Proof Gunman was was walking East towards Tippet

[Jim Feemster]

Since Scoggins or Markham did not see Oswald or any other person cross in front of them in their respective locations the man who shot Tippet had to be coming from the East and walking towards the West.

This puts the gunman facing Tippet as he nears the squadcar.

Much more time would have been needed for Oswald to transverse the extra distance from his rooming house for him to show up walking from the East thereby knocking him out of the scene of the crime all together.

Scoggins would have said something like, " As I was eating my sandwhich a man crossed Patton Street and crossed right in front of my cab and contiued on in an Easternly direction approximately 120 feet when a crusier came up slowly behind him and pulled to the curb, ect, ect...."

Markham would have said something like this, " Just as I was nearing the Northwest corner of Tenth & Patton on the way to catch my bus a man crossed Patton Street right in front of a cab that was parked at the Southeastern corner of Tenth & Patton and continued East a very short distance just as a policeman pulled up behind him."

I realize these two eyeball witnesses weren't asked if a man crossed in front of them but I see no way at least one of them would not volunteer the information especially if it were true!

jim

[Duke Lane]

While I agree with the conclusion for other reasons, failure to volunteer does not constitute "proof," only inference and, potentially, corroboration. Two other people saw the man walking westbound from Denver St, a block east of Patton.

Markham and Scoggins' testimonies could have been used to refute the others', and the fact that this information was not elicited from either of them points toward the conclusion that their interrogators knew full well that they hadn't seen Oswald or anyone else cross Patton from the west. Markham and Scoggins' testimony, then, at least didn't contradict the prosecution's case, and that was sufficient for the WC's purposes.

Competent defense counsel, had there been any, might well have asked if either had in fact seen anyone walking eastbound on 10th, but absent that, we cannot state with certainty what either of them did or didn't see. Absent their testimony that they did see someone walking eastbound, neither can we state with certainty that someone - Oswald or anyone else - was.

That was simply something that Oswald would have had to have done to be at the crime scene, and since it was already determined - but not established - that he was at the scene, then he "had to" be walking east ... even if nobody saw him.

This is along the same lines as establishing Tippit's TOD. The WC concluded that occurred at 1:16, when the "citizen" radio call came over the air (by TF Bowley). That, of course, assumes that Bowley watched it happen and got on the radio immediately, even before the killer had rounded the corner.

Didn't happen that way at all, but it was necessary to have happened then because otherwise, as tight as the timing was for LHO to have gotten from the rooming house to the crime scene, if the murder happened any earlier, it was absolutely impossible. Let it be said that a young man could've walked the necessary distance in the 13 minutes alloted; the thing is, he really only had about five minutes to cover the distance because Tippit was dead before 1:10!

If we recognize that as fact - and it is - then the entire discussion of LHO being the killer is moot. Who cares which direction the gunman was walking or if he was walking at all? He wasn't Lee Oswald, and there's no getting around that.