Former Deputy Sheriff Roger Dean Craig, 39, was found to shot to death at 3:30 p.m. Thursday in his father's home at 10524 Luna Road.
Homicide investigator Robert Garza said a rifle and a note were found near the body. Garza said the wound in Craig's upper right chest apparently was self-inflicted.
Craig had been embroiled in controversy surrounding assassination of President Kennedy.
A DEPUTY at the time of the assassination, Craig said he saw Lee Harvery Oswald running west down Elm Street from the Texas School Book, Depository about 15 minutes after the assassination. He said Oswald then got into a station wagon that had pulled up alongside of him.
He also said he heard the shots fired at the presidential motorcade and that because of their close proximity, the shots had to have been fired from two different rifles.
Craig had recently appeared on radio talk shows expressing his views on assassination and his testimony appears in the Waren Report.
Patrolmen P.L. Anderson and R. W. Wood said Craig's father, Kristel Craig, discovered the body in a back bedroom in their 1-story frame home at 3:30 p.m. The father had talked to the victim 30 minutes earlier, but left the house to work on a lawn mower in the back yard.
POLICE SAID Craig said in the note he was sorry for what he has to do, but that he could not stand the pain.
Anderson and Wood said Craig's father told them Craig had been taking pain-killing medication for injuries in a car wreck two years ago and for a gunshot wound in the shoulder in Waxahachie six months ago.
At that time, Craig reported to Waxahachie police a stranger appeared at the door of a house at which Craig was waiting for a woman friend, and shot him with a shotgun when Craig answered a knock at the door.
Craig was under the supervision of Sheriff Bill Decker at the time of the assassination. He left the department shortly after the assassination.
Craig was named Man of the Year by the sheriff's office in 1960 for his work in aid in helping to capture an international jewel chief.
The Dallas Morning News. May 17, 1975.