The taxicab ride.—William Whaley, a taxicab driver, told his employer on Saturday morning, November 23, that he recognized Oswald from a newspaper photograph as a man whom he had driven to the Oak Cliff area the day before.[C4-455] Notified of Whaley’s statement, the police brought him to the police station that afternoon. He was taken to the lineup room where, according to Whaley, five young teenagers, all handcuffed together, were displayed with Oswald.[C4-456] He testified that Oswald looked older than the other boys.[C4-457] The police asked him whether he could pick out his passenger from the lineup. Whaley picked Oswald. He said,
* * * you could have picked him out without identifying him by just listening to him because he was bawling out the policeman, telling them it wasn’t right to put him in line with these teenagers and all of that and they asked me which one and I told them. It was him all right, the same man.
* * * * *
He showed no respect for the policemen, he told them what he thought about them. They knew what they were doing and they were trying to railroad him and he wanted his lawyer.[C4-458]
Whaley believes that Oswald’s conduct did not aid him in his identification “because I knew he was the right one as soon as I saw him.”[C4-459]
Whaley’s memory of the lineup is inaccurate. There were four men altogether, not six men, in the lineup with Oswald.[C4-460] Whaley said that Oswald was the man under No. 2.[C4-461] Actually Oswald was under No. 3. Only two of the men in the lineup with Oswald were teenagers: John T. Horn, aged 18, was No. 1; David Knapp, aged 18, was No. 2; Lee Oswald was No. 3; and Daniel Lujan, aged 26, was No. 4.[C4-462]
When he first testified before the Commission, Whaley displayed a trip manifest[C4-463] which showed a 12 o’clock trip from Travis Hotel to the Continental bus station, unloaded at 12:15 p.m., a 12:15 p.m. pickup at Continental to Greyhound, unloaded at 12:30 p.m., and a pickup from Greyhound (bus station) at 12:30 p.m., unloaded at 500 North Beckley at 12:45 p.m. Whaley testified that he did not keep an accurate time record of his trips but recorded them by the quarter hour, and that sometimes he made his entry right after a trip while at other times he waited to record three or four trips.[C4-464] As he unloaded his Continental bus station passenger in front of Greyhound, he started to get out to buy a package of cigarettes.[C4-465] He saw a man walking south on Lamar from Commerce. The man was dressed in faded blue color khaki work clothes, a brown shirt, and some kind of work jacket that almost matched his pants.[C4-466] The man asked, “May I have the cab?”, and got into the front seat.[C4-467] Whaley described the ensuing events as follows:
And about that time an old lady, I think she was an old lady, I don’t remember nothing but her sticking her head down past him in the door and said, “Driver, will you call me a cab down here?”
She had seen him get this cab and she wanted one, too, and he opened the door a little bit like he was going to get out and he said, “I will let you have this one,” and she says, “No, the driver can call me one.”
* * * * *
* * * I asked him where he wanted to go. And he said, “500 North Beckley.”
Well, I started up, I started to that address, and the police cars, the sirens was going, running crisscrossing everywhere, just a big uproar in that end of town and I said, “What the hell. I wonder what the hell is the uproar?”
And he never said anything. So I figured he was one of these people that don’t like to talk so I never said any more to him.
But when I got pretty close to 500 block at Neches and North Beckley which is the 500 block, he said, “This will do fine,” and I pulled over to the curb right there. He gave me a dollar bill, the trip was 95 cents. He gave me a dollar bill and didn’t say anything, just got out and closed the door and walked around the front of the cab over to the other side of the street [east side of the street]. Of course, the traffic was moving through there and I put it in gear and moved on, that is the last I saw of him.[C4-468]
Whaley was somewhat imprecise as to where he unloaded his passenger. He marked what he thought was the intersection of Neches and Beckley on a map of Dallas with a large “X.”[C4-469] He said, “Yes, sir; that is right, because that is the 500 block of North Beckley.”[C4-470] However, Neches and Beckley do not intersect. Neches is within one-half block of the roominghouse at 1026 North Beckley where Oswald was living. The 500 block of North Beckley is five blocks south of the roominghouse.[C4-471]
After a review of these inconsistencies in his testimony before the Commission, Whaley was interviewed again in Dallas. The route of the taxicab was retraced under the direction of Whaley.[C4-472] He directed the driver of the car to a point 20 feet north of the northwest corner of the intersection of Beckley and Neely, the point at which he said his passenger alighted.[C4-473] This was the 700 block of North Beckley.[C4-474] The elapsed time of the reconstructed run from the Greyhound Bus Station to Neely and Beckley was 5 minutes and 30 seconds by stopwatch.[C4-475] The walk from Beckley and Neely to 1026 North Beckley was timed by Commission counsel at 5 minutes and 45 seconds.[C4-476]
Whaley testified that Oswald was wearing either the gray zippered jacket or the heavy blue jacket.[C4-477] He was in error, however. Oswald could not possibly have been wearing the blue jacket during the trip with Whaley, since it was found in the “domino” room of the Depository late in November.[C4-478] Moreover, Mrs. Bledsoe saw Oswald in the bus without a jacket and wearing a shirt with a hole at the elbow.[C4-479] On the other hand, Whaley identified Commission Exhibit No. 150 (the shirt taken from Oswald upon arrest) as the shirt his passenger was wearing.[C4-480] He also stated he saw a silver identification bracelet on his passenger’s left wrist.[C4-481] Oswald was wearing such a bracelet when he was arrested.[C4-482]
On November 22, Oswald told Captain Fritz that he rode a bus to a stop near his home and then walked to his roominghouse.[C4-483] When queried the following morning concerning a bus transfer found in his possession at the time of his arrest, he admitted receiving it.[C4-484] And when interrogated about a cab ride, Oswald also admitted that he left the slow-moving bus and took a cab to his roominghouse.[C4-485]