Duke Lane

... I get your point about the ability to predict the time calls however Google references the time from Bonney View and Kienst to Lancaster and 8th at 10 minutes so it's hard to make a case for "exactly 8 minutes" between locations. Tippit might have given the correct locations on both calls, one or none, at those times, who knows? I merely used the Lancaster call at 12.54 as a location/timestamp.

The case for eight minutes is not calculation or Internet estimation, it is taking the actual trip several times in a vehicle moving at the actual speed limit of 40 mph (Google estimates 30 mph for all sidestreets). Sometimes it took nine to nine-and-a-half minutes, once it took seven-and-a-half. We also know that the dispatchers didn't watch the second hand on the clock to mark the time exactly. The basic point is that he said he was at one point and, in approximately the time it would have taken him to drive from one point to the other, he said he'd arrived at the other. That is a difficult thing to do if you were actually at different places both times, albeit not impossible.

I was aware of the shoplifting call that resulted in no official action but had not heard that he gave the offender a lift home (do you know of an address for this). I have seen that Tippit called "clear" at 12.20 only 3 minutes after calling in to deal with the Bonnie View shoplifter. Would this 3 minutes cover his dealing with the shoplifter and dropping them home? Or would he call "clear" and then drop the shoplifter home? I'm sure you are aware of the contention regarding the radio call into Oak Cliff. In any event we have 20 minutes or so unnacounted for.

I don't recall the source on the female shoplifter; it may have been Dale Myers, Bill Drenas or someone else who tracked down the then-owner of a market there in the 4100 block of Bonnie View, where Tippit had previously said he was or was on call to. This call was apparently relayed by telephone according a call sheet cited and displayed by Drenas in his "Car 10" article.

"Clear" would only mean that he was available for duty and/or had finished with whatever business had occupied him previously. Three minutes to "clear" an incident is not difficult to imagine, consisting only of contacting the complainant, finding out what the problem was, getting some clarifying facts (e.g., what did she steal, how much was it worth, do you want her arrested?), and then disposing of the matter.

(Remember that this was in the day when cops would drive you home if you were swerving all over the road on your way home from a bar, unlike today when they'd pull you over, get five cars for backup, thrust you in the back of the car, book you for the weekend, and send you to prison if you've been DWI more than a couple of other times in your lifetime. This was also then in the "outskirts" of Dallas.)

There is no certainty of who the individual was nor where she lived nor, for that matter, that he drove her home. However, given the location, a general rule of thumb that neighborhood markets are usually frequented by people in the immediate area, that the person was not arrested and - out of general good sense - would not have been left standing in front of the small market (vice being left in the larger parking lot of a supermarket), added to the "missing" 20 minutes during which he didn't go but three blocks or so, leads to reasonable presumptions that Tippit (1) took her away from the premises to mollify the store owner, (2) drove her somewhere at least out of sight of the store, and (3) probably gave her something to think about before releasing her.

That is a much smaller leap of faith for the mild-mannered patrolman (as described by virtually everyone who knew him) to have done that than for him to have been embroiled in a nefarious murder plot to kill someone for something he didn't do. That is completely out of character for someone who supposedly didn't even look most people in the eye.

... Then a call at 12.42 calling "all downtown squads". I find it much harder to ignore the 5 witnesses who all claimed to know Tippit and claim to have seen him at Gloco.

"Claim" might be an operative verb, who knows? Setting that aside, if Tippit was sitting at the base of a viaduct leading directly into downtown when that "attention all downtown squads" call came out, why did he race away in the opposite direction? Why not go into downtown, less than a half-mile away? It is also possible that, from a distance (even across a gas station parking lot), whoever was in the car - assuming it was even there - might only have looked like JD Tippit. (I'm looking into that.)

As I see it Oswald cannot get to 1026 North Beckley early enough to walk (even briskly) to get to 10th and Patton soon enough to meet Tippit by 1.06-1.10. I am in total agreement with you on that one. If it was Oswald, he either had other transportation to get there quicker or it was someone else who shot Tippit. Or it was not Oswald who entered 1026 North Beckley.

All true ... except that, if Oswald didn't go into 1026, then he killed Tippit without a gun.

... Also it is apparent as we move the Tippit shooting earlier to accomodate Markham (who I think is a credible witness in order to get the accurate time), it doesn't accomodate both 1026 North Beckley and Top Ten as valid destinations for Tippit. As Top Ten does appear to have credible witnesses one logically has to exclude a pause by Tippit outside the LHO rooming house.

We're in accord except that you've got one thing backward: it is not a case of "mov[ing] the Tippit shooting earlier to accomodate Markham," but rather that the shooting was moved backward to accomodate Oswald having the ability to get there by putting it immediately before the citizen broadcast; to have allowed only for the facts as were presented, it would have eliminated Oswald from being the killer. The facts alone support the earlier time and a delay in anyone making that call, be they Benavides or Bowley.

I don't generally consider Markham "credible" except from the single standpoint that she rode the bus every day and therefore knew her routine. What happened on that particular Friday afternoon was unique in her experience in every way but for her routine. Bowley is as credible a witness as you'd ever want to meet.

It seems to me (and I apologise if this has been stated previously by others).

1) If LHO entered 1026 NBeckley and did not use a transport method other than on foot he did not shoot Tippit.

2) If LHO did not enter 1026 NBeckley but somehow had a handgun he could have shot Tippit and fled to the Texas Theatre.

3) If a police car beeped outside 1026 NBeckley it was not Tippit's car.

That sums it up nicely with the exception of how he might have otherwise gotten ahold of said handgun. The "somehow" needs to at least be hypothesized before we can make that leap.

... Oswald would have had to leave his lodging at about 12.55 – 12.56 pm to get there in time to shoot Tippit. Which would then either call into question Earlene Roberts testimony or suggest Oswald must have used different means of getting to 10th/P.

The only other option I see, is of course; could Oswald have left the boarding house before Earlene Robert's estimated time of 1.00pm? Practically in my opinion, 4-5 minutes to the hour is close enough that it can be called approximately 1pm – I do it all the time when my wife asks me the time. ...

Have you at all looked at the WC reconstruction? They were unable to put LHO into the rooming house by the time you want him to have left.

The devilish thing is that, were it not for two women who knew Oswald, the WC would've had a much better time of getting him to do all the things it wanted him to have done.

Instead of that several-block extended walk to board the bus and ride it for four minutes, they could have posited his walking directly to the cab stand where Whaley's liberal time-keeping records couldn't have disproved them ... if it hadn't been for Mary Bledsoe.

Then, when Whaley let him off at Neeley & Beckley, they'd have shaved off at least 15 minutes getting him to 10&P simply because he wouldn't have had to have walked 6½ minutes in each direction to and from 1026 and spent three or four minutes in his room ... if only Earlene Roberts hadn't been home.

Since I feel like I'm repeating myself, hasn't all of this been covered in this thread and/or elsewhere? I'm 99% certain that the WC timeline has been in the last couple of pages.

Before you can "call into question Earlene Roberts' testimony," you've first got to realize that Oswald didn't appear at the front door out of thin air, and Scotty wasn't beaming him around town.

There are a lot more possibilities than "the only other option" you posited above.

How likely is it after virtually all the Dallas area police cars have been dispatched down-town, first one roaming police vehicle in Oak cliff stops at 1026 N Beckley (Oswald's address, and therefore crosses paths with Oswald at 1 p.m.), and that then, yet another different police car crosses Oswald's path again, this time at 10th and Patton, some 10 to 15 minutes later?

I know, especially after reading your reply, (thanks for all that research!) that there are other possibilities, but how likely is it.........?

Actuarilly speaking, approximately 100% ... because that's the way it apparently happened except for the "10 to 15 minutes later" part and the assumption that Oswald was at both locations, for which there is no solid evidence. Which probably reduces the likelihood to about 0%.

(I recently had a discussion about how unreliable eyewitness testimony can be. During the course of it, I was told that we could not depend upon Earlene Roberts' eyewitness testimony about the cop car or Oswald being at the bus stop north of the house. "All that we do know," I was told, "is that Oswald was at the rooming house shortly after 1:00 and left a few minutes later zipping up a jacket." The difficulty in that, of course, is that it was only the same eyewitness testimony by the same unreliable witness that placed Oswald there in the first place. One bit of eyewitness testimony was to be credited while the next bit was unreliable. Does that make sense?)

There were no "roaming police vehicles" in Oak Cliff, yet there apparently were. What do you make of that?

... I would like to add more to my previous post. I did not use Google initially but used the statemnt from the Car 10 article that stated that the driving distance from Top Ten Records to 1026 North Beckley was about 3 minutes (~20 mph average speed). I then plotted this on the map to work out times between the relevent map locations. When I checked with the Google estimations they were not significantly different that the times I calculated. In summary.....Tippit could have been at

A - the Gloco station at 12.52 (5 witnesses who knew him saw him there)

B - 10th and Lancaster at 12.54 (as he called in on the radio)

C - 1026 North Beckley at 12.59 beeping the horn with LHO inside

D - on West 10th stopping Andrews and acting strangely at 1.04 (see Car 10 article)

E - at Top Ten Records at 1.07 trying to make a call (remember the witnesses said it was not long after this that the shooting occured)

F - at 10th and Patton in time to be shot by 1.12 (Markham's bus was for this time and to me is the most convincing argument that the shooting took place no later than this, maybe a minute earlier if LHO is the shooter who walked to this location)

My theory requires LHO and Whalley to drive by Tippit at Gloco at 12.52 (is this realistic?) and LHO to be in the boardinghouse by 12.58.

... Please note that as I am not familiar with Dallas did East 10th join North Beckley in 1963 as it doesn't appear to now on Google? Also please note that on my map in the previous post I could not get Google to place Tippit's route onto Sunset as he was belived to have travelled but I think the route I indicated would have not taken any more time.

The things that speak most loudly against Tippit being at the Gloco is the fact that he gave his location at 12:46 at Kiest & Bonnie View, and eight minutes later at Lancaster & 8th; i.e., taking an eight-minute trip in eight minutes without having been at either location. Could you do that? Get a call, tell someone you're at your house when you're really not, and then, without knowing next when you'd be called, be able to tell them where you would have been if you had been at your house and traveled exactly as far as you should have? Remember that he would have had no idea where he'd have to be because he had no idea when he'd get his next call asking where he was.

Great planning in any case, huh?

The other thing that argues against it is that it's highly unlikely that Tippit was complicit in his own death, and even more so that he was rushing to meet his killer. While there is much speculation that JDT was somehow involved in the whole assassination cabal, his getting killed likewise argues against that, especially if you argue that maybe Oswald didn't kill him ... because, if so, then what? Absent Oswald's supposed involvement, there doesn't appear to be any reason for Tippit to have gotten killed, does there? Otherwise, what reason might there have been?

I thoroughly dismiss the Andrews story as his "15 minutes of fame." It is completely out of character for the man who'd only recently answered a shoplifting call, taken the suspect home without charging her, getting a call into Oak Cliff, going there and stopping by the record shop. While he might have seemed a little harried there, how does anyone account for his almost "madman-desperate" supposed search of Andrews' car and his casual approach to his own killer only minutes later? The answer would seem to be that Andrews' incident didn't happen.

Just because people sound sincere and have "no reason to lie" doesn't mean they're not. It's not far afield from someone saying after all these years that, yes, it was he who had picked up Oswald hitchhiking in front of the TSBD because he looked like such a fine young fellow and conversed at length with him into Oak Cliff, and gee whiz, y'know, he didn't know anything about the shooting at all, no-siree. (And there, incidentally, is how Oswald left the Plaza and why Roger Craig was right after all, all rolled up into one nice, neat little package.)

Finally, in the scenario presented, ask why Helen Markham would have been at 10th & Patton at 1:12 when she should have been getting on that 1:12 bus a block away and across a busy intersection. Why does the time she should have been getting on the bus somehow coincide with the time she was walking to the bus? 1:12 is not the time either she or Tom Bowley estimated the time of the shooting, and Tom stated that it was 1:10 when he looked at his watch after he had arrived at 10th & Denver (a block away) and the officer was already lying in the street and a crowd had already gathered; he had driven half-way up the block to the scene and parked his car (with is 10-year-old daughter inside; far enough away where she wouldn't see the potentially-traumatic sight) before checking the time, which he did because he was late picking his wife up.

Helen Markham - who walked to the bus stop every day to catch the same bus - said on November 22 that it was "1:06" when she was at the corner; she later testified that she would bet "it wasn't [more than] 1:06 or 1:07" when the murder occurred. These are the times that the WC adjudged as being "confused and inconsistent." How could we now adjudge it to be 1:12 because Helen Markham was a block from where she was supposed to have been at that time?

Tippit was killed no later than 1:08, and yes, it took eight minutes for Bowley to make his transmission, just as it took Donny Benavides "a few minutes" to get out of his truck, briefly examine the officer, and fumble with the radio, which he did not get through on: the two voices heard on the radio recordings are, at first, Tom Bowley's and later, Ted Callaway's. There is no indication whatsoever that the radio transmission took place coincidental with or immediately following the shooting; if you find otherwise from anyone who was anywhere near there at the time, let me know.

10th Street today does NOT go through to Patton from Beckley; there is a nursing home or other such facility that cuts it off. I recall having checked a Dallas Mapsco for 1962 showing that it did, but I didn't photocopy it and can't prove it now.

PS: Most of us will remember what this post said a post or two later: there is no need to re-post the whole thing except to take up space.

... Which although this measurement was obtained using the google measuring stick, doesnt seem right (although it looks right if their stick is accurate) and thats why I asked if there is a record of the exact distance - surely someone must have measured it using a measuring wheel?

I sincerely doubt it, given the few number of people who've even walked the route without one. 8/10 of a mile is about right; the WC estimated it (also without a measuring wheel!) at 9/10 of a mile. You'll have to do the metric conversion yourself, along with the conversion of the "normal" walking speed of 4.3 feet per second.

... The whole Tippit affair is underinvestigated. LHO's activities during the time period are

really unknown.

Amen to that, Jack.

It is well to note that David Belin called the Tippit murder "the Rosetta Stone of the assassination." It is also well to note that the actual Rosetta Stone was not "proof" of anything, but rather "the key that unlocked the puzzle" (to deciphering ancient texts). Perhaps Belin was talking out of both sides of his mouth?

PS - Jack, PM me your email address; Antti, you too. Thanks.

I do agree that if we consider Earlene's testimony reliable (I think most of it is), she did in fact hear a cop car honk in front of her house about that time, and the reasons why that police was there at that time make an excellent question/discussion. ... He [Tippit] seemed to have that extra uniform in his car, and that may have been (worn by) the second officer at that time. I agree that she was confused about the number on the car. As far as I know he was one of the closest, if not the closest to this location at that time, yes?

I agree with you that most of what Earlene said is probably reliable, at least insofar as her own actions. I differ with some over whether she made a positive ID of Oswald in her distraction with the TV coupled with her poor vision (versus her merely inferring that it was Oswald who came in because he did what Oswald would have been expected to do, i.e., just walk in and then go to his room).

I don't agree, however, that she was "confused" about the number on the car. She testified that she looked at the number only to see if it was "170," the number on the car of the officer(s) she knew. Once she saw that it wasn't "170," she ignored it, dismissed it, made no attempt to see what it was when all she knew is what it wasn't.

Any "confusion" was after the fact, most likely as a result of her being pressured to remember what the number on the car was, a la: "Well, it wasn't 170 (yes, ma'am, we know that, 170 had been decommissioned), but I don't know what it was. (Do you think it could have been 107?) It might've been. It might've been 207. I only know it wasn't 170. (So it could have been 106?) It might've been. It might've been 10. But it wasn't 107. (Ma'am, 10 was Officer Tippit's car and he wasn't near here.) Okay, so it wasn't 10 either. I don't know what it was. (Okay, ma'am, we'll put you down as 'confused' and then go ahead and investigate where 207 was.)"

I haven't run across the original source document that prompted any investigation into the whereabouts of any vehicle, other than the FBI document asking for an investigation into 207. Where did they get that number from? No doubt Earlene, but when, and to whom did she report it? The trouble with reports is that they're subjectively written and condensed (i.e., "these are what I think are the high points of what you told me, do you agree you said them all?") as opposed to any near-verbatim account of what was said (i.e., not "this is what you said at first, but here you changed your mind, and then later you said something that contradicted that, and when I asked you about it, you said it was maybe this, is that an accurate account of exactly what was said during the course of the last three hours?").

Wow. I don't think any of my scenarios are any better or worse. Definitely don't have another one.

It's not necessary to have one - I remember Jean Davison among others always pestering for an "alternative scenario" as if you cannot have or introduce reasonable doubt if you don't have a better explanation - but the important thing is that whatever one proposes should be thought through from beginning to end to see if it makes sense. I am, after having been through the entire Bledsoe-on-the-bus discussion, convinced that Mary actually was on the bus; prior to it, I hadn't been.

I'll briefly explain my train of thought. First of all, as stated earlier, I do find the bulk of Earlene's testimony credible ... [and] therefore as she claims to have seen a police car honking it's horn, in front of 1026 N Beckley, at the time she stated, I believe one did do just that.

My second phase is to consider what possible police vehicle would be the most likely one to have been in the area. Not being an expert as to the whereabouts of police vehicles in Dallas on that day at about 1 p.m. in the area in question, except that I do recall Tippit's car being in the area, I suggested that perhaps this was the one. ... Third, I do not believe that the records are entirely precise and accurate as far as they pertain to the whereabouts of police vehicles on that day and time in Dallas Tx. Why? Because I don't think each vehicle on the move bothered to call in it's location all the time. What are the other possibilities in your opinion?

This is a "how to fish" story:

Your premise seems to be that (1) a police car went by 1026 with two officers in it and honked its horn in front of the home in Oak Cliff; (2) Tippit's car was in Oak Cliff and he had a jacket in the car that could reasonably be mistaken as a second officer; (3) you don't know if there were other cars in Oak Cliff, and even if you don't think there were - or maybe there might've been since sometimes cops don't always report where they are (or really are!) - then (4) it "makes sense" that Tippit's car was the car in front of Oswald's house. Thence, from what "makes sense," we hypothesize to determine if that possibility can be supported.

Virtually any possibility can be supported, including that Oswald was the lone gunman in the downtown shooting, made the trip home and to the Tippit scene exactly as described, got to the second murder scene in the necessary timeframe, killed Tippit, fled and, half an hour later, ducked into a theater where he was caught. There is evidence to support all of that. The conclusion can be most easily be reached by not taking into account any of the contradictory evidence that suggests or proves otherwise.

The first step, then, is to determine what police patrols in Oak Cliff, and then which officers were assigned duties in each of those districts that morning in the Oak Cliff area. "Oak Cliff" should also be defined as closely as possible (there is no actual hard definition that everyone will agree upon). Then, beginning prior to the downtown shooting, where were those officers assigned or where did they report being (I think it's fair to say that most if not all of them did not lie just for the sake of lying)? Ditto for the timeframe between the downtown shooting and the Oak Cliff shooting.

Of that x-number of on-duty patrols, how many were still in Oak Cliff at about 1:00, and where were they? Assuming their reporting to Elm & Houston, on orders or otherwise, would their most direct route have taken them by 1026? How were most of those officers told to report to the scene: if they were all told to go "code 3," should it be considered that any instead went "code 1" as the car in front of 1026 certainly seemed to be doing? Answers to these questions will help lead to a "suspect pool" of cops who were assigned to Oak Cliff and who might've passed 1026.

You can't account for lies. Let's take the case of Patrolman R.W. Walker, who was assigned to Districts 85 and 86 in south central Oak Cliff. He reported being "clear" at 12:46, presumably in his patrol area. He is next heard from after the "citizen call" about Tippit being shot, indicating shortly before 1:19 that he was "en route" to the Tippit scene. He is then contacted just after the 1:19 time check and told about a suspect was seen running on Jefferson, which he acknowledges, and before the 1:22 time check he calls in to say that he hasn't seen anyone on Jefferson yet.

According to his later report (summarized in CE2645 at 25H913), he had been "assigned" to "remain in district to answer calls in regard to suspect." At the very least, we gather from this that he did not go downtown, and no version of the DPD radio transcripts reflect his being ordered there. They likewise do not order him to remain in his district: he reports being clear and there are no transmissions between him and dispatch until after Tippit's shooting has been reported.

He apparently got to the murder scene pretty quickly since he was reporting from there - presumably, unless he was lying - within two minutes of calling in saying he was "en route." We don't know where he was en route from because he doesn't say, any more than he said where he was "clear" at, which can only be presumed to have been in his district. Technically speaking, his report of having been "assigned ... to answer calls in regard to suspect" cannot be entirely true since no such order was transmitted (it is true, however, inasmuch as he was not ordered away from his district and that everyone should be on the lookout for "a suspect" is a matter of SOP).

So, despite the fact that he wasn't ordered (like Tippit was) to be "at large for any emergency that comes in," that's exactly what he was. He could've been anywhere in Oak Cliff. He might've had a jacket in his car, or maybe a ride-along trainee that day (nowhere does it say one way or another. Nick McDonald, another Oak Cliff patrol officer did have a trainee with him all day until he left the Tippit scene to respond to the theater call ... or maybe it was the library call? Anyway, McDonald left his trainee at 10&P; prior to that, he was ordered to and reported being "out" at Elm & Houston).

Since all patrols other than he and Tippit and Mentzel and Nelson had been ordered out of Oak Cliff to the downtown area, he might've taken it upon himself to cruise the entire area at large, and been the car that "toot-tooted" in front of 1026. We don't know because he was never specifically asked, or at least did not specifically respond (his being "assigned to remain in district" did not answer the question of his possibly going by 1026 ... but it may be that I'm thinking of another report).

So there's another "suspect" besides Tippit. You can count Nelson out because he went downtown. Mentzel was eating lunch, or at least said he was (he could've been lying, but I have no way of knowing since nobody verified this with witnesses). So now we've got one, maybe two others. Or maybe three. Nelson may have been lying, too, since his radio broadcasts having him on a wild goose chase into Oak Cliff while his report says that he was "dispatched to Texas School Book Depository where stationed in front of building remainder of afternoon," neither of which assertions are true according to the record.

Were there others? I know the answer to that, but you've got to go fishing now.

[Earlene] may have been wrong about a few things, but I don't think she was hallucinating about Oswald coming in - going out to the bus stop - nor about the cop car stopping in front. Perhaps it's just the details that she can't quite recall accurately. Given the above, there is room and need to speculate in order to come up with a reasonable answer to the events one can determine to have occurred with reasonable certainty.

Absolutely. I never said that she was hallucinating, only that she was distracted. When someone walked in the door and went directly to Oswald's room, my assertion is that she was so wrapped up in getting the TV to work that she merely glanced, saw someone who at least resembled Oswald (and maybe it was Oswald), who did something totally expected of Oswald to do (went into his room without saying a word), and gave it no more further thought than she did to the number on the police car when it wasn't what she anticipated.

Duke, in your scenario with Tippit's alleged sequence of stops, have you considered the possibility of switching A and B around, i.e. the Gloco station and Top Ten around. That is, what if Tippit had gone to top ten first then been at the Gloco station for a while before he sped off and perhaps went by 1026 N. Beckley and then to his final destination at 10th and Patton? Would that work better?

Good question; I'll try to remember to answer it again later on. Gotta do some other stuff now.

... Just to comment on the cop car trying to speed up traffic ahead of it; wouldn't they have most likely been "code 3" (siren&lights), or if not code 3, wouldn't they have used their siren&lights to make it clear to others in traffic that they were responding to a call, that is, if in fact they were responding to a shooting call?

If it was ... but it wasn't. Or if it was, it gave no indication of doing so either at the intersection or on the radio. Almost all of the patrols had been called out of Oak Cliff by 1:00 anyway, and of those known to be in the area (with one possible exception) were nowhere near Beckley & Zangs (District 106). The driver of that "one possible exception" reported being entirely elsewhere, however.

I do agree that if we consider Earlene's testimony reliable (I think most of it is), she did in fact hear a cop car honk in front of her house about that time, and the reasons why that police was there at that time make an excellent question/discussion.

Is it entirely impossible that it was Tippit's car?

He seemed to have that extra uniform in his car, and that may have been (worn by) the second officer at that time. I agree that she was confused about the number on the car. As far as I know he was one of the closest, if not the closest to this location at that time, yes?

Of course it's not "entirely impossible" that it was Tippit's car, but it is highly unlikely. Think about it:

From his last transmission at 12:54 at Lancaster & 8th, he most likely went to the Top Ten Records shop where he made a call, then after getting no answer, dropped by Oswald's house, somewhere along the line gaining another officer wearing a uniform in his car. He beeps in front of 1026, turns right on Zangs and then hurries on down to 10th & Crawford so he can get shot, dropping the other officer off along the way, and the officer - who'd been presumably wearing his uniform in front of 1026 - changes his clothes somewhere en route. His route would've been something like this:

Based on the stories we're familiar with, we know it had to like that because /a/ he parked on the side of the Top Ten, on Bishop Street; /b/ he left crossing Jefferson and turning on Sunset; /c/ he passed in front of 1026 going from south to north, then turned right onto Zangs; and /d/ he approached Patton Street on 10th coming from the west.

That trip, according to Google and not accounting for a stop at the record shop, takes about 16 minutes; add three for the Top Ten, that's 19 minutes, from 12:54 would be 1:13. That's cutting it pretty tight, even if he wasn't already dead by then. (He could've save three minutes by doing a U-turn on Zangs and driving down to Davis and then cutting over to Crawford, but that's still 1:10.)

Now if we presume he drove directly from 1026 to 10&P, that would've only taken him about six minutes, putting him well ahead of Oswald getting there. Can't have that, so let's presume he parked in front of the Gloco for a while after turning onto Zangs from 1026 then suddenly took off "at a high rate of speed" south on Lancaster and thence to his death. What happened to the other cop by then? He wasn't there, or at least wasn't reported as being there, and even if he was, he wasn't by the time Tippit got to 10&P. What happened there? Did the "other officer" suddenly realize he was late in changing his clothes, and Tippit dropped him off somewhere to do so, then waited for him to put his uniform back into the car, and then leaving said officer behind?

Remember that the Gloco cop went zipping "at a high rate of speed" down Lancaster. Lancaster is east of Patton, so "Tippit" thereafter had to go west past Patton so he could turn around and mosey through the neighborhood where he was headed east and, "slow, real slow," pulled over to the curb in front of which he got shot. What happened to that desperate speed (not to mention the other officer)? Did Tippit suddenly realize that Oswald would be getting to where he was going to shoot Tippit, so he rushed off so he wouldn't be late for his own murder?

I know that whole thing sounds a little fantastic (if not a little sarcastic to boot!), but Tippit - if he was the cop driving in front of 1026 - did not enter some mysterious time warp where reality and reason were on vacation. He had to go from point "A" to point "B" is some realistic and reasonable manner. It can't be done sensibly.

The "second uniform" has long ago been debunked as a jacket, which given the cooler and wetter conditions of the morning makes much sense for him to have had. If you posit a "second uniform" worn by a second "officer," where did this second officer change clothes between Beckley and Tenth, why did he change clothes, and where did he go? Did Tippit leave him somewhere? If so, where? And why? Where did he disappear to afterward, since it's fairly apparent there were no cops responding to the scene on foot or who suddenly showed up there inexplicably.

So if Earlene Roberts saw two police officers in the car at 1:00-1:04, then that could not have been Tippit's car until and unless someone determines where his "partner" came on board, why he left his uniform in Tippit's car within 15 minutes of the time Earlene had seen them, and where he went. It's doubtful that she saw (even given her limited eyesight) a uniform hanging in the back seat and though that it was another cop ... and what cop is going to "chauffeur" his partner in the back seat of the cruiser? If ever a second cop was going to be in the back seat with a single cop in the front would've been in transporting a prisoner to have control over him to ensure the driver's safety.

... Which raises an intriguing possibility, except that Earlene didn't say anything about the second cop being in the back seat. It's also intriguing that the Oswald character - be he Oswald or anyone else - walked to the same corner the police car turned, and other than that he apparently stopped at the corner (for an indeterminate period of time: could've been a couple of minutes, could've been only momentarily), one could wonder if the cops didn't wait for Oswald just around the bend. But if so, why would he have stopped and stood there? Possibly the patrol car pulled a U-turn on Zangs, went south on it past (or even to) Beckley again, and then did another U-turn to pick up "Oswald."

But if that were so - and I'm not saying that it's not - then that means that "Oswald" got into the car voluntarily, and the cops rushed him off to some point unknown in the neighborhood, then let him out - abandoned him, gun in hand - to wander a neighborhood where eventually another cop would come along and get shot by him. Now if Oswald did get into the first police car voluntarily, what could have happened in it - before he was abandoned - that suddenly made him think that the next cop who came along was out to "get" him, and that he had to shoot said cop in "self defense?"

I think that, in any event, it's a safe bet that, even if it was Tippit in the "beep-beep" car, that he didn't pick up Oswald then turn him loose, only to come back to him, stop beside him and get shot because Oswald was ticked off because he'd had to walk.

Got a better scenario? The "Tippit beeping" one doesn't work.

Today Zang is a divided lane boulevard. I question whether it was in 1963...which would have put the bus stop farther north.

It's easy enough to find out, Jack: at about Jefferson & Crawford is the city building that has all of the street engineering drawings, history, etc. Some years ago, when Dave Perry had proposed the possibility that the police car was honking its horn at a car in front of it, possibly distracted by the fact of a cop being behind him and not driving forward when the light turned green. I went to that building (Public Works Department? Traffic? Engineering?) and checked that there was a light there and also found in the course of it the complete history of when a light was first installed there and each time it had been upgraded in any way (e.g., replaced, additional signal lights added, hung from a new structure, etc.). Here's a shot of that intersection today, courtesy of Google Maps Street View; notice the bench at the bus stop at the corner:

Here's the same intersection including 1026 (with the red roof) at the far right to show how short the distance actually is:

... and here, looking from the intersection back to 1026 including the bus stop at the left:

Supporting - but not proving - the idea that Zangs was not as wide then as it is now, note that 1026 is now the second home from the corner, and that there is an empty lot to the north of the first home; Earlene Roberts said in her testimony (6H443, quoted above) that 1026 was the third home from the corner at the time. The proof of it would be in that building on Jefferson.

I would add at this point, having fielded Perry's proposal (I don't know how he stands on it today), that as reasonable as that possibility seems to be, the fact is that all of the patrol cars assigned to that area had either all already been called out of the area, or were still in their assigned districts elsewhere. It is likewise unlikely that it was a unit responding to the downtown shooting if Roberts' description of it having "just eased on ... around the corner" onto Zangs, not the picture of responding to an emergency, any more than it beeping lightly ("tit-tit") at a car to go through the signal is.

Too, if indeed the patrol car was there at that time as Roberts described, then it doesn't seem as if its purpose was entirely innocent since no officer on patrol that day admitted to having been near there during that timeframe: if a cop had merely been beeping to hurry up a distracted driver, why not just say so? "In responding to the downtown shooting, my route took me through the intersection of Beckley and Zangs, where a car did not go through the green light. I beeped at him to hurry him along ...."

Wow, situation explained ... if only it had happened that way.

Thanks for the research, Duke. I was going from memory. I forgot it was her statement, not her testimony, which placed him at the inbound bus stop. Half a block was too generous...it was more like 200 feet to the corner as I recall.

According to Google Maps, 92 feet. "No problemo" otherwise: it's pretty simple stuff and apparently pretty accurate.

Amending an earlier post:

... Earlene wasn't exactly certain what the number on the car was - she gave at least three - and her eyesight (blind in one eye, presumably had a prescription for the other since she wore glasses) might've not let her see whatever number was there clearly, so no number can necessarily be ruled out completely. Even though she said any of 207 or 107 or 106, it might as easily have been 35 or 193 or any other number. Even where officers reported driving a particular numbered vehicle, it is not an absolute fact that they were driving the car they had said they were driving, especially if their visit to Oak Cliff was not for purposes they'd want to have on record, or even that their car was in the shop that day and it wasn't a detail that they'd thought was important or they even remembered. ...

So here's her testimony on that matter, in two sections:

So in reality - or as close to reality as Earlene Roberts dealt with - she claims that she thought it might've been two cops she knew because of the way they honked their horn, but that looking out - apparently going to the door to do it while Oswald was in his room - she noticed the number on the door wasn't 170 and then ignored it.

The car number "207" was a result of a possible transcription error in an FBI interview, which could have occurred in any number of ways given Earlene's clear and concise manner of speaking and/or her advanced lie-telling propensity, according to her employer and landlady Gladys Johnson.

So we have the FBI report of November 29 with "207" in the picture ("reflected on page 356 of the [Gemberling report] dated November 30" - probably CD5 - according to the cover letter of what became CE2645 at 25H909), followed - as best as I can recall offhand; I don't think there was anything in between relating to this - by Earlene's testimony on April 8, culminating in an FBI investigatory report dated June 15. I've seen the original DPD officers' reports, but cannot recall where they're found or when they were turned in, before or after Earlene's April testimony. In any case, the DPD investigation centered only on Car 207, and possibly touched on the fact that Car 170 had been decommissioned.

In one respect, that doesn't matter because she said that once she saw it wasn't Car 170, she ignored it and wasn't sure of the number (the only thing she was sure of was that it was a black patrol car and not a white accident investigation unit). In another, if it was a transcription error by Gemberling or the typist, it's possible that she did remember the number of the car a week afterward, but no longer did by April. FBI's badd.

What's interesting, though, is her description of having been "put through the third degree" about this. Assuming that she wasn't suffering another bout of exaggeration, it certainly means that this particular topic was revisited on more than just November 29 with Gemberling; when, how often and by whom remains an open question (for the moment, at least). Was she being repeatedly questioned for accuracy and reliability, or was she being sweated? (I'm obliquely reminded of Acquilla Clemons' statement that cops came by - people she at least thought were cops - effectively telling her to forget what she claims to have seen, or anything at all that doesn't resemble the story as assembled.)

... The attached screenshot is the result of many minutes of labor. ... The settings are for "pedestrian" with time and distance for each route on the left. I also plotted out a direct route from his rooming house to the Texas Theater (highlighted in yellow).

It's interesting to note that he started out heading SSE, only to go towards the theater after the Tippit shooting. If you will notice, "Dallas Zoo Blvd" is in direction he was heading. I couldn't help but think of that childhood picture of him at the zoo and wondered if he may have been heading there before he was sidetracked?

This map was the result of plugging in the two addresses to Google Maps' beta "walking" calculations; we come up with the same time time and distance from 1026 to 10&P. You can drag the line to any other street(s) to see the differences in each there would be to be made.

Interesting. But when he left 1026 N.Beckley, he walked NORTH to the bus stop a half block toward downtown, NOT DIRECTLY SOUTH and did NOT walk south again past 1026. I believe the housekeeper Earline Roberts testified that she last saw him at the BUS STOP, which was for buses going downtown to the north.

So if he then walked to Tenth and Patton from the bus stop, he would have walked east to Crawford Street, and then back to the south, further adding to his time. Doing this he would pass the city park shown on the map where Marina claimed "he took his rifle to practice shooting"...one of Marina's most absurd lies.

According to the same Google Maps as above (just dragging the route line), it added 2/10 of a mile and three minutes to the route (1.0 miles total, 19 minutes). Adding the "satellite view" option (this map), the bus stop being "a half block" away isn't quite accurate: 1026 is the one with the red roof.

Actually, I also recalled Earlene testifying that she last saw him at the bus stop "in front of the house," which made me consider the possibility that "in front of the house" but across the street there was a southbound bus stop. Not so. Searching her testimony, she didn't say anything about the bus stop at that time, but rather it in an affidavit executed on December 5, 1963, to wit:

Clearly the northbound bus stop (or "inbound" would be more accurate if any of the bus routes turned on Zangs and crossed the viaduct).

... What was it Ray said ? Something along the lines of "inquirers differ from believers in that they dont revel their beliefs until they have finished their inquiries" or words to that effect. I thought the phrase very clever and I intend to steal it.

Be kinder to yourself: remember that if you only steal one idea, that's plagiarism ... but if you steal several ideas, it's research!

I recently discovered that much of the way my line of thinking has evolved over recent years was actually already considered, unbeknownst to me, by Jerry Rose in The Third Decade, which tells you how long ago he'd already thought of it. Talking to him recently, he said that he was more intent on raising the question than finding the answers, but it was interesting to see that I wasn't alone in my perceptions.

Duke, what are your thoughts concerning Earlene Roberts' claim that a police cruiser stopped by around the time Oswald was at the Beckley address? Do you think she mistook another vehicle for a police cruiser because of her failing eyesight? Since it's certain that Tippit couldn't have been there at that time, who would have been in the vehicle, if it was a police cruiser?

Whoever it was that was at the Gloco, maybe? It's clear that Tippit couldn't have been there either, despite the fact that employees there thought it was him, and Bill Turner's estimation that they were not publicity-seekers making up a story.

So, if Turner is right, and if there was a police car there, its driver wasn't Tippit, and it did take off at a high rate of speed south on Lancaster (and around the blocks to Beckley, about a 4-5 minute trip?), that's the most likely suspect vehicle.

The patrol vehicles normally assigned to the districts around Beckley are pretty well accounted for based on other than the officers' later statements. If an on-duty officer was in the area for some nefarious purpose, it's not likely he'd say so, so the fact that reports were taken from the other patrol officers to the effect that they weren't - and had no reason to be - anywhere near 1026 doesn't mean much.

Earlene wasn't exactly certain what the number on the car was - she gave at least three - and her eyesight (blind in one eye, presumably had a prescription for the other since she wore glasses) might've not let her see whatever number was there clearly, so no number can necessarily be ruled out completely. Even though she said any of 207 or 107 or 106, it might as easily have been 35 or 193 or any other number. Even where officers reported driving a particular numbered vehicle, it is not an absolute fact that they were driving the car they had said they were driving, especially if their visit to Oak Cliff was not for purposes they'd want to have on record, or even that their car was in the shop that day and it wasn't a detail that they'd thought was important or they even remembered.

But again: if Turner is right, and if there was a police car there, its driver wasn't Tippit, and the other patrol vehicles from around the area are accounted for, then someone was in the area who had no official cause to be. If so - and even if that non-official cause was innocent (as is difficult to imagine the case being when someone is parked in a gas station parking lot a couple blocks from Oswald's house and taking off at a high rate of speed at just about the time Oswald - or "Oswald" - was entering 1026) - it's understandable that they wouldn't want to admit being there.

(For the record, the officer normally assigned to that particular district, 106, had been assigned to a hotel downtown where the White House Communications center was located, and he remained there all day except to ferry some FBI or USSS personnel somewhere like Parkland or Love Field. District 106 is the district immediately west of Dealey Plaza and because of its proximity to the parade route - not to mention the assassination - it would surprise me that nobody else was assigned to cover that district in that officer's absence, yet there is no indication that anyone was, and no officer who submitted a report on his whereabouts indicated that he had been assigned to cover that district on that day.

(Also, the only car that was the subject of an investigation of its whereabouts - 207, and not the other numbers Roberts had suggested - had been driven by Officer J.M. Valentine, who had driven from the Juvenile Division at City Hall down to Dealey Plaza and there parked, the keys reportedly given to a sergeant in charge there. Valentine also reported that he had remained in DP until later in the afternoon, as did several other officers such as R.C. Nelson who most certainly did not ... and which gives rise to the question of how accurate those reports were.)

Mr. Pointing, if you had bothered to read Duke's posts on this very thread wherein he discussed his views/suspicions re Oswald's role you would not be making this kind of snide insinuation. Duke has long ago earned a reputation as a straight shooter. He is not a BELIEVER, like you, he is an INQUIRER, and true inquirers cannot state their BELIEFS until the inquiry is complete.

Some people might also add "or until the book is finished," but I don't have any current designs on that!

... Just for the record I have nothing but respect for Duke's work and no less respect for him as a person. But that does not mean that I have to accept all he states without question. And I'm certain Duke wouldn't want nor expect me to. ...

Actually, I do expect people to swallow everything I say. Whole gulps are best: they go down faster and you don't have to take time to taste them.

To be honest I find Duke's style of writing rather confusing at times, a fault of mine rather than his I'm sure, at times Duke an I dont seem to be too far off the same page an yet at other times we seem to be in total disagreement. Hence my request for a "straight answer" I would genuinely like to know where Duke is "coming from."

I've had that comment made about my writing style before, and I do try to not run on so much and segue better, but it's a bear sometimes when there's so many considerations to a single issue at times. At least I get you to read what I write at least two times, which makes the swallowing easier when they've been chewed a little!

Well, we now know, at least in brief, where I'm "coming from" based on some of the posts above if we hadn't before. It's as much of a "straight answer" that can be achieved at this point in time.

Meanwhile, you've recently written:

I actually agree with most of your reasoning Duke. Or to put it another way, I dont disagree with most of it. I am certainly not of the "lone nutter" species. As perhaps you believe. But I am also not one of the "Oswald was just a patsy" species either. Of course Oswald wasn't acting alone, of course there was a conspiracy. But rightly or wrongly I belive Oswald was a very guilty part of that conspiracy. The thread seemed to be going in the direction that Oswald was just a totally innocent guy, who was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Where as I believe Oswald's actions in the theater that day, along with many, many other actions, show that not to be the case.

From all that I've seen that you've posted, it seems that you think that Oswald was more than "a very guilty part of that conspiracy," but rather the only guilty part of the conspiracy since you haven't suggested any role for any of the others involved.

What did those other people do?!? Could we get "a straight answer" on that?

As close as you've seemed to come in defining "the conspiracy" was to acknowledge something I didn't actually say, but which suggests your openness to the possibility of at least one co-conspirator:

... Whether or not Oswald pulled the weapon [in the theater] or, as your post would seem to imply, he was handed the weapon by an accomplice doesn't change the fact that Oswald seemed more than prepared to use it.

It hardly seems plausible that an accomplice in the theater could or would have done anything other to keep the gun himself and not to give it to Oswald. That's what accomplices do: they help you; putting the murder weapon back in your hand ain't hardly "helpin'."

If, after having been pointed out as being THE guy who snuck into the theater by Brewer, there was no gun involved, it's unlikely that Oswald would have been arrested: the cops had bigger fish to fry than some guy not paying a buck to see a movie. Since they were there responding only to one suspicious character who'd been pointed out by Brewer, it's just as unlikely that they would have started searching anyone else just for the sake of being sure Brewer hadn't misidentified the "gate-crasher" whose crime was extremely petty under the circumstances.

Nor do I think they would have started a search for a weapon on other patrons or elsewhere in the building (say, stashed at the bottom of a trash barrel or in the tank of the commode) any more than they searched the library earlier since there was no apparent cause in either case to believe there was one there: having a guilty "gate-crasher" without a murder weapon is hardly reason to believe that the real killer was in the theater or ever had been.

All of that said, I think we can pretty well rule out an accomplice in the theater ... unless his "accomplice-ment" was to have gotten Oswald arrested!

Thanks to Gary Mack for this email, added emphasis mine:

As for the first radio bulletin, which is what Brewer heard, that's harder to document since not all stations recorded everything. What is known is that at least six Dallas-Fort Worth area radio stations had news departments in which there were reporters who gathered news in addition to the news readers. WFAA is known to have monitored the police radio and they were on the air with the assassination announcement within a minute or so of Chief Curry's broadcast that Kennedy had been hit. I strongly suspect WFAA radio broadcast the cop shooting within a very few minutes of the 1:18 call from Bowley. Gary

I think it is entirely plausible that WFAA, at least, had the Tippit story by 1.30, if not before, and so I think that, whatever about the rest of his testimony, Brewer's story about listening to the radio is certainly believable.

Well, this is the first time I've ever heard of a "1:18 call from Bowley," although it is refreshing to see Bowley's role acknowledged rather than Benavides'! Even the WC postulated it was only 1:16. I know some people would like to give Oswald as much time as possible to do the deed, but still ....

(In reality, all that can be said about the time of the transmission - without playing the recording and timing it, and being 100% certain that the time checks were made at exactly 1:16 and 1:19, which they very well may not have been - is that the call came through after the 1:16 time check and before the 1:19 time check, with fewer transmissions between it and 1:16 than between it and 1:19. Does that make it 1:18, two-thirds of the elapsed time since 1:16? I don't see how.)

It strikes me that I've read elsewhere that the first public announcement of JFK getting shot was closer to 12:36 or 12:37, but who's counting? As I said earlier, it's really a pretty minor issue: why Brewer was suspicious of Oswald is not as important as that he was suspicious of him, or whether it was in fact Oswald he was really suspicious of. I just like to see the story told with as many demonstrable facts as possible. It was not a fact that police turned around at Zangs and went back east, at least not according to Julia Postal, who was watching police cars disappear in the distance away from Brewer's store as he walked up behind her. Using an event that might not have happened to "explain" someone's suspicion - to say that their testimony, although wrong, is "clear evidence" - is inaccurate at best.

We do not yet know that Brewer did hear any such announcement over the radio, Denis lacking a cite of it and Gary having only a "strong suspicion" of a broadcast earlier than NBC's 1:49.

Duke, the NBC news report you refer to was the first TELEVISION report not the first RADIO report. The first radio report of a policeman (no mention of Tippits name yet) being shot in Oak Cliff was on radio KLIF at 1.33.

It's always good to know facts. Got a cite on that one? NBC, unless I'm mistaken (which is possible) was also involved in radio at that time, so it's not necessarily apparent that it was a television announcement.

It's probably doubtful that any such tapes or transcripts have survived to give us any indication whether it was a one-time announcement or if it was repeated, or what. It's really a minor point because Brewer for whatever reason decided to see what the guy who ducked into his vestibule was up to. The big news was, of course, the shooting of the President, and I imagine that local news coverage focused largely on that, with the Tippit shooting being a mere sideline. Maybe they had repeated it shortly before Oswald ducked in, which drew the connection for Brewer together with the sirens, which were not the first sirens being heard in that area at the time (police had been in the area for more than 20 minutes by the time Oswald would've appeared).

It is merely a question of whether Brewer really thought of the connection between the news of the shooting and someone ducking into his storefront, or whether that's what he thought he sensibly thought after the fact. I might've myself.

Hi Duke, Do you believe Oswald played any part in the events of that day?

The most interesting question on this thread yet Steve, I like the way you come straight to the point. But will "THE DUKE" give as straight a reply?

It's highly unlikely.

To paraphrase someone once at the forefront of the news, "it depends on what the definition of 'played any part' is." Clearly he had a role, even if it was - as he said - merely that of "patsy." It is easily possible to construct completely different scenarios of both shootings that do not have Oswald involved in pulling any triggers, all based on existing and established evidence and testimony.

Leaving that aside, it is interesting to note that it would have been much easier to place Oswald at the scene of the Oak Cliff crime had it not been for people who knew him. Even if he had not been seen by anyone at all - as he wasn't, apparently, when travelling between 1026 and 10&P - between the TSBD and the Tippit scene, it would only have been necessary to show that he could've gotten to that area of Oak Cliff in time to kill him: he might've walked from TSBD directly to the Greyhound station and gotten in Whaley's cab for a ride to Neeley & Beckley and then walked to 10&P.

There was nobody who could've said that he didn't have his pistol stashed somewhere inside or outside of the building: he supposedly was able to spirit his rifle out of his house and bury it near where General Walker lived, then bury it again and spirit it later back into his house with nobody the wiser. Would it not have been as equally possible for him to have done something similar downtown with his pistol? Since Whaley's logs of pick-up and drop-off times were mere approximations, and Whaley did approximate the time Oswald got in his cab as being 12:30 and out at 12:45 (CE307), it would have been a simple matter to have had Oswald going directly from the TSBD to Greyhound and into Oak Cliff with lots of time to shoot Tippit, even as early as when Tippit was actually shot.

But enter Mary Bledsoe's having seen him on the bus, as well as Earlene Roberts' having seen him in the rooming house. Right or wrong, they were insurmountable problems, even if somewhat handy (Bledsoe for her "maniac" description, and Roberts for helping to account how Oswald came to have a pistol on him), resulting in the fudging of Tippit's death to allow Oswald arguably enough time in which to get there.

If we begin with the premise that the Tippit murder was a diversion (as I've postulated elsewhere, and which has considerable evidentiary support), then it requires a complete re-evaluation of all that took place in that area, involving Oswald and not, and it's a cinch that Oswald did not kill Tippit simply so the cops could find him faster (he could've stayed on the sixth floor with rifle in hand had he wanted to accomplish that, and wouldn't have disappeared between 10&P and TT only to be walking along the main drag acting suspiciously five blocks and half an hour later).

It then boils down to the question of trying to explain the inconsistencies in Oswald's known, unquestioned actions if they are not what they are supposed to have been ... and he ain't talkin'.

... The police battalion arrived en masse with little provocation or good cause. It all smells of a set up.

Right from the beginning, starting even before Tippit was shot, which was itself a double setup, and nothing short of a diversion.

As to the "police batallion," does anyone have any idea how many police patrol units responded first to Dealey Plaza and thereafter, being largely unoccupied due to the tremendous number of them, in turn responded to the Signal 19 in Oak Cliff? Has anyone considered why, when police were responding from all over town (with only a small handful being told to remain on duty in their regularly-assigned areas), why only Oak Cliff was singled out for someone to move into that area from another to "remain at large for any emergency that comes in?" There is much more that could be said, but those are good starting points, don't you think?

Unless you've anything more concrete concerning the time an announcement was made that a "patrolman had been shot in Oak Cliff" you have no solid reason to doubt Brewer's testimony on that point. And that testimony makes it more than clear that he linked Oswald's furtive demeanor with the radio announcement of a patrol officer being shot in the immediate vicinity. But even if Brewer only became suspicious due to "gut instinct" so what? That doesn't change the fact that he DID become suspicious, for whatever reason, and he DID follow Oswald.

I'm going to take a book by NBC as fairly authoritative since they were pretty much in the thick of "media" at the time. Still are, in fact.

If "first mention" of Tippit's shooting indeed came at 1:49, that was three minutes-plus after the announcement over the police radio that "We have information that a suspect just went in the Texas Theater on West Jefferson," which was after Julia Postal called, which was in turn after Johnny Brewer went into the theater after Oswald, which again was after Brewer had seen Oswald and followed him to the theater. So in effect, the argument is that Brewer linked Oswald to an announcement that wouldn't be made for something like five minutes after he left his store.

I'm thinking that it wouldn't normally have worked that way ... but it was an unusual day, so maybe anything is possible ... including that Brewer misremembered the sequence of events in the same way that he was mistaken about the sirens taking a U-turn and the cops racing back toward Patton.

In fact, since Brewer was inside the theater when Oswald was taken into custody at about 1:52, he never actually heard any announcement about Tippit having just been killed.

If those "nebulous co-conspirators" which I "hypothesized" were able to "mastermind" the capture and killing of Oswald then many would say they did a excellent job of it. But I dont belive for one minute that was their "sole role". Nor do I belive they were able to orchestrate the killing of Tippit to "tie up loose ends". This is certainly nothing that I've ever suggested, why second guess me?

Help me out then: since you've attributed all of the shooting to Oswald, what did these others do?

The only way you can put him into the theater before Brewer saw him is to do it without his wearing a jacket, i.e., without his going home to get it.

As I indicated earlier in this thread, I believe Earlene Roberts fatally undermined the probative value of her clothing identification when she admitted to her poor eyesight and admitted that her attention was elsewhere. The evidence that he left 1026 Beckley wearing a jacket is both implausible (it was too warm for a jacket) and unpersuasive, IMO.

But it was good enough to identify Oswald's face, which was smaller than his jacket and apparently made less noise than his zipper? She could make a mistake about a relatively large jacket, but be absolutely positive of Oswald's identity?

I think it's fairly plain that it was Oswald who ducked into Brewer's store.

Well admittedly I was not there when it happened, and admittedly your view is definitely the majority view, but I for one see grounds for real doubt that this was how the deal went down.

[W]e're still left with the question of where he was from the time he got out of Whaley's cab to the time he was arrested (which is effectively the same as saying "from the time when Tippit was shot").

According to the reports we have from his interrogators, he said he he went to his room and changed his clothes, then went to the movies. It seems you have a problem with that, while I do not.

Well, admittedly I was not there when it happened, and admittedly your view is definitely the majority view, but I for one see grounds for real doubt that this was how the deal went down. I guess it comes down to how selective one wants to be with Earlene Roberts' evidence, whether she was completely right, part-wrong and part-right, or completely wrong.

...I attempted to postulate Oswald's escape from Dallas in a earlier post, to which you made a rather sarcastic and nonsensical reply about Oswald stealing an elephant from the zoo and charging out of town! So maybe we can now hear your suggestion.

You asked me about Red Bird Airport being close to downtown Oak Cliff, which it sort of is. I replied:

...I'd think that until someone was able to fill in those kinds of gaps [that I wrote about] before they can hypothesize an "escape" via Redbird or elsewhere, that such speculation has about as much validity as the possibility that Oswald was actually headed to the Dallas Zoo (only a few blocks from where he was, in the direction he was supposedly heading, and also accessible by McWatters' Marsalis bus) to "bulldoze" his way out of Dallas on the back of an elephant.

My point, since you missed it, was simply that because something was "nearby" doesn't make it a destination. He was headed to Jack Ruby's place ... he was going to the Harlandale "safe house" ... he was going to Red Bird ... ad nauseum. There's nothing more than mere proximity on which to form the basis of such speculation, and they have about as much validity as the "zoo" scenario.

"Busybody Brewer" didn't follow Oswald because he was "sweating a dollar ticket fee" that's nonsense, Brewer's testimony makes it perfectly clear as to why he became suspicious of Oswald and subsequently followed him...

So there's really nothing at all surprising concerning Brewer's actions, any sensible, alert person would have acted the same way. As to why Oswald never attempted "getting the heck out of Dodge" Oswald may have been trying to do exactly that before he got "side tracked" into killing Tippit.

I happen to disagree with your assessment about what "any sensible, alert person" would have done: it's a generalization that fails as often as not. Someone commented to me that "any" cop who heard about Tippit getting shot in Oak Cliff would "naturally" connect that to the shooting of the President; makes sense, right? But we find homicide Detective Jim Leavelle testifying that "we didn't put them together at the time." Surely, if "any" cop would put the two together, then certainly a veteran homicide detective would do the same, wouldn't you think? Generalizations are generally meaningless.

Brewer said that the radio "kept reconstructing what had happened and what they had heard, and they talked about it in general. There wasn't too much to talk about. They didn't have all the facts, and just repeated them mostly. And they said a patrolman had been shot in Oak Cliff," so the question is, do we know when an announcement about Tippit was first made on a public radio station?

That goes to whether Brewer was suspicious of Oswald because of the proximity of Tippit's shooting, or whether it was more generally related to JFK's, or whether it was simply that he thought Oswald "looked funny" and thought him "suspicious" for that reason alone. Just because he remembered that it happened that way doesn't mean that it's true.

It's like his description of the police sirens: according to him, they were approaching from the east but turned around at Zangs, which he couldn't have seen from inside the store, no matter whether or where they turned around. It's a "fact" of which he has no personal knowledge and couldn't have had.

Now here's the odd thing about it: while he said that the cops turned around and went back east, Julia Postal was standing in front of the theater looking west after the police cars had gone that way, and her boss had left the theater going west following the police cars ... that, according to Brewer, didn't go by his store nor, therefore, the theater, so Julia and her boss must've been imagining things.

If Brewer was wrong about having heard about a cop getting killed nearby, as it appears he was wrong about the sirens "doing a U-turn ... at Zangs," then the whole deal about what "any" sensible, alert person is out the window, and Brewer making a case why he was a sensible, alert person when the reality may simply be that he became suspicious for no explainable reason beyond "gut instinct."

... And then we get to the question: how is it that Oswald "got 'side tracked' into killing Tippit?" Is this the sole role of those nebulous co-conspirators you've hypothesized? They don't seem to have done anything else except get Oswald captured and killed. So is their role that of the "masterminds" who managed to get Oswald to shoot JFK and then had him kill a cop to "tie up loose ends?"

walking - anywhere! - would've been better than ducking into the theater; getting the heck out of Dodge would've been even better, and riding a bus - even back into downtown! - would've been an unobtrusive way to do that.

Which, of course, leads us to the question of why didn't he, doesn't it?

All very, very true, and further reason to doubt that Lee Oswald was the man who baited Brewer.

Why's that? There's no question that he was in the theater, he had to get there somehow, and someone else would have had to have known he was in there in order to set someone up to "act" as Oswald to attract Brewer's attention - which there was no guarantee of his doing unless, as I'd said, Brewer was "part of the plot," for which there's no evidence - so he'd follow Oswald (again, with no guarantee that he would) into the self-same theater wherein Oswald sat, right?

So if Oswald had moseyed down to the theater to catch a flick after getting out of Whaley's cab, since nobody apparently knew that he'd left the TSBD and nobody apparently knew that he lived weekdays on Beckley, and nobody was apparently watching either busses or cabs or following them - or Oswald - around, how did someone else know that Oswald was in the theater 30 minutes or so after he'd gone in there? By all accounts, up to that point he was an innocuous, unremarkable citizen simply going about his business or lack thereof; why or how would anyone have known he'd gone in there at all?

If Oswald was indeed set up to take the fall for the two murders - and especially the later one - it's apparent that someone would have had to have known that he lived in Oak Cliff rather than Irving (the address on his employment application). The most likely ways that knowledge came about would seem to be that he had told someone where he'd lived (we have no way of knowing if he'd struck up any acquaintences, say, riding a bus back and forth to and from work during the week, or through some other venue) or someone had tagged him and followed him there, a relatively simple task. I'd think the latter to be more likely than the former, wouldn't you?

How did he end up on the radar in the first place? Once again, if he was being set up as the patsy, it may have been simply a stroke of luck, say for example his being spotted as a new guy at the ACLU meeting he'd gone to with Michael Paine: DPD Intelligence certainly considered the ACLU a "subversive" organization and undoubtedly kept their eyes on it, and probably infiltrated its meetings. Lo, when this guy with the big mouth shows up, they look into his background and - ouala! - they find he's a "Communist" who'd actually lived in the Soviet Union in the not-too-distant past. Who could ask for a better patsy?

How that all squares with his being hired at a building overlooking the ideal ambush location, I don't know: it may have been just another stroke of luck. If not him, there were other potential targets for the role of patsy in the building, not least among them being Joe Molina, another "subversive" who was a member of the "suspect" organization, the American GI Forum, essentially a "Mexican VFW" whose biggest sin was probably giving former soldiers of Latino extraction the ridiculous idea that they deserved recognition and benefits by dint of their service in the white man's army, similar to the ACLU's support of the voting and other rights of the black man. (I mean, what were they thinking?!?)

That's all speculation, of course, but in any case we come back to the fact that, in order to set Oswald up for capture in the theater, someone had to know he was in there, or else it was in fact Oswald whom Brewer saw. I'd opt for the latter because the former is much too sketchy a proposition.

We don't hear from Brewer that he followed the guy to the theater, but when he saw him inside, he'd "looked a little different," such as wearing a different shirt. Thus if it wasn't Oswald who'd passed in front of Hardy's Shoe Store, it was someone who knew to wear an almost-identical shirt as the one "the real Oswald" had on. And since you're so keen on his having gone into 1026, what did he do with his jacket in between home and the theater? Leave it in the gutter somewhere? Donate it to a homeless person?

If you accept Earlene Roberts' observation that Oswald went into his room and came out zipping up a jacket - and you cannot accept part of it (i.e., that he came into the house) without accepting all of it - then you have no choice but to accept that he shot Tippit and did not go directly or indirectly only to the theater. Otherwise, you've got to account for that jacket he no longer had when he was arrested. The only way you can put him into the theater before Brewer saw him is to do it without his wearing a jacket, i.e., without his going home to get it.

I think it's fairly plain that it was Oswald who ducked into Brewer's store. Whether or not he'd shot Tippit, we're still left with the question of where he was from the time he got out of Whaley's cab to the time he was arrested (which is effectively the same as saying "from the time when Tippit was shot").

It often amazes me what is cited as "the real story" when it is anything but. If it's in print and it suits our purposes, then it must be a drop-dead fact, right? Or is it simply that seniority and position engender authority? I ain't often right, but I've never been wrong?

McDonald did not write the Associated Press account. Please refer to Myers' With Malice for the real story, as explained by McDonald and the man who did write it. The person who pointed out the suspicious man to McDonald was Brewer.

Here we have the spin, broken down bit-by-bit:

• "The record," Myers intones, "shows that McDonald didn't write the article." What constitutes "the record?" The "record" is generally that which is indisputable in its accuracy, even if not its actual veracity (e.g., the "record" might record someone's perjury, but that perjury is not the truth). According to Black's Law Dictionary, it is "permanent evidence of the matters to which it relates." What, then, is the "permanent evidence" which shows that McDonald didn't write the article? Myers cites that:
  
• The byline on the article reads: "By M.N. McDonald, Dallas Patrolman, Written for the Associated Press." The word "by," among its several definitions, means "from the hand, mind, invention, or creativity of," as in "a book written by Dale Myers;" it may also mean "through the agency, efficacy, work, participation, or authority of," as in "this book was published by Random House." Clearly, there is a difference between the words and actions of "written" and "published," even though in this example we may be referring to the same book (if With Malice had been published by Random House): the publisher, per se, does not bring the book into being by virtue of its "hand, mind, invention, or creativity," even while it does bring the book into being by virtue of its "agency, efficacy, work, participation, or authority" (even though in this case the author and the publisher were the same, they needn't have been).
  I hardly think that Dale would call his book "written by" Random House or even by The Oak Cliff Press, the actual publisher, even though the OCP also happens to be Dale. "Written by" is very specific: the person it was "by" actually wrote it. The "permanent evidence" thus far is that M.N. McDonald wrote the article, but to prove that that's not necessarily the case, Myers cites another article's byline, also attributed to a Dallas police officer entitled:'
  
• "I Yelled But Couldn't Get to Him," by Detective B.H. Combest As Told to the Associated Press. Here there is a huge difference in the attribution: while Combest's story was "by" him, it was "as told to" the Associated Press, meaning that Combest told the story, AP wrote it down and published it. McDonald's article says it was "written by" him "for" the Associated Press. There are very specific rules of attribution followed by journalists so as not to give or claim attribution improperly. If it's terribly important or if anyone's having serious problems understanding this, I will ask editorial folks from the Dallas Morning News, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, or even the Detroit Free Press (I know people at all of them who might well indulge me) to provide a professional opinion devoid of any kind of agenda.
  In support of the "permanent evidence" being something other than what it actually is, Myers goes on to offer a third party's speculation and opinion:
  
• After reviewing the article attributed to McDonald, [former Dallas AP Bureau Chief Robert] Johnson stated that he was "almost certain" that the writer was Oklahoma AP Bureau Chief Wilbur Martin, now deceased ... [because] Martin had a unique writing-style which Johnson recognized (quotes around "almost certain" in the original). Folks, "almost certain" is a far cry from certain knowledge: had Johnson said that he'd watched Martin write the story from simple notes, then he'd have had certain knowledge; he did not. Furthermore, it is based on a non-comparative analysis: Johnson (supposedly) felt that the writing style was the same or similar to Martin's, but he did not know what McDonald's writing style was like. Not too long ago, I had made a complaint against someone which was investigated by someone who is and was very familiar with my own writing style. A written statement was made by someone else, with no coaching from me (although I admittedly offered it!), and because of the investigator's "familiarity" with my writing style, he determined that the letter was actually written by me; he did not even ask the other party if she had written it. "Nobody," he said, "writes like Duke." To whatever extent it may have resembled my own writing style, it's now clear that somebody does. As further "proof" that McDonald didn't write it, we are given nothing more than an excuse coupled with more speculation:
  
• Regarding the paragraph about the unknown tipster, Johnson pointed out that the interview would have been conducted on November 23 and that McDonald may knot have known Brewer's name at the time and that, in his testimony, McDonald pointed out that he "... learned his name later." (emphases mine) It's entirely correct that McDonald may not have known Brewer's name at the time he wrote the article (despite Brewer having known his, which is not unusual inasmuch as there are fewer cops in a patrol area than there are citizens, and McDonald was normally assigned in a nearby district), it is not known either exactly when the article was written, or at what point "later" McDonald learned Brewer's name. It is possible that McDonald wrote the article on Friday evening and he learned Brewer's name on Saturday or Sunday or the next time he bought a pair of shoes. But rather than credit the "permanent evidence" that McDonald wrote the article, Johnson assumes that Martin did and therefore Martin must've "interviewed" McDonald so he (Martin) could write it. He likewise assumes that such an interview took place on the 23rd and that it did not take place on the 22nd, even if only because it wasn't published on the 23rd. Finally and ultimately, this version of events is true because
  
• McDonald denied writing the article in a 1996 interview. QED ... even without any context provided, such as with even an excerpt from the interview. Is it possible that McDonald said "I didn't put it in the paper"? We'll never known ... nor will we know why he might've denied writing if he did (write it or deny it).
  

We are thus left with very few facts to support the contention that the "real story" is as surmised, that McDonald - despite the very specific byline - did not "write" the article in question, those being:

• McDonald denied it
  
• Johnson's "almost certainty" that Martin wrote it
  
• Martin's "unique writing style," recognized by Johnson
  

Meanwhile, the "permanent evidence" remains what it is: despite Myers' trying to tell us otherwise, "the record" shows that McDonald did write the article. His denial of doing so is not part of "the record." Whether or not McDonald actually wrote it - as "the record" tells us he did - is a separate issue.

Yes. Brewer may have been confused about the shoes. However, the actions of Brewer led to the arrest of Oswald in the Texas theater, as the behavior of Oswald attracted Brewer's attention.

Or maybe it went like this: Somebody intentionally attracted Brewer's attention, leading a small army of police to descend on the Texas theatre. ... Bear in mind that we are dealing with a highly sophisticated murder plot that involved deception, including a plot to deceive police....

While I don't disagree in theory, the problem lies in the ability not only to be able to predict Brewer's actions, but moreover to pre-ordain them: a "highly sophisticated murder plot" would not rely upon mere luck to carry off the plan. What if Brewer been in the back getting stock when Oswald (presuming that it was Oswald, as it probably was)came into the vestibule? Fitting shoes on someone? Or the two IBM guys had engaged him in some deep conversation? Or if he'd been simply been looking away from the door, or was just one of those people who "minded their own business" and ignored the guy on the street?

If it wasn't merely luck that Brewer decided to follow the guy, then we'd have to conjecture that he was "part of the plot," which hardly makes sense at all. What assassins are going to recruit a shoe salesman, with his "just reward" being only a lateral promotion to manager of the downtown Hardy's store?

In reality, Oswald ducking into the theater might've been a smart move on his part ... except for the bad luck of Busybody Brewer sweating a dollar's ticket fee that he got no part of and ratting him out to Julia Postal; it was only a "bad move" from the standpoint of his getting caught there and having no avenue of escape. However, chances seem to be that, unless Oswald knew or suspected the cops were looking for him in particular, that walking - anywhere! - would've been better than ducking into the theater; getting the heck out of Dodge would've been even better, and riding a bus - even back into downtown! - would've been an unobtrusive way to do that.

Which, of course, leads us to the question of why didn't he, doesn't it?

... One other question concerning the identities of the other movie patrions in the theater that day; has anyone ever come forth to publicize their being in attendance there, using their ticket stubs as proof? I would think that such a ticket stub would be very valuable to collectors, if not to any participants in a real investigation. Have any such stubs ever appeared, on Ebay or elsewhere?

I've never heard of such a thing, but that's hardly to say that it hasn't happened or that these folks haven't got their stubs in a frame on their mantlepiece either.

Think of the hundreds of people who were at the Trade Mart for the luncheon that never took place: occasionally, someone will trot out their invitation to it, but it's been a relative few in terms of the number of people who were there. Proportionately speaking, we might never expect anyone to come up with such an item of memorabilia, especially since it seems unlikely that it would have been dated.

Another interesting aspect of that, for the sake of saying so, is that it seems equally unlikely that anyone would believe the person who came forward with such an item (and especially if it wasn't dated!). I've spoken to a couple of people - one of them was in a lineup with Oswald, another says he was outside the theater when Oswald was brought out (and who disputes the "angry mob" several people claim to have seen or encountered) - whose own families don't believe them. In the case of the former, it's easy enough to prove just getting a copy of the Report (at least, I think the names of the other "suspects" are there; certainly in testimony); in the latter, I'm still supposed to find the guy a photo of people outside the theater since he thinks he might've been in it. He was also a school chum of Butch Burroughs.

I would also agree with Raymond that the accused need not prove anything. It is up to the state to prove its case, and critics have been showing how absurd that proof is for several decades now. This discussion has been informative and enjoyable.

It's an interesting concept that, first of all, "this is not a court of law" and we therefore should not be constrained by such things as "reasonable doubt" or technical issues of admissibility (or stoop to using such "unethical" tactics), but merely be able to "see the reality" based on the "obvious." Too and conversely, this not being a court of law, the "obvious" invariably points to Oswald as being the sole perpetrator; to suggest otherwise, however, does require "proof beyond a reasonable doubt."

Nicholas Katzenbach hit the nail on the head in his famous memo to Bill Moyers, albeit in a slightly different context:

Those words could as easily be applied to the case in chief rather than the single aspect of Oswald's "motivation," which naturally presumes his guilt since the innocent don't have motives! Nevertheless, the "facts" are "too pat - too obvious," and the fact that a quasi-legal body of politicians - as all were, in one form or another - would endorse them without any form of devil's advocacy, and moreover, that thinking Americans - who are trained from Day One that we are all "innocent until proven guilty" - can swallow such explanations without question is disturbing.

It is all as with the rifle: there is little if anything to factually and fully support the conclusion, but since it was there and we don't know who else might've gotten it there or how, Oswald "must" have done it even though it objectively seems like he didn't. (Unless you've got a better explanation? If so, prove it: I don't have to.)

Isn't it funny that Johnny Brewer decided to conceal such a vivid and precise memory from the Warren Commission, despite the oath he took to "tell the whole truth?"

I've often wished that I would one day witness something of great import and be called to testify, and that in the course of so doing was asked a question by one of the attorneys who, as I began to elaborate, demanded "yes or no, Mr. Lane. Did it happen that way?" whereupon I would have the opportunity to turn to the judge and say, "Your Honor, I took an oath to tell 'the whole truth,' and a simple 'yes' or 'no' would not do 'the whole truth' justice." Unfortunately - or perhaps fortunately! - I don't foresee that ever happening (but there's still time in this life!!).

While by no means intending to disparage Mr. Brewer, it might've been nice - and might well have happened if there was cross-examination - to know exactly how it was that Brewer thought he'd recognized Oswald as a former customer; as it stands, his speculation on that point tends to be "proof" of his recognition of Oswald ... as if that is any sort of indication that Brewer knew him to be the "suspicious" type, or that his customers were more likely to be sneaking around and darting off the streets when cops were around than anyone else.

Here's a question I don't think I've heard posed before: who was standing on either end of this trajectory such that they might've been hit by the bullet on its way to this location, or by the ricochet afterward?

This shot - if that's what it was - seems particularly inboard of the plaza and away from the limousine, someone with a bad aim: how many feet would it have been away from the limo if the limo was directly to the left as we view this photo? What was the angular difference? How far "off" was this shooter, and how did he manage not to hit anyone else in his ineptitude?

I've made my position plain, I belive Oswald was as guilty as hell. Although others were involved thus forming a conspiracy.

That outlook fits in well with your previous post:

I actually agree with most of your reasoning Duke. Or to put it another way, I dont disagree with most of it. I am certainly not of the "lone nutter" species. As perhaps you belive. But I am also not one of the "Oswald was just a patsy" species either. Of course Oswald wasn't acting alone, of course there was a conspiracy.

... but here's the difficulty with it:

I'm convinced Oswald was a major player. Therefore my "list" would be:

* Taking a rifle to work

* Fleeing the murder scene.

* Killing Tippit.

* Sneaking into the theater to escape patrol cars.

* Trying to avoid capture by pulling a revolver and attempting to shoot a police officer.

You've pretty well forgotten to leave any role for anyone else! What exactly did his co-conspirator(s) do other than potentially taking a single shot from the knoll that missed? And where did he or they go? Was there someone who helped this guy or those guys escape, leaving Oswald in the lurch? Since you didn't include in your list that he also "killed JFK," then I'm going to presume that you allow for the possibility that another unidentified and unidentifiable co-conspirator was who was pulling the trigger on the sixth floor.

If that's true, then it looks like by your own estimation that Oswald was, in fact, left to be the designated patsy. Or else, disclaimers to the contrary notwithstanding, you do believe Oswald did all that attributed to him all by his own lonesome.

This may be a shock to you Duke, but the fact that you dont accept that evidence does not make it invalid. How about cutting to the chase and YOU telling ME you're reasons for not accepting that evidence.

You're obviously not familiar with the rest of the quote that the bottom one in my signature line comes from. Another part is "I ain't often right, but I've never been wrong!"

The reasons I don't accept the evidence is that it hasn't been proven beyond even an unreasonable doubt.

You know the drill on the rifle, to illustrate only your first point: Linnie Mae saw him with a package; Buell saw it on the back seat of his car and estimated it at about two feet long, said Oswald tucked it under his armpit while holding the end in his hand, with no part of it showing above his shoulder; Jack Daugherty, the only person who saw Oswald enter the building, didn't see any package of any sort in Oswald's hands. The rifle, even disassembled, was longer than That is the sum total of the evidence of him bringing a package - or not - into the building.

Furthermore, the package he purportedly brought was not photographed at the scene and there is no chain of its possession; it was determined to have come from a roll of paper used in the TSBD for wrapping outbound books for shipping, which required the use of tape that needed to be moistened that was run through a moistener and had to be applied immediately. The tape could not taken through that machine without getting it wet, and there was no evidence that any had been taken from another roll of tape not yet used.

There is likewise no indication that Oswald had taken the paper to Irving with him on Thursday night, or that he'd spent any time in the garage wrapping the rifle in said paper, fashioning it into a sack. Troy West, the man who operated the machine and who testified that he "never" left his station during the day except to make coffee and, presumably, to commune with nature, said that Oswald had no access to the tape, the machine or the paper rolls, and that he, West, did not give any of those items to Oswald at any time. The FBI determined that the paper was from a roll still in use on the Friday, and that the tape had come through and been cut by West's machine, so its origin isn't in doubt.

HOWEVER, the rifle was in the building, the sack had been fashioned from TSBD shipping paper, ergo - despite all of the foregoing - Oswald "must" have done what nobody saw him do, the proof being that someone must have done it and that "someone" could only have been him. QED, right?

If Oswald didn't have access to the paper and tape and didn't take a rifle wrapped in it into the building, then the only logical conclusion is that someone else did. That someone did have access to the materials, and was able to bring it into the building unseen by others. There was opportunity to accomplish the latter (while most if not all of the TSBD employees were watching the parade, for example), as well as the former (e.g., before people arrived for work, after they'd left, while the cleaning crew was cleaning the building on nights and weekends).

Since we don't know who that "someone else" might've been, it does NOT mean that someone other than Oswald couldn't have done it.

The bottom line is that there was opportunity for someone other than Oswald to have fashioned the sack and gotten it into the TSBD, and there is no evidence to show that Oswald was the person who did either of those, and much to show that he didn't.

Ergo, there's no question in my mind - or yours - that Oswald did in fact do what he couldn't have done ... and nobody else could have done what it was alleged Oswald did simply because we don't know who that might have been.

Similar objections can easily be raised on all of the other points you raise, especially regarding motive. You can presume all you want about those things, but you cannot prove them "beyond a reasonable doubt." The WC could do so only because it had no adversary.

So, even if you claim not to be a "lone-nutter," your beliefs portray you otherwise, and while you state that there were "other conspirators" and that Oswald wasn't "a patsy," you have assigned the others no role and leave Oswald guilty of everything.

Do you have the time and inclination to delineate just what role these "co-conspirators" had other than to remain nebulous and lend you a basis to say that there was a conspiracy?