A Deadly Duo

Their paths would have crossed back in the late 1940's, but it was in 1951 that this formidable combination of law enforcement became one of the most admired among their peers and the most feared by defense lawyers and the accused alike.

John Will Fritz the Senior Captain of the Homicide Squad and Henry Menasco Wade the newly elected District Attorney of Dallas County combined their skills to become one of the 20th century's most effective prosecutorial teams ever seen.

The Duo quickly caught the lime light with the now contentious 1953 Tommy Lee Walker case. Between Fritz's so called evidence or lack of it and Wade's most likely prosecutorial misconduct, they would oversee an innocent man sent to the electric chair. 

A decade would pass before they would again take centre stage.  Ten years to hone their dubious ways. 

This time they had their hands on another innocent - Lee Oswald. Nothing had changed. They again applied the same dubious techniques they'd refined together for over a decade with disastrous effect for the accused.





https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/ffr24


FRITZ, JOHN WILL (1895–1984). John Will Fritz, head of the police investigation of the Kennedy assassination, was born on June 15, 1895, in Dublin, Texas. He spent much of his boyhood on a ranch near Lake Arthur, New Mexico. As a young man he traveled throughout West Texas and New Mexico, making his living as a horse and mule trader. He served a brief stint in the army during World War I and returned to Texas in his early twenties to enroll in Tarleton State College (now Tarleton State University) in Stephenville, where he sold three horses to pay for his tuition.
Fritz joined the Dallas Police Department as a beat officer in 1921 and soon became a detective. He advanced through the ranks and was promoted to captain in 1934, when he organized the department's homicide and robbery bureau. Though he was made inspector of detectives in 1935, he voluntarily returned to being a captain in 1944. In 1947 he received the special title of senior captain, and later he reportedly refused the opportunity to become police chief. During his leadership of the homicide and robbery bureau, Fritz gained a reputation as an effective interrogator. In one ten-year period the homicide division reported 98 percent of the murders in Dallas cleared by arrest.
His career spanned some of the most violent times in Dallas history as well as some troubling times for the police department. Fritz gained nationwide attention when he headed the investigation of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He was the first person to question suspected assassin Lee Harvey Oswald just hours after Kennedy was shot on November 22, 1963. Though he did not get a confession, Fritz said he had all the proof he needed to convict, and before midnight he formally charged Oswald with the president's murder. 




http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKwadeH.htm



Henry Wade was born in Rockwell County, Texas, on 11th November, 1914. All eleven children did well at school and six of the eight sons became attorneys. This included Henry Wade who graduated from the University of Texas.
In 1939 Wade became special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigationand investigated espionage cases for four years on the East Coast and in South America. He served in the US Navy during the Second World War and took part in the invasions of the Philippines and Okinawa.
Wade joined the Dallas County District Attorney's office in 1947. Four years later he became District Attorney. He held this position at the time of the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963. Cliff Carter, on behalf of President Lyndon B. Johnson, phoned Wade three times on the night of the assassination. According to Wade, Carter said that "any word of a conspiracy - some plot by foreign nations - to kill President Kennedy would shake our nation to its foundation. President Johnson was worried about some conspiracy on the part of the Russians… it would hurt foreign relations if I alleged a conspiracy - whether I could prove it or not… I was to charge Oswald with plain murder."
Wade was cheated from prosecuting Lee Harvey Oswald after he was murdered by Jack Ruby on 24th November, 1963. However, he was responsible for the prosecution and 1964 conviction of Ruby.








1953: State V Tommy Lee Walker.
Charge: Murder

Arrest Officer :Fritz Senior Captain Homicide Squad Dallas
Prosecutor :    Henry Wade District Attorney Dallas.

http://tx.findacase.com/research/wfrmDocViewer.aspx/xq/fac.19550209_0040186.TX.htm/qx






Mary Mapes: Henry Wade executed an innocent man. 


https://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-magazine/2016/may/henry-wade-executed-innocent-man/







The district attorney then was the legendary Henry Wade, just beginning a nearly four-decade reign as one of the country’s top prosecutors, long before the public would learn of his tendency to target and prosecute the wrong suspects with lethal efficiency. By 1953, Henry Wade already had the city wired. Reporters treated his word as gospel, sometimes even buttressing Wade’s efforts in court with their own testimony. The Dallas Police Department and County Sheriff’s Office eagerly did his bidding. White citizens felt safe with Wade at the helm of his Texas-tough law-and-order empire—until a baffling crime spree that shook the city to its core.



Just after 9 o’clock, an airline reservations clerk was driving home from work at Love Field when his headlights illuminated a small, struggling figure in the middle of the road. It was 31-year-old Venice Parker, crawling on her hands and knees, her dress torn and drenched in blood, her throat slashed. The driver pulled over and ran to her side, asking, “Lady, what’s happened?” He would testify later that Venice was able to say only, “I was stabbed,” before falling silent. He half-walked, half-carried her to the car and sped back to the airport, where he knew he’d find police. He said he did not hear Venice speak again, that she issued only what he described as “gurgling sounds.” He testified that during the short drive, her feet kicked at one of the back windows when she seemed to go into convulsions. 



Screeching to a stop in front of the terminal, he shouted for help. Skycaps and other airport workers rushed to the car. Those witnesses, too, said Venice was collapsed in the car, wordless as her blood pooled on the back seat.

After several minutes, a Dallas police officer arrived. His story would be different. Patrol Officer J.W. Gallaher said that he leaned into the car, and, just before she died, Venice raised her head, coughed, and spoke to him clearly. She said, “A Negro took me under the bridge and cut my throat.” 
Those words changed everything. 
Overnight, the gruesome murder of the pretty, young white woman merged with the story of the Negro Prowler. Front pages shrieked of a city under siege, where gun shops sold out of weapons and the pound was overwhelmed with requests for large guard dogs. 




So under intense public pressure, investigators relied on a tried-and-true technique. They rounded up dozens of black men who had absolutely no connection to the case. One of those men was Tommy Lee Walker.



The cops began arresting young black men. Many were questioned for days after being picked up for “appearing suspicious” or for not being able to sufficiently explain to police where they had been on the night of the murder. Police also targeted men they’d had even casual contact with previously. The chief of the homicide unit, Captain Will Fritz, told reporters a few days after the murder, “We still have about 100 more Negroes to check on. We’ll investigate each one as we have time to get to him.”




Police asked the station’s owner for a list of previous employees and their addresses, which led officers to Tommy Lee’s house near Exall Park. He was arrested and taken in for questioning on a Friday evening. While there, he later told friends and family, he feared for his life after seeing jail officers beat a black inmate.
Late the next night, Tommy Lee was brought before Captain Fritz, who questioned him for hours—not about any involvement in the robbery for which he had been arrested, but about Venice Parker’s murder. Tommy Lee said that Fritz told him he had received a phone call implicating him in the crime. Fritz had received no such call. Fritz said that there were witnesses and that police knew what he had done. Fritz had a reputation for being unusually effective at wringing admissions of guilt out of suspects, and his techniques worked in this case as well. Years later, we know much more about how often false confessions occur and what can trigger them—fear, cultural differences, sleep deprivation, and feelings of hopelessness, all of which played a role in this case.



Many hours later—alone, confused, and frightened—Tommy Lee wearily signed a confession for the murder. It included details about the crime that only police knew, along with a number of errors and information that simply didn’t add up. Tommy Lee, sensitive to issues of race and sexuality, insisted to Fritz that he hadn’t raped Venice Parker. The dubious confession claimed that the young mother had accidentally been stabbed when she “started to run and jumped into my knife.” Walker would say later that he didn’t see or hear the full transcript of the confession until it was read aloud in court during his trial.
As soon as Captain Fritz sent Tommy Lee back to his cell, the teenager realized the extent of the trouble he was in and began telling guards, inmates, and family members that he had been tricked into signing the confession. He said that everyone at the jail told him the same thing, that the only person who could help him now was the district attorney, Henry Wade.
A couple of days later, Tommy Lee met with Wade and renounced his confession in person. He told the DA where he’d been on the night of the murder, providing names of people who’d seen him from 6 pm, three hours before Venice Parker was killed, all the way till the early morning of the next day, when his son was born. Tommy Lee said that Wade told him he understood all of that and would help him—if he would sign a copy of the confession “for his files.” Tommy Lee claimed that Henry Wade told him it would be valuable for anyone trying to help with Tommy Lee’s case, and he promised that he would not ask for the death penalty.









Excerpts from Warren report Chapter.V.

https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-5.html
 
 
 
Page 196
LEE HARVEY OSWALD spent almost all of the last 48 hours of his life in the Police and Courts Building, a gray stone structure in downtown Dallas that housed the headquarters of the Dallas Police Department and the city jail.
 
 
Page 198 

belonging to the homicide and robbery bureau, headed by Capt. J. Will Fritz.1 (See Commission Exhibit No. 2175, p. 197.) Chronology 

The policemen who seized Oswald at the Texas Theatre arrived with him at the police department building at about 2 p.m. and brought him immediately to the third floor offices of the homicide and robbery bureau to await the arrival of Captain Fritz from the Texas School Book Depository. After about 15 or 20 minutes Oswald was ushered into the office of Captain Fritz for the first of several interrogation sessions.2 


 After the lineup, at about 4 :20, Oswald was returned to Captain Fritz' office for further questioning.5 Two hours later, at 6:20 p.m., Oswald was taken downstairs for a second lineup and returned to Captain Fritz' office within 15 minutes for additional interrogation.6 Shortly after 7 p.m., Captain Fritz signed a complaint charging Oswald with the murder of Patrolman Tippit. Oswald was formally arraigned, i.e., advised of the charges, at 7:10 p.m., before Justice of the Peace David L. Johnston, who came to Captain Fritz' office for the occasion.7 

After a third lineup at about 7:40 p.m., Oswald was returned to Fritz' office.8 About an hour later, after further questioning, Oswald's fingerprints and palmprints were taken and a paraffin test (see app. XI) administered in Fritz' office, after which the questioning resumed.9 At 11:26 p.m. Fritz signed the complaint charging Oswald with the murder of President Kennedy.
Questioning resumed in Fritz' office on Saturday morning at about 10:25 a.m., and the session lasted nearly an hour and 10 minutes.15 Oswald was then returned to his cell for an hour, and at 12:35 p.m. he was brought back to Fritz' office for an additional half-hour of questioning.16 From 1:10 to 1:30 p.m.
 
 
Page 199 

p.m. for a 10-minute visit with his brother, Robert. 21 Between 4 and 4:30 p.m., Oswald made two telephone calls to Mrs. Ruth Paine 22 at her home in Irving; at about 5:30 p.m. he was visited by the president of the Dallas Bar Association 23 with whom he spoke for about 5 minutes. From 6 to 7:15 p.m. Oswald was interrogated once again in Captain Fritz' office and then returned to his cell. 24 At 8 p.m. he called the Paine residence again and asked to speak to his wife, but Mrs. Paine told him that his wife was no longer there.25 

Oswald was signed out of jail at 9:30 a.m. on Sunday, November 24, and taken to Captain Fritz' office for a final round of questioning.26 The transfer party left Fritz' office at about 11:15 a.m.;27 at 11:21 a.m. Oswald was shot.28 He was declared dead at Parkland Hospital at 1:07 p.m.29 



Interrogation Sessions 

During the period between 2:30 p.m. on Friday afternoon and 11:15 a.m. Sunday morning, Oswald was interrogated for a total of approximately 12 hours.30 Though subject to intermittent questioning for more than 7 hours on Friday, Oswald was given 8 to 9 hours to rest that night. On Saturday he was questioned for a total of only 3 hours during three interrogation sessions, and on Sunday he was questioned for less than 2 hours.
 
 
 
Page 200
 
 
The number of people in the interrogation room and the tumultuous atmosphere throughout the third floor made it difficult for the interrogators to gain Oswald's confidence and to encourage him to be truthful. As Chief Curry has recognized in his testimony, "we were violating every principle of interrogation ... it was just against all principles of good interrogation practice."
 
 
 
 
 
 
Page 201
 
 
Within an hour of Oswald's arrival at the police department on November 22, it became known to newsmen that he was a possible suspect in the slaying of President Kennedy as well as in the murder of Patrolman Tippit. At least as early as 3:26 p.m. a television report carried this information. Reporters and cameramen flooded into the building and congregated in the corridor of the third floor, joining those few who had been present when Oswald first arrived.
 
 
Page 215
 
 
 Oswald was given his sweater, and then his right hand was handcuffed to the left hand of Detective J. R. Leavelle
 
Page 234
 
 
 
 
 
Although Captain Fritz permitted himself to be interviewed by the news media less frequently than did Chief Curry, he nevertheless answered questions and ventured opinions about the progress of the investigation. On Saturday he told reporters that he was convinced beyond a doubt that Oswald had killed the President. He discussed some of the evidence in the case, especially the rifle, but his contribution to the knowledge of the reporters was small compared with that of Chief Curry.221 

Many other members of the police department, including high officials, detectives, and patrolmen, were also interviewed by news representatives during these days.222 Some of these men had participated in specific aspects of the case, such as the capture of Oswald at the Texas Theatre and the search for evidence at the Texas School Book Depository Building. Few, if any, seemed reluctant to submit to questions and to being televised. It seemed to District Attorney Wade that the newsmen "just followed everybody everywhere they went ... they interviewed some of your patrolmen ... on the corner ... they were interviewing anybody." 223 

Wade himself also made several statements to the press. He visited police headquarters twice on Friday, twice on Saturday, and twice on Sunday. On most of these occasions he was interviewed by the press and appeared on television.224 After Oswald had appeared before the press on Friday night, Wade held an 



 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Page 235 

impromptu conference with reporters in the overflowing assembly room.225 Wade told the press on Saturday that he would not reveal any evidence because it might prejudice the selection of a jury.226 On other occasions, however, he mentioned some items of evidence and expressed his opinions regarding Oswald's guilt. He told the press on Friday night that Oswald's wife had told the police that her husband had a rifle in the garage at the house in Irving and that it was missing the morning of the assassination. On one occasion he repeated the error that the murder rifle had been a Mauser. Another time, he stated his belief that Oswald had prepared for the assassination months in advance, including what he would tell the police. He also said that Oswald had practiced with the rifle to improve his marksmanship.227 

The running commentary on the investigation by the police inevitably carried with it the disclosure of many details that proved to be erroneous. In their efforts to keep the public abreast of the investigation, the police reported hearsay items and unverified leads; further investigation proved many of these to be incorrect or inaccurate.
 
 
228 

Police sources were also responsible for the mistaken notion that the chicken bones found on the sixth floor were the remains of Oswald's lunch.
 
 
Page 236 
 
 
 
District Attorney Wade also held one more press conference. Before doing so on Sunday evening, he returned once more to the police station and held a meeting with "all the brass" except Curry. Wade told them that "people are saying ... you had the wrong man and you all were the one who killed him or let him out here to have him killed intentionally." Wade told the police that "somebody ought to go out in television and lay out the evidence that you had on Oswald, and tell them everything." He sat down and listed from memory items of evidence in the case against Oswald. According to Wade,
 
Wade nonetheless proceeded to hold a lengthy formal press conference that evening, in which he attempted to list all of the evidence that had been accumulated at that point tending to establish Oswald as the assassin of President Kennedy. Unfortunately, at that time, as he subsequently testified, he lacked a thorough grasp of the evidence and made a number of errors.238 He stated that Oswald had told a woman on a bus that the President had been killed, an error apparently caused by the busdriver having confused Oswald with another passenger who was on the bus after Oswald had left. Wade also repeated the error about Oswald's having a map marked with the route of the motorcade. He told reporters that Oswald's description and name "went out by the police to look for him." 239 The police never mentioned Oswald's name in their broadcast descriptions before his arrest.
 
 
 
 
Page 239 
 
 
 


The disclosure of evidence was seriously aggravated by the statements of numerous responsible officials that they were certain of Oswald's guilt. Captain Fritz said that the case against Oswald was "cinched." Curry reported on Saturday that "we are sure of our case." 253 Curry announced that he considered Oswald sane, and Wade told the public that he would ask for the death penalty.254 

The American Bar Association declared in December 1963 that "widespread publicizing of Oswald's alleged guilt, involving statements by officials and public disclosures of the details of 'evidence,' would have made it extremely difficult to impanel an unprejudiced jury and afford the accused a fair trial." 255 Local bar associations expressed similar feelings.256 The Commission agrees that Lee Harvey Oswald's opportunity for a trial by 12 jurors free of preconception as to his guilt or innocence would have been seriously jeopardized by the premature disclosure and weighing of the evidence against him. 
 
 
 
Page 240 


 
 
However, neither the press nor the public had a right to be contemporaneously informed by the police or prosecuting authorities of the details of the evidence being accumulated against Oswald. Undoubtedly the public was interested in these disclosures, but its curiosity should not have been satisfied at the expense of the accused's right to a trial by an impartial jury
 

But a major consequence of the hasty and at times inaccurate divulgence of evidence after the assassination was simply to give rise to groundless rumors and public confusion

Deadly duo indeed.How many innocent people must have been imprisoned or executed during their reign. A black spot on the city of Dallas. Some researchers believe that Fritz arranged for Oswald to be shot so that he could close the case.

The more I read about John Will Fritz the more I'm convinced he wanted this case disappeared, his way. Now by that I'm not suggesting he had Oswald killed, but I think Oswald's numbers were up the moment Fritz laid eyes on him. Fritz had done this hundreds of times before, slim pickings for evidence, an eagerness to close the case at any cost, and a penchant for drawing false confessions from innocent people whom he chose to railroad.

Wade was complicit in this, he would have prosecuted many of Fritz' cases knowing full well there was not enough evidence to make a charge stick, the fact he did so shows the character of the man.

They were truly an incredibly formidable force with seemingly no accountability.
Jesse Curry as Police Chief would have been well aware of Fritz' conduct and as near as I can tell did nothing.
They were the untouchables.

Fritz's carelessness did get Oswald killed. He should not moved that far ahead in the basement.It made it easier for Ruby to shoot Oswald. Off course I am not saying that it was necessarily deliberate but still it was quite irresponsible.

Fritz's carelessness did get Oswald killed. He should not moved that far ahead in the basement.It made it easier for Ruby to shoot Oswald. Off course I am not saying that it was necessarily deliberate but still it was quite irresponsible.


Yep Vinny,
and negligent too. Bare minimum they owed Oswald a duty of care that ensured he was safe in their custody.


Fritz failed miserably in that basement, and Curry can take the rap for that too.

One interesting thing in Fritz's WC testimony. He says that when he heard the shot he thought that some police officer had lost his reasoning and decided to kill Oswald.He turned round and saw Ruby being subdued but could not see his face.He asked someone who that guy was,whether it was one of our officers. Why on earth would  Fritz would assume that a policeman shot Oswald?