SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 1964

BOB CONSIDINE AT SCENE

Violent Dallas:

A New Chapter

Oswald's

Identifier

Also Shot

By BOB CONSIDINE

(Hearst Headling Services)

Special to N. Y. Journal-American

DALLAS, Feb. 22-One of the men who put the finger on accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald after President Kennedy was killed has also been shot.

And the girl friend of a local resident who was questioned about this second shooting turned out to have been a stripteaser in the Dallas nightspot owned by Jack Ruby, on trial now for killing Oswald.

Adding to this incredible skein of circumstances that came to light today is the revelation that the stripper has committed suicide.

These facts, pieced together today--exactly three months after President Kennedy was slain--provide a strange epilogue showing that the jinx of violence continues to persist around figures involved in the assassination, one way or another.

Call it a series of coincidences, if you will. But here they are:

Last month a Dallas used-car dealer named Warren Reynolds was shot in the head. A shooting is not necessarily front-page news here, particularly if the victim lives.

There were 113 murders here last year. At one time, not long ago District Attorney Wade had five men in the death house, awaiting their turn in the chair.

THIS IS DIFFERENT

But the shooting of Warren Reynolds was different.

The Reynolds Motor Co. is close to the spot where Officer J. D. Tippit stopped Oswald as he hurried away from the scene of the assassination. Oswald reportedly shot the officer three times and killed him.

The sound of shooting brought Reynolds out of his office. He told police that he saw Oswald running away, putting new shells into a pistol as he did. He later joined with others in identifying him as the man.

Last month Reynolds was locking up his office for the night and had pushed two of the 30 buttons which doused the lights of the establishment when a man rose from behind a filing cabinet and shot him in the temple with a .22-caliber rifle.

Mr. Reynolds has made a remarkable recovery after doctors had feared permanent loss of speech.

SUSPECT CLEARED

A local desperado named Garner was picked up by the polce after the Reynolds shooting but was cleared. His girl, Betty (Mooney) McDonald, took a lie detector test that helped spring Garner. Two weeks ago she was arrested for engaging in a public brawl with her roommate. Last week she hanged herself in her cell.

Betty never won any beauty contests, but she always said she had a claim to fame.

She had worked as a stripper at a place called the Carousel.

Jack Ruby's Carousel.

There is pathetically little to mark the spot at which John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated just three months ago today.

THe sixth floor window of the ugly Schoolbook Depository, the window from which briefly protruded the barrel and muzzle of the 5.55 mm. Mannlicher-Carcano, is shut now. It alone among the windows on that top floor of the building where Oswald worked, is shutered--with a Venetian blind.

The bend around ehich the open car was passing is heavy with traffic, trucks and cars hammering along the one-way street on assorted errands toward the complex of overpasses just down the road. None stops. Few slow down.

There is a little rise of lawn at the place where President Kennedy's head was shattered, while he acknowledged cheers that caused him to agree with the Governor's lady, riding on the jump seat, that Dallas certainly had turned out fine for him.

The lawn leads gently up to a concrete perula and walking gallery, part of the decor of Dealey Plaza, a bit of park provided by the publisher of the Dallas Evening News to relieve the hard features of the neighborhood.

Against the wall of the gallery huddles a sad patch of wreaths, sprays and potted plants, none them bearing his name or the name of the donors.

A little bowl of three bright red full-blooming tulips was a relief, but not enough of one to keep the eyes off a blanket of red roses decorated with a few Christmas trees balls.

The story turns from chapter to chapter, never ending. It resounds in the sometimes thunderclap trial of the man who killed the man who killed the man. It is debated in the solemn councils of the Warren Commission in Washington. It remains "open" on the books of the FBI and the Secret Service.

And the spot where it hap-

It is as forlorn as an unkept grave.