Recommended Reading: Accidental Assassin by Maurice Carroll
Photo by Jack Beers, Copyright of the Jack Beers Family
YOU KNOW THIS PICTURE. You’ve seen it a lot this week, and countless times before that and if, like me, you saw this image live, on television, after being kept home from school during that dreadful week, you remember this scene in motion. But look to the right margin, to the man just to the right of the hanging microphone, almost directly under that microphone’s shadow. In this photo, he is a young reporter doing his job.
Let me introduce you to Maurice Carroll (though I know him as Mickey). To date, he has worked for nine newspapers, including The New York Times, which is where we met in the 1970’s, when I was a copykid and he was one of the best political reporters in the world. We’ve been friends ever since.
His new book, Accidental Assassin, Jack Ruby and 4 Minutes in Dallas, is just out. Part memoir, and all powerful reporting, it will set straight most of what you might think went on in that terrible time in Dallas.
Marion, how fascinating it is that you have been friends with Maurice Carroll since your days together at The New York Times.
My diary entry for Sunday, November 24, 1963 starts with “A complicating factor in the story arose about noon today when Jack Ruby shot and killed Lee Harvey Oswald, Kennedy’s assassin, as he was being taken from one jail to another. It happened in the basement of the jail – now a different man is in custody. This is morbid. We have continued to watch history in the making….”