The assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963,
continues to inspire interest ranging from well-meaning speculation
to bizarre conspiracy theories and controversial filmmaking. But in
this landmark book, reissued with a new afterword for the 40th
anniversary of the assassination, Gerald Posner examines all of the
available evidence and reaches the only possible conclusion: Lee
Harvey Oswald acted alone. There was no second gunman on the grassy
knoll. The CIA was not involved. And although more than four
million pages of documents have been released since Posner first
made his case, they have served only to corroborate his findings.
Case Closed remains the classic account against which all
books about JFK’s death must be measured.
關於作者：
?Persuasive. . . . Brilliantly illuminating. . . . More
satisfying than any conspiracy theory.? ?The New York
Times?By far the most lucid and compelling account. . . . No
serious historian who writes about the assassination in the future
will be able to ignore it.? ?The New York Times Book
Review?Superb. . . . The most convincing explanation of the
assassination.? ?Robert Dallek, The Boston Sunday
Globe?Required reading for anyone interested in the American
crime of the century.? ?Newsday?Utterly convincing. . . .
Fascinating and important. . . . Case closed, indeed.? ?Chicago
Tribune -- Review
內容試閱：
1 "Which One Are You?" President John F. Kennedy had been dead
less than an hour. J. D. Tippit, only the third Dallas policeman in
a decade to die in the line of duty, was killed shortly after the
President. Rumors swept the city. Dealey Plaza, the site of the
presidential assassination, was in pandemonium. Dozens of witnesses
sent the police scurrying in different directions in futile search
of an assassin. While most police mobilized to hunt the President''s
killer, more than a dozen sped to Dallas''s Oak Cliff, a quiet
middle-class neighborhood, to search for Tippit''s murderer.At 1:46
P.M., after an abortive raid on a public library, a police
dispatcher announced: "Have information a suspect just went in the
Texas Theater on West Jefferson." Within minutes, more than six
squad cars sealed the theater''s front and rear exits. Police armed
with shotguns spread into the balcony and the main floor as the
lights were turned up. Only a dozen moviegoers were scattered
inside the small theater. Officer M. N. McDonald began walking up
the left aisle from the rear of the building, searching patrons
along the way. Soon, he was near a young man in the third row from
the back of the theater. McDonald stopped and ordered him to stand.
The man slowly stood up, raised both hands, and then yelled, "Well,
it is all over now." In the next instant, he punched McDonald in
the face, sending the policeman''s cap flying backward. McDonald
instinctively lurched forward just as his assailant pulled a pistol
from his waist. They tumbled over the seats as other police rushed
to subdue the gunman. The gun''s hammer clicked as the man pulled
the trigger, but it did not fire.After the suspect was handcuffed,
he shouted, "I am not resisting arrest. Don''t hit me anymore." The
police pulled him to his feet and marched him out the theater as he
yelled, "I know my rights. I want a lawyer." A crowd of nearly two
hundred had gathered in front of the building, the rumor
circulating that the President''s assassin might have been caught.
As the police exited, the crowd surged forward, screaming
obscenities and crying, "Let us have him. We''ll kill him! We want
him!" The young man smirked and hollered back, "I protest this
police brutality!" Several police formed a wedge and cut through
the mob to an unmarked car. The suspect was pushed into the rear
seat between two policemen while three officers packed into the
front. Its red lights flashing, the car screeched away and headed
downtown.The suspect was calm. Again he declared, "I know my
rights," and then asked, "What is this all about?" He was told he
was under arrest for killing J. D. Tippit. He didn''t look
surprised. "Police officer been killed?" he asked. He was silent
for a moment, and then he said, "I hear they burn for murder."
Officer C. T. Walker, sitting on his right side, tried to control
his temper: "You may find out." Again, the suspect smirked. "Well,
they say it just takes a second to die," he said.One of the police
asked him his name. He refused to answer. They asked where he
lived. Again just silence. Detective Paul Bentley reached over and
pulled a wallet from the suspect''s left hip pocket. "I don''t know
why you are treating me like this," he said. "The only thing I have
done is carry a pistol into a movie."Bentley looked inside the
wallet. He called out the name: "Lee Oswald." There was no
reaction. Then he found another identification with the name Alek
Hidell. Again no acknowledgment. Bentley said, "I guess we are
going to have to wait until we get to the station to find out who
he actually is."Shortly after 2:00 P.M., the squad car pulled into
the basement of the city hall. The police told the suspect he could
hide his face from the press as they entered the building. He
shrugged his shoulders. "Why should I hide my face? I haven''t done
anything to be ashamed of."The police ran him into an elevator and
took him to a third-floor office. He was put into a small
interrogation room, with several men standing guard, as they waited
for the chief of homicide, Captain Will Fritz. Suddenly, another
homicide detective, Gus Rose, entered the room. He had the
suspect''s billfold in his hand, and he pushed two plastic cards
forward. "One says Lee Harvey Oswald and one says Alek Hidell.
Which one are you?"A smirk again crossed his face. "You figure it
out," he said.For the past thirty years historians, researchers,
and government investigators have tried to deal with Oswald''s
simple challenge. Although the identity of the suspect remained in
doubt for only a few more minutes at that Dallas police station,
the search has continued for the answer to the broader question of
who Lee Harvey Oswald was. Understanding him is the key to finding
out what happened in Dallas on November 22, 1963.Oswald was born on
October 18, 1939, into a lower-middle-class family in a downtrodden
New Orleans neighborhood. His father, Robert Edward Lee Oswald,
died two months before his birth. His mother, Marguerite, was a
domineering woman, consumed with self-pity both over the death of
her husband and because she had to return to work to support Lee,
his brother, Robert, and a halfbrother, John Pic, from the first of
her three marriages. Marguerite played an important role in
Oswald''s development, and conspiracy critics cast her in a positive
light. Jim Marrs, author of Crossfire, one of two books upon which
the movie JFK was based, downplays Oswald''s formative years:
"Despite much conjecture, there is little evidence that Lee''s
childhood was any better or any worse than others." Anthony
Summers, in his best-selling Conspiracy, quotes a relative
describing Marguerite as "a woman with a lot of character and good
morals, and I''m sure that what she was doing for her boys she
thought was the best at the time."The truth is quite different.
Robert described his mother as "rather quarrelsome" and "not easy
to get along with when she didn''t get her own way." According to
Robert, Marguerite tried to "dominate" and "control" the entire
family, and the boys found it "difficult . . . to put up with her."
John Pic developed a "hostility" toward her and felt "no motherly
love." Although she wanted to rule her sons'' lives, she was unable
to cope with them following the death of her husband. High-strung,
and failing to keep any job very long,* she committed Robert and
John Pic to an orphanage. She wanted also to send Lee but he was
too young to be accepted. Instead, she shuffled him between her
sister and an assortment of housekeepers and baby-sitters. The
temporary arrangement did not work. Marguerite had let a couple
move into her home to help care for Lee, but had to fire them when
she discovered they had been whipping him to control his
"unmanageable" disposition. She admitted it "was difficult with
Lee," juggling different jobs and homes they moved five times
before Lee was three. The instability had its effect on Oswald.
Years later, in an introductory note to a manuscript, he wrote:
"Lee Harvey Oswald was born in Oct 1939 in New Orleans, La. the son
of a Insuraen [sic] Salesman whose early death left a far mean
streak of indepence [sic] brought on by negleck [sic]."The day
after Christmas 1942, Marguerite finally placed three-year-old Lee
into the orphanage, where he joined his two brothers. Nearly one
hundred youngsters lived at the Bethlehem Children''s Home. The
atmosphere was relaxed, and Lee''s older brothers watched out for
him during his stay there, which was quite uneventful. In early
1944, Marguerite unexpectedly checked her sons out of the Bethlehem
Home and moved to Dallas. She relocated there because of her
personal interest in a local businessman, Edwin Ekdahl, whom she
had met six months earlier in New Orleans. They married in May of
the following year. Lee''s new stepfather worked for a utility
company and extensive travel was part of his job. Robert and John
Pic were placed in a military boarding school and Marguerite and
Lee traveled with Ekdahl. The business trips and short relocations
were so extensive that Lee missed most of his first year of school,
but by late October, they settled in Benbrook Texas, a suburb of
Fort Worth. Just after his sixth birthday, Lee was admitted to
Benbrook Common Elementary.*She admitted in her Warren Commission
testimony to holding more than a dozen jobs and being fired from
half of them.But young Oswald was no longer concerned about the
frequent moves or his absence from school because he had found a
friend in his stepfather. Lee''s halfbrother, John Pic, recalled, "I
think Lee found in him the father he never had. He had treated him
real good and I am sure that Lee felt the same way. I know he did."
Soon after the marriage, however, Marguerite and Ekdahl began
arguing. "She wanted more money out of him," recalls Pic. "That was
the basis of all arguments."* The fights increased steadily in
vituperation and intensity. Ekdahl often walked out, staying at a
hotel, and in the summer of 1946, Marguerite moved with Lee to
Covington, Louisiana. But Ekdahl and Marguerite soon reunited. Lee
was ecstatic when his stepfather moved back in, but he hated the
fighting and separations. "I think Lee was a lot more sensitive
than any of us realized at the time," recalled his brother,
Robert.*Marguerite was always concerned about money. After the
assassination, she almost always refused to give an interview or
sit for photographs unless paid. Marina, Lee''s wife, said, "She has
a mania--only money, money, money." Her son John Pic said in 1964
that money was "her god."The uncertainty in the marriage prevented
Lee from ever settling into a single neighborhood and school. In
September 1946, he enrolled in a new school, Covington Elementary,
but was again in the first grade, because he had not completed the
required work at Benbrook. After five months, Marguerite withdrew
him from Covington and they moved back to Fort Worth, where Lee
enrolled in his third school, the Clayton Public Elementary. He
finally finished the first grade, but soon after he was registered
for the second grade in the fall, they moved again. A schoolmate at
Clayton, Philip Vinson, recalled that while Oswald was not a bully,
he was a leader of one of three or four schoolyard gangs. Since he
was a year older than his classmates, "they seemed to look up to
him because he was so well built and husky . . . he was considered
sort of a tough-guy type." Vinson also noted, however, that none of
the boys in Oswald''s gang ever played with him after school or went
to his home. "I never went to his house, and I never knew anybody
who did," said Vinson.In January 1948, Ekdahl moved out
permanently, and he started divorce proceedings in March. Soon
after, Marguerite moved to a run-down house in a poor Fort Worth,
neighborhood, adjoining railroad tracks. Lee was enrolled in
another school, the Clark Elementary, his fourth. Unable to afford
the tuition at military boarding school for her other two sons,
Marguerite moved them in with her and Lee. Robert Oswald and John
Pic described the new home as "lower-class" and "prisonlike," and
they found Lee even less communicative than when they had
previously left the household, often "brooding for hours" at a
time. Lee had always been a quiet child. But with the constant
moving, he did not easily fit in with his schoolmates and seldom
made friends.In June 1948, the bitter divorce proceedings came to
trial. Lee was brought to court to testify, but refused, saying he
would not know the truth from a lie. While the divorce dragged
along, he stayed home alone with a pet dog, a gift from a neighbor.
His brother noticed that he seemed to withdraw further into
himself.That summer, Marguerite and her sons moved once again to
Benbrook, Texas. By the autumn they returned to Fort Worth, the
thirteenth move since Lee''s birth. He was enrolled in the third
grade at Arlington Heights Elementary. With her marriage over,
Marguerite now gave Lee all her attention, spoiling and protecting
him. "She always wanted to let Lee have his way about everything,"
recalled her sister, Lillian Murret. Afraid he could be hurt in
physical activities like sports, she instead encouraged gentler
pursuits like tap dancing, but he preferred to stay home by himself
or with her. Until he was almost eleven years of age, Lee often
slept in the same bed with his mother.According to Pic, who
admittedly resented his mother more than Robert did, Marguerite''s
attitudes made the home atmosphere depressing. She was jealous of
others, resented what they had, and constantly complained about how
unfairly life treated her. "She didn''t have many friends and
usually the new friends she made she didn''t keep very long,"
recalled Pic. "I remember every time we moved she always had fights
with the neighbors or something or another." Pic felt so strongly
about her that after the assassination he said that if Lee was
guilty, then he "was aided with a little extra push from his mother
in the living conditions that she presented to him." Even Lee''s
wife, Marina, later said that "part of the guilt" was with
Marguerite, because she did not provide him the correct education,
leadership, or guidance.She did not encourage him to attend school
when Lee whined that he did not like it. Instead, his mother told
him he was brighter and better than other children, and reinforced
his feeling that he learned more at home by reading books than from
listening to his teachers. "She told me that she had trained Lee to
stay in the house," Marguerite''s sister, Lillian, recalled, "to
stay close to home when she wasn''t there; and even to run home from
school and remain in the house or near the house. . . . He just got
in the habit of staying alone like that." Oswald''s cousin Marilyn
Murret said that Marguerite thought it was better for him to stay
at home alone than to "get in with other boys and do things they
shouldn''t do."When Lee visited the Murrets during this period,
Lillian found "he wouldn''t go out and play. He would rather just
stay in the house and read or something." She did not think it was
healthy for him to be inside all the time, so the Murrets took him
out, but immediately noticed "he didn''t seem to enjoy himself." "He
was obviously very unhappy," his aunt concluded.Neighbors noticed
the odd relationship between the overbearing mother and the
introverted youngster. Mrs. W. H. Bell, a neighbor in Benbrook,
remembered Lee as a loner who did not like to be disciplined.
Myrtle Evans, a good friend of Marguerite, said she "was too close
to Lee all the time." Evans said Lee was "a bookworm" even at seven
years of age, and that his mother "spoiled him to death." "The way
he kept to himself just wasn''t normal," Evans recalled.
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