The running commentary on the investigation by the police inevitably carried with it the disclosure of many details that proved to be erroneous. In their efforts to keep the public abreast of the investigation, the police reported hearsay items and unverified leads; further investigation proved many of these to be incorrect or inaccurate. For example, the rifle found on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository Building was initially identified as a Mauser 7.65 rather than a Mannlicher-Carcano 6.5 because a deputy constable who was one of the first to see it thought it looked like a Mauser. He neither handled the weapon nor saw it at close range.[C5-228]
Police sources were also responsible for the mistaken notion that the chicken bones found on the sixth floor were the remains of Oswald’s lunch. They had in fact been left by another employee who ate his lunch there at least 15 minutes before the assassination.[C5-229] Curry repeated the erroneous report that a Negro had picked up Oswald near the scene of the assassination and driven him across town.[C5-230] It was also reported that the map found in Oswald’s room contained a marked route of the Presidential motorcade when it actually contained markings of places where Oswald may have applied for jobs, including, of course, the Texas School Book Depository.[C5-231]
Concern about the effects of the unlimited disclosures was being voiced by Saturday morning. According to District Attorney Wade, he received calls from lawyers in Dallas and elsewhere expressing concern about providing an attorney for Oswald and about the amount of information being given to the press by the police and the district attorney.[C5-232] Curry continued to answer questions on television and radio during the remainder of the day and Sunday morning.[C5-233]
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover became concerned because “almost as soon as * * * [FBI Laboratory reports] would reach the Dallas Police Department, the chief of police or one of the representatives of the department would go on TV or radio and relate findings of the FBI, giving information such as the identification of the gun and other items of physical evidence.”[C5-234] On Sunday, after Oswald was shot, Hoover dispatched a personal message to Curry requesting him “not to go on the air any more until this case * * * [is] resolved.” Hoover testified later that Curry agreed not to make any more statements.[C5-235]
The shooting of Oswald shocked the Dallas police, and after the interviews that immediately followed the shooting they were disposed to remain silent. Chief Curry made only one more television appearance after the shooting. At 1:30 p.m., he descended to the assembly room where, tersely and grimly, he announced Oswald’s death. He refused to answer any of the questions shouted at him by the persistent reporters, concluding the conference in less than a minute.[C5-236]
District Attorney Wade also held one more press conference. Before doing so on Sunday evening, he returned once more to the police station and held a meeting with “all the brass” except Curry. Wade told them that “people are saying * * * you had the wrong man and you all were the one who killed him or let him out here to have him killed intentionally.” Wade told the police that “somebody ought to go out in television and lay out the evidence that you had on Oswald, and tell them everything.” He sat down and listed from memory items of evidence in the case against Oswald. According to Wade, Chief Curry refused to make any statements because he had told an FBI inspector that he would say no more. The police refused to furnish Wade with additional details of the case.[C5-237]
Wade nonetheless proceeded to hold a lengthy formal press conference that evening, in which he attempted to list all of the evidence that had been accumulated at that point tending to establish Oswald as the assassin of President Kennedy. Unfortunately, at that time, as he subsequently testified, he lacked a thorough grasp of the evidence and made a number of errors.[C5-238] He stated that Oswald had told a woman on a bus that the President had been killed, an error apparently caused by the busdriver having confused Oswald with another passenger who was on the bus after Oswald had left. Wade also repeated the error about Oswald’s having a map marked with the route of the motorcade. He told reporters that Oswald’s description and name “went out by the police to look for him.”[C5-239] The police never mentioned Oswald’s name in their broadcast descriptions before his arrest.[C5-240]
Wade was innocent of one error imputed to him since November 24. The published transcript of part of the press conference furnished to newspapers by the Associated Press represented Wade as having identified the cabdriver who took Oswald to North Beckley Avenue after the shooting, as one named “Darryl Click.” The transcript as it appeared in the New York Times and the Washington Post of November 26, reads:
A. [Wade] a lady. He then—the bus, he asked the bus driver to stop, got off at a stop, caught a taxicab driver, Darryl Click. I don’t have his exact place—and went to his home in Oak Cliff, changed his clothes hurriedly, and left.[C5-241]
The correct transcript of the press conference, taken from an audio tape supplied by station WBAP, Fort Worth, is as follows: