Oswald in the doorway: the blog of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, by Ralph Cinque

The following letter was sent by Jim Marrs to OIC members on April 4. It concerns the role of the Dallas Police and how they were manipulated by the feds, just as the public was. Listen to Jim. 

To

James Norwood

CC

staffan h westerberg P MELLOR Hugh O'Neill WingMan ralph cinque and 55 more...

Apr 4

Howdy,

Give the poor old DPD a break. Yes, a few (probably less than a handful) Dallas officers were involved in the assassination plot, although even they were probably not aware of the full plan. The rest were trying to do their job under great handicaps. Understand that many of the Dallas cops augmented their meager police pay by continuing to serve in military reserve units, thus still under military command. Yes, the police work was in some cases shoddy and unsophisticated. They were manipulated by the federal authorities.  Attached is page 195 of Vol. IV of the Warren Commission Hearings. I believe both Chief Curry and Capt. Fritz were not involved in the conspiracy but in the aftermath were overridden by both federal authorities and local Democratic Party officials loyal to LBJ. Read at the bottom of the page how the DPD was pressured from Washington (Cliff Carter according to rumor at the time) to turn over all assassination evidence the night of the assassination.  Note in fourth paragraph from the top how Fritz argued against this as he was trying to mount an investigation. Also note that despite a promise to return the evidence to Dallas, this was not done. Since the feds (particularly the FBI) was not officially called into the case until Tuesday, Nov. 27, this means the Bureau had care, custody and control over ALL the assassination evidence for more than three full days with no public oversight or chain of evidence. No wonder so much evidence is in controversy. There is  no telling what was added or deleted.

By the way, I am convinced that, as could be expected considering the momentousness of the case, there were tape recordings of Oswald's statements made by the DPD. Detective Joe Cody once told me how he personally had installed the  microphone in the interrogation room. The actual recording machine was in another room which allowed DPD officials to state correctly that the interview room was too small to house a recording machine. I still believe that Capt. Fritz knew of the existence of these recordings but kept his silence which may explain why he kept a police guard with him for the rest of his life. He was safe as long as he maintained that no recordings existed. I still believe that such recordings may still exist and it would be quite educational to know what they contain. Having worked with both Fort Worth and Dallas police in the 1960s, it never made any sense to me that their most important prisoner was never recorded or even notes made by a stenographer.

Best regards,

Jim Marrs