JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters

by James W. Douglass

After the lone assassin shot the president to death and wounded Governor Connally from a sixth-floor window in the Texas School Book Depository,[399] he hid his rifle and stepped quickly down four flights of stairs to the lunchroom, where he was seen calmly preparing to buy a bottle of Coca Cola from a vending machine.[400] He escaped from the building and walked seven blocks.[401] He took a bus that was headed back toward the Texas School Book Depository, got stuck with the bus in a traffic jam, and got off it. He walked three to four blocks to hire a taxi.[402] He offered to give up his taxi to an old lady when she asked his driver for help finding a cab (an offer she refused, allowing him to continue his escape without changing taxis).[403] He rode 2.4 miles in the taxi, taking him five blocks too far past his rooming house.[404] He paid his fare, got out, and walked five blocks back to his rooming house.[405] “He went on to his room and stayed about 3 or 4 minutes,”[406] picked up his jacket and a revolver, and departed.[407] The housekeeper saw him standing in front of the house by the stop for a northbound bus.[408] He apparently gave up on the bus and instead walked south another remarkably brisk nine-tenths mile.[409] All of these actions, following his killing of the president, were, by the Commission’s timetable, accomplished in forty-five minutes.[410] Oswald then, we are told, used his revolver to calmly murder Officer J. D. Tippit on a quiet street in the Oak ...