Talk:Jim Leavelle

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 * Only the photo's description page, not "each page the image is used on," need explain the fair-use rationale, which it does. There's no issue. EEng (talk) 04:25, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Movement of Pearl Harbor
The Pearl Harbor incident should be on top of the page since it happened before the assassination in Dallas. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Southconfederate (talk • contribs) 17:38, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
 * He's best-known for escorting Oswald when he was killed. Biographical articles do not need to be chronological (although that's often an easy way to start). TJRC (talk) 21:32, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Proposed deletion
Until yesterday, this article was almost entirely unreferenced BLP info; and/or stuff that doesn't belong even if it could be referenced, such as to whom JL is uncle, JL's opinion that Oswald's brotherr is a nice guy, JL's friendship with the man who put JFK in his casket. After deleting all this stuff, there's almost nothing left. With due respect to a dignified gentleman who did his duty, he's notable only for having been handcuffed to Oswald when Oswald was shot, and that doesn't warrant a separate article -- I've PRODded it (though I've added JL's name to the caption of the famous photo in Lee Harvey Oswald). ''Foregoing written yesterday, but I failed to save it. Today, some second thoughts... I note that wp:BIO1E actually uses "even relatively minor participants" in the JFK assassination as an example of people who may'' nonetheless merit separate articles, giving Howard Brennan as an example -- Brennan testified to seeing a sniper fire from the Depository window. Now, in addition to being front and center in the famous Ruby-Oswald photos, Leavelle did interrogate Oswald, and that puts Leavelle on something of a knife-edge, I think, as far as a separate article. He no doubt testified to the Warren Commission and so on about what Oswald said to him, but on the whole I suspect such material would belong in articles on Oswald and the death of JFK, not in a separate article on Leavelle. Anyway, as it stands we have nothing soureable alopng those lines anyway.EEng (talk) 03:46, 21 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm going to decline the PROD, notwithstanding deference to the nominating and seconding editors. This is indeed a close call, and I don't think its deletion rises to the "uncontroversial" level that PROD is designed to handle. The Kennedy assassination, and the associated Oswald killing, were each such big events that a redirect is not practical; any information about Leavelle would be lost; and I think that's inappropriate for someone who is the subject of such a historic and iconic image.


 * I do not disagree with the trimming that EEng made here; it was unsourced, and this is a BLP. However, some of the material that was deleted would have been worth keeping if it had been properly sourced. I'm thinking of Leavelle's recollections of and beliefs about the historic event, and even his ironic joke to Oswald. As a result, this article is presently more of a stub than necessity dictates. EEng especially deserves kudos for deleting the obligatory Simpsons and Family Guy references; although I will also point out that pop culture references such those are the sort thing that provides evidence of notability: it is assumed that a typical viewer is aware of Leavelle and his image in order to get the joke.


 * I'm confident that this article could be fleshed out with more information, but if shoehorned into, for example, Lee Harvey Oswald or Jack Ruby, that would never happen. TJRC (talk) 00:02, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

I think you're right. I almost removed the PROD myself after my "second thoughts" (above) but finally decided to just see what happened. (I think you're also right that PROD was the wrong mechanism to invoke --- sorry.) I may have been prejudiced by all the silly material in the article as I found it --- great uncles and casket-bearers and so on. I've gone back and restored desireable material. (That includes Leavelle's statement about Robert Oswald's intuition about his brother, although it cannot remain in the article long if no one comes up with a cite --- it's borderline-contentious material re a living person i.e. Robert Oswald --- but let's see if someone can find a cite. Old version of article says Leavelle related Robert's opinion to "Carl T. Cone, a law professor who has researched the Kennedy assassination" -- I have not tried to chase this down and anyway I really, really don't want to get entangled with Kennedy assassination groupies.) There's also a not-the-usual photo of the Ruby-Oswald shooting (from a kinescope, I think) which was used in the original version of the article, and I've added it to the more familiar image. EEng (talk) 03:24, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

The Man in the White Suit
I removed the sentence "He is known as The Man in the White Suit by historians" from the lede. It seems unlikely that this is actually the case, and it is unreferrenced. There's an unrelated movie by the same title which makes google searching difficult; if someone has a source that this is a commonly used description of Leavelle, do feel free to add it. --TeaDrinker (talk) 02:18, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

Leavelle interrogating Oswald on 22?
I just noticed that this article (great job, btw, it certainly deserves its star) contradicts what Jim Leavelle originally said. This article says Oswald was questioned by Detective Jim Leavelle about the shooting of Officer Tippit on the 22nd after his arrest. But Leavelle’s Warren Commission testimony states the exact opposite - that he only interrogated Oswald on the 24th - the morning Oswald was shot, and that he had never talked to him before. Not accusing Leavelle of being unrealible or a liar but his interviews he has done in recent years are in contray to his WC testimony. Memory always distort from time to time.

Racial comment
In the article this statement is made:

"Leavelle later said to author Joseph McBride that to him, the murder of President John F. Kennedy was "no different than a south Dallas nigger killing". This remark reveals that Leavelle was a racist who was not really concerned about who killed President Kennedy.[6]"

That last sentence doesn't appear to be a quote from the source but someone's opinion. It probably should be taken out. Another way to interpret the quote could be that Leavelle cared so little about Kennedy that he would hardly risk being part of a frame up.

And you can be a racist and not approve of the President being killed. Richard Russell (for example) cried openly at the news of the President's death.Rja13ww33 (talk) 22:10, 14 December 2017 (UTC)


 * The line as it stands is a rather shocking case of WP:SYNTH. The line attributed to Leavelle is perhaps accurate, and at least appears in the cited book. The comment about racism and what it meant for Leavelle and the investigation is purely a WP:POV and WP:OR. It was added later in this edit by an ip user. The book in question is by James Di Eugenio, who has written extensively on the assassination from the perspective of a conspiracy theorist. His views are WP:FRINGE to say the least for wikipedia's standards. But in his book he at has some important context that whoever added the detail to this article has chosen to omit. Leavelle was commenting on the shooting of policeman J. D. Tippit, and observing that in comparison to the killing of a cop, the killing of the president was "just another murder inside the city lines of Dallas. I've handled hundreds of them ... what some people don't realise is that when a police officer gets killed, that takes precedence over the shooting of the president, because that's close to him." What Leavelle seems to have been saying is that as a law enforcement official himself, the killing of a fellow policeman affected him more than the killing of the president. It could even be read as that while he felt he could be impartial in his investigation of the assassination, he was unable to be so over the killing of a policeman. The ip addition offering a personal opinion on Leavelle's meaning and motivations has no place on wikipedia under WP:NOR and I will remove it as such. 82.39.49.182 (talk) 05:56, 17 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Excellent points. I forgot to mention that about J.D. Tippit myself. Several officers have been quoted that the JDT killing meant more to them than JFKs.Rja13ww33 (talk) 20:04, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

For the record, Mcbride did say that Leavelle did preface that comment with “As the old saying goes back then.” But Mcbride also said Leavelle said it with a little smile, as if he were genuinely amused by the remark, even saying that Leavelle never even apologized for saying it. He really did say that, yes, and I think it’s quite the shocking statement to make about anybody’s death. The origin of the quote lies in a conversation that author Joseph McBride had with Leavelle some years ago during McBride’s research. McBride had seemingly commented from hearing the recordings of the police interactions of November 22, 1963, that everyone sounded so calm considering the fact that the President had just been shot. Leavelle responded with the line quoted above, with the addition that he had seen many of those. The fact that Leavelle spoke about the death of the President that way may be surprising to many when it’s taken out of its significant historical and sociocultural context. Back in the 1920s, Dallas took centre stage as the main chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. It is estimated that Dallas membership at the time presumably represented one out of three eligible men. Elections had seen Klansmen gain control over public offices. Both the city police commissioner and the county sheriff were a part of the Klan, as were many others working in law enforcement capacities. The Klan eventually closed its headquarters back in 1929. Yet, racial issues in Dallas didn’t quite stop at that. In the early 1960s, it was one of the few cities still resisting integrating its classrooms – long after the decision ordering school desegregation. The civil rights movement was kept at bay in Dallas for the longest time. There are various notions out there that the existence of racial prejudice was predominant in the Dallas Police Department in those days as well, which would definitely fall in line with Leavelle’s quote that he shockingly never even apologised for saying. John F. Kennedy himself may have been of Irish descent, but his endorsement of the civil rights movement would not have endeared him any to those within Dallas wishing to uphold their old status quo. He would, in other words, “be no better than a n*****” – hostilities against Kennedy’s viewpoints were widespread in Dallas, regardless of the warm welcome he received on the day of the assassination, and I think that Leavelle’s quote comes from a very deep-set place of prejudice that is informed by the city’s history and the context of the times they were in. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.13.22.148 (talk) 14:03, 21 December 2017 (UTC)  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.144.249.225 (talk)
 * Well, I am sort of confused: on the one hand you want to say [on the talk page] that "but his [Kennedy's] endorsement of the civil rights movement would not have endeared him any to those within Dallas wishing to uphold their old status quo"......which implies a willingness to be in on a plot/cover up, but you reverted the article back to the statement "Leavelle was a racist who was not really concerned about who killed President Kennedy". It's hard for those two things to co-exist.


 * And as I pointed out previously: this is not a quote directly from the source....it's a conclusion drawn by the person who put it in (based on the quote). I think it should be reverted back to what it was. Leavelle’s racial views (or the racial situation in Dallas) is not the reason there is a Jim Leavelle article on wiki.Rja13ww33 (talk) 20:46, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

Leavelle joking with Oswald?
I have always wondered if Leavelle’s joke with Oswald happened or not. Leavelle never mentioned any such thing back in 1963, and his claim that he did was spoken years after Oswald's death. I have always wondered if Leavelle is misremembering or if he made that up. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 149.254.234.87 (talk) 12:01, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

There is no corroboration for any of this from anyone else who was with Leavelle or Oswald, not from L.C. Graves (who was also handcuffed to Oswald) or Captain Will Fritz (who was leading them). No mention of any light hearted banter whatsoever. From the footage that is available when they are coming out, not much was being said at all. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 149.254.234.87 (talk) 18:43, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

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