Wade said, "The wife had said he had the gun the night before, and it was missing that morning after he left." All indications are from statements made by other law officials and from FBI private briefings that Mr. Oswald had never been quoted as saying anything remotely similar to Wade's assertion.
Mrs. Oswald was alleged to have said, at the very most, that she saw something in a blanket that could have been a rifle. However, it soon became plain that the Secret Service "leak" was itself absolutely inaccurate.
* * *
Oswald, while taking a bus from the scene, laughed loudly as he told a woman passenger that the President had been shot.
Wade said, "The next we hear of him is on a bus where he got on at Lamar Street, told the bus driver the President had been shot, the President. [He] told the lady--all this was verified by statements--told the lady on the bus that the President had been shot. He said, 'How did he know? He said a man back there told him. The defendant said, 'Yes, he's been shot' and laughed very loud."
Wade, in telling his story, made no attempt to explain how Oswald escaped from the building sealed off by scores of Dallas police. We leave that mystery to enter a new one. Why did Oswald, fleeing the scene of a murder, joke publicly about the murder? Why did he "laugh very loud?" Such behavior is hardly, consistent with 48 hours of consistent denial of guilt when in custody of the Dalles authorities. The laughter on the bus story seemed so unlikely that the FBI, in off-the-record briefing sessions for the press, conceded that it was untrue.
A taxi driver, Darry Click, took Oswald home, where he changed his clothes.
Wade said, "He then--the bus, he asked the bus driver to stop, got off at a stop, caught a taxicab, Driver Click--I don't have the exact place--and went to his home in Oak Cliff, changed his clothes hurriedly, and left."
On Nov. 27, it was conceded that "Darryl Click" did not drive a taxicab in which Oswald was a passenger. When "Darryl Click" disappeared from the case, "William Whaley" appeared as the man who drove Oswald, not home, but at least in that general direction....
Oswald, it is alleged, eventually le * * * A map was found in Oswald's possession showing the scene of the assassination and the bullet's trajectory. The day after Wade's historic press conference, and three days after the Oswald arrest a new discovery was made. "Today Mr. Wade announced that authorities had also found a marked map, showing the course of the President's motorcade, in Oswald's rented room. 'It was a map tracing the location of the parade route,' the district attorney said, 'and this place [the Texas School Book Depository, a warehouse from which the fatal shots were fired] was marked with a straight line.' Mr. Wade said Oswald had marked the map at two other place, 'apparently places which he considered a possibility for an assassination.'" (New York Times, Nov. 25.) Oswald's palm print appeared on a cardboard box found at the window. Wade stated, "On this box that the defendant was sitting on, his palm print was found and was identified as his." Inasmuch as a palm print is not always uniquely identifiable, depending on the number of characteristics that are readable, the palm print very likely was not definitely "identified as his." It had been alleged earlier that the defendant ate greasy, fried chicken at the window. The presence of a palm print indicates that he wore no gloves and took no precautions to prevent a trail of fingerprints and palm prints. Nevertheless, no prints of the defendant were found on the floors, walls, window ledge, window frame or window. Only a movable cardboard carton, subsequently present at the police station while the defendant was also there, is now alleged to have his print....