Did Oswald Have a Cellmate? Media Reports Was John Erlod Lee Oswald's Cellmate

Did Oswald Have a Cellmate?

Contemporary Media Reports


From the WFAA-TV (Dallas) coverage of the assassination:

At 12:10 am., CST, November 23rd, Roger Sharp reported from the Dallas Police Department. He reported that "four homicide detectives have been questioning him [Oswald] now for 10 solid hours."

After Oswald's midnight press conference, Sharp reported that Oswald:

. . . has now been booked into the Dallas Police Station. He has been taken to a single cell on the fifth floor of this building where he is being held under heavy guard and apparently will not be questioned any more within the next few hours.
Sharp again refers again to Oswald's "ten hours of constant interrogation," and repeats that:
The suspect, Oswald, as I said, is now on the fifth floor of this building in an isolated cell under heavy guard where he will be held through the night.
The following morning, November 23rd, Bill Lord of ABC reported from Dallas Police Headquarters that Oswald:
. . . stayed here overnight in the jail some two floors above me. He was in an isolated cell. Prisoners had been moved away from the area . . . . The cell was lit normally by normal lighting. They did not turn the lights off because they did want to see him at all times. There were two or three patrolmen watching him through the evening. As for sleep, if he did get any sleep it amounted to about perhaps a half an hour. During much of the night he tossed and turned. He got up from one of the two bunks in the cell, walked about and at one point initiated an hour-long conversation with one of the guards.
All of this is, of course, fully consistent with what the Dallas police have always said about security for the prisoner Oswald, but it flatly contradicts the story of John Elrod who apparently claimed he was in the same prison cell with Oswald. Elrod's tale is the centerpiece of the LaFontaine's book Oswald Talked.

Do police sometimes lie to the media? Certainly. But if they knew so soon that they needed to tell everyone that Oswald was being held in isolation, wouldn't they have simply held him in isolation?


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