Peter W & Oswald

Newsmen who gathered in the basement of the Dallas city jail on this date 46 years ago thought it would be a brief, uneventful perp walk for Lee Harvey Oswald.

Peter Worthington, dispatched to Dallas by the Toronto Telegram after President John Kennedy was assassinated two days earlier, was standing a few feet from Oswald when it all went deadly wrong.

And there is ample television footage of Peter at the scene.

In the first minute of one clip, Peter can be see up close as print and broadcast newsmen jockey for positions before the perp walk.

Later in that footage and in others, Peter can be seen standing to the left with his hands in his pockets while waiting for Oswald to be walked to an armoured car for transfer to a maximum security cell. The same footage shows him wincing when Jack Ruby's gun is fired.

Other footage viewed in a documentary, but not found online, shows Peter interviewing a cop after the shooting. He was in the thick of it for the Telegram that day in Dallas and, as always, did the paper proud.

Dallas cops involved in the perp walk are another story.

Forty-six years later, the visible lack of security for an accused presidential assassin still boggles the mind. And take note of how accommodating the cops were for the cameras in the hectic aftermath of the shooting.