Duke Lane

I'd like to expland the hiding of the rifle to the brown paper bag, which Oswald allegedly used to bring the rifle to work with. Why did Linnie Mae Randle and Buell Wesley Frazier (brother and sister) testify that Lee placed a 2-2.5 foot long brown paper bag type parcel into Wes Frazier's car's back seat. Frazier testified the Lee carried it to the TSBD from the car. Lee had allegedly said it contained curtain rods he planned to use for his apartment room (apparently on N. Beckley), where he was staying.

Were both Mrs. Randle and Wes Frazier somehow pressured to testify that Lee had such a package with him, or did he in fact have this package with him. ...

I can credit the position of Buell and Linnie Mae being "pressured," but if they were, why not get the complete story straight? Why pressure someone to say that LHO brought a bag in if they couldn't corroborate the length of the bag, too? And if the pressure was merely to say that he'd had a bag, is it plausible to consider that B&LM decided to corroborate the remaining details between themselves alone, and then not only testify to the same thing, but also to not accede to pressure to make the imaginary bag longer than they'd concocted in their own imaginations? "Okay, we'll lie about him having the bag, but we won't lie about the length of the bag we both know he really didn't have?" Hello?

... The best ear witnesses were the 3 African American men watching the motorcade on the 5th floor. One of them claimed to have heard the ejected shells drop onto the floor above him. Also one of these men had dust or something fall onto his head during the shooting from the floor above (the floor was being repaired at the time, which allowed for a need for Oswald and hsi employment there in the first place).

If they heard that much, I wonder why didn't they report hearing the assassin take steps (run/walk) to the other end of the 6th floor to hide the rifle after the deed? Why were they unable to give testimony as to how the assassin fled from the building? The elevators and staircases were right there. Surely they'd hear the elevator being operated or someone running in the staircase, if they could hear the shells falling onto the floor above?

Anyone get the feeling that some of the witness statements are false and that some of the evidence has been planted? I am.

Antti,

Jack White responded to your question by describing something he took part in - a test conducted in the TSBD when the floors were empty. Of course he heard the shells drop and of course he heard footsteps. But in 1963, the heavy book cartons all over the sixth floor deadened the noise.

Also, I suspect the assassin knew there were people below him, for the floors were very thin - just one layer of plywood - and the sound would easily carry through. Jack also ignored the simple fact that there were ten to fifteen vehicles and motorcycles right below the window along with cheering crowds, so there was a lot of ambient noise that could have masked some of the sounds from the floor above.

The guys on the fifth floor in 1963 always said they heard the shells hit the floor and the sound of the rifle being operated above them. I don't know of any reason to question their stories and I'm not aware of any researchers who have even attempted to debunk their claims.

Gary

Hi,

Thank you for sharing your view. I'm not sure what it was that made me think there were discrepancies in their stories, somehow I recall the timing of events seemed to get these gentlemen to "stumble". At any rate this was the impression I was left with, I do need to point out it was 2-3 years ago that I read their testimony.

Even with heavy book boxes on the floor, I can't quite figure out why they wouldn't also hear and then mention the movement of the assailant in their testimony. Even if not to set the record straight, they must have been afraid or concerned about this individual possibly moving down to the 5th floor and would therefore try and listen out to what that individual might be doing next, simply out of instinct.

Antti

Gary's are clearly sensible answers, but at least part conjecture. I agree that heavy objects would tend to absorb some of the vibration of the floor (and thence the sound of footsteps), but do not believe that they would absorb it so completely as to be unheard. Another factor corresponding with that would be the type of shoes worn by someone running across such a floor: leather-soled dress shoes or cowboy boots would make a sharper and less muffle-able sound than rubber-soled work shoes or sneakers.

It's at least somewhat plausible that three men who heard fraction-of-an-ounce shells hit the floor above them did not hear the sound of someone running halfway across the 100'x100' floor above them, or running down the stairwell at the far corner (you work out the hypotenuse, I've forgotten how!), but I'm not so certain that they'd not have heard similar movement just five or ten feet away, essentially directly above them. None at all?

Of course, you've got to ask the question: who said there was anyone running upstairs? That is only a necessity if it was, in fact, Oswald sprinting madly to make his fateful encounter with Officer Baker four floors below. If it was anyone else, they did not have to get anywhere in any set amount of time, and in fact would have had sufficient time to get off the floor at a leisurely walk if you consider that all they had to do was be gone by the time anyone - cops, particularly - had gotten to the sixth floor from outside. What was not timed in the "reconstructions" was how long it took Baker & Truly to get upstairs after the lunchroom encounter.

What we do know, however, is that when B&T first went indoors to the main elevator shafts near the NW corner of the building, both men testified that both elevators were stopped at the same place on a floor above them (Truly, being more familiar with the building than Baker, specified that it was at the fifth floor). By the time that they had arrived at the fifth floor where both elevators had been, one was no longer there, and had gone down while B&T were running up, making quite a bit of noise (per Baker's testimony) as they did so, very possibly enough to cover the sound of the elevator's descent.

No, make that simply "enough noise to cover the sound," since the elevator did go down while they were on the way up the staircase, and they didn't hear it it do so .... or, at least, Baker didn't, and Truly didn't testify to it. QED.

What is harder to understand is how a man who claimed to have been standing at the NW corner of the building just feet from the stairs also did not hear or see anyone, despite the fact - established by Officer Baker - that people on the stairwell would make at least enough noise to completely mask the sound of the elevators' operation (and this from a man who would have undoubtedly been alert for any sounds or appearances of someone escaping!). At the time that the assassin(s) would have been (supposedly) coming down the stairs - at least, if he were Oswald hurrying to meet Baker on the 2nd floor - the elevators were not operating, so the sound of the elevators would not have masked the sound of someone running down the stairs.

Ergo, if the elevators weren't operating and making noise, and Jack Daugherty didn't hear anyone making noise going down the stairs - which they would have done - then nobody was going down the stairs! The only speculation - and that's what it is: speculation - that would seem to refute that conclusion is that a man or men would make more noise going up the stairs than down.

It should also be noted that Jack was not working only on the fifth floor, but had been on both the fifth and sixth floors during the time leading up to the shooting. He was not seen by anyone (or nobody admitted to seeing him, anyway) - not Bonnie Ray Williams eating lunch on the sixth floor, nor by him, Junior Jarman or Shorty Norman later on the fifth floor. The only proofs of his having been there - for any reason, doing anything - are his own word and the fact that one of the elevators descended from the sixth floor after Truly had yelled up to send it down and before he and Baker had arrived at the fifth floor.

It is interesting to note that Jack Daugherty had testified that he "always took the full hour" for lunch, with the singlular exception of this particular day, November 22, 1963. Instead, on that day only, he returned to work after going downstairs for lunch in the domino room after only 15 minutes. He testified that he'd ridden an elevator upstairs, and had in fact ridden it between the fifth and sixth floors while he was working there between approximately 12:15 and 12:32 ... facts, actions and noises also not testified to by the three men on the fifth floor!

(From this, can we deduce:

1. Jack was not on the fifth and sixth floors as he testified; and/or
   
2. Jack was there, but was unseen and unheard by anyone on either floor for 15 minutes while he worked collecting books from various locations on each floor; and/or
   
3. Jack was there and was seen by one or more of the three men, but they chose not to admit it?
   

... and if those are all of the possible deductions, which is most likely? If they're not all, what else can we deduce?)

So, let's move to a possible scenario that takes into account almost all of what we know about the events leading up to the shooting.

The men working on the flooring went downstairs to wash up for lunch a few minutes earlier than usual in anticipation of seeing the President's motorcade. They normally broke a few minutes before the lunch hour started so that they'd be cleaned up to eat and enjoy their hour off, but on this day they broke at about ten minutes till and went to the first floor washroom (a "one-holer") to clean up.

Lee Oswald was also on the sixth floor but was still working, and was still expected to be working, since one didn't normally break for lunch until five minutes till noon. He asked them to send an elevator back up for him (which nobody did) and finished his job before going downstairs for lunch at the usual time. He may have left his clipboard on the sixth floor in anticipation of completing the order he'd been working on after the parade was over.

Oswald ate lunch and was seen eating lunch downstairs, seen by at least two people, none later than 12:15, ten minutes before the President was due to arrive. This is not so much a testimony to the fact that LHO "wasn't seen" after 12:15 as it is that everyone was expecting the President to arrive soon, and weren't generally paying attention to anyone other than who they were with; maybe "noticed" is a better word? Oswald was again seen within two minutes of the shooting by three people in two instances, in each case appearing calm and unhurried. In the latter - closely following the first - he was last seen walking toward the front stairs of the building, which could have only taken him to the entry vestibule at the front of the building, where people were entering and exiting unobstructed.

Later, he is said to have told police that he had eaten lunch on the first floor, and had later gone to the second floor to get a coke, both of which are corroborated by witnesses. He is only "missing" - that is, unnoticed - for 15 minutes leading up to the shooting.

At about that same time, Jack Daugherty went back to work after also eating lunch in the first floor lunch room. He is the only TSBD employee who said he went back to work, adminitting that that was contrary to his usual routine of taking the full lunch hour. He went toward the back of the building while everyone else was either at the front of the building, going there, or had their attention centered there, and rode an elevator to the fifth floor. He spent the next 15 minutes, he said, collecting books on the fifth and the sixth floors, presumably unseen by anyone, and presumably also including the assassin(s) supposedly shooting from the sixth floor window(s).

We thus have a killer or killers who are confident enough - or invisible enough - to risk shooting at the President of the United States while an employee was wandering willy-nilly between two floors to seemingly random locations on each floor to collect books for an unspecified order: who's to say whether or when he'd also need to get some Rolling Readers - books that were contained in the boxes surrounding the so-called "sniper's nest" - to add to that order?

Is it likely that Lee Oswald could done what he is claimed to have done, barely dodging Jack's notice as he set about setting up a book-box screen and killing JFK? Could he have done so - could he have actually fired a rifle, mostly within the building - and hope to escape Jack's notice then as well? It wasn't as if JFK's motorcade was waiting for him to get set up before arriving in the plaza, so any inopportune arrival on the sixth floor by Jack Daugherty - who spent 15 minutes prior to the shooting supposedly working on that and the fifth floor - would have or could have irrevocably ruined the moment.

Unless Jack was somehow involved with Oswald or another shooter or shooters, if it didn't matter what Jack saw or heard, but especially if Jack was helping (we are presuming, of course, that Jack "the village idiot" was not the actual shooter).

Jack had the admitted means to have allowed someone to come in the back door of the TSBD after he finished his lunch, and taken them upstairs in an elevator immediately afterward, escaping notice entirely. He or they could have told Bonnie Ray to go downstairs "for their own good," and any Southern Negro (or Negroes) would have known to do just that, no questions asked, their silence ensured ... especially knowing that whoever had ordered them downstairs had the temerity to actually shoot the POTUS wouldn't hestitate to kill them too. The latter part is, of course, pure speculation.

Nevertheless, Jack was on the sixth floor in the moments leading up to the shooting, the only other person known and admitted to having been there other than Bonnie Ray Williams, who was unquestionably on the fifth floor when the shooting actually started; Jack's whereabouts are unknown ... and even he didn't claim to know where he was during the shooting because he claimed not to have heard it ... or anythiing else.

Following the shooting, he was at some point on the fifth floor both by his own admission, established by the fact that one of the two elevators left the fifth floor - even Roy Truly surmised (knew?) in his own testimony it was Jack who'd ridden it down as he and Baker ran up - and went unnoticed by anyone, eventually arriving at the first floor, where Jack alit from it. Whether anyone else rode with him was - and would necessarily have been - unstated, and it is not necessary that they rode all the way down with him, but only that they rode down past the point where B&T were heard coming up the stairs, thus escaping Baker's notice.

The elevator did not have to depart the sixth floor until B&T were heard on the last flights of stairs coming up from the fourth floor, although Baker did not specifically state that the elevator that had already departed the fifth floor was still operating ... nor did he state (or notice?) how far it had descended when he noticed it was already gone. It is possible that the elevator only initially descended one floor, below B&T, before proceeding downward yet again.

What is noteworthy is that one of the sheriff's deputies - Luke Mooney, if memory serves correctly - had indicated that, after he had started to ride the elevator up from the first floor, it ceased operating at the second floor, a fact corroborated by one of the female witnesses whose name escapes me at the moment. He then continued up from the second floor on foot, encountering two men who were descending from above. These men were apparently (dressed as) law enforcement personnel, inasmuch as Boone noted that they were "plainclothes, like me." This mention went unnoticed during his deposition.

(It is likewise noteworthy that, given the amount of time that had passed from the shooting until the time Mooney and the girl had gotten off of the stalled elevator, there was only one law enforcement official - Marrion Baker - who had been in the building long enough to have been descending from above the second floor, and he was still upstairs with Roy Truly. So who were these supposed cops and where were they coming from? Why did Mooney think they were cops, and not just men dressed in suits? He was never asked, nor asked to identify them in any way.)

Finally, since this thread is about the bag, it is also noteworthy that Jack Daugherty had access to the building at least an hour or so before anyone else came in, and presumably earlier (if he had keys) and/or any other time of day or night, presuming only that his early access was made possible by his having keys to the building. He was inside and saw LHO enter the building that morning with - according to Jack - nothing in his hands. The fact is, though, that while Troy Eugene West testified that he came in at 8:00, made coffee, and otherwise remained at his workplace wrapping outbound orders (except, as Harold Weisberg wryly noted, for "the necessities of life") his testimony has no bearing upon whether anyone else had access to it before West arrived or after he left.

This is particulary true of Jack Daugherty, who arrived an hour before everyone else to "check the pipes for leaks" and other miscellaneous duties, both by his own testimony and that of Roy Truly. Jack could have removed the taped wrappings - a "bag" - before or after West arrived on Friday or left for on Thursday. In fact, with ready, unsupervised and unobserved access to the tape machine and all other parts of the building, there would have been no need to remove the "bag" from the building at all, thus answering the question of how "Oswald" managed to get it out of the building without being able to fold it or leave any crease evidence of having folded it, thus concealing it from Frazier and everyone else. Simply stated, Oswald "accomplished" it ... by never having had it!

... You see them bringing LHO all around the police department and reporters asking him questions ... You also see him being interviewed some time before the assassination. ... But previously they played a tape of a radio broadcast where Oswald is talking about his political views: It wasn't the same voice!

old story.... completed just in time for the JFK 40th anniversary (assassination-imagine that). The notorious Dale Myers quote: "...its NOT the Single Bullet THEORY, it's the Single Bullet FACT!" Dale did in fact convince Peter Jennings though...

First, the human voice doesn't change, per se. Its pitch and timber may, but the essential voice does not. This is how someone can be identified by their voice even when they attempt to disguise it. I have no idea where one could have this comparison made (police station? would they spare the time and expense?), but if it could be done, it might resolve the issue.

Second, it is not very difficult to convince someone of something they're receptive to hearing or believed all along. C'mon, I dare anyone: convince me if you can that Lee Oswald didn't kill JFK and/or JD Tippit! Some things are just easy sells. Jennings was a lay-down.

During that right-wing speech (by who do you know?) there was mention made of a Major Knickerbocker being behind the movement. I can only assume this was Harry C. Knickerbocker, operations officer of the Texas Air National Guard, 136th Fighter Group.

... He ended up touring with Frank McGehee and General Walker on speaking tours and the like. A very interesting character for sure and one who has escaped major scrutiny, especially his associations amongt the powerful right-wing.

Oliver was a pretty smart character, too, and was accorded much deference by Counsel Jenner, who interviewed him.

Duke,

We have discussed the officer who reported he was going to Jefferson. There was a cruiser on Jefferson at the time of the

Tippit murder. Just a friendly reminder of our past conversations on the subject.

[Duplicate post]

I am assuming that the killer and his associates, wherever they were located, planned to kill a cop in the Oak Cliff area and make it appear to be the work one Lee Oswald. I am further assuming that they knew that Lee was in the area and that they had the ability to monitor the police radio.

If the purpose of the exercise was simply to strengthen the case against Lee to compensate for the weakness of the case against him as assassin, then it would not matter to them which Dallas cop they happened to murder. ... I recall from Sylvia Meagher that there was another cop nearby who was out for lunch at a diner on Jefferson, as I recall. Since you have studied the area, does it appear that by monitoring both the 10th and Jefferson ends of Patton St, it was only a matter of time before either Tippit or the other cop showed up on one or the other street?

... If their knowledge of police activity in the area came solely from monitoring radio traffic, perhaps they could not eliminate entirely the possibility that some unanticipated cruiser could come by, or some other threat to a successful escape, hence the advisability of murdering Tippit away from the intersection, once the killer saw him approach from his vantage point on the corner of Tenth & Patton, as described by Markham.

I fear that at least part of my point was obscured by apparent sardonicism, and that is that there is absolutely no sense in "lying in wait" at that particular area unless one were fairly certain that there would soon be something coming along that was worth lying in wait for.

From that, you can eliminate anyone who had a strictly personal grudge against Tippit, such as a jealous husband, because there would be no reason to suspect that Tippit - whose assigned area was a couple of miles south, and whose lunch time had already passed - would be in that area at all that day, and much less so after the shooting downtown when everyone was on high alert.

Well, almost everyone ... but more on that later.

As to the likelihood of Tippit or WD Mentzel (the cop who was regularly assigned to this patrol area, and who was about a mile away having lunch at Luby's Cafeteria) or any other cop eventually coming to that intersection, I'd say that the chances are pretty good they would ... if the killer had about six months to wait around! That's an exaggeration, of course, but the point is that the neighborhood is (not even now) particularly high-crime, and the streets aren't particularly high-traffic (even today), and so would not necessarily be patrolled with high frequency. If a patrol goes through that intersection once every day, I'd be surprised, and much more so if one went through at near the same time every day. Today or then.

Even had one come by, it would've been Mentzel's car on patrol, not Tippit's. Mentzel, however, was at lunch (theoretically unknown to anyone simply listening in on a police monitor) ... and he was, incidentally, the only Dallas patrol officer who took lunch (during "normal lunch hours") that day, in the only patrol district that "police resources were being drained from" that hour (far from true) and consequently the only district that required an officer from another patrol district to be assigned, "at large" or otherwise, to cover it.

This is, of course, purely coincidental.

Another coincidence is that Mentzel and Tippit were not the only patrol officers in the district at that time, compounding the question as to why Tippit needed to be assigned there. In point of fact, another officer had radioed in that he was "clear [of the car] for five [minutes]" on "East Jefferson" - which is only in Oak Cliff - less than one minute before Tippit was first contacted and ordered into the very same district (along with RC Nelson, who disregarded his orders and broadcast the fact - unchallenged - even as he was doing so). That officer was at least 10 miles from his assigned patrol area (if he was, in fact, the officer assigned to that number).

Mentzel, (co)incidentally, finished his lunch and went back on patrol immediately before Tippit's shooting, and was then ordered to investigate an accident on West Davis, which he failed to find.

So to summarize:

• WD Mentzel, assigned to districts 93 and 94, took lunch just about the time that JFK's motorcade was going through downtown Dallas; he was the only patrol officer to go on lunch at this critical time (this based on the assumption of a 30- to 45-minute lunch break that he completed at about 1:00, the time of his next broadcast, and his 12:25 broadcast that he was "clear" following having been "on traffic" and his next transmission just before 1:07). It is likewise presumed that he went to lunch prior to 12:30 since he later stated that he did not hear about the downtown shooting until he was finishing lunch, thus did not hear it on the radio;
  
• At 12:28, Unit 56 (WP Parker, in far SE Dallas, by the Garland and Mesquite town lines) radios in about "traffic" involving a '56 Chevy. Dispatch attempts to respond shortly thereafter, but does not get an answer, prompting the question from dispatch: "Anyone know where 56 is?"
  
• At 12:44, Unit 56 (Parker?) reports that he's "clear for five," and dispatch asks his location. He responds that he's at "East Jefferson" (which is only in Oak Cliff) in patrol district 94 (Mentzel's), 10 miles from his own patrol district;
  
• At 12:45 - just seven broadcasts from dispatch later - the dispatcher radios Tippit, who reports being at Kiest and Bonnieview, to "move into central Oak Cliff" because - according to the dispatcher's later comments - "resources were being drained from Oak Cliff"
  
• At 12:54, Tippit is again contacted and reports being at "Lancaster and Eighth," which coincidentally can be reached at normal speed in about eight-and-a-half minutes driving up Bonnieview (which becomes 8th) from Kiest.
  
• Meanwhile, Harry Olsen is out on the sidewalk in front of an "estate" he's guarding on 8th "a couple of blocks from Stemmons" (Lancaster is two blocks off of the highway) and "receives a phone call" from a friend of an "elderly aunt" of a motorcycle cop assigned to the motorcade (which aunt years later becomes a deceased man whose identity is unknown);
  
• Sometime between 1:00 and 1:04, dispatch asks Tippit (who is supposed to be patrolling "at large") for his location. Tippit does not respond.
  
• At 1:04, Mentzel finishes lunch and radios being "clear" following his lunch;
  
• At 1:11, Mentzel responds to a "Signal 7" (accident) at 817 W Davis (point "B" on the map), about 10 blocks (1.2 miles) from 10th & Patton (point "C"). Unit 222, VR Nolan, also responds from his location at Sylvan & Colorado (point "A") less than a mile away;
  
• At 1:16, Tippit's shooting is reported by TF Bowley on Channel 1. Tippit has been dead for several minutes at this time.
  
• Unit 56 (Parker?) does not broadcast again at any time through 2:13. Later reports indicate that the officer(s) assigned to District 56 remained in that district setting up roadblocks following Kennedy's assassination.
  

So some reasonable questions would seem to be:

• Why was WD Mentzel the only officer at lunch while Kennedy's motorcade was travelling through Dallas?
  
• Why was #56 in Oak Cliff? And where did he go afterward?
  
• After not hearing from #56 for 16 minutes and then asking his location, why would a dispatcher not realize that he was in Oak Cliff and far from his assigned area?
  
• Why after hearing that #56 was in Oak Cliff would a dispatcher "realize" that resources were being "drained" from that area and assign two other officers, both from other districts farther south, into it?
  
• Why was Oak Cliff the only patrol district throughout the city that was assigned "additional" coverage when most other districts' officers responded to the "Signal 19" (shooting) call to "all units" to "report downtown?"
  
• Why did RC Nelson disregard his order to move into central Oak Cliff, and why did dispatch not say anything when Nelson told them that he was crossing the viaduct into downtown (away from Oak Cliff) and later that he was "out down here" at TSBD in blatant disregard of his orders?
  
• Why was dispatch concerned with Tippit's location when he was only supposed to be patrolling "at large" around central Oak Cliff?
  

The questions lead to more, including whether the killer was aware of Tippit's being in Oak Cliff because the killer himself was a cop (or was brought there by a cop) who was listening to his own police radio, and thus could be assured that no other police cruisers would come along? Was Tippit in fact having a dalliance with someone who lived three houses from where Scoggins - who "just saw him every day" - was having lunch, and two houses away from the Davis sisters-in-law, one of whom said that he'd been shot "in front of the hedgerow between the house next door and the one he lives in," and if so, were others aware of it (as former officer Tom Tilson has claimed)? Was Tippit ordered into Oak Cliff because it was assumed that, given the chance to be "at large," he would attempt to visit his paramour? Was the killer "killing time" walking around the area waiting for Tippit to finally show up, thus explaining both why neither Scoggins nor Markham noticed him cross Patton and why he was apparently seen by Jimmy Burke (and Markham's son) walking west from Denver Street? Was Tippit in the act of pulling over in front of his paramour's house when he saw someone he recognized and acted as if he was pulling over not to visit his girlfriend, but to greet - "real friendly like" - said unexpected acquaintence? Who was the woman standing on the porch of her home that Frank Wright said had exclaimed "oh, they've shot him!" before going back inside ... perhaps said presumed paramour who may have reconciled with her estranged husband later that very same day? Was Tippit's shooting merely a personal grudge that was carried out serendipitously, the act of a desperate assassin afraid of apprehension, or perhaps a deliberate - and quite successful - attempt to divert police attention away from Dealey Plaza as "one of their own" was shot in the line of duty? Nothing, no other crime of any magnitude, has the emotional impact of a cop-killing and will evoke a massive response by other officers to the exclusion of any other duty; it would have been the most perfect diversion possible. If that's so, who planned it and ordered that Tippit be sent to his death? Is it plausible that it was serendipity that a cop - Tippit - showed up where a shooter was in the simple hope that one could be shot and draw a massive response of cops to the one area of town where a missing TSBD employee happened to live?

Or did Oswald do it?

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a healthy woman in her late thirties is designed by nature to have a male companion. Move over, Jane Austin.

Helen Markham was designed by nature, given her solitary marital situation, to be on the lookout for a likely male. From a distance she would surely have spotted a male pedestrian well before she herself stopped for traffic on the northwest corner of Tenth & Patton.

My interest is determining an approximation of the time elapsed between Markham's first sighting of the pedestrian (presumably the gunman) and her arrival at the corner. It strikes me as entirely possible that the man could easily have walked to the designated crime scene and waited there in the time between Markham's first sighting of him and her sighting of the police car.

If the killer was "lying in wait" for Tippit, he would not want the shooting in, say, the middle of an intersection, therefore he would walk away from the corner, and eliminate the chance of being spotted by a police cruiser on Jefferson.

I can agree with the latter part, but the first? There are many women in my life who would brain me for agreeing with you!!

When she might have earliest seen the killer would largely depend upon where he came from. If he had been either walking westbound from Denver toward Patton, it would have presumably have been later than if he'd been coming eastbound from Crawford and had to cross a yard and street directly in front of Markham. If he had been stationary until he'd seen the police cruiser - say, on the porch of the house that Tippit "lived in?" - then he might not have been noticeable at all.

It would seem that motion - rather than gender! - would have been been what attracted her notice. If he'd been waiting patiently for the cruiser to come along, and his clothing not being something to attract attention (neutral colors, as they were), then the only thing left would seem to be gender. I don't think Helen's sense of smell was that acute!!

As to police cruisers on Jefferson ... what police cruisers could have been on Jefferson? Remember that Tippit was called there because - according to one of the dispatchers, Hensley I'm thinking - "resources had been drained from Oak Cliff" in response to the downtown shooting, so there were no cruisers that could've seen him.

If he was "lying in wait" for Tippit, it could only have been because he'd known that there were no cruisers in the area. Since JD was assigned to a different area a few miles away, it would have been a pretty dumb place for him to "lie in wait," don't you think? I mean, Kiest and Bonnieview would seem like a better choice, somewhere in Tippit's patrol area, no?

But ... wait!!

You're not suggesting that the killer knew there were no cops in the area, and that Tippit would be sent to central Oak Cliff, so it really was a good lying-in-wait location ... or (ohmigod!) that the dispatchers deliberately cleared Oak Cliff so that Tippit could be sent to the area where said gunman was lying in wait for his appareance, are you?

Since that couldn't possibly be true, it proves that Oswald shot JD Tippit - and that only Oswald could have shot him, all while trying to escape so he could get caught. QED. Rosetta Stone and all that. Plain as the face on your nose!

Gosh, why didn't I think of that sooner so I could've avoided this carpal tunnel syndrome I've gotten trying to convince people otherwise? What was I thinking?!?

Case closed. You can log off the forum now and cancel your membership, there's nothing left to discuss.

It's nice to talk to a fellow researcher who takes the time to "smell the roses"

D'ain't no roses on dat day-uh street! Wish I'd had my camera with me, but it was sort of unexpected being there.

Any comments on my earlier question:

What I would like to ascertain is how close to (or how far from) the intersection a person (anyone with normal or corrected vision who was looking straight ahead) would be when the intersection first comes comes into view.

?

No, none except to say that anyone with reasonable vision can - and presumably could, depending upon how many cars were parked on the street at the time - see the corner of 10th & Patton from the corner 9th & Patton with reasonable clarity. What they'd actually notice, on the other hand, is subject to pure speculation.

I did notice someone doing something at the old 400 E 10th lot (now vacant) from the corner of 9th & Patton, but I could not make out what it was until I'd gotten much closer (it was someone trimming along the fenceline). Since he wasn't a police car (or even as big as one), and didn't have brake lights on his tail, I can't guesstimate how much sooner I'd have noticed him if he'd had, or been able to tell what he'd been doing.

I do tend to speculate, however, that if he'd been a she ...!

Is it a fact that the cab wasn't there because Helen Markham didn't say she saw it? She walked the same way every day, saw cars parked on the streets in her very own neighborhood,

Just for my own curiousity...

Helen lived at 328 E. 9th, which would have put her at 9th and Crawford? Do you know why she was coming down Patton? Did her bus headed to downtown not stop at Crawford and Jefferson? Just curious.

Good questions, and which only today - not having read your post, BTW - was I curious enough to find out the answer.

As we know, the address SE corner of 10th & Patton where Tippit was shot is 400 E 10th. A block east lived the Wrights, on the opposite side of the street, at 501 E 10th. Clearly, the start of each block is at the low end of each hundred, so one assumes that it would be a high number across the street, but that's not so since there are only a few homes on each block.

Commission Document 630, page 4, shows a map of the immediate area, at the upper edge of which is a building marked "WASHATERIA." In front of it are two numbers, 328 and 330; Helen lived at 328½, which was the upper level. It is at the corner of 9th & Patton, one block north of the murder scene. Helen only walked a block on her way to the bus before the killing took place.

Somewhere else in that document, I think, is a photo of the front of Markham's home. I'd been surprised to see that it was on the corner of the street. I, too, figured that it must've put it at the SW corner of 9th & Crawford, even tho' the number of the home would seem to have put it in the block immediately west of Patton. US addresses don't always have clear delineations between them such that there is always a "500 block" that is one block long, followed by the "600 block" and preceded by the "400 block." I figured either the addresses weren't "logical" that way, or else there was an alleyway there dividing the block since 328 "had" to have been half-way down the block. Not so: the block ends at 330.

CD 630(h) indicates that "the distance from the front door of the washateria at 328 East 9th Street to the northwest corner of the intersection at East 10th and Patton Streets was walked and timed and this time was two minutes and thirty seconds." This, basically, was to determine how long it took Mrs Markham to leave the front door of her residence and get to the corner where she witnessed a murder.

Remember that Helen did not indicate that she had stopped and spoken with anyone, or that she had been diverted from her intended travel to the bus stop in any way. While the latter may be possible, I would think the former unlikely simply because that person would have been contacted to ascertain when Helen had gotten to the corner, ergo what time Tippit was shot.

Today I was in the neighborhood, parked my truck and walked it myself at a "normal" pace. It took me ONE minute and 30 seconds, perhaps a little longer, but only by a few seconds. I walked it four times at different paces and it never took me longer than UNDER two minutes, even sauntering like I was watching the birds in the trees, stopping to smell the roses and doing anything but worrying about catching my bus.

I don't know who actually walked it back on March 17, 1964, but whoever it was had clearly been celebrating St Paddy's Day and must have been reeling down the street, doubling back, and generally having trouble walking to have taken so long to get there. But hey, it added a minute to the time LHO had to get there, so it must've been a good thing, eh? Hence the term "close enough for government work?"

I'm nearly 50 years old, not the picture of shining health (quad bypass a couple of years ago, so at least in better shape than I was!), so if anything, I probably walked it slower than than the then-under 40 Helen Markham, and certainly not appreciably faster.

But, oh: to answer the question, the reason why she was walking down Patton and not Crawford was that she lived at the corner of 9th & Patton, and Crawford was a block away in the wrong direction!

... I don't remember seeing curbs on Patton as it runs South to Jefferson in any photos so Helen M. couldn't have seen the killer cross Patton behind the cab, {Someone may prove me wrong if they have photos of the complete intersection} and step up on to the curb.

Here's a photo: CD630, page 9. You'll find others as well, tho' I'm not certain about which or whether any others will show curbing.

Looking at the panoramic photo on page 66 of Myers, this house appears to be 4 or 5 houses away from the Davis house. On page 70 of With Malice Myers' diagram makes it seem that the shooting was in front of the house next door to the Davis house. Do you agree that Myers diagram is misleading, and do you know of any reenactment photo showing the actual view that the Davis girls would have had?

If not, and based on the view Goggins [sic - Scoggins] had per photo in WM68, would it be fair to say that the Davises were slightly closer than Scoggins, but their view would have been obstructed -- possibly to a serious degree -- by a tree (or 2 trees?) in front of the house next door? Am I correct in thinking that the Davis girls lived in the corner house?

You are correct as to where the Davis sisters-in-law lived - 400 E 10th, SE corner of 10th & Patton. As to the WM diagram, I'd have to go dig it out to look, so I'm just going to refer you to the official documentation and photos in CD630 regarding the shooting scene and let you decide for yourself:

In many of these, the principals are present - e.g., that's Helen standing on the corner, and Scoggins by and in his Checker cab - so it's a fair presumption that others including the Davises were present as well for these re-enactments.

Duke, A cab driver's function is to look for pedestrians. Even if Scoggins dropped his sandwhich on the floorboard and reached to pick it up he would have seen the killer coming from the West towards the intersection or seen the killer cross in front of his cab or seen the killer walking to the spot where the killer and Tippit met up.

I follow and agree with your reasoning, but not your conclusion. One could say that a cop's job is to catch speeders, and even if he was eating lunch in a diner, he'd notice and pursue one. Not so. People do "turn off" their normal, job-time reactions when they know they're not going to utilize their training.

Scoggins was eating lunch in a quiet neighborhood, not cruising or standing in line for a fare. There is no guarantee that, because he might "normally" notice people walking by (would he? Or would he only notice those that approached his cab?), he would always notice people or all people. I drove a cab years ago for a while, and can't say one way or the other ... but don't think I noticed everyone just because they were nearby, and sometimes I was taken by surprise when someone knocked on the window.

To me the fact that Scoggins doesn't notice the killer until just before shots are fired is the same thing as saying he did not see the killer cross in front of his cab or at any time or location prior.

... In this way it becomes a FACT to me and one a lawyer would prove out in court.

Conjecture might be the way things become "fact" to some people, but it is not either one that an attorney could prove in court, nor the way an attorney establishes fact. Consider:

Had Scoggins been asked if he'd seen the shooter walk across in front of his cab, and he'd said yes, he had, then a fact has been established (subject to argument, of course). Likewise, had he been asked and replied in the negative, again a fact might have been established. He was not, and so none was.

As far as it goes, what you've said ("Scoggins [didn't] notice the killer until just before shots are fired [ergo] he did not see the killer cross in front of his cab or at any time or location prior") is an inference and not a fact established. To move from inference to fact, a follow-up question would be necessary:

The answer to this question (or one similar) might be a step toward establishing the fact, but counsel's failure to ask the clarifying question leaves it as an inference only. In point of fact, Scoggins might have replied to such a question that, just moments before the shooting, he had, in fact, dropped his sandwich on the floor and had to root around under the seat to find it for a minute or so, so if the man had passed in front of his cab, he would not have been able to see him.

... Also, I don't remember seeing curbs on Patton as it runs South to Jefferson in any photos so Helen M. couldn't have seen the killer cross Patton behind the cab, and step up on to the curb. She never even acknowledges the cab being there. I can believe almost nothing of what Helen Markum says about this event. I don't think this is a minor point. IMO Ozwald wasn't the killer----Case Closed.

Is it a fact that the cab wasn't there because Helen Markham didn't say she saw it? She walked the same way every day, saw cars parked on the streets in her very own neighborhood, so one would think that a big, bright yellow Checker cab would stand out in her observations ... wouldn't you? You might think so, but you'd be speculating. Without checking, I don't recall if Markham was specifically asked if she saw the cab, so her silence on the matter does not establish that she didn't see it, but only that she didn't mention it unbidden. (Enough other people testified to its being there that the fact was nevertheless established.)

I'm not sure how ground-level, six-inch curbing might have interfered with anyone's seeing a nearly-six-foot man anywhere, as much as perhaps a five-foot tall Checker cab might. But since Markham didn't see (or say she saw) the cab, then it wasn't there and wasn't an obstacle anyway. To paraphrase a luminary personality in this history of this case (upon the occasion of his hearing that it wasn't possible for a six-foot man to have shot from the storm drain on Elm Street), there were a lot of pissed-off little people scurrying around Oak Cliff, too, apparently!

We do agree, however, that it wasn't Lee Oswald who shot and killed JD Tippit.

PS - As to the curbing, see CD630 at the Mary Ferrell Foundation site.

Duke...please share with us your theory of the Tippit shooter. You say you don't think he was going west to east (the official theory), so what is your opinion? If he was going east to west, wouldn't this eliminate the shooter having come from 1026 because of the greater distance? It would also mean a change in direction of travel at some point. What was the shooter's route in your opinion?

Jack

I think I've expounded on this at length in another thread, but to synopsize, the shooter's route was from around Garland Road, across the Fort Worth Turnpike, to East Jefferson, to the 10th Street alley, to 10th Street; thence Patton, Jefferson Blvd, Ballew's Texaco, Crawford and back to Garland Road. Admittedly, the Garland Road part may be a little hazy, but the rest is probably fairly dead-on, and really the part of the question you were asking.

The shooter had probably never been to 1026 N Beckley in his life. It's possible he lives in Denton County today.

... As Duke has pointed out, we can almost certainly eliminate the possibility that he had come down Patton from the north, which leaves coming from the west down Tenth St or coming from the South along the west side of Patton as the two most likely possibilities.

Careful! I only said that Scoggins did not see the shooter cross in front of his cab, not that the shooter didn't do so!

While Scoggins did see the police car go by, a vehicle is larger object and less likely to be missed by a casual observer on a quiet side street. That he saw the larger object (the police car) doesn't mean that he'd had to see the smaller one (the walking man).

From the WC's prosecutorial standpoint, it would have been ideal if Scoggins had said that, yes, he'd seen the man walk from west to east across Patton, and that without a doubt, the man was Oswald. Scoggins couldn't or wouldn't say that, and so it was best to simply not address the issue during testimony.

To call attention to the fact that Scoggins had been looking and didn't see anyone cross the street would have been potentially exculpatory to Oswald since, if he'd have come from any other direction, he'd have had to walk either past or ahead of Helen Markham, or have had to walk around more blocks than even they could provide him time to do ... or he'd have had to have some other way to have gotten past Scoggins' cab without being seen (i.e., an accomplice, probably driving him there).

One was highly improbable, and neither of the other two was a tenable alternative, so for it to have been Oswald, he'd have to have come from the west and crossed Patton, seen or unseen by Scoggins.

Since he wasn't asked, Scoggins also didn't say that he didn't see Oswald (or anyone else) cross the street in front of him. The implication is that he perhaps just didn't notice, but it still could've happened. Asked and responded to in the negative, it might be construed to mean that it didn't happen. That was also untenable, because the only other available option is that it wasn't Oswald who did the shooting!

So even while I don't think that the shooter was walking from west to east, crossing Patton, I don't believe it can be said that the possibility can "almost certainly" be eliminated simply because Scoggins didn't see (or notice?) him. He almost didn't even notice the police car!

OK. Let's forget Helen for a minute. If Scoggins is setting in his cab facing North at the intersection of 10th&P, then why did he not testify that he saw a man walking in front of his cab crossing Patton as the man walked from West to East on 10th? To my knowledge this question has never been raised by WC or anyone else.

Not to be flippant, but you may well have answered your own question: because Scoggins was not asked!

Most testimony is a series of questions and answers, and witnesses are often counseled to answer only what's asked of them, and not to editorialize beyond the scope of the question. Some do and are able to finish their thought, and some are cut off before they're able to.

Scoggins did get some editorial into his testimony, such as the fact that he didn't pay much attention to the passing police cruiser that Tippit was driving because he "just saw him every day," but not much of it was unrelated to the direct questions. He was directly asked about the police car; he was not asked about seeing a man cross the street in front of him.

The most obvious answer to why that was, is that Scoggins didn't see anyone pass in front of his cab. Had he, and especially had that person been Oswald, that fact would have been known to WC counsel and the question would have been asked, the answer entered into the record. Scoggins didn't see anyone. QED.

Just because a question isn't asked on the record, doesn't mean that it hasn't been asked and answered off the record. Scoggins was an important witness, and I find it difficult if not impossible to believe that he was questioned without any preparation at all.

There are NUMEROUS routes from the Beckley bus stop to Tenth and Patton. (from west and east on Tenth, and from various approach streets). There are possibly a half dozen different routes. The route for LHO to walk WEST on Tenth is completely different than an eastward route. Anyone trying a walking test should:

Drive all the routes first, including both east and west on Tenth, and Beckley and other approaches. Walk each route with helper following in car with camera, stopwatch and note pad or tape recorder. Walk at a normal speed (not a speedwalk or trot) and without predetermined objectives. The walker, if possible, should be same age and build as LHO.

Ideally each route should be videotaped with narrator giving times and locations on audio. Tapes should start with "walker" leaving 1026 Beckley and bus stop and ending at Tenth and Patton. Audio should mention all landmarks, streets and street crossings. There is at least one wide busy street with stoplights, as I recall. If so, it must be assumed that the walker might have to wait for the light to change.

The unedited videotapes with audio would give accurate real time accuracy of each route. Such a taping would be definitive enough to be admitted as evidence if properly done.

Jack

Good suggestions, all, Jack. I've got the equipment to make a VHS of all of that; do you have the capability of turning it into something viewable online? The audio dubs of the timings might prove a bit difficult without a second person in the vehicle so the driver doesn't have to do it and distract his attention from driving, but a reliable subject could make note of them. Unfortunately, I don't have the wherewithal to do it on a golf cart, or get traffic to accomodate such an excursion even if I did!

A truly (no pun intended!) ideal re-enactment would include several takes of the walk at various speeds, since there's no way to know how fast anyone walking from and to those points might have been walking since there were no witnesses to anyone having done so. Should one assume that it was LHO on the lam, skirting from shadow to shadow, or someone else walking at a more leisurely ("normal") pace?

The only conclusions this exercise can reach is whether it was possible for someone to walk from 1026 to 10&P, and in what possible periods of time. While it might rule out certain scenarios, it cannot prove any of them (e.g., it was possible for someone to get from point A to point B in ten minutes at a "normal" walk, but not that LHO did do it ... or that the only way to do it was at a trot, but NOT that LHO - to the exclusion of all other people - was therefore running).

I think it was (and is) possible; I'd just like someone other than a freakin' fitness trainer to do it, since there's NO evidence LHO was that "in shape."

(An interesting question that I've never heard posed - and which I know can be answered - is how "in shape" LHO actually was. Sure, we can see his general physique while wearing a tee-shirt, but was he skinny, or wiry? Could he have walked briskly from 1026 to 10&P? For that matter, could he have - and did he? - walk up three of four flights of stairs in TSBD without getting winded or stopping for a quick rest? Some people reading this will know exactly what I'm suggesting here ...!)

Gotta run, it's late!

Duke,

I do not wish to divert this thread but what do you know about Markham's son, James? A few months before the assassination he had been paroled from Huntsville doing time on a burglary conviction and since had been sought for parole violations. Helen Markham was supposedly under quite some stress at the time. I believe James was eventually nabbed in early 1964.

James

I guess I phrased the question rather badly. The late Larry Ray Harris took me to the scene years ago and I made some video, including the view Markham would have had while waiting to cross the street. But at the time I did not think to videotape the view Markham would have had from further back, as she approached the intersection. I have a vague recollection that there is an uphill slope part of the way from Markham's apartment building going towards the intersection, and that the intersection does not become visible to a walker until he/she reaches the top of that hill.

What I would like to ascertain is how close to (or how far from) the intersection a person (anyone with normal or corrected vision who was looking straight ahead) would be when the intersection first comes comes into view.

As to that particular angle, I don't have any particular doubt that a normal, healthy person can walk the requisite distance in a reasonable time, nor that the conjectured timings could place someone leaving 1026 at 10&P by 1:16 ... I've calculated the time (30" stride x 90 steps per minute, what the military calls "quick time" and what some of us lay folk might call "power walking" these days) and found it reasonable if not conclusive.

I suppose it would be interesting to determine for myself how long it might actually take. I have differences with Unsolved History's use of a fitness trainer to show that scrawny Oswald could have accomplished the same thing (as I do their use of a hip-shooting marksman to duplicate "Maggie's drawers" Oswald's shooting prowess!), and despite being twice LHO's age at the time, I figure I'm in maybe the same shape overall (especially after a quad bypass!!). Even still, I don't think there will be a significant difference.

Of course, I'd much prefer to do it with a witness who, quite incidentally, could also drive my truck along instead of me leaving it somewhere in not-so-upscale Oak Cliff!! (grin)

The most direct (if not the most likely or "logical," to occasionally side with Jack White!) route might be this one on Yahoo ... tho' Mapquest seems to think that this one is the "better" route, tho' I'd have to say that we'd need to rule that one out because it would have "Oswald" almost walking alongside Helen Markham on the way to the shooting. Respectively, the two map services put the distance at .8 and .74 miles (the lesser mileage equating to approximately 17 minutes at the aforementioned "quick time").

An interesting perspective:

A route that would have "Oswald" approaching 10&P is frequently "ruled out" because it would "take too much time" for him to get there from the rooming house 3/4 mile away. Yet if the preponderance of evidence shows that that's exactly what happened - that is, the shooter came from the east - then it rules out that Oswald was said shooter, nicht wahr?

In reality, this is all a gargantuan waste of time because any fool can quickly figure out that someone other than Oswald shot Tippit sometime before 1:16, and with time before that for several people to do different things, like Benavides to decide the coast was clear to get out of his truck, Bowley to arrive on scene and wait for Benavides to stop fumbling with the radio, and not-so-young Frank Wright to scoot a block from his house to the crime scene.

Of course, it all could have happened instantaneously, couldn't it?

If anyone (eg Duke Lane) is familiar with the terrain that Markham was traversing it would be interesting to have an estimate of how close to the corner Markham would need to be before she could see a man walking on the far side of the intersection, assuming she walked looking straight ahead.

As to your specifics, there are too many variables to consider: what was Mrs Markham's vision? Without contacts or glasses, I'd have to be within a foot of something to see what it was, and probably pretty close to being AT the intersection before realizing that anything was moving across the way!!

How did she walk: head up, eyes ahead, or dawdly, eyes watching where her feet were placed, looking up only when necessary (like when you get to an intersection)? You KNOW people walk different ways, including like that and lots of ways in between ... and we ALL know what happens when you "assume!"

I don't think there's a simple, easy or dependable answer to that.

On the question of TIme, David Perry emailed me a copy of Robert Barret's FBI report dated March 17, 1964. This is a CD, not in the 26 vols. Barret checked the bus schedule and reported, as Gary Mack had told me, that the next bus was due at 1.12 and every ten minutes thereafter. I am unable to copy or otherwise post this document, but will gladly forward Dave Perry's email to any member who emails me (not PM).

One can only presume that it was Helen Markham who walked the route in her usual manner when such timing was made.

Since Markham was going to meet a 1:10 bus (using the later figure) and she still had a "comfortable" block to walk without being late for it, then the shooting absolutely, positively had to have taken place before that bus arrived.

Gary Mack tells me that Markham's bus was scheduled to arrive at 1.12 and that the the next one was at 1.22. I think Markham herself said the bus came at 1.15, and someone has suggested that 3 minutes late constituted "on time" by bus co. standards.

If Markham arrived at the corner at 1.06 - 1.07, as I think she testified, then she had a good five minutes to make it to her bus stop, just over a block away(?). This suggests that she was right on schedule by her own time estimates, which were based on her final glance at the clock in her apartment building.

I have asked Gary if he has information on the bus's scheduled time of arrival at a stop near the Eatwell Cafe. If anyone can cite the WC Vol/Page No. of the bus schedule, it would be appreciated.

Assuming Markham intended to get a 1.12-1.15 bus, I am guessing that she was due at work at 2 p.m. I am further guessing that the 1.12 would ordinarily get her to work in good time but that the 1.22 (which might really be a 1.25) might land her in hot water with her boss, who was Greek. And you know what Greeks can be like if you show up late.

The schedule, as I'd noted, was published in a Commission Document, meaning you won't find it in any of the volumes. I'll see if I can't get ahold of that info for you, and possibly publish it here or elsewhere if it's not online already (I haven't found it yet among the Mary Ferrell collection, but then, I'm not sure which one I'm looking for!).

While three minutes late might be considered "on time" as far as a bus company is concerned, getting to the bus stop after its scheduled departure doesn't constitute being "on time" as a bus rider watches the bus disappear into the distance because it did depart on time! Anyone who regularly rides a bus knows not only to be there when the bus is supposed to depart, otherwise they very well might miss it, but they also know that, while busses aren't supposed to depart ahead of their scheduled time, it does occasionally happen, and thus they know to arrive at the bus stop not merely when it's supposed to depart, but before that!

Is two minutes ahead of scheduled departure too far in advance, assuming it would take Markham 3-4 minutes to walk that block and cross a busy boulevard at a leisurely pace? I would think not, since one never knows what obstacles might arise, such as particularly heavy traffic (such as a funeral departing from Dudley Hughes'?), for example, that might delay someone from crossing the street to catch the bus.

As to Greeks, I've never worked for one, but I think ol' Helen testified at one point that she was fired or otherwise chastised because of all the bother her witnessing the shooting was causing at work (in particular, I think, that Mark Lane was calling her there, and maybe the FBI, too).

Please allow me to be so brash as to respond to a number of points in this single post.

There is no reason to believe that her testimony regarding the time was any more credible than anything else that she said. NO ONE can verify what exact time this occurred.

It might be closer to the truth to say that ANYONE "can verify what exact time this occurred." The record clearly shows that TF Bowley verified Markham's time. Thus we have two percipient witnesses who INDEPENDENTLY verify that the murder HAD TO HAVE HAPPENED BEFORE 1.10. That is the defense case which, as the whole world knows, was never presented to the Warren Commission.

[That] is why we are still discussing it.

It seems to me that there is nothing left to discuss about the TIME of the murder, unless you can now produce some EVIDENCE that Markham and Bowley were BOTH WRONG ABOUT THE TIME. ... If you know of evidence which actually contradicts the time given by Bowley and Markham, I'm sure members would appreciate your posting it.

A lack of contradictory evidence proves nothing and needs not to, as their is no certifiable evidence that the shooting occuured at 1:08 or 1:13. If there was, we would still not be discussing this. Whether or not there was a trial may have been of no consequence. Were their a trial, I don't doubt that the police record would have been weighted heavier than the personal timepieces of the two civilians.

At the risk of stating the obvious, if Bowley and Markham are the sole source of evidence as to the time of the murder, and if rational people are to be guided by evidence and not some preconceived belief, then it is impossible that Lee Oswald murdered JD Tippit, because he had a pretty airtight alibi for the time in question (unless he owned a helicopter).

but the evidence which I am referring to and that I feel would have been accepted would have been the record of the "call in" that an officer was down.

No question that the "call in" is evidence, but it does not contradict the testimony of Bowley and Markham, which remains unchallenged as far as I can determine. I think it was Bowley himself who finally figured out how to work the police radio and made the call-in, so his own sworn affidavit, combined with the record of the call-in, means that the call-in came about six minutes after Bowley drove up, and about eight minutes after the murder.

1. Helen Markham saw the shooting; Tom Bowley did not.
   
2. Markham was heading to Jefferson Blvd to catch a bus to work; Bowley was late to picking his wife up from work at the phone company a few blocks away.
   
3. Mr & Mrs Frank Wright lived a block from the shooting, heard the shots, and immediately called the operator to report it.
   

No matter how "flaky" Mrs Markham was regarding the events that happened at 10th & Patton, it was her regular routine to catch a bus to take her to work every day on time. She knew when she had to leave the house, what time the bus would pick her up, what time it would drop her off, and what time she'd walk into work at the downtown diner where she'd worked. She was a short block from where the bus was to have picked her up at the time of the shooting.

The WC looked into the bus schedule for Markham's route, and published it as a Commission Document, meaning it wasn't generally available to the public for several years after the Report and Hearings were published. It showed that her bus arrived at Patton & Jefferson Blvd at 1:08 or perhaps as late as 1:10 p.m., if memory serves. It was that bus that would have deposited Markham downtown in time for her to get to work on time.

Since Markham was going to meet a 1:10 bus (using the later figure) and she still had a "comfortable" block to walk without being late for it, then the shooting absolutely, positively had to have taken place before that bus arrived. That is in keeping with Markham's testimonial estimate, whether her watch was ahead or behind slightly or not.

This, for Charlie Black's edification, is "certifiable evidence" that shows when the murder had taken place by, tho' not at what time. The bus schedule would have been given every bit as much weight as any police records that may have existed, and in fact the police record only can show that the shooting had taken place some time before 1:16.

The only "evidence" that police records had or have as to the time of the shooting is the personal recollections and time estimates of people who did not look at their watches (e.g., "a few minutes later, the police arrived" - how long is "a few minutes?"). Beyond that, there are the Wrights, who called the phone operator to report the shooting right after it happened (according to their story published October 12, 1964 in The New Leader), who are discussed below.

We all know that TF Bowley looked at his watch, and had noted that it read 1:10. In his affidavit, he had said that he did not witness the shooting, so he arrived after it took place and after the gunman had fled. (We should also note that by this time, Markham's bus would have already been departing its stop to take her to work if she hadn't been distracted.)

What Bowley did not say in his affidavit, but which he told me, is that the reason he'd looked at his watch was because he was supposed to have picked up his wife at the telephone company (which he did say) at 1:00 (which he didn't), and that he was already late when he'd swung onto 10th. As he'd stopped, his chief concern - besides ensuring that his daughter didn't see the carnage ahead - was "how much later am I going to be?" As it turned out, it didn't much matter since his wife - a telephone operator - had had to work late due to the increased phone traffic after the assassination. She wasn't relieved of duty until after 4:00 p.m.

(Incidentally, the reason that he did not give an affidavit until 11/25 was because he'd told the cops when they'd arrived that he could provide no information material to the shooting and that he was already late to pick up his wife from work. He promised to give them a statement when he'd come back from a weekend in Austin, which they accepted and which he did.)

Finally, the Wrights: as noted, they lived a block from 10th & Patton, at 501 E 10th at the corner of Denver. They related to George and Patricia Nash of The New Leader that Mrs. Wright had "dialed '0'" to report the shooting (a common practice in the times before 911 emergency calls). The operator - presumably in "emergency mode" after the report of a possible murder, even despite the heavy call volume after the assassination - called the police and relayed their address and information about the shooting.

There is, unfortunately, no record of when all of this transpired. At 1:18 - two minutes after Tom Bowley (not Donnie Benavides) had called in the shooting over the radio - DPD dispatch told responding officers that the address was "501 East Tenth," which was the Wrights' address. At this point, they definitely had the information. Also according to the Nashes' article, at that time, 1:18, Dudley Wright Jr., who was on duty as his father's funeral home, received a call from DPD to dispatch an ambulance to the Wrights' address, and punched a slip in a time clock noting the time he received the information.

There is a problem with this. Mrs Wright said she "didn't wait a minute" before she called the operator, after having heard the shots, looked out of her window and seen a man lying in the street. If we are to believe that police first learned of this only immediately before the time they broadcast the info over Channel 1 and called Dudley Hughes Funeral Home for an ambulance (1:18), then only a few things can be deduced from this:

1. Mrs Wright did not call the operator "immediately," but instead waited several minutes before doing so. That means that she would have waited to see Tom Bowley drive around the corner some time after the shooting, stop his car, admonish his daughter to stay put, walk up the street to the crime scene, and stand around for a while before taking the radio mike from Donnie Benavides and calling the cops ... and then waiting another minute or so; or
   
2. Mrs Wright did call immediately, bu the operator did not consider a shooting - with someone lying in the street afterward - to be of any great import given the news of the President's death, and sat on the information for several minutes before deciding that the police should be notified; or alternately, that she first took a few minutes to notify her supervisor (possibly powdering her nose on the way?) to get permission to notify the police of a shooting; or
   
3. Mrs Wright did call immediately, and the operator also notified the police immediately, but either it took a few minutes for the operator's message to actually get to the dispatchers, or it took the dispatchers a few minutes to assign any priority to it (since they had so much else to think about, what with the assassination site being shaken down, etc.), or else that they themselves sat on the information for several minutes before deciding to broadcast it (after putting two and two together?).
   

If there are other possible scenarios explaining how and why Mrs Wright's report took until 1:18 to be broadcast, they are escaping me at the moment, and they're worth considering. (Anyone?)

Taking all of this into account, the three most probative bits of information - only two of which we have that I'm aware of - are Helen Markham's bus schedule, the time of the radio call-in by Bowley, and the time of the operator's receiving Mrs Wright's call. All of these entities - the bus company, the police and the phone company - all had to operate on reasonably accurate times, and recorded anything of consequence that happened or any deviations from the norm (e.g., that the bus was late to its stop).

To my knowledge, no effort was made to determine who took Mrs Wright's call or what she did with the information, since according to Frank Wright, the police were not interested in hearing his version of events while he and they were at the crime scene, and the Wrights are not listed on any witness list. That something is not on the record does not mean that it didn't happen, only that it wasn't recorded.

Of those, as noted, we don't know when Mrs Wright called, or when her information was relayed; we DO know the bus schedule; and while we know what time the radio call was made, we DON'T know how long before the radio call that the shooting took place. We will leave Bowley's watch out of the equation because, according to his own description, it was not a particularly fancy watch, nor one that he absolutely made sure was accurate even weekly (such as by calling a time-of-day service).

(It is possible, however, to determine from Dallas School District records what time Bowley's daughter's elementary school let out, which also would have been according to a regular schedule. Since he was planning to pick up his wife at 1:00 to leave on a weekend vacation, either the school - or that particular grade - let out before 1:00, or his daughter had special permission to leave early, which he did not indicate to me was the case. We could then determine the time it would take to drive from the school to 10th & Denver, and to walk - or trot - a few houses to the shooting, and we'd have an approximation of what time the shooting took place before.)

The fact that his watch read the time that Helen Markham should have been boarding the bus (but clearly wasn't), and that the shooting had already taken place, however, does suggest that his watch was at least reasonably accurate. The only question is whether it took six minutes before he was able to take the microphone from Benavides.

The bottom line, however, is that Mrs Markham's regular - and successful - routine and the bus company's schedule would have been - barring anything unusual - also accepted as "official" evidence. That it wasn't entered into evidence before the WC could be because it didn't support its theory of "Oswald did it," since it is quite clear that, even if he ran part of the way, LHO could not have gotten to where he is purported to have been in under eight minutes: he'd have had to maintain a pretty brisk clip, an outright run (tho' not an actual sprint) to have done so.

The DPD tape only shows what time the incident was reported, not the time it occurred, and its evidentiary value is thus reduced significantly beside the bus's schedule and Mrs Markham's regular routine in meeting it.

A few years ago the Discovery Channel did a re-enactment and concluded that there would not have been enough time for Oswald to get from his rooming house to the location unless he was walking from West to East. If this is so, he had walked roughly 1 mile and was still walking towards Ruby's apartment, a half mile away. Coincidence?

There is only "coincidence" with respect to Ruby's apartment if and only if it was LHO on 10th Street, and he had been walking eastward. Eastward was also the same general direction as Kay Coleman's apartment, the "estate" being "guarded" by Harry Olsen (Coleman's cop boyfriend and Ruby buddy ... despite his claims to the contrary), the parts store where Donnie Benavides picked up the never-delivered car part, and a 7-11. Coincidence?

For about "coincidences," see the thread "Did Oswald murder Tippit, and did Baker set the Rabbit running?"

would someone commit on the direction the murderer of Tippit was traveling when spotted by Markum?

If this man was walking from west to east Markum must have seen hjm cross the street in front of her as she approached the intersection of 10th and Patton.

and

the cab driver having his lunch near the same intersection on the southwest side must have seen this man pass directly in front of his cab if he was walking from west to east.

this means to me he was coming from the west. can we agree on this as a fact?

thanks for responding guys,

Smitty, this is my point.

From where Tippit's car is parked to the intersection of 10 th and Patton is only about 3 or 4 car links to the east of 10 th and Patton. So if the killer was walking East and turned to walk west as Tippit's squad approached from the west then why did not Markum or the cab driver see him cross their path as he was walking east to begin with.

As Markum appraoched 10th and Patton she would have seen the cab driver parked across the intersection and anyone crossing Patton to her front.

The cab driver would have seen the killer pass directly in front of his cab as he crossed Patton.

Fom the time Markum got onto Patton { a full block to 10 th } she would have had to have been looking at her feet all the way up to 10 th. w/o seeing the killer while the killer only walked less than half of the block he was in before the incident with Tippit.

So since niether witness sees him walking from the east to begin with I contend he must have been coming from the West. Which IMO pretty much rules out the patsied Mr. Oswald as having been the villian.

Walking to the east is the same as walking from the west, or "from west to east." Your argument seems to be that since nobody saw him walking to the east, then he must have been coming from the west. If he was coming "from the west," he would've had to cross Patton to get to where Tippit stopped his car, yet you say that the fact that nobody saw him cross the street proves that he crossed the street?!?

Or is it that he only came from the direction he'd have had to cross the street, but didn't cross the street, and the fact that he didn't do what you'd expect (cross Patton) proves that he came from where he'd have come from if he did do what you'd expect?

Having begun the updated trade paperback - through to about Chapter 56 or so - I am curious about a "stylistic" approach you've taken that doesn't seem to make complete sense to me, that I hope you will explain your reasons for.

The apparent contradiction lies in your willingness to identify Almeida, still presumably the #3 guy in Cuba (#2 if you count Raul as being on top, now that Fidel's infirm), and perhaps in as good or better a position as he may have been in 1963 to take over the government of Cuba once Fidel is no longer part of the picture ... and perhaps in some jeopardy now that he's been firmly identified whereas, even when he was "out of the picture" in 1990-95, then it may only have been a suspicion.

Meanwhile, you have chosen NOT to name a variety of people who have been identified over the years by various sources. One - the "gun dealer" - you say has "avoided publicity" over the years, so you will respect his (unstated?) desire to remain anonymous, even while someone can go to the end-noted source and find his identity.

Another - I don't remember where or whom - you again skirt around naming him while acknowledging that his identity is known to people - and will be known to anyone who researches the endnotes. In that case, you even went so far as to apparently cut out his name at the end of a quote to avoid naming him, along the lines of:

... leaving the "him" at the end dangling as if it might've otherwise said "with John Smith of the CIA" (or whatever), but you'd purposely omitted identifying Smith, even tho' he'd already been identified by someone else - or several other people - over the years, and may even be "generally" known except to the "uninitiated" in this case.

This is really the only major difficulty I've got with an otherwise very interesting and cohesive narrative, and a great source of frustration. What's up with that?

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