Jesse Curry

Jesse Edward Curry (October 3, 1913 – June 22, 1980) was chief of the Dallas Police Department at the time John F. Kennedy was assassinated while traveling through a motorcade in downtown Dallas, and his alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was gunned down by Jack Ruby while Oswald was in police custody.

Early life
Curry's family moved to Dallas soon after he was born. His father served as a police office in Dallas for a brief period of time before becoming a Baptist minister. Curry attended Dallas Technical High School. An all-district tackle, Curry led his high school football team to the state finals against Greenville High School in 1933. He studied optometry for a short time after graduation.

Curry joined the Dallas Police Department as a traffic officer on May 1, 1936, and worked his way up the ranks to become the Chief of Police on January 20, 1960.

The assassination of John F. Kennedy
As Curry was to recount in his testimony with the Warren Commission and with the LBJ Presidential Library, he drove the lead car in the motorcade and provided security for the new president, Lyndon B. Johnson, at Parkland Memorial Hospital where President Kennedy died, and aboard Air Force One when he was sworn in as president. A number of Curry's statements have been found significant by conspiracy theorists who believe they contradict the Commission's conclusion that Oswald was the lone assassin positioned above and behind Kennedy's limousine on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. In 1969, the Dallas Morning News quoted him as stating: "We don't have any proof that Oswald fired the rifle, and never did. Nobody's yet been able to put him in that building with a gun in his hand." Curry reasoned in another interview: “I think there’s a possibility that one [shot] could have come from in front of him. We’ve never been able to prove it, but just in my mind and by the direction of his blood and brains from the president from one of the shots, it would just seem that it would have to be fired from the front rather than behind.”

Later life
Curry died of a heart attack in Dallas on June 22, 1980, and was buried in Grove Hill Memorial Park.