He was waiting at the Dallas Trade Mart for the President to arrive when he received the tragic news that Kennedy had been shot. As doctors at Parkland Hospital were desperately treating the President, he went to the Texas School Book Depository with other police officers. While there, a rifle was discovered, hidden between some boxes. Three spent rifle hulls were found under a window on the sixth floor of the Dallas School Book Depository. Will asked detectives to not touch the empty shells until they were photographed because the position of the shells on the floor was important.
Will Fritz was Captain of the Dallas Homicide and Robbery Division of the Dallas Police Department. He was born in Dublin, Texas on June 15, 1896 to Blake and Ada Fritz as the oldest of 4 boys. His father worked as a farmer in Erath County.
According to the Texas History Notebook, by 1910 his family moved from Dublin to Lake Arthur, New Mexico where he grew up. While there, Blake worked as a horse and mule rancher. Will grew up learning cowboy skills. But Will must have continued to have ties with Dublin since his grandfather lived here. Also, tax records from 1915 show that his father, Blake Fritz, still owned property close to the Gallagher house on Grafton Street.
Later his father and grandfather were buried in Dublin Live Oak Cemetery. They both died the same year, 1924.
Because of his ties with Dublin, Will Fritz later returned to the Dublin area as a young man and sold 3 horses to pay tuition to Tarleton State College.
But on that famous day on November 22, 1963 Will Fritz was in Dallas and was the man that people turned to for information about Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of President John F. Kennedy.
As reported by the Dallas Morning News, March 1, 1959, “The record of Fritz and his Dallas Homicide and Robbery Bureau-which he lead since its formationis a nationally enviable one. Over the past quarter century, he and his aides had solved roughly 98 percent of the 54 to 98 homicides committed each year.”
He was known by his relaxed style and his ability to get confessions. Some reports say he almost got a confession from Oswald, but was interrupted by FBI and Secret Service men.
At 7:10 p.m. on November 22, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald was formally advised that he had been charged with the murder of Patrolman J. D. Tippit.
Though he did not get a confession, Fritz said he had all the proof he needed to convict Oswald for the Presidential assassination. Shortly after 1:30 a.m. Saturday, November 23, Captain Will Fritz formally charged Lee Harvey Oswald with the murder of President John F. Kennedy.