Lived next door to Ruth Paine who had Marina Oswald and her daughter living with her. Lee Oswald would come by on weekends since he had a room close to the Texas School Book Depository. This time, Lee was there on a Thursday night and rode into work with Buell who worked there as well.

On November 22, 1963 he was 19 years old when he was drawn into what many consider to be the crime of the century. Originally he told the Dallas PD that Lee only had a small lunch bag with him when they headed to the depository in the morning.

He told the police that he was down in the basement eating his lunch when the shooting took place. After long hours in interrogation and threats of inclusion on assassination charges he said that Lee had a package about two feet that he carried between his hand and armpit. Buell asked him what he had and was told curtain rods. Even though this was about a foot shorter than the rifle the police were satisfied and ran with it and tried to say he was mistaken and stretched into a package containing the rifle.

He said nothing more for years because of his fear of the Dallas PD who had a reputation for getting convictions with or without factual evidence. Over the years, his youthful and justifiable fear subsided, and he looked to clear the air. He did this by way of a book Driving Truth and later during a program sponsored by the Sixth Floor Museum – basically the house organ for the Warren Commission, Oswald as a lone gunman from the museum's location.

What the story he told was that he was watching the motorcade from the doorway of the book depository. He thought the first shot was simply a backfire from the police motorcycles that were accompanying the cars. He recognizing the confusion and went outside where he saw a well dressed man putting a rifle in a car and driving off from the parking lot behind the wooden fence on the grassy knoll. A few minutes late he saw Lee slowly walking away from the building. This agrees with Lee's story to the police that he figured no work would get done that afternoon so he was going home.

Our of print books that may be of interest...

Driving Truth  by Buell Wesley Frazier