having worked in
Dallas for some time. He said he spoke to Ruby at 1:30 P.M. and recalled
that Ruby asked if he should close his club out of respect for the slain
President.

When asked about his presence at Parkland, Ruby denied ever being
there, and the Commission chose to believe him and concluded that Kantor
must have been mistaken.

Ignored by the Commission were FBI interviews with a Dallas woman
whose experiences on the day of the assassination fully supported Kantor's
account of his Parkland meeting with Ruby. Mrs. Wilma Tice was home
when she heard the news of the Dealey Plaza shooting. Curious, she drove
to Parkland Hospital arriving about 1:30 P.M., and joined the throng of
bystanders awaiting word on the President's condition.

Some months later, she told the FBI she stood beside a heavily built
man in a dark suit who was hitting his hat against his leg. She was only
three or four feet from the man when another man approached him and
said, "How are you doing there, Jack?" She said the two men had a brief
conversation during which the man named Jack offered to donate a kidney
to John Connally.

Two days later Mrs. Tice was astounded to see the man called Jack on
television identified as Jack Ruby, the slayer of Oswald. However, she
assumed that the authorities knew about his presence at Parkland and did not
notify anyone until late in the spring of 1964.

Mrs. Tice had telephoned Ruby's sister, Ms. Eva Grant, to express her
condolences over Ruby's death sentence when she mentioned her encounter at Parkland and learned that Ruby had denied being there. It was at this
point that Mrs. Tice contacted the FBI and told her story.

On April 12, 1964, she received a call from a man claiming to be a
newspaper reporter. He asked about her Parkland encounter and then
advised her not to talk about the incident.

On July 19, Mrs. Tice received a letter asking her to testify for the
Warren Commission. The next day she received an anonymous call from a
man who warned her: "It would pay you to keep your mouth shut."

On July 22, Mrs. Tice called police because someone tried to break into
her home while her husband was away. This incident was followed by
other phone calls, but she had a fourteen-year-old niece answer the phone
and the caller would hang up.

The account of Ruby at Parkland has been further supported in recent
years by former radio newsman. Roy Stamps said he had met Ruby on about forty-five occasions prior to November 22, 1963. Stamps told Texas
researchers that he was in the hall of Parkland holding open a telephone
line to his radio station when he noticed Ruby enter the hospital. He said
Ruby was carrying some television equipment and trailing behind a TV
crew.

In 1979, The House Select Committee on Assassinations reversed the
Warren Commission's decision that Kantor was mistaken about his Parkland
meeting with Ruby, stating: "While the Warren Commission concluded
that Kantor was mistaken, the Committee determined he probably was
not. "

With the presence of Ruby in Parkland, the possibility that CE 399-the
"magic bullet"-was planted appears even more likely.

Of course, virtually anyone could have planted the bullet, since the
stretcher in question lay unattended in the public hallway for some time.
But even if the bullet were not planted-and there is some evidence to
suggest that the bullet may have worked its way out of Kennedy's back
wound-there is also the possibility that CE 399 was substituted for the
bullet found on the stretcher. (Recall that neither of the men who initially
handled the bullet could identify it later.)

Of course, if bullets were switched, it could only have been done while
in the hands of federal authorities-a most ominous suspicion.

After Kennedy's body was returned to Air Force One at Love Field,
Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as thirty-sixth president of the United
States by federal judge Sarah T. Hughes.

On the plane flight back to Washington, it seems the original destination
for Kennedy's body was to have been Walter Reed Army Hospital-long
the major military medical facility for Washington. Examining U.S. Army
Signal Corps transcripts of radio messages from Air Force One that day,
researchers have found several references indicating that military officers
were going to send the body to the Army hospital.

Agent Roy Kellerman radioed Secret Service headquarters saying: "Arriving Andrews [AFBJ 6:05. The body will go to Walter Reed. Have an
ambulance from Walter Reed to take the body there."

Later, Gen. Chester Clifton, senior military aide, radioed:

This is Gen. Clifton. We do not want a helicopter to go to Bethesda
Medical Center. We do want an ambulance and a ground return from
Andrews to Walter Reed, and we want the regular post-mortem that has
to be done by law under guard performed at Walter Reed. Is that clear?

Even the official history of the 1001st Air Base Wing, which included Air
Force One, reported: ". . . the body of the slain President was removed to
Walter Reed General Hospital ..."

So why the sudden change to Bethesda?

Kennedy's personal physician, Dr. George G. Burkley, wrote in his
report of that day:

During the course of the flight [back to Washington], determination of
the immediate action on arrival in Washington was made to assure
complete compliance with Mrs. Kennedy's wishes. I spoke to her while
kneeling on the floor so I would be at the level of her face rather than
leaning forward, and expressed complete desire of all of us and especially of myself to comply with her wishes, stating that it was necessary
that the President be taken to a hospital prior to going to the White
House. She questioned why and I stated it must be determined, if
possible, the type of bullet used and compare this with future material
found. I stated frankly that I had no preference, that it could be any
hospital, but that I did feel that, if possible, it should be a military
hospital for security measures. The question was answered by her
stating that she wanted the President taken to Bethesda Naval Hospital.

Oddly, having just received Mrs. Kennedy's wishes, Dr. Burkley then
adds: "Arrangements were made on the ground for departure to Walter
Reed Army Hospital or Bethesda Naval Hospital, as the case may be."

Why such confusion over military hospitals? Was Mrs. Kennedy's
natural desire to take her husband, a former naval officer, to the naval
hospital an unexpected hitch in a plan for an autopsy at Walter Reed?