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The last police detective to investigate the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas died Friday at age 96.
Elmer L. “Sonny” Boyd died in Corsicana, Texas, about 50 miles from Dealey Plaza, where Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed President Kennedy more than 60 years ago, the Sixth Floor Museum announced in a Facebook post on Tuesday.
“Elmer was deeply involved in the local Kennedy assassination investigation, searching for evidence at the Texas School Book Depository and later escorting Lee Harvey Oswald through the hallways of Dallas Police Headquarters,” the museum said.
“He was a true Southern gentleman and will be deeply missed. Our deepest condolences go out to the entire Boyd family.”
Born in the Dallas suburb of Blooming Grove, Boyd joined the Dallas Police Department as a patrol officer in May 1952 and was promoted to detective in the Homicide and Robbery Division in October 1957.
Boyd was originally assigned to join President Kennedy’s motorcade through Dallas on November 22, 1963.
But a last-minute change meant he ended up waiting for his former commander in chief at the Trade Mart, where JFK had planned to meet him for lunch on that fateful day, according to the Corsicana Daily Sun.
“We were told Kennedy was due to arrive in five minutes and then we got word he’d had an accident,” Boyd told the outlet in 2017.
As news spread that the president had been shot, Boyd and his partner, Richard Sims, followed President Kennedy’s motorcade as it raced to Parkland Hospital.
Upon arriving at the hospital, Boyd and other Dallas police officers were ordered to the Texas School Book Depository building in Dealey Plaza.
“They were tracking everyone except Lee Harvey Oswald. There was an address in Irving, but it turned out to be Marina (his spouse’s) address,” he explained.
Boyd was one of three men on guard on the sixth floor of the Book Depository when they learned that Dallas Constable J.D. Tippit had been shot and killed by Oswald during the pursuit.
“I was told to call the office … and they said they thought the person they were looking for, Oswald, would be there,” he recalled.
He and Sims were later photographed escorting Oswald to the Dallas police station.
According to the outlet, Boyd first came to his attention about the now-historic photograph when an Irish man sent him a copy of it many years after it was taken.
“He wanted me to sign it and send it back to him and put it up in his brother’s pub,” the former Dallas detective explained.
Boyd told the Sixth Floor Museum in 2007 that he participated in Oswald’s interrogation when he was a suspected assassin and was present for about “75 to 80 percent” of Oswald’s interviews while he was in custody.
After working until 3 a.m. for two consecutive days, he went to his mother-in-law’s house to rest.
On the morning of November 24, Boyd and his family were watching television with their families when they witnessed Jack Ruby shoot and kill Oswald as he was being transported to the prison.
Boyd said he immediately knew Ruby was the shooter.
“Jack Ruby thought he was a big time gangster, but he was really just a nightclub owner,” Boyd told the Corsicana Daily Sun.
“He said he wanted to be a hero by killing Oswald, but also to spare Jackie (Kennedy) the trauma of having to return to Dallas for the trial.”
Boyd and his partner were then called back to duty to provide guard duty to Ruby following her arrest.
Because Oswald’s transport time had been changed without public notice, he believed it was impossible for Ruby to have planned the shooting.
His name and badge number were later included in the “Disturbing the Peace” report on Oswald, who used the alias Ruby, during the investigation into the Kennedy assassination, linking the two in October 1963, one month before the president was assassinated.
He told the Sixth Floor Museum that the report noted an altercation between “Junior Rubenstein (Ruby)” and “Alec Heidel (Oswald’s alias)” in the apartment, but that no police intervention was required.
The charges were added to the Warren Commission Report, the 888-page official government report that investigated the assassination of President Kennedy.
The two men from Washington later met with Boyd with the report in hand to discuss the allegations.
“They took that as evidence that Ruby and Oswald knew each other before the shooting,” he told the Corsicana Daily Sun.
Boyd said he didn’t know why his badge number was on the report about Ruby and Oswald, but it was an official Dallas Police Department document.
The Warren Report ultimately concluded that Ruby and Oswald did not know each other prior to the assassination of President Kennedy.
Boyd left the Dallas Police Department in 1978 and served another 11 years with the Euless Police Department before retiring in 1989.
He married his wife, Yvonne Smith, in 1950 and was with her for 65 years until her death in 2015. The couple had three daughters.
In 2023, Boyd donated the firearms, cowboy hat and handcuffs used after Oswald’s arrest to the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas.
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