Donald Willis

In Oak Cliff--one shooter, one accomplice, no automatic, no Oswald Hard to discount rumors of the presence of two gunmen in Oak Cliff. There are two solid bases for two different escape routes. 1) Patrolman Summers' radio report on the suspect, at 1:37: "running on the north side of the street from Patton, on East Jefferson". Then north through the Texaco parking lot and then west. (map, "With Malice" p20). 2) DPD was kind enough, though, to provide, also, a competing escape route: "W on alley [from Patton] to Crawford, left on Crawford to E. Jefferson" (Sgt. Barnes' crime lab sketch, WM p161). The former made some folks happy since it included a pit stop for discarding the infamous jacket. The latter route seems in error when it posits a left turn on Crawford. There's a solid basis for a right turn off the alley, up to the Abundant Life Temple, on 10th St.: "An unidentified witness gave Officer J.M. Poe 2 empty hulls in an empty cigarette pack & stated... that the suspect reloaded the gun as he ran across the church lawn." (11/22/63 Poe-Jez report) Implied: This witness, later ID'd as Domingo Benavides, found said hulls on the church lawn, then, not in the yard at 10th & Patton. And it makes sense: The only reason for the gunman to have left them in the Davis yard--long before reloading, if the temple tale is on the money--would be to have graciously provided the police with evidence. Otherwise, the four hulls would only have been found if the gunman had been followed from 10th & Patton to the temple. As DPD Sgt. Gerald Hill put it, at 1:44, on the police radio: "A witness said he saw the gunman last at the Abundant Life Temple at 10th... 400 block." Benavides saw him first at 10th & Patton. Benavides bent the truth, then, when he testified that he had told officers at the scene--in answer to, "Did you tell the officers what you had seen?"--"No. I left right after" (v6p450)... after handing Poe the shells, that is. He had, in fact, told Poe about the "church lawn". The gunman, according to Benavides, reloaded later, on the church lawn. The DPD was forced to explain away two police-radio references to the use of an automatic. But Benavides' discovery of the hulls so far from the scene indicates that the murder weapon was a revolver. More fallout from Benavides' inconvenient statement re the belated reloading: Witness Pat Patterson was mistaken when he said that he saw a gunman "obviously trying to reload" on Patton. (FBI report 1/23/64) And the witnesses who said that they saw unloading or reloading around 10th & Patton were--if the temple tale is on the money--conspiring to cover-up: Barbara Davis, Virginia Davis, and Sam Guinyard. In fact, Guinyard went a little crazy with the unloading business. He testified, haplessly, that the gunman was running up Patton "knocking empty shells out of his pistol" (v7p397)--this would have been in addition to the four shells supposedly knocked out on 10th St. Just trying to help the police, apparently. I don't recall seeing even one reference to the alley or the church in the record of the Warren Commission interviews. The cover-up of the alternate route continued with Myers' book: "The gunman was last seen by Jimmy Burt and Bill Smith in the alley behind the cars near Crawford" (photo caption WM p91). This was based on a 1968 interview with Burt. However, in a more timely 12/15/63 FBI interview, Burt stated that "when he was close enough to Patton St. to see to the south he saw the man running INTO AN ALLEY located between 10th & Jefferson on Patton." Not "near Crawford". The hearings, Myers, maybe even Burt--all seemed aware of the spectre of a second gunman if the problem of the alley was raised. Of course the fact that it was not raised tends, now, to support the existence of that spectre. However, most of the "6 to 8 witnesses... all telling officers that the subject was running west in the alley between 10th & Patton" (Poe-Jez DPD report 11/22/63) may have actually just been witnesses to a vigilante tailing the "subject". In his Commission testimony, Sgt. Barnes did not mention speaking to any of the witnesses, by name, at the scene. However, a frame grab in "With Malice" shows the police questioning Helen Markham "near the passenger side door" (p152)--she had testified that the suspect had "leaned over" the passenger door (v3p315)--as Barnes looks on. And Barnes was the one who provided the diagram of the alternate escape route. Interviewed in later years, Mrs. Markham said that the suspect had indeed run down the alley. She must have been the source of a "report that a cab driver had picked up Tippit's gun and had left, presumably. They don't know whether he was the one that had shot Tippit... [or had] attempted to give chase." (DPD Sgt. Kenneth Croy [v12p202]) More later on the Markham-Scoggins tie-in with the account of the Holmes-Wheless cab chase... Markham was one of several alley witnesses to Scoggins' flight. The testimony of sisters-in-law Virginia and Barbara Davis was inextricably linked to her own testimony. Before Virginia D even refers to the suspect, she offers, "Well, Mrs. Markham was trying to say--" At this point, David Belin has to ask, "Mrs. Markham?", since that's the first he heard her mention Markham. Virginia 😧 "We heard her say, 'He shot him. He is dead. Call the police.'" Still no explanation of that "he". "She was screaming." Finally, Belin has to come right out and ask, "Did you see anything else as you heard her screaming?" "Well, we saw Oswald." (v6pp456-7) Ah! So Mrs. M's screaming drew Virginia D's attention to "Oswald". Now, Barbara 😧 "First off, [Mrs. M] went to screaming before I had paid too much attention to... the man... coming across the yard." (v3p343) Again, the presence of the man in the yard seems secondary, for the Davises, to the sound of Mrs. M's screaming. Now for Mrs. M's account. "[The man] stared at me." [As he stood at the SW corner of 10th & Patton/CE 524] Counsel Ball: "Didn't you say something?" "No, I couldn't." Ball: "Or yell or scream." "I could not." (v3p308) "I couldn't scream. I couldn't holler. I froze." (v3p?) Makes sense: She couldn't do anything while he was staring right at her. Then: "He cut across Patton like this [heading] toward Jefferson. Then he was still in sight when I began to scream and holler..." (v3p?) In sum: Mrs. M could not scream until *after* the suspect had begun going down Patton, away from her. The Davises, then, like Mrs. M, have been describing a scene on *Patton*, not on 10th St. They, too, saw what Mrs. M last saw of the suspect--the latter running into the alley. And an apparent Freudian slip in Virginia D's 11/22/63 affidavit indicates that she was in good position to see the suspect run into the alley off Patton: "[My sister-in-law and myself] heard a shot and then another shot and ran to the side door at Patton St." Another such slip, in her Commission testimony, reinforces that they were not at the front door on 10th St., as they otherwise maintained: "We saw the boy cutting across the street." (v6p461) She gets "boy" right, supposedly, but not "street", which usually came out "lawn", in their testimony. And 8 or 9 times, in the meandering, doubling-back course of her testimony, she rings variations on "When Mrs. Markham was standing across the street hollering, she told us to call the police, so [Barbara] Jeanette and I went in there, and Jeanette called the police, and we went back, and he was cutting across our yard." (v6p458) This phenomenon of repetition amounts not so much to a slip as a complex. If the two called the police first--as Virginia insisted, many times, then they were of course too late to see the actual shooter. Like Mrs. Markham, the Davises were witnesses to a man running into the alley. The wrong man, as it turns out--but another reason why it might have been thought that there was a second shooter. Hence, the unheroic efforts by the DPD (and Ted Callaway) to take Tippit's pistol out of Scoggins' hands and put it into Callaway's, not just later on in the story--where it seems only natural when Scoggins is driving the cab--but from the get-go. The other alley witnesses: Of course Scoggins. Burt and Smith. And Benavides, one of the Poe-Jez "6 to 8 witnesses". Like the Davises, though, Burt and Smith got to the scene late--they drove from 9th & Denver, a block and a half away. So most of the alley witnesses saw only Scoggins the vigilante. But whom did *Scoggins* see? He must have seen Benavides, running ahead of him. But did he see him as a fellow vigilante or as the culprit? He certainly did not see Oswald, or--after having chased after the killer three times, on foot, by car, and by cop car--or he would most gladly have nailed him at one of the three Friday lineups. As I have previously detailed, he was with the police as early as 1:25pm on Friday. Either he saw Benavides as the killer or he worked in tandem with him, maybe sending him on ahead while he went back for Tippit's service pistol, then losing track of both Benavides and the killer. (He may have been the man that Warren Reynolds saw going into the old house, off the alley, either to conceal himself or to take a short cut to Jefferson.) Holmes and Wheless. This story is of course related third-hand--and very late in the day (1999)--from Kenneth Holmes Sr. to Kenneth Holmes Jr. to Dale Myers. But it is surprisingly credible. It meshes perfectly with the testimonies of Croy and Callaway. Callaway: "I went with Scoggins in the taxicab, went up to 10th. Crawford, from Crawford up to Jefferson, and down Jefferson to Beckley. And we turned on Beckley." (v3p354) The Holmes version: "turning south off 10th onto Crawford [heading, then, towards Jefferson]... [then] on one of the side streets just east of Beckley", Holmes & Bill Wheless "caught up with the cab & forced it to a stop." (WM pp165, 169 [revised ed.]). Tenth, Crawford, and Jefferson neatly frame the alley off Patton--Scoggins seems to have been calling the shots here, picking up where he had left off on foot. And the Holmes-Wheless narrative confirms Croy's testimony that "a cab driver had picked up Tippit's gun". It wasn't just a "report". And Croy was free to reveal that tantalizing detail in 1964 since it was not confirmed at the time. It was just left hanging, tantalizingly. When Holmes & Wheless "pulled up [at 10th & Patton], a woman in near hysterics ran up to the car and told them that 'the man who shot the officer had got in a taxi and took off'." (WM p165 [rev. ed.]) A perfect description of Mrs. Markham and a perfect explanation as to why she was in hysterics. No wonder. Scoggins was "getting away"--again. She had spotted him leaving the scene and running down the alley, then, not much later, leaving the scene in the taxi. And for Mrs M to have thought that Scoggins was the killer, she must have--as I've already suggested--got to the Tippit scene a bit later than she testified that she did. Late enough so that the first thing she saw, maybe, was Scoggins looking in the car window to see what he could see, then going to the street in front of the cab and picking up Tippit's pistol. By then, Benavides would already have been going up the alley. Benavides was the only one of the three searchers--also including Scoggins and Callaway--to have had any luck. He tracked the perp as far as the temple, and he found the shells which the man had left behind. Scoggins was a bit too late with his foot chase, and he and Callaway were way too late with the cab chase. Benavides must have been very discouraged when he found out, though, that his "luck" was not wanted. Nothing re searchers in and beyond the alley was wanted. The police--thanks mainly, it seems, to Summers' transmission--had their guy's escape route. No ambiguity, no second gunman was wanted. If it's difficult to reconstruct the movements of Benavides and Scoggins at the scene, it's due in part to the fact that some documents have disappeared. I have long known that Benavides made out an affidavit. (WM p449) Gone. Now, Michael Kalin has found an FBI report from March 1, 1967, which states that Benavides also "made a statement to the FBI on the date of the assassination". (Education Forum 9/29/23) Also gone. If the Secret Service had Benavides do an affidavit, too, it's still secret. Taken together, Summers and Poe-Jez seem to describe two shooters, one running from Patton to Jefferson, the other from Patton, through the alley, to the Abundant Life lawn. But I lean towards: The Jefferson running man was window dressing, not really a shooter, just an accomplice with a display gun, a display Eisenhower jacket, and a display Oswald-resemblance. He was also a distraction, taking attention away from the vicinity of the alley. The alley shooter, by contrast, seemed to vanish into thin air, seen perhaps by only two witnesses, Benavides and Scoggins. The Jefferson gunman was apparently spotted by several witnesses, including Guinyard, Callaway, Warren Reynolds, and Pat Patterson. But he was not--despite what you may have read--seen by anyone going from Jefferson into the Texaco parking lot. On 11/22/63, Reynolds was telling police and reporters that he last saw the suspect entering an old house (frame grab of Reynolds and reporter by the house, WM p131). Scratch Reynolds re the parking lot. Next up: Mrs. Mary Brock told the FBI (1/21/64) that she informed [Reynolds and Patterson] that the [suspect] proceeded north behind the Texaco station and she last observed him in the parking lot." Busted, some time later, by the WFAA-TV footage. More likely, Reynolds would be informing *her* re the house. Scratch Mr. and Mrs. Brock. The presence of the gas station "witnesses" suggests that Eisenhower man may not even have dropped the jacket at that time, but that it was already there. I guess the "when", though, doesn't really matter... Upshot: Eisenhower man was last seen on the sidewalks of Jefferson. He had done his job: witness magnet. Except, almost ruinously, that one of his witnesses, for some reason, thought that he was wielding an automatic--possibly Callaway, who said that he thought that he saw the gunman's arm in the "raised pistol" position, "the way you'd load an automatic." (WM p78) An unfortunate glitch for the apparent accomplice--he was supposed to have been displaying Oswald's *revolver*. And Sgt. Hill was no help either, with his 1:41 radioed "Shells at the scene indicate that the suspect is armed with an automatic 38..." These two apparent glitches necessitated the Davises' painstaking, but spurious descriptions of the unloading of the pistol. Did Benavides and/or Scoggins see the accomplice? (The attention of Benavides had to have been riveted on the alley, but Eisenhower man was pretty flagrant, so...) Whence did the latter spring? Did Scoggins at first think Benavides was the shooter? Why did neither Benavides nor Scoggins attend a Friday lineup? Both had apparently seen the killer (if not the accomplice), and the fact that neither ID'd Oswald that day indicates that it was not in fact he. The answers to these questions might be a couple of the details lost with the disappearance of the 11/22 Benavides documents.

Markham is quicksand. For instance, she gave three different versions of the escape route of the shooter, or the man she thought was the shooter--up 10th (original affidavit), up Patton (WC testimony), down the alley (based first on the crime scene sketch & later on recorded interviews).

If so, then Leavelle/Dhority was right, Poe/Jez was wrong.

The centerpiece of Benavides' testimony was the cigarette pack with the two shells. Until then, all the public had to go on was the Poe/Jez 11/22 report to Curry. And the contradictory report by Leavelle/Dhority. The latter stated that Benavides did NOT see the suspect; the former, that he did see him reloading. "With Malice" pp487 & 449. The delay in Benavides own voice suggests that the story told the Commission was not the real one.

I don't see that anyone commented on this, so... At least two witnesses saw the killer leave via the alley--Markham and Jimmy Burt. And there was a third witness to whom Markham showed the alley pathway, lived across the street I believe.

Thank you. A friend tipped me off to alt.assassination.jfk way back in about 1998. I stayed with it and alt.conspiracy.jfk, where recently someone tipped me off to the ed forum. I had visited it, but hadn't posted, until now.

I find the Hickey story intriguing, mainly because an LN on alt.assassination.jfk, Claviger by name, endorsed it, some years ago. He still considered himself an LN because, even if the Hickey story were true, Hickey was not part of a conspiracy. Like everyone before him (such as Dale Myers), Claviger made the trajectory fit his theory. I couldn't quite get HOW, but it made me question all the other official and unofficial trajectories. And, yes, not incidentally, Claviger also read my 12 points re DPD Insp. Sawyer, and agreed that he came off as somewhat of a loon.

I'll just add that no one INSIDE the depository, at the finding of the shells, confirms Hill's presence there.

Unholy Matrimony--The Three Shells Are Finally United with the "Nest"; or, Fritz the Matchmaker Vincent Bugliosi, in "Four Days in November", has DPD Sgt. Gerald Hill hollering out a depository window re the discovery of the hulls, at 1:06pm, moments after Dallas Deputy Sheriff Luke Mooney has found them: "1:06 pm. Deputy Luke Mooney is near the southeastern corner of the floor when he whistles loudly and hollers to his fellow officers.... On the floor, at the baseboard beneath the window, are three spent cartridge casings--"hulls" as they call them in Texas. Dallas police sergeant Gerald L. Hill walks over to an adjacent window, sticks his head out, and yells down to the street for the crime lab...." (pp115-116). Hill testified that as he first entered the depository, "Captain Fritz... came up.... Fritz and his men would start at the first floor and work up... and they asked several of us to go to the top floor and work down. We went up to the seventh floor... I went down to sixth.... We hadn't been there but a moment until someone yelled, 'Here it is!'.... The boxes were stacked in a sort of three-sided shield....On the floor near the baseboard... were three spent shells" ..... I went over still further west to another window... and yelled down to the street for them to send us the crime lab" (v7pp45-46). As Bugliosi says, at about 1:06. We've heard now from Hill and Bugliosi. What about Mooney? "I saw the expended shells.... So I leaned out the window... looked down, and I saw Sheriff Bill Decker and Captain Will Fritz standing right on the ground. Well, so I hollered." (WC testimony/v3p284). What about Fritz? He testified that he "arrived at the scene of the offense at 12:58... and immediately entered the building...." (v4pp204, 205). Mooney, then, puts the finding of the shells at about 12:58, when Fritz arrived. Mooney, in fact, testified that "it was approaching 1 o'clock" when he found them (v3p285). A police-radio transmission from Sgt. D.V. Harkness, at about 12:59, confirms that Mooney's shout-out was heard downstairs: "Give us 508 [the crime lab station wagon] down to the Texas School Book Depository" (CE 1974 p41/DPD radio-log tape). Three points: 1) Note how Bugliosi manages to maintain the 1:06 fiction by conveniently ignoring Mooney's time estimate and by omitting the names of Mooney's "fellow officers", specifically Fritz. 2) Hill appropriates Mooney's call for the crime lab. ("And I told [Decker] to get the crime lab officers en route" (Mooney/v3p285). (Of course, Hill may not have known that the crime lab had already been called, several minutes earlier, since he was clearly not upstairs when Mooney called out--he, Hill, has himself downstairs, just inside, about to hook up with Fritz, about 12:59.) 3) And Fritz, in his testimony, put himself inside the building running "back and forth from floor to floor... until...someone called me and told me... they had found some empty cartridges." (v4p205) But Mooney and Harkness nullify Fritz's version of the discovery of the shells. (And if the shells had been found in the "nest", circa 12:58, there would have been no "nest" discovered several minutes later.) And yet Hill apparently did hear someone call out, "Here it is!", supposedly about 1:06, just before he leaned out *his* window--he was caught by a camera ("Pictures of the Pain" p523). What, then, was "it"? It wasn't the shells--they'd been reported some 6 or 7 minutes earlier. In the photo, Hill is breathlessly pointing to the "sniper's nest" area. Is that "it"? But how could the "nest" of boxes itself have been found *later* than the shells lying half-hidden within it? Unless... unless they were *not* lying within it. You won't find a reference to Harkness' c12:59 transmission in the text of any book. You won't because its very existence won't allow for the *separate* discoveries of shells and "nest" to be collapsed into a single discovery. In "Case Closed", Gerald Posner puts the discovery of "nest" and hulls at 1:12 (p268). In "Pictures of the Pain", Richard Trask puts it "prior to 1:06" (p523). The Warren Report says "1:12 p.m." (p79). And Fritz's Homicide detectives Sims and Boyd say the "hulls were found about 1:15 PM." (Sims Exhibit A p2) Together, the timings offered by Fritz, Hill, Sims, and Boyd drowned out Mooney's lone voice--lone because Harkness' transmission has been completely ignored. Without Harkness, Mooney is just a dismissable outlier. *With* Harkness, Mooney wreaks complete havoc with the story of the discovery of the shells, including his own part in it. Mooney identifies the evidence; Harkness verifies the timing. Between them, they undercut not only Fritz's testimony, but Mooney's, too, his testimony, that is, that he found the shells in the "nest" (v3p284). The time--in his testimony--negates the place; a truth exposes a lie. In essence, he cut his own throat. Mooney shouted out one find; Hill shouted out another, several minutes later, calculated with the aid of his own testimony. Without Harkness, the Mooney and Hill scenes can be--as demonstrated by Bugliosi--merged into one. Shells and "nest" can be brought together, in unholy matrimony, as it were. The missing link....How, then, did the shells get to the "nest"? Fritz has already, here, been shown to be one of the less reliable witnesses re the shells. He would never quite come right out and say whether or not he handled them. But three witnesses did come right out and say that he did. Deputy Jack W. Faulkner: "Fritz of the DPD arrived at the scene and the shells were given to him". (Supplementary report 11/22/63/v19p511) Mooney: "[Fritz] was the first officer that picked them up, as far as I know, because I stood there and watched him go over and pick them up and look at them" (v3p286). Reporter Tom Alyea: "Neither Day nor Studehaker saw the casings until Fritz took them from his pocket and handed them to Studebaker to include them in the crime scene shot of the window" (4/23/98 e-mail to Tony Pitman). Capt. Fritz, then, was, most likely, the transporter of the shells. The respective testimonies of Fritz and Hill attempted to resituate, in time, the discovery of the shells; Harkness' transmission restores the timing, brings it back to before 12:59. If Harkness heard Mooney's shouting at 12:59, Fritz--just getting to the steps of the depository--most likely, heard it then, too, and he certainly did not hear it several minutes later.

Two problems with Russell's contention, on 2/23/64, that "officers... put him in a patrol car & had him point out the area where he had last seen the man with the pistol." First, he makes no mention, for the FBI, on 1/21/64, that he left the Tippit scene. Secondly, it seems that he could have stood right there, on or near Patton, and pointed out "the area where he had last seen" the man, on Jefferson, since, in neither FBI interview, does he indicate that he left the Tippit scene. He didn't even get near the next street on Jefferson, which at least Warren Reynolds did.

That CTKA article--does it involve Hill parking outside Mrs. Roberts' house about 1 pm? That is I believe a contention of SkyThrone (now calling himself No False Flags Here, formerly 19effp or something. Can't keep up with his monikers). Of course there is a basis for that--the number of the police car Mrs R invoked. But I have proposed an alternate Hill fake-out, using his presence on the 6th floor of the TSBD shouting down re discovered shells. Supposedly just after they were found. Only problem with that is he's shouting about 10 minutes too late. Perhaps I should re-post that post here... (I don't suppose "Yusuf" is another alias of SkyThrone??)

Indeed, it is, what with inconsistent witnesses, contradictory testimony, suppressed evidence, etc. I did have an alternate scenario for the Temple angle, but can't find it now. At any rate, the 12th & Beckley scenario seems move viable. All we know for sure is that Hill radioed from there, and his witness was either Scoggins or Harold Russell, both of whom I believe said that they took a ride with a cop or two. Callaway's reference (in one of his versions of the chase) mentions Beckley, so I go along with that one. Of course Scoggins is of no use to the police if he won't ID Oswald. Hence the 24 hours it took for them to get him to a lineup and, finally, ID him, although, as he says, he was with the police early in the afternoon on 11/22. (Barrett's spotting of his cab still at the scene some 15 minutes after the Callaway/Scoggins chase is proof of that.) They didn't have any trouble contacting him between 1:23 and 1:42, or as long as the cab remained at the Tippit scene. (In his book, FBI's Hosty speaks of a 2nd witness at the first lineup, which was supposedly conducted only with Mrs M. Hosty as I recall thought it was Callaway. But maybe it was Scoggins, & the latter wouldn't ID Oswald then. Or yes maybe Hosty's recollection is faulty. Yes, complicated...)

Scoggins & Callaway often seem interchangeable, mainly thanks to Mr. S&C's Wild Ride. For instance, the Holmes/Wheless story has someone resembling Mrs Markham shouting, as the cab leaves, something like "He's the killer!" So is she referring to Scoggins or Callaway? Either way, if the tale is true, it certainly calls into question her lineup ID of Oswald, who was everywhere that day, it seems, but not in Scoggins' cab! And I see your point about Scoggins perhaps simply repeating his same statement three times. They do sound similar. But the one word which doesn't fit that interpretation is the "them" in "got in a car with them". Perhaps he misspoke. At any rate, his Version Two in his testimony, which you quote above (and thank you for the clarifying bold type), is still possible since Version One (Scoggins went right back to HQ at about 1:24) is scotched by Barrett's noticing his cab still at the Tippit scene at 1:42. He didn't go right back to HQ. He at least stuck around to let the cops check his wallet and tell them that he knew Tippit. I know that Dale Myers says that Harold Russell was Sgt. Hill's witness in the car with him at 1:26, but Russell did not attend a lineup, and he was further away from the suspect when he saw him than was Scoggins. Russell is a possibility, but still less likely than Scoggins. Or for that matter the interchangeable Callaway!

Scoggins' reference to Callaway comes just before this: "I had got in the car and toured the neighborhood [that would be with CALLAWAY], and THEN the policemen came along, and I left my cab setting down there & got in a car with them & left the scene." That would be with HILL. Two different rides. And Scoggins was suspected, before any rides with anyone, of being the killer: Sgt. Croy testified that maybe a "cab driver had picked up Tippit's gun... They don't know whether he was the one that had shot Tippit." That would be why the police wanted *Scoggins'* wallet.

Michael -- There are, yes, reasons to question the testimony of both Scoggins and Callaway. The latter seemed only too eager to get along with the police, and to badmouth both Scoggins & Benavides. While Scoggins was compromised by the apparent fact that he had seen the killer and knew that it wasn't Oswald. Hence the story--which I believe he was spoon-fed--that he didn't stay at the scene and talk to police. That was supposed to be the explanation as to why he didn't attend any of the Friday lineups--the cops couldn't get in touch with him. But, as I noted, there was a follow-up by Scoggins in his testimony, in which he went with one or two cops in a 2nd (or 3rd) search for the killer. And that is supported by the FBI guy Barrett's seeing that Scoggins' cab was still there some 15 minutes after it would have been had he left for the taxi office immediately after returning to the scene with Callaway. Note that, in Scoggins testimony, there is an off-record conference by his interlocutors just after Version Two of his return to the scene. But there was no on-record mention of what was said, or comment on Scoggins' contradictory testimony here.

I believe I know whose wallet it was. And it was someone hiding in plain sight, right here on this thread. Researchers may have been thrown off the track thanks to references like this in Myers' "With Malice": "Scoggins later testified that he didn't talk to police... after returning to the scene" with Callaway (p303). And indeed Scoggins did testify, "I contacted my supervisor, and they wanted me to come into the office and make a statement, and so I did... the cab company. One of the supervisors got a statement of it, and he asked me, did the police, did I give them a statement, and I told him no, because... and he said, 'Well, why didn't you?'. I said, 'They didn't ask me. They talked with everybody else'." Hence, Myers' "he didn't talk to police." (Hearings v3p332) Myers was apparently satisfied and stopped right there as he looked over Scoggins' testimony. If he had ventured just five pages further, he would have come across this surprising passage: "I saw [Mrs. Markham] talking to the policemen after I came back... I had got in the car and toured the neighborhood, and then the policemen came along, and I left my cab setting down there and got in a car with them and left the scene." (p337) Scoggins, then, actually gives Myers two choices re his actions just after returning to the Tippit scene. Which version is the right one? Double checking. Myers has Scoggins and Callaway returning to the scene about 1:23 (p385) So, in Version One, Scoggins would have left for the office in his cab about 1:25. Meanwhile, in Version Two, FBI agent Robert Barrett arrives at the Tippit scene--photo of that on page 155--at 1:42. Myers: "According to Barrett, upon his arrival in Oak Cliff he parked across from Scoggins' cab near Tenth & Patton..." (p288) Myers makes no comment on this contradiction of Version One. If the latter was on the money, Scoggins' cab would hardly still have been there at 1:42. More substantiation of Version Two: Callaway re the cab ride with Scoggins: "So I went with Scoggins in the taxicab, went up to 10th, Crawford, from Crawford up to Jefferson, and down Jefferson to Beckley. And we turned on Beckley." (v3p354) Myers: "On one of the side streets just east of Beckley private security officer Ken Holmes & his companion Bill Wheless caught up with the cab & forced it to a stop." (p169, WM 2nd ed.) So the Scoggins-Callaway chase was stopped near Beckley. At 1:26, DPD Sgt. Gerald Hill radioed: "I'm at 12th & Beckley now. I have a man in the car with me that can identify the suspect..." (DPD radio logs) Hill, then, was one of the "policemen" that Scoggins "left the scene" with. And Scoggins directed him to the location where he and Callaway had been intercepted. He had been continuing the chase. The wallet. DPD Sgt. Kenneth Croy: "There was a report that a cab driver had picked up Tippit's gun and had left, presumably. They don't know whether he was the one that had shot Tippit..." (v12p202) Certainly, if Scoggins was, at first, wrongly suspected of being the shooter, the police would have wanted to see his wallet.

Can't find "Chapter 2: Downtown at the Depository" or Chapter 3: "Afermath"

Don't know for sure but, as I wrote, I think that Worrell was the running-man witness Sawyer quoted for the 12:44 suspect description. Others disagree, but the age/height/weight specs align, from Worrell to running man to 12:44 and even to Patrolman Baker. Just a coinkydink? By the way, those specs are all off for Oswald, except for the height. Curious that Worrell, running man, and Baker should all get the same (wrong) estimates, for age and weight... Curious, also, that Sawyer did not get Worrell's (or running man's) name OR Brennan's. Even though Chief Deputy Sheriff Allan Sweatt wrote that Sawyer was taking down names and data in front of the building. But I don't think that I ever heard that Sawyer did come up with ANY names. Just as Patrolman Haygood didn't come up with the name of his "2nd-window-from-the-end" witness, though the dispatcher had specifically told him to get those names. I say Haygood's witness, but it wasn't really his witness--it was Patrolman Hill's. Haygood just subbed for him at the hearings. What's in a name?--nothing for the DPD.

I've used the Stevenson police chronology quite a bit. That's where I found out, for instance, that there was no "roll call" per se, but a checking off at the front door of people as they left the depository. Kaminski would have been posted at the front door (as you say, by Lumpkin) around 12:40, long after Oswald would have left the building (by any door). When I met fellow researcher Walt Cakebread at a Stockton (CA) library, I took the opportunity to check the 11/22/63 Stockton Record newspaper and found a reference to Kaminski: "Lt. Erich Kaminski said the assassin's weapon appears to have been a "hi-powered army or Japanese rifle of about 25 calibre." (page 😎 And I've long been interested in Holmes' account. Yes, Holmes, in his earlier report and in his testimony, states that Oswald had said that he left by the front door. In fact, in his testimony, he said he was stopped right at the front entrance by the police. If so, that would have placed him out of range of the 6th-floor. But that's just what Oswald *said*, though that seems to have upset the horses at the interviews--Fritz & co. deigned not to mention THIS reference to the Baker-Truly encounter in their own reports of this interview session: Of course, because that would have contradicted what Bookhout and Fritz reported from the first interview. Sleeping dogs... But SkyThrone's discovery of two dispatches to Hoover saying that Insp. Sawyer had a suspect running out of the building with a rifle--which had to have been the back of the building--and Mrs. Reid's quite apparently invented story of Oswald running down the stairs and out the front--make me think that Oswald might not have been telling the truth. Of course, Sawyer's witness may have been the one not telling the truth, and that would balance Oswald's own version. For me, the decider is Mrs. "front door" Reid, who was CLEARLY not telling the truth. OK OK--unless both Baker & Hine were lying, which I doubt... It's complicated.

It's usually claimed to be from witness Howard Brennan, but the height/weight specs would have to have been incredibly lucky guesses by Brennan. Much more likely from Sawyer's unidentified running witness, ground level.

James Worrell and the Magic Affidavit "An unidentified individual told Insp. J.H. Sawyer that he had seen an individual run from the TSBD building shortly after the shooting of Pres. Kennedy and that this individual was an unknown white male, approximately 30, slender build, 5'10", 165 pounds, carrying what looked to be a 30:30, or some type of Winchester rifle. Insp. Sawyer then contacted Dallas Police Sgt. G.D. Henslee, radio dispatcher, and this description was broadcast to all Dallas squad cars." -- dispatch to "Director, FBI", from Dallas FBI office. (courtesy of SkyThrone, alt.conspiracy.jfk, 9/3/23) Of course, the Dallas Police Dept. could never admit that their actual Dealey star witness--who provided them with the 12:44 suspect description--was someone who stated that he had seen Oswald BEHIND THE DEPOSITORY, WITH A RIFLE, AFTER 12:30, on 11/22/63. His observations were broadcast and re-broadcast, live, and could not be taken back. DPD did the next best thing and attached the suspect description, none too credibly, to witness Howard Brennan: The latter thought that the suspect was "standing" as he shot from the "sniper's nest" (Warren Commission hearings v3p144), hence the cockamamie (at least from his vantage point) height and weight specs. But Brennan did see a rifle, and that's all that was needed. Downplaying of back-of-the-depository activity began that same day, with TSBD employee Mrs. R.A. Reid, who wrote, in an affidavit, that Oswald came through her office shortly after the shooting. At the Commisson hearings, Counsel David Belin asked her, "How would he have gotten out of the office?" Mrs. Reid: "Right straight out this door down this stairway and out the front door." (v3p278) (Note that she is more than helpful--she has Oswald all the way out the building, not just the office.) She told Belin that Oswald was wearing "a white T-shirt and some kind of wash trousers" (p276). However, Patrolman M.L. Baker--who had just encountered Oswald in the next room--wrote in his same-day affidavit that he was "wearing a light brown jacket". Mrs. Reid may have been thinking of Oswald's usual office attire. (As per James Jarman: "Oswald usually worked in a white tee-shirt". [12/5/63 FBI interview]) Who to believe? TSBD secretary Geneva Hine, when asked by Counsel Joseph Ball, "When you came back in [to the same office, after 12:30] did you see Mrs. Reid?" Hine: "No, sir, I don't believe there was a soul in the office when I came back in right then." (v6p396) Ball asks her, "Were you facing the door [Oswald] is supposed to have left by?" Hine: "Yes, sir." Ball: "Do you recall seeing him?" "No, sir." (p397) Mrs. Reid--supposed witness to Oswald leaving by the front door--caught out by Baker and Hine. Further references, the next few days, to an Oswald front-door departure can be found in written accounts of the Oswald interviews (Warren Report pp619, 636). The interviews were not recorded. And if Mrs. Reid's testimony is any indication, the interview accounts of Oswald's exit route must be deemed, at best, unreliable, too. However, all sources agree: Three minutes after the shooting, Oswald was downstairs, on the first floor, then out the front or back door. "Out the front door by 12:33"--Warren Report (p155). "Three minutes from the last shot to dialing the telephone inside the TSBD", after "his encounter with Oswald... inside the TSBD"--Pierce Allman (JFK Facts). Behind the building, it was "approximately three minutes before I saw this man come out the back door here."--James Worrell (v2p195). On the 23rd, the downplaying of elements in the 12:44 suspect description continued. In his affidavit, witness James Worrell, stated that, from Pacific Street, just north of the TSBD, he saw a man "come out of the building and run in the opposite direction from me... didn't have anything in hands." So, for Worrell here, no rifle apparent on the runner. But, in between the taking of the affidavit and its final form--in the Commission Exhibits--a funny thing happened. Taking Worrell's affidavit, "at about 5pm", on the 23rd, Det. R.L. Anderton wrote that, from the "north side of the TSBD... [Worrell] saw "a man run out of the building in a southerly direction. He said when he got home and saw pictures of Lee Harvey Oswald in the newspapers and on television, he recognized him as the man he saw run from the building." (CE 2003 p185) Now, take a look at Worrell's affidavit--Commission Exhibit No. 2003, page 69. The name of the man that he recognized, that he "saw run from the building"... not there. In fact, there's no name at all. We know that Anderton took it down. But it's not there in CE 2003. There is just an impersonal reference to a "w/m". "Oswald" expunged. The Long Arm of the Law, Rewrite Dept. This is just the beginning of the weaning of Oswald from Worrell's narrative. On 11/30/63, Worrell told the FBI that he got a "profile view" of the man behind the TSBD and that he "felt [Oswald] was the person he had seen." But the next year he told the Commission that he "didn't see his face. I just saw the back of his head." It hardly seems likely that Worrell didn't get a glimpse of the running man's face, first running north out of the building, then turning south down Houston, "along the side of the depository building" (v2p196). Worrell changed his mind? No--the altered affidavit confirms that Worrell's mind was being changed for him. First, the rifle disappears, then "Oswald" disappears, twice. Actually, the first disappearance would have been the identification of Sawyer's unidentified witness. But, based on the subsequent disappearances, it seems safe to assume that that "unidentified" witness was... Worrell. Safer than to assume that there were TWO witnesses to Oswald rushing out the rear of the building--and that Worrell somehow didn't see the other, unidentified witness. So, the sequence of disappearing names: "Worrell" from Sawyer's report... "Oswald" from Worrell's affidavit... and "Oswald" from Worrell's testimony. n and of themselves, these disappearing acts may or may not be that significant. To put the best light on it, they may just have been a case of DPD personnel trying to save face, after invoking the specter of a man with a rifle running out the back door of the depository at 12:33. Exposed, they could have sputtered, "Well, no one saw him inside the building with a rifle at 12:33--ask Allman", etc., till the cows came home. But the cows, or horses, would already have long been out of the barn by that time... So the DPD simply suppressed the story. Obviously, they did not want to deal with the complication of having Oswald connected with the back-door rifle, fictitious or not. But the pesky Worrell kept bringing him up. The simple fact of the altered affidavit, however, is quite significant, in one way--an illustrative way. It shows, clearly and concisely, both the before and the after of how the DPD could suppress information. It shows, in short, the DPD M.O. It's a little skeleton key to the JFK assassination.

My name is Donald Willis. I've written 8 books, mainly on horror and science fiction films, and edited one book, "Variety's Complete Science Fiction Reviews". My most recent books: "Chronology of Classic Horror Films: The 1930s" and "... The 1940s." It began as one book, but my editor said 700 pages would be a little too lengthy. It divided easily into two... The first was nominated for a Rondo award on the Classic Horror Film Board. The second was called "wonderfully readable" by Rick, the CHFB's resident book reviewer. I've also contributed articles to Film Comment, Film Quarterly, and Sight & Sound. One of my articles in the latter, "Ozu: Emotion and Contemplation", was reprinted for the Hong Kong Film Festival, back in the 90s.