Daily Mirror dated Monday November 25th 1963
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About 40 minutes after the assassination of John F Kennedy
on November 23rd 1963 a police officer, J D Tippit, stopped his
patrol car to question a man he had seen walking along Tenth Street in Dallas. As Tippit got out of his car the man
shot him 4 times and the police officer died immediately. The man ran off.
A short while later a shoe store employee saw a man who he
recognised as a recent customer acting suspiciously in the entrance to the
store. He appeared to be hiding from the police cars that had been called to
Tippit’s murder scene. The store man followed the suspicious character to the
Texas Theatre cinema and watched him go in without paying. He got the manager
to call the police and on their arrival pointed out the man, who turned out to
be Lee Harvey Oswald. He was arrested for Officer Tippit’s murder. A witness
later claimed that Jack Ruby was among the people in the cinema during the
arrest.
Oswald was taken to the Dallas Police Department and
questioned. It is not clear when or how the police decided that they had JFK’s
assassin but 10 hours after being arrested for Tippit’s murder he was charged
with Kennedy’s.
The following day the police decided to move Oswald from the
police station to the County
Jail. A handcuffed Oswald
was led into the basement car-park flanked by detectives Jim Leavelle and L C
Graves and past a large crowd of journalists, TV cameras and on-lookers.
Suddenly Jack Ruby stepped out and, holding a revolver in his outstretched
right hand, shot Oswald once in the stomach. An hour and forty-two minutes
later he died.
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Did Jack Ruby kill Oswald because, as he claimed, he ‘did it
for Jackie’ or was he eliminating Oswald before he could reveal anything about
a conspiracy to murder JFK?
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Jacqueline Lee Bouvier married John F Kennedy in 1953,
became his widow in 1963 and married Greek Shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis
in 1968. She and JFK had 4 children, 2 of which died in infancy – one only 2
months before the assassination. Their son JFK Jr died in a plane crash at the
age of 38. Daughter Caroline is still alive. Jackie Kennedy Onassis died in
1994.
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Kathleen Heathcote’s killer, Ronald Evans, was caught and
sentenced to life imprisonment but in 1975 he was released ‘on licence’. In
1978 Bristol
was being terrorised by a rapist nicknamed the ‘Beast of Bristol’. He was caught by a police woman decoy and
turned out to be Evans. He was given a further 9 years on top of his life
sentence.
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Harold Challenor was a Detective Sergeant in the CID in 1963
and was known for planting evidence and beating up suspects. He met his match
when he planted a half brick on a journalist for Peace News in order to charge
him with carrying a weapon. Other cases then became public knowledge and
Challenor appeared at the Old Bailey in 1964, charged with conspiracy to
pervert the course of justice, he was deemed to be unfit to plead and was sent
to Netherne Mental Hospital with a diagnosis of
paranoid schizophrenia
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On several occasions, when I worked in Essex Street in
London in the late ‘60’s, I saw Rupert ‘Maigret’ Davies parking his 1930 racing
green ‘blown’ Bentley in the road outside our offices.
‘No Hiding
Place’ lasted from 1959 until 1967 With Raymond
Francis as DCI Lockhart. When Eric Lander left Johnny Briggs, who is now best
known as Mike Baldwin in ‘Coronation
Street’, took over as the co-star.
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I thought the sick joke was a modern phenomenon. Canadian
presenter and actor Bernard Braden was a popular figure on TV in the early
‘60’s and always quite outspoken. The usually very outspoken ‘That Was The Week
That Was’ team was uncharacteristically reserved in their tribute to the
murdered President.
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Burley has a car-park now. I know because a friend of the
family lives there. I don’t think she is related to Lord Shackleton.
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A 1963 newspaper wouldn’t be complete without a Beatles item. 5000
queued all night outside the theatre for tickets for the Beatles Xmas Show.
This was before Internet and phone ticket sales, so at least the little
darlings weren’t ripped off for using a credit card or having the tickets
posted to them.
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The Perishers comic strip was created by cartoonist Maurice
Dodd in 1959 and lasted until 2005 although reprints are still being published.
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It’s always fun to look back at future predictions from the
advantage point of that future. I’m still waiting for a home free of plugs and
wires and for an end to washing up, ironing and dirty clothes. As for microwave
food that ‘tastes good but looks raw’ we’re almost there with ‘looks cooked but
tastes like cardboard’.
