Donald Willis

Someone for the "Reclaiming History" team apparently found an interview which Whaley did not long after 11/22, in which he talked as he drove to the site where he (now) said he dropped off Oswald, several blocks below the boarding house. Unfortunately, he also added, as he dutifully drove there, that he turned onto N. Beckley at the 500 block (actually the 1000 block). Apparent upshot: Whaley thought the place that he dropped off Oswald--opposite the house--was the 500 block.

All valid points. Because Hill had to take another car to Oak Cliff, we know that someone was using 207. As for Whaley--I used to discount him outright. But details like his saying (in his Rewriting History interview, drive) that, coming off the viaduct route, he turned left on N. Beckley at the 500 block (really the 1000 block) made me think otherwise. Don't think he could have made that mistake if he hadn't ferried Oswald to Beckley and thought that Oswald's "This will be fine" meant that the 1000-block drop-off was really the 500 block, as originally scheduled. And, yes, I noticed that Whaley died shortly after. And the Burroughs timing tracks--if Oswald left the rooming house just before 1pm, he would have arrived at the theatre not long after 1...

All valid points. Since Hit the wrong button. Going to try again..., in his Reit

To continue my reply to Richard Bertolino... If you can enlarge the page I just posted, about 10 minutes ago, you'll see that I have Oswald coming in to N. Beckley about 12:51 and alighting at the 1000 block. So, rooming house, about 12:52. Leaving it, about 12:55. Now to switch to Hill/Valentine: Hill radios dispatcher about 12:48: "Hill & Valentine en route to Elm & Houston". Arrival time there: circa 12:51. And they did arrive there, as shown in a photo on jfkinvestigators.wordpress.com. Hill interacts at the TSBD with Insp. Sawyer and a third-floor suspect, going up to & back down from the 3rd floor, with the suspect. No way, then, that he can be on Beckley before, say, 1:05, after Oswald has left. Even if a third officer borrowed their car, it's doubtful he could have been there between 12:51 & 12:55...

Sawyer was informed by the dispatcher that the shooting had come from the 4th or 5th floor. He entered the building, as he testified, with a couple of officers. Sgt Hill testified that he was one of the two officers, and he had come to the TSBD with Valentine. Hill and Sawyer were apparently detoured by news of the discovery of a suspect on the 3rd floor. Hill apparently then continued on up, either with or after Valentine, leaving Sawyer on the ground floor. The original goal of 4th or 5th floor was then achieved, at least by Valentine, as per his report, which was apparently not vetted by the conspirators, who had helped Sawyer & Hill rework their stories, but had forgotten about Valentine, by the time of his report. The C's would not have wanted any suggestion of a report of shooting from the 5th floor. Hence, the "magical" transformation of the 5th floor into the 6th floor. done apparently without Valentine's help, or he would not later have reported "5th floor"...

Good reason to fake-place Valentine on the 6th floor. According to his response to the questioning of every patrolman re where he was on 11/22/63 in the hour after the assassination, he wrote that he had been posted on the fifth floor. This, after entering the building with Insp. Sawyer & Sgt. Hill in response to Dealey officers (Harkness and Patrolman LL Hill) claiming that witnesses saw shooting from that floor. Sawyer, however, apparently stayed downstairs.

Asked, at the hearings, to put an "X" on a map (CE 371) to indicate where he left off Oswald, Whaley marks a big "X" on the intersection of N. Beckley and Neches/El Dorado/Zangs, different names for a street which is actually continuous. And in the video, he calls that intersection the 500 block. Oswald threw him off when he changed destinations and said "This will do fine"--at the 1000 block, when he saw that the coast was clear...

Then why did Whaley say that he "turned left at the 500 block of N. Beckley..."? Obviously, Oswald changed his mind about the original drop-off point when he saw that there were no police cars near the rooming house. And the taciturn (as Whaley noted) Oswald did not inform Whaley that the new drop-off point was in fact a change. So Whaley thought that the block he turned onto on Beckley was the 500 block.

Markham did testify that she first saw the guy when he was "almost across Patton St." (v3p307)

Two sections of Myers' 11/22/2023 recap here of the events of 11/22/63 have since been discredited. Brennan's supposed description of the man and rifle in the window came not from Brennan, but from an unnamed individual who saw the suspect run out of the depository "shortly after the shooting", according to FBI dispatches, including one from James R. Malley to Gordon Shanklin. And cab driver William Whaley did NOT drive Oswald to a spot "five blocks past his room". As Whaley recounted it, in a "Four Days in November" video segment, he "turned left at the 500 block of N. Beckley..." In total confusion, Whaley--both here and in his Commission testimony--has separated the "500 block" from the intersection of Beckley and Neely, 5 blocks south of the rooming house, and the actual 500 block. "No, sir. I didn't drive until I reached the 500 block. I drove until I reached Beckley and Neely", as he tells counsel Ball. However, he tells his video interviewer that he "turned left at the 500 block of N. Beckley", which turn onto Beckley was actually at the 1000 block. Either way, Whaley seems to be under the impression that he left Oswald off near his rooming house, whether the 500 block or the 1000 block. All that he seems to know for sure is that Oswald told him, 'This will do fine". Which instruction apparently happened at the 1000-block turn. Hence Whaley's mistaken designation of the latter as the 500 block, Oswald's original instruction. Letting Oswald off near the rooming house would take about five minutes off his subsequent travel time from the latter. If he were, then, actually heading towards 10th & Patton, he would have arrived there about 1:10. Some little speculation, then, would be required to have Oswald and Tippit together there as late as 1:14 or 1:15. Speculation aside, however, Oswald was not the man who encountered Tippit at about 1:14 or so.

Don't forget the DPD's contributions to the concoctions, beginning with DPD Sgt Henslee's radio-transcription inventions.

Who saw him there then?

Early response by Brehm, from the Dallas Times Herald 11/22/63: "The first shot must not have been too solid, because he just slumped. Then on the second shot he seemed to fall back." "Drehm [sic] seemed to think the shots came from the front of or beside the President. He explained the President did not slump forward as he would have after being shot from the rear."

Early response by Brehm, from the Dallas Times Herald 11/22/63: "The first shot must not have been too solid, because he just slumped. Then on the second shot he seemed to fall back." "Drehm [sic] seemed to think the shots came from the front of or beside the President. He explained the President did not slump forward as he would have after being shot from the rear."

There were also apparently reporters from the Chicago Daily News there that day. The S.F. Chronicle 11/29/63 features an article by M.W. Newman and Henry Hanson of the News, recounting many things, including this paragraph: "H.L. Brennan... saw a rifle barrel sticking out of a fifth-floor window in a red-brick warehouse building. The man who held the gun was 'slender and nice-looking'. He crouched in a dusty, cobwebby corner and fired while leaning over crates of textbooks." The most interesting part of that recollection is the word "cobwebby"--witness James Tague echoed this word in his Commission testimony: "From the reflection of the sun it was something on the window... Not the window that proved to be where the shots were fired, but it was a different window, like it had spider webs or dust, and maybe shots had come through the window." (v7p554) Where exactly was that cobwebs-and-dust window from which shots also seemed to come? Counsel did not follow up on this.

The sniper at the middle window on the 6th floor A notion not given much play nowadays. Not since March 19, 1964. In fact, three witnesses, in all, seemed to situate a sniper at a 6th-floor window other than the sniper's nest window. One was Howard Brennan, who (a) circled both windows in the east end double-window, as the location of the sniper, and (b) circled the third single window from the east end of the depository, as the apparent location of the two 5th-floor witnesses he espied up there. (See CE 477.) (A) echoes, in part, the 12:37 DPD radio transmission re suspected shooting from the "second window from the end". (B) put Harold Norman at a window other than the one in which he is seen in the Dillard photo. More to the point, Brennan thus effectively moved Norman out of the end window (just below the sniper's-nest window) from which, he stated, he had heard the "bolt action of the rifle". (SS affidavit 12/4/63) To hear Brennan tell it, then, Norman heard the bolt action coming from the third single window from the east end right above him. Norman and Brennan, out of sync. The second witness who moved Norman bodily out of the end window was SS Agent Forrest Sorrels. He testified that the "two colored men" he saw on the 5th floor "were about, oh, maybe a third of the distance from the right to the left, maybe not quite that far." (v7p344) That too put Norman in about the third or fourth single window from the east end. And, again, if true, would have those bolt-action sounds coming from the corresponding window on the 6th floor. Brennan and Sorrels, true, might have misremembered a scene which they saw only briefly. But it would not seem possible that our third witness could suffer such a memory lapse. Because he was himself one of the three 5th-floor witnesses, Bonnie Ray Williams. And he held to his radical situating of the three of them for almost four months. In an 11/23/63 FBI interview, Williams stated that when he joined Norman and Jarman they "were looking out windows on the south side of the building approximately at the middle of the building." In the next two weeks, by contrast, Norman, properly, it would seem, put himself in the window at the SE corner of the 5th floor. (SS affidavit 12/4) But, quite independently of Norman & Jarman, Williams continued to maintain, as late as 3/19/64, that the three of them "were at the windows which are located at about the center of the building on the south side". (FBI statement) And it was there, he went on, that the famous "little pieces of cement hit [him] on the head." (Those eccentric fragments actually started out life hitting *Norman* in the face, according to Jarman's 11/24 FBI interview, and returned to Norman in the latter’s 10/20/77 HSCA interview!) That 3/19 date, above, is significant--it was the day before Norman, Jarman, & Williams assumed their locations (as shown in Dillard) near the SE end of the 5th floor for an indoor photo, and five days before Williams, finally, testified that he was in his Dillard location at the second single window from the end. In his Commission testimony, he corrected several earlier statements, but for some reason not his "middle"/"center" references. Finally, the twain met--i.e., Williams, on the one hand, and Norman & Jarman, on the other. But why these odd, conflicting narratives (until 3/20/64)? It may have begun about 1:12 on 11/22/63, when DPD Insp. Sawyer radioed that shells had been found on the 3rd [sic] floor, and then later told reporters, “Police found the remains of fried chicken and paper on the fifth floor. Apparently the person had been there quite a while.” (Stockton Record [AP] 11/22/63 p8) The DPD Crime Lab photographed, that same day, a pop bottle and a bag of chicken scraps, apparently found below the third double window from the east end, almost in the middle of the 6th floor. ("JFK First Day Evidence", p169) Echoing Sawyer’s comments, news photographer Tom Alyea wrote (in a 12/19/63 statement), “at the time, it was suspected that the assassin had stayed quite a time there. There was a s[t]ack with a stack of chicken bones on it. There was a Dr. Pepper bottle which they dusted for fingerprints.” Apparently in response to this interesting find, there was a change in Williams' itinerary—the first in a series of changes. In his initial statement, on Friday, he wrote, in an affidavit, that he "went up on the 5th floor with a fellow called Hank and Junior." However, the next day, in his FBI statement, he was now averring that he "went back upstairs in the elevator to the 6th floor with his lunch”. And in his testimony, he said that, yes, the Dr. Pepper bottle and the chicken were his. (v3pp170-71) Perhaps indicating the haste with which Williams’ story was amended, on Saturday, he then—in his Commission testimony—stated that, No, he did not descend “to the 5th floor using the stairs”--as he had so stated in the 11/23 interview. No, he testified, at the hearings, “I didn’t tell [the FBI] I was using the stairs. I came back down to the 5th floor in the same elevator I came up on.” (v3pp171-72) Finally, Williams amends his 2nd amendment: In the same testimony, he changes his descent elevator from the west one to the east (p172). A many-tangled web. Now, it may be perilous to try to put oneself in the mind of someone long ago and far away, but there seems to be no other way to explain Williams' two bizarre FBI statements to the effect that he, Norman, and Jarman were looking out the windows "approximately at the middle of the building" on the 5th floor. But when he was instructed--as he must have been--to claim the bottle and bag as his own and to say that he first went back up to the 6th floor, he must have assumed (as did Alyea) that the two items had belonged to the assassin, and that, further, the third window from the east end on the 6th floor, then, was where the assassin had done the shooting. (Williams, it seems, did not consider that the assassin might have eaten his lunch in one spot and shot from another.) So, in order to forestall others from coming to the same conclusion that Alyea and Williams did, the latter was enlisted to demystify the third-window mystery. Williams’ “instructors” were taking no chances, brooking no ambiguity re the placement and number of shooters. [Sawyer’s “fried chicken”, however, still had to be addressed. To that end, several deputies and policemen were told to say that they saw pieces of chicken adorning the nest. But Crime Scene Det. Studebaker nixed that idea, testifying that if there had been any chicken present there, it would have appeared in his photos of the area. (v7p147)] Consequently--on his own initiative, presumably, without instruction--Williams told the FBI that--from the middle of the building--he had heard shots "from right over his head" (11/23/63), "from directly above me" (3/19/64). However, for his came-the-dawn Commission testimony--when he testified that he was, in fact, at the second single window from the east end--he was saying that *Norman*, at the east-end-corner single window, "was directly under the window that Oswald shot from" (v3p175). That "directly”, as well as the magic cement pieces, moved with Williams from about the third double-window to the first, and from himself to Norman. The fact that Williams was so quick to say that he had heard firing from “directly above” him, at that middle window, suggests that this “directly above” factoid was scripted for him, but for use only in the east-end windows. He must have thought, mistakenly, that there had, for some reason, been a last-minute change in the shooting location. Unless one believes that there was actually shooting from the 6th-floor middle window… And the cement was clearly another factoid, transferring, as it did, from one witness (Norman) to another (Williams) and back again… These factoids were meant of course to reinforce the evidence of the presence of a sniper on the 6th floor, whether or not there really was one. Why did Williams' assassination "instructor" not correct him after that 11/23 "middle of the building" bungle? Perhaps because the main order of the day was to have him claim the Dr. Pepper and bag lunch as his. And if counsel, at the hearings, asked him if he had said “middle of the building”, he could simply have replied that he did not. However, he pretty obviously did--twice. That twice may be why the subject was not brought up again, anywhere. Making things more interesting, and more complicated, Alyea--in one of his periodic statements on the scene in the depository--maintained that he had filmed Studebaker, on the 6th floor, "dusting the Dr. Pepper bottle which had been brought up to him from the 5th floor". ("Secrets from the Sixth Floor Window" p45.) A fine new kettle of fish...

Tantalizing. Anything to add re that third point? Say, nose-witnesses at Parkland...

I doubt both stories. Markham I believe did not even get to 10th & P in time to see the shooter, only a vigilante (probably Scoggins), with Tippit's revolver. If Scoggins were a plant he would have ID'd Oswald at the first Friday lineup. As his testimony indicates, he knew Tippit, and went on 2 or 3 searches for the killer, the first (as I indicated) on foot, the 2nd with Callaway, the third with a cops.

I had never thought of Jimmy Burt as the one that Barbara (& Virginia) Davis saw. Certainly a possibility as he went the same way, apparently, as the actual killer. But he was with Smith, wasn't he?. Wouldn't she have seen him, too? That intersection gets very complicated, foot-traffic-wise. But if Smith didn't follow Burt around the corner...? But my take is that none of them--Davis, Davis, Markham, Burt, Smith--saw the killer, just a vigilante chasing same. I think the only two witnesses to the killer were Benavides & Scoggins, but they ran into a police buzz-saw, and couldn't ID anyone, on Friday, at least... I think the killer did his job and left very quickly*, and the only two people up & about outside at 10th & Patton were Benavides and Scoggins. *No time, for instance, for a belated head shot, as described by one (very belated) witness... PS I think you're right--two witnesses, at least, wanted to help the police catch the killer of JFK--the Davises

Such as Mrs M & Virginia Davis, who apparently did not even see the shooter, just a vigilante chasing him.

We seem to be getting somewhere...

I could go with "didn't" and return to my original take that McWatters took Oswald all the way to Oak Cliff, but Whaley's confusion between "Neches" and the "500 block" seems legit. All because his "advisors" wanted Oswald to have gotten to 10th & Patton about the same time as Tippit, not 7 minutes earlier, which latter phenomenon would have taken some 'splainin', or at least some LN speculation... Either way, Oswald wasn't near 10th & Patton at all that Friday...

And yet Neely was not mentioned by Whaley in his 11/23 affidavit, nor in his first 2 or 3 Commission stints. Sometime in between that last (2nd or 3rd) session & the 4/8/ final session, the word "Neely entered his mind, either from diligent research or from suggestions by Commission staff. He just, suddenly, drops the word "Neely" during the 4/8 session, without explaining where it came from or why. Or what happened to his several "Neches" references...

I have great doubts about that: Two of the men closest to the shooter & the shooting--Scoggins and Benavides--did not or would not ID Oswald in a lineup on Friday. Saturday doesn't count--Scoggins was a friend, or at least an acquaintance of Tippit's. He would surely have ID'd the killer at the first opportunity. So it wasn't Oswald...