FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION

Date 11/23/63

VIRGIE RACHLEY, 405 Wood Street, telephone 544-3827, employed as a bookkeeper at the Texas School Book Depository, second floor, corner of Houston and Elm Streets, Dallas, Texas, Furnished the following information:

From an examination of the photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald, she does not believe that she has ever seen him and is certain that she has never spoken to him. She works on the second floor at the front of the building and rides to work on the elevator located in the east end of the building which goes only to the first four floors.

At about 12:16 p.m. on November 22, 1963 she left her office and went out the south door of the Texas School Book Depository Building to watch the Presidential motorcade pass. She was standing across the street immediately in front of the building but on the north side of the entrance to the Triple Underpass along which the motorcade traveled. She observed President KENNEDY'S car pass her point of observation and almost immediately thereafter heard three explosions spaced at intervals which she at first thought were firecrackers. It sounded as though these sounds were coming from the direction of the Triple Underpass, and looking in that direction after the first shot she saw something bounce from the roadway in front of the Presidential automobile and now presumes it was a bullet bouncing off the pavement. She stated she did not see president KENNEDY being shot and that she did not realize this was what happened until later.

After the shots she and others in the crowed moved on down toward the Triple Underpass and on returning to the building were told they could not go inside. She did not go inside until about 3:00 p.m.

She stated that just before the shooting a man had passed out on the parkway between the Elm Street entrance and the Main Street entrance to the Triple Underpass and that an ambulance had picked him up and left the scene just seconds before the Presidential car came into sight on Houston Street.

This ambulance picked up the man directly across Houston Street from the Sheriff's Office.

RACKLEY stated that she did not look up at the Texas School Book Depository Building since she did not think the sounds were coming from that building. She recalled no one who had mentioned seeing anyone in the windows of the building prior to the shooting although just after the shooting some unidentified man who had been sitting on a wall directly across the street and south of the Texas School Book Depository Building stated "I saw everything". She did not know what he was talking about at the time and does not know whether he saw anyone in the windows of the building or not.

She recalled that after the second shot she smelled gunsmoke but did not know where it was coming from.

on 11/24/63 at Ferris, Texas File # DL 89-43

By Special Agents BARDWELL D. COUM and JOSEPH G. PEGGS Date dictated 11/24/63