Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy

Oswald’s Movements After Depository

According to the timeline reconstruction the Commission found most credible, Oswald left the Depository approximately 3 minutes after the assassination. He likely walked east on Elm Street for seven blocks to the corner of Elm and Murphy, where he boarded a bus heading back toward Oak Cliff. A bus transfer found in Oswald’s shirt pocket upon his apprehension was dated November 22, 1963, and identified as having been issued by busdriver Cecil J. McWatters of the Dallas Transit Co. McWatters testified that he issued the transfer on a trip passing a checkpoint at St. Paul and Elm Streets at 12:36 p.m., reaching Field Street at about 12:40 p.m. He recalled issuing the transfer to a man who boarded just beyond Field Street after beating on the front door of the bus. Deputy Sheriff Roger D. Craig claimed to have seen a man he later identified as Oswald running toward a light-colored Rambler station wagon about 15 minutes after the assassination, and that Oswald later remarked in the interrogation room, “Everybody will know who I am now.” The Commission could not accept key elements of Craig’s testimony, noting that Captain Fritz did not recall the dramatic statement and that the overwhelming evidence placed Oswald far from the building by that time. The Commission concluded the man Craig saw enter the Rambler was not Oswald.

The Bus Ride

McWatters picked Oswald from a police lineup on the evening of the assassination as the man who boarded the bus at the “lower end of town on Elm around Houston,” though McWatters later testified he had been in error and a teenager named Milton Jones was the passenger he had in mind about the bus argument. An elderly passenger, Mary Bledsoe, who had rented a room to Oswald about six weeks earlier on October 7 but asked him to leave after a week, boarded the Marsalis bus at St. Paul and Elm Streets to return home after watching the motorcade. She testified that Oswald boarded at Murphy, appearing disheveled with his sleeve torn, his shirt dirty and unbuttoned, his face “so distorted” he “looked like a maniac.” When arrested at the Texas Theatre, Oswald wore a brown sport shirt with a hole in the right sleeve at the elbow, which Mrs. Bledsoe identified as the shirt Oswald was wearing on the bus. She stated she was certain Oswald boarded the bus, sat halfway to the rear as traffic moved slowly, heard a passing motorist inform the driver that the President had been shot, and disappeared into the crowd when the bus neared Lamar Street. The Marsalis bus traveled west on Elm, south on Houston, and southwest across the Houston viaduct along Marsalis—whereas the Beckley bus, which stopped across the street from Oswald’s roominghouse at 1026 North Beckley, continued west on Elm past the Depository. Rather than waiting for the Beckley bus, Oswald boarded the first Oak Cliff bus that came along. Secret Service and FBI agents reconstructed the trip, walking the seven blocks from the Depository to Murphy and Elm in an average of 6½ minutes, and timing the bus ride from Murphy to Lamar at 4 minutes, placing Oswald on the bus from approximately 12:40 p.m. to 12:44 p.m. if he left the Depository at 12:33 p.m.