(pronounced luh-VELL)

James Leavelle, Dallas detective handcuffed to history, dies at 99

He believed Oswald acted alone out of a twisted sense of personal vainglory and had little patience with the myriad conspiracy theories that have sprung up in the wake of the assassination, including in Oliver Stone’s 1991 film “JFK,” for which Mr. Leavelle was a technical adviser.

“The only person they haven’t accused yet of pulling the trigger has been Jackie Kennedy,” he told the Dallas Morning News in 2002. “If you had asked me in ’63, I would have said that all this would blow over by about ’64. I’m as amazed as anyone that 40 years later, there is still this interest.”

One of the reasons Mr. Leavelle’s presence in the Oswald shooting was so memorable was that, alone of all the people gathered in the basement of the Dallas police building, he was wearing an off-white Stetson and light tan suit from Neiman Marcus. Both are now in the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas, along with the handcuffs he used with Oswald.

“On my salary of $300 a month, I couldn’t buy a Neiman Marcus suit,” Mr. Leavelle told the Morning News. “It was given to me by a friend who had gained too much weight and couldn’t wear it anymore . . . I owned three suits and I wore this one because it came up next in the rotation.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/jim-leavelle-dallas-detective-handcuffed-to-history-dies-at-99/2019/08/30/18909df0-cb26-11e9-a1fe-ca46e8d573c0_story.html