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On December 7, 1941, Jim Leavelle was aboard the USS Whitney when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, serving in the U.S. Navy through World War II. Twenty-two years later, he would be front row at one of history's pivotal moments once again as a homicide detective for the Dallas Police Department when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.
Following Kennedy's assassination, Jim Leavelle would be the first man to interrogate Lee Harvey Oswald in connection with the murder of Dallas police officer J. D. Tippit. At the time of the interrogation, Oswald was not yet a suspect in the Kennedy assassination.
On November 24, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald was handcuffed between Leavelle and fellow detective L. C. Graves as he was being led through the basement of the Dallas Police Headquarters to an armored car for the short trip from the city jail to the county jail. Jack Ruby then stepped from the crowd and fatally shot Oswald at point-blank range.
The moment, captured in a Pulitzer Prize winning photo, would forever brand Leavelle as “the man in the tan suit”.
James Leavelle passed away on August 29, 2019, at the age of 99.
Interview recorded on November 6, 2015
Video Credits:
Interviewer - Greg Corombos
Editor - Daniel Taksas
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