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Is a certain amount of satisfaction felt by all in attendance. The Dallas police have done an incredible, some would even say a near impossible job. Over the last eleven and a half hours in that short span since the president's murder, they have apprehended the man they believe is responsible and amassed evidence against him that is destined to withstand years of intense scrutiny. Despite the thousands of government man hours yet to come, the basis of the case against Oswald is collected and assembled by the Dallas police in these first crucial hours. It is a feat the world will soon forget. That is Vincent Bugliozi in parkland, his account of Kennedy's assassination and the three days that follow it. And it is his judgment on the performance of the Dallas police on the 22 November, the day that Kennedy is shot. But Dominic, we have now reached the 23 November. So it's the day after Kennedy's assassination. And I mean, I know the buglesia spent years and years investigating this, but I'm sure that listeners would like to know whether you concur with his judgment on the performance of the Dallas police. Do you feel qualified to pass judgment on it?

Tom, regular listeners, the rest assisted, will know that we feel qualified to pronounce all kinds of historical fields of inquiry, and this is no different. There is one thing I would certainly quibble with Vincent Bergley on there. He says they had compiled evidence which is destined to withstand decades of scrutiny, didn't he? And of course, the truth of the matter is that actually for decades that evidence has been pulled apart, reinterpreted, twisted, questioned, undermined. And although I agree with him that the Dallas police worked remarkably competently and efficiently, actually, to apprehend a suspect, to compile a case, to put together the evidence, and so on and so forth. The fact of the matter is that what happens in the next couple of days means that all of their work will be produced.

Put in a kind of shadow.

Put in a shadow, exactly. So, actually, I think he's being unduly to write as though this is an open and shut case and there's nothing to be asked about it, is to miss the fact, willfully miss the fact, that for tens and tens of millions of people, there are always questions about this. Now, whether those questions are justified is a different matter.

I guess the salient fact, though, is that he is pointing out that within less than a day, the Dallas police have compiled this case against the man they think is guilty of shooting the president.

Yes.

So what do they know at this point about Oswald's movements before the assassination? Have they kind of looked into that? Have they drawn up a picture of what his movements might have been?

They have, of course. So this is the kind of picture they have. They know that Oswald, who had previously spent time in the Soviet Union, is married to a russian woman called Marina, and that she lives in Irving, which is kind of suburban, metropolitan fringes of Dallas.

And she's with a Quaker, isn't she, called Ruth Payne, who is very interested in Russian. She's a russian teacher.

Yes, exactly. That's how they become friends. They know that Oswald usually visited his wife in Irving at the weekends, but very unusually.

Well, the only time I think exactly.

Had visited her on a Thursday during the week, had left his rented accommodation in Oak Cliff, Dallas, to go out to Irving to see his wife. They know because she has told them that he left his wedding ring behind again.

It's weird, isn't it, these parallel stories? So Jackie taking her ring off and leaving it on her dead husband's finger, the symbolism of it all.

They know that he left early on the Friday morning with a long package wrapped up in brown paper to get a lift from a neighbor called Wesley Frazier into Dallas to work. And that when Wesley Frazier asked Lee Harvey Oswald what he is carrying, Lee Harvey Oswald said, curtain rods. They know that he arrived at the Texas book depository at 752 in the morning, which is on the corner of Houston and Elm, overlooking dealy Plaza, as we said. And that unusually, again, he walked to work. He walked away from Wesley Fraser as they walked away from the car with his package, kind of went off to the book depository. They know that he spent the morning working at the book depository, that he went up and down between the different floors, that he spent time on the 6th floor from where they think the shots were taken. They know that at 12:00, half an hour before Kennedy was assassinated, he was seen on the 6th floor by one of his bosses, that some of the others were going downstairs for lunch, that he did not go downstairs for lunch, and that he asked for the elevator gate, that's the gate on the lifts to be closed.

Then there is a blank. But they know that at 1231, this police motorbike officer, Marion Baker, went into the Texas book depository looking for the suspect and that he and the superintendent bumped into Lee Harvey Oswald. The superintendent said, oh, it's fine. I know him. He works here. And that Lee Harvey Oswald then left the building and was gone from the building no later than about 1235. He is the only employee of the Texas Book depository to have left the building after the assassination. They know that at 1239, he caught a bus going west on Elm street, and he was seen by somebody on the bus who knew him, looking kind of, she said, scruffy and kind of distracted and a bit wild eyed. They know that at 1246 because, of course, in the chaos following the assassination, there's all kinds of traffic jams and congestion and sort of confusion. They know that Oswald got off the bus and, unusually, did something that he never normally did because he doesn't have very much money at all. That he hailed a cab that took him to Oak Cliff. Then he got out of the cab, that he went home, changed his trousers, and that's what brought him to the attention of Officer Tibet.

And they know there was no doubt in their minds that Oswald is the man who shot Officer Tibet and then fled without buying a ticket into this.

Into the movie theater.

Movie theater where he was subsequently arrested. And that, of course, he fought the police and tried to pull a gun when they arrested him. By Saturday morning, Fritz has also caught Oswald out in two lies. Now, for an experienced investigator like Captain Fritz of the Dallas Police Department, he knows that unless the circumstances are very unusual, somebody who has been falsely accused does not generally tell small lies because it's not in their interest to do you know, you're trying to cover up something else in your life. The chances are that you will tell the truth because you know beyond any doubt, because you know you didn't do it. You know that the truth will exonerate you. Oswald has already told two lies. He's lied about whether or not he brought any curtain rods to work. Of course, if they are just curtain.

Rods, what's the issue?

There is no gain to him in lying about it. And secondly, he has denied that he's ever bought a gun. And then, of course, they say to him, well, what about your revolver? Oh, yeah.

Well, that's not a gun.

And when they say to him the mail order gun in the name ahidel, he denies anything about it. Now, if Oswald had bought the gun perfectly innocently, if it's not the murder weapon, if he had not shot Kennedy, there is no reason again for him to lie about this because, of course, gun ownership in Texas is hardly unusual. So the police that morning, Saturday morning, they are in no doubt whatsoever that Oswald is the man.

And what about the kind of the justice system? Are they convinced by the evidence? Do they go public with it?

Totally convinced. The DA, Henry Wade, at 01:00 that afternoon, he goes to the press. So the press is still there, by the way?

Of course they are.

It's a really important point, bis, when we get to Jack Ruby, the press are still there, great hordes of them in the police headquarters in downtown Dallas.

And, Dominic, it's fair to say also that, of course, this is generating international as well as merely american interest. And that already, particularly in Europe and actually particularly in France, I gather all kinds of conspiracy theories are starting to circulate in a way that they're not openly in America at this point.

Yeah. So in France, lots of people are saying it's conspiracy. The french papers, for example, don't forget the United States has had quite disoliding coverage in european papers for a couple of years because of civil rights. So there's been a heavy emphasis in european papers on the racism of the south, the abuse of demonstrators, Martin Luther King put in prison in Birmingham, all of that kind of stuff. So as soon as Kennedy is shot, a lot of the european press say, oh, America is crazy. And it's full of crazy people and conspiracies.

And so this also is part of the context for it, that they are aware that they have to present a watertight case because the eyes of the world as well as of America are on them.

Absolutely. That's why they are so open with the press, because it is so important to them that there not be a hint of suspicion about this. So 01:00 that afternoon, the district attorney, Henry Wade, he tells the press, he says, we have the suspect. He's been charged. We expect a trial in mid January, and I will be asking for the death penalty. So about 15 minutes after that, Oswald's mother, Marguerite, and his wife, russian wife Marina, are shown in to see him.

His mother's a terrible woman, isn't she?

She is, yeah. She's a bad mother, I think it's fair to say.

Very, very self centered. It's all about her.

Very self centered and incredibly flaky. Marina, of course, this very young Russian.

Who he met in Minsk, who doesn't really speak English.

She is totally out of her depth and bewildered by the whole thing. But here is what is really interesting. They go in and they have this very disultry conversation. He asks about the kids and stuff like this. Marina, at this point believes her husband is guilty because he's not protesting, because she knows him. She knows what a spiky, difficult, anti authority, sort of aggressive man Lee Oswald is. And when she sees him sullen, all of this, she thinks this is very weird. She knows that if he were innocent, he would be shouting and roaring about his rights and protesting and having to be dragged in and out and all of this thing. And when she sees him react like this, she thinks he's guilty. Now, the other person who comes along that afternoon is his brother, Robert. Robert similarly finds Lee's demeanor very peculiar. He is disturbed by it because he says that his brother is like a robot, just answering questions mechanically, not showing any emotion, not doing what Robert hoped he would be doing, which is saying, they've got the wrong man. You've got to get me out of here. You've got to get me a lawyer.

It's as though Lee's not really interested. The president of the Dallas Bar association comes along and he says, do you want my help in finding you a lawyer? People are actually bending over backwards to try and make sure this all runs properly. He too says, I found Lee Harvey Oswald very calm, not frightened, not angry, just impassive, unreadable.

And also, he just wants this weird lawyer in New York, doesn't he? John Apt.

Yes, he keeps saying, I need this guy apt, who he's read about, a sort of civil liberties lawyer. And the Dallas people say, well, we'll get you a good lawyer down. Know we'll find you a. No, I must have this guy by evening. There are two more developments in the case, both of which seem to the police to confirm what they already believe. One is they have found a money order for the rifle, the money order that Mr. Heidel used to buy it from Chicago. And the money order handwriting. The analysis shows that this is Lee Harvey Oswald's handwriting. Secondly, they find a photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald in the backyard of his home with a rifle and two communist papers, and it seems to be the same rifle. And they show the photograph to Oswald. And Oswald says, that's not my face. It's a fake face. They've put somebody else's face on top of my body. And now there's been lots of discussion about this ever since. This features Oliver Stone's film JFK. I think the general consensus now is that this is not a fake photograph. There's been very, very detailed analysis of it in the last few years, which suggests that it is actually an authentic photograph.

It doesn't mean that he did it.

By the way, but this is clearly his defense, isn't it? The idea that he's being set up. So when he'd been taken out to the press conference, he'd said, I'm a patsy. And this, again, is a phrase that will appear in one of the stains film, JFK and so on. Yeah, this is what he's saying. He's being framed. He's being set up.

Well, he explicitly says in the patsy thing, he says, they're framing me because they know I spent time in the Soviet Union, which he did, which we will come to later on in this series. So the police, as far as they are concerned, there is no doubt in their mind. Now he spends one more night in custody, the night of Saturday, the 23 November. Of course, what he doesn't know, what nobody knows, is that this is the last night of his life. Overnight, the police have a series of death threats against Lee Harvey Oswald. That is standard. Again, that is not unusual. That is perfectly normal in this circumstance. And they have already decided, obviously, they're going to transfer him to the county jail. They're not going to keep him at police headquarters for the next kind of two months or something. But they know they will have to do it with absolutely maximum security. You know, they're not naive. They're not idiots. So at 09:00 the chief of police actually tells his subordinates, 09:00 on Sunday morning, he tells his subordinates, I want an armored truck. I will go personally to lead the kind of caravan of vehicles.

I want police reinforcements. I want motorbikes in case there are crowds trying to storm the truck and get Oswald out and lynch him. I also want. He says, I want the police to do an absolutely thorough search of the basement of the building. We'll be bringing him out through the basement onto this ramp and loading him onto the truck. Nothing at all can go wrong.

But the assumption is that the police station itself is secure, right?

Yeah, I think so.

That no one is likely to get into the police station who isn't a member of the police.

Well, they have security. I mean, they're not going to be letting lots of people come in. What they don't allow for is the fact that the actual arrangements around the transfer will be so chaotic that for a single moment they will take their eyes off this ramp. For Lee Harvey Oswald, that will be a fatal moment.

Because, of course, the gentleman that we've already mentioned, Jack Ruby, he is very, very upset about the Kennedys. He's very, very traumatized, isn't he, by the notion that if Oswald pleads not guilty, that Jackie Kennedy might be subpoenaed and have to come to Dallas.

That's right.

And he's very upset about the thought of what this would do to her emotional state and what it would do to the children. And he's working himself up into a lather about this.

So Jack Ruby is obviously, he's not the only person in America, in Texas, or indeed in Dallas, who has been deeply affected by President Kennedy's death. And he's not the only erratic and eccentric person, but he's an important erratic and eccentric person for reasons that obviously everybody knows. He has spent the whole of Saturday in this sort of what Vincent burglarity describes as impulsive, frenetic activity. He's closed his clubs out of respect. He's been going to his clubs. He's been ringing people up. He's gone to look at the wreaths at Daly Plaza, and people have seen him there crying, Tom.

And it's not just Bugliosi who's saying this. I mean, it's people who are with him at the time. So there's this guy, George Senator, who's sharing his apartment. And he realizes that Jack is very disturbed. So he says he had a sort of stare look in his eyes. I don't know how to describe it. I don't know how to put it in words. I mean, maybe that's retrospective, but I suspect not.

No. Lots of people say that Jack Ruby was behaving very impulsively and erratically on the Saturday. The thing about going to DD Plaza and being seen crying. I mean, the one thing I will say, tom, I don't want to anticipate too much, is, if you believe, as many people do, that Jack Ruby has mafia links and has been employed by organized crime to eliminate Leigh Harvey Oswald so that he won't talk. I mean, there are a couple of issues here. One is, why would you allow Lee Harvey Oswald spend days, hours and hours with Fritz?

Being interrogated.

Yeah, being interrogated. But secondly, it would seem an implausible choice of assassin to eliminate the assassin, to have your assassin spend the weekend going around the city crying, ringing people up, talking to everybody about what he's going to do. So, as you say, he's obsessed by this thing about the trial. He reads a report in the Dallas Times Herald that says there is a possibility, if the trial is held in Dallas, that Jackie Kennedy will have to come back to Dallas in due course to testify as a witness. He is horrified by this. He thinks this is awful. But he also sees an open letter, a very kind of. I think it's pretty moving. Some people, I suppose, might find it morkish. I don't. I think it's very moving. An open letter from a Dallas resident to Caroline Kennedy, Kennedy's daughter. From a guy who says, I took my two daughters out of school so they would see your mummy and daddy when they visited Dallas. And he says, we saw them and they looked so happy. And your daddy looked at my youngest and eldest daughter and he waved to them. And I thought of you and I thought, what a lovely guy he obviously was.

And then he know it's such a terrible thing that has happened to you, but I wish we could help you. You'll have so many friends, though. God loves you. God loves little girls.

You can absolutely see how this would hit someone as emotional and overwrought as Ruby in the solar plexus.

Exactly. Ruby reads this letter. It's published as an open letter. The kind of thing, Tom, that, as we know, is often published in the wake of tragedies. He reads this letter, he cracks. And by his own account, this is the moment he thinks, I am a jew. And we have been downtrodden and people say we are weak. And all this because it's a jew.

Who had written that letter that had been printed in the Dallas newspaper saying.

That Kennedy was a traitor.

That Kennedy was a traitor. And so he wants to stand up and show that jews are a tough. Is it. What's the phrase he uses?

Jews have guts. That's what he says. I want to show the world that a jew has guts. However, before Jack Ruby shows the world that he has guts, he has something even more pressing to do. He has to go into town to the Western Union office because he needs to send one of his strippers some money. And so that, I think, is where we should leave him on that exciting cliffhanger. How big is the queue going to be? Is he going to get there? Is he going to be able to do it in time?

I think it reflects well on him.

He's quite a paternalistic employer, isn't he?

He is, yeah. And just to kind of. We haven't had much english engagement in this, and we're a patriotic podcast, so just to mention that one of his strippers is actually english. Yeah.

Kay Coleman, I think it was, wasn't it?

Yeah. So, anyway, this is by the by.

Well, that's nice, Tom. Nice to have an english element to the story.

So the tension is building. Will Jack Ruby get the money off in time? Will he get to the police station in time? What is going to happen. We will reveal all after the break.

Hello.

Welcome back to the rest is history. It is 1117 on the 23 November 1963. And on Main Street, Dallas, Jack Ruby is filling out a western Union money order for a stripper.

Yes.

Two minutes later, back in the police station, a handcuffed Lee Harvey Oswald is being taken by his police escort down an elevator to the basement. Dominic, what happens next?

Right, so the basement has been searched, totally searched. There are 70 policemen stationed in the basement for security. The plan, however, has changed. The original plan was they would take Oswald to the county jail in an armored truck. The plan now is that the armored truck will attract so much attention that they will actually take him in an unmarked police car and they will use the armored truck and the cavalcade as a kind of decoy. It's actually, Tom, I have to say a pretty good plan, given the amount of attention that would be paid to the armored truck. So they're taking Oswald down in the elevator, and then they'll lead him through the office and he will be taken towards the basement garage and he will be loaded into the car. The basement is full of reporters, television cameras, cameramen, photographers, all of this stuff. So the place is rammed, actually. Meanwhile, as you say, a very short walk away on Main Street, Jack Ruby has got to the front of the queue at the western Union office. There was one person ahead of him in the queue. Had there been more, he would not have been there in time.

This is a problem, I think, if you believe that Jack Ruby is a hired, paid professional assassin.

But who was that person, Dominic, ahead of him in the queue?

Well, I mean, Tom, I don't. Come on, you've got to get on.

Top of the case.

I don't know, but I think the queue would be. The line, as our american listeners would call it, is surely a hard thing to fix.

Right?

I mean, you don't know who's going to be standing there in the line.

Anyway, but if it's a mafia boss or it's someone from the X Files or a Cuban x File, I mean, you know.

Right. So at 1119, as you said, oswald is in the elevator going down to the basement. At 1120, the police are moving the cars and the trucks into position outside the basement garage at the end of this ramp. Now, because of the change of plan, there's just a bit of faffing around with the trucks and the cars. If you're really fascinated by this truck based faffing, you can read probably thousands of websites about it, but basically, they're reversing some cars, moving others. It's a slight bit of confusion. Not massive confusion, though.

Truck based faffing.

But they are distracted in that sense of distraction. Jack Ruby, who has just left the Western Union office who's basically walking past the Dallas police headquarters as he has done so many times with his corned beef sandwiches and celery tonics, he walks up the ramp and into the basement. And I think there is a claim that one person saw him and shouted, oh, stop. But it was too late. He was in. At the same moment that he walks into the basement, the elevator doors open, and Leigh Harvey Oswald and his guards. He's flanked by two detectives, Detective Levelle and Detective Graves. They step out of the elevator into the jail office. They move past the desks into the garage. They're blinded temporarily by the tv lights that have been set up. And as they come into view, the press surge towards them. And one of the press, a guy called Ike papas from CBS, they're all shouting, Mr. Oswald. Mr. Oswald. And he shouts, do you have anything to say in your defense? And it is at that moment that a man lunges out of the crowd holding a gun in his right hand. I mean, everybody who's ever had a smidgen of interest in this story will have seen the clip, I'm sure, right away, multiple policemen see that it is Jack Ruby.

Somebody shouts, Jack, you son of a bitch, don't do it. And Ruby fires. He fires a shot directly into Lee Harvey Oswald's stomach. Then the police pile on him right away. I mean, Ruby obviously doesn't deny it.

Well, he'd be hard pressed to, wouldn't he?

He'd be very hard pressed.

I mean, he's literally just shot in front of the full glare of the world's media, the world's press.

Yes, he has. And he says, I hope I killed that son of a bitch. It'll save everybody a lot of trouble.

Which, I mean, is very ironic because he's now absolutely set people down a whole succession of rabbit holes with that.

He has indeed. So they drag Lee Harvey Oswald's body back into the jail office. And a detective, I think his name is combest, is over him. Oswald is losing blood very rapidly. And the guy says to Oswald, is there anything you want to tell me? Is there anything you want to say?

Now he doesn't, does he?

And he doesn't say a word. And then he passes out. Now, as with the Kennedy assassination, they move incredibly quickly to get Oswald to Parkland Hospital. He is there within minutes.

And they think about taking him into trauma room one, don't they? And then they think that would be disrespectful. They do, because that's where Kennedy had been taken. So they move him into trauma room two.

But two of the same doctors who had worked on Kennedy also work on Oswald. And they are, of course, very conscious of the irony of this, but they're doing their job professionally. It's obvious, by the way, there is a moment when they think he might.

Pull through because his brother Robert, he comes and a doctor comes out and says he'll be all right.

Yeah, but the issue is he's lost so much blood. Now, this is a story in which iron is a piled on ironers at the very moment that Oswald is bleeding to death in trauma room two in the White House in Washington. Jacqueline Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and the two children are just being shown into the east room of the White House to see John F Kennedy's body lying in state. So this is before Tom. It will be moved to the rotunda of the Capitol for the public to pay their respects. So this is a private moment. Jackie gives him two farewell letters from the children. They'd all had tie clips made with PT 109, which was the torpedo boat that had been sunk by the Japanese in the second World War and which.

Had given him terrible damage to his spine that had necessitated the wearing of the corset.

Exactly. So they put that in and then they closed the casket. Oswald back at the hospital, they're working desperately on him, but at that's two days and seven minutes after John F. Kennedy was declared dead, Lee Harvey Oswald is declared dead.

And meanwhile, is Ruby. Is the interrogation already beginning? Yes.

They've been interrogating Ruby and he's basically said the whole thing. I mean, he's only got one thing to say and he said it. So he has said. When I saw Mrs. Kennedy was going to have to appear for a trial, I thought to myself, why should she have to go through this ordeal for this no good son of a bitch? I'd read about that letter to little Caroline. I had been to the western Union office to send a telegram. I had to do it. I had to show the world that a jew has guts. And later on, he says the same thing to the FBI.

But Dominic, I think the thing he says that kind of basically sums up not just his motivation, but Oswald's. And I suppose, in a sense Kennedy's as well. I wanted to be something, something better than anyone else. That sense of wanting to make a mark, perhaps it's true of all three men in very different ways.

Yeah, that's a nice point, actually, Tom. So John F. Kennedy had been raised by his father to be so competitive. And to believe that he could make a mark on the world. As, of course, he know he's a bright guy. He has a sense of service and know leaving an imprint on society. Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald, in their different ways, are very damaged men. They have none of Kennedy's assurance. His brains, his charisma, his charm contacts, his background. Yeah, and they have none of his other advantages. You're absolutely right. And these are two men who have totally failed to make a mark. And are very conscious of it.

And now they do.

I mean, most of us, Tom, learn to live with the fact that we won't be ranked among the great men of history. But both Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey.

Oswald, they've made their mark. Here we are talking about them.

They have made their mark. But they were men who were conscious of their own failure, I think, right up to the last moments of their lives. So that is a terrible blow for the Dallas police department. I mean, it is a blow to their public reputation. From which they arguably never, ever recovered. I mean, it must be humiliating for people associated with law enforcement in Dallas. That the one place in that city, this huge, booming texan city, the one place that everybody visits, is a reminder of their failure. That, first of all, they didn't protect the president. Not that there's much they could have done, to be fair. And secondly, that the assassin was himself shot in their custody two days later.

I think, having read Parkland, that the police do actually come out of it incredibly well. I mean, my sense was that they were all corrupt, hopeless, incompetent. The vague sense that I had. But actually, I pretty impressed with the investigation.

Yeah.

I'll tell you, the other thing I was impressed by was the sheer range of names that the police officers had. I very much enjoyed deputy Chief Blumpkin.

Right.

And then there's Special Agent Floyd. Boring. And one thing the episode certainly wasn't. Was boring.

Well, that's true.

So I just throw that out.

Yeah. Well, there's definitely this quality about this whole story, Tom, of the great american novel, isn't there?

Yeah, there really is.

Of a huge panoramic range of people with ludicrous names.

You wouldn't believe it. And of course, lots of people don't.

No, they don't.

But, Dominic, before we come to the theories about what happened, whether there was a conspiracy, if there was a conspiracy who might have been behind it. Let's round off the narrative of these four terrible days. So we're now on the 25 November. This is the day that is scheduled for JFK's funeral. But it's also going to be a day of two other funerals, isn't it?

It is. And this was, of course, the day, Tom, it was kind of marked, ringed in Kennedy's diary, because they wanted to be back for their son John Jr's birthday. They have the birthday party. I mean, it's an extraordinary detail, very human detail, that they still have the birthday party because they feel they don't want to deny the little boy his party. They want to give him a sense of normality. So Kennedy's funeral was held in St Matthew's Cathedral, the catholic cathedral in Washington. And then, of course, he was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

And, Donna, just to mention before this, there had also been a service in the White House, which was a catholic service, and this was the first ever catholic service to be held in the White House.

Is that right? The first catholic service. We talked last week, didn't we, about this sense of controversy about the first catholic president? I mean, no one's really questioning it.

No one's complaining about that now.

No one's complaining about it now. So both the Kennedy family and the Johnson family march in the procession, as do 22 international presidents, ten prime ministers, kings, queens, emperors. Tom, you were very keen to get a british element in. Good Prince Philip is there.

Well, the queen can't because she's pregnant with Prince Edward. So good to get Prince Edward in as well.

Right, your great patron. Yeah. I know you're a big fan of Prince Edward because he once said he'd heard of you or something like that, isn't it? Or he commended you on your book.

He said he'd very much enjoyed Rubicon.

Yeah.

So, anyway, I'm glad we got that into the Kennedy story.

Edward, who pretended to have read Tom's book. Anyway, move on. So it's always somebody at these great international occasions and funerals, there's always somebody who shouldn't be there, and that's generally the british prime minister. So in the case of Alaihi, Queen Tom, it was Liz Truss, very demeaningly for Britain. And the funeral of President Kennedy, it was Sir Alec Douglas Hume. So the one post war prime minister who nobody remembers.

I remember him because he was in Wiston. He was a very good cricketer.

He was a very good cricketer.

So I'm glad we got Rubecon in. And we got cricket, which I wasn't expecting to achieve before we began this episode.

And the leader of the Labor Party, Harold Wilson, is also.

But also Dominic. It's the first foreign live event to be covered on soviet tv.

Is it? That is fact. The great concern, actually, the security concern, is not just attacks on the Kennedy and Johnson family, but President de Gaulle marches in the procession and he's such a tall man that he really stands out. And everybody is very worried because the OAS. Yeah, of course, the sort of algerian.

Have they sent a jackal?

Have they sent the jackal to eliminate him? Yes, that's a big concern at the time, that algerian terrorists. When I say algerian terrorists, I mean, of course, french sort of right wing nationalist terrorists who do not want to surrender their position in Algeria. There are a million people lining the route. There are 175,000,000 people watching on tv. And the two moments all of our american listeners will surely recognize are. There's the spectacle of this horse called Black Jack. It's the symbol of a foreign leader. So this huge black horse, it's riderless, and in the stirrups are two empty boots reversed. I don't really know where that comes from, but it's obviously a very spectacular kind of demonstration of loss, regret for the lost leader. And the other is the heartrending moment of John Jr. Age three, on his birthday, in his little suit, saluting his father's. You know, we often say in Britain, we're the only people that do these things well. But the Americans do this brilliantly on this sort of very moving moment. And there are two other funerals, as you say. There's a funeral just outside Fort Worth at the Rose Hill cemetery, which is the funeral of Lee Harvey Oswald.

And it had been really difficult, hadn't it, for Robert, his brother, to find a place that would accept his body. He keeps ringing round and they say, no, we're not going to have him. Can't get any priests.

Of all the Oswalds. I mean, I actually feel really sorry for Robert. I may feel sorry for Marina as well. But they're dragged into this situation, as you say. Nobody gives them any houseroom. And the priest, they eventually book is a Lutheran. He doesn't even turn up. He lets him down, doesn't he? They get to the cemetery. The cemetery say to them, look, you can do it, but you must tell everybody that it was already arranged and booked. In other words, you can't say that we allowed you to do it after we knew of the assassination. And there are so few people that the reporters have to carry the coffin, those reporters who've been sent to cover it. But the funeral that actually, I find really moving is the funeral of the one man who's always forgotten the other victim, which is J d Tippett. The policeman shot by Oswald. Yeah. His funeral took place at Beckley Hills Baptist Church in Dallas. There are 1500 people there. 700 uniformed policemen went. And he had a $7,500 life insurance policy, which obviously wouldn't be very much for his family to live on. And they got loads and loads of donations.

American footballers, the Detroit Lions. Every member of the team sent money. New York stockbrokers. A guy called Walter Annenberg, who was a newspaper mogul and kind of political donor.

Yeah, he was ambassador to London, wasn't he?

He was indeed, yeah. And a Nixon.

Yeah. And Palm Springs.

Big house.

I've been to it.

Have you? Oh, my word, Tom. That's a great bit of name dropping. So he paid off their mortgage, the Tippett's mortgage. In total, they were sent $650,000. Such was the wave of sort of sympathy for the Tippett family. Both Robert Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson made time to call Tippett's widow and to say how sorry they were.

Well, that reflects well on them.

And Jacqueline Kennedy sent her a gold framed photo and said, there is another bond that we share. We must remind our children all the time what brave men their fathers were. So very moving.

Lump in the throat. Yeah.

Very lump in the throat moment, Tom. So that's the narrative. Now, of course, the question, which we haven't really.

We've kind of hinted at it, haven't we?

I mean, we have told you about the police case and what police think happened. We haven't told you what other people think happened or actually, Tom, what you and I think happened.

So that is yet to come. So we are five episodes into this epic survey of JFK, his assassination and the aftermath of the assassination. But we have the whole question of who might really have killed him. Was it Lee Harvey Oswald operating alone? Was he perhaps part of a broader conspiracy? Was he, as he had claimed to be, a patsy? So we will be back trying to answer those questions. You'll get them no matter what. But if you don't want to wait, you can go to the rest is history.com, where you can join the rest is history club and get immediate access. But whichever way you choose to go, I hope that you will join us again for the conclusion of this extraordinary story. Thank you very much, Dominic, for tour de forces the phrase and there's more to come. So we'll see you very soon. Bye. Bye. Bye.