No More Silence: An Oral History of the Assassination of President Kennedy

Roy Westphal

ROY WESTPHAL Criminal Intelligence Division Dallas Police Department "The morale on the police department also suffered because we had allowed our President to be killed. We didn't stop it; therefore, we screwed up. In addition, the Oswald shooting was a foul-up from the word go. In my opinion, we looked like a bunch ofcountry oafs·.!" Born in Dallas in 1931 and graduated from high school in Wiley, Texas, Roy Westphal attended East Texas State University for a year and eventually joined the Dallas Police Department in December 1953. He worked in various divisions in the police department including: Patrol, Burglary and Theft, Vice, but mostly in Criminal Intelligence. Promoted to detective in 1957, Westphal continued in that role in the Criminal Intelligence Division in 1963. I was assigned a security post, as were other plain clothes detectives, at the Trade Mart when President Kennedy was to have a big luncheon and political rally for the Democrats. Security was tight because he was the President and Vice-President Johnson was there, as well. We'd all been out there since 7:00 that morning and weren't anticipating any problems because no one was to get in without an invitation. But we had our orders: "We're not going to stand for any disruption or anything which would embarrass the President or the city." ROY WE S T P HAL, C RIM INA LIN TEL L I GENe E 327 Sometime that morning a man came up to me and wanted to know if he could wave the "Free Cuba" flag when the President came in, so I asked Captain Gannaway and Chief Stevenson if he could and was told, no. I was instructed to get the man's name and so forth, and at the end of my tour of duty that day write a report so that it could be sent through channels. So I got the man's name; he was very nice and readily agreed not to wave the flag once he was given an explanation, and that was the last that I saw of him. Later one of our officers, Jack Brian, came by and told me that the President had been shot. I told him that I didn't think that it was very funny and didn't want to hear it because I had been on that post for several hours and was tired. He had the strangest look on his face and said, "I'm not kidding," so I knew that he was telling the truth. Shortly thereafter, Lieutenant Revill came by and got O.J. Tarver, Brian, and myself, along with Ike Lee of the FBI and all of us went in Revill's car down to the School Book Depository. There, it was utter confusion! When we went into the building, our reasoning was to search from the top downward since we didn't know if the man might still be in the building. As we went up the elevator, I met Sergeant Flusche, and we were among other officers who got up into the attic looking for the suspect. It was filthy up there. I had on a brand new suit that day and ruined it. I was proud of that thing at the time, and it was the most expensive suit that I had, but it was never much good after that. After finding nothing in the attic, we came down to the sixth floor. There we found rows and rows of boxes of books that were stacked as high or higher than an average man's head. Apparently Oswald had stacked cardboard boxes of school books for a gun rest. At first we thought that he had been waiting and eating because some chicken bones were discovered, but I think they found later that it was some other workman's food. Evidently Oswald had fired his shots, went down the row of books, threw the rifle over a stack of books, either went down the elevator or down the stairs, and then went out of the building. At that time, there must have been around a dozen Dallas policemen and deputy sheriffs searching the floor. I knew a lot of them, but we didn't pass the time of day because our President had been shot. I had voted for Kennedy, though I wouldn't have the 328 NO MORE SILENCE second time since...