Greg Doudna

4 hours ago, Micah Mileto said:

Sorry, not true, not Robert Frazier's initials! See how clear the R and the F look when the bullet was digitally recreated in a computer https://www.nist.gov/image/kennedy-stretcher-bullet-digital

 

You are right Micah. The NIST photo, which I had not seen until your link, is a superior photo, and it does show "RF" in the position I was reading "ELT" from the NARA photos. I was mistaken, and I apologize. With that ELT reading removed--because it clearly is RF and not ELT in the superior NIST photo--I have to eat crow. With that reading of Elmer Todd's initials gone, there do not seem to be Elmer Todd initials anywhere identifiable on C399 in the photos. Or if there are, someone else will have to find them, because I cannot now.

Stu Wexler also privately informed me that two well-known names did go to the National Archives to check the artifact, C399, in person, and found no Elmer Todd initials. And without any question, in-person examination of the artifact is superior to any photograph.   

I apologize for the error.

Update: Nov 13, 2021-- a superior photo of C399 from NIST brought to attention by Micah has shown my analysis below on C399 from NARA photos is incorrect, and I retract the below. gd

 

 

 

The argument is convincing about Oswald's change of clothes at the rooming house, both shirt and pants. However it does not logically follow that the fibers from C150 found on the 6th floor rifle--Oswald's rifle--necessarily were therefore planted by police. Since it was Oswald's rifle it is not surprising that fibers from a shirt belonging to Oswald would be found on it, from his having held or fired the rifle at some point during his ownership and possession of it, but that could be from any time in the past. What the significance is however is, if Oswald did change his clothes including his shirt in Oak Cliff newly into C150 at ca. 1 pm as you bring out, then the fibers from C150 found on the rifle could not have been from Oswald's use of that rifle at ca. 12:30 pm that day, since Oswald was not wearing C150 at the time the shots were fired of the assassination. 

In other words, planting of fibers from C150 on the rifle is not necessary to the argument here, as I see it.

On the bus transfer, as you rightly point out it is common and routine when changing clothes to transfer contents of one pocket into the pocket of the other, such as that bus transfer. I interpret the significance of the bus transfer (I realize you have a different interpretation but anyway this is mine) is that Oswald intended to use that transfer to catch a southbound bus on Beckley to get to the Theatre. He first feinted (intentionally) in housekeeper Earlene's view as if he was headed north, letting her see him--knowing she would see him--waiting at the bus stop heading north, before (out of her sight) moving to catch a southbound. However for some reason he did not use the bus transfer and paid for the southbound bus out of pocket, I assume, as the explanation for why the bus transfer remained in his shirt pocket unused. I realize the southbound bus trip on Beckley is unverified, but it seems to be the explanation involving the least number of anomalies for how he did get to the Texas Theatre.

Carroll Jarnagin August 1968 interview with Barry Ernest

This is an interview of Carroll Jarnagin on August 1, 1968 by Barry Ernest published in The Girl on the Stairs, 2018 edition (first published 2012), pp. 114-117. In this interview Jarnagin sticks to his story, shows fear of talking, shows no motivation whatever to have fabricated or invented the story, and tells the details of what Jarnagin interpreted as an attempt on his life related to his attempt to give testimony concerning what he had seen and heard at the Carousel Club that night of Oct 4, 1963.

But before Barry Ernest got Jarnagin to talk in Aug 1968, he first tried to get him to talk in March 1968 and failed. Here is Barry Ernest telling of his first failed attempt (pp. 80-81):

"One of the leads Penn Jones provided to me was Carroll Jarnagin, a Dallas attorney who claimed he had seen Oswald in Jack Ruby's Carousel Club not long before the assassination (. . .) My phone calls to Jarnagin went unanswered. So I decided to visit his office at 511 North Akard Street in the midtown section of Dallas. I expected to find a typically busy legal practice. But when I opened the door, I walked into an eight-foot by eight-foot room. A few feet ahead was a single chair for visitors. To my left, a startled man rose from a small metal desk so quickly that his chair slammed into the wall inches behind. Jarnagin was working out o a broom closet.

"Jarnagin was a frail person and of average height. Probably in his early forties, he wore glasses and a business suit. He smiled as I entered. He then offered me his hand, no doubt expecting me to be another--maybe his only--client. As he sat back down, I told him the nature of my visit. Would he mind answering a few questions?

 "The smile left his face more quickly than it would have taken to traverse his meager office. He motioned for me to sit down as he reached for a cigarette. I settled into his only other chair. Minutes of silence drifted by. 'i don't want to talk about it,' he finally said. 

"I told him I only wanted to know what it was that made him so sure the man he saw was Oswald. He refused to answer. Instead, he nervously puffed on one cigarette, then another, and another. The guy was making me uneasy.

"After ten minutes of this, I got up to leave. Jarnagin motioned for me to sit again. He apologized for his silence, saying he had already provided the FBI with a full statement. That agency had disbelieved him, he said, labeling it a case of 'misidentification'. 

Comment: The FBI believed Jarnagin's story was a "misidentification"? That is not lying or fabrication. If the FBI believed it was misidentification, that is exactly what it in fact was. But if the FBI or other law enforcement did think it was a misidentification, someone other than Oswald discussing with Ruby a contract killing by rifle from a building on a parade route in Dallas of the governor of Texas two months before shots were fired from a rifle in a building on a parade route that wounded the governor of Texas and killed the president of the United States sitting next to him--would not that have been of interest to investigate? However nothing in the FBI reports that I have seen mentions a misidentification interpretation as explanation for Jarnagin's story. There is no evidence that the FBI, or any other law enforcement agency or the Warren Commission, believed Jarnagin had misidentified someone else for Oswald who had discussed those things with Ruby--even though that is exactly what happened. 

"'And that is the way I'm going to accept it,' he added. He stared at me intensely. Then he averted his eyes, as if it was me giving him the creeps.

"Hoping to break the ice, I said it was Penn Jones who had mentioned his name. He immediately asked how many deaths had occurred to witnesses up to that point. I told him Jones had the number pegged at forty-five. 'I don't want to be number forty-six,' he muttered.

"That was when it hit me. Jarnagin wasn't toying with me. He wasn't playing games. He was scared.

"'Well, if I make you uncomfortable...' I said.

"He did nothing to stop me from leaving this time. Jones told me there were people in Dallas who would be afraid to talk. I had just met one of them.

Five months later Barry Ernest tried again with Jarnagin and this time succeeded. After telling of a chilly reception he had received talking to Sheriff Bill Decker in the Criminal Courts Building in Dallas, in July 1968, Ernest writes:

"It wasn't much better when I knocked at another office. The response I got was meek. 'Come in.'

"When I did, Carroll Jarnagin glanced up from his desk with a smile. His pleasantness left when he recognized who had entered.

"'Remember me?'

"He reached into his desk drawer and quickly removed and opened a pack of cigarettes, extracting and then igniting a cigarette. I certainly brought out a most unhealthy reaction in this guy. He waved his free hand toward the chair, indicating I should sit. Jarnagin had done nothing to decorate the place. It smelled and looked the same as it had when I was here last, five months ago. 'I remember you,' he said. He proceeded to tell me my name, where I was from, and the exact date and time of our previous meeting. He brought forth details of my past I had not remembered telling him during the idle chatter I apparently had lapsed into while we had talked last March. Then he gave me a verbatim recitation of the questions I had asked him back then, and the answers he had provided, all without benefit of notes. The man had total recall.

"'So,' I began, 'can I get you to talk a bit about seeing Oswald at the Carousel Club?'

"Jarnagin returned to his shell, puffing profusely on what seemed like an endless supply of cancer sticks. 'How many deaths now?' he suddenly blurted out. 'What?' 'How many deaths of witnesses does Jones show now?' 'I don't really know,' I said honestly. 'I haven't been in touch with him yet.' 'I'm sure it's higher than the forty-five you mentioned the last time you were here.' I had forgotten the number.

As usual, Jarnagin refused to answer my questions. He even declined my idea of simply nodding yes or no in lieu of a verbal response. After fifteen minutes of this nonsense, I got up to leave. Jarnagin raised his index finger and coughed out a plea.

"'Wait,' he gasped. 'Please sit down.' He studied me a bit longer, then broke his silence.

"'It was Oswald I saw that night at the club.'

"I asked how he could be so sure. Was his eyesight as sharp as his memory? He said he was able to see the man distinctly, since Oswald occupied the booth next to where Jarnagin was sitting, and based on the tantalizing conversation he heard, the attorney had begun to pay close attention.

Comment: my impression was the seating was at tables, not booths. Jarnagin's letter and narrative to the FBI in 1963 refers to tables and eye contact and line of sight to Ruby and the other man at the next table.

"That was October 4, 1963. When Oswald's picture appeared on television and in the papers nearly seven weeks later, Jarnagin said he immediately recognized him as the man he had seen with Ruby. 'Were there any other witnesses to what was beng said?' I asked. 'I was accompanied by a young woman,' he answered. 'Her name was Shirley Mauldin, but she denies it now.'

Comment: In the FBI interview of Shirley Mauldin (26H259-60, https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1142#relPageId=295), she did not deny that she accompanied Jarnagin that night. According to the FBI report, she said "she overheard no conversation in the Carousel Club between Ruby and anyone, and she could recall no discussion regarding the shooting of the Governor of Texas ... she was definite in her recollection that she and Carroll did not engage in any conversation regarding the reporting of anything they had overheard to the proper authorities." This simply says Jarnagin did not discuss what he overheard with her; he never said he did, and given what he was hearing that is not surprising. Shirley Mauldin did not deny she was with Jarnagin; she did not deny that Ruby was at the table next to them (according to the FBI report; no record she was asked); did not deny that Ruby was talking to a man at the next table (according to the FBI report; no record she was asked). She denied only that she had heard anything, or that Jarnagin had told her anything about it. What Jarnagin is saying here that Shirley Mauldin was denying is a little unclear. The conversations and quotes told by Barry Ernest are identified as from written notes.

"Jarnagin said much of the conversation he overheard centered on a plot by Chicago gangsters to eliminate Kennedy. The plot was successful, he felt, because of Ruby's connections to organized crime.

Comment: I do not recall Jarnagin's original account saying anything about "Chicago' as the location of the implied organized-crime interests behind the discussed contract killing of Governor Connally. It could be "Chicago" is Jarnagin's comment in clarification based on assumption, not a detail learned or heard from the overheard conversation.

"'You're not writing a book, am I right?' he asked. "'No,' I said. 'I'm here strictly for my own curiosity'.

"'Good,' he said, 'because I'm afraid that if I talk publicly about it, they will get me too.' Jarnagin was concerned for his life because of a previous incident. During Jack Ruby's trial in early 1964, Jarnagin said he was awakened in the middle of the night by a car idling just outside his bedroom window. As he drew the curtains aside to investigate, he noticed a hose attached to the exhaust pipe of the vehicle. The hose snaked its way over to the air-conditioning unit he had running in his window. Carbon-monoxide gas was filling his room. Whoever had set up the contraption must have discovered he was awake, Jarnagin said, because seconds later the car sped away, dragging the hose behind it. The next morning, Jarnagin found an empty can of ether sitting outside the window. He discovered that it too had been poured into his air-conditioning fan. Had he not been awakened, he would have been overcome by the combined fumes. 'Fortunately, the only consequence was a three-day headache.'

"Did he associate the attempt on his life with what he had seen at the Carousel Club? 'Most definitely,' he replied. 'I have absolutely no other reason for why it occurred.'

"'And you never told any of this to the Warren Commission?' 'They never contacted me,' Jarnagin answered. 'I notified the FBI right after the assassination about what I had seen and heard at Ruby's club, but I guess they weren't interested either. Other than Penn Jones, you're the only person I've really talked to.'"

Skipping over some recapitulation of Wade's Warren Commission testimony re Jarnagin (which I discussed earlier), resuming:

"I asked Jarnagin why he chose to talk to the district attorney if he feared for his life. 'I thought I could help,' Jarnagin replied. 'And the attempt on my life did not occur until after I had offered my information to Henry Wade.'

"'And the polygraph test?' I asked. 'Wade told the Commission it showed you were not telling the truth.'

"Jarnagin shrugged. 'What can I say? The polygraph is notoriously unreliable ... and I was very nervous. I was aware of how the government was describing the relationship between Ruby and Oswald, and I knew different.'

"Suddenly Jarnagin went mute, perhaps sensing he had said enough, or too much. I decided to leave after one final question.

"'How do you know, in all honesty and with such certainty, without any doubt at all, that the man you saw talking with Jack Ruby that night was Lee Oswald? Could you possibly have been mistaken?'

"The attorney took a final, long puff on his cigarette, then slowly snuffed out what remained of it in the ashtray. He leaned back in his chair, clasped his hands behind his head, and without expression, looked me squarely in the eyes for what seemed like several minutes.

"'It was Oswald,' he answered. 'I know it was him.'" 

Carroll Jarnagin 1988 interview with Jim Marrs

This is an interview of Carroll Jarnagin in the summer of 1988 by Jim Marrs published in Marrs, Crossfire, 2013 edition, pp. 393-394. The key points of interest are Jarnagin's sticking to his story--making no profit from it, seeking no publicity from it, no identifiable self-interest served by it--twenty years after the Barry Ernest interview, still sticking to his story despite its having been disbelieved and the reported failure on the polygraph test. So it is a judgment call: does this sound like a witness who made up this story? Or does it sound like a witness who did witness an interaction of Crafard and Ruby but got some details garbled, chief of which was a mistaken identification of Crafard as Oswald? 

"Jarnagin explained to this author that he visited Ruby's Carousel Club on October 4, 1963, to discuss a legal case with one of Ruby's strippers.

Comment: Marrs' telling has some mistakes. The woman Jarnagin was with was not a current employee of Ruby though said she had previously worked for Ruby.

"While seated in a booth at the club, Jarnagin overheard Jack Ruby--whom he knew well--talking with another man. Jarnagin heard the man tell Ruby, 'Don't use my real name. I'm going by the name of O. H. Lee.' This, of course, was the name Lee Harvey Oswald used to rent a room on North Beckley in Oak Cliff.

Comment: There are the booths again, just as in the 1968 interview with Barry Ernest.  On not using his real name, Curtis LaVerne Crafard (or Craford after 1964) was using a different name "Larry", and my assumption is Jarnagin's claim to have heard "O.H. Lee" was some misunderstanding of an overheard "Larry", that is, Ruby addressed Crafard one way, and Crafard corrected him and asked to be called Larry, misunderstood by Jarnagin as "Lee". Also, the original claim of Jarnagin in 1963 of the name he heard was not "O.H. Lee" but "H.L. Lee". One can see how the memory of the initials was "shaped" by the belief that it was Oswald, such that 25 years later the initials were now remembered to match all three of Oswald's names.  

"Jarnagin described this meeting: 'These men were talking about plans to kill the governor of Texas. Ruby explained, 'He [Governor Connally] won't work with us on paroles. With a few of the right boys out we could really open up this state, with a little cooperation from the governor.' Then Ruby offered Lee a drug franchise. Ruby also said that the boys really wanted to kill Robert Kennedy. Lee offered to go to Washington to do the job. They then discussed using public lockers and pay telephones as part of hiding their plot. Ruby assured Lee that he could shoot Connally from a window in the Carousel Club and then escape out a back door. Lee was asking for money. He wanted half of the money in advance, but Ruby told him he would get one lump sum after the job was done.'

Comment: the "drug franchise" offer is new (not in Jarnagin's 1963). The mention of "using public lockers and pay telephones" is new.

"One thing that sets Jarnagin's story apart from the others is that he contacted authorities with his information prior to the assassination. The day after he heard Ruby's conversation, Jarnagin telphoned. Nothing came of this.

Comment: Actually Jarnagin said he made two telephone calls anonymously (without giving his name) to the Texas Dept. of Public Safety (state highway patrol), or the Texas Rangers, in Austin anonymously trying to get a warning message to Gov. Connally, but neither of those agencies confirmed those calls were received. In light of the parallel example of the destruction of an Oswald note delivered to the Dallas FBI two weeks before the assassination, although that is a different and unrelated agency it illustrates a bureaucratic incentive to deny receipt of anything unusual, particularly in the nature of a warning not acted upon, relative to Oswald prior to the assassination. So Jarnagin's claim and the Texas Dept. of Public Safety's denial could be interpreted either way, a "he says versus they say" conflicting claim. Since Jarnagin said he refused to give his name when making the two phone calls to Austin, is it also possible although the officers answering may have been polite and humored the caller, they internally regarded it as a crank call and did no paperwork on it? (was it procedure to have paperwork on every call including crank calls? I don't know.) One highly relevant point would be whether phone records confirmed whether or not Jarnagin made phone calls to Austin that day from his home phone, and to what numbers--that could have confirmed or disconfirmed that matter straight up--but there is no record that the FBI made that check (why not?).

"Jarnagin stated, '[After Ruby shot Oswald] I definitely realized that the picture in the November 23, 1963, Dallas Times Herald of Lee Harvey Oswald was a picture of the man using the name O. H. Lee, whose conversation with Jack Ruby I had overheard back on Octobver 5, 1963." 

Comment: See my above on Frances Hise, same thing. Whereas Oswald almost certainly never was in the Carousel, Crafard met Ruby about this time and Ruby invited him to live at the Carousel. It was no impersonation, no double, nothing complicated. The stories of witnesses Hise and Jarnagin were true in that they saw a person. They misidentified that person as Oswald when it was actually Crafard, due to an accident of similar physical description and appearance. Again Jarnagin uses the initials "O.H. Lee" instead of what he informed the FBI in 1963 he heard: "H.L. Lee" (assuming Marrs is quoting Jarnagin accurately here, which I assume is the case).

"After the assassination, Jarnagin again contacted the authorities, this time the Dallas police and the FBI. He was interviewed but his startling account of a Ruby-Oswald plot was buried deep in the volumes of the Warren Commission and never mentioned in its report.

Comment: Jarnagin contacted the FBI, in the form of a letter directly to J. Edgar Hoover personally, within days of the assassination, but there is no record that he contacted the Dallas Police Department. He did later talk to Henry Wade, District Attorney of Dallas County (and former law school classmate of Jarnagin's), when Wade was preparing the prosecution of Ruby for the murder of Oswald. 

"In fact, the Warren Commission quickly dismissed rumors circulating throughout Dallas in 1963-1964 that Ruby and Oswald knew each other by stating, 'All assertions that Oswald was seen in the company of Ruby or anyone else at the Carousel Club have been investigated. None of them merits any credence.'

Comment: I believe that Warren Commission statement is accurate.

"Jarnagin said when he tried to tell the FBI what he knew, agents accused him of having hallucinations. The attorney huffed, 'It was clearly abuse of a witness.'

Comment: There were two central problems with Jarnagin's story. The first was the mistaken identification in which Jarnagin thought he saw Oswald. He didn't. That was the question of interest to the Warren Commission and Jarnagin was wrong on the identification, but not wrong on having seen the interaction of Ruby and the man itself. What Jarnagin did see was Crafard and Ruby, which in itself would not be too significant or surprising if it were not for what Jarnagin said he heard them saying, not realizing that it was Crafard. That is the actual importance of the Jarnagin story--what he said he heard in light of the correct identity that it was Ruby and Crafard. The second problem is the polygraph, reported failed by Jarnagin, which I do not have a good explanation for other than in this case, based on the total picture, I just think that polygraph report is not reliable or in error, with the polygraph perhaps measuring self-doubt of Jarnagin concerning what he saw. It is a little difficult for me to believe that Jarnagin would intentionally carry out an elaborate lie of this nature--all the way to a serious letter to J. Edgar Hoover which if it was a fabrication would risk loss of his license to practice law. And what was going on with District Attorney Wade, who should have understood what polygraph examinations measure--denying under oath that he believed Jarnagin had intentionally lied, even though Jarnagin failed the polygraph? Wade's interpretation was Jarnagin believed what he was saying was true but it was his imagination, and that the polygraph detected that instead of deception--that is what Wade told the Warren Commission in his testimony, even though it makes no sense. Was Wade trying to be nice to an old law school fellow classmate? (By giving something other than accurate truth under oath concerning what polygraph tests measure?) Who knows.

Frances Hise and "Ossie" in the Carousel Club

I believe I have identified another Carousel Club sighting of Crafard mistaken for Oswald, exactly analogous to that of Jarnagin, and thereby removing one more mistaken claim of a witness seeing Oswald in the Carousel Club: Frances Hise. Frances Hise appears in many books as a witness claiming to have seen Oswald and Ruby together in the Carousel Club. But whereas Oswald almost certainly never was in the Carousel Club, Crafard was living there on October 23, 1963, the date Frances Hise, a young woman applying for a job with Jack Ruby, reported the following (this is from an FBI document dated Nov 28, 1966):

"On November 28, 1966, Inspector Gino Marionetti of the San Francisco Police Department made available a copy of his report regarding the above mentioned interview [with Frances Hise on Nov 26, 1966]. (. . .) According to the aforementioned police department report, Frances Hise advised she was (<lines blocked out>) She indicated that on October 23, 1963 she was in Jack Ruby's place in Dallas, Texas. She described his place as being across the street from the Dolphus Hotel on Commerce Street and next to the Colony Club in Dallas. She indicated she was talking to Ruby about employment as a cocktail waitress when a person she described as white, male, American, five feet five inches, dark hair and approximately thirty years of age came on to the premises.

"Continuing, Frances Hise advised Inspector Gino Marionetti that Ruby referred to this man as 'Ossie' and told him to go into the back room. He then joined this man immediately and Miss Frances Hise left the premises.

"Finally in the aforementioned police report, Inspector Marionetti stated that Miss Hise advised him that there was no doubt in her mind that 'Ossie' and Lee Harvey Oswald were one and the same person." (https://maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=60403#relPageId=108&search=frances_irene hise)

Physical description: the 5'5" is shorter than both Oswald and Crafard, but her 5'5" height memory estimate is less discrepant with Crafard's 5'8" than Oswald's 5'9". Crafard was an inch shorter than Oswald. The "dark hair" is consistent with other witness testimonies of Crafard's hair as dark brown and darker than Oswald's. 

What he was doing there: Miss Hise saw Ruby greet the man and direct him to "the back room". Crafard was living in a room next to Ruby's office. 

Identification by Miss Hise of the man as Oswald: in agreement with other post-assassination retroactive confusions of Crafard with Oswald, Frances Hise simply made the same mistake, because the man she saw with Ruby (and having no idea otherwise who he was) had some resemblance to Oswald later in the news. Just as was the case with Jarnagin and others.

And what about her remembering Ruby greeting the man as "Ossie"? When this incident is recounted in some assassination-conspiracy books I have noticed it is misspelled "Ozzie". "Ozzie" is how "Oswald" would be shortened in sound. But the document does not say "Ozzie". There was no "Ozzie". What she said Ruby said was "Ossie", sort of like "horsey", or in this case, it is clear (since the man had to have been Crafard, and not Oswald) that she heard Ruby addressing Crafard as "L. C." . . . for "Larry Crafard" . . . "LC"--remembered by Miss Hise as "Ossie"!

And from this routine Crafard sighting a ton of mystification developed over another alleged Ruby-Oswald sighting in the Carousel Club. It was not Oswald. But it did involve a truthful witness who simply was mistaken concerning the identification. No Oswald double. No impersonation. Nothing complicated. Just Crafard.

All of the above is a report of what Frances Hise herself told a law enforcement officer. In addition, there is this hearsay from a man who says Frances Hise told him this when she (Miss Hise) was drunk: "Hise was quite drunk and informed him that she had been working in Ruby's bar in Dallas, Texas. He noted that she informed him that Lee Harvey Oswald came into the bar and asked her if he could buy her, Hise, a drink. Later Ruby took Oswald into his office in the back of the bar according to the story Hise related to Tooze" (https://maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=60403#relPageId=111&search=frances_irene hise). Again this agrees with Crafard, who chatted up women and drank alcohol (and was present in the Carousel Club where he was living on Oct 23, 1963), none of which agrees with Oswald.

4 hours ago, Gil Jesus said:

I'm not aware of testimony that drivers were cutting off sections of the transfer like cutting paper dolls.

I AM aware, however that McWatters said he PUNCHED the transfer for 1 pm.

"I work that run all the time. I PUNCH ( emphasis mine ) at 1 o'clock every day." ( 2 H 285 )

Not cut, not tear, but PUNCH the transfer.

I hope this explains my position a little clearer.

I don't follow you here. In reading McWatters' Warren Commission testimony, it is just plain he refers to cutting with a cutter to tell the time, plus two punches, one prepunched on either "AM" or "PM" (punch #1) which with the cutting gives the time, and then at the point the customer gets off and asks for the transfer, a second punch identifying the destination stop (punch #2). That's two punches and one cut for each bus transfer. 

McWatters: "cut your transfers across your cutter ... it is just a little thing that you raise up and down and you can adjust them ... if you wanted at 1:15, 1 'oclock would be across this direction. If you wanted it 1:15 you would cut across this direction ... 10:25, I will just cut it, in other words, cut it across there, and cut it. In other words, it would show at 10:30 ... Yes, sir. In other words, I just reached up on my cutter and just tore off one which is already punched ... It was already punched ..." (pp. 268-269)

You cite McWatters' language of "punching for 1 o'clock" at p. 285 but Mr. Ball of the Warren Commission uses the identical language on the same page you cite, and both McWatters and Mr. Ball are clearly using that language of the bus transfer in evidence-- the very item you are insisting is not "punched at 1 o'clock".

Mr. Ball: "We have a transfer here that you have seen or we will show you in a few minutes as soon as it gets here, which has a punch mark of 1 o'clock" (p. 285).

Mr. Ball: "Now, there are on this transfer two punches, there is one in p.m., and there is marked punch Lakewood. Now, the p.m. refers to the time?" Mr. McWatters: "Yes, sir." (p. 291).

If the bus transfer found on Oswald was different from a normal transfer why does McWatters not seem to notice, and keep identifying it as his transfer he made?

McWatters: "I just punch them p.m. ... so it will be just a straight cut across it ... all I carry are two books of transfers and so I just punch two books p.m., using one going one way at 1 o'clock and the other coming back at 2" (p. 286).

McWatters: "I looked at the transfer and my punch, I said yes, that is the transfer I issued because it had my punch mark on it." Ball: "Did your punch mark have a distinctive mark?" McWatters: "It had a distinctive mark and it is registered, in other words, all the drivers, every driver has a different punch mark" (p. 268).

McWatters: "that punchmark was made by that punch right there." (p. 291) 

Plus, McWatters remembered he only gave one man a bus transfer that afternoon on that line, to a man with physical description given by McWatters in agreement in height and weight with Oswald, a man who got off his bus with that transfer at the same time and location Oswald one or two minutes later got the cab ride from Whaley. The idea of police forging and then planting that bus transfer on Oswald requires Dallas police to have gotten access to McWatters' personal puncher to forge the bus transfer before then going over to plant it on Oswald, and then arrange to have McWatters remember a man matching Oswald's physical description as the one man he gave a transfer to that afternoon at location to the block and time to the minute just before Whaley's cab. No offense intended but this sounds outlandish. What is the point of all this mystification over something that has nothing to do with Oswald's guilt or innocence anyway? 

In other words, you know Oswald ended up in the Texas Theatre. You don't dispute that. And the reason he is in that theatre by himself has to be because he does not have a getaway car driving him. So it is not a matter of if he went to Oak Cliff ending up on his own in that theatre, but how he got there. Why the resistance to the bus and the cab, preferring unbelievable scale of mystification just to get him to the same theatre some other way? What in the end is accomplished by all the mystification? I don't get it.

14 hours ago, Gil Jesus said:

My Summary:

The Commission's conclusion that Oswald "escaped" the Texas School Book Depository by means of a bus and a taxi was as fake as its evidence.

First of all, a co-worker of Oswald's testified that Oswald's leaving the building at lunchtime was nothing out of the ordinary.

Secondly, the Commission failed to prove that Oswald was definitely on the bus. The bus driver and a teenaged passenger could not identify Oswald as the man who got on and then off the bus. A woman passenger, who the Commission said "positively identified" Oswald, had been a victim of a stroke that obviously affected her memory and perception, making her credibility questionable.

Thirdly, the bus transfer in evidence, that was supposed to have been pre-stamped for 1 o'clock and given to Oswald by the driver, has no such timestamp on it. And it's torn at the bottom to hide whether or not it had a timestamp for another time.

Regardless of who the man was, the bus transfer in evidence is NOT the transfer the driver gave to him.

It's fake.

Fourthly, the Commission failed to prove that Oswald was in the taxi. It claimed that the driver entered times in 15 minute intervals on his log sheet. But the sheet itself proves that was a lie. His time of 12:30-12:45 for this fare means that this passenger could not have been Oswald, who the Commission's timing had assassinating Kennedy and would not have entered the cab until 12:47-48.

In addition, the driver could not describe his passenger's clothing and when he viewed the police lineup, he chose someone other than Oswald.

He testified that although his passenger requested to go to a block that was five blocks south of Oswald's roominghouse, he dropped him off two blocks shy of his destination and swore in his affidavit that his passenger continued walking south when he left the cab. This was the OPPOSITE direction of Oswald's roominghouse.

This is all evidence, in my opinion, that Oswald was NOT the man on the bus or in the taxi.

I like a lot of your analysis but here is a counterpoint on this particular one, just to give another point of view for consideration.

-- Nothing fake about the bus transfer. He said he pre-prepared them for 1 pm, and that is what that transfer shows. Instead of multiple quarter-hours for which one needs to be punched to identify, he cut off all times below 1 pm itself. The first time at the top of the uncut form, the line for 1 pm, is still remaining. Since that is the only time showing, there was no need to punch it to identify which time that bus transfer was for. Does this reconstruction make sense?

-- The vehicle which Roger Craig and other witnesses saw picking someone up who ran from around behind the TSBD, which Roger Craig said was Oswald, suffers from all of the problems in trusting that identification as you rightly bring out regarding the Tippit killing witnesses. There is a photo of Roger Craig looking at that car and he looks too far away to trust that as a secure identification. There is no question a man ran to the street and got in a car but there is no evidence there was anything sinister or Oswald related about it--lots of people watching the parade that day, somebody may have gotten separated from their ride, ran to the car so as to minimize holding up traffic behind the car, etc. The main problem with the idea of Oswald getting a ride is it makes no sense. To drive him to his rooming house? Then to drive him again to the Texas Theatre so that he could meet a getaway car at the Theatre? Makes no sense. If the car was Oswald's getaway why bother with the rooming house and Texas Theatre at all, since he already is in a getaway car. The car pickup idea also rules out--on no real evidence apart from the questionable Roger Craig distance identification which probably was mistaken--the possibility that Oswald was not part of any conspiracy but realized there had been one and he somehow needed to escape on his own.

-- The planting of the bus ticket by officers on Oswald's person is really a problem and a stretch, not because its absolutely impossible, but because it is so ad hoc and makes little actual sense. First it requires at least one of those officers, plus at least one superior commanding officer, that makes two so far, to be complicit in planting that evidence, and being trusted never to reveal it or talk for the rest of their life. And for what reason or motivation? To remove Oswald having a car ride which would mean he was involved in a conspiracy with others? But a lot of the best researchers think the Oswald-alone idea was not even the original idea, but rather an Oswald-part-of-Cuban-conspiracy was the original idea. But here one has to suppose multiple officers including regular police on the street were involved in planting a bus transfer on Oswald, which is not evidence of guilt, not something that actually matters in incriminating Oswald, but rather far-fetched so as to remove the possibility that he was not on his own. This is just a lot of complexity, and all founded on no substantial evidence.

-- Bledsoe the landlady is admittedly a weak witness but it raises the question, if it wasn't Oswald she saw, how did she get involved in that in the first place. She imagined it on her own? Or was she put up to it? By the same handlers who gave the instructions to plant the bus transfer to the officers searching Oswald? This just gets too complex. Better: he had been her tenant for a week; she recognized him, was not wrong about that. On the torn shirt, that was completely her getting that from the agents showing her that jacket, which she then described in her testimony because she "knew" that was what he had worn. So she was a bit screwed up on her testimony. But her testimony is not necessary to reconstruct Oswald getting the cab that day as his mode of transportation to Oak Cliff.

-- On Whaley and the cab, I am inclined to give a cab driver quite a bit of credibility in identifying a passenger they carried sitting right next to them on the front seat. This is somewhat stronger evidence than eyewitnesses like the Tippit killer eyewitnesses who saw someone a few moments from a distance. As Whaley put it in his testimony and I believe it, as a cab driver it was his habit to quickly look over a new customer carefully, size him up, make a quick judgment before letting him into his cab, as a necessary survival skill. It doesn't matter that there was that business of #2 or #3 in the lineup mixup on the numbers: he never wavered in interviews etc. in saying his passenger was Oswald that he saw on TV. Furthermore his original statement said Oswald was wearing gray pants and I believe he said matching gray jacket but which the original FBI agent mistakenly wrote as "matching (gray) shirt" which was not correct. Later in his Warren Commission testimony Whaley changed the pants color from original gray to "faded blue", then had Oswald wearing his heavy blue jacket over the gray jacket which makes no sense. But that was months later. His original FBI interview had Oswald wearing gray pants and (reconstructed with the FBI report correction) matching gray jacket, pure and simple--which is what Oswald was wearing according to TSBD witnesses and Buell Wesley Frazier. Even in the video of Whaley that David Andrews posted above, right at 0:18 Whaley says "gray work clothes" with no mention of blue--and that video of Whaley was filmed after his WC testimony because elsewhere in that video he refers backward to it as past. I do think he added the "blue" and the "second blue jacket over the first" later, out of some kind of confusion or trying to cooperate or whatever when he was on the spot before the Warren Commission.  

-- On Oswald's movements. Yes Whaley's passenger gets out of the cab away from his rooming house and Whaley sees him walk away in the wrong direction (if it was; in the video he basically has Oswald crossing Beckley to the side of Beckley that the rooming house was up the street, which is not clearly walking away from it). But it is all consistent with Oswald acting evasively consistent with his leaving the TSBD immediately in the first place. That he was acting evasively is clear from how Earlene Roberts saw him standing at the northbound bus stop on Beckley after leaving the rooming house. I interpret that as Oswald knew she could see, knew that she would look and would see, and that was an intentional feint as if he was heading north (which she would report if asked), when actually he headed south when out of her sight, probably taking a bus south to the Texas Theatre.

-- Bottom line: if Oswald had an escape car pick him up, his stops at both the rooming house and then to the Texas Theatre, both alone, make no sense--because he already is in an escape car (if so) which can drive him wherever. Instead Oswald's movements all agree with a lone fugitive, who may or may not have believed he would meet someone in the Theatre. As to who he was running from, and why, those are other questions. 

-- Then there is this, from William Kelly, concerning the Rio Grande Building, 251 N. Field Street. (https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2019/06/view-from-snipers-nest.html )

. . . the Rio Grande building, - which included the Army Intelligence, Secret Service and the Emigration and Naturalization Service, who all shared the same cafeteria where Witt said he learned of the Kennedy’s distaste for umbrellas. Was it someone in cafeteria from Army Intelligence or the Secret Service who told Witt of the meaning of appeasement and symbol of the umbrella? It is a building that Oswald visited a number of times.

Supposedly the bus stop where Oswald walked to get on a bus from the TSBD, was right in front of that Rio Grande building. It has occurred to me--I don't know if to anyone else--that if Oswald had a contact with an agency (as his personal history makes plausible) that contact could well have been located in that Rio Grande building. Maybe he went there not to catch a bus but to try to find someone, then instead got on the bus, then the cab? Who knows. But the evidence that does stand out to me is Earlene seeing him at the rooming house, the Whaley ID outside of the police lineup, the bus transfer, Oswald alone in the theatre, and no evidence of any other travel mechanism to Oak Cliff (long-distance claimed sighting of him getting into a car by a witness who had never seen him before, not good enough). And supposedly he basically confirmed as much to Fritz in questioning, which was likely heard by witnesses in addition to Fritz. 

Anyway this is an alternative point of view on this one from someone who respects your work.

On the timeline of Larry Crafard's arrival to Dallas

Attorney Carroll Jarnagin, writing to J. Edgar Hoover on Dec. 3, 1963 said he witnessed an unkempt young man, newly arrived in town, asking for Jack Ruby in the Carousel Club on Friday, October 4, 1963. I believe it is certain that the person Jarnagin saw with Ruby that night was neither Oswald nor a fabrication but was Larry Crafard. The only issue is interpretation of which details were garbled, but the Crafard identification itself to me is just plain.

Jarnagin simply misheard Crafard telling Ruby to call him "Larry", heard by Jarnagin as sounding like "Lee" (Oswald's first name), Jarnagin mistaken.

I have just found this from Greg Parker written in 2016 concerning research on Crafard. This research of Greg Parker had nothing to do with the Jarnagin story. Greg Parker, commenting on when Crafard arrived in Dallas, independently arrived at a suggestion of October 4, 1963. (http://www.prayer-man.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/rokc forum/www.reopenkennedycase.org/apps/forums/topics/show/13311315-crafard-puzzle2679.html?page=1 [post of Feb 13, 2016 6:06 am])

"Crafard stated in that Nov 28 [1963] FBI interview that he met Ruby on or about Oct 21. Having read his [Warren Commission] testimony, I have to believe that is in error (. . .) The [Texas State] Fair--and the Hollywood show opened on October 5. Two or three days after that, Crafard meets Ruby. The FBI interview has them meeting two or three days after the R & R show ended. I think the FBI agent just got his notes confused. Two or three days after the R & R show ended was when Crafard officially started working for Ruby.

"Crafard doesn't say exactly when he arrived in Dallas--only that he started work at the Hollywood show when it opened. I have checked multiple sources. It did open on Oct 5, so it is possible, maybe even likely that he arrived the day before--October 4.

"Whilst October 15 was the date Oswald started work at the depository--October 4 is an interesting date too. It is the date Oswald (also) arrived in Dallas."

This is indeed a startling coincidence--the suggestion on grounds independent of Jarnagin that Crafard arrived in Dallas the same day Jarnagin saw Crafard show up at the Carousel Club, newly arrived from out of town, asking for Ruby and in need of money and a place to stay.

(Note: Oswald actually arrived in Dallas from Mexico City on Wed Oct 2 according to the accepted timeline, staying at the Dallas YMCA Wed and Thu nights Oct 2-3, then at Ruth Paine's house Fri, Sat, and Sun nights Oct 4-6.)

Greg Parker's reconstruction is very reasonable.

In other words, Jarnagin's story of what he witnessed at the Carousel Club on Fri Oct 4 was not derived backward from reading a story in a newspaper of a timeline of Oswald (who had nothing to do with Ruby or the Carousel Club). It was a witnessing of Crafard (who had a lot to do with Ruby and the Carousel Club) meeting Ruby when Crafard first got into town (returned to Dallas).

Jarnagin by total accident witnessed that.

And Greg Parker nailed it on the timeline, on grounds independent of Jarnagin.

8 hours ago, Micah Mileto said:

Doug Horne and David Mantik both agree that the white spot looks like some brain matter coming out of a small hole underneith it. The HSCA said it just looked like a piece of brain matter lying on top of the hair, no mention of anything that looks like a hole.

Thanks Micah. That explanation (thanks also to Dave Andrews) does seem to make the best sense among the alternatives. 

5 hours ago, David Andrews said:

Well, "dark within a white border," then.  Which gives it the "clip" appearance to some.

In the back threads, it's been posited that the head shown has been filled with some mortician's compound, and any deficiencies in the stretched scalp retouched in this photo.  The rear scalp shown is in place, unlike the folded-over scalp with bits of brain and skull shown in the color half-length autopsy photo, and the b/w rear of autopsy table photo.  So some have posited that the color photo in the first post was taken at end of autopsy, after some reconstructive work had been done.  The surgeon seems to be pinching the front of the scalp flap closed - if no reconstructive work was done before this photo, there still seems to have been trouble keeping the scalp flap in place.

I was wearing pajamas with feet at the time.  I have no expert knowledge.  I'm offering ideas presented solely in the back threads on this Forum, and that may be the best place to search (term: "back of head photo") for shared knowledge, speculation and opinion.  Sorry I can't upload comparison pictures, but you've seen them, and they're in the back threads also.

Interesting, too, is the flap of skull and scalp hanging at a 90 degree angle to the head.  It corresponds to the bloody "blob" in that area shown after Zapruder 313.  Apparently no one noticed this loose flap at Parkland.  Some say it's shown in this photo in coordination with an alteration applied to the head in Zapruder.  What's your take?

I appreciate your comments David, since no one with actual knowledge of an explanation has come forward. I have not been able to find the back threads on the Forum discussing this question to which you refer. 

It does look like a hand may be pulling on scalp to keep it closed over part of the major hole in the head, with a darkened black patch on the head to the left of the open flap being a portion of the gaping wound that the surgeon was not able to cover with scalp. It is difficult for me to see any obvious way that would be related to the object however, since there does not seem to have been blown away hole or loose scalp that low in the back of JFK's head where the object is. Is the object a remnant of some medical procedure at Parkland from the futile attempts to save his life? But I have no idea what that might be.   

On 10/17/2021 at 7:05 AM, David Andrews said:

To be clear: in a past thread, someone knowledgeable once said that a mortuary clip (my phrase) of this style was not to be found in an autopsist's or mortician's toolbox. 

That agrees with I could not find anything like that in some google searching. Also there is the question of timing of these photos--they were taken at the start of the autopsy, which would be before any morticians or restoration for purpose of open casket viewing was begun (that occurs after the autopsy)? If so then morticians' work would be irrelevant here. 

On "red within white" look comparable to the bloodied ear, I do not myself see any red in the object in the color photo. 

On 10/15/2021 at 6:54 PM, David Andrews said:

Some have suggested the object is a mortuary clip, used to hold JFK's lower scalp in place over the shattered skull, while the doctor holds the front edge with thumb and forefinger.  Others say there's no such article.  Stray brain tissue has been another guess.

It could be a painted-in lower skull wound.

I think the object's appearance on multiple photos (three distinct photos I think from different angles) can rule out that it is a photographic artifact or did not exist. The "mortuary clip" idea, something related to keeping scalp attached, does not quite make sense due to lack of known scalp needing to be attached at that position of JFK's head; also, is there a picture or photo of such a tool or clip in use by autopsists or morticians?--I cannot find any, though if one could be found and shown that looks like in the photo, that could resolve the issue. 

Stray brain tissue ... hard to say for sure but the object seems to me to look more like it is plastic or metal.

Question: what is the small triangular-shaped object about 1 inch above JFK's rear hairline in the autopsy photos?

Is it (a) shrapnel as Donald Thomas argues in Hear No Evil? Thomas has a missed shot #1 hitting the street behind the limousine and kicking up shrapnel one piece of which landed in the back of JFK's head, and that is the cause of JFK raising his arms or elbows instinctively.

Is it (b) a photographic artifact, an illusion in the photograph, i.e. nothing actual in JFK's head?

Is it (c) something else? (what?)

 

Back of head, JFK autopsy photo (above)

Exit wound with part of bullet showing. From: https://www.bevfitchett.us/gunshot-wounds/entrance-versus-exit-wounds-entrance-wounds.html . Text accompanying this illustration: "Occasionally, a bullet traveling through the body will lose so much velocity that, while it may have sufficient velocity to create an exit hole, the bullet will not exit. This may be due to the elastic nature of the skin or resistance to its exiting by either an overlying garment or an object such as a seat back or wall. In the latter case, the "exit" may show shoring of its edges. Occasionally, a bullet may be found protruding from its exit (Figure 4.25)." Illustration caption: "Figure 4.25 7.62 x 39 mm bullet projecting from exit."

John Butler, I assure you I did not have that image upside down "in order to make it harder to understand the comparison", rather that was the way it was (upside-down) in the medical slide show of the link I gave, combined with my technically not knowing how to fix that, but you have fixed it which is good.

You attack Dr. Rose for using the word "temple" in his autopsy to describe the bullet to the temple the photo shows for Tippit, and charge that by using the word "temple" in description of temple, "Earl Rose's autopsy report would not pass review in any peer-reviewed journal in Anthropology..."

But I just checked Rose's autopsy report on Tippit, in Myers' Appendix C in With Malice, and Rose never uses the word "temple" in his autopsy report. I believe you are casting aspersions on Dr. Rose unjustifiably on this point.

On saying that bullet in Tippit's temple in the photo is not what plain, understandable layman's English would call a "temple" location of that bullet, all I can say is my guess is approximately 1000 out of 1000 native-English speakers looking at that photo would call that a shot into his temple. However, I get the impression I have stepped into some conflict between you and some others which I do not understand, and have no wish to be part of, so I am out of here. (I just would appreciate you not casting aspersions on my motives in that upside-down photo, of which there were none.) 

Hi David Josephs, on Vaganov, I don't think he was the Tippit gunman. A number of witnesses saw the gunman and gave fairly good physical descriptions which does not agree with Vaganov's height of 6'2". I do not think a single witness described the gunman as tall, which would be one of the first things a witness who had seen Vaganov would say. (Acquila Clemons' seeing of a tall man waving to the killer and hearing him shout "go on!" I have elsewhere argued--shown, I think--was Acquila Clemons standing at the northwest corner of Tenth and Patton seeing Ted Callaway, who was big and tall, on Patton waving across the street to the killer and shouting "hey man, what's going on?") Also I believe the light-gray, near-white jacket found behind the Texaco station at Jefferson and Crawford was left by the killer, and as brought out by author John Berendts in an Aug 1967 Esquire article on Vaganov, that jacket measured 32 1/2 inches sleeve length whereas Vaganov's sleeve length measured 36 inches.

A distinctive red car seen by Benavides at the scene of the Tippit killing was suspected to be Vaganov's red Thunderbird but what Benavides saw is pretty clearly now identified as Jack Tatum's red 1964 Ford Galaxie--the movements of the red car described by Benavides match Tatum's car's movements. And finally, there is no evidence connecting Vaganov to the killing of Tippit or to anyone involved in Ruby's circle. Vaganov had some brushes with the law mainly for forged check writing but in the end he let Esquire magazine pay him to tell his story and most of his story checked out, such as a report that he had told his wife's mother he was offered a job at $17,500 a month and Vaganov explained that was an Encyclopedia Britannica salesman ad promising as much as $1,750 month earnings, and Berendts verified Encyclopedia Britannica had run such ads. The Aug 1967 Esquire article on Vaganov: https://classic.esquire.com/article/19670801073/print.

I agree with Berendts in the conclusion of that article: "Vaganov's willingness to be questioned, to have his picture published in a national magazine, to go to Dallas and face the Tippit eyewitnesses, would by themselves tend to rule him out. Furthermore there is not one shred of direct evidence linking him with either killing that day or with any of the principals involved."

4 hours ago, John Butler said:

Greg,

David Josephs did a great job pointing out the problems with the Tippit autopsy almost 10 years ago.

To answer your question, they are not the same areas of the head.  The right middle Cranial Fossa is a skull bone  at the bottom of the skull in the mid right portion.  This is demonstrated in your post. 

The right temple is a different area of the skull. 

 

I sure do not follow you. The photo shows a bullet in the temple, that is Dr. Liguori's description ("one in the right temple") in the FBI report of Nov 29, 1963, and a bullet entering in the right temple would go right into the middle cranial fossa which is right there according to this visual. 

This is from a medical lecture slide labeled "Middle Cranial Fossa Technique Lecture Slides" I found at this link: https://medicine.uiowa.edu/iowaprotocols/middle-cranial-fossa-technique-lecture-slides. Sure looks like a temple entrance to me. 

4 hours ago, John Butler said:

 

 

This wound shown here is not in the right temple or in the right middle cranial fossa at the bottom of the skull. So, what do we make of this?

I take it to be a fraud.  Both the diagram and the photo.  I base this on the FBI report indicating there were only 3 gunshot wounds and the second description of gunshot wound No. 1 in Earl Rose’s autopsy report.  The autopsy clearly states “Examination of the wound of the right temple is made.  It is found to enter in the right middle cranial fossa…”

Sure looks to me like photo of bullet hole = right temple = middle cranial fossa.  

You allege the photo of Tippit with the bullet hole in his forehead is a "fraud" citing "the FBI report indicating there were only 3 gunshot wounds". 

I looked up the FBI report I think you and David Josephs mean, the one citing Dr. Liguori on Nov 29, 1963. He told the FBI "there appeared three wounds in the body, one being in the right temple which in the opinion of Dr. Liguori could have caused instant death, one wound in the left chest, the bullet being deflected by a brass button of the uniform worn by Officer Tippit and the bullet being found only about one inch under the surface, and the third wound in the upper abdomen" (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=57697#relPageId=90&search=tippit_liguori three bullets). 

I am failing to follow the logic in claiming an early doctor's statement to the FBI telling of a bullet wound to the right temple of Tippit proves a photo with a bullet wound to the right temple of Tippit is fake. However thanks for answering my question and I have no more questions on that, which may be going afield from Gil Jesus's topic.

The Tippit killer's fingerprints

The fingerprints on Tippit's car by the passenger window where the killer was witnessed leaning in to talk to Tippit, and found on the right front fender where the killer went around to shoot Tippit and may have leaned and put his hand on the hood or bumper in that location for balance . . . for decades were identified as "smear prints...none of value", and thereby not excluded as Oswald's.

In either 1998 or 2013, whichever it was (I have the 2013 edition of Myers, With Malice), Dale Myers produced and reported one of the single most exculpatory or exonerating evidentiary indications of Oswald's innocence in the Tippit killing.

For it was Dale Myers who did what no one prior to him had done--he obtained those fingerprints from Dallas Police Department files and had an experienced latent fingerprint expert make a fresh study of them. That expert, Herbert Lutz of Wayne County, Michigan, found that the prints on the passenger door and the right front fender were:

• made by the same individual, and
• that individual was not Oswald (match to Oswald's prints was excluded)

(pp. 336-340 of Myers, With Malice) 

This is extraordinarily significant, in terms of the issue of Oswald's guilt or innocence in the Tippit killing.

It does not matter that Dale Myers is the leading proponent that Oswald killed Tippit. That has nothing to do with anything here. What matters is Myers, and no one else, produced new information, a new fact, of extraordinary relevance to the Tippit case.

For those fingerprints practically certainly were left by the killer of Tippit. There is a remote possibility that that is not the case, that somebody other than the Tippit killer left those prints in those two locations exactly where the killer was with respect to Tippit's car. So it is not quite airtight. Also, separate issue, with the whole Malcom Wallace fingerprint saga in mind, second and third expert opinion corroborations would be better than just one expert opinion. But the one expert opinion is what we have to go on, it is what it is, and there is nothing known to refute or impugn it at this time.

Now to the basic question: what are the odds that those prints were left by the killer? Well, this is in the end going to be a subjective judgment, and judgments will vary. But I will give mine: I would put that at about 90-95% confidence that those prints are from the killer. Not 100%, not complete certainty. But 90-95%, almost certain. The reason is the two locations match the killer's location so perfectly with eyewitness testimony of where the killer was. And even more than that, the expert's finding that the passenger door prints and the right front bumper prints are not from different individuals but from the same individual. It is this last point which to me spikes the probability way up to ca. 90-95%.

To repeat and emphasize, what Dale Myers produced in this is new, going beyond what was previously known.

Myers judges what he regards as overwhelming evidence on other grounds that Oswald killed Tippit, combined with the slight possibility that the fingerprints may not be from the killer, to maintain his conclusion that Oswald killed Tippit. That is, Myers does not interpret the prints as exonerating Oswald. That is neither here nor there, that is not important. What matters is Dale Myers produced this highly relevant information, it is extraordinarily important new information, and never mind Myers' own interpretation of what he produced, it strongly suggests, if not comes close to outright establishing, that Oswald was not the Tippit killer.

Furthermore, those prints--almost certainly from the killer; not from Oswald--potentially could identify the actual killer. They could be checked against Craford's prints. Craford had a criminal record, certainly in Oregon. There must be prints of Craford in existence. This could be done.

Even at this late date, the Tippit case potentially could be solved in history on the basis of those fingerprints.

But the existing information of these fingerprints already known now, thanks to Myers, strongly suggests exculpation of Oswald--whether or not a true solution to the case may or may or may not be established.

I don't know about that Pete, but here is something that has sobered me from studying this Tippit case: the realization of what must be a high number of criminal convictions of innocent people in history, convicted by juries who in almost all cases thought they were convicting the right person. 

To continue: when the Tippit killer ran into the Texas Theatre, as noticed by Brewer and Julia Postal, I am convinced it was the sheer accident of, first, Brewer and usher Burroughs could not see anyone in the balcony in the dim light where the killer had gone after entering (somehow he in the balcony avoided being seen by Brewer and Burroughs peering up into the dark balcony looking for him), and second, Brewer still from a distance, from the stage, saw Oswald in the ground level seating area stand up and move and that caught Brewer's attention, and he had a similar dark shirt, and Brewer told police, "that's him!", with, in Brewer's view, his identification retrospectively proven correct and any doubt in his mind removed if there ever was any, by all the information that came forth about the man he had pointed out: Oswald.

Brewer fingered to police the wrong man who, as it quickly became clear, was the leading suspect in the JFK assassination--Brewer by mistake fingered the killer's target, the hit man's intended victim in that theatre, the reason the killer went to that theatre, instead of the killer who had entered the theatre and had gone into the balcony, just as Julia Postal knew and told officers. Police arrested the killer's next target rather than the killer.

Brewer's mistaken identification, and the fact that Oswald had a revolver of the same kind that killed Tippit on his person, and that he resisted arrest (but did not try to shoot a police officer), and that Oswald appeared to have been the assassin of President Kennedy according to police and news reports, sealed the case against Oswald in the Tippit killing, in the eyes of police and the world.

The killer of Tippit went into the balcony and may have been the man deputy sheriff Bill Courson said he saw coming out of the balcony, in Sneed, No More Silence, p. 485. The lack of any police record of the names of balcony theatre patrons that day even though police had been ordered to take down names and addresses of patrons in the theatre--could it be that was because some officer had recognized that individual, recognized Craford as an associate of Ruby (with the possible Mob implications that could involve)? Either the killer left the theatre before the names of patrons were taken down, or in order to conceal or foreclose further investigation concerning the identity of one name that had been taken down the entire list of names was "lost". Notably, no citizen ever came forward in later years to identify himself as having been the man who had just left the theatre balcony questioned by police that day, immediately after the killer of Tippit went into that balcony.  

When police converged on the Texas Theatre in response to Julia Postal's call to the police regarding a suspicious man in the balcony, officer Henry Stringer who arrived to the back of the theatre found a pickup truck idling with its engine running, no driver in sight (report of Stringer, Dec 3, 1963, https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1140#relPageId=260; Myers, With Malice, p. 229). To my knowledge that has never been explained in any document I have seen (i.e. the driver identified and explanation of why that vehicle had been left with its engine running). Perhaps there is a mundane explanation, but a non-mundane explanation might be that was a getaway vehicle for someone inside the theatre intent on killing Oswald, and the driver, perhaps standing somewhere a little removed from the running vehicle, melted into bystanders or fled when police cruisers came to the location.  

1 hour ago, John Butler said:

David,

There is something wrong with the autopsy report done by Earl Rose.  He gives two different descriptions for gunshot wound No. 1.  This is the head wound.  He first describes, but does not give a medical or an anatomical location for the first description.  He simply gives a description/measurement in inches that leads one over to the forehead where there is a gunshot wound and contusion ring present in that location.  This was in an Unger photo and a diagram (by Rose I think).  The next description falsifies the first.  

Later, he gives the second description of gunshot wound No. 1 that has the bullet entering the base of the skull (right middle cranial fossa) traveling through the right temporal lobe and striking the brainstem severing functions there.  The bullet then leaves the brainstem area when it strikes the rear portion of the skull (occiptal/parietal bone) then moves upward towards the top of the skull ending about an inch from the top of the skull (Calcarine Gyrus which I believe is in the front of the skull).

Which of these descriptions do you like?  It seems that the forehead wound with contusion ring (frontal bone wound near the sphenoid bone) is the one that most people think is what occurred.

But, if you prefer the second description based on medical/anatomical locations then the first description is a fraud.  So, what does one do with the Unger picture showing a forehead wound and contusion ring?  And, what about the diagram?  Are these faked according to Rose's autopsy?

and,

If Tippit was laying face down went shot the fourth and last time that the bullet would have had to go into the area under his jaw and travel upward to course through the temporal lobe and strike the brainstem.

If Tippit was lying on his face and stomach it is hard to imagine how this wound came about.  Perhaps the shooter rolled him over?  Perhaps the shooter squatted and shot Tippit from a low angle.  The autopsy report said the bullet entered the right middle cranial fossa which is a bone at the bottom of the skull. 

If he was lying on his face then the bullet wound have went in the other direction hitting structures in the front of the head. 

All I know is something is wrong with this autopsy report.  

  

 

I am not following your point. How is a bullet entering at the "right middle cranial fossa" different from the description and photo of the bullet entering at the right temple?  

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 .38 Smith & Wesson revolver in a paper bag a few blocks away from the Carousel Club in downtown Dallas. Just threw a .38 Smith & Wesson 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 both the rifle and 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 .38 Smith & Wesson revolver turned up abandoned on a downtown Dallas street. 

Think of the oddity of that timing.

Why would someone toss a .38 Special Smith & Wesson 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 why that make any sense: either it had just been used in a crime such as an armed robbery or a killing 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 there was no handgun homicide in Dallas at that time other than the killing of Tippit. And police already had (or thought they did) the murder weapon for that, the Oswald revolver.

Nevertheless it would still be assumed that the Dallas Police Department--the assassination of JFK and killing of officer Tippit by that kind of handgun hours earlier totally aside--would investigate that paper-bag snub-nosed .38 revolver and have records of it. But in this case that is not the case. The Dallas Police disappeared any record that was made of that paper-bag .38 revolver. The only reason the existence of that revolver is known is from FBI documents first released in 1978 and first noticed in the 1990s. There is no issue that the FBI document, and hence the underlying Dallas Police Department information from which the FBI documents derived, are inauthentic, nor has that been alleged. As told in this account 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 which was at 13-1/2 Commerce, where Curtis Craford (or as he was then known, Larry Crafard) was staying. Ruby drove to his Club and picked up Craford ca. 5 am the night Craford fled Dallas, about 2-3 hours before the citizen found the paper bag with the revolver and reported it. The spot where the revolver was thrown out the car window at Ross and Lamar is in excellent agreement with a car taking a passenger from the Carousel Club to nearby 35E going north. 

Like other matters of evidence concerning the Tippit killing, the disappearance of Dallas Police records concerning this revolver falls into a pattern of DPD handling of evidence relevant to the Tippit killing.

• names and addresses officers had been instructed to collect and had collected, of theatre patrons in the Texas Theatre: no record (disappeared)
• missing identity or any other information concerning a man questioned by police who came out of the balcony of the Texas Theatre moments after the suspected Tippit killer had been reported to police to be in the balcony, a man who was not Oswald but who a deputy sheriff mistakenly believed had been Oswald.
• the lack of any record of interview of John Callahan, the general manager of the Texas Theatre who was present that day and took the tickets of persons entering the theatre, who could have been able to say whether or not he recognized one of those from whom he had taken a ticket as having been Oswald, if he had been asked. The FBI and Warren Commission never interviewed him either. Neither did any journalist or book author for the rest of Callahan’s life so far as is known. That police talked to Callahan that day is mentioned in reports. Is it possible he was asked and did answer, and that is why there is no record of him having been asked or further interviewed?
• the lack of a direct statement under oath from any of the five officers who marked their initials on the four shell hulls removed by the Tippit gunman from the gunman’s .38 Special revolver, found at the Tippit crime scene, identifying their initials on the hulls that the Dallas Police Crime Lab turned over to the FBI, which the FBI found had been fired from Oswald's revolver (a pattern consistent with and raising the question of whether there had been substitutions of hulls in the chain of custody).
• and in the present case, the complete non-existence of any Dallas Police records or information concerning the paper-bag revolver, the same kind of weapon that was used in the killing of Tippit, turned in to the Dallas Police by a citizen the morning of Nov 23, 1963, after having been found tossed in a paper bag from a car 

It is not argued here that Dallas Police were party to the assassination or to the killing of one of their own officers. It is rather that once there was a decision to close the case by wrapping it up on Oswald as the killer, evidence that did not assist in making that case in court or in the eyes of public opinion was either not of interest or in certain cases covered up, in the interests of assisting in closure of the case.    

Here is the full text of the FBI document which refers to the find of that revolver turned in to the Dallas Police (posted in the article, 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 was followed by three other FBI documents (given in full 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. Record was 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."

.38 Special is the kind of bullets which killed officer Tippit. A snub-nosed .38 modified to fire .38 Special bullets is both the kind of this revolver 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 so used in that killing—which was the one not used in the Tippit killing, and its exact match to the kind of weapon that was used, was coincidence? 

Also, the snub-nosed .38 Special may have been the most common type of concealed handgun in America at the time. Thus Oswald’s possession of a snub-nosed .38 Special could well be coincidence (carried by him for self-defense, not used to murder), 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.

Note for example in CE 2011, the FBI document prepared for the Warren Commission, that .38 Special revolvers--.38 revolvers which had been modified and rechambered to fire .38 Special bullets--are referred to as simply .38's. In any case the FBI document quoted above verifies that the paper-bag snub-nosed .38 Smith & Wesson found a few blocks from the Carousel Club was a .38 Special, the kind of gun used to kill Tippit.

The FBI documents do not give further tracing information of what became of that 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. 

There is no record of the FBI comparing 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, 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 of 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 “fruit” found also in the paper bag, 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--was not identified with any other crime, any other homicide, nor any owner. Whereas a citizen carrying a concealed weapon does not necessarily imply that citizen has murdered or intends to murder, the tossing of an untraceable handgun in a paper bag on a street does suggest or imply just that--that the weapon could well have been used in a crime or homicide such as a contract killing or hit.

Which of these two revolvers is more likely to have been the murder weapon in the killing of Tippit—killed with a professional coup de grace shot into the forehead as found in the autopsy and as claimed to have been seen by witness Tatum? The handgun found on Oswald at his arrest? Or the handgun tossed because it had been recently used in a homicide or contract killing--the very night following the Tippit killing, tossed only a few blocks from the Carousel Theatre the very night of Craford's flight from Dallas, after he was picked up in a car at the Carousel Theatre by Jack Ruby and George Senator at about 5 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 traces if 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 suggested: 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 except that was prevented by the arrival of police who arrested Oswald. The Tippit murder weapon was not Oswald's snub-nosed .38 revolver, although elements of the Dallas Police sought to have it look and concluded that way. Oswald was innocent of the murder of Tippit. He didn't do it. Craford did, 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 his kind of (almost literally) smoking-gun evidence which disappeared while in either police custody—evidence that very likely would have exonerated Oswald?

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 for good, forever.

From police hands the day after Tippit was killed.

5 hours ago, Pete Mellor said:

Have read this thread as well as the innocence of Oswald in Tippit case with interest.

It has bugged me that someplace I read about Crafard, but couldn't remember in what book.  After days of brain freeze I found it.

Scheim's 'Contract on America' (p247) states that Larry 'had no front teeth', was 'creepy' and 'looked like a bum'.

Maybe Jarnagin wouldn't notice the teeth in a dark club, but certainly Laura Kittrell would notice, unless he had false teeth.

Another witness is quoted 'Crafard had sandy hair'.

Hi Pete, although he was said to have had teeth knocked out in a fight in early October do any witnesses actually say they saw Crafard going around with no front teeth? I cannot think of any immediately. If he was missing front teeth maybe he wore dentures? Is it certain he was missing front teeth? That Laura Kittrell told memories of encounters with Larry Crafard (as well as of Oswald) is certain, and I do not recall Laura Kittrell noting anything about missing front teeth though she noted other details. A number of disparate people who saw Crafard including in good lighting and who did not have prior history of knowing Crafard or Oswald did believe mistakenly post-assassination that the Crafard they had seen had been Oswald, so this is not a matter of someone saying today they don't think that would have happened, though it is a relevant question in each specific case. On hair, I have the impression most witness descriptions including the FBI's report of physical description had Crafard with brown or darker brown hair slightly darker and fuller than Oswald's which is in agreement with the Crafard color photos of the Warren Commission exhibits. Of course witness descriptions can vary but sandy hair does not sound quite right for Crafard.   

Just to be clear, I am not saying Jarnagin's story was entirely reliable. The main problem is he wrote down a reconstructed conversation the best he could from what he remembered two months earlier, and did so post-assassination in which the post-assassination narrative clearly corrupted his narrative. In addition he had been drinking and may have been partly intoxicated at the time, although his companion told the FBI he was not drunk. And most of all, what he saw had nothing--nothing--to do with a sighting of Oswald in the Carousel Club as Jarnagin thought. Henry Wade was perfectly correct in not using Jarnagin as a witness for the prosecution in the trial against Ruby. His testimony would have added nothing to Wade's prosecution case and Jarnagin's testimony would have been ripped to shreds on cross-examination. None of this is contested.

What has hardly been considered is something else, of much interest, that Jarnagin was a witness--an imperfect, flawed witness as many witnesses to actual history are, but a witness--of an early encounter between Ruby and Larry Crafard, of significance in light of what Jarnagin heard. The Jarnagin story is a distorted, imperfect version of an event that happened, as opposed to an invention or fabrication. That is the key point. The polygraph, rather than measuring lying, may have been measuring self-doubt on his answers, not the same thing. Perhaps that is what Henry Wade meant when he said Jarnagin was sincere and believed his story but the polygraph showed it did not happen. But self-doubt on his answers (if that is the correct interpretation of that polygraph) is not the same thing as not true.

Jack Ruby: What do you want?

"Lee" ["Larry"]: I need some money

Jack Ruby: Money?

"Lee" ["Larry"]: I just got in from New Orleans. I need a place to stay, and a job.

From dancer Joyce McDonald, stage name Joy Dale, associate of Crafard who knew him before introduction to Ruby, and who came to the Carousel at about the same time as Crafard, in the WFAA-TV interview the day after Crafard left Dallas and the same day that Ruby had killed Oswald.

"Well, I have a friend out here that came to Dallas, unemployed, know--not knowing anyone. He had met Jack once. Jack gave him a place to stay until he found him a job, gave him money to live off of until he went to work, until he could move out." (24 H 796)

I think these are two versions of the same thing and the same person. 

In Crafard's Warren Commission testimony, he gives a story of having talked on the phone for hours the night of Nov 22/23 to a woman he claims he had never previously met and could not remember her name. That hours-long conversation was followed by Crafard being picked up at around 5 am by Ruby followed by a sudden decision to hitchhike to Michigan, after almost no sleep that night, according to Crafard's testimony. Though the Warren Commission sought from questioning to identify the woman of Crafard's phone call story it was hopeless; Crafard was not giving up any verifiable information on that point. 

I think the woman Crafard talked to the night of Fri/Saturday whom he would not identify to the Warren Commission may have been Joyce McDonald. He did say goodby to someone--Joyce McDonald, and then Ruby at 5 am. He told Joyce how he wanted his departure explained to people, and on Sunday Nov 24, the next day on WFAA-TV, she did.  

Ruby connects himself in some way to the Tippit killing through a "Freudian slip"?

Carousel Club dancer Joyce McDonald, stage name Joy Dale, lived at 424 ½ West Tenth Street, Apartment 3, in Oak Cliff. This was her correct address as furnished by Andy Armstrong from Carousel Club written records to the FBI on Nov 26, 1963 (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1136#relPageId=111) and furnished by Joyce McDonald herself when she was interviewed by the FBI on Dec 2, 1963  (https://maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=57014#relPageId=80).

But on Nov 24, 1963, later the same day he killed Oswald, Jack Ruby was interviewed by the FBI and asked to name names and give addresses that he knew, which Ruby did. Most of the names Ruby gave he did not give street addresses known by heart but for a few he did. One Carousel Club employee address Ruby did give was for dancer Joyce McDonald, stage name Joy Dale.

But Ruby gave a wrong address for her, by mistake. Instead of the correct address (above) in the 400's block of West Tenth, Ruby--by mistake--gave the street address where Tippit was killed. Instead of Joyce McDonald’s address in the 400’s block on West Tenth, Ruby gave the Tippit killing address in the 400s block of East 10th St.!

• By mistake (and that is surely what this was, a mistake) Ruby gave his dancer Joyce McDonald's (Joy Dale)'s home address as "410 1/2 -- 10th St." (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1137#relPageId=60).
• Tippit was shot dead by his killer when he pulled his cruiser over in front of 410 East 10th St.

The Tippit killing address had nothing to do with Joyce McDonald, despite Ruby providing that as her address. Joyce McDonald did not live there. Nor is there any reason to suppose she had anything otherwise to do with that address. It was because her correct address by accident also was on Tenth Street (even though West Tenth St), and by accident also on a 400's numbered block, which caused a confusion in Ruby's brain. Ruby got two distinct and unrelated addresses, both of which he knew, confused, pure and simple.

It was not a case of either of the following two explanations, both of which can be dismissed on grounds of simple improbability:

• A second or previous actual address for Joyce McDonald, because the addresses are too similar (400s block; Tenth; ending with 1/2) to be explicable as coincidence in a move from one location to another location by the same person.
• A random mistake on Ruby’s part, the verbal equivalent of a typo with no further significance, because if that were the case it would have been random and not landed on the street address where Tippit was killed, of all places for a random street address to land.

The street address of the house in front of which Tippit was killed which Ruby supplied by mistake (to which Ruby included the “1/2” from Joyce McDonald's address which Ruby remembered or conflated) was in Ruby's immediate knowledge, a second address, known by heart, which came to his mind here by mistake, just as he knew Joyce McDonald's address by heart. The question of interest becomes: why does Ruby know the street address where Tippit was killed, to have gotten the two confused? Ruby's mistake may signal unexplained knowledge or interest in that address calling for explanation. That house appears to have been vacant at the time of the Tippit killing according to city directory information. However Virginia Davis, who lived with her sister-in-law two houses away at the corner house on East 10th and Patton, 400 E. 10th St., made a curious comment in her Warren Commission testimony to an officer, whom she seemed to have initially assumed was Tippit, lived in that particular house two houses away, at 410 E. Tenth. This is Virginia Davis testifying what happened after she heard shots:

Mrs. Davis. No, sir; we just saw a police car sitting on the side of the road.

Mr. Belin. Where was the police car parked?

Mrs. Davis. It was parked between the hedge that marks the apartment house where he lives in [410 E. 10th] and the house next door.

Mr. Belin. Was it on your side of East 10th or the other side of the street?

Mrs. Davis. It was on our side, the same side that we lived on.

Virginia Davis years later told Dale Myers she had had no idea where Tippit lived and could not imagine why she would have said that. However, according to the stenographer recording her WC testimony in 1964 Virginia Davis did say that. And recall that Scoggins, the cabbie, parked around the corner on Patton from E. 10th at the time of the killing, claimed he recognized Tippit's police cruiser as there regularly.

Something interesting about that street address (410 E. 10th) where according to the city directory no one was listed as living, but which two neighborhood witnesses seemed to think a police officer was living there, a street address in front of which Tippit was killed, and it was this street address which Ruby had committed to memory.

It is perhaps conceivable that Ruby had no prior relationship with that house and simply had been told that street address either from news sources or some private informant, as the street address where Tippit was killed, some time that weekend before Ruby shot and killed Oswald on Sunday morning. The address stuck in his memory and Ruby confused it with Joyce McDonald's when asked for Joyce McDonald's, due to the accident of their similarity. That is one possibility, but there is another possibility: that Ruby had some relationship or knowledge of the house at that street address which preceded the Tippit killing, enough to have committed that street address to memory via familiarity. And if Ruby had some knowledge or relationship to the house at that address prior to the Tippit killing, that raises the question of a possible Ruby relationship either to the Tippit killing or the location where it occurred, even if we may not know what that relationship may have been.

Contrast that with nothing to associate Oswald with that address or any other address on East Tenth Street, and a total lack of any known logic or explanation why Oswald would have gone to or have been on East Tenth Street in the first place. 

In other words, there is here an association of Ruby with the street address of the Tippit killing, uttered from his own mouth on the same day he killed Oswald--a freak Freudian slip?--reinforces other grounds for suspicion that the killer of Tippit at that address and then would-be killer of Oswald in the Texas Theatre that day, might have been Curtis Craford, employed by Ruby.

The Tippit killing of Nov 22 in front of 410 East Tenth Street, the address of Ruby’s “Freudian slip” utterance on Nov. 24, was followed by a failed attempt on the part of the killer of Tippit to kill Oswald in the Texas Theatre. That intent to kill Oswald on that occasion failed (Oswald's life saved by the timely arrival of police and arrest of Oswald). Following that, Ruby assisted his recent hire, ex-hit man Curtis Craford, killer of Tippit and would-be killer of Oswald, in fleeing Dallas that night, in the early hours of the next morning.

Ruby admitted that he and another man (George Senator) picked up Craford at the Carousel Club at about 4 or 5 am in the early morning hours of Sat Nov 23 and Craford fled Dallas for Michigan that morning.

But even before helping his employee of brief duration and unclear job duties, Curtis Craford, to fly by night to another end of the country leaving Dallas precipitously the night after Tippit was killed and Oswald had narrowly avoided the same fate from the same killer, Ruby seemed to be talking to nearly everyone in sight of the need to extrajudicially kill Oswald before trial, according to anecdotal testimonies.

Ruby framed this focus of attention on his part in terms of his grief for the JFK assassination and sympathy for Jackie Kennedy. As Ruby told it, it was all about compassion for Jackie Kennedy, and had nothing to do with the many mob contacts represented in his phone records and his personal mob associations later catalogued by the HSCA and journalists such as Seth Kantor. In the version told by Ruby, laying groundwork for a defense with intent to be viewed sympathetically in the public eye and at the time of sentencing, his talk and intent to kill Oswald prior to trial had nothing to do with the recent arrival of a hit man whom he barely knew but generously offered housing in the Carousel Club until said hit man fled Dallas with no goodbys in the early morning hours of Saturday Nov 23. 

In addition to Ruby talking of the necessity for Oswald to be killed before trial, beginning mid-afternoon on Fri Nov 22 according to witness testimony, Ruby's movements that weekend show him stalking Oswald at the police station Friday and Saturday, then on Sunday morning Nov 24 carried out the killing of Oswald that his employee had failed to accomplish at the Texas Theatre on Friday.

Ruby's confusion of those two street addresses--that slip of the tongue, that Freudian slip, told by Ruby to the FBI on Sunday Nov 24, the street address where Tippit met his killer instead of the different street address where his dancer Joyce McDonald lived which he meant to say—has gone largely unnoticed, or if noticed misunderstood, its significance not appreciated, in discussions of the Tippit killing to date. There is certainly no record of law enforcement at the time pressing Ruby to explain why that particular street address--the street address where Tippit met his killer--was the content of Ruby's mistake.

But I do not think that would be a detail that the fictional television detective Colombo would have missed, if Columbo had been on this case.

On the Jarnagin polygraph, in the opinion of Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade, the polygraph showed Jarnagin to be sincere but untrue. Wade explained Jarnagin's polygraph to the Warren Commission not as having detected intentional deception but as having determined that Jarnagin's statements though he believed them to be true were factually untrue. I have never before heard a law enforcement official claim that a polygraph was capable of distinguishing truth from untruth in a sincere witness who believes both to be true.  

Mr. Wade. (. . .) I know one of them during the trial was a lawyer there in Dallas, which I presume you all got his four-page statement, said he heard them discussing killing Connally a week before then, came out to my house and that had been sent to the FBI, and that was during the trial, and I gave him a lie detector which showed that he didn't have, this was a fanciful thing.

Mr. Rankin. You found that was not anything you could rely on.

Mr. Wade. I didn't use him as a witness [in the Ruby trial] and after giving him the polygraph I was satisfied that he was imagining it. I think he was sincere, I don't think he was trying--I don't think he was trying to be a hero or anything. I think he really thought about it so much I think he thought that it happened, but the polygraph indicated otherwise. (5H232)

That polygraph did not show Jarnagin was knowingly speaking falsely, according to District Attorney Wade. The polygraph was able to determine, instead, according to Wade, that what Jarnagin said and believed to be true, was imagination not real. Later,

Mr. Wade. He talked to me at length there at my house, just us, and I would say at 11 o'clock at night. It was on a Sunday night I know (. . .) I read that statement over. It is a rather startling thing. It didn't ring true to me. It all deals with a conversation between Oswald and Ruby about killing John Connally, the Governor of Texas, over, he says, they can't get syndicated crime in Texas without they kill the Governor. I know enough about the situation, the Governor has practically nothing to do with syndicated crime. It has to be on a local, your district attorney and your police are the ones on the firing line on that, and they discussed at length killing him, how much they are going to pay him, 'He wants five thousand, I believe or half of it now, and half of it when it is done.' (. . .) 

He told me this is what happened, and I said, 'I can't put you on the stand without I am satisfied you are telling the truth because,' I said, 'We have got a good case here [against Ruby], and if they prove we are putting a lying witness on the stand, we might hurt us,' and I said, 'The only thing I know to do I won't put you on the stand but to take a polygraph to see if you are telling the truth or not.' He said, 'I would be glad to.' And I set it up and I later ran into him in the lawyers' club there and he handed me another memorandum which amplified on the other one, which all have been furnished to the attorney general or if we didn't lose it in the shuffle. This was during the trial actually, and then when the man called me he took a lie detector. There was no truth in it. That he was in the place. He was in the place, in Ruby's Carousel, but that none of this conversation took place. He said he was in one booth and Ruby was in another booth.   

On 10/2/2021 at 12:14 AM, George Govus said:

It's fascinating to consider Tippet's murder unrelated to Kennedy's.

Occam's Razor is a blunt instrument when it comes to the JFK assassination, I reckon.

Still I looked up homicide statistics for Dallas in 1963.

https://www.centraltrack.com/dallas-annual-homicide-count-for-every-year-since-1930/

113 murders for the year. Less than one every three days, on average. Here you have two within the hour.

George, yes. Alternative explanations for the Tippit murder such as the jealous husband or the local street gang, do not explain why the killer of Tippit went to the Texas Theatre where Oswald was arrested. The Tippit killer going to the same theatre where Oswald was inside means one of only two things: either he went there to kill Oswald, or he was Oswald.