The Roger Craig Story
...ORIGINALLY WRITTEN IN 2012...
We all know someone who has shown great strength and courage in these lives, and these individuals are only more impressive when they have acted courageous and spoken out with such honesty and fearlessness over their actions. That said I’m sure if I mentioned the name Roger Craig most people would say, “Who?” It’s unfortunate, not that everyone should be expected to know of every single remotely significant individual who has ever lived in American history but it’s just sad for someone like me who knows his story and that despite what he sacrificed he looms practically unknown in the history books.
Craig was a motivated and intelligent southerner who by the early 1960s was a young officer with the Dallas Police Department in Texas. He won an officer of the year report despite being one of the youngest officers on the force. He appeared to have a bright future in law enforcement looming ahead of him... until November 22nd, 1963.
With President John F. Kennedy’s visit to Texas in order to improve his standing as a Democratic President in a more conservative southern state his final stopping place was Dallas in the morning of November 22nd. A rainy morning gave way to a sunny latter morning. Huge enthusiastic crowds lined the streets in Dallas as Kennedy rolled through town. It was turning out to be an unexpectedly wonderful day. Then Kennedy’s motorcade arrived in a small portion of southern Dallas known as Dealey Plaza, the location where officer Roger Craig just happened to be located as a member of the police force lining the motorcade route as observers more than anything. Despite recent hostilities towards Kennedy in the south, multiple reports of possible violence against the President on his visit and the fact that only two weeks before a trip to Miami had to be completely rethought when a police informant learned that there were plans to assassinate Kennedy from an “office building with a high-powered rifle”, Kennedy’s protection was cut back (which included officers operating as just observers along the motorcade). Interestingly, as far as the official story goes, a young man named Lee Harvey Oswald would assassinate President Kennedy as he passed through Dealey Plaza from the 6th floor of the building where he worked (coincidence?).
With the officers on the scene functioning mostly as observers and being spread along the route only a few officers were quick to respond to the shooting, Officer Craig being one of the first. Practically every officer on the scene, individuals who were likely the best at detecting where the gunfire came from despite echoes and reverberation off of nearby buildings, rushed towards a hill a short distance down from the Texas School Book Depository where Oswald reportedly shot from. Officially more than ten witnesses claimed to have seen activity up on that floor; too many accounts to say nothing occurred up there. I wholeheartedly believe someone, or more than one person, were up there but they were there as a distraction to allow other real shooters from better locations to shoot and go unseen and I know for a personal fact that it wasn’t Oswald up there. One officer quickly dismounted his bike and ran up this hill, historically known as the “grassy knoll” where he encountered a man with dirty hands who flashed him Secret Service credentials that convinced the officer he had nothing to do with the shooting. This officer later learned there were no Secret Service personnel on the grounds in that area. They were all with the motorcade. This man was obviously an impostor and just happened to be lingering near where the shooting was believed to have come from. Craig also rushed this area. Other than this fake Secret Service man no other suspects, officially, were discovered in the area around the grassy knoll. With the President rushed to nearby Parkland Hospital officers converged on the Dealey Plaza area to investigate what had immediately become the most significant crime scene not only in their Departments history but in American history! And it would just so happen that for practically every intriguing thing that happened at that location in the aftermath investigation Roger Craig happened to be there. While this sounds suspicious and suggests Craig fabricated elements of his story to put himself in the spotlight but Craig never sought spotlight for what he had seen and the only reason much of his story got out was through books written on the assassination in which authors went to him to get his story out. He also is verified either in photographs or by others on location as having been everywhere that he said he was that day.
Officially only three shots were fired as the official investigation focused on proving Oswald’s guilt over conducting an impartial investigation. They practically admitted this repeatedly in their written correspondence. Once member of the group brought together to investigate the case after Oswald was killed, known as the Warren Commission (as it was headed by Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren), was so brazen as to address a dissenting question on the case with the statement, “We are trying to close doors, not open them”. Three empty rifle shells were found on the sixth floor of the Depository so, putting two and two together, the Commission determined Oswald fired three shots from that location before fleeing the location. Their problem was both President Kennedy and Texas Governor John Connally (who sat in front of the President in his limousine) were shot, with Kennedy being struck by at least two different bullets. The original conclusion was that two shoots hit Kennedy and one struck Connally accounting for their wounds. It was then discovered that at least one shot missed the car and wounded a bystander. This left only two shots to wound Kennedy and Connally. This forced the Commission to establish the infamous Single Bullet Theory (more well known as the Magic Bullet Theory). The theory, absolutely essential to defend Oswald’s lone guilt, argued that one bullet wounded both Kennedy and Connolly thus leaving the final bullet to have caused Kennedy’s fatal headshot a few seconds later. There are endless problems with this theory regarding bullet trajectory angles, the angles of Kennedy in regards to Connolly, wound irregularities, lack of damage to the bullet, unaccounted for metal fragments and so on. But if I play the devils advocate and acknowledge one shot missed the car and two others caused all of Kennedy and Connally’s wounds this is all the bullets that could be involved for Oswald, or whoever was on that floor, to have acted alone in killing the President.
This knowledge known, only minutes after the assassination, a handful of witnesses and a Dallas Officer Buddy Walthers discovered a bullet smear next to a manhole cover near where Kennedy was hit. This mark couldn’t have been caused by any of the other three bullets as the angle didn’t work. This mark was proof that at least a fourth bullet was fired. Craig arrived on the scene and not only encountered this mark but also claimed there was another bullet in the grass near the street. A photograph was captured with Officer Walthers and an unknown man reaching into the grass to pick the bullet up. This smear and extra bullet were quickly suppressed in the workings of the Warren Commission as it suggested another shooter must’ve been involved. But Craig was right there to confirm that this did occur, alone disproving the Commission’s conclusion that only three shots were fired. It’s worthy to note that Officer Walthers, who confirmed this discovery as well as being the officer who discovered that one shot had missed and hit a bystander (throwing more complications into the working of the governments investigation), was killed not long after the assassination when it appears while on the job he was led into a ambush and gunned down in a motel room. He is one of many witnesses who conveniently died in the three or so years following the assassination.
Nearly an hour after the assassination Craig was among the many officers who had gradually had their focus turned to the Book Depository. As the officers searched they were quickly led to the sixth floor as witnesses had said the shooting came from a high up floor in the building (the Depository was only seven stories tall) and the first officer who reported to the building claimed he heard shots from high up in the building. This officer also encountered Oswald on the second floor of the building likely 60 or so seconds after the shooting (even though the Warren Commission stretched it out to 90 seconds using totally invalid time tests). When one looks at what Oswald would have had to do between his last shot and making it down to the second floor where he was seen it simply wasn’t possible for him to make it down there so quick. He was also found to be calm and collected even though he’d reportedly just shot the President and sprinted down four flights of stairs. As these officers focused their search on the sixth floor these three spent rifle shells were found under a half open window.
Craig was the second officer on the scene when the shells were discovered and thus saw the shells as they were originally discovered. Craig said the shells were all lined up one by one in a line like they had been placed there together. Officially, and in police photographs taken a little while later, these shells were more scattered near the window sill. But this initial account from Craig, despite being more likely the accurate one, is extremely important and begs the question of why the official assortment of these shells would differ so greatly from what he saw. As I believe, this location was not an assassins lair, but rather was a location to be used as a distraction, firing on the President, getting the onlookers’ attention and allowing a real gunman (or gunmen) to crack off a shot from a better angle. Thus three shells were left there intentionally to be discovered and put the head on Oswald, who worked in the building. Now Craig’s account of the shells stacked right next to each other suggests a pattern of shells staged there. More definitively, the official murder weapon, an Italian-made 6.5 mm Mannlicher-Carcano, “officially” tied to belonging to Oswald (which it didn’t, but that’ll take forever to discuss if I start chatting about it now), which was also discovered between some boxes on the sixth floor, is a cheap, shoddy weapon. They were manufactured in bulk during World War II to help Italy in their war effort. They were made to work briefly and to be discarded. They were nicknamed “The Humanitarian Weapon” because they were so poorly constructed that they seldom ever hit their target (and yet Oswald, who lacked any strong weapons experience and who was known as a poor shot while in the Marines, nailed a moving away target perfectly two out of three shots from a cramped corner with his gun mounted on a few crooked boxes... nothing suspicious about that). As such a shoddy weapon, after a round was fired from such a rifle, when the bolt was worked and the next round was loaded in, the spent shells from these types of guns would eject from the gun erratically to the right. Such abrupt ejection patterns make it impossible for three shells to land perfectly side by side. The official pattern of shells scattered around better matched with the type of gun used. So conveniently Craig’s account was dismissed and practically regarded as non-existent to the Commission in their efforts.
But what’s most significant about what Craig saw that day came before he ventured into the Book Depository. Approximately ten minutes after the shooting, while he was assisting with the investigation, he was abruptly distracted by the abrupt clamor of a car horn. He quickly turned to react to the sound, which came from a Nash Rambler station wagon near the Book Depository. When he glances over he saw an individual flee from the backside of the Depository and rush to the car. Seeing someone rushing to a car to leave the scene, Craig immediately suspected this individual might have been involved in the shooting. However, due to the crowds of people, Craig could only watch as the man dived into the station wagon, being driven by a dark-colored, possibly Latin individual, before it sped off. This incident was verified by at least seven other witnesses, all of which had the same perspective as Craig did. But being the first to report it, and being an officer on the scene, the incident is primarily regarded as being witnessed just by him. What’s of significance, and again the others on the scene said the same, is that Craig got a good look at the fleeing man. Later that evening, upon returning to the police station, Craig got a glimpse of this man that he saw again. This man was sitting in the Police Chief’s office being interrogated. This man was Lee Harvey Oswald, who officially had shot the President and fled from the Depository three minutes after the assassination.
The Warren Commission took to great lengths to defend the story that Oswald fled the Depository, boarded a city bus which he deboarded shortly after before taking a taxi cab out to his rooming house in nearby Oak Cliff. One must wonder why the Commission would go to such lengths to argue against Craig’s story which had several witnessed to defend it while they only had one shaky and very questionable account of a woman who was Oswald’s landlady for a week to argue for his bus/cab venture. What made Craig’s account problematic is that it argued that Oswald had at least one accomplice, this man who picked him up. The Commission was trying to argue that Oswald had acted alone. Acknowledging one accomplice would have forced authorities to find this accomplice and whole knows how many skeletons would have come stumbling out of the closet had that occurred. Once again, it flew in the face of the official story to give Craig’s account any validity.
In the aftermath, while Oswald was being interrogated, Craig was presented to him for verification. After Craig stated he saw Oswald flee the building in a Rambler station wagon, surprisingly, Oswald verified the story inasmuch as he said the Rambler belonged to Ruth Paine, a woman with whom his wife had been living with. Later on, according to noted taken by the police, Oswald changed his tone completely and provided this story about boarding a bus and then leaving it when it got stranded in the chaotic traffic of the assassinations aftermath and took a cab to the rooming house where he lived. Officially he arrived at his rooming house at 1:00 pm, leaving at 1:03 pm, killing Dallas officer J.D. Tippit at 1:16 pm before Oswald fled into a movie theatre where he apparently hid until police arrived and arrested him around 1:55 pm. But there are problems here. One, if Oswald took a bus and then a cab there is no way he could have made it home by 1:00 pm, but his landlady saw him arrive there so it’s known he arrived at this time. However, had he caught a ride right after the assassination he could’ve easily made it home by this time. Also, Oswald officially shot officer Tippit at 1:16 pm, presumably in an effort to maintain his freedom after being encountered by an officer. But all eyewitness accounts show Tippit was shot around 1:06-1:07 giving Oswald a max of four minutes to walk almost a mile (something nearly impossible for Olympic athletes!). Once again he didn’t have enough time, but if he had a ride he could’ve made it. However the Commission needed to maintain he did everything alone and everyone who saw Tippit’s killer said he not only was walking, but also coming from the east while Oswald’s rooming house was to the northwest of the killing location. There’s lots of other arguments and evidence that Oswald wasn’t the killer, one of which being the main concessions employee at the theatre Oswald supposedly hid in. In his account he said Oswald entered between 1:00 pm and 1:07 pm. Once again, Oswald could’ve only made it this far by 1:07 pm if he had a ride, but either way it has him in the theatre before or at the time Tippit was shot.
Reportedly Oswald was seen fleeing into the theatre and the police were reported when a nearby shoe store owner claimed to have seen the man who hid momentarily in his store when police drove by (arising his suspicion). The official story argues that the shoe store owner saw this man and that he was clearly seen rushing into the theatre to hide. However, if this were the case then why did Oswald not officially arrive there for some 30 minutes after the concession employee saw him arrive. And furthermore, the idea that there was a string of people who saw Oswald and thus easily established a chain of motion by Oswald from the shoe store to the seat he was in when police arrived and arrested him. But this is a total myth. The fact of the matter is after this man in the shoe store left it was more presumed that he fled into the theatre and snuck up a side staircase to where he sat. The only strong account of when Oswald entered says he entered by 1:07 pm. Nothing really washes for Oswald having fled to the theatre to hide without transportation of some kind, thus adding more circumstantial credence to Officer Craig’s notion that Oswald hitched a ride out of Dealey Plaza.
Again, in the years following the assassination, many researchers learned of what Craig had seen and he became one of the most prominent witnesses to the case and he had no problem being honest about what he had seen. However, ramifications for what he had seen were quick to occur. Not long after the assassination this once beloved local officer gradually became ostracized by his fellow officers, many of which were crooked cops to some degree or another. He was practically forced out of the department only a couple years after the assassination but even years later he felt what he did was right and was strong in his conviction that he was doing nothing wrong despite the cold shoulders placed against him.
But this was only the beginning of Craig’s post assassination torment. In the years after the assassination Craig’s life would be threatened numerous times. While meeting with a colleague of his Craig was almost shot to death, the bullet just barely missing him. Craig noticed his colleague went to the ground the moment before the gunfire, convincing Craig that he had been led there for an ambush. Craig also narrowly escaped death when an explosive of some kind had been placed in his car. When he started it the engine block practically exploded. But Craig’s closest brush with death was while on a car ride he turned a corner to find a vehicle parked sideways in the middle of the roadway. This forced Craig off the road wherein he tumbled end over end down a hill rolling some hundred feet to the ground below. He suffered several injuries to his back, arms and legs leaving him next to completely disabled. Jobless, Craig’s story was finally revealed in the 1970s when an interview conducted with him was made into a documentary film titled “Two Men in Dallas”. His story was finally out. But only a short while later, in 1975, Craig was found shot to death in his home. Officially it was reported as a suicide. This has been much maligned in the years since his death but, despite the attempts on his life, I tend to believe in this story of suicide. Despite his soft-spoken and courteous demeanor, but 1975 he was a disabled man with practically no friends left over and no real job prospects. The dangers he faced had become too much for his family to handle and his wife had recently left him. Beyond this, the medication he took for his various injuries caused severe depression, something he likely didn’t need any assistance in feeling. Sadly he had lots of reasons to ultimately take his own life.
Whatever one chooses to believe, the story of Roger Craig is an incredibly sad one and an example as to why most people who know too much tend to keep quiet about what they see. Unfortunately those with great power have the power to do as they please and if anyone wants to stand up against them they often have the power to have those people “taken care of”. Craig certainly wasn’t the first witness in regards to the Kennedy assassination to die mysteriously. But he was one of the most significant considering what he saw and always maintained. Despite the many attempts on his life he never held back or changed his story for the sake of safety. This, coupled with the verification for what he saw, it’s astounding people still thing Craig fabricated much of what he saw for attention. It is a very sad reminder of what happens when one stands alone for the truth. But we all must remember that if many of us stand up together we are not so easily dealt with. For all he went through and for his many contributions to bringing out the truth in the case of this assassination, Roger Craig deserves to be better known than he is as a lost footnote in history.
We all know someone who has shown great strength and courage in these lives, and these individuals are only more impressive when they have acted courageous and spoken out with such honesty and fearlessness over their actions. That said I’m sure if I mentioned the name Roger Craig most people would say, “Who?” It’s unfortunate, not that everyone should be expected to know of every single remotely significant individual who has ever lived in American history but it’s just sad for someone like me who knows his story and that despite what he sacrificed he looms practically unknown in the history books.
Craig was a motivated and intelligent southerner who by the early 1960s was a young officer with the Dallas Police Department in Texas. He won an officer of the year report despite being one of the youngest officers on the force. He appeared to have a bright future in law enforcement looming ahead of him... until November 22nd, 1963.
With President John F. Kennedy’s visit to Texas in order to improve his standing as a Democratic President in a more conservative southern state his final stopping place was Dallas in the morning of November 22nd. A rainy morning gave way to a sunny latter morning. Huge enthusiastic crowds lined the streets in Dallas as Kennedy rolled through town. It was turning out to be an unexpectedly wonderful day. Then Kennedy’s motorcade arrived in a small portion of southern Dallas known as Dealey Plaza, the location where officer Roger Craig just happened to be located as a member of the police force lining the motorcade route as observers more than anything. Despite recent hostilities towards Kennedy in the south, multiple reports of possible violence against the President on his visit and the fact that only two weeks before a trip to Miami had to be completely rethought when a police informant learned that there were plans to assassinate Kennedy from an “office building with a high-powered rifle”, Kennedy’s protection was cut back (which included officers operating as just observers along the motorcade). Interestingly, as far as the official story goes, a young man named Lee Harvey Oswald would assassinate President Kennedy as he passed through Dealey Plaza from the 6th floor of the building where he worked (coincidence?).
With the officers on the scene functioning mostly as observers and being spread along the route only a few officers were quick to respond to the shooting, Officer Craig being one of the first. Practically every officer on the scene, individuals who were likely the best at detecting where the gunfire came from despite echoes and reverberation off of nearby buildings, rushed towards a hill a short distance down from the Texas School Book Depository where Oswald reportedly shot from. Officially more than ten witnesses claimed to have seen activity up on that floor; too many accounts to say nothing occurred up there. I wholeheartedly believe someone, or more than one person, were up there but they were there as a distraction to allow other real shooters from better locations to shoot and go unseen and I know for a personal fact that it wasn’t Oswald up there. One officer quickly dismounted his bike and ran up this hill, historically known as the “grassy knoll” where he encountered a man with dirty hands who flashed him Secret Service credentials that convinced the officer he had nothing to do with the shooting. This officer later learned there were no Secret Service personnel on the grounds in that area. They were all with the motorcade. This man was obviously an impostor and just happened to be lingering near where the shooting was believed to have come from. Craig also rushed this area. Other than this fake Secret Service man no other suspects, officially, were discovered in the area around the grassy knoll. With the President rushed to nearby Parkland Hospital officers converged on the Dealey Plaza area to investigate what had immediately become the most significant crime scene not only in their Departments history but in American history! And it would just so happen that for practically every intriguing thing that happened at that location in the aftermath investigation Roger Craig happened to be there. While this sounds suspicious and suggests Craig fabricated elements of his story to put himself in the spotlight but Craig never sought spotlight for what he had seen and the only reason much of his story got out was through books written on the assassination in which authors went to him to get his story out. He also is verified either in photographs or by others on location as having been everywhere that he said he was that day.
Officially only three shots were fired as the official investigation focused on proving Oswald’s guilt over conducting an impartial investigation. They practically admitted this repeatedly in their written correspondence. Once member of the group brought together to investigate the case after Oswald was killed, known as the Warren Commission (as it was headed by Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren), was so brazen as to address a dissenting question on the case with the statement, “We are trying to close doors, not open them”. Three empty rifle shells were found on the sixth floor of the Depository so, putting two and two together, the Commission determined Oswald fired three shots from that location before fleeing the location. Their problem was both President Kennedy and Texas Governor John Connally (who sat in front of the President in his limousine) were shot, with Kennedy being struck by at least two different bullets. The original conclusion was that two shoots hit Kennedy and one struck Connally accounting for their wounds. It was then discovered that at least one shot missed the car and wounded a bystander. This left only two shots to wound Kennedy and Connally. This forced the Commission to establish the infamous Single Bullet Theory (more well known as the Magic Bullet Theory). The theory, absolutely essential to defend Oswald’s lone guilt, argued that one bullet wounded both Kennedy and Connolly thus leaving the final bullet to have caused Kennedy’s fatal headshot a few seconds later. There are endless problems with this theory regarding bullet trajectory angles, the angles of Kennedy in regards to Connolly, wound irregularities, lack of damage to the bullet, unaccounted for metal fragments and so on. But if I play the devils advocate and acknowledge one shot missed the car and two others caused all of Kennedy and Connally’s wounds this is all the bullets that could be involved for Oswald, or whoever was on that floor, to have acted alone in killing the President.
This knowledge known, only minutes after the assassination, a handful of witnesses and a Dallas Officer Buddy Walthers discovered a bullet smear next to a manhole cover near where Kennedy was hit. This mark couldn’t have been caused by any of the other three bullets as the angle didn’t work. This mark was proof that at least a fourth bullet was fired. Craig arrived on the scene and not only encountered this mark but also claimed there was another bullet in the grass near the street. A photograph was captured with Officer Walthers and an unknown man reaching into the grass to pick the bullet up. This smear and extra bullet were quickly suppressed in the workings of the Warren Commission as it suggested another shooter must’ve been involved. But Craig was right there to confirm that this did occur, alone disproving the Commission’s conclusion that only three shots were fired. It’s worthy to note that Officer Walthers, who confirmed this discovery as well as being the officer who discovered that one shot had missed and hit a bystander (throwing more complications into the working of the governments investigation), was killed not long after the assassination when it appears while on the job he was led into a ambush and gunned down in a motel room. He is one of many witnesses who conveniently died in the three or so years following the assassination.
Nearly an hour after the assassination Craig was among the many officers who had gradually had their focus turned to the Book Depository. As the officers searched they were quickly led to the sixth floor as witnesses had said the shooting came from a high up floor in the building (the Depository was only seven stories tall) and the first officer who reported to the building claimed he heard shots from high up in the building. This officer also encountered Oswald on the second floor of the building likely 60 or so seconds after the shooting (even though the Warren Commission stretched it out to 90 seconds using totally invalid time tests). When one looks at what Oswald would have had to do between his last shot and making it down to the second floor where he was seen it simply wasn’t possible for him to make it down there so quick. He was also found to be calm and collected even though he’d reportedly just shot the President and sprinted down four flights of stairs. As these officers focused their search on the sixth floor these three spent rifle shells were found under a half open window.
Craig was the second officer on the scene when the shells were discovered and thus saw the shells as they were originally discovered. Craig said the shells were all lined up one by one in a line like they had been placed there together. Officially, and in police photographs taken a little while later, these shells were more scattered near the window sill. But this initial account from Craig, despite being more likely the accurate one, is extremely important and begs the question of why the official assortment of these shells would differ so greatly from what he saw. As I believe, this location was not an assassins lair, but rather was a location to be used as a distraction, firing on the President, getting the onlookers’ attention and allowing a real gunman (or gunmen) to crack off a shot from a better angle. Thus three shells were left there intentionally to be discovered and put the head on Oswald, who worked in the building. Now Craig’s account of the shells stacked right next to each other suggests a pattern of shells staged there. More definitively, the official murder weapon, an Italian-made 6.5 mm Mannlicher-Carcano, “officially” tied to belonging to Oswald (which it didn’t, but that’ll take forever to discuss if I start chatting about it now), which was also discovered between some boxes on the sixth floor, is a cheap, shoddy weapon. They were manufactured in bulk during World War II to help Italy in their war effort. They were made to work briefly and to be discarded. They were nicknamed “The Humanitarian Weapon” because they were so poorly constructed that they seldom ever hit their target (and yet Oswald, who lacked any strong weapons experience and who was known as a poor shot while in the Marines, nailed a moving away target perfectly two out of three shots from a cramped corner with his gun mounted on a few crooked boxes... nothing suspicious about that). As such a shoddy weapon, after a round was fired from such a rifle, when the bolt was worked and the next round was loaded in, the spent shells from these types of guns would eject from the gun erratically to the right. Such abrupt ejection patterns make it impossible for three shells to land perfectly side by side. The official pattern of shells scattered around better matched with the type of gun used. So conveniently Craig’s account was dismissed and practically regarded as non-existent to the Commission in their efforts.
But what’s most significant about what Craig saw that day came before he ventured into the Book Depository. Approximately ten minutes after the shooting, while he was assisting with the investigation, he was abruptly distracted by the abrupt clamor of a car horn. He quickly turned to react to the sound, which came from a Nash Rambler station wagon near the Book Depository. When he glances over he saw an individual flee from the backside of the Depository and rush to the car. Seeing someone rushing to a car to leave the scene, Craig immediately suspected this individual might have been involved in the shooting. However, due to the crowds of people, Craig could only watch as the man dived into the station wagon, being driven by a dark-colored, possibly Latin individual, before it sped off. This incident was verified by at least seven other witnesses, all of which had the same perspective as Craig did. But being the first to report it, and being an officer on the scene, the incident is primarily regarded as being witnessed just by him. What’s of significance, and again the others on the scene said the same, is that Craig got a good look at the fleeing man. Later that evening, upon returning to the police station, Craig got a glimpse of this man that he saw again. This man was sitting in the Police Chief’s office being interrogated. This man was Lee Harvey Oswald, who officially had shot the President and fled from the Depository three minutes after the assassination.
The Warren Commission took to great lengths to defend the story that Oswald fled the Depository, boarded a city bus which he deboarded shortly after before taking a taxi cab out to his rooming house in nearby Oak Cliff. One must wonder why the Commission would go to such lengths to argue against Craig’s story which had several witnessed to defend it while they only had one shaky and very questionable account of a woman who was Oswald’s landlady for a week to argue for his bus/cab venture. What made Craig’s account problematic is that it argued that Oswald had at least one accomplice, this man who picked him up. The Commission was trying to argue that Oswald had acted alone. Acknowledging one accomplice would have forced authorities to find this accomplice and whole knows how many skeletons would have come stumbling out of the closet had that occurred. Once again, it flew in the face of the official story to give Craig’s account any validity.
In the aftermath, while Oswald was being interrogated, Craig was presented to him for verification. After Craig stated he saw Oswald flee the building in a Rambler station wagon, surprisingly, Oswald verified the story inasmuch as he said the Rambler belonged to Ruth Paine, a woman with whom his wife had been living with. Later on, according to noted taken by the police, Oswald changed his tone completely and provided this story about boarding a bus and then leaving it when it got stranded in the chaotic traffic of the assassinations aftermath and took a cab to the rooming house where he lived. Officially he arrived at his rooming house at 1:00 pm, leaving at 1:03 pm, killing Dallas officer J.D. Tippit at 1:16 pm before Oswald fled into a movie theatre where he apparently hid until police arrived and arrested him around 1:55 pm. But there are problems here. One, if Oswald took a bus and then a cab there is no way he could have made it home by 1:00 pm, but his landlady saw him arrive there so it’s known he arrived at this time. However, had he caught a ride right after the assassination he could’ve easily made it home by this time. Also, Oswald officially shot officer Tippit at 1:16 pm, presumably in an effort to maintain his freedom after being encountered by an officer. But all eyewitness accounts show Tippit was shot around 1:06-1:07 giving Oswald a max of four minutes to walk almost a mile (something nearly impossible for Olympic athletes!). Once again he didn’t have enough time, but if he had a ride he could’ve made it. However the Commission needed to maintain he did everything alone and everyone who saw Tippit’s killer said he not only was walking, but also coming from the east while Oswald’s rooming house was to the northwest of the killing location. There’s lots of other arguments and evidence that Oswald wasn’t the killer, one of which being the main concessions employee at the theatre Oswald supposedly hid in. In his account he said Oswald entered between 1:00 pm and 1:07 pm. Once again, Oswald could’ve only made it this far by 1:07 pm if he had a ride, but either way it has him in the theatre before or at the time Tippit was shot.
Reportedly Oswald was seen fleeing into the theatre and the police were reported when a nearby shoe store owner claimed to have seen the man who hid momentarily in his store when police drove by (arising his suspicion). The official story argues that the shoe store owner saw this man and that he was clearly seen rushing into the theatre to hide. However, if this were the case then why did Oswald not officially arrive there for some 30 minutes after the concession employee saw him arrive. And furthermore, the idea that there was a string of people who saw Oswald and thus easily established a chain of motion by Oswald from the shoe store to the seat he was in when police arrived and arrested him. But this is a total myth. The fact of the matter is after this man in the shoe store left it was more presumed that he fled into the theatre and snuck up a side staircase to where he sat. The only strong account of when Oswald entered says he entered by 1:07 pm. Nothing really washes for Oswald having fled to the theatre to hide without transportation of some kind, thus adding more circumstantial credence to Officer Craig’s notion that Oswald hitched a ride out of Dealey Plaza.
Again, in the years following the assassination, many researchers learned of what Craig had seen and he became one of the most prominent witnesses to the case and he had no problem being honest about what he had seen. However, ramifications for what he had seen were quick to occur. Not long after the assassination this once beloved local officer gradually became ostracized by his fellow officers, many of which were crooked cops to some degree or another. He was practically forced out of the department only a couple years after the assassination but even years later he felt what he did was right and was strong in his conviction that he was doing nothing wrong despite the cold shoulders placed against him.
But this was only the beginning of Craig’s post assassination torment. In the years after the assassination Craig’s life would be threatened numerous times. While meeting with a colleague of his Craig was almost shot to death, the bullet just barely missing him. Craig noticed his colleague went to the ground the moment before the gunfire, convincing Craig that he had been led there for an ambush. Craig also narrowly escaped death when an explosive of some kind had been placed in his car. When he started it the engine block practically exploded. But Craig’s closest brush with death was while on a car ride he turned a corner to find a vehicle parked sideways in the middle of the roadway. This forced Craig off the road wherein he tumbled end over end down a hill rolling some hundred feet to the ground below. He suffered several injuries to his back, arms and legs leaving him next to completely disabled. Jobless, Craig’s story was finally revealed in the 1970s when an interview conducted with him was made into a documentary film titled “Two Men in Dallas”. His story was finally out. But only a short while later, in 1975, Craig was found shot to death in his home. Officially it was reported as a suicide. This has been much maligned in the years since his death but, despite the attempts on his life, I tend to believe in this story of suicide. Despite his soft-spoken and courteous demeanor, but 1975 he was a disabled man with practically no friends left over and no real job prospects. The dangers he faced had become too much for his family to handle and his wife had recently left him. Beyond this, the medication he took for his various injuries caused severe depression, something he likely didn’t need any assistance in feeling. Sadly he had lots of reasons to ultimately take his own life.
Whatever one chooses to believe, the story of Roger Craig is an incredibly sad one and an example as to why most people who know too much tend to keep quiet about what they see. Unfortunately those with great power have the power to do as they please and if anyone wants to stand up against them they often have the power to have those people “taken care of”. Craig certainly wasn’t the first witness in regards to the Kennedy assassination to die mysteriously. But he was one of the most significant considering what he saw and always maintained. Despite the many attempts on his life he never held back or changed his story for the sake of safety. This, coupled with the verification for what he saw, it’s astounding people still thing Craig fabricated much of what he saw for attention. It is a very sad reminder of what happens when one stands alone for the truth. But we all must remember that if many of us stand up together we are not so easily dealt with. For all he went through and for his many contributions to bringing out the truth in the case of this assassination, Roger Craig deserves to be better known than he is as a lost footnote in history.
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