of me. When I got in, he was sitting in an interrogation room by himself. I went in, sat down, and started talking to him about Tippit. I never even mentioned the president because I had no idea of his possible involvement. I had Oswald for less than twenty minutes, when Captain Fritz came back from the school book depository where he and several other officers had been searching. Of course, when they went in there, they went in expecting to find a stranger, not an employee. When they didn’ t find anyone, they asked the manager to do a head count. Oswald was the only employee missing and Capt. Fritz said,“ I want to talk to that man. Give me his address.”
As it turned out, Oswald had given them a phony address. He didn’ t live there. So the captain was in a bit of flurry looking for Oswald’ s whereabouts when an officer informed him that I had someone in interrogation by that name. Capt. Fritz came in and asked Oswald, in front of all of us, where he worked and when Oswald said he worked at the school book depository, the captain knew he had his man. From then on, the captain had privilege and took over the investigation. I didn’ t get to question him further, but I had already gleaned some pretty useful information.
Although the investigation had been handed over to Capt. Fritz, Oswald was still assigned to me as a prisoner. So when he was transferred, it was my responsibility to move him. That’ s why he was handcuffed to me when we walked through the basement of the police headquarters.
When we made that move through the basement, I vividly remember seeing Jack Ruby before he made his move. I always made it a habit when I went into a room, particularly during an investigation of any kind, to look up and down my surroundings. He was facing me about five or six
feet away. When I lowered my gaze, I also saw that he had a pistol in his left hand, held tight against his left leg. Of course, it all happened so fast there was little time to react, but I knew what was going to happen when I saw the pistol.
I gave the people in that room a hard time about it later on. If they had all looked hard enough, they would have seen the pistol and could have taken him down and been heroes. But as it is, it was up to me to confront him. Ruby made two quick steps which brought him within an arm’ s length, I reached past Oswald and caught him by the left shoulder, to try and push him back. At the same time, Ruby moved the pistol over to his right hand and fired a shot. In response, I jerked back and tried to pull Oswald behind me. I turned his body enough that, instead of the bullet hitting him dead center, it entered Oswald about four inches to the left of the navel on the left side. The bullet went through the stomach and took a chunk out of the liver on the right side before striking a major artery, shattering the end of the seventh rib, and then
NEARLY 22 YEARS AFTER PEARL HARBOR, JIM LEAVELLE WITNESSES ANOTHER MOMENT OF INFAMY, AS OSWALD IS SHOT TO DEATH.
IN A 2006 INTERVIEW WITH TOM BROKAW, LEAVELLE REMEMBERED JOKING TO OSWALD BEFORE HIS TRANSFER,“‘ LEE, IF ANYBODY SHOOTS YOU, I HOPE THEY ARE AS GOOD A SHOT AS YOU ARE,’ MEANING THAT THE PERSON WOULD HIT OSWALD INSTEAD OF ME. HE KIND OF SMILED AND SAID, YOU’ RE BEING MELODRAMATIC... NOBODY IS GOING TO SHOOT AT ME.’” glancing off and lodging itself about three or four inches to the right of where it went in. It so happened that if it hadn’ t hit the rib, it’ s likely it would have continued its path and hit me as well.
When I examined him later, you could roll the bullet in your thumb underneath his skin. After I got him to the hospital, and went with him as he was rolled into the operating room, I told the doctors that I wanted the bullet out of him. So they pinched it, hit it with a scalpel, and the bullet popped right into a tray the nurse was holding. I wiped it off with a tissue or something, took my pocket knife and gave it to the nurse before telling her,“ I want you to scratch your initials on the butt end of this bullet because you and I, somewhere down the line, are going to be testifying that this is the bullet that came out of Oswald.” After things were taken care of at the hospital, I returned to the office and made up the case report needed to file Ruby on charges of murder.
They did indict Ruby for murder and we tried him the following year, which ended with a death sentence conviction. However, the court of criminal appeals overturned it and sent him for a retrial when it was learned that the judge hearing the case was writing a book about the trial. They felt a fair decision couldn’ t be made in light of this information, and I think it was the proper decision for the courts to make. Ruby was reset for trial on February 10, 1967, but he died just about a month before that retrial was set to begin, on January 3, 1967. It turned out he had developed an aggressive cancer while in jail.
It was a surprising end to a wild saga, but I’ d count this episode as certainly the most memorable in what turned out to be an incredibly fulfilling 25-year career in the police force.
10 AMERICAN VALOR QUARTERLY
AVQ