Joseph McBride
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Thomas,
The other police car at the scene was reported by witnesses Doris
Holan and Sam Guinyard. Witness Virginia Davis seemed to suggest
that other policemen were present immediately after the shooting. I
study and analyze in detail in the book the very complex pattern of witness reports.
Butch Burroughs probably was correct about Oswald being in
the theater earlier than the official story has it. The exact time
he arrived is not entirely certain. Burroughs said he entered
at about 1 p.m. or minutes after. But Earlene Roberts said
Oswald was at the rooming house until about 1:04. So Burroughs
may have been off by some minutes. The official record
shows that a suspect was reported in the theater at 1:46. It's
always been a question where Oswald was between 1:04
and 1:46. Burroughs seems a credible witness.
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A new interview about my book INTO THE NIGHTMARE by
Ray Kelly of Masslive.com and the Springfield (MA) Republican:
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Gerald McKnight, the author of Breach of Trust, has sent me this message: "I have written a new preface to a pb copy of "Breach of Trust" (out in September) and what I focused on in this preface was material (much of it originating w/ the FBI and SS) that exonerated Oswald as the Dealey Plaza shooter. It might benefit McBride to know that the Dallas Police had Oswald as the assassin of JFK and Tippit and the assailant of Connally by 1:40 P.M. CST. If McBride would like this citation I'd be glad to send it forward. I have no argument with McBride's assertion that Tippit was "detailed" to find Oswald and kill him when, in fact, he was like Oswald, a dupe in a much bigger operation. I could add here all the business of the Dallas cops climbing all over Oswald in the Texas Theatre grappling for his revolver. A Dallas Police forensic report on the alleged Oswald revolver indicated that not a single DP cop's finger prints were lifted from the weapon."
Mr. McKnight, I admire and recommend BREACH OF TRUST. Oswald's identity supposedly was not known by the Dallas
Police until they arrested him, but he allegedly carried two pieces of identification, one with an alias, so
they were not sure of his identity until he was taken to the station. A suspect was reported
at the theater at 1:46; the arrest occurred at 1:52. Tippit was searching for Oswald
as early as 12:45 and probably before that. The police probably knew who Oswald
was and had been surveilling him and perhaps even using him as an informant. But this was unofficial and not admitted. Tippit probably was duped to some extent but was
also involved in the plot against Oswald and perhaps the plot against Kennedy as well.
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In retrospect (many years later), couldn't the words "hunt down Oswald" easily be interpreted as "keep a watchful eye out for the slender white male who just shot President Kennedy"?I had a revealing interview with Edgar Lee Tippit, the father of the late officer. The elder Tippit was a lively ninety when I interviewed him. He revealed to me that after his son's death, another Dallas police officer went to J. D.'s widow, Marie, and told her he and J. D. had been sent by the police to hunt down Oswald.
Knowing the evidence and the witness testimony in the Tippit murder case as I do, I feel that the latter interpretation of any "hunt down Oswald" remark that anyone might have made after 11/22/63 is almost certainly the correct explanation.
Therefore, Joseph, you must then believe that the TWELVE or so witnesses who positively identified Lee Harvey Oswald were either all lying or they innocently identified a perfect-looking Oswald double as the one and only gunman who killed J.D. Tippit or as the one and only man who was fleeing the scene of the shooting on foot with a gun in his hand. Correct?I believe another policeman or perhaps two policeman [sic] and probably a civilian as well were involved in the shooting of Tippit. I go into great detail on all this in the book and offer a wealth of evidence. I identify possible suspects in both shootings and exonerate others, including Oswald.
Why do you disregard the two bullet shells found by the Davis girls at 10th & Patton (which they turned over to DPD Detectives Doughty and Dhority on Nov. 22)? Those shells have a clean and firm chain of custody. So even if a person wants to toss aside the "Poe shells", the Davis shells cannot be dismissed in the same manner. Those shells were marked by each DPD officer. And they were fired in Oswald's revolver "to the exclusion". And that revolver was in Oswald's hands when he was arrested while trying to kill more policemen with that same gun.
Based on the evidence, there's no possible way Oswald can be innocent. And here's why:
JFK-Archives/The Murder Of J.D. Tippit
Excerpt from above article:
"What makes Oswald's guilt in the Tippit murder EXTRA convincing (vs. "unconvincing") is the fact that there are multiple types of evidence to convict him -- including direct (eyewitness) testimony which corroborates and buttresses the physical evidence left behind by Oswald at the scene of the crime (i.e., the eyewitnesses fingered OSWALD -- and the bullet shells found at the crime scene were fired in OSWALD'S revolver -- and OSWALD himself had the murder weapon in his own hands just 35 minutes after Tippit was killed, with OSWALD himself acting like a very guilty man in the theater).
The melding together of that much eyewitness testimony, circumstantial evidence, and physical evidence (the bullet shells on Tenth Street) doesn't occur in a great number of murder cases. But in the Tippit case, it did occur. And Oswald was nice enough to KEEP THE MURDER WEAPON IN HIS POSSESSION right after the crime too, which is a huge asset when it comes to solving the murder of Officer Tippit.
The only possible way for Oswald to be innocent of Tippit's murder is if LHO's identical twin had actually shot Tippit with LEE HARVEY OSWALD'S gun, and then the identical twin (or exact look-alike) was somehow able to get Oswald himself to take possession of Revolver V510210 prior to his arrest in the Texas Theater.
And even that ridiculous scenario wouldn't really explain why Oswald, just thirty-five minutes after J.D. Tippit had been shot with LHO's Smith & Wesson revolver, was behaving like a very guilty person when the police approached him inside the Texas Theater on November 22, 1963.
Conspiracy theorists are experts at making up excuses to EXPLAIN AWAY all the evidence that exists against Lee Harvey Oswald in both the JFK and Tippit murder cases. But unless the CTers really want to believe that all of the eyewitnesses who identified Oswald were totally wrong AND that all of the physical evidence in the Tippit case was manufactured by the authorities to frame a man named Lee Oswald, then the conspiracy theorists really have nowhere to go with their persistent arguments that Oswald was innocent of killing J.D. Tippit." -- David Von Pein; January 10, 2012
Hi, David,
Thanks for your questions. I think you will find a great detail of supporting evidence and detail
in INTO THE NIGHTMARE: MY SEARCH FOR THE KILLERS OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY
AND OFFICER J. D. TIPPIT that will clarify all these points for you. But briefly, here are
answers to the questions you raise.
The Warren Report relied mostly on ballistics evidence to claim that Oswald killed
Tippit, but that evidence was a mess. An FBI expert testified that the bullets
could not be linked to the shells allegedly found at the scene and entered into evidence. The chain of evidence on
three of the four bullets was seriously flawed. The shells were not in fact marked at the scene by the police, as
Detective James Leavelle admitted to me. Three
of the bullets suspiciously turned up in the dead files of the Dallas Police Department long after
the fact. Evidence suggests the bullets entered into evidence were planted. Other shells
found at the scene were not entered into evidence. Officers reported an automatic
was used; Oswald was said to have a revolver.
As for the witnesses, some (actually nine) indeed identified Oswald as the shooter or
a man fleeing from the scene. But Helen Markham, the star witness, was
hysterical and hopelessly confused. She may not have even seen
the shooting. The closest witness, Domingo Benavides, wouldn't
identify Oswald as the shooter and was not brought to view a lineup.
Benavides only identified Oswald years later on TV after his brother was shot
and killed. An extraordinary amount of violence and intimidation surrounded Tippit witnesses,
a sign of the extreme sensitivity of that part of the case, which David Belin called its "Rosetta stone."
The llneups from which some witnesses identified Oswald were tainted because
it was obvious Oswald was the designated suspect at those showings. Ten witnesses
who saw parts of the events would not identify Oswald as the shooter or the man fleeing.
Other witnesses said other men were involved in the shooting. Suspicious vehicles,
including another police car, were seen at the scene. It is likely
Oswald was not even there. I identify likely
suspects in the shooting, including one or two Dallas police officers.
I exonerate other suspects, including Oswald.
I demolish the weak case brought by the DPD against Oswald in the Tippit shooting and do so with
the help of the lead detective, Leavelle, whom I grilled
closely. He admitted many of the flaws in the case. Former
DA Henry Wade, whom I interviewed, similarly admitted to me the flaws
in the case against Oswald for allegedly shooting Kennedy. These key law enforcement men
were not able to marshal convincing evidence against Oswald
when I questioned them in close detail. Wade told the Warren
Commission that as early as November 23, he "felt like nearly it was a hopeless case" against Oswald
for shooting Kennedy. He told the commission, "I wasn't sure I was going to take a complaint." And Wade admitted to me, "I probably made a lot of mistakes."
Oswald did not try to shoot a policeman at the theater. An
FBI expert testified there was no dent on the cartridge in
the gun that supposedly had misfired.
So you are placing credence on what Oswald
correctly called "so-called evidence" that is easy
to discredit. Also, as I am sure you know, Oswald
could not have walked from his rooming house
in Oak Cliff in time to shoot Tippit. The Tippit
shooting took place at 1:09, or a minute earlier,
and Oswald was seen at his rooming house
nine-tenths of a mile away at about 1:04. The Warren
Report distorts the time of the shooting to prove its dubious case.
I conducted the first interview by a researcher with T. F. Bowley,
who said he came upon the dead officer at 1:10. Oswald could only
have been at the Tippit shooting scene if he
had been driven there, and that seems unlikely.
As for the police dispatch describing the suspect,
that was vague and could have applied
to thousands of men in Dallas. Tippit was given
more explicit instructions, not by the regular police radio, to find Oswald. This is
backed up by a variety of sources and evidence. You also
know that the police radio did contain odd instructions
singling out Tippit to be at large in Oak Cliff for a possible emergency.
I propose alternate theories of the Tippit shooting
and back them up with eyewitness and other evidence.
I also bring forward some new evidence in the Kennedy
shooting. I hope you read the book with an open mind.
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Not to be a pain, but how were you able to demonstrate this? Through a timeline? Through previously unknown eyewitness evidence? Both?
Pat, It's not a pain to be asked good questions. Other researchers and journalists have speculated from December 1963 that Tippit may have been tracking down Oswald. I studied the frantic actions of Tippit as reported by Earl Golz, Greg Lowrey, and other researchers. Tippit clearly gave signs of hunting for a man.
I had a revealing interview with Edgar Lee Tippit, the father of the late officer. The elder Tippit was a lively ninety when I interviewed him. He revealed to me that after his son's death, another Dallas police officer went to J. D.'s widow, Marie, and told her he and J. D. had been sent by the police to hunt down Oswald. Whether this was to capture him or kill him is not certain, but the evidence indicates that the latter is a strong possibility. This was at a time when Oswald's identity was not officially known to the DPD, although there is evidence indicating they knew about him and had fingered him as the patsy.
The other officer told Marie that he had not made it to the scene of the shooting because he became involved in an auto accident. This story had never been reported before, and Edgar Lee Tippit had
never been interviewed.
I found evidence that there was an auto accident near the time and place of the Tippit shooting. I studied the police dispatch tapes, FBI reports, HSCA interviews, and other documents to ascertain the movements of other officers around Oak Cliff. I had the first interview by a researcher with Tippit witness T. F. Bowley. Other policemen were behaving suspiciously in Oak Cliff besides Tippit. I believe another policeman or perhaps two policeman and probably a civilian as well were involved in the shooting of Tippit. I go into great detail on all this in the book and offer a wealth of evidence. I identify possible suspects in both shootings and exonerate others, including Oswald. Edgar Lee Tippit also provided me with other important information about his son, who in other books has been a mostly shadowy figure. I also had candid interviews with, among other people,
Tippit's mistress Johnnie Maxie Witherspoon, his rightwing employer Austin Cook, and Detective James Leavelle, who headed the "investigation" of the Tippit killing.
There is much new material in the book, partly because I worked on it for more than thirty years.
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Greetings Mr. McBride.
According to this review of your book
He [McBride] does not back away from making specific criticisms within the community as well. For example, his assessment of Mary Ferrell is that she was a disinformation agent, based on his personal dealings with her. Ferrell, of course, personally disliked Kennedy despite colleting an enormous quantity of information about the assassination, which survives as The Mary Ferrell Foundation. McBride also believes that Ferrell's release of the audio tape to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) near the end of their run was done so only to provide a kind of escape hatch for Robert Blakely to suggest a conspiracy without being forced to investigate its origins. He relates that the first-generation researcher Penn Jones told him to "stay away from her." (218-221)
I knew Mary Ferrell, though not very well, and I know of absolutely no reason why she should be considered a disinformation agent. And what is so great about Penn Jones?
As for the accusation that JD Tippit was a wannabe murderer, I say innocent until proven guilty.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/A-Personal-Journey-into-th-by-Joseph-Green-130716-953.html
Greetings Mr. McBride.
According to this review of your book
He [McBride] does not back away from making specific criticisms within the community as well. For example, his assessment of Mary Ferrell is that she was a disinformation agent, based on his personal dealings with her. Ferrell, of course, personally disliked Kennedy despite colleting an enormous quantity of information about the assassination, which survives as The Mary Ferrell Foundation. McBride also believes that Ferrell's release of the audio tape to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) near the end of their run was done so only to provide a kind of escape hatch for Robert Blakely to suggest a conspiracy without being forced to investigate its origins. He relates that the first-generation researcher Penn Jones told him to "stay away from her." (218-221)
I knew Mary Ferrell, though not very well, and I know of absolutely no reason why she should be considered a disinformation agent. And what is so great about Penn Jones?
As for the accusation that JD Tippit was a wannabe murderer, I say innocent until proven guilty.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/A-Personal-Journey-into-th-by-Joseph-Green-130716-953.html
Raymond,
My personal dealings with Mary Ferrell quickly alerted me to her duplicity. My investigative reporter's
instincts for a phony quickly kicked in, and I began investigating her background and MO. I go into this in detail in the book and can only summarize it here. I concluded that she was what fellow Tippit researcher Greg Lowrey called "The Gatekeeper," the person delegated by the U.S. government to keep tabs on what genuine researchers and others were doing. She doled out documents and other information to maintain the facade of being a researcher, but she had intelligence connections and spread disinformation. She also actively disliked John F. Kennedy.
Penn Jones warned me to stay away from her. He was a great journalist who was a maverick and was on the case from the first weekend. He turned up many important leads for the rest of us to follow. He made some mistakes and was sometimes sloppy. But he was intrepid, fearless, shrewd, and hard-digging. He was an inspiration to me and many others and was a mentor to me and a friend.
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What do you consider to be the most important information you discovered about the JFK assassination when you were writing the book?
The answer to your first question would be that in my extensive research, which included rare interviews with key people in Texas and archival discoveries, I was able to demonstrate that Officer J. D. Tippit was hunting for Oswald for the last twenty-four minutes of Tippit's life.
This proves that Tippit was involved in the conspiracy, because Oswald's identity was not officially known to the Dallas Police Department at the time. Other researchers have theorized that Tippit may have been doing this, but I uncover proof that Tippit was pursuing Oswald to capture or perhaps kill him. Tippit was racing around Oak Cliff increasingly frantically, and another officer was also involved in the pursuit. While exonerating Oswald and other suspects in the shooting, I point to possible suspects and believe that two, three, or even four men were involved.
In summer 2010, I and a friend went to the exact spot of the Tippit slaying. We sat parked in the car in Tippit's exact spot as an old Hispanic man walked by. We called him over to to passenger window of my friend. I asked him, a man in his mid 70's, what do you know about the Tippit shooting?
The first words out of his mouth were there were 2 people involved in the shooting of Tippit. This man said he had been living in this exact neighborhood in November, 1963. He did not say he had actually witnessed the shooting. But the first thing he said was that there were 2 people involved in the shooting of Officer Tippit; apparently this was common knowledge in this neighborhood at the time.
After that, I decided to time exactly how long it would take to walk from Oswald's room house on North Beckley to 10th and Patten. It took me 11 minutes and 5 seconds and I was power walking at a very fast rate, as fast as I could walk and not be jogging or running, plus I was cutting corners, walking in the middle of the street, not waiting for red lights, etc.
Then I walked back to North Beckley and it took me 10 minutes and 25 seconds, again power walking as fast as I could in a straight line back to Oswald's house.
At the time I was a 46 year old man in reasonably good physical condition.
Hello, Robert,
I wish I knew the name of that witness. I didn't mention him in the book because the story hasn't been verified.
But I have also walked that route frequently, and it is obvious Oswald couldn't have walked from his
rooming house to the scene of the Tippit shooting in time to fire the shots. The shooting probably
occurred at 1:09, earlier than the Warren Commission has it. I have found evidence that two, three,
or even four men were involved. The ballistics alone exonerate Oswald, and the Warren Report relied
almost entirely on the ballistics, since Helen Markham was so unreliable. The only way Oswald
could have been at the scene would have been if he was driven there, but I find that
unlikely. There were suspicious vehicles at the scene, including another police car.
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Hi Joseph, I'd be interested to hear your take on the TSBD side of things. Where was Oswald at 12.30?, etc.
Hi, Sean, Oswald was in the second-floor lunchroom at the time of the shooting. After he left
the building, he seems to have been driven to Oak Cliff in the station wagon seen by
Roger Craig and photographed at 12:40.
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Joseph McBride has agreed to answer questions on his new book, Into the Nightmare: My Search for the Killers of President John F. Kennedy and Officer J. D. Tippitt (2013)
Thanks for having me, John. I have learned a lot from this fine site and its erudite posters over the years. It's been a boon
to my long research on INTO THE NIGHTMARE. I am glad the Forum is back in business! I am happy to be asked
to answer questions and exchange thoughts with the other members.
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What do you consider to be the most important information you discovered about the JFK assassination when you were writing the book?
The answer to your first question would be that in my extensive research, which included rare interviews with key people in Texas and archival discoveries, I was able to demonstrate that Officer J. D. Tippit was hunting for Oswald for the last twenty-four minutes of Tippit's life.
This proves that Tippit was involved in the conspiracy, because Oswald's identity was not officially known to the Dallas Police Department at the time. Other researchers have theorized that Tippit may have been doing this, but I uncover proof that Tippit was pursuing Oswald to capture or perhaps kill him. Tippit was racing around Oak Cliff increasingly frantically, and another officer was also involved in the pursuit. While exonerating Oswald and other suspects in the shooting, I point to possible suspects and believe that two, three, or even four men were involved.
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I was born in Milwaukee in 1947 and attended Marquette University High School and the University of Wisconsin, Madison. I was a reporter for The Wisconsin State Journal before moving to California in 1973 and was a film critic, reporter, and columnist for Daily Variety in Hollywood for many years. My screenwriting credits include co-writing Rock 'n' Roll High School (1979).
I am the author of fifteen books, including Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success (1992), Steven Spielberg: A Biography (1997), Searching for John Ford (2001) and What Ever Happened to Orson Welles?: A Portrait of an Independent Career (2006).
I have written for Life, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Book Review, The Los Angeles Times Magazine and The Nation. I live in Berkeley and I am a professor at San Francisco State University.
My latest book is Into the Nightmare: My Search for the Killers of President John F. Kennedy and Officer J. D. Tippit.
Joseph McBride, Into the Nightmare: My Search for the Killers of President John F. Kennedy and Officer J. D. Tippit (2013)
in JFK Assassination Debate
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