Mr. HUBERT. Was that a local call?
Mrs. GRANT. Oh, no.
Mr. HUBERT. Or, was it a long distance call?
Mrs. GRANT. No; it was a local call.
Mr. HUBERT. Was it a man or a woman?
Mrs. GRANT. A man, and another thing, I know my phone was tapped and I
know—it’s a terrible thing to say, but I have all reasons to believe
that the district attorney has been on it and is still on it. The
only time they got off is when I went to the FBI and complained about
it; that I thought my brother wasn’t protected in the city jail, and
somebody knows every move I was making. It seems my phone was clearer
after that, and truthfully, if the district attorney has any tapes on
me, it should be in on the tape of the day of the verdict, and I was so
sick over the verdict and having this.
Mr. HUBERT. You did not recognize the voice that made the threat
against Belli?
Mrs. GRANT. No.
Mr. HUBERT. Were you asked to convey that information to Belli?
Mrs. GRANT. No; no.
Mr. HUBERT. How long did that conversation last; do you know?
Mrs. GRANT. Not over 3 or 4 minutes. It was the other party speaking.
This happened the afternoon—the day my brother got his horrible verdict.
Mr. HUBERT. That was Saturday afternoon, March 14?
Mrs. GRANT. That’s right; March 14.
Mr. HUBERT. About what time of the afternoon was it?
Mrs. GRANT. I would say after 2:30—sometime between 2:30 and 4, it
seems.
Mr. HUBERT. It was a one-sided conversation, I take it?
Mrs. GRANT. Practically.
Mr. HUBERT. And the essence and the gist of the conversation was that
if Mr. Belli did not leave town he would be injured?
Mrs. GRANT. The voice said something like this, “Mrs. Grant?” I says,
“Yes.” He said, “If Melvin Belli knows what’s good for him, he had
better leave town. They are going to kill him.” Now, I don’t know—this
man didn’t sound like a child and he didn’t sound like an imbecile.
Mr. HUBERT. Did you ask him who he meant by “they”?
Mrs. GRANT. I’ll tell you the truth, I was so shocked at the verdict,
and before I knew it he was off—I was hanging on the phone there by
myself.
Mr. HUBERT. Did he indicate to you in any way who “they” were?
Mrs. GRANT. No.
Mr. HUBERT. Or who was going to kill him?
Mrs. GRANT. No. Oh, now I want to tell you about—going back to Monday,
which would be the 16th, there was conversation and, of course, I think
I heard this Sunday too.
Mr. HUBERT. That’s March 16?
Mrs. GRANT. I think March 16 was on a Monday.
Mr. HUBERT. That’s correct.
Mrs. GRANT. But I may have heard this Sunday, that the sheriff—and
there has been threats against Belli—and this is another thing I know,
whether someone is on my phone and leaked it out—it wasn’t me, that the
sheriff is going to give Belli a guard out of town, that he has been
threatened, but I already knew that. Then, I got to thinking about all
of this and I says, “I hope he leaves, I don’t want to have this on my
mind,” but, I knew when I was in his suite of rooms—somebody called
there Monday afternoon sometime and he went to the phone for a minute;
as a rule someone else was answering the phone, and then he went in
the bedroom there and he answered the phone. He had quite a suite of
rooms—three rooms, I think, and the remark among the people there—they
said the sheriff is going to give him a guard, you know, escort him out
of town.
Mr. HUBERT. You mean you heard that that afternoon.
Mrs. GRANT. Too, but it wasn’t—I already had known that from the
conversation Saturday afternoon, it didn’t look good.
Mr. HUBERT. Did he comment upon this telephone call that he answered
himself?
Mrs. GRANT. No; he hardly did any talking that afternoon.
Mr. HUBERT. Well, you mentioned the telephone call, I wonder why you
did so, that is to say, what import you had put on it?
Mrs. GRANT. You want to know the truth?
Mr. HUBERT. Yes; I want to know the truth.
Mrs. GRANT. I was not thinking anything about it but he is coming back
for a trial and I told Phil recently, I thought he was going to get his
trial transferred from the Texas Bar Association and I guess he can’t.
I wasn’t going to say anything about it—I figured—he’s never coming
back, but now I am a little scared. I wouldn’t like anything—look, you
don’t want a lawyer in a case?
Mr. HUBERT. Let me finish about this phone call—is there any other
significance to that phone call that you heard him answer? You
mentioned it in connection with this.
Mrs. GRANT. It didn’t look right when he left—left the phone.
Mr. HUBERT. That’s just an impression, though, he didn’t say anything
to indicate the nature of it?
Mrs. GRANT. No; no.
Mr. HUBERT. You indicated that perhaps, I say—you indicated—the way
you brought it up—it could be inferred perhaps that it was also a
threatening phone call?
Mrs. GRANT. No, no; I didn’t mean that at all.
Mr. HUBERT. But, do you know that to be a fact?
Mrs. GRANT. No, no; this was merely that the sheriff said he was going
to escort him out of town.
Mr. HUBERT. Do you think it was the sheriff on the phone?
Mrs. GRANT. It could be—that’s what I felt, and shortly after this
there was another phone call came in and he went in and he took the
call.
Mr. HUBERT. When you said the rumor or talk was that the sheriff was
going to escort him out of town, I assumed you meant he was going to
give him protection, is that what you meant?
Mrs. GRANT. That’s what I mean, so he doesn’t get hurt. Maybe the
sheriff knows something about this, although he does know—I don’t
know. I only know I was too sick after the verdict to even think about
anything, but now that I know he’s coming back, I asked Phil, I said,
“Do you think he’s coming back?” And he says, “Yes; he’s coming back.”
Mr. HUBERT. Mrs. Grant or Mr. Burleson, do you have any other matter I
have touched upon that you would like to bring up at this time?
Mr. BURLESON. I would like to go into some of these things you have
just questioned her about.
Mr. HUBERT. All right.
Mr. BURLESON. Right at first, Mr. Tom Howard did go down and talk to
Jack on Sunday the 24th?
Mrs. GRANT. Oh, yes.
Mr. BURLESON. And did get a writ of habeas corpus, I believe?
Mrs. GRANT. I know nothing of the court procedures of that date.
Mr. BURLESON. You don’t know that Judge Brown did set a bond on assault
with intent to commit murder upon Lee Harvey Oswald before this hearing?
Mrs. GRANT. I understand it was filed in Richardson. I may be wrong.
Someone told me that, that they did file a murder charge against Oswald.
Mr. BURLESON. Before Oswald was pronounced dead, did you know anything
about Judge Joe B. Brown setting bond and granting a writ to let Jack
out on assault with intent to commit murder?