Question on Huntsville

Hugh,

don't know if you're old enough to know... but what was the employment situation like in Huntsville in the early '60s?

Buell allegedly moved to Irving to improve his employment prospects, but I know here in Australia, small towns which rely heavily on one big employer do okay - and locals are usually preferred for employment because they have roots in the area that keep them there. If that held true of Huntsville, I kind of question what kept Frazier from getting a job in the prison system, or at least in some business that existed by servicing that industry.

Greg,

That is an excellent question and I was unaware that Mr. Frazier was from Huntsville. 

Although that was way before my time (I was born in 1968), I did get to talk to some old timers in the prison system, including inmates and employees and have a bit of knowledge of it.  In the 1960s the system in Texas was not the gargantuan industrial complex it is today.  At that time the inmates were not micromanaged as they are now and the units were much more self sustaining and mostly located in Huntsville and its surrounding environs- there were a few exceptions.  There were really no other businesses that supported the institution.  However, in the 1980s in response to various federal lawsuits and debates (I could write a whole book on these events alone) over the rise of violent crime in the State, Texas embarked on a prison construction project on a mammoth scale, dwarfing anything ever tried before.  The result is that today the crime rate is actually lower than it was in the 1970s and dozens of new units popped up all over Texas.  If you are interested in one criminal and one court case instrumental to this expansion, simply Google "Kenneth Allen McDuff" and "Ruiz V. Estelle" and you'll have a better understanding of what was going on.  That stated, today just about anyone with a high school diploma and a clean record can get a job.  They may have to relocate to some barren area but the jobs are there- Texas is practically begging for officers and many units are dangerously understaffed. 

In the 1960s most of the jobs were given to veterans of the military who served in WWII and Korea.  Also, I have no doubt there was a certain amount of nepotism involved in hiring.  But, to answer your question, I don't think Mr. Frazier would have easily been able to get a job with TDC.  Also he was pretty young and that probably would have played a part as well.  My guess is that he was probably telling the truth about Dallas and I could see where a young man who had never been anywhere would find the lure of the big city adventurous.  Houston, however, is much closer but I am assuming his sister was already in Dallas and having a place to live would have made it more inviting. Today would be different. 

Again, that is an interesting question.  I would like to know more about what Frazier knew about Ruth and Michael Paine but that is a whole other thread.

Thank you for that detailed response. 

Taking concerns from the table is an important part of the way forward, and i can now take this off the table.

in his own way, Buell is almost as interesting as Larry. His family relationships for a start... if you read both Buell and Linnie-Mae's testimony, it looks a lot like there was not a whole lot of love there. She speaks of him like he was beneath in the social order. There is also an FBI report stating that Buell's step-father drank to excess and that he was scared of him and kept his distance. Yet if we believe the record, Buell spent quite a number of hours on the afternoon/evening of Nov 22 visiting his step-father in hospital.

greg parker wrote:Thank you for that detailed response. 

Taking concerns from the table is an important part of the way forward, and i can now take this off the table.

in his own way, Buell is almost as interesting as Larry. His family relationships for a start... if you read both Buell and Linnie-Mae's testimony, it looks a lot like there was not a whole lot of love there. She speaks of him like he was beneath in the social order. There is also an FBI report stating that Buell's step-father drank to excess and that he was scared of him and kept his distance. Yet if we believe the record, Buell spent quite a number of hours on the afternoon/evening of Nov 22 visiting his step-father in hospital.

I have read Buell's testimony but not Linnie-Mae's.  Now I have a homework assignment and will read it tonight.  I do recall Buell coming off as a rather simple young man when I read it.

Although I was unaware of the step-father being a drunk, that exact part of the testimony (his visit) struck me as extremely odd, to say the least.  Mr. Frazier seemed pretty calm about the whole thing.  He seems extremely unaffected by the events around him.  After witnessing the scene of the assassination of a president he calmly returns to work and sits down for lunch!  Then he decides that, after the employee roll call, he will avoid going home and instead visit his step-father at the Irving clinic where he is subsequently picked up by the police!  I wonder where he would have gone had he made it out of the hospital before apprehension.  Whatever the case, it certainly seems as though he were being evasive.

Buell claims today that Captain Fritz threatened to abuse him during interrogation.  I find this hard to believe.  Fritz was no dummy and understood that abusing a suspected assassin could mean disaster.

Hugh wrote:I have read Buell's testimony but not Linnie-Mae's.  Now I have a homework assignment and will read it tonight.  I do recall Buell coming off as a rather simple young man when I read it.

Although I was unaware of the step-father being a drunk, that exact part of the testimony (his visit) struck me as extremely odd, to say the least.  Mr. Frazier seemed pretty calm about the whole thing.  He seems extremely unaffected by the events around him.  After witnessing the scene of the assassination of a president he calmly returns to work and sits down for lunch!  Then he decides that, after the employee roll call, he will avoid going home and instead visit his step-father at the Irving clinic where he is subsequently picked up by the police!  I wonder where he would have gone had he made it out of the hospital before apprehension.  Whatever the case, it certainly seems as though he were being evasive.

Buell claims today that Captain Fritz threatened to abuse him during interrogation.  I find this hard to believe.  Fritz was no dummy and understood that abusing a suspected assassin could mean disaster.

I'm with you - up until not believing the bit about threats from Fritz.We know Dallas police were capable of such (have you seen The Thin Blue Line? Det. Rose in that instance). In this case, Fritz had a young, simple-minded kid alone and was desperate to close the case. So I could imagine something like that happening. On the other hand, it did take Buell a long time to get around to mentioning it, so who knows? But I tend to give him him the benefit of doubt on it. 

As for the hospital... it was Linnie Mae who dropped her brother in it to start with by volunteering that he'd given Lee a lift. but then told them he could be found at Parkland... so that bought Buell a bit of extra time while they checked other hospitals.