Friday, January 25, 2013

Dallas Police Detective Paul Bentley



Cigar chomping Dallas Police Detective Paul Bentley, the chief operator of the Dallas Police department's polygraph unit; was one of the officers who arrested Lee Harvey Oswald at the Texas Theater. 

Two days after the assassination Paul Bentley received a letter:

Robert D. Steel,
Commander, USNR-R
7960 June Lake Drive,
San Diego,
California.

Perhaps you are aware that ONI has quite a file on Oswald, which no doubt has been made available on the Washington level. If not, I am certain that this information can be obtained for you through our resident special agent in charge of the Dallas office, A. C. Sullivan, who is a wonderful agent, and whom I hope you know. As a personal friend, I congratulate you, wish you continued success, and pray that your guardian angel will remain close at hand and vigilant, always.

 Robert D. Steel 

While we know a lot about Detcive Paul Bentley, we know very little about A. C. Sullivan, full name - Arthur Carroll Sullivan, Jr., who was in ONI 27 years, and also worked for the FBI and as an investigator for the Dallas DA. 

On July 21, 2008, retired Dallas Police Detective Paul Bentley passed away after a lengthy illness.

Detective Bentley is best known for his part in the arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald inside the Texas Theatre shortly after the shooting of Officer J.D. Tippet. According to Detective Bentleys widow, Mrs. Mozelle Bentley of Dallas, Detective Bentley, along with several other officers had gone into the theatre looking for the suspect who shot their colleague. Oswald was seated in the middle of a row when officers converged on him from all sides and arrested him. Detective Bentley is the plain clothes detective in the now famous photo of Oswald being led out of the theatre. Up until his death, autographed photos of that photo were still being requested from Detective Bentley.

Paul Bentley, 87, Dies; Detective Arrested Oswald

Published: July 25, 2008
Corrections Appended

Paul Bentley, the Dallas police detective who helped arrest Lee Harvey Oswald 80 minutes after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, died Monday at his home in Dallas. He was 87.

Jim MacCammon, courtesy of Howard Upchurch

Paul Bentley, right, with Lee Harvey Oswald in custody outside the Texas Theater in Dallas.

His death was confirmed by Gary Mack, curator of the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, the exhibit that occupies the floor in the former Texas School Book Depository from which Oswald fired his 6.5-millimeter Mannlicher-Carcano rifle at the 35th president.

When Detective Bentley hurtled over several rows in the Texas Theater that day, Nov. 22, 1963, to get to the slim man pointing a pistol at another police officer, he had no idea that the man was Kennedy’s killer.

“At the time of the arrest, I had no knowledge whatsoever that this might possibly be our suspect in regards to the assassination of the president,” Detective Bentley told WFAA-TV in Dallas in a 1963 interview.

But he did know that the man might be a suspect in the shooting of Officer J. D. Tippit, who had been killed half an hour earlier when he confronted Oswald on a nearby street some 45 minutes after Kennedy was shot.

The assistant manager of a shoe store near the theater, in the Oak Cliff section southwest of downtown, had told the ticket taker that a man acting suspiciously had sneaked into the theater.

“The person who saw him suggested that she call the police, because he might be connected to either the shooting of the president or of Officer Tippit,” Mr. Mack said in an interview on Thursday.

Detective Bentley was at a police station when reports arrived that someone had fired on the president’s motorcade and, soon afterward, that an officer had been shot. He went to the site of the Tippit shooting, then to the theater.

“Bentley and several other officers went up to the balcony,” Mr. Mack said. “Officer Nick McDonald went through the back door, behind the screen, and stood on the stage. The shoe store manager was with him and pointed out the guy who had been acting suspiciously. As McDonald approached, Oswald stood up and said, ‘Well, it’s all over now.’ ”

When Officer McDonald came close, Oswald punched him and drew a pistol. Detective Bentley raced down from the balcony.

“That’s when I tried to get as close to him as possible, trying to grab the weapon,” he said in an oral history given to the museum in 1994. “I came over the backs of seats,” twisting his right ankle between two of them, and, along with other officers, subdued Oswald.

Photographs of Oswald in custody show a cut over his eye. It was caused by the Masonic ring Detective Bentley was wearing during the scuffle, about 20 rows back from the movie screen.

Seated in the patrol car to the left of Oswald during the ride downtown, Detective Bentley heard a dispatcher say Oswald was the prime suspect in the Kennedy shooting. “I turned to him, and I said, ‘Did you shoot President Kennedy?’ ” Detective Bentley recalled. “He said, ‘You find out for yourself.’ ” (Detective Bentley's recollection is unsupported by other existing historical records.)

Paul Lester Bentley was born in Dallas on June 29, 1921. He served in the Army Air Forces in World War II and joined the Dallas police in 1947. He retired from the department in 1968, then became security director for First National Bank in Dallas.

He is survived by his wife of 66 years, the former Mozelle Robertson; a sister, Mildred Waldroop; a son, James; and one grandson.

Two days after the Kennedy assassination, while being escorted through the basement of the Dallas city jail, Oswald was shot to death by Jack Ruby. At Ruby’s left at that moment, memorably captured by cameras, was Detective Jim Leavelle, wearing a light-colored Resistol. Clutching Ruby’s right arm, trying to wrench away his pistol, was Detective L. C. Graves — Detective Bentley’s brother-in-law.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: July 26, 2008 

An obituary on Friday about Paul Bentley, a Dallas detective who helped capture the presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, included an incorrect identification from a museum curator, in some editions, for the brand of hat worn two days later by Jim Leavelle, a Dallas police detective photographed escorting Oswald when he was killed. It was a Resistol, not a Stetson.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: August 6, 2008 

An obituary on July 25 about Paul Bentley, the Dallas police detective who helped arrestLee Harvey Oswald after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, included incorrectly, without qualifying its source, a remark Mr. Bentley remembered hearing after the arrest. Many years later, Mr. Bentley told oral history interviewers that on the road to police headquarters with Oswald, after hearing police dispatchers say the man in custody was a prime suspect in the assassination of Kennedy, he asked Oswald, “Did you shoot President Kennedy?” and that Oswald replied, “You find out for yourself.” Mr. Bentley’s recollection is unsupported by other existing historical records.

The obituary also described Mr. Bentley’s role in the arrest imprecisely. Mr. Bentley adjusted the handcuffs after Oswald complained they were too tight; he did not snap the handcuffs on. (Another officer had placed his handcuffs on Oswald moments earlier.)

Duke Lane: “I'd only met Paul Bentley once, and was surprised at his having much less of a gruff demeanor (and being much more soft spoken) than I'd have expected from his cigar-chomping photo in front of the Texas Theater. Of course, it was many years after that photo that I met him; he was older, probably mellower (a grandfather a couple of times over), no longer a cop and with an audience. In all, I found him very pleasant for the short time I was around him.”

Bernice Moore: “Det Paul Bentley and Det.LC Graves were bro in laws..
In another write up........Bentley's grandson related that Bentley woud tease Graves that he had caught LHO and that Graves let him be shot....”

J. Raymond Carroll: “Mislaid my (photo) copy of Sylvia Meagher's index and can't find much about Bentley in the Warren Commission, but it seems he claimed to be a hero at the time. In his Nov. 23 TV interview Bentley claims that HE prevented LHO's revolver from firing. Funny that he couldn't say whether it was his thumb or his finger that blocked the firing pin. Paul Bentley was a man incapable of feeling pain. Nick McDonald made a similar claim, and they both claimed that the firing pin dented the shell in the chamber. McDonald's claims to heroism (& Bentley's as well) were severely deflated when FBI experts said the firing pin had NOT dented any shell in the revolver.”

Dear New York Times Public Editor:

The author of your 7/25/2008 Obituary for Dallas Detective Paul Bentley made a significant error in this paragraph: Quote

Seated in the patrol car to the left of Oswald during the ride downtown, Detective Bentley heard a dispatcher say Oswald was the prime suspect in the Kennedy shooting. "I turned to him, and I said, 'Did you shoot President Kennedy?' " Detective Bentley recalled. "He said, 'You find out for yourself.' "

It seems the author was relying here on Bentley's oral history at the Sixth Floor Museum, given some 30 years AFTER the event.

There are major problems with relying on Bentley's later memory:

1. Bentley's arrest report (page 77-8 CE 2003 in Vol XX1V Warren Commission Hearings) says nothing about this conversation.

http://www.history-m...Vol24_0126b.htm

2. A check of the DPD Radio transcripts shows NO statement by the dispatcher during this period suggesting that Lee Oswald was a suspect in the President's murder.

3. Another officer in the same car as Oswald and Bentley CONTRADICTS Bentley's 1994 recollections.

DAllas Police Archives, Box 2, Folder# 7
http://jfk.ci.dallas.tx.us/box2.htm

K.E. Lyon: "Enroute to the City Hall, Oswald refused to answer all questions. and he kept repeating, "Why am I being arrested? I know I was carrying a gun, but why else am I being arrested"?

I have been a faithful Times reader for 30 years, but this is by no means the first time I noticed that the Times is an unreliable source of information on the JFK assassination. In particular, Times reporters seem to consistently slant their stories so as to shore up the many weaknesses in the case against Lee Oswald. In this instance, your report gives the FALSE and MISLEADING impression that Lee Oswald did not deny shooting President Kennedy.

The TRUTH is that he denied it passionately up to his dying breath.

By copy of this email, I am asking Gary Mack, Curator of the Sixth Floor Museum, to correct me if anything herein is in error.

Yours, Sincerely,
J. Raymond Carroll

[EDIT]

The Times has already made one correction to the original Bentley obituary:

Quote Correction: July 26, 2008
An obituary on Friday about Paul Bentley, a Dallas detective who helped capture the presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, included an incorrect identification from a museum curator, in some editions, for the brand of hat worn two days later by Jim Leavelle, a Dallas police detective photographed escorting Oswald when he was killed. It was a Resistol, not a Stetson.

And I just received this reply from the Public Editor:

Quote
Thank you for contacting the Public Editor. An associate or I read every message. Because of the volume of e-mail, we cannot respond personally to every message, but we forward many messages to appropriate newsroom staffers and follow up to be sure concerns raised in those messages are treated with serious consideration. If a further reply is warranted, you will be hearing from us shortly. Since the Times is so conscientious about the TRIVIAL Brand-name of a man's HAT, we might reasonably expect that they will be at least as diligent in correcting errors/falsehoods that are REALLY significant and that are REALLY LIKELY to MISLEAD readers of the Times.

Gary Mack's reply:

Quote
Mr. Carroll, New York Times Editor,
Two of Mr. Carroll's concerns are unfounded.
First, the absence of the Oswald conversation in Bentley's report cannot be used to prove the discussion never happened. The absence may only show that Bentley did not include every detail. Second, Officer K.E. Lyon's report suggests that Oswald was asked if he had killed President Kennedy, thus confirming Bentley's oral history statement. For Oswald to have denied killing Kennedy, he must have first been asked if he had done so.

As for the transcript of Dallas Police radio broadcasts, Mr. Carroll is correct. Police dispatchers did not suggest Oswald was wanted for anything. However, someone or something must have prompted Bentley to ask Oswald about killing Kennedy, for Bentley's 1963 police report states he knew only that the possible suspect may be involved with the shooting of Officer Tippit.

Gary Mack

And my response to Gary (cc to NYT Public Editor)

Quote
Thank you Mr. Mack for your prompt response, but I must take issue:
[Gary Mack] First, the absence of the Oswald conversation in Bentley's report cannot be used to prove the discussion never happened. The absence may only show that Bentley did not include every detail.

[J.R.C.] Here Mr. Mack is suggesting that Bentley was not very professional when he filed his arrest report. If the suspect actually refused to deny killing the President when given the opportunity, that is an important fact. Indeed it is the ONLY important fact about the assassination that Bentley was aware of.

How likely is it that a professional officer, holding the rank of Detective, will write an Arrest Report that leaves out the ONLY IMPORTANT FACT about the case that is within this detective's personal knowledge?

Think of Jim Garrison and the notorious Sciambra Memorandum.

[GM] As for the transcript of Dallas Police radio broadcasts, Mr. Carroll is correct. Police dispatchers did not suggest Oswald was wanted for anything.


[JRC] Proof that Bentley's memory was failing in his Oral History for the Sixth Floor Museum.
[GM] Second, Officer K.E. Lyon's report suggests that Oswald was asked if he had killed President Kennedy, thus confirming Bentley's oral history statement.
[JRC] I am afraid I cannot find any such suggestion in Lyon's report. Even if he WAS asked about JFK, where is the corroboration for Bentley's 1994 claim about how Lee Oswald answered this supposed question.
[GM] However, someone or something must have prompted Bentley to ask Oswald about killing Kennedy, for Bentley's 1963 police report states he knew only that the possible suspect may be involved with the shooting of Officer Tippit.
[JRC] This argument sounds like a NON-SEQUITOR to me. The fact is that Bentley's police report says nothing about the conversation Bentley claims in his 1994 Sixth Floor History.
[GM] For Oswald to have denied killing Kennedy, he must have first been asked if he had done so.

You and I both know that he WAS asked this question, but it was later, after being taken to City Hall, and we both know that he passionately denied killing the President in all his public and private statements. But the Times leaves out these denials and would now have readers believe that, before he ever got to City Hall, Lee Oswald refused to deny killing JFK when he first had the opportunity.

There is no credible basis (except an aging man's failing memory) for the highly prejudicial assertion about Lee Oswald made by the New York Times in the paragraph in question from the recent Obituary for Detective Paul Bentley.

But I am glad to see that the Times can still distinguish between a MATERIAL FACT and a TRIVIAL FACT. I see the Times has now posted a correction to the Bentley obituary that seems to answer the many burning questions about the brand name of another detective's HAT.

Sincerely,
J.Raymond Carroll

Gary Mack: “As for the transcript of Dallas Police radio broadcasts, Mr. Carroll is correct. Police dispatchers did not suggest Oswald was wanted for anything. However, someone or something must have prompted Bentley to ask Oswald about killing Kennedy, for Bentley's 1963 police report states he knew only that the possible suspect may be involved with the shooting of Officer Tippit.”

Duke Lane: “I think the question has always been: yes ... but what? The question that Gary Mack fails to answer (as an expert on the matter, quotable by the New York Times) is what "someone or something prompted Bentley to ask Oswald about killing Kennedy" when there is no actual proof (as opposed to "suggestions") that such a question was ever asked.” According to the "official" line (spin?), nobody had a clue that there was any connection between the crimes until Oswald was brought into DPHQ and identified by co-worker affiants there as also having worked in the building associated with the murder of the President. It was then - and only then - that the connection was supposedly made.

Of course, afterward any cop who "didn't realize" the potential for such a connection was clearly clueless (see Jesse Curry's book extolling the virtues of DPD's investigation). As I think Jerry Rose once put it (to the effect that), "a few minutes and a few blocks away, the connection made sense; 45 minutes later and [just?] three miles away, it wasn't so obvious."

The Times has its answer from The Sixth Floor's expert, it's not going to confuse its readers by arguing facts.

Steve Thomas notes: The only time I can remember LHO giving this response was in response to a question put to him by Detective Guy Rose concerning his address:

Mr. BALL. Did you ask him what his address was?
Mr. ROSE. Yes; but from there, he wouldn't tell me--he just said, "You just find out." 

Good catch, Steve. I now realize that my email to the Public Editor forgot to highlight the most important evidence contradicting Bentley's 1994 claim. It is of course Bentley's own arrest report in CE2003. In his original arrest report Bentley wrote: Quote “On the way to City Hall I removed the suspect's wallet and obtained his name. He made several remarks enroute to the City Hall about police brutality.” AND DENIED SHOOTING ANYBODY.

J. Ray Carroll: It should be obvious to the New York Times, and to any reasonably objective person, that if the story Bentley gave to the Sixth Floor Museum in 1994 is true, then he lied or was mistaken in original arrest report.

But since all the other evidence is consistent with his arrest report and shows that, at every opportunity LHO passionately denied shooting anybody, it must follow that Bentley's 1994 recollection -- complete with a dispatcher report that never happened -- is no more than a figment of his imagination.

It is a HISTORICAL FACT, and can be verified throughout the records of the Dallas Police Department and the Warren Commission, that Lee Oswald emphatically denied shooting JFK EVERY TIME HE WAS GIVEN THE OPPORTUNITY.

The New York Times is now trying to promulgate FALSE HISTORY by substituting confused 30-year- later memories for the official record of the time. 


Overview
Videotaped oral history interview with Paul Bentley -- Chief polygraph examiner with the Dallas Police Department in 1963, Detective Bentley was involved in the arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald at the Texas Theatre. Mr. Bentley recorded a videotaped oral history interview on 2/16/1994, and he also recorded a second videotaped oral history interview on 1/22/2008. In addition, he participated in a videotaped panel discussion at The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza on 4/18/2007 and gave a videotaped lecture at The Sixth

Date 1994-02-16
Collection Oral History Collection
Object Number 1994.007.0002





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