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About Dallas Police Captain Will Fritz (Part 1)

Now turning to those Dallas Police that I find suspicious in the JFK Assassination plot in Dallas, first on my list is Captain Will Fritz. Fritz is so suspicious and so interesting to me, that I will devote three blog posts to him alone. Before I delve into the details of his WC testimony, I will first summarize.

The main reasons that I find the testimony of Will Fritz to be suspicious, is because it is 45 pages long and very detailed, yet we have no way of confirming it. Although Captain Fritz held and interviewed Lee Harvey Oswald (hereafter LHO) for nearly 48 hours, there was no tape recording, no shorthand, no official transcript and no notes from those days. All the notes from those interviews of LHO submitted to the WC were note written months after the event.

The notes that Captain Fritz produced months later closely harmonized with notes of others present – yet these folks all had months to coordinate their notes, and every incentive to do so.

This is particularly disturbing when we recognize that Will Fritz was nearly the only source of the final words spoken by LHO before he was killed in Dallas Police custody – yet we have no way of confirming if LHO actually said one single word that Captain Fritz claimed that he said.

History, so far, has been gentle with DPD Captain Will Fritz, but I won’t be. I find I make most sense out of the WC testimony of Will Fritz by doubting every word he says. For example, Will Fritz offers the exact times of the events in question. Yet he read those events verbatim from the Dallas Police Logs, while Officer Gerald Hensley admitted that the official version of the Dallas Police Radio Log was his re-write of the original.

So, the Dallas Police had months to get their story straight.

In any case, Captain Fritz portrays himself as a fearless hero pursuing LHO, as well as a good buddy to LHO. Although Fritz portrays LHO as somebody who was ornery to everybody else, he portrays LHO as open and friendly to Fritz, and who shared information with Fritz freely.

I doubt this pose. In my view, Will Fritz used this posture to put words into the mouth of LHO, from the start of his WC testimony to the end. Something sure smells fishy. Here are just a few examples, before I dive into the details in my next blog post. Captain Fritz claimed that:

  1. LHO gave him Ruth Paine’s address. (Other WC witnesses claimed they obtained that address).

  2. LHO gave him his Oak Cliff address. (Other WC witnesses claimed they obtained that address).

  3. LHO told him about his three year stint in Russia.

  4. LHO told him about Marina and his babies under the care of Ruth Paine, and his weekend visits.

  5. LHO said that Ruth Paine recommended him for his job at the TSBD.

  6. LHO said he was eating “a cheese sandwich and a Coke” with “Junior” when JFK was killed.

  7. LHO said he met Officer Baker outside the lunchroom; and Baker put a gun in his face.

  8. LHO said that he registered in Oak Cliff as O.H. Lee, because the landlady didn’t hear well, and he didn't want to bother with it.

  9. LHO said he didn’t own a rifle, but he saw Roy Truly with a rifle at the TSBD earlier that week.

  10. LHO said that after JFK, he took a bus to his room, but because of traffic, he switched to a taxi.

  11. LHO said that a lady wanted his cab, but the cab driver told him to tell her to catch the next cab.

  12. LHO said that he rode that cab only part-way to his room.

  13. LHO said that the cab fare was 85 cents.

  14. LHO said that at his room, he changed his shirt, got his gun (for no reason) and went to a movie.

  15. LHO denied killing Officer Tippit.

  16. LHO said that he hit an officer at the Theater, who returned the blow; “So I deserved it.”

  17. LHO said he was a member of the FPCC of New York

  18. LHO said he was a Secretary of the FPCC in their New Orleans branch

  19. LHO said he was a member of the ACLU

  20. LHO denied that he took curtain rods to work that day; but he only carried his lunch.

  21. LHO said that Alek Hidell was his alias.

  22. LHO said that he changed his usual night at Irving, because someone else was there that weekend.

  23. LHO said he got his pistol about 6 months before, in Fort Worth.

  24. LHO said JFK had a nice family.

  25. LHO denied killing JFK.

  26. LHO said people will forget about JFK in a few days and think of the new President.

  27. LHO denied shooting Governor Connally, and expressed no sympathy.

  28. LHO explained the Backyard Photos (BYP) as fakes, made by the photographers in the hall.

  29. LHO added that it was his face, but somebody else’s body.

  30. LHO denied that he ever lived on Neely Street, so the BYP was a fake.

  31. LHO said those who claimed to visit him on Neely Street were mistaken.

  32. LHO said that whoever saw him put a paper sack in the back seat of Frazier's car, was thinking of another day.

  33. LHO said that marks on his map of Dealey Plaza found in his room, were job-hunting marks.

  34. LHO said he didn’t think much about Religion.

  35. LHO refused to discuss God with Captain Fritz.

  36. LHO said he did not belong to any political party.

  37. LHO said he was a Marxist but not a Marxist-Leninist.

  38. LHO said he had one PO Box that he used to receive mail from Russia.

  39. LHO denied ordering a rifle from Klein’s store in Chicago.

In my reading – every single one of those statements can be found in other WC testimony and in newspaper stories supplied during the many months between the JFK assassination (11/22/1963) and Captain Fritz’s first WC testimony (4/22/1964).

I claim that LHO said none of these things to Captain Will Fritz. Rather, I believe that Captain Will Fritz played a game of cat and mouse with LHO, knowing that LHO was connected with the Radical Right in Dallas and New Orleans. Fritz convinced LHO to keep playing ball with his co-conspirators, and that they would soon "come forward to give" LHO "legal assistance," and he would soon be released.

In my opinion, LHO believed these fabrications, and acted upon them; when in fact, Captain Will Fritz and Chief Jesse Curry were plotting with Sheriff Bill Decker about the best way to eliminate LHO once and for all.

Best regards,

--Paul Trejo

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