Greg Doudna

Concerning the color of the CE 162 jacket, the majority of Tippit crime scene witnesses spoke of "warm" light-tan tones of an off-white color of the Tippit killer's jacket, most NOT describing it as gray, even though the Warren Commission was insistent on always calling and labeling CE 162 "gray". The reason? Because Oswald actually did have an honest-to god gray jacket in color. Buell Frazier testified as clearly as could be that Oswald frequently wore a gray jacket to work at the TSBD. Marina told the FBI Lee had a gray jacket in the Soviet Union that he returned to America with. Marina said that to the FBI who, however, did not show CE 162 to Marina when she said that, or any other time. Marina was shown CE 162 for the very first time in her Warren Commission testimony in 1964 at which time she identified it as gray and as Oswald's, and said Oswald wore it to Irving the night of Nov 21. The Warren Commission rejected Marina's testimony on when she said she saw Oswald wearing CE 162. The Warren Commission concluded Lee wore his blue jacket CE 163 to Irving Nov 21 and back to Dallas on Nov 22, and dismissed Marina's testimony that she saw Lee wear CE 162 the night of Nov 21. Marina never testified to having seen Lee wear CE 162 on any other specific occasion than the night of Nov 21. The only specific occasion Marina testified to having seen Lee wear CE 162, the Warren Commission concluded never happened. Ruth Paine never testified to having ever seen Oswald wear CE 162. Buell Frazier never did. The only time Marina ever claimed to have seen Oswald wear CE 162, the Warren Commission blew that off, decided Marina didn't know what she was talking about on that. Nobody in Irving ever said they saw Oswald wear CE 162, except Marina whom the Warren Commission dismissed as unbelievable on the one time Marina claimed she had seen the phantom CE 162 on Lee. Nobody in the TSBD ever said they saw Oswald wear CE 162. Nobody at Oswald's rooming house on N. Beckley ever said they saw Oswald wear CE 162. Nobody prior to the Tippit killing ever spoke of Oswald having a light-tan off-white jacket of the color of the Tippit killer's light-tan off-white CE 162. Oswald did have a gray jacket, however. It just had nothing to do with CE 162. A photo of Oswald in a group photo of coworkers in Minsk has Lee in a jacket, not otherwise identified, whose color cannot be verified due to the photo being in black-and-white. As can be seen, the jacket Oswald is wearing in that photo is NOT--is NOT-- CE 162 (nor is it CE 163). But that jacket Oswald is wearing in Minsk DOES EXACTLY match the "flannel, wool-looking" description of Buell Frazier of the real Oswald's "gray" jacket which Frazier saw Oswald frequently wear--sitting next to him in the car--to work to the TSBD, a gray jacket frequently worn by Oswald which Frazier said unequivocally was NOT--was NOT--CE 162. The Warren Commission was dead-set on having the off-white light-tan CE 162, the jacket of the Tippit killer, identified as the real gray jacket of Oswald. That is why they consistently labeled CE 162 gray when it was not gray but off-white light tan. That is why. That is why. That is why. And just about all the major books and discussions in the decades since, more or less, have perpetuated that labeling--continuing to call CE 162, the jacket abandoned by the killer of Tippit, a "gray" jacket, even though it never was gray, except to people challenged with color-recognition issues, or under indoor fluorescent lighting which washes out warm colors in interior lighting. The Warren Commission called CE 162 a "gray" jacket. And therefore it became a "gray" jacket in the annals of journalism and history writing. That is how powerful a labeling is. The Tippit killer's light-tan off-white jacket CE 162 was not the color of the real Oswald's gray jacket, because it was not Oswald's gray jacket, which was gray. From the Warren Commission testimony of Buell Frazier: Mr. BALL - On that day [Nov 22, 1963] you did notice one article of clothing, that is, he had a jacket? Mr. FRAZIER - Yes, sir. Mr. BALL - What color was the jacket? Mr. FRAZIER - It was a gray, more or less flannel, wool-looking type of jacket that I had seen him wear and that is the type of jacket he had on that morning. Mr. BALL - Did it have a zipper on it? Mr. FRAZIER - Yes, sir; it was one of the zipper types. Mr. BALL - It isn't one of these two zipper jackets we have shown? [CE 162 and CE 163] Mr. FRAZIER - No, sir. (. . .) Mr. BALL - You are not able to tell us then anything or are you able to tell us, describe any of the clothing he had on that day, except this gray jacket? Mr. FRAZIER - Right. Mr. BALL - That is the only thing you can remember? Mr. FRAZIER - Right. Mr. BALL - I have here a paper sack which is Commission's Exhibit 364. That gray jacket you mentioned, did it have any design in it? Mr. FRAZIER - No, sir. Mr. BALL - Was it light or dark gray? Mr. FRAZIER - It was light gray. Mr. BALL - You mentioned it was woolen. Mr. FRAZIER - Yes, sir. Mr. BALL - Long sleeves? Mr. FRAZIER - Yes, sir. Mr. BALL - Buttoned sleeves at the wrist, or do you remember? Mr. FRAZIER - To be frank with you, I didn't notice that much about the jacket, but I had seen him wear that gray woolen jacket before. Mr. BALL - You say it had a zipper on it? Mr. FRAZIER - Yes, sir. Buell Frazier was describing the jacket Oswald was wearing in the Minsk photo, not CE 162.

I can't speak for others but here is my take on this. Burroughs' time memory of 1:00 to 1:07 for Oswald in the theater is from decades later and as you note, not too plausible that Oswald could have gotten there on foot in that time. Something like 1:15-1:20 entry into the theater arriving either by bus south on Beckley or on foot would be more realistic. The major problems with Oswald at the Tippit crime scene at ca. 1:15 (or whenever) are: why would Oswald walk there? And the encounter of Tippit with his killer has all the appearance of an ambush and a professional killing, not a spontaneous spooked impulse shooting as supposed of Oswald. The issues are complicated involving witnesses and the FBI report of a revolver match to shell hulls incriminating Oswald, but the question of why would Oswald choose to walk there (Tenth and Patton) remains ... along with its not Oswald's fingerprints, but may be the killer's fingerprints, on the passenger car door where Helen Markham directly said on Nov 22 she saw the killer lean down and put his arms against the patrol car before he got Tippit out of the car and shot him dead... and the earliest witness descriptions of the Tippit killer had the killer with wavy black hair and the closest witness to the killer from only ca. 15 feet away said the killer had a block cut rear hairline, neither of which agree with Oswald ... and another credible suspect exists who does match the facts and physical descriptions of the killer, a recent hire of Ruby who had hitman experience and expertise (and who was misidentified as Oswald on other known occasions) ... The only explanation I have seen that attempts to make sense of why Oswald would be at Tenth and Patton is that of Burt Griffin's recent book, and it is possible Myers also said something like this somewhere: that Oswald was on his way to a Marsallis bus stop, where he would use his transfer and get to a Greyhound bus station by city bus, from where he might then take a bus to Mexico which he could afford with the $11.20 or whatever it was he had in his pocket. (If this was an escape, it was not a very well-planned one.) The alternative is Oswald was found in the Texas Theatre because that is where he went from his rooming house and entered, wearing his blue jacket upon entry to the theater, as a paying customer, for the purpose of meeting someone there (https://www.scrollery.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/T-Jackets-112.pdf).

I appreciate this on this detail Kevin, thanks. It may not actually disagree with what I said, technically speaking. The Tippit autopsy bullets confirmed the fact that the W's and R's two manufactures of bullets were used in the killing, however as you note that could not have been a source of knowledge of that fact learned on the weekend of Nov 22-24, 1963. The source for that information would necessarily--from the very fact you bring out--be the four shell hulls recovered from the Tippit crime scene on Nov 22. In the scenario in which there were substitutions of those hulls: (a) the R's plus W's mix used by the Tippit killer was learned Nov 22 from the real hulls abandoned by the Tippit killer on Fri Nov 22 (2+2 R's and W's). (b) at some point prior to the FBI lab's receipt of shell hulls a week later, other R's and W's were fired from Oswald's revolver, replications of the officers' markings were made on the substituted hulls, and the substituted R and W hulls were submitted to the FBI lab which matched them to Oswald's revolver to the exclusion of any other weapon. If there were substituted hulls, and if hypothetically that were to be established as distinguished from speculated, the question would arise whether the original (now missing) real hulls of the Tippit killer were indeed R's and W's mixed. However, the Tippit autopsy body bullets independently verify that, in fact, that was the case. That is the sequence of the logic I see. (On discussion of the chain of custody of the Tippit crime scene shell hulls received by the FBI lab raising the possibility of substitutions, my piece, "Were the Tippit crime scene shell hulls fired from the revolver of Lee Harvey Oswald?", https://www.scrollery.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/T-BALLISTICS-108-1.pdf .)

OK I’m corrected, thanks Pat. It just sounds wacky that autopsists could be claimed to err on a description of a location of a wound of that magnitude.

From my experience in the world of contested interpretations of archaeological and radiocarbon dating data Dr. Wecht’s explanation makes sense. A subtle point though. I wonder if it is quite precise to say the Clark and HSCA panels “moved the entrance wound higher” as if it was an issue of correct position of the same wound under discussion. Idiomatically the wording may be sorta OK but I wonder if that is exactly what was going on. As I read it, they were not talking about a dispute over the location of the same autopsists’ EOP wound. They were rather claiming to have discovered a new wound (at the cowlick), missed by the autopsists. And, separate issue, they were claiming the autopsists’ EOP wound did not exist. Two distinct issues. It was not a claim that the autopsists saw the cowlick wound, then the autopsists mislocated that cowlick wound by mistake near the EOP. Pat do you think that is an accurate or inaccurate clarified reading of what the Clark and HSCA panels were saying?

Yes, I know you have informed of this before, noted. First, both Jimmy Burt and William Smith were lying at points in their stories, the giant exhibit A on that being Jimmy Burt's conflicting statements concerning whether he and William ran down a block to get to the Tippit patrol car, or as he told in an FBI interview, they drove in his car there, a rather major discrepancy; however the independent testimonies of Frank Wright and blanket-girl telling of Jimmy Burt's car there say the run from a block away is the untruthful one. Second, if they were a block away any up or down on identification of Oswald as the killer would be of little value because too far away. However, they weren't a block away. They were in Jimmy Burt's car (or at least one of them was, because the car was there) immediately in front of Tippit's patrol car, the car facing backwards directly toward Tippit as he pulled up, at the time Tippit was killed. Then moments later they drove away, which may be why not more than two witnesses are known to have said they saw that car there (in addition to Jimmy Burt himself putting himself and Wm and his car there, to the FBI). Third, and to go to your point, you are saying, you have the audio of an entire Al Chapman interview with Jimmy Burt, and in that interview Burt does not say the killer was NOT Oswald. You conclude that was Al Chapman's sole, solitary source of information from Jimmy Burt, and therefore Al Chapman's bylined article in the National Enquirer overtly and explicitly quoting Jimmy Burt saying he saw the killer and the killer was NOT Oswald, was false, and a witting lie by Al Chapman (or National Enquirer, one or the other). Do I have your reasoning represented accurately? I am looking at two pages numbered "10" and "11" which have Al Chapman commenting at 11:00 pm later the same day on an interview he did with Jimmy Burt on Feb 7, 1968, between 2:30 and 3:30 pm. These two pages, which are the only two pages I have on that, are only some additional comment of Chapman following the interview, not the transcript itself however, which appears to have been in the preceding pages with the closing four lines of the transcript at the top of p. 10. Can you confirm this is the interview to which you refer? Assuming the answer is yes (if not, please specify the interview to which you refer?): Your point falters, for this reason: it is clear Al Chapman talked with Jimmy Burt about the Tippit crime scene and Jimmy Burt's involvement in it, more than just that one-hour interview named on Feb 7. The reason that is known is in his comments on that interview, Al Chapman makes reference to a wider range of discussions he has had with Jimmy Burt. For example, in his comments (recorded later the same day of that interview), Al Chapman says: "This is Al Chapman who you heard interview Jimmy Earl Burt who now lives at 404 E. Tenth in Dallas, Texas. This is the address at which Officer Tippit was shot in front of this house. There's a few things I would like to say here that Jimmy was in a hurry he took time off work to go home to his apartment and make this interview so we didn't get everything on it that we wanted to. There are a few things I'd like to go over..." There are quite a few things that follow in which Al Chapman appears to be telling or reviewing additional things he had been told by Jimmy Burt which are not in the interview. The point being, your reason cited is not probative evidence that either Al Chapman or National Enquirer blatantly fabricated and published a wholly untrue statement attributed to Jimmy Burt. Because, the absence of that statement, as presented in National Enquirer, in the formal one-hour Feb 7, 1968 interview itself is not the total source of Jimmy Burt information Al Chapman had. There were previous discussions. Is possible for you to give a link to that interview, either in the audio or transcript? I would like to study it if I could get access to it. If the interview is not accessible in either of those forms, could you answer two questions from your access to it? (1) Does Jimmy Burt say the killer WAS Oswald--does the interview contradict the quotation attributed to him in the Chapman National Enquirer article? (I note in your wording you do not claim that, is why I ask.) Could you say Jimmy Burt's exact words (as best as you can) on the identification question, in that interview? (2) Could you say what, if anything, Jimmy Burt says in that interview (exact words from the interview if possible) about seeing the killer have his hands on the right side of the Tippit patrol car as he leaned in to talk to Tippit? Bottom line, you have NOT established Jimmy Burt did not say the statement attributed to him in print, in which he is quoted as stating the Tippit killer was not Oswald. At best you have questioned how secure is it to know Burt told Chapman that, which is not the same thing. From the two pages summary I can read of Al Chapman, he does not strike me as intending to lie about what Jimmy Burt told him, but strikes me as attempting to present Jimmy Burt's statements truthfully.

There may be more to this Helen Markham timing issue than meets the eye. Assume (as I do) that Bill is correct on the police tapes and 1:15 is the correct time Tippit was shot (or 1:14:30 by Myers' estimate if it is possible to sharpshoot the timing that precisely). Gavan McMahan's recently published material from interviews with the family of Helen Markham contains some things that seem questionable and mixed-up, but one of the things that may have something to it is the family says Helen Markham had been asked to be at that scene to witness something. This could be blown off if it were not that there is an FBI interview report that one of the members of Helen Markham's son Jimmy Markham's gang, Jimmy Burt, had parked his car in an unusual way--headed backward--immediately next to Tippit's patrol car (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10598#relPageId=30)--a mechanism of Jimmy Burt and his friend William Smith getting to the crime scene that is abandoned in all their other accounts. However, witness Frank Wright from his front yard moments after the shooting saw that car of Jimmy Burt parked next to the Tippit patrol car in that same odd manner, and saw it drive away, and that confirms the timing of when Jimmy Burt and Wm Smith were there in Jimmy Burt's car: as odd and as unconsidered as this has been, Jimmy Burt's car, with Jimmy Burt in that car (and presumably William Smith), was parked there when Tippit's patrol car arrived to pull over right next to it, maybe to meet it. That is, Jimmy Burt's car was stopped facing the wrong way on the side of Tenth, and Tippit pulled his patrol car right up behind it. This timing is confirmed by a third witness, as told by Ray Schaeffer in an email: " 'In 1988 I was at the Tippit murder scene that summer. A woman and her son who lived across the street from where Tippit was shot struck up a conversation with me. I learned from her that she was the woman who put a blanket over Tippit. When talking to me she said she noticed a grey coupe blocked the driveway in front of where Tippit pulled up behind the car. She noticed a policeman get out and go toward the coupe. The next thing she noticed was hearing shots. She ran back in the house and got a blanket off the couch and placed it on Tippit." (https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/12363-new-info-on-tippit/). That "grey coupe" was the same car Frank Wright saw, which was Jimmy Burt's car, and which Jimmy Burt himself said he parked next to Tippit's--though both Jimmy Burt and William Smith distanced themselves from that and for some reason that never entered the narrative of the Tippit case as it is commonly told. It doesn't mean Jimmy Burt or William Smith killed Tippit or knew that Tippit would be killed; I do not believe they did, or would. But what it can mean is that Tippit was there to meet them at a prearranged meeting time of 1:15 pm for some other reason. All that needs to be supposed is Tippit's killer--Craford of Ruby's circle I suspect--by some means had prior knowledge of that 1:15 meeting, when and where. 1:15 would be the time of the preplanned meeting based on that is when the kililng of Tippit did happen. The 1:15 meeting would be the means by which Tippit would be known to be there, by his killer who arrived in time to ambush him in a professional execution at that location. Tippit's killer arrived walking from the east (unconfirmed starting from where, but Ruby's apartment was only 3-4 blocks east of 10th and Patton). The back and forth, east and west, of Tippit's killer on the sidewalk just before Tippit was shot are not to be explained in terms of Myers' interpretation of a pedestrian (Oswald) changing directions to avoid having his face seen by a police car, and then that flagging Tippit's attention as suspicious. No, it was Tippit's killer moving back and forth on the sidewalk as Tippit's car approached and his killer was flagging down Tippit's car and getting to the passenger side window (vent) of the patrol car to speak to him. It was part of the ambush. Tippit was ambushed. His killer said something through the window vent, enough to get Tippit to get out of the car, then the killer shot him dead with five bullets four of which hit and were fatal. Jimmy Burt (and William Smith if Jimmy Burt was truthful in telling the FBI Wm Smith was in the car with him) would be sitting in Burt's car only one car-length away when the murder happened. It depends which way they were looking, but if they saw the murder, they would be in the absolute best position as witnesses of the killer of any, even if this has not heretofore been realized. It may or may not be coincidence that Wm Smith was originally reported by a family member to be saying Oswald on the news was not the killer of Tippit that he saw, and a few years later Chapman in National Enquirer quoted Jimmy Burt as saying categorically that Oswald was not the killer. If they were a block away at the time of the shooting, there is little weight in what they said because that is too far away to give much weight. But if they were sitting in a car only feet away from the killer shooting Tippit dead, then they would have known, either way, whether it was or was not, Oswald, because they would have been able to see so closely and directly. What emerges is that some prearranged meeting of Jimmy Burt with officer Tippit, set for 1:15 at that location, with Jimmy Burt perhaps assisting Tippit in easily spotting Jimmy Burt's car by parking facing the wrong direction by the curb, was how the killer could know when and where to appear to ambush Tippit and kill him, a mechanism for how that could have happened. I assume the killing happened as a shock and surprise to Jimmy Burt and Wm Smith and would be motive to come up with some other story of where they were and how they ran to the scene, etc. On Tippit's end of it, he may have quietly that morning asked his friend Murray Jackson working as dispatcher that day to assign him to that area of Oak Cliff as a favor, which could account for that, and also support the idea of a prearranged meeting. To return to Helen Markham. Its decades later, but from McMahon in Garrison (Nov 2023 issue): "According to Laverne [Helen Markham's daughter-in-law, living today], Helen was shut down very quickly by the authorities and directed not to talk about the matter. Helen was not allowed to tell the truth of what she saw and what she knew. She was coached by the authorities on what she was supposed to say, and not say. Helen was intimidated and forced by the authorities to lie. She was frightened, confused, and didn't know who to trust ... Over the years and on a number of occasions, the authorities paid Helen several thousands of dollars. This was an inducement to maintain her continued cooperation .... the first payment was on her return from Washington where she gave her testimony to the Warren Commission... "... According to the Markham family, Helen was a prearranged or planted witness. She was paid to be in position at Tenth Street, Oak Cliff, to witness... She was acting out a role and pretending to be on her way to work. Helen had to make it look like a coincidence that she just happened to be in the area whilst on her way to work. She was taking up her planted witness position. The family claims that at some point Helen walked eastbound on the sidewalk, across Patton Avenue, on the north side of Tenth Street ... Helen Markham's son, James, was the leader of the Oak Cliff street gang which had about twelve members ... involved in criminal activities, including auto theft, breaking-and-entering, stealing, and vandalism [but, n.b. murder and violent assaults not mentioned] ..." This could be an explanation of why Helen Markham left her home at 1:04 pm so early, much earlier than needed to get to the Eatwell Cafe for the start of her shift. The reason gang leader Jimmy Markham, her son, might ask his mother to be there as a witness maybe would be to witness a Tippit/Jimmy Burt encounter in case it resulted in Jimmy Burt's arrest or something. None of these people would be party to or have advance knowledge of the murder of Tippit, which was probably a bit more serious trouble than anyone in Jimmy Markham's gang would wish to get into (murder of a police officer). Helen Markham's surprise and terror at seeing Tippit murdered would be real. She did not know or see that coming. A recent interview of cabbie Scoggins' grandson, with credit to Gavan McMahon for obtaining it--the grandson sounding credible relays what his father told him, that Scoggins had been asked in advance to be parked where he was that day by someone unidentified associated with Ruby. Scoggins might assume it was because someone might be needing a cab. It may support the Tippit murder was premeditated, a professional execution, and unknown to Scoggins he, Scoggins, was slated to be a getaway car. However, streetsmart Scoggins, upon hearing/seeing Tippit killed, scrambled instantly out of and away from his cab precisely so he would not be carjacked at gunpoint. The killer ran around Tenth to Patton to Scoggins' cab but was not quite fast enough, Scoggins was already out of the cab. The killer had no choice but to continue on foot, which probably was not his original plan if the cabbie had still been inside the cab and the killer may have planned on utilizing his chauffeuring services. If someone in Ruby's circle set that up with Scoggins, the same circle in contact with Jimmy Markham's gang could have something set up for a Jimmy Burt meeting with Tippit at Tenth and Patton as the pretext to have Tippit there at a certain time, where (unknown to these other persons) Tippit would be ambushed and killed. Even though the assumption would be all of these people were actually innocent and unwitting of the murder of Tippit, they could easily have been suspected and questioned, if the narrative had not so immediately and decisively been perceived to be closed around Oswald, believed to render other investigation unnecessary.

"How long were you with him?" "About three minutes." ... "Did he fully understand the charges against him?" "I don't know. "You didn't discuss--?" "I did not discuss the charges with him." ... (unintelligible question from reporter) "I do not believe so since he's not asking for a lawyer to represent him at this time." ~ ~ ~ It is not clear Oswald was offered by Nichols an opportunity to have a temporary, immediate counsel immediately that would not jeopardize Oswald's ability to have his preferred Abt of New York take full control of his defense if Abt agreed to do so, when contact was able to be made to Abt. It seems Nichols asked Oswald if he wanted the Bar Association to get him a full attorney for his case other than Abt, and Oswald wanted Abt. Oswald not wanting to forego Abt seems to be behind Oswald's answer of "no" to the question from Nichols as asked and as Oswald understood the question. Nichols' all of three minutes inquiry over, Nichols goes out and announces Oswald is not asking for an immediate attorney, even though Oswald plainly and repeatedly was saying to anyone who would listen that he was. Above all, above all, no indication Nichols made a clear offer, understandable to Oswald, that Nichols and the local Bar Association would offer to provide him with immediate temporary counsel pending contact and decision from Abt in New York and, if Abt agreed, the temporary counsel's deferral over to Abt to take control of Oswald's defense. If Nichols had said, "I offered him immediate counsel without jeopardizing his ability to have Abt come in, and he STILL said NO", that would be a different matter. The reason Nichols did not spell that out, is because Nichols did not offer that to Oswald. If he had, he would have said so. "About three minutes." He was in there just long enough to get a desired "no" to the way he asked the question, then out of there. When Michael Paine phoned the local ACLU Saturday morning (following Ruth's and Marguerite's conversation of the night before), asking if anything was being done about legal counsel for Oswald, Michael was told they were on it. When the ACLU showed up later that day to try to see Oswald themselves, they were turned away, denied access to Oswald, on the grounds that Oswald had not requested to see them. It appears the reason Oswald had not requested to see them was because he had not been informed they were there, to know to request to see them. The whole idea was to keep Oswald away from a lawyer as long as possible because the instant a lawyer entered the picture Oswald would go silent (every lawyer would tell Oswald to quit talking). That would remove Fritz's earnest attempts to break out a confession from Oswald. That is what was going on. It was a travesty.

The Charles Harrelson tramp identification claim has been a red herring, but other things about Harrelson may not be. It is not in reasonable dispute that Harrelson sr was a killer for hire and associated with/part of the Dixie Mafia, killers for hire. And the Dixie Mafia had working relationships with Marcello of New Orleans, who controlled organized crime in Dallas. Then there is the confession (later retracted) from Harrelson himself re involvement in the JFK assassination, and separately, credible later multiple reports that Marcello confessed, which are blithely blown off as Marcello’s early stage senility doing that, nothing to see there (but the FBI to this day will not release its Marcello tapes for independent review, despite the JFK records act). That is after Congress’s investigation of the JFK assassination directly named Marcello along with Trafficante as one of its leading suspects, in the absence of and before the reports that Marcello confessed to exactly what Congress suspected of him and which the FBI refused to investigate despite HSCA’s request that Marcello be further investigated by the Justice Department for the JFK assassination as HSCA was closed down and its funding ended. And if Marcello did have a role in arranging for the JFK killing as he in his later years was telling people he did, the way it would be done would be via his connections in Dallas with contacts inside the police dept (Ruby), and maybe in the way Marcello is believed to have been behind the killing of that judge for whose killing Harrelson sr was convicted … by outsourcing a contract hit to those in Texas with the demonstrated expertise and ability to do it, Dixie Mafia killers. There are separate theories of Trafficante sending anti-Castro Cubans, Escalante’s named persons, John Martino known people. So if that is true there is no need for supposition of a separate Dixie Mafia Texas separate connection (unless Marcello-Trafficante were hiring more than one contract hit in the hope one would succeed). Yet unless the specific gunmen and who hired them etc are conclusively determined, which is not the case in the view of 98% of researchers who, along with privately a majority of the seven-member Warren Commission themselves and President Johnson, disbelieved their own WC unanimous finding of an Oswald-alone explanation … all credible possibilities should be considered open to evidence-grounded investigation UNLESS the case is conclusively solved (meaning specifics with names, dates, and logistics), which by wide agreement it is NOT. But back to Harrelson sr. In Peterson and Zachary, The Lone Star Speaks (2020), 422-425, the authors report, newly and from their own interview contacts in Big Spring, Texas, on a confession to his friends of serial professional killer George McCann in 1970 shortly before McCann met his own violent death on Sept 30, 1970—this is the same George McGann who was Beverly Oliver’s husband—to having been a gunman in Dealey Plaza in the JFK assassination, hired for a high price by the Dixie Mafia, and McGann’s associates who heard it at the time believed him. “McGann’s friends knew that he (McGann) and Harrelson were well acquainted” (p. 424). “McGann also shared with them that some other people they knew had also been in Dallas that day, namely Charles Harrelson and Pete Kay. Both of these names were familiar to his pool-playing companions. They had seen them with McGann on several occasions, and had even met them in Huntsville” (p. 422). After so many false confessions of Grassy Knoll shooters there must be high bars of skepticism toward any late hearsay claim of this nature. Maybe someone was pulling someone’s leg. Maybe McGann was spinning a tall tale of his own to his friends as a joke. Who knows. But in all the discussions of Charles Harrelson I think this detail of his friend and associate McGann’s claimed confession to direct participation in the JFK assassination, and hearsay placing of Harrelson in Dallas the day of the assassination, has been largely under the radar, unknown altogether until Peterson and Zachry’s publication in 2020, and has received little notice since then. It is the kind of thing the US Congress—HSCA—urged be investigated in 1979 (Marcello’s circles), which was never done at the time when such investigation could have been done. When the reports emerged that an actual direct confession of arranging the JFK assassination from the man, Marcello, himself, from an FBI informant believed credible, had unexpectedly emerged in the course of a surveillance on a different charge, the FBI responded not by investigating it but by closing down its formally-still-open inactive investigation of the JFK assassination altogether on the grounds that all of FBI’s prior lack of investigation of Marcello had not turned up anything, so logically the new report of a direct confession was not believable, therefore it was time to NOW close the case for good. I believe Simpich and Schnapf, attorneys, have been seeking via filing legal motions to compel release of FBI’s Marcello tapes and information, unfortunately, so far as I understand, without success. Thanks to them for trying though.

You could be right. What has swayed me is the FBI was in direct line or chain of command from Hoover-LBJ on a national security control and interpretation of the case.

The FBI had Craford at 5'8" and 150 pounds (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10486#relPageId=153). Deputy Sheriff Courson who passed a man coming down from the balcony at ca. 1:40, who he mistakenly thought was Oswald (who was not Oswald), who was probably the man of Brewer's shoe store who went into the theater into the balcony at 1:35--Courson said that non-Oswald man (whom he, like Brewer, took for Oswald) was wearing a "plaid" shirt, without saying its color. Brewer's testimony on the shirt color could have been influenced by what he saw the arrested Oswald wearing. However, Julia Postal also said she saw the same man wearing a brown shirt when he went by her (in her Warren Commission testimony). I think the brown shirt that Julia Postal saw on that man who went by her into the theater and into the balcony, was the same plaid shirt Courson saw on the same man minutes later passing by Courson coming down from that balcony. Practically none of the Tenth and Patton witnesses identified Oswald's brown shirt, CE 150, as the color tone of the shirt of the Tippit killer, with the exception of Guinyard who positively identified Oswald's brown arrest shirt CE 150 as the very shirt he said he saw Oswald wearing when Oswald walked right in front of Guinyard on Guinyard's side of the street (?). And Guinyard was also the only one of about a dozen Tenth and Patton witnesses to unequivocally call the color of the Tippit killer's jacket "gray". (Nearly all of the other witnesses said it was an off-white light tan more or less, as CE 162 visibly is today, but for some reason the Warren Commission felt it important to insist on calling the off-white light-tan colored CE 162 jacket "gray" even if the only way it actually looks "gray" is if viewed under unnatural bluish-hue fluorescent lighting!) It is not too great a leap to imagine Guinyard as a scared African-American in 1963 deep south Dallas who as survival instinct was only too willing to try to give the answers wanted. Barbara Davis. Mr. BALL. I show you a shirt which is Commission Exhibit No. 150. Was that--does that shirt look anything like something he had on, that the man had on who went across your lawn? Mrs. DAVIS. I thought that the shirt he had on was lighter than that. Virginia Davis. No memory of the shirt. Tatum: told HSCA Moriarty the killer was not wearing any shirt other than a white T-shirt. Callaway: said he could not see the shirt, only a white T-shirt, because the shirt was being worn open. Helen Markham. Mr. BALL. I show you a shirt here, which is Exhibit 150. Did you ever see a shirt the color of this? Mrs. MARKHAM. The shirt that this man had, it was a lighter looking shirt than that. Mrs. BALL. The man who shot Tippit? Mrs. MARKHAM. Yes, sir; I think it was lighter. Scoggins: "Mr. SCOGGINS: ...and he had on a light shirt. Mr. Belin. A light shirt? Mr. Scoggins. I wouldn't say it was white, but--Mr. BELIN. Would the shirt be lighter than Exchibit 150 or about the same color or darker or would Exhibit 150 look anything like the shirt you thought he was wearing, if you know? Mr. SCOGGINS. No, I don't, so I couldn't answer that. The Scoggins testimony is of particular interest as credibly seeing the shirt fairly close, calling it "light" (unspecified color) and distinguishing that "light" shirt (unspecified color) from the white T-shirt. Provisional conclusion: two colored shirts of two men, Oswald's a darker-colored brown, the Tippit killer's shirt a lighter-colored--color unspecified in the witnesses above but by default a lighter-colored brown on the strength of Julia Postal's testimony and the implication of the witnesses above that the killer's shirt differed from Oswald's CE 150 in lighter tone, not the color itself being in the brown spectrum since the witnesses did not volunteer that.

Questions as to fact: What trousers or pants was Oswald wearing at the time he was arrested in the Texas Theatre? Is it certain the trousers Oswald was wearing at the time of his arrest was CE 158? Does a color photo of CE 158 exist on the internet or published in a book?

Curtis Craford is my main suspect, yes. Ticks most of the major boxes. The sticking point is of course the match of the shell hulls to the revolver, and the mix of two brands of bullets used by the Tippit killer and the mix of the same two brands of bullets reported in Oswald's revolver. I don't consider the witnesses a particularly decisive sticking point in themselves, since all are weak with the possible exception of Scoggins. There are quite a number of them, true, but a multiple of weak witnesses does not add up to a strong witness. And the arguably single strongest Tippit gunman witness, Benavides, gave several specifics which disagree with Oswald and weigh in favor of exoneration. Benavides in weight is equal to about the combined weight of all the other witnesses put together. Maybe that's a slight overstatement, but I don't think by much. And Scoggins has recently been shown, I believe, to be a compromised witness because of the recent report of his grandson's credible story of his grandfather (Scoggins) having been asked by a Ruby associate that day to have his cab parked there at a certain time, which is why Scoggins was eating lunch in his cab that day when the killing of Tippit happened. That does not mean Scoggins had anything to do with, or foreknowledge, of the killing, only that somebody mob-related wanted an escape vehicle on standby. Then it goes back to the shell hulls and the bullets, which can only be explained, if Oswald was innocent of Tippit, as involving substitutions in both cases. The argument for substitutions suffers from no direct positive evidence (i.e. confession) of substitutions, but on the other hand an argument can be made that there was overwhelming motive (LBJ himself: "you have your man"), and a possible argument for plausibility involving something internal to the Dallas office of the FBI. I used to suspect possibly Dallas Police malfeaseance in physical evidence manipulation but have more recently come to consider that maybe there was not significant overt physical evidence cooking on the part of DPD, that the focus of scrutiny might better be focused on the Dallas FBI office, and not everyone in it, but maybe two or even only one in that office and a witting supervisor, something like that. We know Hoover was thick with LBJ and we know the FBI was capable of lying (e.g. the coverup and destruction of the Oswald note to Hosty). And persuasive to me have been some of the points made in Pat Speer's deep-dives of evidence analyses; some of his hits land home on the Dallas office of the FBI. And if the FBI was cooking evidence in one instance, there could be more. By cooking evidence the hypothesis would be in the conduit of conveyance between Dallas and arrival in D.C. to the FBI lab. The FBI Lab in D.C. I assume for several reasons is clean, i.e. they accurately analyzed what they were given, but it is what they were given--sent from Dallas--which is the weak link. And the agent in the Dallas FBI office associated with handling and conveyance of physical evidence of most interest, Drain, ironically was known for publicly accusing the Dallas Police Crime Lab of fabricating physical evidence, so much so that the Warren Commission itself suspected the Dallas Police Department of fabricating physical evidence. How ironic would it be if the Dallas Police were actually clean of Drain's accusation, and Drain was accusing others of what he himself was doing. On the mix of the bullet brands. The killer of Tippit used the two brands (R and W, Remington-Peters and Winchester-Western), verified by the bullets taken from Tippit's body in the autopsy. But only one brand, W's only, were found among 5 bullets taken from Oswald's pocket. Perhaps W's only is the true original state of the Oswald bullet evidence, pockets and revolver both. All that needs to be supposed is a substitution of 3 R's replacing 3 W's live bullets from the revolver. Since 1+1 (R and W) were given to the Secret Service on I think Sun afternoon, Nov 24, this would be the terminus ad quem, latest possible, for the substitutions of that to have happened, with the odd conveyance of those two bullets to the Secret Service (no good reason for that I have ever heard explained) being for the actual purpose (possibly) of establishing evidence of mixed-brands for Oswald that early. By late Friday night Nov 22 there was overwhelming motive to fix the case around Oswald's guilt, considered nothing less than a national security imperative, from the direct order of LBJ on down. By Sun mid-day Nov 24 with Oswald dead and in no position to fight back (and no harm to a living defendant), all restraints could be off in the drive to wrap up Oswald good, by fair means or foul. Again, nothing less than perceived as a national security imperative. Also, it is a mistake to think that evidence cooking is done only by people who know someone is innocent. I believe the majority, not all but the majority, of evidence cooking that does happen in police and crime lab circles is done in cases of people the evidence-cookers believe are guilty, or bad people. Sometimes prosecutors just need that little extra boost of evidence to show in court to put somebody bad away, I believe is the operable logic. Just trying to be helpful in the public interest. The FBI was tasked with total control of the investigation, was the investigating arm of the Warren Commission. The Dallas Police were ordered to turn everything over to the FBI. The FBI was centrally controlled, local offices essentially micromanaged from headquarters, Hoover and crew in hands-on management. On the shell hulls from 10th and Patton match to Oswald's revolver, the hypothesis would be substitutions and forged replication of officers' marks on those hulls prior to conveyance to the FBI lab in D.C. The FBI lab (verified later by the HSCA ballistics panel) would accurately find that the hulls were fired from Oswald's revolver because they were. They just weren't the same hulls found at the Tippit crime scene, would be the hypothesis. And then I go to the paper-bag revolver found tossed in a downtown Dallas street in the early morning hours of Sat Nov 23 of the same caliber that killed Tippit, as my suspected actual murder weapon of Tippit, not Oswald's revolver, and I correlate the disappearance of that revolver (FBI Dallas office suspected involvement), Craford being in a car driving in that area of town in the same early morning hours of Sat Nov 23, and Craford's sudden hightailing out of Dallas a few hours later for Michigan.

That is a fair argument Bill. I respond: You started by saying forget Oswald as killer of Tippit or JFK on your jacket question. Now here it comes back in to establish to you the correctness of Brewer’s identification of Oswald as the man in front of his shoe store. Just to take up one point. Given that deputy sheriff Bill Courson mistakenly thought a man inside the theater coming down from the balcony at about 1:40 was Oswald, who was not Oswald (Courson in Sneed on that), do you think it is unreasonable that another witness, Brewer, could mistakenly pick out Oswald as the man who passed Brewers store and went into the balcony of the theater at 1:35 (the same man Courson saw)? If Roger Craig could be mistaken on his “Oswald” fleeing the TSBD in a station wagon, maybe Brewer could be mistaken in his “Oswald” in front of his store through the glass doors? And no it wasn’t coincidence that if Brewer fingered by mistake the wrong one of two similar men in the theater that day, incorrectly Oswald on the main level instead of the correct man who went from the shoe store into the balcony at 1:35, that Brewers mistake fingered the suspected assassin of JFK. You are arguing from the improbability of that coincidence. I will agree (I think with you on this) that it was indeed coincidence that there was a sufficiently roughly resembling man to Oswald in the theater, to have fooled Courson. But it would not be coincidence that the man at Brewers shoe store went into the balcony of that theater, because the reason would be to kill Oswald who was in that theater. And the reason to kill Oswald would be related to what happened at the TSBD with JFK and Oswald. If the man who went into the balcony at 1:35 (who was the man in front of Brewers store) is interpreted as a professional killer in a failed intended execution attempt of Oswald at the theater that succeeded two days later from Ruby on Sunday morning, some of what seems so incongruous could begin to make sense.

Davis said he thought it happened just before the movie started, that is just before the 1:20 main feature started. I have already quoted that twice and gave the exact second on the Sixth Floor video to find it. Did you not check that? Why are you asking then? Maybe your question should be why did Davis think ca 1:20 was when Oswald sat down near him. Why do you suppose Davis thought that? Of course it is possible witnesses can be mistaken. Such as possibly Brewer’s identification of Oswald as the man in front of the glass doors of his store at 1:35?

I would assume around the time of first police arrival, maybe around 1:40 or so, unless you know better. Why?

Bill, do you have a comment on whether Oswald removed his jacket before or after he entered the theater and sat down three seats away from Davis just before the movie came on (at 1:20 pm), as Davis thought the timing was? On Brewer 15 minutes later, do you think it is possible Brewer could have misidentified Oswald in the theater as the man he saw through the glass door out front of his store? Or do you exclude that as beyond the realm of reasonable possibility—that a witness intending to be truthful could possibly misidentify a person as Oswald who wasn’t?

You are better than this Bill. This is about the third or fourth time you have raised this entirely irrelevant point. I do not agree with everything Cairns says in his piece, I continue to think Ruth Paine has been mistreated by this community. But in fairness, Cairns standing in line for a signature or to meet for a moment his person of interest does not strike me as hypocritical or comical, and I do not know what you are on about on that. Better to stick to being responsive to the substance of what Cairns writes, not these ad hominem attempts and name-callings.

Bill, As Stu says, Davis says at 8:00, "he set down by me--close to me", before he got up and moved to sit by someone else. The "opening credits" is in either the Marrs or Burroughs interview of Davis. In this Sixth Museum video he says at 7:18 concerning the timing that he thought Oswald had sat near him when the movie was just about to come on: "the movie had already come on--had--just about to come on I think it was--and this person came in, and almost sat down behind me ... he was like going down in a sitting motion, changed his mind and moved two seats over ... to my right ... he set down by me--close to me"

You could be right but there is another possibility: his watch was accurate and Bowley who I think first named that 1:10 time the next day was mistaken in memory of the time. A day-later memory of exact-minute time from a tumultuous and eventful day with much sensory input could involve human witness error. If he told or wrote that time in real time or the same afternoon that would be a different matter, but to my knowledge there is no verification of that, only his later memory saying that was the exact time that day.

You really don’t know, Bill? It’s in Marrs citing direct interview, Douglass citing another direct interview, and Davis himself videotaped in his oral history for the Sixth Floor Museum.

Jack Davis inside the theatre said Oswald was inside the theater on the main seating level sitting next to him during the film’s opening credits which ended about 1:20, which is 15 minutes before Brewer. Oswald was already without his jacket at 1:20 in the theater. He must have taken it off either before or after he entered the theater. Most folks take their jackets off after entering a theater. Which do you think?

Hey Ed—no reflection on you since this has so often been stated (including I believe by Marina in testimony), and there was no way before 2016 for anyone to have known differently, but that is factually not correct that no item of Oswald’s clothing was “M”, that Oswald never wore Medium size. Check a color photo closeup of the light maroon button-down dress shirt of Oswald (the one Oswald and TSBD coworkers said Oswald wore to work the morning of Nov 22), CE 151, shown on Pat Speer’s website. An inside collar photo closeup shows it is size “M”, medium. Pat Speer was the first to obtain a color photo of that shirt from the National Archives in 2016 (https://www.patspeer.com/chapter-4b-threads-of-evidence). The collar reads: "Briarloom Traditional by Enro. M/ 15-15 1/2. An original design. All fine cotton." I don’t think that jacket was Oswald’s either (though I do think it was the Tippit killer’s). But not because Oswald never wore size Medium, since that point is now settled from the color photo obtained and published by Speer.

And the press conference where the late Helen Thomas asked why Bush II was intent on going to war with Iraq and the press secretary said with a straight face that the premise of the question was wrong, because “nobody, but nobody, wants to avoid war more than President George W. Bush”. And the polls showing at the height of the war fever as high as 65% of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein had done 911, and that was why Iraq was being attacked. Sort of like if the U.S. launched an attack on Mexico in response to Pearl Harbor. And it was intended to have the public believe that without ever actually claiming that. I noticed how Bush’s speechwriters had Bush, repeatedly, putting the words “Saddam Hussein”, “terrorism”, and “911”, in the same sentences. Bush never outright claimed Saddam Hussein had done 911. There was total deniability that he ever said that. But by putting those three terms into the same sentences, over and over, that is what caused 65% of Americans to think so.

Thanks Stu, good points for sure. Do you think confirmation bias could possibly have played a role in all those Oswald print analyses? (Rhetorical question.) One other thing about that study was how they determined whether an examiner got it right or wrong on a given match to a person. The definition of “correct match” was what other examiners said as consensus, not external objective independent knowledge. The study disclosed this so this is not anything the study itself did not say. But technically the study was actually testing for consistency or replicability of examiner findings, not actual truth of them, if, hypothetically, for some reason 100% of examiners were agreed on an identification of a fingerprint to a person that was however actually not correct. I recall two conclusions everyone seemed agreed on from these studies were the importance of blindness, and review of individual examiners’ findings, to reduce incidence of errors. But there was resistance to implementing these two things because it cost more money to do so.