Tom Samoluk (ARRB) on the Will Fritz Interrogation notes

The Will Fritz Oswald interrogation notes have always been of huge interest to me and fellow researchers. They were not made public until the ARRB received them from an anonymous donor.

Lethbridge Herald – Nov. 22 1997. Will Fritz interrogation notes.

During one of my chats with Podcaster Robbie Robertson of Out of the Blank he told me that he would have Tom Samoluk of the ARRB on soon. I wanted to see if he could ask him about the above and perhaps Tom Samoluk  could offer some extra information on the Will Fritz interrogation of Lee Harvey Oswald, especially how he got hold of that documentation of the Fritz interrogation notes.

What follows is a transcript of the subject discussed between Robbie Robertson and Tom Samoluk, which comes from this video.

RR: I just got a couple more questions for you, but do you know anything about Fritz’s interrogation of Oswald? That’s a big area for me.

Will Fritz being interviewed in the third floor corridor. of the DPD.

TS: Yeah, that was another interesting chapter because we wanted to find out what records existed from the interrogation. And this has not been written a lot about it. Got some coverage, I think, because we did release these records that I’m going to reference at the time we found them.

But I remember we had written to, I think we found a family member, a surviving family member of Captain Fritz. And it led us to, I believe, a lawyer representing Captain Fritz or Captain Fritz’s family because he was long deceased. And we said what we were seeking, any records that may have survived with a focus on the interrogation, but interested in anything else. And then one day, this is my recollection, at the ARRB headquarters in Washington, I got a packet, like a manila envelope. And if I recall correctly, there was a cover letter from the attorney that we had been dealing with. And he basically said, this is what we found. And the family does not want to be interviewed. The family does not want to talk with anyone, but they freely contribute these records.

And there were handwritten notes. You know, there’s no way of validating at that point, but we believe them to be handwritten notes by Captain Fritz taken during contemporaneous with the interview. The way they were written, I think that that was our record. That was our thought that they were in fact contemporaneous, although they might have been shortly after, but he took notes about the assassination. And we made those available to the media. I forget whether that was 96 or 97. 97. Got some coverage. 97. So I don’t know. Are you familiar with those records? Yeah. There’s probably nothing I can mention to you, Robbie, that you haven’t dealt with. Go ahead, please. Please do. No, but you’ve done great research. Yeah. So those became part of the record, I think.

And I was not directly involved in this, but one of my colleagues on staff, I believe we also got some notes that hosted the FBI agency and hosted the had taken, which was interesting. He was coming out with a book of his own at that time in the mid-90s. And that was kind of a factor in our discussions with him. But my recollection is that the original thought and what people had said was there were no contemporaneous notes with the interrogations of Lee Harvey Oswald. And I think we ended up getting the Fritz and Hostie notes, whether that was everything. Of course, we don’t know. But I think that’s what we found. But we found them. And I remember when I was opening up the file with the Fritz notes, the original notes.

And I was with, one of the analysts was with us who, more directly than me, dealt with the actual original records that we were getting and reviewing from the various federal agencies. So I’m holding, just having opened up the Manila envelope that came in the mail, and I’m holding the records. And we’re reading the cover letter from the attorney and realizing what they are in the original records. And my colleague Kevin says, Tom, I think it’s time for us to put on the white gloves. And we did, because that’s what he was used to, wearing the white gloves, dealing with all those federal records. But so that, it’s another example. That was obviously at the municipal level related to Dallas. But we looked hard for records that we thought would be of interest. And I think we did add to the richness of the, of the assassination record.

Henry Wade (far left), C.W. Brown (black tie and patterned jacket)to the left of Will Fritz who is on the phone inside Room 317 of Robbery and Homicide. Behind FRity, partially visible Richard Sims and David Johnston. Click pic. to enlarge.

RR: How thoroughly did anybody look through Hostie’s notes? Because he said something that wasn’t exposed until Bart Kamp. And this is another theory about Oswald. It’s ‘Prayer Man’. I don’t necessarily buy that, but there is a statement in Hostie’s notes where he talked about getting a Coke for his lunch and then going out to go watch the parade. So that’s a bunch of big obviously conspiracy. I wouldn’t say conspiracy, but it’s one that’s very controversial subject in the Kennedy assassination. There’s photographs of someone that does look like Oswald standing on the front steps. I don’t necessarily go into that because I feel like if you want the public interest, you don’t really have to deal with that because it’s kind of like trying to study specific individuals like Ruth Payne or any of them. You just get lost in kind of the minutia. But do you know why no one really questioned that that was in his notes?

TS: You know, I don’t recall a discussion of that, but certainly Oswald’s movements before the assassination, after the assassination are critically important. And I must say that as Oliver Stone went through in some detail with some witnesses that the Warren Commission didn’t pay attention to, like a lot of things, and any researchers watching this will agree, unfortunately there are a lot of things that leave us scratching our heads. But the investigation that day was botched from the get-go. There were a lot of mistakes made. Granted, it was 1963 and not 2023, but even for 1963, there were a lot of mistakes made by the Dallas police.