page_title: Lee Harvey Oswald
section_title: Police interrogation
hierarchical_section_title: Lee Harvey Oswald / Police interrogation
caption_attribution_description: English: Fake service card with the name Alex J. Hidell
context_page_description: Lee Harvey Oswald was an American Marxist and former U.S. Marine who assassinated United States President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. Oswald was honorably released from active duty in the Marine Corps into the reserve and defected to the Soviet Union in October 1959. He lived in Minsk until June 1962, when he returned to the United States with his Russian wife, Marina, and eventually settled in Dallas. Five government investigations concluded that Oswald shot and killed Kennedy from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository as the President traveled by motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas.
  About 45 minutes after assassinating Kennedy, Oswald shot and killed Dallas police officer J. D. Tippit on a local street. He then slipped into a movie theater, where he was arrested for Tippit's murder. Oswald was eventually charged with the assassination of Kennedy. He denied the accusations, stating that he was a "patsy." Two days later, Oswald was fatally shot by local nightclub owner Jack Ruby on live television in the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters.
context_section_description: Oswald was interrogated several times during his two days at Dallas Police Headquarters. He admitted that he went to his rooming house after leaving the book depository. He also admitted that he changed his clothes and armed himself with a .38 revolver before leaving his house to go to the theater. However, Oswald denied killing Kennedy and Tippit, denied owning a rifle, and said two photographs of him holding a rifle and a pistol were fakes. He denied telling his co-worker he wanted a ride to Irving to get curtain rods for his apartment (he said that the package contained his lunch). He also denied carrying a long, bulky package to work the morning of the assassination. Oswald denied knowing an "A. J. Hidell". Oswald was then shown a forged Selective Service System card bearing his photograph and the alias, "Alek James Hidell" that he had in his possession at the time of his arrest. Oswald refused to answer any questions concerning the card, saying "you have the card yourself and you know as much about it as I do."
  FBI Special Agent James P. Hosty and Dallas Police Captain Will Fritz (chief of homicide) conducted the first interrogation of Oswald on Friday, November 22. When Oswald was asked to account for himself at the time of the assassination, he replied that he was eating his lunch in the first-floor lounge (known as the "domino room"). He said that he then went to the second-floor lunchroom to buy a Coca-Cola from the soda machine there and was drinking it when he encountered Dallas motorcycle policeman Marrion L. Baker, who had entered the building with his gun drawn. Oswald said that while he was in the domino room, he saw two "Negro employees" walking by, one he recognized as "Junior" and a shorter man whose name he could not recall. Junior Jarman and Harold Norman confirmed to the Warren Commission that they had "walked through" the domino room around noon during their lunch break. When asked if anyone else was in the domino room, Norman testified that somebody else was there, but he could not remember who it was. Jarman testified that Oswald was not in the domino room when he was there. During his last interrogation on November 24, according to postal inspector Harry Holmes, Oswald was again asked where he was at the time of the shooting. Holmes (who attended the interrogation at the invitation of Captain Will Fritz) said that Oswald replied that he was working on an upper floor when the shooting occurred, then went downstairs where he encountered Dallas motorcycle policeman Marrion L. Baker.
  Oswald asked for legal representation several times during the interrogation, and he also asked for assistance during encounters with reporters. When H. Louis Nichols, President of the Dallas Bar Association, met with him in his cell on Saturday, he declined their services, saying he wanted to be represented by John Abt, chief counsel to the Communist Party USA, or by lawyers associated with the American Civil Liberties Union. Both Oswald and Ruth Paine tried to reach Abt by telephone several times Saturday and Sunday, but Abt was away for the weekend. Oswald also declined his brother Robert's offer on Saturday to obtain a local attorney.
  During an interrogation with Captain Fritz, when asked, "Are you a communist?", he replied, "No, I am not a communist. I am a Marxist."
caption: Fake Selective Service System (draft) card in the name of "Alek James Hidell", which was found on Oswald when he was arrested. "A. Hidell" was the name used on both envelope and order slip to buy the alleged murder weapon (see CE 773),[196] and "A. J. Hidell" was the alternate name on the New Orleans post office box rented June 11, 1963, by Oswald.[197] Both the alleged murder weapon and the pistol in Oswald's possession at arrest had earlier been shipped (at separate times) to Oswald's Dallas P.O. Box 2915, as ordered by "A. J. Hidell".[198]
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