Now I will voice my opinion about Police Chief Jesse Curry, during the time of the JFK Assassination in Dallas. Chief Curry is second on my list because among the Dallas Police, he had the highest, bird's eye view of everything that occurred in the Dallas Police Department in 1963.
The main reasons that I find the Warren Commission (hereafter WC) testimony of Jesse Curry to be suspicious, is because it covers every aspect of the assassination weekend -- and yet his testimony is very short -- ten times shorter than that of Captain Fritz.
Furthermore, whatever Captain Will Fritz did and failed to do -- Chief Jesse Curry was the supervising officer, and he stood by Will Fritz in all of his WC testimony. I repeat here that Fritz kept no formal notes of his 48 hours of holding Lee Harvey Oswald (hereafter LHO) prisoner. Fritz had months to prepare his WC testimony, and he passed it by Jesse Curry for approval. Curry approved wholeheartedly.
Let's begin now, to set out the WC testimony of DPD Chief Jesse Curry, regarding the assassination of JFK and LHO under his watch at the DPD. Here are the 20 main points of his testimony as I read them:
1. Chief Curry was in the motorcade as the driver of the Lead car. In the car with him were Sheriff Bill Decker, and Dallas Secret Service agent, Forrest Sorrels.
2. They followed the motorcade route that the Washington DC Secret Service had approved.
3. Curry claims he had little to do with the route.
4. Curry didn’t see anything unusual about the TSBD when they passed it.
5. When Curry heard the shots, he got on the police radio with Sheriff Decker and they asked for more men to come to the area to help. That area included the railroad yard behind the picket fence, and also the TSBD where people might hide.
6. They did that because they knew that they had to lead JFK's limo to Parkland Hospital in a hurry.
7. Curry stayed closely by Vice President LBJ, and helped to arrange for a Judge to formalize the swearing in of LBJ. Curry attended the swearing in.
8. After the Judge went home, Curry stayed in Love Field talking with Mayor Cabell for maybe an hour, and they watched LBJ's airplane take off for Washington DC.
9. When Curry arrived back at DPD Headquarters, it was about 3:15, and he learned that LHO was already in custody and in the charge of Captain Will Fritz. Curry warmly approved of this.
10. Curry claimed that it is customary to allow the Homicide Captain to decide when to send a prisoner to County Jail.
11. Curry spent the rest of the day fielding the News Media.
12. The News Media demanded to see LHO, so Curry set up a midnight press conference to allow them to photograph LHO for only a few minutes, so they could see that he was not being maltreated.
13. Questions were not allowed, although some reporters did sneak some questions in before LHO was quickly spirited away.
14. All day Saturday Will Fritz kept interrogating Oswald, and wasn’t ready to send him to County Jail.
15. Fritz and Curry finally agreed on Sunday morning as the time to send LHO to County Jail.
16. Curry and Fritz arranged the transfer with Sheriff Bill Decker, the highest supervisor of the Dallas County Jail.
17. Curry and Fritz made detail arrangements very early Sunday morning, and Fritz decided he would escort LHO, rather than ask the Sheriff’s Department to come and get him.
18. Curry hired an armored car for the job, but Fritz refused to use it. So, they decided to use the armored car as a decoy in the convoy.
19. Curry claims that the armored car got in the way, so that Officer Roy Vaughn, who was guarding the Main Street ramp, abandoned his post briefly to direct that traffic. It was at that moment, Curry claims, that Jack Ruby sneaked into the DPD basement and hid behind some newsmen.
20. Curry claims that the transfer almost worked -- but the News Media hopelessly confused the Dallas Police normal procedure.
In my opinion, the lack of detail in this WC testimony is glaring, given the supervisory role of Chief Jesse Curry over the entire Dallas Police Force during a time period that most people regard as one Police blunder after another. I will offer my opinion about the hidden meaning of all these statements in my post next week.