Covering the Kennedy assassination, 58 years ago
Within minutes after an assassin killed President John F. Kennedy 58 years ago, on Nov. 22, 1963, Union staff writer Peter Kaye and columnist Lew Scarr flew to Dallas to cover the story. Kaye wrote a straight news report. Scarr spoke to eyewitnesses and filed this report from the scene of the tragedy. From The San Diego Union, Saturday, Nov. 23, 1963:
3 SHOTS RING OUT IN THE TEXAS SUN
By Lew Scarr, San Diego Union Staff Writer
DALLAS — Dealey Plaza, commemorated here as the birthplace of Dallas, was bathed in noon hour sunshine yesterday.
The people of Texas stood four deep along Main Street and Houston and Elm streets.
The flashing temperature and time sign atop the Texas School Book Building at Elm and Houston read 74 degrees at 12:27 p.m.
The presidential motorcade, on its way to a luncheon speech at the Trad Mart, turned right off Main onto Houston.
A father standing on the grass at Dealey Plaza lifted his young son up so he could see President Kennedy. Then he took the boy’s hand and ran across the plaza so he could get another look.
Just as he reached Elm Street, he heard a shot and saw the President slump in his car. Then he heard two more shots and threw his son to the ground.
The time sign on the book warehouse now flashed 12:30. The sign is on the roof just above the sixth floor, southwest corner of the building from where the fatal shot was fired.
Elm Street at this point becomes a one-way on-ramp for the Stemmons Freeway (route to Denton). President Kennedy was shot as his car moved in the middle lane bout 50 yards from the School Book building.
A bullet from a Mauser, a high-powered German rifle, passed through the President’s head, struck a concrete slab in Dealey Plaza and ricocheted down the freeway.
The shot was not particularly difficult for a person accustomed to using a rifle. The fatal shots were fired directly over the tops of some trees which offered the sniper some cover.
A few hours after the shooting, a Texas blue norther swept into Dallas.
The temperature had dipped to 45 degrees as Detective J.B. Hicks of Dallas County Sheriff’s Crime Lab left the book bindery.
Hicks carried a shovel and a fingerprint kit. He had just left the sixth floor, where a rifle with a shell still in it was found near a stack of books.
PRINTS FOUND
“We found plenty of prints,” Hicks said, “Both on the rifle and on a stack of boxes.”
Hicks said the assassin apparently steadied his rifle on the top of three piled boxes about 30 inches high.
He said the assassin fired through an open window.
Three spent Mauser cartridges were found near the window, too, Hicks said.
He said he used his shovel to dig for spent bullets in the parkway, but was unsuccessful.
Lee Harvey Oswald, 24, native of Fort Worth and admitted left-wing fanatic, was arrested. Oswald has worked for the book-bindery for 30 days as a clerk.
2 INTERVIEWED
Two sheriff’s deputies who helped capture Oswald were interviewed by this reporter.
Bill Courson was off duty and at home when he got a call to the Texas Theater in Oak Cliff, about 21⁄2 miles south of the slaying scene.
The suspect had been seen ducking into the theater. Coursen and Deputy Jim Ramsey were two of about 50 officers who stormed the theater.
Ramsey said he saw the suspect making his way through the empty seats. He and 10 other officers subdued Oswald after what he said was a furious two-minute fight.