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Dramaturg: Kathy Janich

ASSASSINS
By Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman
September-October 2012

Fabrefaction Theatre: Cast + Crew Research Packet


TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Who is Stephen Sondheim (and John Weidman)? Page 2
2. About the show Page 4
3. The Assassins . Page 8-50
o John Wilkes Booth .. Page 8
o Charles Guiteau .. Page 10
o Leon Czolgosz .... Page 13
o Guiseppe Zangara ..... Page 16
o Lee Harvey Oswald ... Page 18
o Samuel Byck ....... Page 33
o Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme ...... Page 38
o Sara Jane Moore .... Page 43
o John Hinckley ...... Page 47
4. Glossary of Terms ..... Page 51
5. Video recap ..... Page 53










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SECTION 1: WHO IS STEPHEN SONDHEIM (AND JOHN WEIDMAN)?

To hear Sondheim and partner John Weidman talk about writing ASSASSINS: http://youtu.be/CBsoFzS991E


Excerpt from Wikipedia bio:
Stephen Joshua Sondheim, born March 22, 1930 hes 82 now -- is an American
composer and lyricist known for his contributions to musical theatre. He is the
winner of an Academy Award, eight Tony Awards including the Special Tony
Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards,
a Pulitzer Prize and the Laurence Olivier Award. Described by Frank Rich of
The New York Times as "now the greatest and perhaps best-known artist in the
American musical theater.

o Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Sondheim


Sondheim biography from The New York Times:
The words "intellectual" and "Broadway musical" were seldom mentioned in the same breath until the era of Stephen
Sondheim, the dominant artistic force in the American musical theater since the 1970s. Before his breakthrough show,
"Company," Mr. Sondheim, a protg of Oscar Hammerstein II, was already recognized as a wunderkind for his lyrics for
"West Side Story" (music by Leonard Bernstein) and
"Gypsy" (Jule Styne).
"Company," for which he wrote both music and words in
1970, was the first of several groundbreaking
collaborations with the producer-director Harold Prince. As
a team they established the so-called "concept musical,"
in which style and story are intertwined, as a flourishing
experimental genre. This multi-character mosaic, set in
New York, was followed by "Follies" (1971), "A Little Night
Music" (1973), "Pacific Overtures" (1976), "Sweeney
Todd" (1979) and "Merrily We Roll Along" (1981). Each
was a radical departure from its forerunner.
"Follies" offered brilliant pastiches of vintage Broadway styles. "A Little Night Music," their waltz musical, adapted from the
Ingmar Bergman movie "Smiles of a Summer Night," yielded Mr. Sondheim's most famous song, "Send in the Clowns."
"Pacific Overtures" fused Western and Asian styles. Many regard the revenge tragedy "Sweeney Todd," with its operatic
grand guignol, as his masterpiece. "Merrily We Roll Along" told its show business story backward.
These were followed by several collaborations with the book writer James Lapine, of which the most famous, "Sunday in the
ParkWith George" (1984), musically imitated the pointillism of the painter Georges Seurat, and won the Pulitzer Prize for
drama. "Into the Woods" (1987) imagined beloved fairy-tale characters living unhappily ever after, and "Passion" (1994)
examined the pathology of romantic obsession.
If his work defies the escapism of traditional Broadway shows and uncovers uncomfortable truths about the human
condition, it does so with compassion. -- Stephen Holden
o Source: http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/stephen_sondheim/index.html
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America Theatre Wing bio:
Stephen Sondheim wrote the music and lyrics for Saturday Night, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,
Anyone Can Whistle, Company, Follies, The Frogs, Pacific Overtures, Sweeney Todd, Merrily We Roll Along, Sunday in the
Park With George, Into the Woods, Assassins, Passion and Road Show as well as lyrics for West Side Story, Gypsy and Do
I Hear a Waltz? and additional lyrics for Candide. Anthologies of his work include Side by Side by Sondheim, Marry Me a
Little, You're Gonna Love Tomorrow and Putting It Together. For films, he composed the scores of Stavisky, co-
composed Reds and wrote songs for Dick Tracy and the television productionEvening Primrose. He co-authored the
film The Last of Sheila and the play Getting Away With Murder. Mr. Sondheim is on the council of the Dramatists Guild,
having served as its president from 1973 to 1981. -- Bio as of November 2009

Awards:
Pulitzer Prize in Drama, Sunday in the Park with George (1985)
Academy Award for Best Song, "Sooner or Later (I Always Get My Man)" from Dick Tracy (1990)

Grammy Awards
Company (1970, Best Score from an Original Cast Album)
A Little Night Music (1973, Best Score from an Original Cast Album)
"Send in the Clowns" (1975, Song of the Year)
Sweeney Todd (1979, Best Cast Show Album)
Sunday in the Park With George (1984, Best Cast Show Album)
Into the Woods (1988, Best Musical Cast Show Album)
Passion (1994, Best Musical Cast Show Album)
West Side Story (2010, Best Musical Cast Show Album)

Tony Awards
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1963, Best Musical)
Company (1971, Best Score, Best Lyrics)
Follies (1972, Best Score)
A Little Night Music (1973 Best Score)
Sweeney Todd (1979, Best Score)
Into The Woods (1988, Best Score)
Passion (1994 Best Score)
Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre (2008)

Drama Desk Awards
Company (196970, Best Musical, Outstanding Music, Outstanding Lyrics)
Follies (197071, Outstanding Music, Outstanding Lyrics)
A Little Night Music (197273, Outstanding Music and Lyrics)
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Sweeney Todd (197879, Outstanding Musical, Outstanding Music, Outstanding Lyrics)
Sunday in the Park with George (198384, Outstanding Musical, Outstanding Lyrics)
Into the Woods (198788, Outstanding Musical, Outstanding Lyrics)
Passion (199394, Outstanding Musical, Outstanding Music, Outstanding Lyrics)

OBIE Awards (off-Broadway)
Road Show (2009, Music and Lyrics)

Laurence Olivier Awards (London)
Sweeney Todd (1980, Best New Musical)
Follies (1987, Best New Musical)
Candide (1988, Best New Musical)
Sunday in the Park with George (1991, Best New Musical)
Merrily We Roll Along (2001, Best New Musical)
Society of London Theatre Special Award, Stephen Sondheim (Honorary Award)


WHO IS JOHN WEIDMAN?

America Theatre Wing bio: John Weidman wrote the new book for the 2011 revival
of Anything Goes. He wrote the book for Pacific Overtures (Tony nominations, Best
Book and Best Musical), score by Stephen Sondheim. He wrote the book for
Assassins, score by Stephen Sondheim, directed off-Broadway by Jerry Zaks and in
Londons West End (Drama Critics Award for Best Musical) by Sam Mendes. He
wrote the book for Big (Tony nomination, Best Book), score by Richard Maltby, Jr.
and David Shire, directed on Broadway by Mike Ockrent, and co-created with
choreographer/director Susan Stroman the musical Contact (Tony nomination, Best
Book; Tony Award, Best Musical).Bounce/Road Show, score by Stephen Sondheim,
direction by Harold Prince, premiered at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. He is
currently completing a screen adaptation of Contact for Miramax. Since 1986, he
has written for Sesame Street, receiving more than a dozen Emmy Awards for
Outstanding Writing for a Childrens Program. From 1999 to 2009 he served as
president of the Dramatists Guild of America. -- Bio as of May, 2011.

o Source: http://americantheatrewing.org/biography/detail/john_weidman







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Harvard Magazine feature | January-February 2011:

Storytelling with Sondheim

Librettist John Weidman writes books for the best.

ACT I : John Weidman 68 spends the first 13 years of his life in Westport, Connecticut, where he plays Little League
baseball and dreams of turning pro. Then he realizes: There are no major league players from Westport. His revised
attitude about the future: Wait and see.

Act II, Scene 1: Weidman (WIDE-man) at Harvard. His father is a writer (the novelist and dramatist Jerome Weidman,
author of I Can Get It for You Wholesale), so its only natural that he befriends Timothy Crouse 68, the son of playwright
Russel Crouse, who coauthored the book for The Sound of Music. In 1966, on a lark, they write the Hasty Pudding show A
Hit and a Myth. (Nothing seemed at stake. And we got to go to Bermuda.)

Act II, Scene 2: Weidman graduates. He extends his Wait and see credo by applying to law school. Facing the draft, he
chooses not to attend Yale immediately, and instead teaches for a few years at a New York public school. Then he heads to
New Haven to join Clarence Thomas in the Yale Law class of 1974.

Certain that the law is not for him, Weidman writes two letters, seeking an internship. The first goes to Bowie Kuhn,
commissioner of Major League Baseball, who blows him off. The secondwith a postscript: I have an idea for a play about
the opening of Japan; can we talk about it?goes to Broadway producer-director Hal Prince. Weidman: At Harvard, I
majored in East Asian historyI thought I knew something no one else did. I had no ambition to write a play. I had no
training. I just thought: I can do this while Im at Yale.

Act II, Scene 3: Prince meets with Weidman for 15 minutes before giving him a contract (and $500) to write the play. In the
summer of 1973, Weidman completes a draft of Pacific Overtures. Prince decides it needs to be a musicaland convinces
Stephen Sondheim to turn the play into one. Weidman: It was so surreal I didnt stopat least not too oftento think that I
was working with two giants of the theater. Pacific Overtures opens in 1976. Reviews are mixed. But the marquee says it
all: Prince. Sondheim. Weidman.

Act III, Scene 1: Weidman writes for the National Lampoon, which leads to several years of screenwriting. In 1978, he
marries a Yale classmate, Lila Coleburn, who soon abandons law herself for clinical psychology. Two children follow.
Watching Sesame Street with his daughter, he decides that working there would be honest labor, and he begins to write
sketches for the show.

Act III, Scene 2: In the mid 1980s, Anna Crouse, Russels widow, decides that the reason there has been no first-class
production of her late husbands Anything Goessince 1934 is that the book isnt good enough. (Howard Lindsay and Crouse
rewrote the P.G. Wodehouse/Guy Bolton book for the Cole Porter musical.) For $1,000 each, she hires Weidman and her
son to rewrite it. Despite a mixed review in the New York Times from Frank Rich 71 (The corny, sporadically amusing one-
linersgive the script the collegiate air of a Harvard Hasty Pudding show), the show is a hit and runs for two years.
Act III, Scene 3: Along the way, Weidman and Sondheim become friends. Periodically, they meet to kick around ideas. In
the late 80s, Sondheim mentions his interest in the men who have tried to kill a U.S. president. Weidman is equally
intrigued; their collaboration becomesAssassins. Weidman: I was a Camelot kid. After Kennedy was shot, I went to
Washington and stood on the sidewalk as his cortege passed by. And I thoughtas Steve didhow can one small man
cause so much grief? We opened at Playwrights Horizons and were mostly vilified, but Ive never enjoyed anything as much
as working with Steve on that.

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Sondheim: Ordinarily, I start reading the librettists work after he has written one or two scenes, but John never offered to
show them to me. I assumed that his reluctance to show me anything came from uncertainty. I should have known better
from the man who wrote Pacific Overtures. Within five minutes of reading, I knew the reason for Johns hesitation in
showing me what he was writing: far from uncertainty, he knew exactly what he was doing, and he was on a white-hot roll.
Act III, Scene 4: Assassins (1990) polarizes reviewers, as does Road Show (2008), his third collaboration with Sondheim.
Other shows provoke no ambivalence. He is nominated for the Tony Award for best book for a musical three times (Pacific
Overtures, Big, and Contact), and wins a 2000 Tony for the dance musical Contact.For his Sesame Street work, he wins a
dozen Emmys. And, for a decade, hes president of the Dramatists Guild. He is one of only three writers to have had several
collaborations with the great Sondheim.

The Critics Turn: In March, Anything Goes will be revived on Broadway, with Joel Grey and Sutton Fosterin a theater
named for Stephen Sondheim. Completes a circle, doesnt it? Weidman shrugs it off; unlike many theater people, he seems
to have no ego, no urgent drive, no need to be noticed. From his 2008 Harvard class report: The success my career has
afforded me, both psychic and material, has not been spectacular, but it has been substantial and, more importantly,
enough for me.Unspectacular? Thats the first time I wrote intimately about myselfever. And its not false modesty.
Thats an entirely accurate description of how I feel. Then whats the payoff? I like writing dialogue. I like the solitary part. I
like collaborating. I just really enjoy the work.

o Source: http://harvardmagazine.com/2011/01/storytelling-with-sondheim?page=0,1
Audio:

At 75, Stephen Sondheim Looks Back... and Forward (9:56)

March 19, 2005 - Broadway composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim turns 75 on March 22. The living legend will be
honored with a 12-hour performance of his works, Wall-to-Wall Sondheim, Saturday at New York's Symphony Space. He
composed stage classics including Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods, Company and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to
the Forum; and he provided the lyrics for shows such as West Side Story and Gypsy. After so many songs, numerous Tony
Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and an Oscar (for best original song, 1990's Dick Tracy), Sondheim might not be blamed for
enjoying a quiet retirement. But he continues to work: Bounce was produced in Washington, D.C. in 2003. And an album of
Sondheim singing his own music recorded in the 1950s and '60s is due out in May.
o http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4538517


Sondheim Musical 'Assassins' Makes Belated Broadway Debut (2:56)

o http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1850486

America Theatre Wings Downstage Center (59:37) | Original air date Jan. 3, 2010

o http://americantheatrewing.org/downstagecenter/detail/stephen_sondheim
Video
Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman talk about ASSASSINS | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBsoFzS991E




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SECTION 2: ABOUT THE SHOW

Original production opened Dec. 18, 1990, at Playwrights Horizons, NYC
Closed on February 16, 1991. Ran for 73 performances

London production Opened Oct. 29, 1992, at the Donmar Warehouse.
Closed Jan. 9, 1993. Ran for 76 performances. Directed by Sam Mendes.

Broadway production began previews on March 26, 2004, at Studio 54. It opened April
22, 2004.
Closed July 18, 2004. Ran for 26 previews and 101 performances. Produced by
Roundabout Theatre Company.


History of Assassins excerpted from liner notes of 2004 Broadway cast recording:
Assassins had its premiere, off-Broadway, on Jan. 27, 1991. It received a uniformly chilly
reception from the critics and, on most nights, an equally chilly reception from the 147
subscribers who crowded into the tiny theater at Playwrights Horizons, where it was performed.

Given the shows deeply unsettling subject matter, and the fact that we were exploring that
subject matter, not just at the theater but in the musical theater, perhaps this reaction should not
have been surprising. Nevertheless, the expectation had been that the show would complete its
limited engagement at Playwrights, then transfer for an open-ended commercial run. In the
end, only 10,000 people were able to see Assassins during its limited three-month run. By
contrast, almost 15,000 people see The Lion King on Broadway every week. A new Stephen
Sondheim musical, much discussed and eagerly anticipated, seemed to have closed before it
opened. As a live theatrical event, it was almost as if Assassins never happened.

[The song Something Just Broke was written in London at the suggestion of director Sam Mendes.]

Assassins was going to be the first production of the fall 2001 season at the Roundabout Theatre Company, then came
the morning of Sept. 11. All parties agreed it had to be postponed. Finally, it moved toward its first Broadway production
beginning in the fall of 2003, opening 13 years after audiences first met Assassins.

o John Weidman









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SECTION 3: THE ASSASSINS
o John Wilkes Booth
o Charles Guiteau
o Leon Czolgosz
o Guiseppe Zangara
o Lee Harvey Oswald
o Samuel Byck
o Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme
o Sara Jane Moore
o John Hinckley

DECADE: 1860s

John Wilkes Booth (May 10, 1838-April 26, 1865)

o Who: A famous American stage actor.
o What: Assassinated President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C.,
on April 14, 1865.
o Weapon: .44-caliber Derringer.
o Died: Was shot by a Union soldier while hiding out in a barn. Then the barn was set on
fire.
o Age: He was a month shy of his 27th birthday.


In short: Hailing from a famous family of actors, Wilkes also served as a soldier in the Civil War
and became a passionate supporter of the Confederacy cause. He originally thought to kidnap
President Lincoln and exchange him for the release of Confederate prisoners of war; when that plan failed he shot Lincoln
during a performance of Our American Cousin at Fords Theatre in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865, as part of a larger
plan to assassinate various government officials. After the shooting, he leapt down to the stage and shouted Sic semper
tyrannis! (Thus always to tyrants, from Julius Caesar -- also the state motto of his
native Virginia), breaking his leg in the process and fled. He was run to ground 12
days later in a barn in Virginia.

o Source: Liner notes, 2004 Broadway cast recording

More details: Booth was a member of the prominent 19th-century Booth theatrical
family from Maryland; by the 1860s, he was a well-known actor. He was also
a Confederate sympathizer vehement in his denunciation of the Lincoln
administration and outraged by the South's defeat in the Civil War. He strongly
opposed the abolition of slavery and (less documented) Lincoln's proposal to extend voting rights to recently emancipated
slaves.

Booth and a group of co-conspirators originally plotted to kidnap Lincoln, but later planned to kill him, Vice President Andrew
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Johnson and Secretary of State William Seward in a bid to help the Confederacy's
cause. Although Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia had surrendered four days
earlier, Booth believed the war was not yet over because Confederate Gen. Joseph E.
Johnston's army was still fighting the Union Army. Of the conspirators, only Booth
succeeded in carrying out his part of the plot. Booth shot Lincoln once in the back of the
head. The president died the next morning at a home across the street from Ford's
Theatre. Seward was severely wounded but recovered. Vice President Johnson was
never attacked.

Following the assassination, Booth fled on horseback to southern Maryland, eventually
making his way to a farm in rural northern Virginia 12 days later, where he was tracked
down. Booth's companion gave himself up, but Booth refused and was shot by a Union
soldier; the barn in which he was hiding was then set ablaze. Eight other conspirators or
suspects were tried and convicted, and four were hanged shortly thereafter.

Background:
Booth was born in a four-room log house on May 10, 1838, the ninth of 10 children. He
was reportedly named after the English radical politician John Wilkes, a distant relative.
Nora Titone, in her book My Thoughts Be Bloody, recounts how the shame and ambition of John Wilkes and his
brother Edwin would eventually spur them to strive, as rivals, for achievement and acclaim Edwin, a Unionist, and John
Wilkes, as an assassin.

While attending the Quaker-run Milton Boarding School for Boys in Sparks, Md., Booth met a Gypsy fortune-teller who read
his palm and pronounced a grim destiny, telling Booth that he would have a grand but short life, doomed to die young and
"meeting a bad end." His sister recalled that Booth wrote down the palm-reader's prediction and showed it to his family and
others, often discussing its portents in moments of melancholy in later years.

At age 17, Booth made his stage debut on Aug. 14, 1855, in the supporting role of the Earl of Richmond in Richard III at
Baltimore's Charles Street Theatre. Some critics called Booth "the handsomest man in America" and a "natural genius" and
noted his having an "astonishing memory"; others were mixed in their estimation of his acting. He stood 5 feet 8 inches tall,
had jet-black hair, and was lean and athletic. Noted Civil War reporter George Alfred Townsend described him as a
"muscular, perfect man," with "curling hair, like a Corinthian capital."

When family friend John T. Ford opened 1,500-seat Ford's Theatre on
Nov. 9, 1863, in Washington, D.C., Booth was one of the first leading men
to appear there, playing in Charles Selby's The Marble Heart. Booth
portrayed a Greek sculptor in costume, making marble statues come to
life. Lincoln watched the play from his box. At one point during the
performance, Booth was said to have shaken his finger in Lincoln's
direction as he delivered a line of dialogue. Lincoln's sister-in-law, sitting
with him in the same presidential box where he would later be killed,
turned to him and said, "Mr. Lincoln, he looks as if he meant that for
you." The president replied, "He does look pretty sharp at me, doesn't he?"

THE GUN USED TO SHOOT LINCOLN Source: Wikipedia | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_wilkes_booth



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DECADE: 1880s
Charles Guiteau (Sept. 8, 1841-June 30, 1882)

o Who: An American preacher, writer and lawyer.
o What Shot President James A. Garfield from behind twice on July 2, 1881, at
the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station. Garfield died 11 weeks laters
from infections likely caused by doctors who didn't yet believe in washing
o their hands or using sterilized instruments. As he surrendered to authorities,
he said: "I am a Stalwart of the Stalwarts.... Arthur is president now!'" (The
Stalwarts were a traditionalist faction in the Republican Party near the end of
the 19th century.)
o Weapon: A .422-caliber Webley British Bulldog revolver with an ivory handle.
o Death: By hanging in Washington, D.C., two days before the first anniversary of the assassination attempt.
o Age: 40.

In short: Born in Illinois to a middle-class family, Guiteau later joined and left the Oneida Community, a utopian commune,
twice. He unsuccessfully attempted several careers, including law, evangelism and politics. He wrote a pamphlet, The
Truth, mostly lifted from unattributed sources, as well as an unsolicited speech for presidential candidate James Garfield.
When his request to be ambassador to France was ignored, he shot President Garfield twice in the back at the Potomac
Railroad Station in Washington, D.C., on July 2, 1881. (He had bought a fancy $15 pearl-handled revolver with the idea that
it would be displayed in museums thereafter.) His trial took two months, but deliberations lasted a little over an hour. On the
scaffold at his hanging, Guiteau recited a poem he had written I Am Going to the Lordy.

o Source: Liner notes, 2004 Broadway cast recording


More details: Grew up in Illinois and Wisconsin. Failed to get into the University of Michigan and eventually joined the
utopian religious sect known as the Oneida Community in New York, with which his father already was involved. He left the
sect twice in his five years there, earning the nickname "Charles Gitout."

On June 11, 1880, Guiteau was a passenger on the SS Stonington when it collided with the SS Narragansett at night in
heavy fog. The Stonington was able to return to port, but the Narragansett burned and sank, with significant loss of life. No
one on the Stonington was injured, but the incident left Guiteau believing that he had been spared for a higher purpose.

Later in 1880, he wrote a speech in support of Ulysses S. Grant's presidential campaign. When
Garfield (left) won the Republican nomination, he changed the title but little else. Still he believed
himself largely responsible for Garfield's election and insisted he made made a U.S.
ambassador, first to Vienna, then to Spain. Job seekers lined up daily to seek work in the new
administration, so Guiteau's presence wasn't strange. But he made such a pest of himself that
Secretary of State James G. Blaine personally told him to leave and never return.

He borrowed $15 to buy the revolver, choosing between one with wooden grips or one with ivory
grips. He was $1 short, but the store owner let him have it. Guiteau chose the ivory, it's believed,
because he wanted the gun to look good as a museum exhibit after the assassination. (The gun
was recovered and photographed by the Smithsonian in the early 20th century but has since been lost.) Guiteau spent the
next several weeks taking target and stalking Garfield.
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Guiteau pleaded not guilty to murder and although he had lawyers, argued to represent himself. His trial was one of the first
high-profile cases in the United States in which the insanity defense was used. Guiteau vehemently insisted that he had
been legally insane at the time of the shooting, he was not medically insane.

Guiteau became something of a media sensation during his trial because of his
bizarre behavior cursing and insulting the judge, most of the witnesses, the
prosecution and his defense team; formatting his testimony in epic poems he
recited at length; and soliciting legal advice from random spectators in the
audience via passed notes. He dictated an autobiography to the New York
Herald, ending it with a personal ad for "a nice Christian lady under 30 years of
age." He was oblivious to the American public's hatred of him, even after he was
almost assassinated twice. He frequently smiled and waved at spectators and
reporters in and out of the courtroom, seemingly happy to be the center of attention for once in his life.

Throughout his trial and up until his execution, Guiteau was housed at St. Elizabeths Hospital (the same facility at which
would-be Reagan assassin John Hinckley has spent his life). Guiteau wrote a defense of the assassination he had
committed and an account of his own trial, which was published as "The Truth and the Removal."

The book can be read here: http://archive.org/stream/truthremoval00guit#page/10/mode/2up

To the end, Guiteau was actively making plans to start a lecture tour
after his perceived imminent release and to run for president himself
in 1884. When found guilty on Jan. 25, 1882, he yelled at the jury
saying, "You are all low, consummate jackasses!"
He notoriously danced his way to the gallows and on the scaffold as a
last request, recited a poem he had written during his incarceration
called "I Am Going to the Lordy." He had originally requested an
orchestra to play as he sang his poem, but his request was denied.
Part of Guiteau's brain remains on display at the Mtter Museum in
Philadelphia and the National Museum of Health and Medicine in
Maryland.



More on Guiteau ...
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/guiteau/guiteauaccount.html

Cool 5-minute video on Guiteau from A&E Network's "Biography" series ...
http://www.biography.com/people/charles-julius-guiteau-235814




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"Charles Guiteau" is a traditional song about the assassination of President James A. Garfield by Charles J. Guiteau. It is
based on another old ballad, "James A. Rogers." It was written in 1882. Hear an mp3 excerpt here:
http://toneway.com/songs/charles-guiteau


THE LYRICS
Come all you tender Christians, wherever you may be
And likewise pay attention to these few words from me
I was down at the depot to make my getaway
When Providence turned against me, it proved to be too late

My name is Charles Guiteau, my name I'll never deny
To leave my aged parents to sorrow and to die
But little did I think, while in my youthful bloom
I'd be carried to the scaffold to meet my fatal doom

I tried to play off insane, but found it would not do
The people all against me, it proved to make no show
Judge Cox he passed the sentence, the clerk he wrote it down
On the thirtieth day of June, they'll put me underground

My sister came in prison to bid her last farewell
She threw her arms around me, she wept most bitterly
She said, My loving brother, today you must die
For the murder of James A. Garfield, upon the scaffold high
I'm standing on this platform to bid you all adieu
The hangman's noose is a-waiting, it's a quarter after two
The black cap is on my face, no longer can I see
And when I'm dead and buried, dear Lord, remember me



PRESIDENT JAMES A. GARFIELD SHOT BY CHARLES GUITEAU, AS IMAGINED IN AN ARTISTS RENDERING

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DECADE: 1900s
Leon Czolgosz (Jan. 24, 1873-Oct. 29, 1901)

o Pronunciation: Schollgosch.
o Who: A laborer.
o What: Shot President William McKinley twice, in the chest and abdomen, at the Pan
American Exposition in Buffalo, N.Y., on Sept. 6, 1901. McKinley died Sept. 14
o Weapon: A .32-caliber Iver Johnson "Safety Automatic" revolver (serial #A63344)
o Death: In the electric chair.
o Age: 28.

In short: Born in Detroit to Polish immigrant parents, Czolgosz worked in menial jobs in
Cleveland, Ohio, from the age of 12. Following a nervous breakdown, he quit his job in a bottle
factory and became an anarchist. Inspired by the assassination of King Umberto I of Italy by an American anarchist, he went
to the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, N.Y., on Sept. 6, 1901, and shot President William McKinley point-blank with a
$4.50 gun wrapped in a [white] handkerchief. McKinley died a week later from his wounds. Czolgosz was executed less
than two months later; his last words were I killed the president because he was the enemy of the good people the good
working people. I done my duty.

o Source: Liner notes, 2004 Broadway cast recording



More details: Czolgosz was the son of Polish-Russian immigrants who had six other children. He found work in a wire mill
in 1898, but then he suffered a mental breakdown and returned to the family farm near Cleveland, Ohio.

He rejected his family's Roman Catholic beliefs and, in 1900, became excited by the news that an Italian immigrant had
returned to Italy and assassinated King Umberto. He kept newspapers cuttings of the assassination and started to read
what were considered anarchist newspapers.

On May 6, 1901, he traveled to Cleveland to hear well-known agitator Emma Goldman speak at the Federal Liberal Club.
He spoke to her briefly afterward and followed her to Chicago, where he attended other meetings where she spoke.

While in Chicago he read that President McKinley (left) planned to visit the Pan-American
Exposition in Buffalo, N.Y. (an early version of the Worlds Fair). On Sept. 3, he bought a pistol
and three days later was in the audience when McKinley (left) spoke at the Temple of Music.
Although surrounded by 50 bodyguards, Czolgosz was able to walk up to McKinley and fire two
shots, hitting him in the chest and abdomen. McKinley shouted, "Be easy with him, boys" as
secret service agents beat Czolgosz with fists and pistol butts.

McKinley was taken to hospital where it was discovered that the chest wound was superficial
but the other bullet had torn through the stomach wall. For the first few days his condition
improved and newspapers reported that he would recover. However, the bullet that had passed
through the stomach wall and a kidney had turned gangrenous. He died Sept. 14, 1901.

When questioned, Czolgosz claimed he had been incited to kill McKinley by the speeches of Emma Goldman. She was
arrested and imprisoned for questioning. When she was finally released she shocked the public by stating that: "He
14 | P a g e

(Czolgosz) had committed the act for no personal reasons or gain. He did it for what is his ideal: the good of the people.
That is why my sympathies are with him."

Czolgosz was tried and found guilty of killing McKinley. Before being executed on Oct. 20, 1901, he remarked: "I killed the
president because he was the enemy of the good people the good working people. I am not sorry for my crime."

o Source: Spartacus Educational website http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAczolgosz.htm



Czolgosz gave his name to police as Fred Nieman or Fred Nobody and later stated in reference to his decision to
assassinate McKinley, "I didn't believe one man should have so much service, and another man have none."

o Source: "American Experience," PBS


In her autobiography, "Living My Life," Emma Goldman described her first meeting with Czolgosz:

"The subject of my lecture in Cleveland, early in May of that year, was Anarchism, delivered before the Franklin Liberal
Club, a radical organization. During the intermission before the discussion I noticed a man looking over the titles of the
pamphlets and books on sale near the platform. Presently he came over to me with the question: 'Will you suggest
something for me to read?' He was working in Akron, he explained, and he would have to leave before the close of the
meeting. He was very young, a mere youth, of medium height, well built, and carrying himself very erect. But it was his face
that held me, a most sensitive face, with a delicate pink complexion; a handsome face, made doubly so by his curly golden
hair. Strength showed in his large blue eyes. I made a selection of some books for him, remarking that I hoped he would
find in them what he was seeking. I returned to the platform to open the discussion and I did not see the young man again
that evening, but his striking face remained in my memory."

A report from the Wichita Daily Eagle from Sept. 7, 1901, on the assassination:

It was shortly after 4 p.m. when one of the throng which surrounded the presidential party, a medium sized man of ordinary
appearance and plainly dressed in black, approached as if to greet the president. He worked his way amid the stream of
people until he was within two feet of the president.

President McKinley smiled, bowed and extended his hand in the spirit of
congeniality his American people so well know, when suddenly the sharp crack
of a revolver rang out loud and clear above the hum of the voices, the shuffling
of myriad feet and vibrating waves of applause.

There was an instance of almost complete silence. The president stood stood
still, a look of hesitancy, almost of bewilderment on his face. Then he retreated
a step, while a pallor began to steal over his features.

Then came a commotion. Three men threw themselves forward, as with one
impulse, and sprang toward the would-be assassin. Two of them were United
States secret service men who were on the lookout, and whose duty it was to guard against such a calamity. The third was
a by-stander, a negro, who had only an instant previously grasped the hand of the president. In a twinkling the assassin was
borne to the ground, his weapon was wrestled from his grasp, and strong arms pinioned him down.

o Source: Spartacus Educational website http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAczolgosz.htm

15 | P a g e


A full-page tabloid report on the case | http://dtc-wsuv.org/jhays/Project02/nobody.html

The execution
At 7:12 a.m. on Oct. 29, 1901, Leon Czolgosz is electrocuted at Auburn prison in New York. Three jolts are given, at 1700
volts each. Later that day, sulfuric acid is poured into Czolgosz' coffin. Hes buried in Soule Cemetery in Sennett, N.Y.

o Source: NNDB tracking the entire world | http://www.nndb.com/people/196/000057025/

On video
The electrocution of Leon Frank Czolgosz. The YouTube entry says, "There is no sound as it was 106 [now 111] years ago
and it is VERY, VERY rare." Some question its validity. Note: This is somewhat disturbing.

o http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYSxfyIqrjs

A longer piece on piece from Biography.com on Czolgosz and the assassination.
o http://www.biography.com/people/leon-frank-czolgosz-235807/videos




I DONE MY DUTY. Leon Czolgosz






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DECADE: 1930s
Guiseppe Zangara (Sept. 7, 1900-March 20, 1933)

o Who: A laborer & bricklayer
o What Tried to shoot President-elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt at Bayfront Parkin
Miami on Feb. 15, 1933. His shots went awry and he killed Chicago Mayor Anton
Cermak instead.
o Weapon: A .32-caliber pistol.
o Death: In the electric chair.
o Age: 32.

In short: A slight man, barely 5 feet tall, Zangara was born in rural Italy , where his father
put him to work at age 6. After his mothers death, his family immigrated to Philadelphia. He
complained of lifelong stomach trouble and had his appendix removed (apparently to no effect) at age 26. He became a
naturalized citizen at age 29, and four years later bought a $5 pistol to shoot President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt at
Bayfront Park in Miami on Feb. 15, 1933. As he fired, he shouted, There are too many people starving to death! He
missed Roosevelt because of his short stature and accidentally shot Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak, who lingered nearly
three weeks before dying. Zangara was executed a little more than a month after his attempt on Roosevelt. In the electric
chair, his unremorseful last words were: Lousy capitalists! No picture! Capitalists! No one here to take my picture. All
capitalists lousy bunch of crooks. Go ahead. Pusha da button!
o Source: Liner notes, 2004 Broadway cast recording

More details: Guiseppe Zangara (also known as Joseph) was born in Ferruzano, Italy. After serving in the Tyrolian Alps in
World War I, he did a variety of menial jobs in his hometown before emigrating with his uncle in Paterson, N.J., to the United
States in 1923. On Sept. 11, 1929, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States.
Zangara, a poorly educated bricklayer, who liked to eat banana splits, was driven mad by the constant sharp pain in his
abdomen, later attributed to adhesions of the gall bladder. It was difficult for him to work due to both his physical and mental
conditions and, in his fevered mind, he came to believe the president of the United States was somehow supernaturally
actively causing his pain.

Further, he was a very lonely man; he blamed authority figures for his pain, but the side effects of his condition included
chronic flatulence, while his outspoken and impatient nature likely pushed other people away.

Other sources report that Zangara envied those who had more than he did, and sought the
assassination of "all capitalist presidents and kings." Zangara began plotting to assassinate
President Herbert Hoover, but FDR (LEFT) was elected to replace him before Zangara could act
on his plan. Zangara would later say, "Hoover and Roosevelt everybody the same."

On Feb. 15, 1933, FDR was giving a speech in Bayfront Park in the city of Miami, Fla., where
Zangara was living, working the occasional odd job, and living off his savings. Zangara took a
.32-caliber pistol, purchased at a local pawn shop, and joined the crowd. However, being only 5
feet tall, he was unable to see over other people and had to stand on a wobbly, folding, metal
chair to get a clear aim at his target. After the first shot a woman jostled his arm and he fired five more shots wildly. He
missed the president-elect.

Five other people were hit including Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak who was sitting next to FDR. En route to the hospital,
Cermak had allegedly told FDR, "I'm glad it was me and not you, Mr. President." Roosevelt himself was remarkably poised.
17 | P a g e

Cermak (RIGHT) died of a complications brought about by an abdominal wound
19 days later, on March 6, 1933, two days after Roosevelt's inauguration, the only
fatality of the shootings.

Only two weeks later, on March 20, 1933, Zangara was executed in Old Sparky,
the electric chair at the Florida State Penitentiary after being convicted of
Cermak's murder.

According to Florida law, because Zangara intended murder, it was irrelevant that
his intended target was not who he killed; 1st degree murder was applicable. Also
according to Florida law, a convicted murderer could not share cell space with
another prisoner before his execution, but another convicted murderer was already
awaiting execution at Raiford. Zangara's sentence required prison officials to
expand their waiting area, and the "death cell" became "Death Row."

Giuseppe Zangara's last words were spoken to the judge present at his
execution, "You give me electric chair. I no afraid of that chair! You one of
capitalists. You is crook man too. Put me in electric chair. I no care! Get to
hell out of here, you son of a bitch [spoken to the attending minister]... I go sit
down all by myself... Viva Italia! Goodbye to all poor peoples everywhere!...
Lousy capitalists! No picture! Capitalists! No one here to take my picture. All
capitalists lousy bunch of crooks. Go ahead. Pusha da button!"

Raymond Moley a leading criminologist interviewed Zangara in depth and
concluded he was not part of a radical plot, and that he was gunning for
Roosevelt. All major historians agree with Moley.

Nevertheless some conspiracy ideas circulated in Chicago at the time to the
effect that Zangara was a hitman hired by the Capone faction of the Chicago
Mafia as a diversion for a second killer --who never fired a shot and was
never seen--to shoot Cermak, an enemy of the Capone mob, not Roosevelt.

Chicagoans genuinely mourned the passing of Cermak, and attributing his
death to some tangible, conspiratorial reason, instead of an accidental collision with a deranged assassin's bullet, was likely
part of the city's necessary grieving process.

Source: http://murderpedia.org/male.Z/z/zangara-giuseppe.htm
References
Davis, Kenneth S. FDR: The New York Years: 1928-1933 (1994)
Freidel, Frank. Franklin D. Roosevelt: The Triumph (1956)
Picchi, Blaise. The Five Weeks of Giuseppe Zangara: The Man Who Would Assassinate FDR(1998)

A 3-minute video on the assassination attempt from biography.com:
http://www.biography.com/people/franklin-d-roosevelt-9463381/videos/giuseppe-zangara-a-near-miss-2179203722


Nifty photo gallery here: http://murderpedia.org/male.Z/z/zangara-giuseppe-photos.htm


18 | P a g e

































GO AHEAD. PUSHA DA BUTTON!







DECADE: 1960s

Lee Harvey Oswald (Oct. 18, 1939-Nov. 24, 1963)

o Who: Former Marine; clerk; stock boy at the Texas School Book Depository in
Dallas.
o What: Four government investigations say he assassinated President John F.
Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas.
o Weapon: A rifle.
o Death: Shot in the stomach by Dallas nightclub operator Jack Ruby during a jail
transfer. He was being led through the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters
and died at Parkland Memorial Hospital, the same hospital to which JFK had been
taken.
o Age: 24.

19 | P a g e

In short: Born in New Orleans to an unstable mother, Oswald quickly became
disaffected with America and attempted to join the Socialist party at age 16. He was
court-martialed out of the U.S. Marines and defected to the USSR in 1959, where he
married Marina Nickolaevna; he then defected back to the United States. Oswald
shot President Kennedy from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository in
Dallas (where he was employed) on Nov. 22, 1963. During a prison transfer two days
later, he was shot and killed by Jack Ruby, an event that was captured on live TV.
Although a variety of conspiracy theories have been propounded, the bipartisan Warren Commission, following extensive
investigation, concluded that Oswald acted alone in shooting President Kennedy.
o Source: Liner notes, 2004 Broadway cast recording

Childhood: Oswald was born in New Orleans and had two older siblings brother Robert Edward Lee Oswald Jr. and half-
brother John Edward Pic.

His ancestry included English, Irish, French, Dutch, and German (Bavarian). As a child, Oswald
was withdrawn and temperamental. In August 1952, while living with half-brother John Pic, at the time a U.S. Coast
Guardsman stationed in New York City, Oswald and his mother were asked to leave after Oswald allegedly threatened Pic's
wife with a knife.
Charges of truancy, in the Bronx, led to psychiatric assessment

at a juvenile reformatory, the psychiatrist, Dr. Renatus
Hartogs, describing Oswald's "vivid fantasy life, turning around the topics of omnipotence and power, through which he tries
to compensate for his present shortcomings and frustrations." Finding a "personality pattern disturbance
with schizoid features and passive-aggressive tendencies," Dr. Hartogs recommended continued treatment. However, in
January 1954, Oswald's mother returned with him to New Orleans. At the time, there was a question pending before a New
York judge as to whether Oswald should be removed from the care of his mother to finish his schooling, although his
behavior appeared to improve during his last months in New York.

In New Orleans, in October 1955, Oswald left the 10th grade after one month. He worked as an office clerk or messenger
around New Orleans, rather than attend school. Planning for his enlistment, the family returned to Fort Worth in July 1956,
and he re-enrolled in 10th grade for the September session at Arlington Heights High School in Fort Worth, but quit in
October to join the Marines. He never received a high school diploma. By the age of 17, he had lived at 22 locations and
attended 12 schools.

Though he had trouble spelling and writing coherently he read voraciously, and by age 15 claimed to be a Marxist, writing in
his diary, "I was looking for a key to my environment, and then I discovered socialist literature. I had to dig for my books in
the back dusty shelves of libraries." At 16 he wrote to the Socialist Party of America for information on their Young People's
Socialist League, saying he had been studying socialist principles for "well over 15 months." However, Edward Voebel,
"whom the Warren Commission had established was Oswald's closest friend during his teenage years in New Orleans ..
.said that reports that Oswald was already 'studying Communism' were a 'lot of baloney.' " Voebel said that "Oswald
commonly read 'paperback trash.'"

While a teenager Oswald attended Civil Air Patrol meetings in New Orleans, in 1955. Other cadets recall him attending
"three or four" times, or "10 or 12 times" over a one- or two-month period.

Marine Corps: Oswald enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps on Oct. 24, 1956, just after his 17th
birthday. He idolized his older brother Robert and a photograph, after his arrest by Dallas
police, shows Lee wearing his brother's Marines ring. One witness testified to the Warren
Commission that Oswald's enlistment may also have been an escape from his overbearing
mother.

Oswald's primary training was as a radar operator, a position requiring a security clearance. A
May 1957 document states that he was "granted final clearance to handle classified matter up
to and including CONFIDENTIAL after careful check of local records had disclosed no
20 | P a g e

derogatory data." In the Aircraft Control and Warning Operator Course he finished seventh in a class of 30. The course "...
included instruction in aircraft surveillance and the use of radar."

Like all Marines, Oswald was trained and tested in shooting, scoring 212 in December 1956 (slightly above the minimum for
qualification as a sharpshooter), but in May 1959 scoring only 191 (barely earning the lower designation of marksman).

Oswald was court-martialed after accidentally shooting himself in the elbow with an unauthorized .22 handgun, then court-
martialed again for fighting with a sergeant, named Miguel Rodriguez, who he thought was responsible for his punishment in
the shooting matter. He was demoted from private first class to private and briefly imprisoned in the brig. He was later
punished for a third incident: While on nighttime sentry duty in the Philippines, he inexplicably fired his rifle into the jungle.
Slightly built, Oswald was nicknamed Ozzie Rabbit after the cartoon character, or sometimes Oswaldskovich because of his
pro-Soviet sentiments. While in the Marines, Oswald made an effort to teach himself rudimentary Russian. Although an
unusual accomplishment, in February 1959, he was invited to take a Marine proficiency exam in written and spoken
Russian. His effort at the time was rated "poor."


Defection to the Soviet Union: In October 1959, just before turning 20, Oswald traveled to the Soviet Union, the trip
planned well in advance. On Sept. 11, 1959, he received a hardship discharge from active service, claiming his mother
needed care, and was put on reserve. Along with his self-taught Russian, he had saved $1,500 of his Marine Corps
salary, obtained a passport and allegedly submitted several fictional applications to foreign universities in order to obtain a
student visa. On Oct. 31, Oswald appeared at the U.S. embassy in Moscow, declaring a desire to renounce his U.S.
citizenship. He told the interviewing officer "... that he had been a radar operator in the Marine Corps and that he had
voluntarily stated to unnamed Soviet officials that as a Soviet citizen he would make known to them such information
concerning the Marine Corps and his specialty as he possessed. He intimated that he might know something of special
interest." (Such statements led to Oswald's hardship/honorable military discharge being changed to undesirable.) The
Associated Press story of the defection of a U.S. Marine to the Soviet Union was reported on the front pages of some
newspapers in 1959.

Though Oswald had wanted to attend Moscow University, he was sent to Minsk to work as a lathe operator at the Gorizont
(Horizon) Electronics Factory, a facility producing radios, televisions, and military and space electronics. A co-worker was
assigned to teach him Russian, and Oswald received a government subsidized, fully furnished studio apartment in a
prestigious building and an additional supplement to his factory pay all in all, an idyllic existence by Soviet working-class
standards. He was under constant surveillance.

But Oswald grew bored in Minsk. He wrote in his diary in January 1961: "I am starting to reconsider my desire about
staying. The work is drab, the money I get has nowhere to be spent. No nightclubs or bowling alleys, no places of recreation
except the trade union dances. I have had enough." Shortly afterward, Oswald (who had never formally renounced his U.S.
citizenship) wrote to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow requesting return of his American passport and proposing to return to the
U.S. if any charges against him would be dropped.

In March 1961, Oswald met Marina Nikolayevna Prusakova, a 19-year-old pharmacology student; they married less than six
weeks later in April. The Oswalds' first child, June, was born Feb. 15, 1962. On May 24, 1962, Oswald and Marina applied
at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow for documents enabling her to immigrate to the U.S. and, on June 1, the U.S. Embassy
gave Oswald a repatriation loan of $435.71. Oswald, Marina, and their infant daughter left for the United States, where they
received no attention from the press, much to Oswald's disappointment.


Dallas: In July 1962, Oswald was hired by Dallas' Leslie Welding Co.; he disliked the work and quit after three months. In
October, he was hired by the graphic arts firm of Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall as a photoprint trainee. Oswald's inefficiency and
21 | P a g e

rudeness at his new job were such that fights threatened to break out, and he was allegedly seen reading the Russian
publication, Krokodil. He was fired during the first week of April 1963, but may have used equipment at the firm to forge
identification documents.


Edwin Walker assassination attempt: In March 1963, Oswald purchased a 6.5 mm caliber Carcano rifle by mail order,
using the alias A. Hidell, as well as a .38 Smith & Wesson Model 10 revolver by the same method. The Warren Commission
concluded that on April 10, 1963, Oswald attempted to kill retired U.S. Major Gen. Edwin Walker, an outspoken anti-
communist, segregationist and member of the John Birch Society. Oswald's wife, Marina, told the Warren Commission that
Oswald considered Walker the leader of a "fascist organization."

Before the Kennedy assassination, Dallas police had no suspects in the Walker shooting, but Oswald's involvement was
suspected within hours of his arrest following the assassination. (A note Oswald left for Marina on the night of the attempt,
telling her what to do if he did not return, was not found until early December 1963.)The Walker bullet was too damaged to
run conclusive ballistics studies on it, but neutron activation analysis later showed that it was "extremely likely" that it was
made by the same manufacturer and for the same rifle make as the two bullets which later struck Kennedy.

George de Mohrenschildt, friend of the Oswalds when they were in Dallas, told the Warren Commission that he strongly
suspected that Oswald took a 'pot shot' at General Walker, because the following weekend, on the night of Easter Sunday,
April 14, 1963, George and Jeanne De Mohrenschildt brought an Easter bunny to baby June Oswald, and when Marina was
showing Jeanne their new apartment, Oswald's dug-up rifle appeared in a closet. Jeanne exclaimed to George that Lee had
a rifle, and George joked to Lee, "Were you the one who took a pot-shot at General Walker?" At this point Lee and Marina
both became stunned for an uncomfortable moment of silence, and then George broke the ice by laughing, and they all
laughed. George de Mohrenschildt testified that this was the last time he ever saw Oswald, and that he had a strong feeling
that Oswald was guilty of shooting at General Walker. In April 1963, Oswald moved for a time to New Orleans, may have
gone to Mexico in September and, in October, returned to the Dallas area.


Return to Dallas: According to the Warren Commission, on Oct. 14, Oswald learned of a job at the Texas Book Depository,
was interviewed and hired. Oswald's supervisor Roy Truly said that Oswald "did a good day's work" and was an above
average employee. During the week, Oswald stayed in a Dallas rooming house (under the name O.H. Lee), but he spent his
weekends with Marina at a family friend's home in Irving. Oswald did not drive, but commuted to and from Dallas on
Mondays and Fridays with Wesley Frazier. On Oct. 20, the Oswalds' second daughter was born.

In the days before Kennedy's arrival, several newspapers described the route of the presidential motorcade as passing the
Book Depository. On Nov. 21 (a Thursday) Oswald asked for an unusual midweek lift back to Irving, saying he had to pick
up some curtain rods. The next morning (Friday) he returned to Dallas; he left behind $170 and his wedding ring, but took
with him a paper bag. A co-worker testified that he last saw Oswald on the sixth floor of the Depository at 11:55 a.m. 35
minutes before the assassination.


Kennedy shooting: According to several
government investigations, including the Warren
Commission, as Kennedy's motorcade passed
through Dallas's Dealey Plaza about 12:30 p.m. on
Friday, Nov. 22, Oswald fired three rifle shots from
the sixth-floor, southeast corner window of the Book
Depository, killing the president and seriously
wounding Texas Gov. John Connally.
22 | P a g e


Bystander James Tague received a minor facial injury. According to the investigations, immediately after firing his last shot,
Oswald hid and covered the rifle with boxes and descended using the rear stairwell. About 90 seconds after the shooting, in
the second-floor lunchroom, he encountered police officer Marrion Baker accompanied by Oswald's supervisor Roy Truly;
Baker let Oswald pass after Truly identified him as an employee. According to Baker, Oswald did not appear to be nervous
or out of breath.

At about 12:40 p.m., Oswald boarded a city bus but (probably due to heavy traffic) he requested a transfer from the driver
and got off two blocks later. He took a taxicab to his rooming house, at 1026 North Beckley Ave., arriving about 1 p.m.
He left "a very few minutes" later, zipping up a jacket he was not wearing when he had entered earlier.



Oswald was next witnessed near the corner of East 10th Street and North Patton Avenue, about nine-tenths of a mile
(1.4 km) southeast of his rooming house a distance that the Warren Commission said, "Oswald could have easily
walked." According to the Warren Commission, it was here that Patrolman J. D. Tippit pulled alongside Oswald and
"apparently exchanged words with [him] through the right front or vent window." "Shortly after 1:15 p.m.," Tippit exited his
car and was immediately struck and killed by four shots. Numerous witnesses heard the shots and saw a man flee the
scene holding a revolver. Four cartridge cases found at the scene were identified by expert witnesses before the Warren
Commission and the House Select Committee as having been fired from the revolver later found in Oswald's possession, to
the exclusion of all other weapons. The bullets taken from Tippit's body could not be positively identified however as coming
from Oswald's revolver.

Capture: Shoe store manager Johnny Brewer testified that minutes later he saw Oswald "ducking into" the entrance alcove
of his store. Suspicious of this activity, Brewer watched Oswald continue up the street and slip into the nearby Texas
Theatre without paying. He alerted the theater's ticket clerk, who telephoned police at about 1:40 pm.

As police arrived, the house lights were brought up
and Brewer pointed out Oswald sitting near the
rear of the theater. Oswald appeared to surrender
(saying, "Well, it is all over now," or "This is it")
then pulled a pistol tucked into the front of his
trousers, pointed it at an officer, and pulled the
trigger. However, the officer (Nick McDonald)
stated that the hammer came down on the
webbing between the thumb and first finger of his
own left hand as he grabbed for the pistol, and it
did not fire. Oswald also struck the officer with his
left hand. However, the officer struck back and
Oswald was disarmed after a struggle. As he was
23 | P a g e

led from the theater, Oswald shouted he was a victim of police brutality.

At about 2 p.m., Oswald arrived at the Police Department building, where he was questioned about the shooting of Officer
Tippit. When Captain J. W. Fritz heard Oswald's name, he recognized it as that of the Book Depository employee who was
reported missing and was already a suspect in the assassination Oswald was booked for both murders, and by the end of
the night he had been arraigned as well.

Soon after his capture Oswald encountered reporters in a hallway, declaring "I didn't shoot anybody" and "They're taking me
in because of the fact that I lived in the Soviet Union. I'm just a patsy!" Later, at an arranged press meeting, a reporter
asked, "Did you kill the President?" and Oswald, who by that time had been advised of the charge of murdering Tippit, but
not yet arraigned in Kennedy's death, answered "No, I have not been charged with that. In fact, nobody has said that to me
yet. The first thing I heard about it was when the newspaper reporters in the hall asked me that question." As he was led
from the room, "What did you do in the USSR?" was called out, and "How did you hurt your eye?"; Oswald answered, "A
policeman hit me."

Police investigation: A fake selective service (draft) card in the name
of Alek James Hidell was found on Oswald when he was
arrested. A.Hidell was the name used on both the envelope and order slip
to buy the alleged murder weapon and A. J. Hidell was the alternate name
on the New Orleans post office box rented June 11, 1963, by Oswald. 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.

Oswald was interrogated several times during his two days at Dallas Police
Headquarters. He denied killing Kennedy and Tippit, denied owning a rifle, said two photographs of him holding a rifle and a
pistol were fakes, denied telling his co-worker he wanted a ride to Irving to get curtain rods for his apartment, and denied



carrying a long heavy package to work the morning of the assassination. The Warren Commission also noted that Oswald
denied knowing an A. J. Hidell, and when shown a forged Selective Service card bearing that name in his possession when
arrested, refused to answer any questions concerning it, saying "... you have the card yourself and you know as much about
it as I do." The Warren Commission noted that this "spurious" card bore the name of Alek James Hidell.

Death: On Sunday, Nov. 24, Oswald
was being led through the basement of
Dallas Police Headquarters for his
transfer to the county jail when, at 11:21
a.m., Dallas nightclub operator Jack
Ruby stepped from the crowd and shot
Oswald in the abdomen. Oswald died at
1:07 p.m. at Parkland Memorial
Hospital the same hospital where
President Kennedy had died 48 hours
and 7 minutes earlier.

A network TV camera, there to cover the
transfer, was broadcasting live at the
time, and millions witnessed the shooting
24 | P a g e

as it happened. The event was also captured in a well-known photograph. Ruby later said he had been distraught over
Kennedy's death and that his motive for killing Oswald was "... saving Mrs. Kennedy the discomfiture of coming back to
trial." Others have hypothesized that Ruby was part of a conspiracy.

After autopsy, Oswald was buried in Fort Worth's Rose Hill Memorial Burial Park. A marker inscribed
simply Oswald replaces the stolen original tombstone, which gave Oswald's full name, and birth and death dates.
In 2010 Oswald's original coffin was auctioned off for more than $87,000.

FBI agent destroys Oswald note:
According to FBI Agent James Hosty, two days after the assassination, Dallas FBI Special Agent-in-Charge J. Gordon
Shanklin ordered Hosty to destroy a note that Oswald had left with a receptionist at the Dallas FBI office about seven to 10
days before the assassination. The note allegedly contained some sort of threat. In testimony before the Warren
Commission, Shanklin denied ordering Hosty to destroy Oswald's note, and denied having any knowledge of the note. The
FBI acknowledged that Hosty's and Shanklin's accounts contradicted each other, but said that it would not investigate the
matter further.


Official investigations | Warren Commission:

The Warren Commission, created by President Lyndon B. Johnson to investigate the assassination, concluded that Oswald
acted alone in assassinating Kennedy (this view is known as the lone gunman theory). The Commission could not ascribe
any one motive or group of motives to Oswald's actions.

It is apparent, however, that Oswald was moved by an overriding hostility to his environment. He does not appear to have
been able to establish meaningful relationships with other people. He was perpetually discontented with the world around
him. Long before the assassination he expressed his hatred for American society and acted in protest against it. Oswald's
search for what he conceived to be the perfect society was doomed from the start. He sought for himself a place in history
a role as the "great man" who would be recognized as having been in advance of his times. His commitment to Marxism
and communism appears to have been another important factor in his motivation. He also had demonstrated a capacity to
act decisively and without regard to the consequences when such action would further his aims of the moment. Out of these
and the many other factors which may have molded the character of Lee Harvey Oswald there emerged a man capable of
assassinating President Kennedy

The proceedings of the commission were closed, though not secret, and about 3 percent of its files have yet to be released
to the public, which has continued to provoke speculation among researchers.



Ramsey Clark Panel:
In 1968, the Ramsey Clark Panel examined various photographs, X-ray films, documents, and other evidence, concluding
that Kennedy was struck by two bullets fired from above and behind him, one of which traversed the base of the neck on the
right side without striking bone, and the other of which entered the skull from behind and destroyed its right side. (Ramsey
Clark was a lawyer, activist and public official. He worked for the U.S. Justice Department.)

House Select Committee:
In 1979, after a review of the evidence and of prior investigations, the United States House Select Committee on
Assassinations was preparing to issue a finding that Oswald had acted alone in killing Kennedy. However, late in the
Committee's proceedings a Dictabelt was introduced, purportedly recording sounds heard in Dealey Plaza before, during
and after the shots were fired. After submitting the Dictabelt to acoustic analysis, the Committee revised its findings to
assert a "high probability that two gunmen fired" at Kennedy and that Kennedy "was probably assassinated as the result of
25 | P a g e

a conspiracy." Although the Committee was "unable to identify the other gunman or the extent of the conspiracy," it made a
number of further findings regarding the likelihood or unlikelihood that particular groups, named in the findings, were
involved.

The Dictabelt evidence has been questioned, some believing it is not a recording of the assassination at all. The staff
director and chief counsel for the Committee, G. Robert Blakey, told ABC News in 2003 that at least 20 persons heard a
shot from the grassy knoll, and that a conspiracy was established by both the witness testimony and acoustic
evidence. Officer H.B. McLain, from whose motorcycle radio the HSCA acoustic experts said the Dictabelt evidence
came, has repeatedly stated that he was not yet in Dealey Plaza at the time of the assassination. McLain asked the
Committee, "If it was my radio on my motorcycle, why did it not record the revving up at high speed plus my siren when we
immediately took off for Parkland Hospital?

In 1982, 12 scientists appointed by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), led by Norman Ramsey, concluded that the
acoustic evidence submitted to the HSCA was "seriously flawed." Donald B. Thomas said in a 2001 article in Science &
Justice, the journal of Britain's Forensic Science Society, that the NAS investigation was itself flawed. He concluded with a
96.3 percent certainty that there were at least two gunmen firing at President Kennedy and that at least one shot came from
the grassy knoll. Commenting on Thomas's study, G. Robert Blakey said: "This is an honest, careful scientific examination
of everything we did, with all the appropriate statistical checks." In 2005, Ralph Linsker and several members of the original
NAS team reanalyzed the timings of the recordings and reaffirmed in an article in Science & Justice the earlier conclusion of
the NAS report that the alleged shot sounds were recorded approximately one minute after the assassination.

o Source: Wikipedia | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Harvey_Oswald




THE LAST WORDS OF LEE HARVEY OSWALD

Compiled by Mae Brussell
Did Lee Harvey Oswald act alone in shooting Pres. John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963, or did he conspire with others? Was
he serving as an agent of Cuba's Fidel Castro, himself the target of American assassins? Or in squeezing the trigger of his
carbine was he undertaking some super "dirty trick" for a CIA anxious to rid itself of a president whose faith in the
"company" had evaporated in the wake of the Bay of Pigs fiasco? Or was he representing a group of Cuban exiles, the
Teamsters Union, the Mafia? Indeed, was it Lee Harvey Oswald at all who killed JFK? Or was there a double impersonating
Oswald? These questions continue to nag many people more than a decade and a half after that dreadful day in Dallas, in
spite of the 26 volumes of hearings and exhibits served up by the Warren Commission, the congressional investigations, the
release of heretofore classified FBI documents.

Almost everyone, it seems, has been heard from on the Kennedy assassination and on Lee Harvey Oswald's guilt or
innocence, except one person -- Lee Harvey Oswald himself. From the time of Oswald's arrest to his own assassination at
the hands of Jack Ruby, no formal transcript or record was kept of statements made by the alleged killer. It was said that no
tape recordings were made of Oswald's remarks, and many notes taken of his statements were destroyed.

Determined to learn Oswald's last words, his only testimony, "The People's Almanac" assigned one of the leading
authorities on the Kennedy assassination, Mae Brussell, to compile every known statement or remark made by Oswald
between his arrest and death. The quotes, edited for space and clarity, are based on the recollections of a variety of
witnesses present at different times and are not verbatim transcripts. "After 14 years of research on the JFK assassination,"
Mae Brussell concludes, "I am of the opinion that Lee Harvey Oswald was telling the truth about his role in the
assassination during these interrogations."
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12:30 P.M., CST, NOV. 22, 1963
Pres. John F. Kennedy Assassinated

12:33 P.M.
Lee Harvey Oswald left work, entered a bus, and said, "Transfer, please."
12:40 - 12:45 P.M.
Oswald got off the bus, entered a cab, and said, "May I have this cab?" A woman approached, wanting a cab, and Oswald
said, "I will let you have this one. . . . 500 North Beckley Street [instructions to William Whaley, driver of another cab]. . . .
This will be fine." Oswald departed cab and walked a few blocks.

1:15 P.M. Officer J. D. Tippit Murdered
1:45 P.M. Arrest at the Texas Theater
"This is it" or "Well, it's all over now." Oswald arrested. (Patrolman M. N. McDonald heard these remarks. Other officers who
were at the scene did not hear them.) "I don't know why you are treating me like this. The only thing I have done is carry a
pistol into a movie. . . . I don't see why you handcuffed me. . . . Why should I hide my face? I haven't done anything to be
ashamed of. . . . I want a lawyer. . . . I am not resisting arrest. . . . I didn't kill anybody. . . . I haven't shot anybody. . . . I
protest this police brutality. . . . I fought back there, but I know I wasn't supposed to be carrying a gun. . . . What is this all
about?"

2:00 - 2:15 P.M. Drive to Police Dept.
"What is this all about? . . . I know my rights. . . . A police officer has been killed? . . . I hear they burn for murder. Well, they
say it just takes a second to die. . . . All I did was carry a gun. . . . No, Hidell is not my real name. . . . I have been in the
Marine Corps, have a dishonorable discharge, and went to Russia. . . . I had some trouble with police in New Orleans for
passing out pro-Castro literature. . . . Why are you treating me this way? . . . I am not being handled right. . . . I demand my
rights."

2:15 P.M. Taken into Police Dept.
2:15 - 2:20 P.M.
"Talked to" by officers Guy F. Rose and Richard S. Stovall. No notes.
2:25 - 4:04 P.M. Interrogation of Oswald, Office of Capt Will Fritz

"My name is Lee Harvey Oswald. . . . I work at the Texas School Book Depository Building. . . . I lived in Minsk and in
Moscow. . . . I worked in a factory. . . . I liked everything over there except the weather. . . . I have a wife and some children.
. . . My residence is 1026 North Beckley, Dallas, Tex." Oswald recognized FBI agent James Hosty and said, "You have
been at my home two or three times talking to my wife. I don't appreciate your coming out there when I was not there. . . . I
was never in Mexico City. I have been in Tijuana. . . . Please take the handcuffs from behind me, behind my back. . . . I
observed a rifle in the Texas School Book Depository where I work, on Nov. 20, 1963. . . . Mr. Roy Truly, the supervisor,
displayed the rifle to individuals in his office on the first floor. . . . I never owned a rifle myself. . . . I resided in the Soviet
Union for three years, where I have many friends and relatives of my wife. . . . I was secretary of the Fair Play for Cuba
Committee in New Orleans a few months ago. . . . While in the Marines, I received an award for marksmanship as a
member of the U.S. Marine Corps. . . . While living on Beckley Street, I used the name 0. H. Lee. . . . I was present in the
Texas School Book Depository Building, I have been employed there since Oct. 15, 1963. . . . As a laborer, I have access to
the entire building. . . . My usual place of work is on the first floor. However, I frequently use the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh
floors to get books. I was on all floors this morning. . . . Because of all the confusion, I figured there would be no work
performed that afternoon so I decided to go home. . . . I changed my clothing and went to a movie. . . . I carried a pistol with
me to the movie because I felt like it, for no other reason. . . . I fought the Dallas Police who arrested me in the movie
theater where I received a cut and a bump. . . . I didn't shoot Pres. John F. Kennedy or Officer J. D. Tippit. . . . An officer
struck me, causing the marks on my left eye, after I had struck him. . . . I just had them in there," when asked why he had
bullets in his pocket.
27 | P a g e



3:54 P.M.

NBC newsman Bill Ryan announced on national television that "Lee Oswald seems to be the prime suspect in the
assassination of John F. Kennedy."

4:45 P.M. At a Lineup for Helen Markham, Witness to Tippit Murder

"It isn't right to put me in line with these teenagers. . . . You know what you are doing, and you are trying to railroad me. . . . I
want my lawyer. . . . You are doing me an injustice by putting me out there dressed different than these other men. . . . I am
out there, the only one with a bruise on his head. . . . I don t believe the lineup is fair, and I desire to put on a jacket similar
to those worn by some of the other individuals in the lineup. . . . All of you have a shirt on, and I have a T-shirt on. I want a
shirt or something. . . . This T-shirt is unfair."

4:45 - 6:30 P.M. Second Interrogation of Oswald, Captain Fritz's Office

"When I left the Texas School Book Depository, I went to my room, where I changed my trousers, got a pistol, and went to
a picture show. . . . You know how boys do when they have a gun, they carry it. . . . Yes, I had written the Russian
Embassy. (On Nov. 9, 1963, Oswald had written to the Russian Embassy that FBI agent James Hosty was making some
kind of deals with Marina, and he didn't trust "the notorious FBI.") . . . Mr. Hosty, you have been accosting my wife. You
mistreated her on two different occasions when you talked with her. . . . I know you. Well, he threatened her. He practically
told her she would have to go back to Russia. You know, I can't use a phone. . . . I want that attorney in New York, Mr. Abt. I
don't know him personally but I know about a case that he handled some years ago, where he represented the people who
had violated the Smith Act, [which made it illegal to teach or advocate the violent overthrow of the U.S. government] . . . I
don't know him personally, but that is the attorney I want. . . . If I can't get him, then I may get the American Civil Liberties
Union to send me an attorney."

"I went to school in New York and in Fort Worth, Tex. . . . After getting into the Marines, I finished my high school education.
. . . I support the Castro revolution. . . . My landlady didn't understand my name correctly, so it was her idea to call me 0. H.
Lee. . . . I want to talk with Mr. Abt, a New York attorney. . . . The only package I brought to work was my lunch. . . . I never
had a card to the Communist party. . . . I am a Marxist, but not a Leninist-Marxist. . . . I bought a pistol in Fort Worth several
months ago. . . . I refuse to tell you where the pistol was purchased. . . . I never ordered any guns. . . . I am not malcontent.
Nothing irritated me about the President." When Capt. Will Fritz asked Oswald, "Do you believe in a deity?" Oswald replied,
"I don't care to discuss that." "How can I afford a rifle on the Book Depository salary of $1.25 an hour? . . . John Kennedy
had a nice family. . . ." (Sheriff Roger Craig saw Oswald enter a white station wagon 15 minutes after the assassination.
Oswald confirmed this in Captain Fritz's office. A man impersonating Oswald in Dallas just prior to the assassination could
have been on the bus and in the taxicab.) "That station wagon belongs to Mrs. Ruth Paine. Don't try to tie her into this. She
had nothing to do with it. I told you people I did. . . . Everybody will know who I am now."

"Can I get an attorney?. . . I have not been given the opportunity to have counsel. . . . As I said, the Fair Play for Cuba
Committee has definitely been investigated, that is very true. . . . The results of that investigation were zero. The Fair Play
for Cuba Committee is not now on the attorney general's subversive list."

6:30 P.M. Lineup for Witnesses Cecil J. McWatters, Sam Guinyard, and Ted Callaway

"I didn't shoot anyone," Oswald yelled in the halls to reporters. . . . "I want to get in touch with a lawyer, Mr. Abt, in New York
City. . . . I never killed anybody."

28 | P a g e

7:10 P.M. Arraignment: State of Texas v. Lee Harvey Oswald for Murder with Malice of Officer J. D. Tippit of the
Dallas Police Dept.

"I insist upon my constitutional rights. . . . The way you are treating me, I might as well be in Russia. . . . I was not granted
my request to put on a jacket similar to those worn by other individuals in some previous lineups."

7:50 P.M. Lineup for Witness J. D. Davis

"I have been dressed differently than the other three. . . . Don't you know the difference? I still have on the same clothes I
was arrested in. The other two were prisoners, already in jail." Seth Kantor, reporter, heard Oswald yell, "I am only a patsy."

7:55 P.M. Third Interrogation, Captain Fritz's Office

"I think I have talked long enough. I don't have anything else to say. . . . What started out to be a short interrogation turned
out to be rather lengthy. . . . I don't care to talk anymore. . . . I am waiting for someone to come forward to give me legal
assistance. . . . It wasn't actually true as to how I got home. I took a bus, but due to a traffic jam, I left the bus and got a
taxicab, by which means I actually arrived at my residence."

8:55 P.M. Fingerprints, Identification Paraffin Tests -- All in Fritz's Office

"I will not sign the fingerprint card until I talk to my attorney. [Oswald's name is on the card anyway.] . . . What are you trying
to prove with this paraffin test, that I fired a gun? . . . You are wasting your time. I don't know anything about what you are
accusing me."

11:00 - 11:20 P.M. "Talked To" by Police Officer John Adamcik and FBI Agent M. Clements

"I was in Russia two years and liked it in Russia. . . . I am 5 ft. 9 in., weigh 140 lb., have brown hair, blue-gray eyes, and
have no tattoos or permanent scars." (Oswald had mastoidectomy scars and left upper-arm scars, both noted in Marine
records. "Warren Report," pp. 614-618, lists information from Oswald obtained during this interview about members of his
family, past employment, past residences.)

11:20 - 11:25 P.M. Lineup for Press Conference; Jack Ruby Present

When newsmen asked Oswald about his black eye, he answered, "A cop hit me." When asked about the earlier
arraignment, Oswald said "Well, I was questioned by Judge Johnston. However, I protested at that time that I was not
allowed legal representation during that very short and sweet hearing. I really don't know what the situation is about.
Nobody has told me anything except that I am accused of murdering a policeman. I know nothing more than that, and I do
request someone to come forward to give me legal assistance." When asked, "Did you kill the President?" Oswald replied,
"No. I have not been charged with that. In fact, nobody has said that to me yet. The first thing I heard about it was when the
newspaper reporters in the hall asked me that question. . . . I did not do it. I did not do it. . . . I did not shoot anyone."

12:23 A.M., NOV. 23, 1963 Placed in Jail Cell

12:35 A.M. Released by Jailer

Oswald complained, "This is the third set of fingerprints, photographs being taken."

1:10 A.M. Back in Jail Cell

1:35 A.M. Arraignment: State of Texas v. Lee Harvey Oswald for the Murder with Malice of John F. Kennedy
29 | P a g e


"Well, sir, I guess this is the trial. . . . I want to contact my lawyer, Mr. Abt, in New York City. I would like to have this
gentleman. He is with the American Civil Liberties Union." (John J. Abt now in private practice in New York, was the general
counsel for the Senate Sub-Committee on Civil Liberties from 1935-1937, and later served as legal adviser for the
Progressive party from 1948-1951. Mr. Abt has never been a member of the ACLU.)

10:30 A.M.-1:10 P.M. Interrogation, Capt. Will Fritz's Office

"I said I wanted to contact Attorney Abt, New York. He defended the Smith Act cases in 1949, 1950, but I don't know his
address, except that it is in New York. . . . I never owned a rifle. . . . Michael Paine owned a car, Ruth Paine owned two
cars. . . . Robert Oswald, my brother, lives in Fort Worth. He and the Paines were closest friends in town. . . . The FBI has
thoroughly interrogated me at various other times. . . . They have used their hard and soft approach to me, and they use the
buddy system. . . . I am familiar with all types of questioning and have no intention of making any statements. . . . In the past
three weeks the FBI has talked to my wife. They were abusive and impolite. They frightened my wife, and I consider their
activities obnoxious."

(When arrested, Oswald had FBI Agent James Hosty's home phone and office phone numbers and car license number in
his possession.)

"I was arrested in New Orleans for disturbing the peace and paid a $10 fine for demonstrating for the Fair Play for Cuba
Committee. I had a fight with some anti-Castro refugees and they were released while I was fined. . . . I refuse to take a
polygraph. It has always been my practice not to agree to take a polygraph . . . The FBI has overstepped their bounds in
using various tactics in interviewing me. . . . I didn't shoot John Kennedy. . . . I didn't even know Gov. John Connally had
been shot. . . . I don't own a rifle. . . . I didn't tell Buell Wesley Frazier anything about bringing back some curtain rods. . . .
My wife lives with Mrs. Ruth Paine. She [Mrs. Paine] was learning Russian. They needed help with the young baby, so it
made a nice arrangement for both of them. . . . I don't know Mrs. Paine very well, but Mr. Paine and his wife were separated
a great deal of the time."

(Michael Paine worked at Bell Aerospace as a scientific engineer. His boss, Walter Dornberger, was a Nazi war criminal.
The first call, the "tipoff," on Oswald, came from Bell Aerospace.)

"The garage at the Paines' house has some seabags that have a lot of my personal belongings. I left them after coming
back from New Orleans in September. . . . The name Alek Hidell was picked up while working in New Orleans in the Fair
Play for Cuba organization. . . . I speak Russian, correspond with people in Russia, and receive newspapers from Russia. . .
. I don't own a rifle at all. . . . I did have a small rifle some years in the past. You can't buy a rifle in Russia, you can only buy
shotguns. I had a shotgun in Russia and hunted some while there. I didn't bring the rifle from New Orleans. . . . I am not a
member of the Communist party. . . . I belong to the Civil Liberties Union. . . . I did carry a package to the Texas School
Book Depository. I carried my lunch, a sandwich and fruit, which I made at Paine's house. . . . I had nothing personal
against John Kennedy."

1:10 - 1:30 P.M. Lee Harvey Oswald Visited by Mother, Marguerite Oswald, and Wife, Marina Oswald

(To his Mother.) "No, there is nothing you can do. Everything is fine. I know my rights, and I will have an attorney. I already
requested to get in touch with Attorney Abt, I think is his name. Don't worry about a thing."

(To his Wife.) "Oh, no, they have not been beating me. They are treating me fine. . . . You're not to worry about that. Did you
bring June and Rachel? . . . Of course we can speak about absolutely anything at all. . . . It's a mistake. I'm not guilty. There
are people who will help me. There is a lawyer in New York on whom I am counting for help. . . . Don't cry. There is nothing
to cry about. Try not to think about it. . . . Everything is going to be all right. If they ask you anything, you have a right not to
answer. You have a right to refuse. Do you understand? . . . You are not to worry. You have friends. They'll help you. If it
30 | P a g e

comes to that, you can ask the Red Cross for help. You mustn't worry about me. Kiss Junie and Rachel for me. I love you. .
. . Be sure to buy shoes for June."

2:15 P.M. Lineup for Witnesses William W. Scoggins and William Whaley

"I refuse to answer questions. I have my T-shirt on, the other men are dressed differently. . . . Everybody's got a shirt and
everything, and I've got a T-shirt on. . . . This is unfair."

3:30 - 3:40 P.M. Robert Oswald, Brother, in Ten-Minute Visit

"I cannot or would not say anything, because the line is apparently tapped. [They were talking through telephones.] . . . I
got these bruises in the theater. They haven't bothered me since. They are treating me all right. . . . What do you think of the
baby? Well, it was a girl, and I wanted a boy, but you know how that goes. . . . I don't know what is going on. I just don't
know what they are talking about. . . . Don't believe all the so-called evidence." When Robert Oswald looked into Lee's eyes
for some clue, Lee said to him, "Brother, you won't find anything there. . . . My friends will take care of Marina and the two
children." When Robert Oswald stated that he didn't believe the Paines were friends of Lee's, he answered back, "Yes, they
are. . . . Junie needs a new pair of shoes."

(Robert Oswald told the Warren Commission, "To me his answers were mechanical, and I was not talking to the Lee I
knew.")

3:40 P.M. Lee Harvey Oswald Calls Mrs. Ruth Paine

"This is Lee. Would you please call John Abt in New York for me after 6:00 P.M. The number for his office is ___________,
and his residence is _______________ . . . . Thank you for your concern."

5:30 - 5:35 P.M. Visit with H. Louis Nichols, President of the Dallas Bar Association

"Well, I really don't know what this is all about, that I have been kept incarcerated and kept incommunicado. . . . Do you
know a lawyer in New York named John Abt? I believe in New York City. I would like to have him represent me. That is the
man I would like. Do you know any lawyers who are members of the American Civil Liberties Union? I am a member of that
organization, and I would like to have somebody who is a member of that organization represent me." Mr. Nichols offered to
help find a lawyer, but Oswald said, "No, not now. You might come back next week, and if I don't get some of these other
people to assist me, I might ask you to get somebody to represent me."

6:00 - 6:30 P.M. Interrogation, Captain Fritz's Office

"In time I will be able to show you that this is not my picture, but I don't want to answer any more questions. . . . I will not
discuss this photograph [which was used on the cover of Feb. 21, 1964 Life magazine] without advice of an attorney. . . .
There was another rifle in the building. I have seen it. Warren Caster had two rifles, a 30.06 Mauser and a .22 for his son. . .
. That picture is not mine, but the face is mine. The picture has been made by superimposing my face. The other part of the
picture is not me at all, and I have never seen this picture before. I understand photography real well, and that, in time, I will
be able to show you that is not my picture and that it has been made by someone else. . . . It was entirely possible that the
Police Dept. has superimposed this part of the photograph over the body of someone else. . . . The Dallas Police were the
culprits. . . . The small picture was reduced from the larger one, made by some persons unknown to me. . . . Since I have
been photographed at City Hall, with people taking my picture while being transferred from the office to the jail door,
someone has been able to get a picture of my face, and with that, they have made this picture. . . . I never kept a rifle at
Mrs. Paine's garage at Irving, Tex. . . . We had no visitors at our apartment on North Beckley. . . . I have no receipts for
purchase of any gun, and I have never ordered any guns. I do not own a rifle, never possessed a rifle. . . . I will not say who
wrote A. J. Hidell on my Selective Service card. [It was later confirmed that Marina Oswald wrote in the name Hidell.] . . . I
31 | P a g e

will not tell you the purpose of carrying the card or the use I made of it. . . . The address book in my possession has the
names of Russian immigrants in Dallas, Tex., whom I have visited."

9:30 P.M. Lee Harvey Oswald Calls His Wife, Marina, at Mrs. Paine's Home

"Marina, please. Would you try to locate her?" (Marina had moved.)

10:00 P.M. Office of Captain Fritz

"Life is better for the colored people in Russia than it is in the U.S."

9:30 - 11:15 A.M., SUNDAY MORNING, NOV. 24, 1963 Interrogation in Capt. Will Fritz's Office

"After the assassination, a policeman or some man came rushing into the School Book Depository Building and said,
`Where is your telephone?' He showed me some kind of credential and identified himself, so he might not have been a
police officer. . . . `Right there,' I answered, pointing to the phone. . . . `Yes, I can eat lunch with you,' I told my co-worker,
`but I can't go right now. You go and take the elevator, but send the elevator back up.' [The elevator in the building was
broken.] . . . After all this commotion started, I just went downstairs and started to see what it was all about. A police officer
and my superintendent of the place stepped up and told officers that I am one of the employees in the building. . . . If you
ask me about the shooting of Tippit, I don't know what you are talking about. . . . The only thing I am here for is because I
popped a policeman in the nose in the theater on Jefferson Avenue, which I readily admit I did, because I was protecting
myself. . . . I learned about the job vacancy at the Texas School Book Depository from people in Mrs. Paine's neighborhood.
. . . I visited my wife Thursday night, Nov. 21, whereas I normally visited her over the weekend, because Mrs. Paine was
giving a party for the children on the weekend. They were having a houseful of neighborhood children. I didn't want to be
around at such a time. . . . Therefore, my weekly visit was on Thursday night instead of on the weekend. . . . It didn't cost
much to go to Mexico. It cost me some $26, a small, ridiculous amount to eat, and another ridiculous small amount to stay
all night. . . . I went to the Mexican Embassy to try to get this permission to go to Russia by way of Cuba. . . . I went to the
Mexican Consulate in Mexico City. I went to the Russian Embassy to go to Russia by way of Cuba. They told me to come
back in `thirty days.' . . . I don't recall the shape, it may have been a small sack, or a large sack; you don't always find one
that just fits your sandwiches. . . . The sack was in the car, beside me, on my lap, as it always is. . . . I didn't get it crushed. It
was not on the back seat. Mr. Frazier must have been mistaken or else thinking about the other time when he picked me up.

. . . The Fair Play for Cuba Committee was a loosely organized thing and we had no officers. Probably you can call me the
secretary of it because I did collect money. [Oswald was the only member in New Orleans.] . . . In New York City they have
a well-organized, or a better, organization. . . . No, not at all: I didn't intend to organize here in Dallas; I was too busy trying
to get a job. . . . If anyone else was entitled to get mail in P.O. Box 6525 at the Terminal Annex in New Orleans, the answer
is no. . . . The rental application said Fair Play for Cuba Committee and the American Civil Liberties Union. Maybe I put
them on there. . . . It is possible that on rare occasions I may have handed one of the keys to my wife to get my mail, but
certainly nobody else. . . . I never ordered a rifle under the name of Hidell, Oswald, or any other name. . . . I never permitted
anyone else to order a rifle to be received in this box. . . . I never ordered any rifle by mail order or bought any money order
for the purpose of paying for such a rifle. . . . I didn't own any rifle. I have not practiced or shot with a rifle. . . . I subscribe to
two publications from Russia, one being a hometown paper published in Minsk, where I met and married my wife. . . . We
moved around so much that it was more practical to simply rent post office boxes and have mail forwarded from one box to
the next rather than going through the process of furnishing changes of address to the publishers. . . . Marina Oswald and
A. J. Hidell were listed under the caption of persons entitled to receive mail through my box in New Orleans. . . . I don't
recall anything about the A. J. Hidell being on the post office card. . . . I presume you have reference to a map I had in my
room with some X's on it. I have no automobile. I have no means of conveyance. I have to walk from where I am going most
of the time. I had my applications with the Texas Employment Commission. They furnished me names and addresses of
places that had openings like I might fill, and neighborhood people had furnished me information on jobs I might get. . . . I
was seeking a job, and I would put these markings on this map so I could plan my itinerary around with less walking. Each
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one of these X's represented a place where I went and interviewed for a job. . . . You can check each one of them out if you
want to. . . .

The X on the intersection of Elm and Houston is the location of the Texas School Book Depository. I did go there and
interview for a job. In fact, I got the job there. That is all the map amounts to. [Ruth Paine later stated she had marked Lee's
map.] . . . What religion am I? I have no faith, I suppose you mean, in the Bible. I have read the Bible. It is fair reading, but
not very interesting. As a matter of fact, I am a student of philosophy and I don't consider the Bible as even a reasonable or
intelligent philosophy. I don't think of it. . . . I told you I haven't shot a rifle since the Marines, possibly a small bore, maybe a
.22, but not anything larger since I have left the Marine Corps. . . . I never received a package sent to me through the
mailbox in Dallas, Box No. 2915, under the name of Alek Hidell, absolutely not. . . . Maybe my wife, but I couldn't say for
sure whether my wife ever got this mail, but it is possible she could have." Oswald was told that an attorney offered to assist
him, and he answered, "I don't particularly want him, but I will take him if I can't do any better, and will contact him at a later
date. . . . I have been a student of Marxism since the age of 14. . . . American people will soon forget the President was
shot, but I didn't shoot him. . . . Since the President was killed, someone else would take his place, perhaps Vice-President
Johnson. His views about Cuba would probably be largely the same as those of President Kennedy. . . . I never lived on
Neely Street. These people are mistaken about visiting there, because I never lived there. . . . It might not be proper to
answer further questions, because what I say might be construed in a different light than what I actually meant it to be. . . .
When the head of any government dies, or is killed, there is always a second in command who would take over. . . . I did not
kill President Kennedy or Officer Tippit. If you want me to cop out to hitting or pleading guilty to hitting a cop in the mouth
when I was arrested, yeah, I plead guilty to that. But I do deny shooting both the President and Tippit."

11:10 A.M. Preparation for Oswald's Transfer to County Jail

"I would like to have a shirt from clothing that was brought to the office to wear over the T-shirt I am wearing. . . . I prefer
wearing a black Ivy League-type shirt, which might be a little warmer. I don't want a hat. . . . I will just take one of those
sweaters, the black one."


11:15 A.M. Inspector Thomas J. Kelley, U.S. Secret Service, Has Final Conversation with Lee Harvey Oswald

Kelley approached Oswald, out of the hearing of others, except perhaps Captain Fritz's men, and said that as a Secret
Service agent, he was anxious to talk with him as soon as he secured counsel, because Oswald was charged with the
assassination of the President but had denied it. Oswald said, "I will be glad to discuss this proposition with my attorney,
and that after I talk with one, we could either discuss it with him or discuss it with my attorney, if the attorney thinks it is a
wise thing to do, but at the present time I have nothing more to say to you."

11:21 A.M. Lee Harvey Oswald Was Fatally Wounded by Jack Ruby


Video:
Who was Lee Harvey Oswald? | http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/oswald/
The killing of Lee Harvey Oswald | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjphDSY5QJ4
Walter Cronkite announces JFKs death | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2K8Q3cqGs7I





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DALLAS. NOV. 22, 1963




Decade: 1970s
Samuel Byck (Jan. 30, 1930-Feb. 22, 1974)
o Who: An unemployed former tire salesman.
o What: Tried to hijack a plane flying out of Baltimore/Washington International Airport on Feb. 22, 1974. Planned to
crash it into the White House and kill President Richard M. Nixon.
o Weapon: A 747 and a .22-caliber revolver.
o Death: Committed suicide by shooting himself in the head after police fired at him.
o Age: 44.


In short: Born into an economically disadvantaged family in Philadelphia. Byck dropped out of
high school and served two years in the U.S. Army, where he was trained in firearms and
explosives. He married and had four children, but could not hold a job and failed in several
businesses, including selling tires. Byck spent two months in a psychiatric hospital to be treated
for depression and began to blame his problems on a government conspiracy to keep the poor
man down. He became an outspoken critic of President Nixon and was questioned by the Secret
Service of October 1972 for threatening Nixons life (he claimed he had been joking). He picketed
the White House dressed in a Santa suit in December 1973. He became suicidal and planned to
hijack a 747 at the Baltimore Washington International Airport and crash it into the White House,
recording his thoughts at length as he drove to the airport on Feb. 22, 1974. His plan failed
completely, although he wounded the pilot and killed the co-pilot. He was shot by federal agents
and then killed himself.

o Source: Liner notes, 2004 Broadway cast recording


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More details: Samuel Joseph Byck killed two people and himself in 1974 in a failed plot to
fly an airplane into the White House and assassinate President Richard M. Nixon. On the
morning of Feb. 22, Byck took a pistol and a homemade gasoline bomb to the Baltimore
Washington International airport. He forced his way through a security checkpoint, shot and
killed a 24-year-old guard, then boarded a Delta Air Lines flight scheduled to fly to Atlanta.
He ordered the pilots to take off, and when they hesitated he shot them, fatally wounding
the co-pilot. Police outside the plane fired at Byck and wounded him, and he shot himself in
the head. At the time it was reported, it was not widely known that Byck had planned what
he called "Operation Pandora's Box," an assassination attempt on Nixon, the focus of his
many personal and political grievances. As it turned out, the Secret Service had been aware of Byck's previous mail threats
to the president, but didn't consider him a serious threat.

Byck had a history of mental illness, and in the years before his death sent letters and recorded tapes to a variety of famous
people, with a special affection for composer Leonard Bernstein. Byck's actions took place a week after a man named
Robert Preston stole an Army helicopter and landed it inside the White House Complex, just 150 feet from the West Wing
(he was ultimately shot down and wounded). "The Assassination of Richard Nixon," a feature film based on Byck, was
released in 2004 and starred Sean Penn as "Sam Bicke."

o Source: http://www.infoplease.com/biography/var/samuelbyck.html


Byck was born to poor Jewish parents in South Philadelphia. He dropped out of high school in the ninth grade in order to
support his family. He enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1954, was honorably discharged in 1956, married shortly thereafter, and
had four children. In 1972, he began to suffer from severe bouts of depression after his wife divorced him and after
experiencing many job failures. He admitted himself to a psychiatric ward where he stayed for two months. He later began
to harbor the belief that the government was conspiring to oppress the poor.

He first came to the attention of the Secret Service in 1972, when he
threatened Nixon, whom he had resented ever since the Small Business
Administration had turned him down for a loan. Byck also had sent
bizarre tape recordings to various other public figures including
scientist Jonas Salk, U.S. Sen. Abraham Ribicoff of Connecticut, and
conductor Leonard Bernstein; and had tried to join the Black Panthers.
The Secret Service considered Byck to be harmless, and no action was
taken at this time.

It has been suggested (for instance, by the 2004 film dramatization of his
life) that Byck's hijacking was inspired by news reports of the Feb. 17,
1974, buzzing of the White House by Army PFC. Robert K. Preston in a
stolen helicopter.
Since Byck was already known to the Secret Service, and because legal
attempts to purchase a firearm might have resulted in increased scrutiny,
Byck stole a .22-caliber revolver from a friend of his to use in the
hijacking. Byck also made a bomb out of 2 gallon jugs of gasoline and an
igniter. All through this process, Byck made audio recordings explaining
his motives and his plans; he expected to be considered a hero for his
actions, and wanted to fully document his reasons for the assassination.

After a standoff with police, an Anne Arundel County police officer on
the jetway, stormed the plane and fired four shots through the aircraft door at Byck with a .357 Magnum revolver. Two shots
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penetrated the thick window of the aircraft door and wounded Byck. Before police could gain entry to the aircraft, Byck
committed suicide by shooting himself in the head.
According to a special on the History Channel, Byck lived for a few minutes after shooting himself, dying after saying "help
me" to one of the police officers who entered the plane after he had been shot. A briefcase containing the gasoline bomb
was found under his body. The plane never left the gate, and Nixon's schedule was not affected by the assassination
attempt.

It was subsequently discovered that Byck had sent a tape recording detailing his plan, which he called "Operation Pandora's
Box," to news columnist Jack Anderson. A review of records disclosed that Byck had been arrested twice for protesting in
front of the White House without a permit, and that he later dressed in a Santa suit for another protest.

In 1987, an FAA document titled Troubled Passage: The Federal Aviation Administration During the Nixon-Ford Term
1973-1977 was produced, which mentioned Byck's failed hijacking: ...though Byck lacked the skill and self-control to reach
his target, he had provided a chilling reminder of the potential of violence against civil aviation. Under a more relaxed
security system, his suicidal rampage might have begun when the airliner was aloft.

The 9/11 Commission Report also mentioned Byck's attempt to fly a plane into the White House. On Page 561 in note 21, it
says:
As part of his 34-page analysis, the attorney explained why he thought that a fueled Boeing 747, used as a weapon
"must be considered capable of destroying virtually any building located anywhere in the world." DOJ memo, Robert
D. to Cathleen C., "Aerial Intercepts and Shoot-downs: Ambiguities of Law and Practical Considerations", Mar. 30,
2000, p. 10. "Also, in February 1974, a man named Samuel Byck attempted to commandeer a plane at Baltimore
Washington International Airport with the intention of forcing the pilots to fly into Washington and crash into the
White House to kill the president. The man was shot by police and then killed himself on the aircraft while it was still
on the ground at the airport."

o Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Byck



The Villager (Greenwich Village, NYC) Volume 74, Number 35 | January 05 - 11, 2005

THE ASSASSINATION OF RICHARD NIXON
Directed by Niels Mueller
Distributed by THINKFilm
Diary of a mad salesman
Sean Penn plays an alienated citizen eager to murder to gain some respect
By David Kennerley
Exactly 30 years ago, Samuel Byck, a misguided malcontent dressed as Santa Claus, picketed the White House lawn and
protested the scabrous policies of the Nixon administration. But Byck didnt stop there.
Blaming the president for his own business and romantic failures, as well as pretty much all the nations ills, Byck attempted,
in an act of crazed desperation, to hijack a plane and crash it into the White House. He longed to kill Nixon and finally make
a mark on history.
Byck botched that endeavor miserably, too.
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Fascinated with the story, first-time filmmaker Niels Mueller directed The Assassination of Richard Nixon, starring Sean
Penn in top form as the volatile Byck. Aside from minor plot retooling, Mueller and co-writer Kevin Kennedy have stuck to
the facts as much as possible.
The result is an intermittently absorbing yet ultimately claustrophobic, dour affair.
Sam Bicke Muellers lawyers advised a tweak in the spelling is a 44-year-old loser who likens himself to a grain of
sand on this beach called America. He cant seem to keep a job or a woman. He stinks as an office furniture salesman
because hype runs counter to his rigid principles. His hard-ass, sleazeball boss Jack Thompson, who gives a dead-on,
chilling performance is not pleased.
At first, Bicke does his best to turn his life around. Along with his reluctant partner, Bonny (Don Cheadle), he applies for a
government loan to get a ludicrous business scheme a traveling tire store on wheels up and running. He recites
aphorisms from How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, albeit with hollow conviction.
Frantic to regain a meaningful human connection, Bicke tries to woo back his estranged wife, Marie (Naomi Watts), but she
pities him more than she loves him. The marriage is over, yet he refuses to remove his wedding ring.
Perhaps assuming his audience is as daft as his subject, Mueller adds scenes to drive home Bickes nebbish ineptitude.
Bicke screws up taking a family photo that only he wants. At the furniture store, when the secretary squawks orders, he
jumps. Mueller means for these moments to be painful for Bicke, but they also register as painfully facile.
Refusing to accept responsibility, the desperado devises an assassination plot dubbed Operation Pandoras Box to exact
revenge. Pres. Nixon, a ubiquitous TV presence, awash in the Vietnam quagmire and later the Watergate scandal, is the
ideal target.
The whole system has a cancer, but somebody has to resist, Bicke laments. He embraces the Black Panthers motto, By
any means necessary.
For posterity, Bicke documents his plan, and his pain, on a series of reel-to-reel tapes, preparing to send them to, among
others, maestro Leonard Bernstein, whom he views as the embodiment of goodness.
All I want is a piece of the American Dream, whines Bicke. Dictating into the machine, he is so articulate, so insightful, we
wonder why he doesnt try his hand at, say, becoming an op-ed columnistor a screenwriter.
All too predictably, Bicke descends into madness. With each visit to the mailbox, seeking approval on his government loan
application, he appears increasingly disheveled, in the end wearing rumpled boxer shorts and a scraggly beard.
With its clunky, shaky-camera technique, The Assassination of Richard Nixon may be as misguided as one of Bickes
schemes, and sitting through the film can be an exercise in frustration. Watching Bicke mope and stammer as a sort of
Willy Loman with a vengeance, you just want to shake some sense into him.
Mueller claims he wanted to explore how a person goes from point A to B, with point B being when this person loses all
empathy for those around him and lashes out in indiscriminate violence. But the film also asks us to empathize with a
deranged terrorist. No thanks.
Without Penn, who nabbed last years Oscar for Best Actor for his performance in Mystic River and who turns in another
lean, incisive turn as the brow-beaten Bicke, the film would surely sink.
Although Samuel Byck is barely a footnote in history, Mario Cantone played him in the Broadway revival of Stephen
Sondheims Assassins.
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Bycks glib explanation for planning the attack was, Because there isnt any Santa Claus. Pity that no one his boss, his
wife, or even Dale Carnegie bothered to advise him that once you stop believing, youre doomed.


A REPORT IN THE BALTIMORE SUN ON BYCK.


Clips of the audio tapes made by Sam Byck: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHAWUby7V-A

























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Decade: 1970s
Lynette Squeaky Fromme (Oct. 22, 1948-present)

o Who: Drifter, troubled free spirit, member of the Manson Family.
o What: Tried to kill President Gerald Ford in Capital Park in Sacramento,
Calif., on Sept. 5, 1975.
o Weapon: M1911A1 .45 Colt semi-automatic pistol.
o Age: 26 then; 63 and counting.


In short: Born to upper-middle-class parents in Santa Monica, Calif. Fromme met
Charles Manson shortly after graduating from high school. She became enamored of
him romantically and philosophically, and was one of the leaders of his family of
disciples. She believed him to be an ardent environmentalist as well as the Messiah.
Fromme attempted to assassinate President Ford outside the Senator Hotel in
Sacramento on Sept. 5, 1975, regarding him as a phony who had not been elected
and who was partially responsible for our involvement in Vietnam. As she had not
loaded a bullet in the chamber of the gun, she was easily subdued by the Secret Service. Fromme claimed she had not
really intended to kill Ford but had hoped that her act would bring Manson to public attention again. She was convicted two
months later.

o Source: Liner notes, 2004 Broadway cast recording



More details: Lynette Alice "Squeaky" Fromme is an American member of the Charles Manson
Family. She was sentenced to life in prison for attempting to assassinate President Gerald Ford
in 1975. After serving 34 years in custody, she was released from prison on Aug. 14, 2009.

The assassination attempt: On the morning of Sept. 5, 1975, Fromme went to Sacramento's
Capitol Park (reportedly to plead with President Gerald Ford about the plight of the California
redwoods) dressed in a nun-like red robe and armed with a M1911A1 .45 Colt semi-automatic
pistol that she pointed at Ford. The pistol's magazine was
loaded with four rounds, but there was no bullet in the firing
chamber. She was immediately restrained by the Secret Service. While being further
restrained and handcuffed, Fromme managed to say a few sentences to the on-scene
cameras, emphasizing that the gun "didn't go off." She subsequently told The Sacramento
Bee newspaper that she had deliberately ejected the cartridge in her weapon's chamber
before leaving home that morning, and investigators later found a .45 ACP cartridge in her
bathroom.

After a lengthy trial in which she refused to cooperate with her own defense, she was convicted and received a life sentence
under a 1965 law that made attempted presidential assassinations a federal crime punishable by a maximum sentence of
life in prison. When U.S. Attorney Duane Keyes recommended severe punishment because she was "full of hate and
violence," Fromme threw an apple at him, hitting him in the face and knocking off his glasses.

"I stood up and waved a gun (at Ford) for a reason," said Fromme. "I was so relieved not to have to shoot it, but, in truth, I
came to get life. Not just my life but clean air, healthy water and respect for creatures and creation."

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In 1979, Fromme was transferred from a federal prison California to a facility in West Virginia; she had attacked a fellow
inmate, with the claw-end of a hammer. On Dec. 23, 1987, she escaped from the West Virginia prison, attempting to meet
Manson, whom she had heard had testicular cancer. She was captured two days later and sent to a federal prison in Texas.

She became eligible for parole in 1985, and was entitled by federal law to a mandatory hearing after 30 years but could
waive that hearing and apply for release at a later date. Fromme steadfastly waived her right to request a hearing and was
required by federal law to complete a parole application before one could be considered and granted. Fromme was granted
parole in July 2008, but was not released due to the extra time added to her sentence for the 1987 prison escape. When
she finally was released in 2009, she reportedly moved to Marcy, N.Y.

o Source: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynette_Fromme

Frommes move to Marcy, NY: http://www.uticaod.com/news/x211355264/Would-be-Ford-assassin-moving-to-Marcy


Squeaky Fromme was born as Lynette Alice Fromme in Santa Monica, California, on October 22, 1948. Fromme was a
child performer, touring with a dance troupe around the age of 10. After high school, Fromme moved to Venice Beach,
where she met Charles Manson. She was instantly captivated by Manson, as were all members of his "Family," and before
long Manson invited her to join him in traveling the country, which she did.

The Manson 'Family': When they returned, Fromme moved into the Spahn Ranch with
Manson and his followers, taking care of 80-year-old George Spahn, who nicknamed her
Squeaky because of the sound she made when he would touch her.
When Manson and his followers were arrested for the multiple murders they committed in
August 1969, Fromme avoided police scrutiny because she was not present at either murder
scene. Instead of sitting in the courtroom with Manson, as a show of her unflagging support
she camped outside the Los Angeles County courtroom where Manson and his followers
were being tried.

After Manson was convicted, he was moved from prison to prison, and Fromme moved from town to town to be near him.
Unrelated to her Manson Family activities, in November 1972, Fromme and four others were arrested after a couple was
found murdered and buried in the woods. The other four confessed, and Fromme was released.

o Source: http://www.biography.com/people/squeaky-fromme-20902443


August 14, 2009 2:12 PM
Exclusive: My Private Letters From Squeaky Fromme

Source: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-5242164-504083.html

By Paul LaRosa

NEW YORK (CBS) -- Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, a follower of notorious murder cult leader Charles Manson was released
from prison Friday. She served 34 years in jail for pointing a gun at then President Gerald Ford.

Despite the enormous spotlight on Fromme and crimes by Manson's more murderous followers, Fromme had little interest
in being interviewed. But, over the years she did have an unusual written correspondence with longtime CBS News
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producer Paul LaRosa, in which she talks about the spell Manson had on her and far-ranging issues such as the
environment and murdered high school classmate Phil Hartman, who had starred on Saturday Night Live.

From LaRosa: As a child of the Sixties, I've always been fascinated with the Manson family. I've read a lot of books on the
case and even own the rare book "Child of Satan, Child of God" by Susan Atkins.

Somewhere along the line, back in the late 1990s, I decided I should write to Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, the Manson "girl"
convicted of trying to assassinate President Gerald Ford. At the time, I had just finished reading the biography "Squeaky," a
terrific book by Jess Bravin. The front inside leaf of the book has a picture of Fromme as a girl when she was in a choir that
performed at the White House; the back leaf is a photo of her trying to kill the President.

Man, what happened?

This woman's entire life changed when a troll-like guy named Charlie found her sitting on a bench in Venice Beach one day.
I was hooked.

So I wrote to her, and she began writing back. I don't have my letters but I do have three of hers. And today, the day Lynette
Fromme was released from prison, I went back and re-read them. Basically, I was asking back then if she'd do an interview
with CBS News but my ulterior motive was connecting with someone from The Family. I was thrilled to one day get a letter
from the prison in Fort Worth, Texas, where she was being held.

The first letter from Lynette dated July 15, 1998 is typewritten. It was clear from the get-go that she is a fine writer. Her
sentences and spelling were perfect, and she could be eloquent. I asked her what she had learned in prison and here's
what she wrote: " this time in prison has shown me more of what I believed to start with, more of human nature, more of
timelessness, more of cold, hard realities and of the absolute miracle of existence."

I had asked her several other questions, one of them about why she became an activist. She answered: "What made me an
activist? What if I said (like everybody else) 'Charlie made me do it?

She always signed her letters Lynette Fromme in a loopy cursive style. Never "Squeaky."

Her next two letters were handwritten. In September, 1998, came her longest missive and somewhere in the middle, she
wrote: "I miss real life.I suppose that I could see myself here specifically for the purpose of understanding people, but I'd
hate to think I'd have to give myself over to people as entirely as Manson has and does because they we??? humanity
will do what humanity has always done until it decides not to. Can we decide not to? I don't know if life can go on without
the animal competition for territory, food, sex."

I had asked her about the murder of comedian Phil Hartman because, I knew from reading her biography, that the former
Saturday Night Live comic and Lynette went to the same high school and were close friends (yes, truth is stranger than
fiction). Hartman had been murdered, shot to death by his wife who then killed herself. Lynette had a real fondness for
Hartman. She wrote, "I wonder if he had any notion that such was possible or did he not believe her or did she not say."

Lynette said she had read reports of the murder-suicide in the National Enquirer and The Star, and did not believe the level
of detail they provided. "I have somewhere my junior high school yearbooks with Phil's writings and a little cartoon surfer he
drew," she wrote. "I think he was funnier in high school than on TV although some of what I saw on SNL of him was
excellent.we took drama together for 18 months or 2 years and we had fun. He was more supportive than competitive and
so enthusiastic that it was fun to go to class with him and anyone like him."

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She moved on, back in 1998, to the topic of age: "I turn 50 October 22nd. I will feel some sense of relief at having arrived,
as the age lines blur greatly during a period of about 15 years and one of course dies dozens of times in mind (even if it
does indicate cowardice)."

The next letter did not reach me until April 2000. Lynette apologized for a delay in writing back and said she'd had the flu
and was losing weight. She wanted me to know she had thought about my request to interview her and had decided against
it. But she did say she was a fan of the CBS News broadcast 48 Hours: "I used to watch the show when I had access to a
T.V. in Florida. It seemed longer than an hour, exposed a lot of ground, and was engaging. I liked it. I can't run it or dictate
the content but I would not want to throw myself into a sea of predatory viewpoints either. Jerry Springer already asked me."
(And then she drew a little face expressing, I believe, dismay).

She wanted me to know that she was more and more interested in the conservation movement, especially Julia "Butterfly"
Hill who at that time had become famous for sitting in a redwood for 738 days. "I'm interested in the true state of the planet
and the innovative moves being tried to both cut down on and recycle waste, on the whole concept of microcosm and
macrocosm, infinitely smaller and infinitely larger life but primarily in what we want to preserve, explore, examine and
simply enjoy.

"I don't want to trash this planet. I believe we lose our right to know and have what we don't respect."

I sent her magazine articles about Julia "Butterfly" Hill and another letter but never heard from her again.

The coda to this story is that one time on assignment I was in Susan Ford's home in New Mexico. During a break in the
interview, I looked over her bookshelf and spotted the book "Squeaky." I found it bizarre that she'd own a copy of a book
about a woman who had tried to kill her father.

"What," I said to the daughter of the former president, "is this book doing on your bookshelf?"

"Open it," she said.

Inside was a handwritten note from former President Ford to Susan. I can't quote it verbatim but basically it read: Interesting
book. You might remember this gal who tried to shoot me.


Manson Disciple Squeaky Fromme Set Free | CBS News (Sept. 25, 2009, 7:33 AM)

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/08/14/national/main5241905.shtml?tag=stack

The Charles Manson follower convicted of trying to assassinate President Gerald Ford was
released Friday from a Texas prison hospital after more than three decades behind bars.
Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, 60, left the Federal Medical Center Carswell in Fort Worth at
about 8 a.m. EDT Friday, spokeswoman Dr. Maria Douglas said. Though a few
photographers had camped out since the night before outside the facility surrounded razor wire-topped fences, Fromme
slipped by the group unnoticed in one of the many cars streaming in and out of the front gate Friday morning.





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On video:
Squeaky Fromme Assassination Attempt Interview | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxjggckztOY
Lynette Fromme Interview segments, Manson back porch tapes | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3vY3qso_FI
Lynette Fromme 1987 Interview | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-fJGxTfeqI

In print:
A short piece from the Utica, NY, newspaper | http://www.uticaod.com/news/x560099823/CBS-show-catches-up-
with-Manson-follower-Squeaky-Fromme-in-Rome

Charles Manson background: Charles Milles Manson (born Nov. 12, 1934) is an American criminal and musician who led
what became known as the Manson Family, a quasi-commune that arose in California in the late 1960s. He was found guilty
of conspiracy to commit the murders of actress Sharon Tate and Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, a supermarket executive
and dress shop owner, respectively, carried out by members of the group at his instruction. He was convicted of the
murders through the joint-responsibility rule, which makes each member of a conspiracy guilty of crimes his fellow
conspirators commit in furtherance of the conspiracy's objective.

Manson believed in what he called "Helter Skelter," a term he took from the song of the same name by the Beatles. Manson
believed Helter Skelter to be an impending apocalyptic race war, which he described in his own version of the lyrics to the
Beatles' song. He believed his murders would help precipitate that war. From the beginning of his notoriety, a pop culture
arose around him in which he ultimately became an emblem of insanity, violence and the macabre. The term was later used
by Manson prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi as the title of a book he wrote about the Manson murders.

At the time the Family began to form, Manson was an unemployed ex-convict, who had spent half of his life in correctional
institutions for a variety of offenses. Before the murders, he was a singer-songwriter on the fringe of the Los Angeles music
industry, chiefly through a chance association with Dennis Wilson, founding member and drummer of the Beach Boys. After
Manson was charged with the crimes with which he was later convicted, recordings of songs written and performed by him
were released commercially. Various musicians, including Guns N' Roses, White Zombie and Marilyn Manson, have
covered some of his songs.

Manson's death sentence was automatically commuted to life imprisonment when a 1972 decision by the Supreme Court of
California temporarily eliminated the state's death penalty. California's eventual reinstatement of capital punishment did not
affect Manson, who is currently incarcerated at Corcoran State Prison.

o Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Manson












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DECADE: 1970s
Sara Jane Moore (Feb. 15, 1930-present)

o Who: Housewife, wannabe radical.
o What: Shot President Ford in San Francisco on Sept. 22, 1975. She failed
as she had at so much else in life.
o Weapon: A .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver.
o Age: 45 then; 82 and counting now.


In short: Moore had five husbands and four children. She failed in various careers:
as an aspiring nurse, as a member of the Womens Army Corps and as an
accountant. At age 42, she joined the counterculture movement, but was alienated from her friends when they discovered
that she was an FBI informant. In order to regain her radical friends trust, she attempted to assassinate President Ford
outside the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco on Sept. 22, 1975 [less than three weeks after Fromme shot at him in
Sacramento]. A bystander grabbed her arm and deflected her aim. She pleaded guilty, was sentenced to life in prison [she
was paroled on Dec. 31, 2007, at age 77 after serving 32 years]. There comes a point, she said, when the only way to
make a statement is to pick up a gun.

o Source: Liner notes, 2004 Broadway cast recording


More details: A native of Charleston, W.Va., Sara Jane Moore was a former nursing school student, Women's Army
Corps recruit, and accountant. She had been divorced five times and had four children before she turned to revolutionary
politics in 1975. Moore's friends said she had a deep fascination and obsession with Patty Hearst. After Hearst was
kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army, her father Randolph Hearst created the organization People in Need (P.I.N.)
to feed the poor, in order to answer S.L.A. claims that the elder Hearst was "committing 'crimes' against 'the people.'" Moore
was a bookkeeper for P.I.N. and an FBI informant

when she
attempted to assassinate Ford.
Moore had been evaluated by the Secret Service earlier in
1975, but that organization had decided that she presented
no danger to the president. She had been picked up by police
on an illegal handgun charge the day before the Ford
incident, but was released from arrest. The police confiscated
her .44-caliber revolver and 113 rounds of ammunition.
Moore was about 40 feet away from President Ford when she
fired a single shot at him with a different firearm, a .38-
caliber revolver. She was standing in the crowd across the
street from the St. Francis Hotel, using a gun she bought in haste that same morning and did not know the sights were six
inches off the point-of-impact at that distance and she narrowly missed. FBI case agent Richard Vitamanti measured the
location the next day. After realizing she had missed, she raised her arm again, and Oliver Sipple, a Marine no longer on
active duty, dived toward her, knocking her arm the second time, perhaps saving President Ford's life. Judge Samuel Conti,
still on the bench in 2010, spoke on the record, that Moore would have killed Ford had she had her own gun, and it was only
"because her gun was faulty," that saved the president's life. During her second attempt, Sipple grabbed Moore's arm and
then pulled her to the ground. Sipple said at the time: "I saw [her gun] pointed out there and I grabbed for it. [...] I lunged and
grabbed the woman's arm and the gun went off." The single shot that Moore did fire from her .38-caliber revolver ricocheted
off the entrance to the hotel and slightly injured a bystander.
44 | P a g e

Trial + imprisonment: Moore pleaded guilty
]
to attempted assassination and was sentenced to life in prison. At her
sentencing hearing Moore stated: "Am I sorry I tried? Yes and no. Yes, because it accomplished little except to throw away
the rest of my life. And, no, I'm not sorry I tried, because at the time it seemed a correct expression of my anger In 1979,
Moore escaped from the Alderson Federal Prison Camp in West Virginia but was captured hours later. After her return, she
was transferred to a more secure facility, and served the restr of her term at the federal womens prison in Dublin, Calif.
Release: On Dec. 31, 2007, at age 77, Moore was released from prison on parole after serving 32 years of her life sentence
and five days short of the one-year anniversary of Fords death from natural causes [Dec. 26, 2006]. Moore has stated that
she regrets the assassination attempt, saying she was "blinded by her radical political views." She was to be under
supervised parole for at least five years. Her release came via a federal law that makes parole mandatory for inmates who
have served at least 30 years of a life sentence and have maintained a satisfactory disciplinary record. When asked about
her crime in an interview, Moore stated, "I am very glad I did not succeed. I know now that I was wrong to try."

In the years since: Moore discussed her 1979 escape from prison. She revealed that an inmate told her "...when jumping
the fence just put your hand on the barbed wire, you'll only have a few puncture wounds." Moore went on to say, "If I knew
that I was going to be captured several hours later, I would have stopped at the local bar to get a drink or at a burger place
just to get a drink and a burger."


Quotes:

I do regret I didn't succeed, and allow the winds of change to start. I wish I had killed him. I did it to create chaos.
(1975)

I didnt want to kill anybody, but there comes a point when the only way you can make a statement is to pick up a
gun.

The government had declared war on the left. Nixon's appointment of Ford as vice president and his resignation
making Ford president seemed to be a continuing assault on America.


I know now that I was wrong to try. Thank God I didn't succeed. People kept saying he would have to die before I
could be released, and I did not want my release from prison to be dependent on somebody, on something
happening to somebody else, so I wanted him to live to be 100. (2007)

o Source: Wikipedia | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sara_Jane_Moore















45 | P a g e




BOOK | Taking Aim at the President: Biography of Sara Jane Moore
By Geri Spieler


An online article from the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper
By Justin Berton
Published 4 a.m., Thursday, Jan. 22, 2009

In the span of 18 months, Sara Jane Moore went from being a housewife in Danville to a
wannabe political assassin in San Francisco.

Moore, who in 1975 became the only female to fire a shot at the president of the United
States (Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme aimed at President Gerald Ford three weeks before in
Sacramento but never got off a round), is the enigmatic subject of local author Geri Spieler's
new biography, "Taking Aim at the President."

Moore's attempt on Ford's life outside the St. Francis Hotel is steeped in local history. It
occurred in the strange wake of Fromme's attempt and Patty Hearst's arrest; the man who
tackled Moore, Oliver Sipple, became a reluctant gay-rights icon after it was learned that the
Marine who saved the president's life was also homosexual.

Spieler, a journalist whom Moore first wrote to from her prison cell more than 30 years ago, details her tumultuous
relationship with Moore and attempts to link the telltale signs of what makes a future assassin. Yet not even psychiatrists
and federal agents, who visited Moore in prison annually to pick at her psyche, could make sense of what led to the 45-
year-old mother's murder attempt.

"You really can't underestimate who's a threat," Spieler said. "Sara Jane wasn't the stereotypical, 45-year-old white male,
foreign-born loner. Her profile didn't fit."

Spieler portrays a complex woman of intelligence (140 IQ) who was seductive but bad at relationships (five marriages), and
masterfully elusive (one prison escape in 1979). Moore had five children and got involved in the Bay Area's radical
underground movement in the late 1960s and early '70s, even working as an FBI informant.

On the morning of the attempt, Spieler recounts Moore driving from suburban Danville to San Francisco along Interstate
680, loading bullets into a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver that she'd purchased hours earlier. Outside the St. Francis,
Moore not only waited for the president, but also worried that she'd be late to pick up her son afterward. How many would-
be assassins have been distracted by maternal concerns?

Moore's bullet missed Ford by just six inches, Spieler reports. Had the gun's sights been properly adjusted, the president
could have been killed. "She figured, 'I'm a good shot. Let's go,' " Spieler said. "But if she'd tested it, it would have been a
different piece of history."

Moore was released in 2007, and her whereabouts are unknown. But Spieler says Moore's unlikely profile forever changed
the way the Secret Service investigates potential assassins.

46 | P a g e

"Sara Jane represents what we don't know about who will try to assassinate a president," Spieler said. "And that the Secret
Service can never really let its guard down."

o Link: http://www.sfgate.com/thingstodo/article/Geri-Spieler-Biography-of-Sara-Jane-Moore-3175260.php




September 23, 2012
Huffington Post
Sara Jane Moore Tried To Assassinate President Ford,
Discusses Attempt And Spending 32 Years In Jail (VIDEO)
To look at this 80-year-old grandmotherly woman, it is difficult to imagine that she spent
32 years in prison for attempting to assassinate President Gerald Ford, but that's exactly
what happened. On September 22, 1975 in San Francisco, Sara Jane Moore fired a
shot at President Ford that missed his head by several feet. A bystander wrestled her to
the ground before she was taken into custody by authorities.
Moore was a 45-year-old divorced mother who hung around disaffected groups feeding
her alienation. Looking back on the incident, she says of her earlier self that it seems
like a "different person." She sees the genesis of her assassination attempt as stemming
from her immersion in radical leftist groups that were pushing her to the edge, and that
she was alienated from the world as it was and needed to do something about it. It's
unclear why she felt killing President Ford would have done anything about it, but she
declares that to this day she believes if she hadn't made the attempt someone else
would have:
Oh, I still think that. If I hadn't done it, someone else would have. That was the tenor of
the time. There was more talk about it than people realize. Again, I thought that what
was happening to us there in San Francisco was the whole world and it wasn't. I had to learn later that everybody didn't feel
that way.

Some six of her 32 two years spent behind bars was in solitary confinement. She escaped from prison in 1979 but was
promptly recaptured. In hindsight Moore believes that the action was wrong, although "understandably wrong, but that's just
my ego talking."

Watch the full interview here | http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/28/sara-jane-moore-tried-to_n_208512.html.






47 | P a g e


DECADE: 1970s
John Hinckley (May 29, 1955-present)

o Who: Housewife, wannabe radical.
o What: Attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan in Washington, D.C., on
March 30, 1981.
o Weapon: A .22-caliber Rhm RG-14 revolver.
o Age: 25 then; 57 and counting now.


In short: Born to well-to-do parents in Oklahoma, Hinckley was a good athlete in school but
became increasingly reclusive during high school, spending most of his time alone in his
room playing guitar. He briefly attended college, then moved to California to become a
songwriter. There he allegedly saw the movie Taxi Driver, about a psychopathic assassin,
15 times, and became obsessed with the young actress Jodie Foster, who played a child
prostitute in the film. He began purchasing guns and practicing target shooting in 1979.
After having learned that Foster enrolled in Yale University, Hinckley signed up for a writing class there and pursued her
through notes and telephone calls. On March 30, 1981, he wrote to Foster, informing her that he was going to undertake a
historical deed to impress her. Later that day, he attempted to assassinate President Reagan outside the Washington
Hilton, wounding four people in the process. Found not guilty by reason of insanity, Hinckley was sentenced to a psychiatric
facility, where he remains. In December 2003, he received permission to make unsupervised visits to his parents home.

o Source: Liner notes, 2004 Broadway cast recording


More details: John W. Hinckley Jr., was born in Ardmore, Okla., and moved with his family to Dallas, Texas, at age 4. He
grew up in University Park, Texas. In grade school, he played football and basketball, learned to play the piano, and was
elected class president twice. After Hinckley graduated in 1973 from his Texas high school, the family, owners of the
Hinckley oil company, moved to Evergreen, Colo. He was an off-and-on student at Texas Tech University from 1974 to
1980 and, in 1975, moved to Los Angeles in the hope of becoming a songwriter. His efforts were unsuccessful, and he
wrote to his parents with tales of misfortune and pleas for money. He also spoke of a girlfriend, Lynn Collins, who turned out
to be a fabrication. He returned to his parents' home in Evergreen before the college school year ended. During the next few
years, he developed a pattern of living on his own for a while and then returning home poor. During the late 1970s and early
1980s, Hinckley began purchasing weapons and practicing with them. He also began taking anti-depressants and
tranquilizers.


Figure 1THE GUN HINCKLEY USED TO SHOOT REAGAN.
Obession with Jodie Foster: Hinckley became obsessed with the 1976 film Taxi
Driver, in which disturbed protagonist Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) plots to
assassinate a presidential candidate. He watched the film 15 times in a row on a
continuous loop. Hinckley developed an infatuation with actress Jodie Foster, who
played a child prostitute in the film. The Bickle character was in turn partly based
on the diaries of Arthur Bremer, the attempted assassin of Alabama Gov. George Wallace. When Foster entered Yale
University, Hinckley moved to New Haven, Conn. for a short time. He enrolled in a Yale writing class, and began slipping
poems and messages under her door and phoning her.
48 | P a g e

Failing to develop any meaningful contact with the actress, Hinckley developed such plots as aircraft hijacking and
committing suicide in front of her to get her attention. Eventually he settled on a scheme to impress her by assassinating the
president, with the theory that as a historical figure he would be her equal. Hinckley trailed President Jimmy Carter from
state to state, but was arrested in Nashville, Tenn., on a firearms charge. Penniless, he went home again, and despite
psychiatric treatment for depression, his mental health did not improve. He began to target the newly elected
president Ronald Reagan in 1981 and started collecting information on the assassination of John
F. Kennedy by Lee Harvey Oswald, whom he saw as a role model.
Hinckley wrote to Foster just before his attempt on Reagan's life:
Over the past seven months I've left you dozens of poems, letters and love messages in
the faint hope that you could develop an interest in me. Although we talked on the phone
a couple of times I never had the nerve to simply approach you and introduce myself. [...]
the reason I'm going ahead with this attempt now is because I cannot wait any longer to
impress you.
John Hinckley, Jr.


Reagan assassination attempt: On March 30,
1981, at about 2:25 pm local time, Hinckley shot
a .22-caliber Rhm RG-14 revolver six times at
Reagan as he left the Hilton Hotel in Washington,
D.C., after addressing an AFL-CIO conference.
Hinckley wounded police officer Thomas
Delahanty, Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy,
and critically wounded Reagan press
secretary James Brady. Hinckley did not hit Reagan
directly, but seriously wounded him when a bullet
ricocheted off the side of the presidential
limousine and hit him in the chest. Hinckley did not
attempt to flee and was arrested at the scene. All of
the shooting victims survived, although Brady, who
was hit in the right side of the head, endured a long
recuperation period and remains paralyzed on the left side of his body.

Trial: At the trial in 1982, Hinckley was charged with 13 offenses and found not
guilty on June 21 -- by reason of insanity. The defense psychiatric reports
portrayed him as insane, while prosecution reports saw him as legally
sane. Hinckley was confined at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C.

Reaction to verdict: The verdict resulted in widespread dismay; as a result,
the U.S. Congress and a number of states rewrote laws regarding the insanity
defense. Idaho, Montana, and Utah abolished the defense altogether. Hinckley's
parents wrote a book during 1985, Breaking Points, about their son's mental
condition. Vincent Fuller, who represented Hinckley during his trial and for several
years afterward, said Hinckley has schizophrenia.
49 | P a g e

Life at St. Elizabeths Hospital: Soon after his trial, Hinckley wrote that the shooting was "the greatest love offering in the
history of the world," and was upset that Foster did not reciprocate his love. After being admitted, tests found that Hinckley
was an "unpredictably dangerous" man who might harm himself, the target of his obsession (Foster), or any other third
party. During 1983 he told Penthouse magazine that on a typical day he will "see a therapist, answer mail, play guitar, listen
to music, play pool, watch television, eat lousy food and take delicious medication."
He was allowed to leave the hospital for supervised visits with his parents in 1999, and longer unsupervised releases in
2000,

privileges revoked when he was found to have smuggled materials about Foster back into the hospital. Hinckley was
later allowed supervised visits during 2004-05. Court hearings were held in September 2005 on whether he could have
expanded privileges. Some of the testimony during the hearings centered on whether Hinckley is capable of having a
normal relationship with a woman and whether that would have any bearing on what danger he would pose to society.
On Dec. 30, 2005, a federal judge ruled that Hinckley would be allowed visits, supervised by his parents, to their home in
Williamsburg, Va. The judge ruled that he could have up to three visits of three nights and then four visits of four nights,
each depending on the successful completion of the last. All of the experts who testified at Hinckley's 2005 conditional
release hearing, including government experts, agreed that his depression and psychotic disorder were in full remission and
that he should have some expanded conditions of release.
Hinckley requested further freedoms including two one-week visits with his parents, as well as a monthlong visit, but a
federal district denied that request in June 2007. In June 2009, a federal judge ruled that Hinckley could visit his mother for
a dozen visits of 10 days at a time, spend more time outside of the hospital, and have a driver's license. The court ordered
that Hinckley \carry a GPS-enabled cell phone to track him whenever he was outside his parent's home, and he was
forbidden to speak to the news media. This was done over the objections of the prosecutors who said that he was still a
danger to others and had unhealthy and inappropriate thoughts about women. Records show that he has had sexual
relations with two women, one who was married for a long time and another who has bipolar disorder. Hinckley recorded a
song titled "Ballad of an Outlaw"[I cannot find this on audio or video anywhere yet. kj] which the prosecutors claim is
"reflecting suicide and lawlessness."
It was reported in March 2011 that a forensic psychologist at the hospital had testified that "Hinckley has recovered to the
point that he poses no imminent risk of danger to himself or others." Hinckley returned to court in spring 2011 for further
direction, and was granted additional family visits in May 2011. On Nov. 30, 2011, a hearing began in Washington to
determine Hinckley's future.
o Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hinckley,_Jr.














JOHN HINCKLEY JR. IN 2003

50 | P a g e


Update on Hinckleys status | WASHINGTON September 21, 2012 (Associated Press)

John Hinckley case on hold for hospital reply

Judge: DC hospital must decide how to proceed in case involving Reagan shooter John Hinckley

WASHINGTON (AP) A judge in Washington is ordering a psychiatric hospital caring for John Hinckley to decide how to
proceed with a request to expand the time he spends away. Hinckley shot and wounded President Ronald Reagan in 1981.

In late 2011 and early 2012, lawyers spent two weeks discussing plans that would expand Hinckley's release privileges from
Washington's St. Elizabeths Hospital beyond the 10-day stretches he is allowed at his mother's home in Virginia.
Part of the plan was that Hinckley would attend group programs at People's Place in Williamsburg, Va., but it has since
withdrawn its participation.

Judge Paul Friedman is giving St. Elizabeths until Oct. 19 to say how it plans to proceed.

o Source: http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/correction-john-hinckley-story-17286137#.UF9vz7JlR68

On video:
The attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan (3:43) | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Bj6aOgfcJU

A report on ABC News Nightline (10:48) | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4w6KPkv0vT8



















51 | P a g e



SECTION 6: GLOSSARY OF TERMS

Page 8
Sic Semper Tyrannis: Thus always to tyrants, from Julius Caesar. Also the state motto of his native Virginia.

Page 9
David Herold: An accomplice of John Wilkes Booth in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. He was tried and sentenced
to death by hanging. The sentence was carried out on July 7, 1865, a day after it was imposed.

Page 12
Brutus: Marcus Junius Brutus the Younger, often referred to as Brutus, was a politician of the late Roman Republic and
the man who assassinated Julius Caesar.

Page 21
Plotz (lyric in How I Saved Roosevelt): Slang for to collapse or faint, as from surprise, excitement, or exhaustion.

Page 23
Emma Goldman: (June 1869 May 14, 1940) was an anarchist known for her political activism, writing,
and speeches. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North
America and Europe in the first half of the 20th century. She was lionized as a free-thinking "rebel
woman" by admirers, and derided by critics as an advocate of politically motivated murder and violent
revolution.

Page 24
Cossacks: A people in southern Russian who became aggressive warriors during the 16th and 17tg centuries. In place of
taxes, they supplied the Russian Empire with scouts and mounted soldiers.

Page 28
Narc: Slang for a government agent or detective charged with the enforcement oflaws restricting the use of narcotics.

Womens Army Corps: Also known as WAC, was was the women's branch of the United States Army. It was created as
an auxiliary unit, the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) on 15 May 1942 by Public Law 554, and converted to full
status as the WAC in 1943. The WAC as a branch was disbanded in 1978.

Page 38
Bernstein, Lenny: (Aug. 25, 1918- Oct. 14, 1990) was a world-renowned musician throughout his entire
adult life. He was Music Director of the New York Philharmonic and conducted the world's major
orchestras recording hundreds of these performances. His books and the televised Young People's
Concerts with the New York Philharmonic established him as a leading educator. His compositions
include Jeremiah, The Age of Anxiety, Kaddish, Serenade, Five Anniversaries, Mass, Chichester
Psalms, Slava!, Songfest, Divertimento for Orchestra, Missa Brevis, Arias and Barcarolles, Concerto for
Orchestra and A Quiet Place. Bernstein composed for the Broadway musical stage, including On the Town, Wonderful
Town, Candide and the immensely popular West Side Story. In addition to the West Side Story collaboration, Mr. Bernstein
worked with choreographer Jerome Robbins on three major ballets, Fancy Free, Facsimile and Dybbk. Mr. Bernstein was
the recipient of many honors, including, the Antoinette Perry Tony Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Theater, 11
Emmy Awards, the Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award and the Kennedy Center Honors.

52 | P a g e

Page 39
Sympathy for the Devil (song): A song by The Rolling Stones which first appeared as the opening track on the band's
1968 album Beggars Banquet. Hear it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRXGsPBUV5g

Helter Skelter (song): A song written by Paul McCartney,
[3][4]
credited to LennonMcCartney, and recorded by The
Beatles on their eponymous LP The Beatles, better known as The White Album. A product of McCartney's deliberate effort
to create a sound as loud and dirty as possible, the clangorous piece has been noted for both its "proto-metal roar" and
"unique textures" and is considered by music historians as a key influence in the development of heavy metal.
Hear it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWuXmfgXVxY

Page 45
Coquette: A woman who flirts lightheartedly with men to win theiradmiration and affection; flirt.

Page 46
James Blaine: Republican politician and State Department employee who was with President James A. Garfield was he
was shot by Charles Guiteau.

Page 74
Artie Bremer: American convicted for an assassination attempt on U.S. Democratic presidential candidate George
Wallace on May 15, 1972 in Laurel, Md.

Sirhan Sirhan (left): Jordanian citizen who was convicted for the assassination of U.S. Sen. Robert F.
Kennedy on June 5, 1968.

James Earl Ray: American criminal convicted of the assassination of the Rev.Martin Luther King Jr. on
April 4, 1968.


Page 78
Indonesia: A republic in the Malay Archipelago consisting of 13,677 island, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawest and more.
Gained independence from the Netherlands in 1949.

Duomo: A cathedral, especially in Italy.












53 | P a g e



SECTION 7: VIDEO RECAP

Guiteau

His book | http://archive.org/stream/truthremoval00guit#page/10/mode/2up
Cool 5-minute video from A&E 's "Biography | http://www.biography.com/people/charles-julius-guiteau-235814

Czolgosz

The electrocution of Leon Frank Czolgosz. Note: Disturbing | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYSxfyIqrjs
Longer piece Biography.com on Czolgosz, assassination | http://www.biography.com/people/leon-frank-czolgosz-
235807/videos

Zangara

3-minute video from biography.com |
http://www.biography.com/people/franklin-d-roosevelt-9463381/videos/giuseppe-zangara-a-near-miss-2179203722

Nifty photo gallery here | http://murderpedia.org/male.Z/z/zangara-giuseppe-photos.htm

Oswald

Who was Lee Harvey Oswald? | http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/oswald/
The killing of Lee Harvey Oswald | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjphDSY5QJ4
Walter Cronkite announces JFKs death | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2K8Q3cqGs7I

Byck
Clips of the audio tapes he made | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHAWUby7V-A

Fromme + Moore
Squeaky Fromme Assassination Attempt Interview | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxjggckztOY
Lynette Fromme Interview segments, Manson back porch tapes | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3vY3qso_FI
Lynette Fromme 1987 Interview | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-fJGxTfeqI

Full Today show interview | http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/28/sara-jane-moore-tried-to_n_208512.html.

Hinckley

The attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan (3:43) | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Bj6aOgfcJU
A report on ABC News Nightline (10:48) | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4w6KPkv0vT8