Texas Theatre Theatrics

J.F.K. Assassination Articles An Overlooked Texas Theater Witness By Bill Drenas The events that took place at the Texas Theater in the early afternoon of November 22, 1963, have always fascinated me. I am not sure of the reason why. It could be that during the time of President Kennedy's assassination and the subsequent arrest of Lee Oswald at the Texas Theater I was also in a movie theater in my hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts. My mother had taken me to the Strand Theater in downtown Lowell for an early afternoon matinee. We had no idea that anything had happened until we left the theater and saw a family friend on the street. She was very upset and told us the president had been shot and killed earlier in the afternoon in Dallas, Texas. Many years later when I was finally able to begin visiting Dallas on a regular basis my mentor, a longtime Dallas resident, the late Stan Clark, had many in-depth conversations about the Texas Theater. Stan was a very thorough Kennedy assassination researcher. His files on several assassination related topics were masterpieces of serious research. By trade Stan was an architect, with a keen eye for details, and this was reflected in the completeness of his files and his personal annotations to all of the documents in any specific file folder. In October 1999 during one of my long-term stays in Dallas, Stan mentioned to me that he was very friendly with Paul Bentley, one of the Dallas police officers who arrested Lee Oswald at the Texas Theater. I asked Stan if it would be possible for us to go over and visit with Paul at some point. Stan told me that Paul was a very gracious and friendly man and that we could probably stop by to see him soon. A few days later Stan pulled his file on the Texas Theater and we carefully reviewed the report made by Detective Paul Bentley which appears in Warren Commission Exhibit 2003, pp. 77-78. Stan mentioned that we would go over and see him that day, and that this first visit with Paul would be a brief visit just to introduce Paul to me and then we could go back at another time to do a more in-depth interview. When we arrived at Paul's house I was immediately greeted and made to feel very comfortable by this congenial gentleman. As we talked about the assassination I mentioned that I wanted to do a very detailed write up about the rest of the Texas Theater for a possible future book project to which Paul said he was very happy to help me. We then made plans to come back at a later date. During this conversation Stan was holding Paul's two-page police report about the Texas Theater arrest. As we were heading out the door Stan asked Paul, “Who is this C. F. Bentley, Jr. that is mentioned in your report?” Paul replied that it was his nephew, once also a Dallas police officer, who was present at the Texas Theater arrest. I asked, ”Do you think he would mind talking to us about it?” At that point Paul got on the telephone and called C. F. to arrange a time for us to go over and visit with him. A few days later my good friend and research partner Ken Holmes Jr, Stan Clark, and I went over to visit Paul Bentley’s nephew. The front door was opened by a tall, good looking, well-built man in his early 60s who introduced himself as C. F. Bentley Jr. He was very friendly and immediately made us feel at home. After the introductions we sat at his kitchen table and C. F. and Ken, who was a former police officer, exchanged some small talk about law enforcement. C. F. then asked the three of us, “Do you boys know how Oswald got that black eye?” One of us mentioned that one of the arresting officers might have punched him. I said that Oswald may have hurt his eye when he fell into the theater seats. C. F. then went on to explain that he was responsible for Oswald receiving that black eye. He told us that as the officers were struggling to take the pistol away from Oswald, C. F. took the butt end of his shotgun and smashed it into Lee Oswald’s head. At that point we decided to ask him to tell the story from the beginning so that we could get all of the details. He started by giving us some background in-formation. C. F. told us he had been around law enforcement officers for most of his life. His father C. F. Bentley was a captain in the Dallas Police Reserves for many years and had also spent a lot of time with his uncle Paul Bentley, and Paul’s brother in law L. C. Graves. They were both detectives in the Dallas Police. (L. C. Graves was the homicide detective that was holding on to the left arm of Lee Oswald when Jack Ruby shot Lee.) While still in his teens C.F. joined the U. S. Air Force in the mid-1950s and had a tour of duty in Korea. When he came back home he took the exam for the police department and was then hired and attended the Dallas Police Academy in 1958. Upon graduation he became a sworn police officer with badge number 1485. For the next few years he worked on radio patrol in several different districts all over the city of Dallas. He was one of three officers on the first Dallas police K-9 unit. He received two weeks special training with the German shepherd police dogs on a farm near Springfield, Missouri, in September 1961. Thereafter he worked for several years with the K-9 unit. In the early morning hours of December 21, 1965, he was nearly killed in the line of duty. At about 11:45 p.m. he and his partner spotted a car on Stemmons Freeway that matched the description of a stolen car. When he signaled a car to pull over it immediately took off and the officers gave chase. The chase continued north at speeds up to 100 miles an hour. In the town of Carrollton he lost control of the car and it plunged off the highway into a ravine. This accident left him seriously injured with severe facial cuts, missing teeth, and a back injury. These injuries required a long-term hospital stay.

J.F.K. Assassination Articles An Overlooked Texas Theater Witness (page 2) By Bill Drenas In 1967 he was contacted to organize the first police department and become the first police chief of Bella Vista, Arkansas. He remained police chief there for the next 18 years. C. F. then began to tell us his story about the Texas Theater. Friday, November 22, 1963, was his day off from work. He was shopping for a new television set with his wife and young son at the Sears Roebuck store on West Jefferson Boulevard, in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas. Suddenly, news about shots being fired at the president's motorcade in downtown Dallas appeared on the television sets that he was in the process of looking at. Then, there was an announcement calling for any off-duty police officers to report for duty. He immediately took his family to his car and drove to his home in the southwestern part of Oak Cliff. He quickly changed into his uniform and headed to the Dallas Police Southwest Substation on West Illinois Avenue that was located less than a mile from his home. When he arrived at the substation he went to the garage area where the police cars were kept and asked the mechanic for a vehicle. The mechanic told him to take whichever car was available and he took the next one up. He then went inside the substation and drew a shotgun. Because of the amount of heavy radio traffic he could not clear as a unit in service. At that point he began to run code 3 (red lights and siren) towards the location in downtown Dallas where the president had been shot. During the ride towards downtown Dallas, reports of an officer being shot in Oak Cliff were being broadcast over the police radio. C. F. decided not to go downtown, and instead began driving to the location where the officer had been shot since he was already in Oak Cliff. When C. F. arrived at East 10th Street and Patton Avenue, he observed that the officer’s body had already been removed, and that several uniform officers and detectives were on the scene. The police dispatcher had broadcast a description of the suspect in the officer’s shooting as a white male wearing a white jacket and dark pants. C. F. spoke to the sergeant at the scene and was told to search the neighborhood for the assailant. Additional information was broadcast on the police radio stating that the suspect had taken his jacket off and thrown it behind a service station on East Jefferson Boulevard. C. F. was driving south on Zangs Boulevard and had just turned east on West Jefferson Boulevard when a call came over the police radio saying that an unknown subject had entered the basement of the Oakland Public Library at the intersection of East Jefferson Boulevard and Marsalis Avenue. C. F. proceeded to the library along with several other squads that were available. The officers got out of their patrol cars, searched the building, and found out that the suspect in question was an employee of the library. All the officers re-entered their patrol cars and left the scene. C. F. began driving west on East Jefferson Boulevard. He was then sitting at a red light at the intersection of Zangs Boulevard and East Jefferson Boulevard. When the light turned green he traveled approximately 20 yards past the intersection when another police radio dispatch was broadcast that a suspect had entered the Texas Theater and was in the balcony. C. F. was almost directly in front of the Texas Theater at the time of this broadcast, and so he pulled into the first parking spot in front of the theater. He was the first squad to arrive there and as he got out of his car another arrived right after him. C. F. entered the front door of the theater with his shotgun and was told by a theater employee that the suspect had gone to the balcony. By this time there was another police officer beside him (name unrecalled) and they both went up the stairs to the balcony. As far as he could see there were 3 to 5 people in the balcony at that time, and he could hear voices saying turn up the house lights, but unfortunately the house lights were already on and it was still very difficult to see. At this time C. F.’s uncle Paul and another detective arrived in the balcony. Paul told C. F. to search everyone in the balcony and to get their names. Just as C. F. began to do this someone downstairs hollered, “The son of a bitch is downstairs!” All the officers turned and exited the balcony, ran down the stairs and turned left into the theater. As C. F. entered the seating area he could see an officer wrestling with a white male who had a pistol in his hand. As he approached Paul Bentley was off to his left. When they reached the two men who were fighting C. F. hit Lee Oswald in the face with a vertical butt stroke of his shotgun. Paul Bentley then punched Lee tearing some of the skin off Lee’s forehead with the Masonic ring that Paul wore on his hand. At this point several additional officers grabbed Lee and then C. F. heard someone shout, “I got his gun!” At this point the officers were able to get Lee under control and while they were handcuffing him C. F. pulled away from the scuffle. As Paul Bentley and other officers were removing the suspect from the front door of the theater C. F. went out with them. The officers then put the suspect in an unmarked police car and departed the scene. C. F. also left the scene, returned to the Southwest Substation, turned in the police car and shotgun, and returned home. On Sunday, November 24, 1963, C. F. was at work patrolling district 63 when the dispatcher advised him to report code 3 to the basement of City Hall because Lee Oswald had been shot. As C. F. arrived at City Hall an ambulance was pulling out of the basement garage onto Commerce Street. C. F. fell in behind the ambulance and followed it code 3 to Parkland Hospital. At the hospital C. F. took over the employee's elevator and delivered blood from the basement to the operating room. After a while he finally obtained a key to override the employee’s elevator to expedite the blood delivery. At about the third time they delivered blood the medical staff told him to take it back as Lee Oswald had died. Stan Clark asked C. F. why he had not written a report. C. F. explained to us that he was never asked to write a report and there were probably several other officers present at the arrest who did not write a report either. As we finished the interview C. F. asked if there were any photographs taken in or around the Texas Theater at the time of the arrest because he wanted to see if he was in any of them. I mentioned to him that there were a few photographs and that it might take me a while to get him copies of them. I then asked him if he had a photograph of himself in a Dallas Police uniform from approximately the time of the assassination. C. F. said he would have to look and would definitely get back to me on it. We then thanked him for his hospitality, said our goodbyes, and left. At this point I would like to tell you about an observation I made during this interview. Even though I have interviewed many people in connection with the Kennedy assassination this interview was quite different. On several occasions I have interviewed witnesses who either refused to be tape-recorded, or if they did agree to be on tape they would tighten up quite dramatically once the tape recorder was turned on as compared to their casual conversation before the tape was started. When I asked C. F. if I could tape the interview he said that would be fine and when the tape recorder was turned on the relaxed and casual manner that he had shown us from the time we entered the house did not change at all. After generating new information from an interview I try to in some way corroborate the information if possible. I knew from interviewing Paul Bentley and also from his report of December 3, 1963 (Warren Commission Exhibit 2003, pp. 77-78, reproduced below) that C. F. was definitely at the Texas Theater during the arrest of Lee Oswald. This report mentions that Paul saw C. F. Bentley in the balcony of the Texas Theater in the second to last paragraph on page 1 of the report.