Chris Kyle & JFK


Whether or not every human being is connected by no more than six degrees of separation, I'm continually fascinated by the odd, weird and occasionally wonderful ways we seem to be related to each other. This being the anniversary of John F. Kennedy's death, I was reminded of my own very weak - very, very, very weak - connection to the event.

It came about this year, after the tragedy of Chris Kyle's murder. Stepping in to work on American Gun, I wanted to talk to some old-time police officers who swore by the .38 Special.* A friend put me in touch with a man who'd carried the gun for years and years - Jim Leavelle.

The same man who was walking Lee Harvey Oswald out of the police station when Jack Ruby appeared.

Chris had a lot of friends in the Dallas police department, and I know he heard the story of that day more than a few times. Here's the account from American Gun, in Chris's voice:

 
I started this chapter with a presidential assassination. It’s hard for a boy from Dallas to do that without thinking of Lee Harvey Oswald and that awful day back in 1963 when John F. Kennedy was shot down here. There are still plenty of folks around who were there and remember what all happened.

One of them is Jim Leavelle, who was walking Oswald down the ramp of the garage under police headquarters two days later when Jack Ruby shot him.

Jim, a friend of a friend, was a Dallas police officer for going on twenty-six years. If you’ve ever studied the JFK assassination, or even spent a bit of time looking at the photos, you’ve seen him at Oswald’s right in the light suit on the garage ramp as they walk down to take Oswald to court. Just as they come into view in the famous TV footage, Ruby ducks past an army of reporters and policemen. Leavelle starts to yank Oswald toward him out of the way, but Ruby’s too close. He fires into Oswald’s middle, then gets gang tackled.

Leavelle says he spotted Ruby’s pistol in the half-second after Ruby ducked around one of the other officers near the car. The retired officer is often asked by people why he didn’t shoot Ruby.

“It just happens so fast,” he tells them. “It always does. Sometimes you don’t have time to draw. You just react. That’s all you can do.”

That’s some hard-earned experience talking there. Training helps, good weapons help, but nothing beats fate, or dumb luck.

Leavelle was in a bunch of close scrapes over his career. He packed a number of weapons – a lot of .38s in just about every barrel length, a .45 Colt, a .38 Super, a .357 that he thought was a bit too heavy for an everyday carry. The day he escorted Oswald, he had two Colt .45s with him, but never had the chance to use them.

Ruby, by the way, killed Oswald with a .38 Special.

* I might have used my uncle, a former NYC policeman, but that seemed a little too close to nepotism, or maybe nephewism . ..