Greg Doudna

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Totally convincing on the Barrett story of the Oswald wallet at the Tippit crime scene being insubstantial.

Myers previously noted what can be verified by anyone comparing photos of the WFAA-TV crime scene wallet and the Oswald wallet in evidence: though the wallets look alike and are of the same style they are not the same make: the flap in the one (the Oswald wallet) has rounded corners/inset metal band, whereas the WFAA-TV wallet has square corners/full-length metal band. That difference is not ambiguous in the photos and is verifiable from the adjoining photos published by Myers in With Malice, pp. 362-363 of 2013. 

The only question that remains is the distinct question of explanation of the WFAA-TV wallet. If it was from a person or witness associated with the handing over of the Tippit revolver to officers at the same time, that would explain why that citizen's wallet was not confiscated and taken into evidence or otherwise reported in paperwork, because there is no reason why a bystander citizen's ID and wallet would be confiscated or deemed material evidence in the crime under investigation.

23 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

As stated, I have not spent much time or energy on the Tippit case. But I think I see what's really going on here. Myers is angry as hell that his book is not being treated as the end-all be-all. It drives him insane. He may very well be right in that the book should be more widely studied by those writing about the Tippit killing. That's not the point. The point is that this anger has led Myers to mis-represent some of the facts. And to assert as fact one assertion that it is flat out stupid. Ridiculously stupid. Drool on the floor stupid. Stoopid.

He asserts that the (non-Oswald) print on the car is irrelevant. This shows Myers' true colors and reveals a HUGE gaping hole in his book. If he was half the researcher he claims to be he would have used his contacts in cop land to submit this print for an FBI check. Because it matters. Yes, it could not be proved that the print came from the killer. But what Myers deliberately avoids because he is not really interested in any truth besides the killer being Oswald is that the ID of the print could have opened a new door in the case. And helped him sell 10-20x as many books.

Because...the timing of the print is not the only relevant thing about this print, is it? It matters, really matters, whose print it is. Say the print is tied to a local gas station attendant. It helps Myers' cause. But say the print is tied to a known hit man from Chicago who flew in the night before and flew out the next day. Oops! A door opens! The guy could have walked by the car at Top Ten Records. But it doesn't matter. Why was a known mobster touching Tippit's car? 

Or say the print belonged to an ex-cop living on the outskirts of Dallas, who had recently come into some money. Once again, a door opens. What's up with that? 

So I think that Myers reveals his bias in his assertion the print is irrelevant. I remember reading an article on Lt. Day that said that, upon his retirement from the DPD, he'd had numerous offers to perform independent fingerprint exams for defendants, but refused to do so, as it wouldn't feel right to use his skills to help exonerate the wrongfully accused. This is a massive problem, btw. The FBI, after years of training field agents to work in its crime lab, came to the conclusion that work in the field affected one's judgement, and led to a bias against suspects, whereby these crime lab "experts" were far more likely to misrepresent or overstate evidence than the crime lab experts with a scientific background. At that point, they changed policy, and stopped hiring crime lab employees from the field. 

In any event, I suspect Myers is of this same mindset and is losing his mind at the thought of Greg Doudna taking his work on the print to suggest Oswald's possible innocence. A real researcher, one actually interested in the truth, would write Greg and discuss ways that they could get the print analyzed. Although the ability to take a single print and figure out whose print it was (beyond a suspect's) did not exist in 1963, it does now. So maybe the case can move forward. 

Even if it's just to prove the print belonged to some gas station attendant...

P.S. It occurs to me that while Myers is now dismissive of the print, it's possible he made attempts to discover the identity of the print that were detailed in his book. If so, well, he was a better researcher then than he now appears to be. 

Well put Pat, quality insights, thanks.

The fingerprints excluded as coming from Oswald which were found below the window vent through which the killer talked to Tippit moments before killing him, and sober consideration of the meaning of the paper-bag revolver of the caliber used in the Tippit homicide found with no known explanation to the present day hours after the Tippit homicide, are two items of physical evidence that raise reasonable doubt on the security of the narrative of Oswald's guilt in the Tippit killing.

I believe the only reason anyone would reject the statement above is if one already believes it is certain that Oswald killed Tippit on other grounds.

However, Myers says emphatically that is not his reasoning in the case of the fingerprints, in his conclusion that the exclusion of a match to Oswald of the fingerprints at the window vent, information newly obtained in 1994 not previously known, "doesn't add anything to the case", i.e. does not legitimately raise any reasonable doubt that Oswald might have been the killer. 

Myers' treatment of both the fingerprint issue, and the paper-bag revolver, if one reads below the packaging of the insults and rhetoric in which his discussion is presented, is very insubstantial. In the case of the fingerprints, his assertion that the fingerprints are irrelevant, is, Pat, you are right, "Drool on the floor stupid. Stoopid", for all the reasons you name.

On the paper-bag revolver, Myers essentially paraphrases accurately the suggestion that the paper-bag revolver was thrown out of a car window by a killer after a homicide which might go to the Tippit killing as the only homicide done with a handgun in the hours before that paper-bag revolver was abandoned--as if accurately citing that suggestion in a ridiculing way is a rebuttal. Again, is it not obvious the only reason that would come across as ridiculous is if one thinks it is settled on other grounds Oswald's revolver was the murder weapon (so the one in the paper bag could not be)? That is the only reason one would find the possible relationship of that paper-bag revolver to the Tippit homicide laughable. It is not as if there are grounds other than that ruling out a connection.

Myers says the paper-bag revolver "is not new". Of course the fact of the find of that paper-bag revolver is not new. But what is new is the suggestion that it could be the murder weapon of the Tippit killing. That had no prior suggestion or discussion before I raised it. There was some early misguided rabbit-hole talk about that paper-bag revolver being found at Dealey Plaza and involved in events at Dealey Plaza which was wrong. That was what the 2006 Bill Adams article noted as the lesson of his article in the conclusion, that "Assumptions can lead you into false conclusions, and speculation turned into fact will lead to embarrassment and ridicule by other researchers and the public at large." 

What Myers has done focuses on these two items of physical evidence for which there may be "something to see there"--unless one believes it certain on other grounds that the case against Oswald in the Tippit killing is airtight and cannot reasonably be called into question--both new, recent, newly made an issue by me (neither the fingerprints nor the paper-bag revolver appear in McBride's book; neither appear in the recent Oliver Stone films; and when I was writing about the fingerprints on this forum with hardly any interest or reaction only weeks ago, the leading gatekeeper on this forum was urging that I be ignored and mocking that "nobody is interested").

I think Myers may be threatened by these two items, when he believes he long ago had the case nailed down airtight, nailed down cold. Since I was the conveyer or one responsible for raising these issues, what he did was not simply try to refute the relevance of those two items (he really offered no substantive rebuttal apart from showing immaterial errors and ridicule), but to do so in a way that was accompanied with association with craziness and smearing and name-calling so that it would be found in the future by anyone who googles my name with respect to the Tippit case. That kind of name-calling has never happened to me before in public. That is what is going on here--a hatchet job to discredit the spectre that two items of physical evidence raise reasonable doubt in the Tippit case, claims of grounds for reasonable doubt not previously made. 

Often attacks follow a back story of some bad blood or negative history. In the case of Myers and me there was none. I never attacked Myers, never disparaged his work, never called him names, etc. as he has received (wrongly in my view) from others. I have always defended the quality of Myers' work on the Tippit case against others. Myers' With Malice book remains the best on the Tippit case without peer, period. A while ago I had mentioned privately to Tracy Parnell that I had been thinking about the Tippit case and thought I had something to say concerning a case for exoneration of Oswald in that killing. Tracy Parnell, with the best intentions in the world--he is a LNer and believes I was necessarily mistaken but has always been a gentleman with me--urged me to run what I had by Dale Myers. It was only for that reason that I wrote Myers an email. Myers replied that he would not engage ideas that have not been published, but if and when I had something published to let him know and he would review it. Fair enough, I understood that. I then started a thread on the Education Forum ("argument for actual innocence") of ideas in development, mainly for the purpose of obtaining constructive feedback and cross-examination and get bugs worked out (or kill it altogether if I saw it was wrong) prior to some idea of an eventual print publication. I wrote Myers one more time shortly after that on an unrelated point, a couple-sentences inquiry asking for his reference or source for an unfootnoted claim he had made in a comment on his blog, but not in his book, regarding a claim that Callaway denied that the WFAA-TV Tippit-scene wallet was Callaway's. Myers did not reply and I made no further followup. That was my last contact with Myers until waking up yesterday morning to find his machine guns blazing at me publicly on his blog--in which Myers did decide, after all, to review before publication. 

Its about the fingerprints, and about the paper-bag revolver. That is what I think is going on here.  

Callaway's story of seeing and calling to the gunman on Patton is verified by an independent second witness, Acquila Clemmons, who witnessed the encounter between the gunman and Callaway, across the street from each other, and hearing Callaway shout to the gunman, the same words:

Callaway to gunman across street (waving and shouting): "Hey man, what the hell's going on?"

Acquila Clemmons sees and hears Callaway waving and shouting to the gunman across the street, hears: "Go on!" (partial hearing of "what the hell's going on?")

Acquila Clemmons also answers the question of which side of Patton the gunman ran. Acquila Clemmons saw them on opposite sides of the street, in agreement with Callaway on that.

Acquila Clemmons saw the whole thing between Callaway and the gunman, looking south on Patton from her vantage point on the northwest corner of Patton and 10th. 

https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/27358-tippit-acquila-clemons/

Listen to Acquila Clemmons tell it--isn't it obvious?

Response to Myers 

And to think of all the times I defended Myers on this forum . . .

Sheesh. The name-calling, the invective. 

Never mind. Myers’ 863-page With Malice is still the most authoritative, comprehensive, accurate analysis of the facts of the Tippit killing there is. For any on the fence about paying the $75 or whatever the current rate is for a hardbound copy, it is absolutely worth it. It is the gold standard, the Bible, on the facts of the Tippit case and judicious analysis of those facts. But now to the present . . . 

(1)  Myers misrepresented me on one point. Myers:

"Doudna, seemingly eager to exonerate Oswald for the Tippit murder at all costs--including, apparently, twisting reality into a lie--claimed that it was now an 'undisputed fact' that Tippit's killer circled and touched the right-front fender"

(Bold is added by me throughout.) I did not claim that it was an "undisputed fact" that Tippit's killer touched the right-front fender. Here is where Myers got that (pay attention to the syntax). I wrote :

"It is plausible the killer left his right hand print there, the killer was there, it agrees with the killer talking through the right passenger window vent to Tippit and the same fingerprints at the right passenger window, and the somewhat unusual position of full right-hand on something as low as the right front bumper from other causes reinforces that it looks like the killer left the right front bumper prints from a right hand. I do not understand your reasoning for making a probability judgment that the killer who went around that right front bumper (undisputed fact) "most likely never touched" the right front fender as he went around the front of the car. Where is your "most likely" coming from? Its extremely plausible and, since the prints are there in agreement with the killer's position and movements, likely that the killer was the source of those prints." (https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/27892-lee-oswald-the-cop-killer/page/3/)

(2)  Myers takes offense at what he sees as my presuming wrongly his reasoning regarding the fingerprints. Actually I was referring to and addressing Bill Brown’s reasoning not Myers', though I put in a parenthetical caveat factual statement concerning Myers but without reading outside the parentheses as referring to Myers (though I acknowledge it is ambiguous and regret the offense caused). Myers:

"What causes someone to think so irrationally? Here's a clue. In conjuring his own reality, Mr. Doudna takes a stab at explaining how others think, including yours truly.

"In responding to researcher Bill Brown, Doudna writes: 'This is how paradigms work. You (like Myers who reported the Lutz fingerprint findings) believe it is settled fact that Oswald's revolver was the Tippit murder weapon, i.e. that Oswald was the killer. Therefore, you [Bill Brown] reason, no matter how much the fingerprints might look like they could be from the killer, the mental response is 'that cannot be correct' and 'there must be some other explanation'--because of other information and/or assumptions. I am not criticizing this reasoning as method in principle, just pointing out what is going on here.' (emphasis [italics, not bold] in original)

"Actually, that's not how I think, Mr. Doudna. In fact, I find it a bit presumptuous that you believe you know how I think or what my reasoning is behind the research I conduct. Allow me to help you..."

Myers goes on to explain that he does not regard the fingerprints information from Lutz as offering anything useful concerning Oswald's guilt or innocence, irrespective of any other information: it "goes nowhere. It doesn't prove whether Oswald was the killer or not (. . .) the fingerprint evidence doesn't add anything to the case".

Bill Brown in response to my above also said the same in different words, "There's no real reason to believe the prints belong to the killer. None whatsoever." 

There is a disagreement here in that it appears to me 90-95% likely those fingerprints are from the killer of Tippit, but (I have acknowledged) that is not certain because of 5-10% chance they are not. Myers' position is that even if they were from the killer of Tippit it would not be proof of incrimination of that person as the killer of Tippit ("even if the fingerprints did match Oswald's, it would only put him at the car. That would be strong circumstantial evidence, yes? But it wouldn't prove he fired a gun and killed Tippit, would it?"). Bill Brown (as I understand) argues that the prints either were not or likely were not from the killer, i.e. way lower subjective estimate on the odds.

(3)  Concerning my piece on the revolver found with an apple and an orange in a paper bag at 7:30 am on Saturday morning, Nov 23, 1963, on a street in downtown Dallas (https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/27932-the-murder-weapon-of-the-tippit-killing/), Myers objects to my referring to that paper bag and its contents as thrown out of a car window.

"How does Doudna know that the revolver in the paper bag was tossed out of a car window? Answer: He made it up. Yup, I kid you not. (. . .) And yet, Doudna mentions the revolver being tossed from a car window no less than nine times throughout his narrative."

I would say I inferred the obvious there, rather than "made it up". I quoted the full source document which of course quotes no witness having seen how that revolver in a paper bag got on the street. I think readers understand. This criticism from Myers is dismissed.

(4)  Myers criticizes me for claiming witnesses saw the killer of Tippit with his hands in contact with the Tippit cruiser. Myers:

"Doudna ... proclaimed that the fingerprints were left by 'someone in the exact location where witnesses saw the killer's hands on Tippit's car' and are 'from someone who was not Oswald.' (emphasis in original).

"But who are these witnesses that Doudna speaks of?

"Doudna can't be talking about Helen Markham, who was not only 150 feet away from the squad car at the time of the shooting, but more importantly, her vantage point precluded her from seeing what--if anything--the killer was doing with his hands. Why? Because Tippit's squad car was between her and Tippit's killer. She may have thought the shooter leaned down and placed his hands on the side of the car, but she couldn't possibly have seen that happen from position on the northwest corner of Tenth and Patton. Nor can Doudna be talking about Jack Tatum, who had a good view as he drove passed [sic] Tippit's patrol car seconds before the shooting. Tatum said he saw the killer leaning over, alright, but he had both hands in his zipper jacket--not touching the side of the car."

My comment: I accept Myers’ criticism. That would have been better worded: "one witness claimed to have seen the killer's arms on the car". That witness was Helen Markham, whose witness testimony has some difficulties. I do not see that it can be excluded what Helen Markham could have seen of the killer, because she could have seen through the Tippit cruiser's windows. From Helen Markham’s WC testimony:

Mrs. Markham. I saw the man come over to the car very slow, leaned and put his arms just like this, he leaned over in this window and looked in this window.

Mr. Ball. He put his arms on the window ledge?

Mrs. Markham. On the ledge of the window.

(. . .)

Mr. Ball. Then what happened?

Mrs. Markham. Well, I didn't think nothing about it; you know the police are nice and friendly, and I thought friendly conversation. Well, I looked, and there were cars coming, so I had to wait. Well, in a few minutes this man made--

Mr. Ball. What did you see the policeman do?

Mrs. Markham. See the policeman? Well, this man, like I told you, put his arms up, leaned over, he--just a minute, and he drew back and he stepped back about two steps. 

Helen Markham claimed the right front passenger car window was rolled down but officers arriving at the scene found the right passenger window rolled up but the right front vent window open. The killer must have spoken through the right front vent window. It is possible Helen Markham could have seen the body of the killer through the cruiser's windows while being mistaken on which window the killer was speaking through. It is also possible her testimony is unreliable. The same goes for Tatum whose story first came to light only in the late 1970s. Both Helen Markham and Tatum (also Benavides) put the killer right next to the place on the Tippit cruiser where the passenger door fingerprints were found, but it is not possible to know for certain whether the killer did or did not touch the car since both witness testimonies of Helen Markham and Tatum could be in error.

There is something to be added on this however. In With Malice, p. 210 (2013 edn), there is a photo of Barnes dusting for fingerprints on the Tippit cruiser at the scene of the crime. In that photo Barnes is brushing directly below the open vent window. Doesn't that sort of look like prints that would be left by someone leaning into talk through that vent window? One lowers one's head to be able to speak through the open vent to be heard and to make eye contact--an awkward posture, difficult to maintain if one does not make hand contact with the cruiser?

Even with an acknowledged lack of certainty, viewed in isolation what might be the chances that those prints were from the killer who talked through that window vent, seen in that position by the cruiser, by witnesses Markham, Benavides, and Tatum? 

(5)  Myers is critical of me for saying the killer went around the right front fender. This criticism caught me by surprise since my real point was that the killer was at the right front fender of the cruiser, at a position next to the Tippit cruiser where fingerprints from the same individual who left the prints under the vent window were also found. Whether the killer stood at the right front fender location, shot, turned around and headed west on 10th, or went "around" the right front fender, shot, turned around, passed the right front fender again and headed west on 10th, both involve the killer in proximity to the place on the cruiser where the fingerprints were found from the same individual who seems to have talked to Tippit through the vent window at some point in time. So I do not understand the full point of Myers making an issue of this. Even so, I believe there is reason to believe the killer went “around” the right front of the cruiser, though I accept Myers’ criticism (and will get it corrected) that Benavides does not prove that. Myers:

"Finally Doudna coughed up a name: Domingo Benavides.

"'Benavides, the witness who saw him run away,' Doudna wrote, 'got a good look at the back of the killer's head confirming he went back around that right front fender.' (emphasis added)"

"But this is utter, provable, nonsense. Benavides testified to the Warren Commission that as he was approaching in his pick-up truck, the killer was standing on the passenger side of the squad car 'right in front of the windshield on the right front fender.' When Benavides heard the first shot, he pulled his truck into the curb and ducked down. He then heard two more shots. He looked up and saw Tippit stumble and fall.

"'Then I seen the man turn and walk back to the sidewalk,' Benavides testified, 'and go on the sidewalk and he walked maybe five foot and then kind of stalled. He didn't exactly stop. And he threw one shell and must have took five or six more steps and threw the other shell up, and then he kind of stepped up to a pretty good trot going around the corner.'

"Later in his testimony, Benavides added, 'As I saw him, I really--I mean really got a good view of the man after the bullets were fired, he had just turned. He was just turning away. In other words, he was pointing toward the officer, and he had just turned away to his left, and then he started--there was a big tree, and it seemed like he started back going to the curb of the street and into the sidewalk, and then he turned and went down the sidewalk to, well, until he got in front of the corner house, and then he turned to the left here and went on down Patton Street.'"

"Providing a description about Tippit's killer, Benavides testified, 'I remember the back of his head seemed like his hairline was sort of--looked like his hairline sort of went square instead of tapered off, and he looked like he needed a haircut for about two weeks...'

"So, in fact, Benevides never saw Tippit's killer leave the passenger side of Tippit's squad car, except to turn to his left (away from the right front fender) and trot west on Tenth toward Patton. It was then that Benavides observed the back of the killer's head.

"Look, folks, this is all basic stuff. Is no one capable of doing basic research before shooting their mouth off on these forums?"

Comment: The key point is the killer is at the position of the right front bumper of the cruiser, whether or not he went "around" it as he was shooting at Tippit. Benavides first saw him "in front of the windshield on the right front fender", then ducked down, then up again, and "I seen the man turn and walk back to the sidewalk". 

Myers makes a major point of disputing that that is not when Benavides first noticed the block-cut hairline of the back of the killer's head. Why not? Benavides sees the man turn and walk back to the sidewalk--he would be looking at the back of his head. Why is Myers insisting some later time is only when Benavides could have seen that?

But whether the killer went "around" the right front fender and returned around it, or merely stood next to it and turned around, either way he was there and turned his body around in the opposite direction at that position. That is the point that matters (for it is consistent with a killer having turned and put his right hand on the cruiser at that right front bumper, as a possible explanation of the prints found in that location left by the same individual who left the prints under the right front window vent). 

However, Benavides aside, I believe there is reason to believe the killer did go "around" that right front bumper while shooting before turning back. Witness Jack Tatum, from a Myers blog post of Nov 22, 2018 (https://jfkfiles.blogspot.com/2018/11/jack-ray-tatum.html). Tatum:

“'He was already down and I saw a person (positively identified by Tatum as Oswald) with a gun in his hand and he turned around, as if he was going to run off or walk off and as he got to the rear of the car, he hesitated and walked around the squad car (towards the officer) and shot a fourth time. It could have been a third.' (. . .) 'Oswald got within six and eight feet of Tippit. I saw him aim his gun and shoot and I could see the officer and Oswald. I’m not sure he (Oswald) actually obscured my view; maybe I was looking at him (Oswald).' Tatum stated that he had a clear view of the final shot at an oblique angle. (. . .) 'I saw Oswald turn around and look in my direction. At the same time, I saw a lady (Helen Markham) on the corner, down on her knees facing Patton. She was covering her head; she thought she was going to be shot, I guess. I saw Oswald turn around and start to walk towards my car and then he broke into a fast trot in my direction, up the street. At some point, I put my car in gear and went away from him west.'”

Assuming Tatum's story is credible and what he tells is some version of what happened, what happened was the killer was on the sidewalk side of 10^th, the passenger side of the Tippit cruiser. The killer did not go around the back of the car and out into the middle of the street on the driver’s side back up to Tippit again. No, what Tatum appears to be describing is the killer’s movements at the front of the cruiser, after appearing to leave on 10th on the passenger side, returning again around the front of the cruiser, meaning the killer did go around the right front fender in order to get closer to Tippit whom he was shooting. Then the killer would have turned around and gone back around that right front fender to the sidewalk on 10^th and west to Patton. When Tatum says he saw the killer "look in my direction" that corresponds with the same language of Helen Markham telling of seeing the killer coming toward her headed west on the sidewalk on the south side of 10^th: "When he saw me he looked at me, stared at me”. The two testimonies of the killer walking towards and looking at Markham and Tatum become the same thing, with the killer on the sidewalk of the south side of 10^th, having returned from around the front of the Tippit cruiser.

The argument that the Tippit killer did go around the right front of the cruiser, while not certain, rests on three points. First, the final shot into Tippit at closer range by the killer that Tatum claimed he witnessed, involving going around the front of the cruiser to get that close. Second, the find of the bullet in Tippit’s temple at the autopsy compatible with a professional coup de grace final shot at close range, again which would have involved going around the front of the cruiser. And third, no counterindication or counterevidence, i.e. no witness who affirmatively testified that the killer did not or could not have gone around the right front of the cruiser.

Again I acknowledge Myers is correct that Benavides seeing the back of the killer's head does not establish that the killer went around the right front of the car, that I misspoke on that. But I believe the three points just named do make that very plausible, and Benavides’ testimony is not inconsistent with it.

I have learned much from Myers' work in With Malice and Myers' previous blog posts (and a couple of things in this one). It is especially valuable that Myers in the present blog post gives the details or back story on how the Lutz fingerprint findings happened, the date (1994), how it worked, etc.; that is truly appreciated. 

It is never pleasant to be trashed and called names. But that should be viewed as "static" and focus should be kept on “signal”, which in this case is the enormous solid primary work Myers has done on the Tippit case. Pat Speer has a pretty good take on things here. 

I have updated some of my work in progress on the Tippit case in which I argue for Oswald's innocence in that case at https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/27367-an-argument-for-actual-innocence-of-oswald-in-the-tippit-case/. I intend to gather there some of my more scattered pieces on individual aspects of the Tippit case. 

Also, I am not certain deputy sheriff Courson was not corrupt and that his account is necessarily truthful in all particulars. Long story, but an argument for elsewhere. 

On 7/11/2022 at 10:12 AM, Bill Brown said:

Nothing is illogical about Courson's account (above).  What is illogical is your belief that it somehow means that this is evidence or proof that Oswald was inside the theater as well as the man who resembled Oswald who had just killed a police officer.

Oswald first went up to the balcony.  There were teenagers up there and he decided to then go down to the main lobby, where he was later arrested after a scuffle.  So what?

That misrepresents me Bill. I do believe the person Courson said he met is a different person than Oswald, however I do not believe Courson's account (who thought they were the same person) proves, i.e. "is evidence or proof" for that that. As you misrepresent me above.

In your second paragraph you give a different interpretation, in which you argue Courson was correct: it was Oswald Courson saw coming down from the balcony. Viewed in isolation, Courson's account could be interpreted either way, the way I read it or the way you read it, in terms of the reality underlying Courson's account.

Now I will explain other information that I believe weighs in favor of Courson's man not being Oswald (though I believe it very plausible that the man Courson saw was the killer of Tippit).  

• Start with Oswald seated in the main ground level of the theatre (and when I refer to "Oswald" here forward, this is who I mean, the known Oswald on the ground level). No theatre patron or theatre staff person inside the theatre saw him in the balcony. No theatre patron or theatre staff person saw him come down from the balcony.
• Theatre patron Jack Davis, in among other venues his oral history for the Sixth Floor Museum which I have listened to, told of Oswald moving around inside the seating on the ground level, and has said that when Oswald briefly sat next to Davis, that was during the opening credits of the film or thereabouts, much earlier than the time the killer of Tippit went from the street past Julia Postal's ticket window and up into the balcony. Jack Davis's account appears incompatible with an interpretation that the man met by deputy sheriff Courson coming down from the balcony was Oswald--because by Courson's account he only went to the Texas Theatre in response to police radio calling in the Julia Postal report of the suspicious man (whom you and I both stipulate and agree was the killer of Tippit) going into the theatre ca. 1:40 pm. Davis's account of Oswald on the main level appears inconsistent with the Courson man being Oswald.
• Usher Burroughs has also said, in agreement with Jack Davis's account, that Oswald was in the main seating area, seated at more than one position, and came out and bought popcorn from Burroughs (Oswald going out one back door and returning in the aisle of another is also the story of Davis, in agreement with Burroughs). So that's two.
• There is no other information from any of the other patrons in the theatre that day, nor the man who took the tickets that day (general manager Callahan), in any disagreement with the witness accounts just noted of Davis and Burroughs, concerning Oswald's earlier presence in the theatre than the man Courson saw coming down from the balcony. (See the next point on Julia Postal.)
• Julia Postal who sold tickets that day (following which Callahan took the tickets at the door), it is reported that when she was interviewed later and asked if she had not sold a ticket to Oswald, that she burst into tears, and then calming down asked again again burst into tears. Since that is hearsay and in any case could be interpreted in different ways it is not probative of much. But since there is no other theatre staff or theatre patron saying differently, it does suggest some ambiguity. I believe Julia Postal in her WC testimony was asked if she had seen the arrested Oswald before she saw him arrested and she said she didn't think so, an answer in the negative but expressed in a somewhat less-certain form than clear "no". But there is the story of her tears when asked the question more directly by the later interviewer, suggesting possible ambiguity on the point.

Brewer of course did identify the killer of Tippit who went up into the balcony, with Oswald, and Courson said he thought the man he met coming down from the balcony (who may have been the killer of Tippit) probably was Oswald. 

So this is a case of conflicting scenarios depending on how individual witness testimonies are assessed and interpreted. With Brewer and Courson I believe the weight of the theatre witness testimonies favor that Brewer and Courson misidentified some other man as Oswald. Even if you do not agree, I hope you will see that that is not, as you term it, "NOT logical at all". 

(I think you are confusing the meaning of "logical" with what I think you mean: "plausible", not the same meaning.)

To be clear, the reason I think the killer of Tippit (who went into the balcony, and likely was the man Courson met coming down from the balcony) and Oswald (seated in the main seating area and who I do not believe ever was in the balcony) were distinct individuals, two persons and not the same person, I do not claim is proven by, as distinguished from compatible with, the testimonies of Davis or Burroughs in themselves, since any one witness's account can be partly or wholly in error or often interpreted in more than one way. I draw that from a larger argument involving other factors, just as you draw from other factors in assuming they were the same individual.

As for why the killer of Tippit went into the Texas Theatre, I believe the answer to that is quite simple: intent to kill Oswald.

Oswald went to the Texas Theatre to meet someone. The killer of Tippit knew Oswald was there. The killer of Tippit intended to kill Oswald in the Texas Theatre. The arrival of police interrupted both of those intentions. My reconstruction.

I think the killer of Tippit most likely left the Texas Theatre by simply walking out a door and melting into bystanders, after passing Courson on that stairs, either before other officers arrived and sealed the building or after other officers arrived and with permission of officers. (I do not believe the killer of Tippit was the man taken by police out the rear of the theatre minutes after Oswald's arrest, theatre patron Applin being taken downtown to make a witness statement, who had nothing to do with either Oswald or the killing of Tippit.)

The murder weapon of the Tippit killing?

On the night of Nov 22/23, 1963, the night following the killing of officer Tippit in Oak Cliff by a killer using a .38 Special, someone abandoned a snub-nosed Smith & Wesson .38 Special revolver in a paper bag a few blocks away from the Carousel Club in downtown Dallas. Just threw that revolver in a paper bag by the side of a street out of a car window, just got rid of it. It was found by a citizen the next morning who turned it in to the Dallas Police (documentation quoted and linked below).

By that time--Saturday morning Nov 23--the narrative had already developed and was being reported around the world: Lee Harvey Oswald had assassinated JFK from his workplace at the Texas School Book Depository and then had shot and killed officer Tippit in Oak Cliff. Police had the revolver of Oswald. There was no missing murder weapon in the Tippit killing.

But the next morning after the killing of officer Tippit by a .38 Special revolver--the only known murder by handgun in the Dallas area that day--a mystery Smith & Wesson .38 Special revolver turned up abandoned on a downtown Dallas street. 

Think of the oddity of that timing.

Why would someone toss a Smith & Wesson .38 Special revolver in a paper bag out of a car on a street in downtown Dallas, the night of Nov 22/23, 1963? 

Think hard—is there any reason why anyone would do that that particular night?

There are only about two reasons I can think that make any sense: either that revolver had just been used in a crime such as an armed robbery or a murder and the perpetrator was abandoning an untraceable weapon so as not to be incriminated by having it found on their person if arrested, or, somebody who was not supposed to be in possession of a weapon was being pulled over by a police cruiser and threw it out a car window before coming to a stop, to avoid having it found in their possession.

The first question police might ask (one would think) would be whether there had been a homicide or gangland killing involving a handgun which might shed light on that abandoned snub-nosed .38 Smith & Wesson.

But the only handgun homicide in Dallas at that time was the killing of Tippit. And police already had (or thought they had) the murder weapon for that, the Oswald revolver.

Nevertheless it would still be assumed that the Dallas Police Department—the killing of officer Tippit by that exact kind of handgun hours earlier totally aside--would investigate that paper-bag revolver and have records of it. But in this case that is not what happened. The Dallas Police disappeared any record of that paper-bag .38 revolver. The only reason the existence of that revolver is known to have been in DPD custody the weekend of the assassination is from FBI documents first released in 1978 and first noticed in the 1990s. There is no issue that the FBI documents, and hence the underlying Dallas Police Department information from which the FBI documents derived, are inauthentic, nor has that been alleged. Here is the background as told by Bill Adams in the May 1996 issue of Fourth Decade (https://maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=48693#relPageId=8) :

"The FBI unleashed a controversy in 1978 when they released 100,000 pages of documents concerning its investigation into the assassination of President Kennedy. Within those 100,000 pages was a very intriguing document. That same year the Assassination Information Bureau (AIB) reviewed the FBI document release and reported the discovery of various documents in the AIB's newsletter, Clandestine America. One issue of the newsletter mentioned that a .38 caliber revolver was discovered 'in a paper bag in the immediate vicinity of the assassination site.' 

"In the Fall of 1991 I was reading through Paul Hoch's collection of Clandestine America when I came across the AIB article on the revolver. I was intrigued by the potential implications of a second gun being found in Dealey Plaza [sic]. Over the next few months I contacted many assassination researchers and was disappointed to learn that none of them had ever heard of the revolver. (. . .)

"At this point I decided to use the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to obtain any additional revolver documents that existed. During the last few days of 1991 I filed the first of many FOIA requests with the FBI regarding the revolver. My first request went to FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C. Two months later the FBI responded to my request by sending copies of '2 pages of preprocessed material.' I was making progress faster than I expected and now possessed three documents concerning the revolver. The new documents provided more detail about the FBI investigation of the revolver and claimed the revolver had been found 'in [the] immediate vicinity of the assassination area.' I now could confirm that the AIB and Woods did in fact have two different documents on the revolver. These documents had apparently also been released as part of the FBI's 1978 release but had not been reported by the AIB. Four years later [1996], as I write this article, I am still awaiting the FBI's closure of this request and/or release of additional documents responsive to my request.

"During the summer of 1993 I gave up waiting for the FBI to complete my 1991 FOIA request. I filed a new FOIA request with each of the involved FBI Field Offices--Boston, Dallas, Philadelphia, and Springfield. Within a month I had responses from all four Field Offices. Springfield said they had no responsive documents but would refer me to FBI Headquarters. Both Dallas and Philadelphia referred me to FBI Headquarters as well. Boston however provided a bizarre response: they were 'currently unable to locate [their] files pertaining to the assassination.' Boston assured me that 'when/if the file is located, processing of [my] request will continue and [I would] be advised of the results.' Apparently they never did find their file as Boston has never sent another reply to my FOIA request.

"As a result of the assassination Records Collection Act (ARCA) of 1992 the FBI files reviewed by the HSCA were released to the National Archives. One of these FBI files turned out to be a two page document concerning the FBI's attempts to trace the revolver. This document also mentions that the revolver was 'found in a paper bag in the immediate vicinity of the assassination area.' I obtained this document from a different researcher and now possessed four different revolver documents. (. . .)

"Early in 1995 Paul Hoch sent me a copy of another AIB discovered document concerning that revolver. He discovered this document while looking for other material I had requested, unrelated to the revolver investigation. This document was also apparently included in the 1978 FBI document release. This document was a new fifth document that I had never seen before and my FOIA requests had not uncovered. The document provides the missing piece to the revolver puzzle. The document not only reveals where the revolver was found but who found it. The following quote from this document shows just how wrong I and other researchers were [concerning a Dealey Plaza location]:

"'On 11/23/63, Patrolman L. Raz brought into the Homicide and Robbery Bureau, Dallas PD, a brown paper sack which contained a snub-nosed .38 caliber Smith & Wesson, SN 893265...had been found near the curb at the corner of Ross and Lamar Streets and was turned in by one Willie Flat...'"

The corner of Ross and Lamar is only about 6 blocks, about 0.3 miles, from Jack Ruby’s Carousel Club at 1312-1/2 Commerce, where Curtis Craford aka Larry Crafard, with self-professed hit man experience, recently arrived to Dallas, was living. Ruby drove to his Club and picked up Craford ca. 4 am that night, the night Craford fled Dallas, about 2-3 hours before the citizen found the paper bag with the revolver and reported it. Looking on a map, the spot where the revolver was thrown out of a car window at Ross and Lamar is in excellent agreement with the route of a car taking a passenger from the Carousel Club to nearby interstate 35E going north. 

Here is the full text of the FBI document which refers to the find of that revolver turned in to the Dallas Police, as posted in Gil Jesus, “The Gun in the Bag”, https://jfkconspiracyforum.freeforums.net/thread/983/gun-bag.

MEMORANDUM

TO SAC, DALLAS (89-43) DATE: 11/25/63

FROM SA RICHARD E. HARRISON

SUBJECT: ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT KENNEDY

On 11/23/63, Patrolman J. RAZ brought into the Homicide and Robbery Bureau, Dallas PD, a brown paper sack which contained a snub-nosed .38 caliber Smith & Wesson, SN 893265.

This gun had the word "England" on the cylinder and had been found at approximately 7:30 AM in a brown paper sack, together with an apple and an orange, near the curb at the corner of Ross and Lamar Streets and was turned in by one Willie Flat, white male, 9221 Metz Drive, employed at 4770 Memphis, to the Dallas PD.

2-Dallas

REH:cah

(2) FBI DL 89-43-636

That FBI document of 11/25/63 was followed by three other FBI documents (quoted at the same link above), dated Nov 29, Nov 29, and Nov 30, 1963, which report FBI efforts to trace the serial number and history of that firearm. Records were found from the serial number that that revolver had been shipped by the Smith & Wesson company on Jan 13, 1942 to the US Government, Hartford Ordnance, Hartford, Conn. It was reported by a sales manager of Smith & Wesson that 

"shipments to Hartford Ordnance at that time were destined for England under Lend-Lease Agreement and stamping on cylinder is probably a proof-mark of that government certifying its acceptance. Such weapons are known to have been sold surplus in England, altered and rechambered in that country to accommodate thirty-eight special ammunition. Such weapons were subsequently imported for sale by U.S. gun dealers."

(Note in CE 2011, for example, the interchangeability in terminology of “.38” and “.38 Special”, in description of the same kind of revolver—original .38 revolvers which had been modified and rechambered to fire the slightly smaller and superior .38 Special bullets.)

The FBI documents do not give further tracing information of what became of that serial-number weapon after its original shipment in 1942 to the US Government in Connecticut and then likely shipment to England and likely return to the US for sale as surplus.

It was .38 Special bullets which killed officer Tippit. A snub-nosed .38 modified to fire .38 Special bullets is both the kind of revolver of the paper bag and the kind of revolver that Oswald had, making two distinct weapons of the same kind, both compatible with having been used in the killing of officer Tippit, but one was not used in that killing.

Which of those two was the one not used in the Tippit killing, the one not used in the Tippit killing, although an exact match to the kind of weapon that was used, being coincidence? 

The snub-nosed .38 Special may have been the most common type of concealed handgun in America at the time. This means Oswald’s possession of a snub-nosed .38 Special revolver could well be coincidence (carried for self-defense that day, not used to murder Tippit), if the other snub-nosed .38 Special (the one tossed from a car in a paper bag) was the murder weapon used to kill Tippit.

There is no record that the FBI obtained that revolver from the Dallas Police Department or ran it through examination in the FBI lab in Washington, D.C. (at least there is no hint that was done in known documentation), although DPD’s possession of that revolver apparently was an issue of some interest to the FBI. There is no record the FBI compared any of the four bullets taken from Tippit's body in the autopsy to bullets fired from that paper-bag revolver found hours after that killing of Tippit, to test for a possible match. Such comparison was done with bullets fired from Oswald’s revolver (with the FBI reporting inconclusive results, neither confirming nor excluding a match). But there is no record of any similar examination done with the paper-bag revolver; why?

Is this information concerning this paper-bag revolver not simply stunning, with respect to the Tippit case? It should be. 

That paper-bag snub-nosed .38 found abandoned in downtown Dallas some time before 7:30 am Nov 23, 1963: the mention of the fruit, the apple and the orange, also in the paper bag with the revolver, as well as the likely high traffic and visibility of anything tossed into the street at the Ross and Lamar location, suggests the tossing of that revolver was recent, likely earlier that same night—and that paper-bag revolver was not identified with any other crime, nor any owner. Whereas a citizen carrying a concealed weapon does not necessarily suggest or imply that citizen murdered or intends to murder, the tossing of an untraceable handgun in a paper bag on a city street does suggest or imply just that--that the weapon very well may have been used in a recent crime or homicide such as a murder or a hit; that is why it was tossed.

Which of the two revolvers is more likely to have been the murder weapon in the killing of Tippit—a killing which had a professional coup de grace shot into the forehead as found in the autopsy and as told by witness Jack Tatum (who feared to come forth at the time because he feared mob involvement)? The handgun found on Oswald at his arrest? Or the handgun tossed because it had been recently used in a homicide or contract killing—tossed the very night following the Tippit killing, tossed only a few blocks from the Carousel Club the very night of Craford's flight from Dallas, after he was picked up in a car at the Carousel Club by Jack Ruby and George Senator at about 4 am.?

And if there was not a connection of that paper-bag .38 revolver to the Tippit killing, why did the Dallas Police disappear all trace of records of that revolver, and the FBI have inadequate records as well? Why is the owner of record of that weapon by serial number not known, why is no ballistics testing by either DPD or FBI known? Why the coincidence in the timing? Why the coverup?

Let us go to the conclusion that might be found by the fictional television detective “Columbo”, if this had been a case investigated by Columbo: that abandoned paper-bag snub-nosed Smith & Wesson .38 Special was the murder weapon of Tippit. That was the murder weapon used by Curtis Craford to murder Tippit after which he reloaded and went to the Texas Theatre to murder Oswald, knowing he was there, except that intent to murder was thwarted by the arrival of police who arrested Oswald, saving Oswald’s life for the moment. The Tippit murder weapon was not Oswald's snub-nosed .38 revolver, although elements of the Dallas Police sought to have it look that way and to have investigators conclude that way. Oswald was innocent of the murder of Tippit. Craford did it, and he did it with that revolver found in the paper bag.

~ ~ ~

What became of that paper-bag .38 Special Smith & Wesson revolver? Where is that revolver today? Nobody knows. 

What was going on with this kind of (in this case almost literal) smoking-gun physical evidence which disappeared while in police custody—evidence that very well could have resulted in complete exoneration of Oswald in the Tippit killing if it had been allowed to become known and investigated?

Gone, just gone. Never examined for ballistics characteristics, fingerprints, or comparison with Tippit body bullets. 

Just disappeared, vanished. 

The murder weapon of Tippit.

Gone, likely forever.

From Dallas Police Department hands the day after Tippit was killed. 

Gil mine wasn't meant as an attack. It was honest questions, discussion. I'll steer clear going forward since it was taken amiss. I apologize for raining on your parade, so to speak, on your thread where you present the hard work of your research. 

deleted

8 minutes ago, David Von Pein said:

That, of course, would be impossible, since we all know that the real killer (Oswald) had the Tippit murder weapon in his possession just 35 minutes after Tippit was slain.

The logic here is that non-fingerprints/non-Tippit cruiser information (that is, interpretation thereof) is brought to bear on interpretation of a specific fact (the Tippit cruiser fingerprints). I understand the reasoning. This is how paradigms work. You (like Myers who reported the Lutz fingerprint findings) believe it is settled fact that Oswald's revolver was the Tippit murder weapon, i.e. that Oswald was the killer. Therefore, you reason, no matter how much the fingerprints might look like they could be from the killer, the mental response is "that cannot be correct" and "there must be some other explanation"--because of other information and/or assumptions. I am not criticizing this reasoning as method in principle, just pointing out what is going on here.

In the present case I contest this "other information" you are assuming and which you bring to bear to interpret the present case, specifically the security of the belief that the Tippit murder weapon was Oswald's revolver which he had with him in the Texas Theatre. I have argued for a different way of looking at this, in which (a) the true Tippit murder weapon was the "paper bag revolver" found by a citizen on a downtown Dallas street on the morning of Sat Nov 23; and (b) the claim that the four shell hulls from the killer's revolver found at the Tippit crime scene were fired from Oswald's revolver is questionable (this is not a dispute of the accuracy of the FBI lab's findings or that the revolver was Oswald's). You may or may not have seen some of my argument on that. On the "paper bag revolver" as the Tippit murder weapon, see summary of my argument on that at second up from the bottom at https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/27887-oswalds-light-colored-jacket/page/2/. On the Oswald revolver/Tippit crime scene shell hull ballistics see my piece, "Tippit Ballistics", https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/27893-tippit-ballistics/. Also my piece, "The jackets as exculpation of Oswald as the Tippit killer: an analysis" at https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/27754-the-jackets-as-exculpation-of-oswald-as-the-tippit-killer-an-analysis/.

 

18 minutes ago, Bill Brown said:

You are simply trying way too hard to link those prints to Tippit's killer. There's no real reason to believe the prints belong to the killer. None whatsoever.

The prints belong to the same person.  No one saw the killer touch the right front fender.  Therefore, other than your bias, there is no reason to believe the prints on the passenger door belong to the killer. 

You're entitled to your opinion. I think its just obvious those prints likely came from the killer. 

On 7/12/2022 at 7:07 PM, Bill Brown said:

Then if no one said they saw the killer touch the right front fender, why have you so adamantly included it?

In fact, I would argue that since Lutz determined both prints (passenger door/window & right front fender) belonged to the same person, then it's more probable that the print on the passenger door/window didn't belong to the killer since the killer most likely never touched the right front fender. 

Someone left full-hand prints on that right front fender. By your logic since no one saw any anyone do so then it is most likely no one left those prints. A right hand on top of a right front bumper is not a usual or normal place for a person to put their right hand full-on, and the killer was rounding that right front of the car in a situation of stress and rapidly. No witness said they saw whether he did or did not physically touch the car at that moment because no one was looking at the right front fender at that moment (Benavides, the witness who saw him run away, got a good look at the back of the killer's head confirming he went back around that right front fender).

It is plausible the killer left his right hand print there, the killer was there, it agrees with the killer talking through the right passenger window vent to Tippit and the same fingerprints at the right passenger window, and the somewhat unusual position of full right-hand on something as low as the right front bumper from other causes reinforces that it looks like the killer left the right front bumper prints from a right hand. I do not understand your reasoning for making a probability judgment that the killer who went around that right front bumper was present at the area of the right-front bumper (undisputed fact) "most likely never touched" the right front fender as he went around the front of the car. Where is your "most likely" coming from? Its extremely plausible and, since the prints are there in agreement with the killer's position and movements, likely that the killer was the source of those prints. 

Just now, Bill Brown said:

Who said the killer touched the right front fender of the patrol car? Maybe I've missed something.

No witness said that, but witnesses saw the killer go around the right front fender and back around it again. The killer was witnessed going around the right front fender shooting Tippit, then witnessed (having turned around) going back around the same right front fender as he walked rapidly or ran west on Tenth (then south on Patton and etc.).

No one saw him touch the right front fender or bumper, in the same way he was seen leaning with hands on the right front door at the window when talking to Tippit through the vent. The prints from the right front fender are identified in Myers as from a right hand. One reconstruction would be the killer, if a right-handed shooter, after administering the coup de grace to Tippit's head, turned around, transferred the revolver to his left hand as he was seen with it moments later at the corner of Tenth and Patton pulling shell hulls out of it with his right hand (and then reloading with his right hand into the revolver held in his left hand). With the revolver in his left hand and his right hand free, and in a hurry, he uses his free right hand to balance or perhaps avoid stumbling as he goes back around that right front fender to make his escape. Thereby accounting for the prints from a right hand in that location.  

1 minute ago, Bill Brown said:

So that's it? Either the killer or a bystander? Couldn't possibly be anyone in the parking lot at the Southwest substation? Another officer from a previous shift? A mechanic? There are literally a dozen other options that you are choosing to ignore.

Touche Bill. However, it is the coincidence of the two locations matching where the killer is known to have been from eyewitnesses, in the one case (the right front door window) the killer directly witnessed placing his hands, that makes the killer look like the most likely source. Fair enough?

Just now, Bill Brown said:

I realize that is your point but my point is that you're wrong. There is no way you can claim that those paetial prints lifted by Barnes "most certainly came from the Killer". No other way to put it other than youre spouting nonsense.

You could have said that there is a chance those partial prints came from the killer.  If you would have simply said that, then I wouldn't take issue with it because you would be factually correct.  But that is not what you said. 

To be clear, I recognize there is a slight chance that the fingerprints could be from a bystander or an officer in those ca. 20 minutes before Barnes lifted the prints. I subjectively think of it as in the neighborhood of ca. 90-95% likely they are from the killer, considered in isolation from other evidence and factors. Of course, it is the "other evidence and factors" which cause the differences of interpretation.

What would move that ca. 90-95% to ca. 100% would be if an identification match to those fingerprints was made and it matched to someone who was not one of the officers or bystanders that day. Such as e.g. a match to Curtis Craford (or someone else).

18 hours ago, Bill Brown said:

By the way, explain how prints lifted from the passenger side of the patrol car not belonging to Oswald exonerates him from being Tippit's killer.

The point is those fingerprints at the right front door window of the Tippit cruiser, and at the right front fender, almost certainly came from the killer, who was seen at that right front door window talking to Tippit, then shooting Tippit as he (the killer) went around the right front fender. Handprints on the right front fender are an unusual position for handprints, but well explained as from the killer associated with the shooting while the killer was at that position at the car.

The 1990s Lutz analysis reported by Myers--not known or reported by the earlier DPD in 1963--tightens the argument by Lutz's find that all of those fingerprints are from one single individual (and not multiple ones), an individual whose hands were in contact with the Tippit cruiser in both of those separate locations, exactly where the killer was in both locations, because that individual was the killer.

Lutz's finding, in other words, diminishes the slight possibility (as Myers interprets unconvincingly) that those fingerprints may have come from some onlooker or bystander in the ca. 20 minutes or so between the time the Tippit killer was leaning into and talking to Tippit at the cruiser's right front window, the time officer Barnes lifted those two sets of prints when he arrived to the scene.

If someone else were to be identified as the killer via a match to those fingerprints, then since there was only one shooter that would be evidence of exoneration of Oswald, is the argument.

I agree that both the witnesses and the ballistics physical evidence also must be addressed in any comprehensive "Innocence Project"-genre argument for Oswald's exoneration. But "Innocence Project" cases are filled with cases of actually innocent persons (exonerated via DNA) who were convicted by juries on the basis of eyewitness testimony. As I recall, something like ca. 50% (or was it ca. 70%? I don't remember) of such exonerations in modern times of criminal convictions for serious crimes involve sworn positive eyewitness identifications as part of the evidence which wrongfully convicted those persons. And the JFK assassination case is just filled with known instances--running into the hundreds--of ordinary citizens willing to swear up and down after seeing Oswald on TV that they were certain they remembered encountering him in some town in Kentucky or Montana or wherever, in addition to dozens of alleged sightings in the Dallas area itself of which no one will dispute many were in error (disputes being only over cases, not the phenomenon itself that erroneous identifications happen).  

Testing for exoneration via DNA in the Tippit killing is not possible from the physical evidence available.

But there are those fingerprints on the Tippit cruiser.

Which give every appearance and likelihood of having been left by the killer.

Fingerprints, likely from the killer, which according to the most recent published and non-controverted expert fingerprint analysis, were not, repeat not, left on that Tippit cruiser right front door window by Lee Harvey Oswald.

Should this not in itself be sufficient to cause revisitation of the total evidence picture in the Tippit case--consideration of whether this is another instance (by analogy, since it never came to trial) of a wrongful conviction, which like many Innocence Project case exonerations in recent times, involve eyewitness identifications?

6 hours ago, Bill Brown said:

I'm very up to date on the fingerprints.  You are misinterpreting what Myers' expert found and what I said earlier in this thread.

I said the prints weren't discernible and I stand by that.  The only thing that Herbert Lutz (the expert  sought out by Myers) was able to determine was that the prints lifted by Barnes were "probably" from just one person.  Lutz was able to determine that the prints did not belong to Oswald.  He reached that conclusion because there was enough information in the lifted prints to compare to the Oswald fingerprint card.

That is not to say that the prints were discernible in trying to determine just who the prints belonged to.  The prints were partial yet contained enough information to rule out Oswald.  Understand now?

No, that #1 point was not the only thing of interest Herbert Lutz determined. He also determined a second matter of interest, #2--new, as of 1998 Myers' publication, for this had not been determined or disclosed, whichever it was (the former according to Warren Commission testimony), prior to Myers' publication in 1998--that "the fingerprints taken from Tippit's patrol car were not Oswald's" (Myers p. 340). As you now also note.

That is of extraordinary significance. Future generations one day may credit Myers with having obtained and published this pivotal exonerating evidence for Oswald in the Tippit case which CTs have for the most part ignored (e.g. no mention of Myers' fingerprint finding in the recent JFK Revisited 2 and 4 hour films, I think; no mention of the Lutz fingerprint findings in McBride's 2013 book on the Tippit case, Into the Nightmare [based on no listing for "Lutz", "Pete Barnes", or "fingerprints" in that book's index], etc.) . . . because published by LNer Myers!

Love that irony!--distaste for work published by a LNer, Myers, overriding paying attention to content in that work materially arguing for exoneration of Oswald! This is the fruits of "ignore" epistemology! aka "shoot yourself in the foot" CT epistemology.

Furthermore, there may be a third (#3?) new development of interest as a result of the 1990s fingerprint analysis of Herbert Lutz, though this is not overtly claimed in Myers' reporting of Lutz's findings: the possibility, perhaps likelihood, contrary to Barnes' early report, that a positive fingerprint match to the killer of Tippit may be obtainable from comparison of the right fender fingerprints (= individual who left the fingerprints on the right front door, per Lutz = killer of Tippit).

Whereas Barnes testified to the Warren Commission that the fingerprints lifted from the two locations on the Tippit cruiser were of no use for identification information because too smeared, a photograph of those right front fender fingerprints published by Myers appears to show quite a bit of fingerprint material, much non-smeared, from that right front fender. I am no fingerprint expert, but I no longer uncritically take Barnes' early word for it that those fender fingerprints are not identifiable or amenable to a positive match by expert analysis--just look at the photo in Myers on p. 337. (I would defer to fingerprint experts today on this point, however, if fingerprint experts today could be found to comment.) Those fingerprints may be identifiable, but have not yet been identified.

But what is established, since 1998 (if Myers' first edition has that; I have only the 2013 rev. edition), from those fingerprints on the basis of expert testimony, unknown in Warren Commission published testimony and exhibits, unremarked in virtually all CT discussions of the Tippit case to date: those fingerprints left by someone in the exact location where witnesses saw the killer's hands on Tippit's car, are from someone who was not Oswald.

Anyway, glad to hear you have been up to date on the Myers' Lutz report all along, including the key point of the finding, not known or reported by DPD at the time, that those prints are not from Oswald.

Others have pointed out in the past that the man Bernard Haire saw taken into a police cruiser out the back door may have been George Applin, theatre patron that day who was the only theatre patron taken by police downtown to give a statement. There is no claim to my knowledge that Bernard Haire claimed the man looked like Oswald, only that he assumed it was based on seeing what he thought was someone taken out under arrest. But a George Applin escorted by officers into a cruiser as a witness to be taken to headquarters, not under arrest, could be a simple mistaken interpretation on the part of Bernard Haire of what he saw.

The reason I think that is correct that the man Bernard Haire saw was Applin--unrelated to shooting of anyone--and not the mystery man in the balcony, and likely the actual killer of Tippit, reported encountered by deputy sheriff Bill Courson (in Sneed, No More Silence)--is it is known that Applin was taken by police downtown (not as a suspect but as a witness), and it would be somewhat odd if no one saw Applin being taken into a police cruiser by police, meaning it makes full sense that that is what Bernard Haire was seeing. Therefore I reason what Bernard Haire witnessed was the (innocuous) taking of Applin downtown by police which is known to have occurred, with no actual reason to suppose either Applin or the man Bernard Haire saw resembled Oswald in physical appearance. I realize this is a lot less "exciting" explanation of what Bernard Haire saw than florid stories of "Oswald doubles", but so be it. It makes the best sense of the facts to me.

1 hour ago, Sandy Larsen said:

The underlying problem is that right-wing lies get low-income white people to vote Republican, and thus against their own economic interests.

True. I see it as a larger extension of an historical question that still baffles me: why were poor southern whites hostile to blacks (African Americans)? What had blacks ever done to them? Why weren't poor southern whites on the side of the poor blacks, against wealthy white landowners who were oppressing them both?

Well the standard answer is "racism", but that both is and isn't a real explanation. And yet the racism was the mechanism. Similarly, I can imagine no fully convincing counternarrative counterhistory in which the Democratic Party could have made a choice to side on behalf of the marginalized such as blacks, Latinos, gays and transgendered-- without losing those low-income white voters to Republicans. But why is it obvious that that should necessarily have been the case? Yet it seems that it necessarily was the case. 

21 hours ago, Bill Brown said:

"Also, as written in a recent post on this Forum, who do the fingerprints on the front passenger side of Tippit's car belong to?"

Pete Barnes (of the crime lab) found partial prints near the passenger door and window but they weren't discernible.

Bill you're not up to date on the fingerprints. See Myers, With Malice, pp. 336-340 and get up to speed on what you are talking about.

13 hours ago, Bill Brown said:

But, you said this (below).  Sorry man, NOT logical at all:

"Meanwhile, the Tippit killer, who resembled Oswald and was mistaken for Oswald by some witnesses just as numerous witnesses mistakenly identified various persons as Oswald post-assassination, abandoned his light-gray, almost-white, jacket in flight, presumably in order to make identification more difficult in a hot pursuit situation from police. The killer went by Brewer's store, entered the Texas Theatre without purchasing a ticket and went up into the balcony, with intent to kill Oswald next. That intent was thwarted by the timely and rapid arrival of police who saved Oswald's life by arresting him. 

That there were two, not one, persons among the ca. 15 or so patrons inside the theatre that day, who witnesses thought resembled or looked like Oswald--Oswald and someone else--is established from two independent testimonies from inside the theatre..."

Again you're asserting illogic without explaining why any of the above is illogical. For example, your three-dot ellipses at the end leave off that I cited two inside-the-theatre witness testimonies for exactly what you say is "NOT logical at all" (for those two witnesses to have seen what they said they saw). For example, for the life of me I do not understand why you would say it is illogical that a deputy sheriff's claim that he saw a man coming down from the balcony whom he thought was Oswald but who clearly was not, might logically be accounted for by his having seen a man coming down from the balcony who he thought looked like Oswald but clearly was not.

What's illogical about deputy Courson's account on that point? Explain?

"I pulled up and bumped the bicycle rack in front of the theater in front of the theater, left the car and went in and identified myself as an officer to the ticket taker. I didn't know whether she even saw me or not, but I flashed my badge, then walked from there onto the stairs.

"I started up the stairs to the balcony because that is where the call said that he was hiding. I'm reasonably satisfied in my own mind that I met Oswald coming down. I was looking for a man in a white or light colored jacket because at that time I hadn't been told that he had discarded the jacket and that it had been found. So there were two reasons why I didn't stop him. I'm looking for a man in the balcony, not coming down walking casually, and the description didn't fit because he was wearing a kind of plaid or checkered patterned shirt, not the light colored jacket. But I'm reasonably sure that it was Oswald." (Bill Courson, Sheriff's Department, in Sneed, No More Silence [1998], 485).

What's illogical about Courson's story, apart from the mistaken identification of the man he saw as Oswald? Explain?

Another point: whereas Gerald Hill, the main original source of the "automatic" idea, exaggerated and dissembled on his claims of how well he examined the first two or three shell hulls found, the two officers who clearly did handle and examine those first two shell hulls, Poe and Barnes, neither said anything in their reporting about the shells being automatics. When shown the evidence shell hulls later in their Warren Commission testimony, there were issues over finding their marks on what they were shown, but neither of those officers said, "hey wait a minute--these aren't automatics. The shell hull I marked was an automatic." This indicates the "automatic" idea, resting as it does most centrally on an early radio report of one of the least-reliable officers of all, Gerald Hill, as not correct. The idea probably began from witness Callaway, who had military experience, seeing from a distance the killer holding the revolver up high in his left hand in what Callaway thought was standard position to have an automatic reloaded, when actually it was the killer manually unloading shell hulls from a non-automatic revolver (and then manually reloading). Note also the overlooked testimony of Acquila Clemons who told of witnessing manual unloading by the killer. (Also note that Acquila Clemons never claimed, contrary to much mistaken reporting, to have seen a second shooter--she saw two persons only one of whom was the shooter--she saw, looking southward from the northwest corner of Tenth and Patton where she was standing, the interaction between Callaway and the killer on Patton--there was only one shooter, Callaway was not a shooter [https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/27358-tippit-acquila-clemons/; and second from bottom here: https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/27770-a-five-point-road-map-to-accomplishing-a-change-of-consciousness-in-america-concerning-the-jfk-assassination/].)

8 hours ago, Tom Gram said:

This is really killer stuff Greg. It reminded me of something similar I ran into with the mailbox evidence. David Belin avoided having a witness authenticate (or even discuss) certain documents under oath, and instead had the FBI show this witness a photograph of the documents months later and write an incredibly vague report that answered literally none of the relevant questions about those documents. This was almost certainly done to avoid suborning perjury - and what you described with the shells looks to be a variation on the same tactic. 

Interesting your experience finding the same type of thing in a different area Tom. It agrees with what I imagine to be routine case presentation by prosecutor's offices across America--take existing evidence that can be found and tell the most convincing story possible out of what one has. There was a lot of pre-interviewing of witnesses before bringing them under oath for their Warren Commission testimony. As the saying goes for good lawyer practice (at least as I have seen it in courtroom thriller movies), don't ask a witness a question that you do not know in advance what that witness's answer will be.

49 minutes ago, Paul Cummings said:

Hi Greg, thank you for your contribution. I seem to recall reading years ago about Tippit being killed with an .38 automatic based upon the ejection or shells versus Oswald having .38 revolver. Please clarify if you can. Again thanks.

In my view that is an example of an early mistake that once started, never dies. There are people today who still think an automatic was used but it is clear to me that that was just a mistake/early misstatement on the part of witness Callaway and officer Gerald Hill, it was not an automatic. Myers, With Malice, explains that and is totally convincing to me on that detail. The key points are Gerald Hill never examined those shell hulls in person despite claiming he did (Hill said one howler after another in sloppy claims in his interviews, long story there, this being just one more); the find locations of the hulls in the Davis sisters' house front yard means it was not an automatic since if it was an automatic they would have been found right around the Tippit cruiser not away from the location of the shooter at the cruiser when the shots were fired; and multiple witnesses who witnessed the killer manually unloading and reloading as he ran/moved away around the corner from Tenth south on Patton. The shells do match to the kind used in Oswald's revolver--as I understand it snub-nosed .38 Special revolvers were the most common concealed-carry weapon in America at the time so that agreement is not too significant in itself, and more importantly, it also matches to what I believe is the true find of the Tippit murder weapon, the paper-bag snub-nosed Smith & Wesson .38 Special revolver tossed and abandoned (because just recently used in some serious crime) by some unknown party not later than the early morning hours of Sat Nov 23 on a street in downtown Dallas, found by a citizen at about 7:30 am that morning and turned in to Dallas Police that morning, according to an FBI report.  

I posted this nearly a year ago but it seems relevant here again.

TIPPIT BALLISTICS

In not a single instance in the published record—whether in the Warren Commission report or exhibits or in any other venue—are any of the four evidence shells Q74, Q75, Q76, and Q77 (supposedly the four shells ejected from the Tippit killer's revolver found at the scene of the crime) identified under oath by an officer who originally marked them, on the basis of identification of his mark, as the shell he marked. 

The observation above (which is from me) is true and startling, but has been so little noticed that, for example, awareness of this lacuna in published evidence is not even mentioned in the usually scrupulous Myers, With Malice (and the same comment is applicable to other published studies). 

The FBI lab found that the evidence shells turned over to the FBI labeled as the shells found at the Tippit crime scene—Q74, Q75, Q76, Q77—had been fired from Oswald’s revolver to the exclusion of any other weapon (3H466). This is the linchpin of the case against Oswald. The problem with this is there is no clear evidence those shells were the ones found at the Tippit crime scene. 

There are officers testifying to the Warren Commission that they marked shells at the scene (without identifying their mark on evidence shells shown to them). There is an unsigned FBI report to the Warren Commission stating that three Dallas Police officers confirmed to an FBI agent identification of their marks on evidence shells to that FBI agent (but there is no signed document or testimony or known report from that FBI agent reporting that, nor signed document or testimony from any of those three Dallas Police officers saying that directly). There is an officer testifying under oath that he had been shown the four evidence shells earlier (not while under oath), and on that occasion he had identified two shells that he had marked (but without stating an identification of his mark on an evidence shell in present time in that testimony). (He testified under oath that he had formerly said something, but not that what he had said was accurate.) All of this can be found in the Warren Commission testimony. 

But there is no instance of any of the five Dallas police officers who marked the four shells found at the scene prior to turning them into the Crime Lab for safekeeping, under oath in testimony to the Warren Commission, or in sworn written statement, or in any other setting under oath, having been shown any of the evidence shells, identified their mark on it, and identified that shell on the basis of their mark, as the same shell they had received and marked at the scene of the crime. 

It is such an odd lacuna, so easily missed—and it is systematic across the board, applying to all five officers and all four of the shells found at the Tippit crime scene. 

But the other claims—thirdhand statements from other than the marking officers themselves—that those officers identified their marks on the evidence shells read so smoothly that the truth of the short statement at the top of this section—almost as if by some sleight of hand—is not "seen". 

To cut to the chase

The theory of the case developed here is that there were three corruptions in the Dallas Police Department handling of the ballistics evidence in the Tippit case.

(1) The Dallas Police Department did not hand over to the FBI but withheld three of four bullets taken from Tippit's body, after being instructed to hand over all physical evidence in their possession and stating that they had done so.

(2) The four ejected .38 Special shells found at the scene of the crime from the killer's revolver and marked by officers were replaced, sometime between Sat Nov 23 and Tue Nov 26, by person or persons within the Dallas Police Crime Lab, by four substituted shells fired from Oswald's revolver. Marks were scratched on the substitute shells attempting to imitate, not entirely successfully, the officers' marks on the original shells. Following this, the newly-marked shells fired from Oswald’s revolver were handed over to the FBI on Thu Nov 28 to examine whether they were fired from Oswald’s revolver, in order to find out whether Oswald was guilty.

(3) Three live .38 Special cartridges of Winchester-Western manufacture of six taken from Oswald's revolver were replaced by three of the same kind of Remington-Peters manufacture. 

In this reconstruction there were no substitutions in the four body bullets of Tippit, the revolver of Oswald, or the five shells found by officers Boyd and Sims in Oswald's pants pocket. There was no planting of shells at the scene. There was no corruption in the FBI lab with respect to these items. The FBI lab reported accurately on the basis of what they received. There was no intent to be dishonest or willingness to lie under oath with respect to these items on the part of the five officers who originally scratched their marks on those shells.

This is not an argument merely over whether evidence would have held up in court or justified a legal conviction of Oswald. This is an argument that Oswald was actually innocent of the Tippit killing; that whatever else Oswald may or may not have done he did not kill officer Tippit, and on that specific charge he should be exonerated.

Method

One way to test theories is to ask: on the assumption that this theory were true, what would one expect to happen, if so?

If, for example, the theory of the case to be developed here is correct, one might expect to see in the known evidence and testimony:

• Officers noticing otherwise-unidentified marks on the shells which may resemble their own but which look different from their own, causing some confusion or uncertainty in identifications of their marks.
• Officers when asked prior to their testimony if they were prepared to make a positive identification of their mark on a shell expressing reluctance to do so under oath, and responsive to this, if called to testify are not questioned on that point.
• One way of dealing with an inability to obtain direct testimony under oath from officers identifying their marks on shells would be to "conceal" that by workarounds.

On the other hand, if the four shells handed over by the Dallas Police Department to the FBI were the same four shells found at the scene of the crime—a straightforward, clean handling and conveyance of those four shells—one might expect:

• Officers who marked those shells, in their testimony before the Warren Commission would be shown a shell, asked if they could identify their mark on the shell, and then asked if they could identify the shell as the one they had marked, stated clearly under oath, as part of the vast quantity of other Warren Commission testimony.
• Officers who marked those shells would normally be expected to be able to find and identify their own marks without difficulty, and would so testify under oath.

Following is an examination of the testimonies of the five officers who marked the four shells ejected from the killer’s revolver at the scene of the Tippit killing, before those shells entered the custody of the Crime Lab at the Dallas Police station. 

Warren Commission testimony of the five officers who marked the four ejected shells from the killer’s revolver found at the scene of the Tippit killing

Patrolman J. M. Poe

Mr. Ball. Did you put any markings on the hulls?

Mr. Poe. I couldn’t swear to it; no, sir. 

(…)

Mr. Ball. What did you do with the hulls?

Mr. Poe. I turned the hulls into the crime lab, which was at the scene.

Mr. Ball. Do you know the name of the man with the crime lab or from the crime lab?

Mr. Poe. I couldn’t swear to it. I believe Pete Barnes, but I wouldn’t swear to it.

(…)

Mr. Ball. Now, I have here a package which has been marked “Q”—FBI lab. Q-74 to Q-77. Would you look those over and see if there is any identification on there by you to indicate that those were the hulls given to you by [citizen] Benavides?

Mr. Poe. I want to say these two are mine, but I couldn’t swear to it.

Mr. Ball. Did you make a mark?

Mr. Poe. I can’t swear to it; no, sir.

Mr. Ball. But there is a mark on two of these?

Mr. Poe. There is a mark. I believe I put on them, but I couldn’t swear to it. I couldn’t make them out any more.

Mr. Ball. Now, the ones you said you made a mark on are you think it is these two? Q-77 and Q-75?

Mr. Poe. Yes, sir; those two there.

Mr. Ball. Both marked Western Special? They both are marked Western Special? How long did you stay there?

Mr. Poe. At the scene?

Mr. Ball. Uh-huh.

Comment: Poe does make a tentative identification though he “wouldn’t swear to it” of two evidence shells that he thought he had marked out of the four, even though—very oddly (assuming he marked)—he cannot identify his marks. But the marks are the basis for identification, so if Poe cannot find his marks, how is he tentatively identifying at all? That is not asked. It appears Poe was guessing concerning which two he thought he marked, or possibly was influenced by marks which most closely resembled his own on two shells even though he did not think he made those marks. All of this is consistent with an officer encountering forged attempts to imitate his marks on substituted shells.

Under oath, Poe, the first officer to take possession of shells ejected from the killer’s gun at the scene, has testified he is not able to identify marks he remembered making on any of the four shells. The following account from Henry Hurt, Reasonable Doubt, 152-55, is so jaw-dropping I can do no better than quote it at length.

“In 1984, Poe explained to the author that he was absolutely certain that he marked the shells. Indeed, he could not be certain of a single other instance during his twenty-eight years of police work when he had failed to properly mark evidence. He indicated that he became aware that he could not find his markings prior to his Warren Commission testimony ‘when the FBI came down and interviewed us … We were down in the [FBI] office, and I just could not be absolutely positive that my mark was in there.’ While Poe did not specifically say that he was pressured to ‘find’ his marks in the hulls, he volunteered this comment about his experience: ‘I wasn’t going to lie to the man and say I saw my mark when I didn’t. I still wouldn’t do that.’

“Officer Poe insisted to the author that even though he could not find his identifying marks, he felt certain that the hulls were the ones he had taken into evidence at the scene of the Tippit murder. Poe recalled one explanation that he had not mentioned to the Warren Commission two decades earlier. He stated that the reason he was not able to find his markings might have been that so many other identifying marks had been placed in the cartridge hulls, actually on top of his identifying marks, thus obscuring his markings in the thicket of marks from other officials through whose hand the evidence passed. Stated Poe: ‘When it came to [my] looking at them again, there were so many marks in there that I couldn’t find mine … In a better light, or [with] a magnifying glass, I might be able to pick it out.’

“Soon after Poe made this statement, the author examined the cartridge hulls at the National Archives with a lighted magnifying glass. Only Officer Poe can state whether his identifying mark is on the hulls, and he has stated that he cannot find it because it appears lost among so many other marks. What is readily apparent to anyone who examines the hulls is that while there are several identification marks scratched in them, in no case is a marking obliterating another marking. Moreover, in each hull at least 50 percent of the surface area around the inside rim has no marking at all, leaving ample space for even additional identifying marks. There is no conceivable reason for any marking to be placed over another marking.

“The markings in the hulls are distinctive and clearly seen—even with the naked eye. It seems impossible that if Poe’s marks were actually there, he could not find them. Confronted with this, Officer Poe flatly stated, ‘I [have] talked to you all I’m going to talk to you. You already got your mind made up about what you’re going to say. I know what the truth is.’ He then hung up the telephone, refusing to discuss the matter further.

“Dallas Police Sergeant Gerald Hill, a key figure in the arrest of Oswald, was one of the first policemen to arrive at the scene of the Tippit slaying (. . .) At the scene, Sergeant Hill inspected the cartridge hulls and ordered Officer Poe to mark them as evidence and turn them over to the crime lab.

“In 1984 the author interviewed Hill, who rose to the rank of lieutenant before his retirement from the police force (. . .) When asked if he believed the official version on Tippit’s death, he dismissed the question with bombast, stating that the cartridge hulls from the scene, proved to have been fired in Oswald’s pistol, sealed the case.

“The author referred to the grave inconsistencies concerning Poe’s identification of the hulls, suggesting the possibility that they might have been replaced by hulls not discovered at the scene and marked by Poe. The implication, of course, is that when the hulls marked by Poe were tested in the lab and were found not to have been fired from Oswald’s pistol, they were replaced by hulls that had been fired from Oswald’s pistol—after it came into the custody of the police. (. . .)

“Hill dismissed the suggestion with the following statement: ‘If they did that [replaced the cartridge hulls], they would also have forged Poe’s marks.’

“It was pointed out to Hill that, as the facts prove, it made no difference that Poe’s marks could not be found. The evidence still became the cornerstone of the case against Oswald in the killing of Tippit. Hill acknowledged that the circumstances concerning the apparent disappearance of Poe’s marks made it appear that something like this might have been done. Then, Hill added, ‘If it were any other police department in the United States, I would say that is possible. But this department is so clean that it scares me.’” 

Sergeant W. E. Barnes 

Mr. Belin. Now you mentioned out there that some cartridge cases were found, is that correct?

Mr. Barnes. That is true.

Mr. Belin. Sergeant, I will ask you to examine Commission Exhibits Nos. Q-74, Q-75, Q-76, and Q-77, and ask you to state whether or not there appears to be any identification marks on any of these exhibits that appear to show that they were examined or identified by you?

Mr. Barnes. I placed “B”, the best that I could, inside of the hull of Exhibit 74—I believe it was Q-74 and Q-75, as you have them identified.

Comment: “I believe it was” suggests some hesitation or uncertainty. Does he not know for sure? How strong is his belief? Belin does not follow up but goes to other matters.

(. . .)

Mr. Belin. Now all four of these exhibits appear to be cartridge case hulls, is that correct?

Mr. Barnes. .38 caliber.

Mr. Belin. .38 caliber pistol?

Mr. Barnes. Yes. 

Mr. Belin. They are kind of silver or chrome or grey in color? You can identify it that way?

Mr. Barnes. Yes.

Mr. Belin. How many of these hulls, to the best of your recollection, did you identify out there?

Mr. Barnes. I believe that the patrolman gave me two, and Captain Doughty received the third.

Mr. Belin. The two that the patrolman gave you, were the ones that you put this identification mark on the inside of?

Mr. Barnes. Yes.

Mr. Belin. What instrument did you use to place this mark?

Mr. Barnes. I used a diamond point pen.

Mr. Belin. You put it on Q-74 and Q-75?

Mr. Barnes. It looks like there are others that put their markings in there too.

Comment: Does not answer the question. The question calls for a yes or no answer. Belin accepts the non- or ambiguous answer to the question without followup or clarification and turns to another topic. Barnes does not clearly state that he marked Q74 or Q75. The “too” might be parsed as implying an unspoken affirmative answer to Belin’s question but it is not straightforward and Belin does not seek to have it clarified.

The FBI later reported that Barnes had changed his mind on one of the two shell identifications that he believed he had marked, from Q75 to Q77 (CE 2011). According to this FBI report, Barnes retracted his belief expressed in sworn testimony that he had marked Q75. An anonymous author of the FBI report, not under oath relays secondhand from FBI Special Agent Odum from whom no signed document or testimony is known on this matter—meaning the FBI report is relaying thirdhand (and unsworn) hearsay from Barnes. According to this anonymously-authored FBI report relaying thirdhand from Barnes, Barnes identified Q77, not Q75, as the second of the two shells he marked, as well as Q74. That is the latest known word from believed to be from Barnes concerning shell identification.

Going back to the Warren Commission testimony (when Barnes said he believed he had marked Q74 and Q75), Commission Counsel Belin, asking the questions, was very concerned about the issue of marks, referring to them repeatedly in his questioning. The very purpose of the marks is to establish that an item in evidence is the same that was from the scene of the crime. It is therefore extraordinarily odd, with Barnes directly being questioned, and Belin having the four evidence shells physically presented to Barnes to examine, and Belin asking Barnes repeated questions about marks, that Belin does not ask the one question that most matters, the reason marking is done in the first place: could Barnes identify his mark on a shell he was looking at in front of him? In all the verbiage of his questioning of Barnes, Belin never asks that question of Barnes, which is sort of the whole point of the thing.

These oddities are what one might anticipate—they become comprehensible—if Barnes had marked shells at the crime scene and then, like Poe, sees marks on the evidence shells which do not look like he made them. But Barnes reasons those marks must be his because where else could his marks be. The reactions of Poe and Barnes are in agreement with a scenario of honest officers being confronted with forged marks on substituted shells. The reactions are not so easily in agreement with what would be expected if the marks were genuine.

Note finally that the two evidence shells Poe said he thought he had marked (Q75, Q77), the two Barnes under oath believed he had marked (Q74, Q75), and the two Barnes was later reported thirdhand to have identified (Q74, Q77), differ from each other, even though Poe and Barnes marked the same two shells at the scene of the crime. There is the impression something is amiss here.

Captain G. M. Doughty

He received and marked the third of the four shells found at the Tippit crime scene. He was not called to testify before the Warren Commission. No known sworn testimony or signed statement from Doughty exists with respect to identification of his mark on an evidence shell. (But see below on CE 2011.) 

Detective C. N. Dhority

He was one of two officers who received and marked the fourth of the four shells found at the Tippit crime scene.

Mr. Ball. Now, what did you do with the empty hull that was given to you, that Virginia gave you?

Mr. Dhority. I gave it to Lieutenant Day in the crime lab.

Mr. Ball. Do you know whether or not Virginia or Jeanette Davis found an empty shell—did she tell you she found an empty shell—Jeannette Davis?

Mr. Dhority. I don’t recall—it seems like she told me she had found one earlier and gave it to the police out there, as well as I remember.

Mr. Ball. Gave it to the police that day?

Mr. Dhority. Yes; I believe so.

Comment: That is all of the questions asked by Mr. Ball about the shell, as he turned to other matters. Dhority is not asked about marking the shell or identification of his mark or identification of one of the evidence shells as the one he marked. (Why?)

There is the appearance that none of these officers were willing to commit perjury, which means they were not willing to say they recognized marks as theirs which they did not recognize as theirs. The simple reason the Warren Commission did not obtain simple and direct identification-of-evidence-shell testimony from these officers is because these officers were not willing to commit perjury.

Detective C. W. Brown

Mr. Brown. Lieutenant Wells ordered my partner, G. N. Dhority, and I, to go to the Davis residence where Mrs. Barbara Davis handed my partner this spent hull at approximately 7 p.m. that evening. That was brought to the homicide and robbery bureau by myself and Detective Dhority.

Mr. Belin. Was it brought to that bureau at the time you brought the two women?

Mr. Brown. At the same time the Davis women were brought to the office for affidavits and identification.

Mr. Belin. Who did you turn that cartridge shell over to?

Mr. Brown. That went to the crime lab, Dallas Crime Lab.

Mr. Belin. Did you, yourself, turn it over?

Mr. Brown. No; Detective Dhority handled that.

Mr. Belin. Detective Dhority handled that?

Mr. Brown. We were keeping this evidence in a chain there. Mrs. Barbara Jeanette Davis handed him the spent cartridge. He gave it to the crime lab himself which was initialed by both of us.

Mr. Belin. Anything else, sir?

Comment: That is all of the questions asked of Detective Brown concerning identification of evidence shells, which is to say nothing. Brown testifies that he marked, but never identifies or is asked to identify his marking on one of the evidence shells. As with the case with Dhority, there is the appearance that the lack of questioning to Brown concerning identification of an evidence shell as the one he marked, is because there was knowledge on the part of the Commission counsel that Brown would not offer the identification wanted. (Otherwise he would have been asked.)

The third-hand anonymously-authored FBI report, CE 2011

“On June 12, 1964, four .38 Special cartridge cases, designated as Exhibits C47-50, were shown to Captain G. M. Doughty of the Dallas Poilce Department by Special Agent Bardwell D. Odum, Federal Bureau of Investigation. Captain Doughty identified his marking on one of these cases which also bears a marking ‘Q76’. Captain Doughty stated this is the same shell which he obtained from Barbara Jeanette Davis at Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. (. . .)

“On June 12, 1964, the same four cartridge cases, designated as Exhibits C47-C50, were shown by Special Agent Bardwell D. Odum to Detective C. N. Dhority, Homicide Division Dallas Police Department. Detective Dhority identified his marking on one of these cartridge cases which also is marked ‘Q75’. He stated this is the same cartridge case which he obtained from Virginia Davis, Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. (. . .)

“On June 12, 1964, four .38 Special cartridge cases, designated as Exhibits C47-C50, were shown to Dallas Police officer J. M. Poe at his home at 1716 Cascade, Mesquite, Texas, by Special Agent Bardwell D. Odum. Officer Poe stated he had received two similar cartridge cases on November 22, 1963, from Domingo Benavides at Dallas, Texas, and had on the same date given them to Pete Barnes, Crime Laboratory, Dallas Police Department. He stated he recalled marking these cases before giving them to Barnes, but he stated after a thorough examination of the four cartridges shown to him on June 12, 1964, he cannot locate his marks: therefore, he cannot positively identify any of these cartridges as being the same ones he received from Benavides. 

“On July 6, 1964, Officer J. M. Poe, Dallas Police Department, advised Special Agent Bardwell Odum that he marked the two cartridge cases on November 22, 1963, ‘J.M.P.’

“On June 15, 1964, the same cartridge cases, designated as Exhibits C47-C50, were shown by Special Agent Bardwell D. Odum to Pete Barnes, an officer of the Dallas Police Department assigned to the Crime Laboratory, and he identified his marking on two of these cases, which also bear the markings “Q74” and “Q77”. He advised these are the same two cartridge cases which he received from officer J. M. Poe of the Dallas Police Department at Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963.” (CE 2011)

Comment: CE 2011 is an unusual document. Dated July 7, 1964 and issued from FBI, Dallas, anonymously authored and unsigned, it states its purpose is to respond to the President’s Commission’s request for tracing various items of physical evidence. Its content consists of description of what FBI agents, such as Bardwell Odum in the case of the Tippit physical evidence, learned from various witnesses. If any error or misrepresentation were to come to light, it is difficult to see that there would be accountability, since information from witnesses is presented in the form of thirdhand hearsay authored anonymously and with no known supporting interview-report documentation. There is an issue in that document of witness testimony on another ballistics issue involving a denial by Bardwell Odum that he had anything to do with several interviews attributed to him in that document; see Aguilar and Thompson at http://whokilledjfk.net/magic_bullet.htm.

A pattern to what is missing

In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s story, “Silver Blaze”, Sherlock Holmes studying a case suggested attention be given to “the curious incident of the dog in the night-time”. But, he was told, the dog did nothing in the night-time. “That was the curious incident,” said Sherlock Holmes. The point is it is noticed that something did not happen which should have happened.

Is it not just obvious what was going on? The Warren Commission was functioning like a prosecutor making a case in court. They did not suborn perjury, but presented the best case based on the evidence they had. The Warren Commission hearings and exhibits have no testimony from any of the five officers identifying their marks on shells Q47-Q50 because no such testimony was obtainable from those officers. CE 2011 was a fallback, a document without name attached and layers of deniability. CE 2011 asserts unsworn thirdhand hearsay identifications of physical evidence from officers none of whom were willing to state such directly in their own name under oath. The missing sworn testimony from an officer concerning identification of his mark on any of those evidence shells was rather successfully disguised such that the systematic lacuna on this critical point went largely unnoticed.