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

Don Flusche

DONALD FLUSCHE Patrol Division Dallas Police Department "IfRoy Vaughn tells you it's Christmas, go on and hang the stocking because he won't lie to you!" Born in Cooke County, eighty miles north of Dallas, Don Flusche was educated at St. Mary's Parish Parochial School, then moved to Dallas and graduated from Jesuit High School in 1945. After a short stint at WesternElectric Company, a subsidiary ofthe Bell System, he served in the Anny from 1946 through 1949 as a drill instructor and as a telephone repainnan, with military police work as a collateral duty. Upon his discharge, Flusche worked for Chance-Vought as an aircraft electrician, attended SMU, and was married in 1950. He joined the Dallas Police Department in 1954 working Patrol, went into plain clothes assignments in 1959 and was promoted to sergeant in 1961. Two years later, in 1963, he was decorated with the Dallas Police Department's Medal of Honor, the highest award granted by the police department. On November 22, 1963, Flusche was serving as a sergeant at the Northeast Substation on Goforth Road near White Rock Lake and Loop 12. I was patrol sergeant in charge of one and two man units working seven or eight beats. There wasn't much going on out that way and knowing what time the motorcade was going by, I drove down to Lemmon Avenue and parked about half a block off of Lemmon hoping to catch a glimpse of the President, which I did. After seeing him there, I thought, "Well, I'll drift on DONA L D FLUS C HE, PAT R 0 L D I V lSI 0 N 457 downtown and go by the Patrol office to pick up some paperwork that was pending down there." As I was entering the downtown area, I heard the dispatcher on Channell, Bubba Hulse, issue a Signal 19, which involved the shooting of the President. The dispatcher gave the location where it had occurred, so I went down to the School Book Depository. Since I had been near the downtown area when I heard the dispatch, I was on the scene probably within two or three minutes of the time it was dispatched. When I arrived, there was a large crowd and a lot of confusion. They were still in a state of shock since the motorcade had apparently just passed. As I got out of the car, dressed in full uniform with the white supervisor hat, I remember seeing Roy Vaughn, who was assigned to Central Division at that time, and I asked him, "What the hell's going on?" He said, "As near as we can determine, the shots came from up there," referring to the School Book Depository. I further asked, "Has anybody secured the building?" and he responded that it had been. So I went on into the building, meeting Inspector Herb Sawyer in the process. He told me to go to the sixth floor and assist with whatever search that was needed up there and to try to secure that floor. When I got up to the sixth floor, there were several other people there, mostly in plain clothes. I can't recall the names of those I saw, but I found out later that most of them were federal officers, either from ATF and even Federal Game Enforcement people. I thought this was rather unusual because why were they so involved in all this, especially since murder, even a president, at that time was a state crime, thus it was our crime and our investigation that would have to be conducted? There was some confusion on the part of the people there as to what their r91es should be in this thing. There were some deputy sheriffs there as well as a number of Dallas policemen. I recall in particular W.e. Flowers, Paul Wilkins, and Roy Westphal. Upon arrival on the floor, I saw the shells on the floor which were being watched at that time by someone. This was before Carl Day had arrived. I also noticed the boxes had been stacked up to what reminded me of what one would use if you were going to bench rest a rifle to do some precise shooting in a shooting match. 458 NO MORE SILENCE When I saw the shells were being covered, I told the man, "Now stay with this. Don't let this...