Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy (70 page)

Craig later said the crowd of deputies was hostile. "The men about me
felt they were being forced to acknowledge Kennedy's presence," he said,
adding the deputies voiced "bitter verbal attacks on President Kennedy."
Craig said: "They spoke very strongly against his policies concerning the
Bay of Pigs incident and the Cuban Missile Crisis and they seemed to
resent very much the fact that Kennedy was a Catholic."

Craig said just after the motorcade turned on Elm Street, he heard a shot
and began running toward Dealey Plaza. He ran down the grassy incline
between Main and Elm Street and saw a Dallas police officer run up the
Grassy Knoll and go behind the picket fence near the railroad yards. Craig
followed, noting "complete confusion and hysteria" behind the fence. He
began to question people when he noticed a woman in her early thirties
attempting to drive out of the parking lot. Craig recalled:

I stopped her, identified myself, and placed her under arrest. . . . This
parking lot was leased by Dallas deputy sheriff B. D. Gossett. He, in
turn, rented parking space by the month to the deputies who worked in
the courthouse, except for official vehicles. I rented one of these spaces
I paid Gossett three dollars a month and was given a key to the lot.
An interesting point is that . . . the only people having access to it were
deputies with keys . . . How did this woman gain access and, what is
more important, who was she and why did she have to leave? I turned
her over to deputy sheriff C. L. "Lummie" Lewis and . .. ]he] told me
that he would take her to Sheriff Decker and take care of her car. . . . I
had no way of knowing that an officer with whom I had worked for four
years was capable of losing a thirty-year-old woman and a threethousand-pound automobile. To this day, Officer Lewis does not know
who she was, where she came from, or what happened to her. Strange!

Meanwhile, Craig questioned people who were standing at the top of the
Grassy Knoll, including Mr. and Mrs. Arnold Rowland. Craig said by
approximately 12:40 P.M. he had turned the Rowlands over to Lummie
Lewis and met E. R. Walthers back on the south side of Elm Street where
"several officers and bystanders were looking at the curb on Elm Street
where a nick caused by a bullet was reported to have hit."

He said his attention was attracted by a shrill whistle. In his report of
November 23, 1963, Craig wrote:

.. . I turned around and saw a white male running down the hill from
the direction of the Texas School Book Depository Building and I saw
what I think was a light-colored Rambler station wagon with luggage
rack on top pull over to the curb and this subject who had come running
down the hill get into this car. The man driving this station wagon was a
dark-complected white male. I tried to get across Elm Street to stop the
car and talk with subjects, but the traffic was so heavy I could not make it. I reported this incident at once to a Secret Service officer, whose
name I do not know, then I left this area and went at once to the
[Depository] building and assisted in the search of the building. Later
that afternoon, I heard that the city had a suspect in custody and I called
and reported the information about the suspect running down the hill
and getting into a car to Captain [Will] Fritz and was required to come
at once to City Hall. I went to City Hall and identified the subject they
had in custody as being the same person I saw running down this hill
and get into the station wagon and leave the scene.

Craig later described the driver of the station wagon as a "very dark
complected" man with short, dark hair wearing a white windbreaker-type
short jacket. (Recall the witnesses who told of a dark man or Negro on the
sixth floor of the Depository just before Kennedy's arrival.)

Craig said since the two men were the only ones he saw trying to flee
the scene, he believed the incident "important enough to bring to the
attention of the authorities at a command post which had been set up in
front of the Texas School Book Depository."

Here Craig may have had a brush with one of the bogus Secret Service
men. Craig later said he approached the front of the Depository and asked
for someone involved in the investigation. He said a man in a gray suit told
him, "I'm with the Secret Service" and listened to Craig's report on
assassination witnesses. Craig later recalled:

He showed little interest in the persons leaving [the scene]. However,
he seemed extremely interested in the description of the Rambler [station
wagon]. This was the only part of my statement which he wrote down in
his little pad he was holding.

On April 1, 1964, Craig described his confrontation with Lee Harvey
Oswald at Dallas Police Headquarters to the Warren Commission:

I drove up to to Fritz's office about, oh, after five-about 5:30 or something like that-and-uh-talked to Captain Fritz and told him what I had
saw. And he took me in his office-I believe it was his office-it was a
little office, and had the suspect sitting in a chair behind a deskbeside the desk. . . . And Captain Fritz asked me was this the man I
saw-and I said, "Yes" it was.... Captain Fritz then asked him about
the-uh-he said, "What about this station wagon?" And the suspect
[Oswald] interrupted him and said, "That station wagon belongs to Mrs.
Paine . . . Don't try to tie her into this. She had nothing to do with it." . . .
Captain Fritz then told him ... "All we're trying to do is find out what
happened and this man saw you leave from the scene." And the suspect
again interrupted Captain Fritz and said, "I told you people I did." . . .
Then he continued and he said, "Everybody will know who I am now."

In later years Craig said Oswald made the last statement in a dejected and
dispirited tone, almost as if "his cover had been blown."

This was all explosive testimony since Oswald officially acted alone and
made his way home that day by bus and by taxi. Therefore the Warren
Commission stated it "could not accept important elements of Craig's
testimony." It even went further, suggesting that the meeting between
Craig and Oswald never occurred. According to the Warren Commission
Report:

Captain Fritz stated that a deputy sheriff whom he could not identify did
ask to see him that afternoon and told him a similar story to Craig's.
Fritz did not bring him into his office to identify Oswald but turned him
over to Lieutenant Baker for questioning. If Craig saw Oswald that
afternoon, he saw him through the glass windows of the office.

The truth of whether or not Craig was in Fritz's office came in 1969
with the publication of a book by Dallas police chief Jesse Curry. On page
72 is a photograph captioned "The Homicide Bureau Office under guard
while Oswald was being interrogated." In the photograph, well inside the
homicide office, stands Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig.

Craig also pointed out to Warren Commission attorneys that he had
learned that Mrs. Ruth Paine, with whom Oswald's wife Marina was
living, indeed owned a light green Nash Rambler station wagon.

His insistence on sticking with his story despite repeated attempts by
authorities to have both Craig and Arnold Rowland change their testimony,
began to cause problems for Craig within the Sheriff's Department. Initially, Sheriff Decker had backed Craig, calling him "completely honest."
But later, Craig's credibility began to slip within the department and on
July 4, 1967, he was fired by Decker. Some say the cause was laxity and
improprieties in his work, while others say it was due to his unyielding
position on the assassination.

In recent years there seems to be growing corroboration for Craig's
story. First, a photograph taken in Dealey Plaza minutes after the
assassination shows Craig in the exact locations as he described. There
are even two photos of a Nash Rambler station wagon moving west on
Elm.

In later years, researchers discovered Warren Commission Document 5,
independent corroboration of Craig's story that was not published in the
Commission's twenty-six volumes. In this document, an FBI report dated
the day after the assassination, Marvin C. Robinson reported he had just
past Houston Street driving west on Elm Street in heavy traffic when he saw a
light-colored Nash station wagon stop in front of the Texas School Book
Depository and a white man walk down the grassy incline and get into the
vehicle, which drove west.

This is further evidence of the deceptive lengths to which the Warren
Commission went trying to suppress any evidence that failed to fit its
preconceived scenario.

In later years, Roger Craig-though vindicated in the controversy over
his assassination testimony-continued to live with hard luck. His wife left
him-some say due to pressure over his involvement in the assassinationand his back was injured in a car accident. He claimed to have been the
object of murder attempts.

On May 15, 1975, Roger Craig, then only thirty-nine years old, was
killed by a rifle bullet. His death was ruled a suicide.

Within an hour of the assassination, Dallas police sergeant D. V.
Harkness had an encounter with three strange fellows, whom many researchers believe may have been involved in the shooting.

Union Pacific Railroad dispatcher Lee Bowers saw three men sneak into
an empty railroad car in the train yards just behind the Texas School Book
Depository a short time after the assassination. Bowers ordered the train
stopped by radio and then summoned Dallas police. Several officers,
including Harkness, rousted the trio from the rail car at gunpoint and
marched them to the Dallas County Sheriff's Office. Their route took
them past the Depository and across the eastern portion of Dealey Plaza.
At least three news photographers took pictures of the three men as they
were marched through the plaza under guard. These photographs are the
only proof that this incident occurred.

For once in the sheriff's custody, the men officially disappeared. Although reportedly transferred later to the Dallas Police Station, they were
never booked and any names, information, or fingerprints that were taken
have never been made public.

The House Subcommittee on Government Information and Individual
Rights discovered in 1975 that Dallas police arrest records for November
22, 1963, compiled for the Warren Commission, were missing.

These three men remain among those persons whom the FBI failed to
identify and who were on the scene near the time of the assassination.

But were these "tramps" actually near the assassination site at the time
of the shooting? In 1981 Kent Biffle, a reporter for the Dallas Morning
News wrote an article detailing his experience that day:

Everyone was pointing toward a fence that connected with the Underpass. ... I ran that way. Some teenagers followed. One of them darted
ahead and hit the fence before I did.... Puffing, I followed him. The
other side of the fence revealed no gunman. There was just a maze of
railroad tracks and three dazed winos. "What happened?" I asked one.
"What happened?" he asked me. People were still climbing over the
fence. I ran east toward the Texas School Book Depository.

Were these three "dazed winos" the same three men later apprehended'?

For more than twenty years the identities of the three men have been the
object of speculation among assassination researchers. Although labeled
"tramps," photos show the men had recent haircuts, shined shoes, and
old, but unsoiled, clothing. In the photographs they hardly appear to be
genuine tramps or winos.

In 1976 the three "tramps" drew national attention when comedian/
social activist Dick Gregory and others claimed that two of the men were
none other than Watergate conspirators E. Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis. This allegation was quickly, though not conclusively, dismissed. (In
the summer of 1985, E. Howard Hunt lost a libel court case based on a
national article that claimed that CIA documents indicated Hunt was in
Dallas the day of the assassination.)

After the 1980 arrest of convicted assassin Charles V. Harrelson, researchers took a fresh look at the "tramps," particularly the youngest of
the trio. Many researchers now believe the tallest "tramp" may indeed
be sitting in jail today.

Of all the people who have confessed to participating in the JFK
assassination, convicted Texas hitman Charles V. Harrelson appears to
have the most independent evidence to back up his claim.

Aside from being twice convicted of murder for hire, Harrelson has a
long history of involvement with Dallas underworld characters linked
directly to Jack Ruby. This connection first came to the attention of JFK
researchers when Harrelson was arrested near Van Horn, Texas, September 1, 1980. He had been identified as a suspect in the death of federal
judge John Wood of San Antonio who was shot from ambush by a
high-powered rifle.

High on cocaine (well-known for loosening the inhibitions) and pointing
a pistol to his head, Harrelson held lawmen at bay for six hours. During
this time, according to the arresting officers, he not only confessed to the
Judge Wood killing, but also claimed he participated in the Kennedy
assassination. This statement, repeated in some Texas newspapers, sent
assassination researchers to their files looking for confirmation.