Joseph McBride, Into the Nightmare: My Search for the Killers of President John F. Kennedy and Officer J. D. Tippit (2013)

[Joseph McBride]

I had a revealing interview with Edgar Lee Tippit, the father of the late officer. The elder Tippit was a lively ninety when I interviewed him. He revealed to me that after his son's death, another Dallas police officer went to J. D.'s widow, Marie, and told her he and J. D. had been sent by the police to hunt down Oswald. Whether this was to capture him or kill him is not certain, but the evidence indicates that the latter is a strong possibility. This was at a time when Oswald's identity was not officially known to the DPD, although there is evidence indicating they knew about him and had fingered him as the patsy.

The other officer told Marie that he had not made it to the scene of the shooting because he became involved in an auto accident. This story had never been reported before, and Edgar Lee Tippit had

never been interviewed.

Back when you were writting for newspapers and magazines how do you think your editors would have reacted if you based part of a story on a 90 year-old man's recollection of a 2nd hand story he'd been told 30 years earlier?

Mr. Colby,

Have you read the book? We could better discuss your question if you had read the material I drew from the interview and read

the contextual material as well and judged it accordingly.

I will say, since you brought up that Mr. Tippit was ninety when I interviewed him, that someone's age does not mean that someone is not a credible source. I've interviewed

thousands of people as a journalist since 1960 and as a biographer and historian, and I and consider myself a good judge of sources. Among the people I've interviewed have been many people in their nineties or older who were very sharp, as was Mr. Tippit.

People who are much younger sometimes are less sharp, so it's not a question of age. The attitude you

express has a name: ageism. Mr. Tippit told me an important account he was given by Marie Tippit, his son's widow. And I always

check what interviewees tell me against other evidence, as I did in this case, as you

will see if you read what I wrote.

And I am still writing for newspapers and magazines, by the way, as well as writing books and teaching.

Edited July 27, 2013 by Joseph McBride

[David Von Pein]

Oswald was never convicted in a court of law.

But the evidence against him is still there on the table for any District Attorney to thoroughly examine prior to deciding to reopen the case -- regardless of whether or not Oswald ever went to trial.

And the evidence against ONLY Oswald is multi-faceted too -- the best combination possible -- hard physical evidence (LHO's gun on him in the theater linked to the bullet shells at the scene of the crime, plus the many eyewitnesses who fingered Oswald as the killer or running from the scene with a gun in his hand). That combination of corroborative types of evidence is a prosecutor's dream.

Should new evidence emerge, or surface with the publication of [Joseph McBride's] book, a re-examination should follow.

Hooey. Conspiracy theorists have been saying they've got "new evidence" to prove a conspiracy in the JFK and Tippit cases all the time. How many times have you read a blurb attached to a new conspiracy book claiming that This is the book to read! The conspiracy is proven between these covers!?

But nothing is going to make the solid evidence against Lee Harvey Oswald (along with Oswald's own incriminating actions) disappear into a pile of dust, regardless of the number of conspiracists who have claimed they have unearthed "new groundbreaking evidence".

Oswald practically confessed to J.D. Tippit's murder, as discussed here:

"They Say It Just Takes A Second To Die"

Joe [McBride]...risked his life just talking to these people.

Oh, come now. Do you really believe that, Bill?

Also -- Can the D.A. reopen a criminal case without a defendant to prosecute?

IOW -- Who's going to be put "on trial" for the Tippit murder 50 years later?

Just think "Jim Garrison". He had the same problem of "finding" someone to put on trial. And he selected the totally innocent Clay Shaw (with a little help from a xxxx named Perry Russo, of course).

But there's not even a HINT that someone else was involved in the Tippit murder other than Lee Oswald. Unless, that is, the D.A. thinks that Acquilla Clemmons' account is credible. And even then--WHO is the "other" person Clemmons saw? How can that vague description help out any prosecutor, especially when we know that it's coming from a witness (Clemmons) who didn't even see the actual shooting? She saw the aftermath. And all reasonable people know she saw Ted Callaway with Tippit's gun.

In the final analysis, any D.A. is going to look long and hard at the EVIDENCE associated with the Tippit murder before reopening the case. And unless the D.A. is blind as a proverbial bat, he cannot possibly reopen the J.D. Tippit case because the murderer was already apprehended on November 22, 1963--in the Texas Theater 35 minutes after the murder occurred.

Edited July 27, 2013 by David Von Pein

[Joseph McBride]

Thanks for your thoughtful comments on the legal situation, Bill. We have not had

much help from the legal system in bringing justice re the events of November 22, 1963, to say the least, although Garrison

tried. A case is far more complicated with people working against the truth and with time taking away

witnesses and possible perpetrators. Then there are the other complications you lay

out, not least of which would be the involvement of the Dallas Police Department

in the plotting and the coverup of these events fifty years ago. But it's not too late to keeping trying for justice, even if history

may be the final court in this case. In the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., "[T]he arc of the moral

universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

Edited July 27, 2013 by Joseph McBride

[Len Colby]

I had a revealing interview with Edgar Lee Tippit, the father of the late officer. The elder Tippit was a lively ninety when I interviewed him. He revealed to me that after his son's death, another Dallas police officer went to J. D.'s widow, Marie, and told her he and J. D. had been sent by the police to hunt down Oswald. Whether this was to capture him or kill him is not certain, but the evidence indicates that the latter is a strong possibility. This was at a time when Oswald's identity was not officially known to the DPD, although there is evidence indicating they knew about him and had fingered him as the patsy.

The other officer told Marie that he had not made it to the scene of the shooting because he became involved in an auto accident. This story had never been reported before, and Edgar Lee Tippit had

never been interviewed.

Back when you were writting for newspapers and magazines how do you think your editors would have reacted if you based part of a story on a 90 year-old man's recollection of a 2nd hand story he'd been told 30 years earlier?

Mr. Colby,

Have you read the book? We could better discuss your question if you had read the material I drew from the interview and read

the contextual material as well and judged it accordingly.

No, I haven't but I think the same applies to almost everyone else commenting on this thread. If you think the context so important perhaps you'd be so kind as to post the relevant excerpt. Or tell us what page it is on. I did some keyword searches via Amazon's "Look Inside" but couldn't find it.

I will say, since you brought up that Mr. Tippit was ninety when I interviewed him, that someone's age does not mean that someone is not a credible source. I've interviewed thousands of people as a journalist since 1960 and as a biographer and historian, and I and consider myself a good judge of sources. Among the people I've interviewed have been many people in their nineties or older who were very sharp, as was Mr. Tippit.

People who are much younger sometimes are less sharp, so it's not a question of age. The attitude you express has a name: ageism.

Call it what you will, I have seen no evidence that race, gender, sexual orientation etc. are relevant to a person's credibility but there are numerous scientific studies showing that older people have less accurate memories. IIRC on average noticeable declines set in around 65 - 70, Mr. Tippit was old enough to have been the father of someone that age.

But you chose to respond to only one of my points. Even if we ignore his age he was recollecting something that had happened about 30 years earlier. I'd be skeptical of any story from that far back independent of the person's age. And the story was third-hand [cop>Marie>Tippit>you]. So my question still stands.

Tippit told me an important account he was given by Marie Tippit, his son's widow. And I always check what interviewees tell me against other evidence, as I did in this case, as you will see if you read what I wrote.

OK then please post the excerpt and/or spell out the corroborating evidence.

[Mark Knight]

I apologize for Mr. Colby. He apparently wants to challenge the book without reading it. I believe I'll refrain from criticizing the book until I've read it.

[Joseph McBride]

I apologize for Mr. Colby. He apparently wants to challenge the book without reading it. I believe I'll refrain from criticizing the book until I've read it.

Mark,

I appreciate your thoughtful note. Once I publish a book, I always welcome critical responses if they are

reasoned, as well as new information or comments. But it's somewhat absurd and pointless to try to

respond to criticisms from people who haven't read the book or don't want to do so. One of the first principles of scholarship is not to criticize or attack

something you haven't read. And the whole book is the context. I would be happy to respond in future, after people have taken the time to read the book, to thoughtful critical inquiries or other

questions or comments based on the actual book.

Edited July 28, 2013 by Joseph McBride

[William Kelly]

Joe, when talking with old man Tippit, did you ask him why he named his son J.D.?

From what I understand, he took the name from the hero of an adventure book - "J.D. of the Mountains."

Can you confirm that?

Thanks,

[Len Colby]

I apologize for Mr. Colby. He apparently wants to challenge the book without reading it. I believe I'll refrain from criticizing the book until I've read it.

No need for you, or anyone else, to apologize. I questioned one aspect of the book he brought up in this thread. Cleary the elder Tippit's account is weak evidence. McBride said there is corroborating evidence; I, and I expect others, would be curious to know what it is.

I imagine your reaction would have been quite different if Posner, McAdams, the Bug etc. had cited a decades old 2nd hand account from a 90-year-old man.

[Mark Knight]

If you will note, Mr. Colby...I haven't criticized Bugliosi or Posner because I don't own, and haven't read, their books, either. Check the record. "You're all the same" doesn't exactly apply here, and is NOT proper investigatory technique.

I resent the fact that you seem to think you know what I would or would not do or say regarding these men, not having read the books. Considering the fact you don't know me at all, I will call your conclusion "presumptuous" and let it go at that.

[Len Colby]

If you will note, Mr. Colby...I haven't criticized Bugliosi or Posner because I don't own, and haven't read, their books, either. Check the record. "You're all the same" doesn't exactly apply here, and is NOT proper investigatory technique.

I resent the fact that you seem to think you know what I would or would not do or say regarding these men, not having read the books. Considering the fact you don't know me at all, I will call your conclusion "presumptuous" and let it go at that.

And where exactly did I indicate you ever had "criticized Bugliosi or Posner"?

Let's imagine a slightly different scenario in which an LNT with a newly published book came to this forum and cited a 2nd account a 90 year-old witness recalled having been told 30 years prior. Don't you think it all but inevitable someone here would have questioned it? Would you then have appologized to the LNT for that member's conduct?

[Dawn Meredith]

There is legal cause to convene a Dallas County Grand Jury to review the new witnesses and evidence, and Dallas D.A. Watkins should do it, but, like Garrison, or Sprague, Tanenbaum or any other honest and independent DA, he isn't strong enough, though he does have an assistant prosecutor who handles the cold cases, including all those that Henry Wade had convicted but were released on new DNA evidence. If the convicted suspects didn't commit those crimes, somebody else did, and this guy is swamped with unsolved cold cases.

But maybe, if "Into the Nightmare" can provide a hammer and some ammunition, the mere threat of Watkins convening a Tippit grand jury would spook the feds into getting into the game - and convening a federal grand jury in the district of North Texas. From what I understand, crimes committed in the air - like aboard Air Force One - are considered federal crimes and brought to federal court, and therefor a federal grand jury could also have jurisdiction, though not for the Tippit murder (unless it was connected to a conspiracy to kill the President).

We can argue about the details forever, but we only have a short time for the still living witnesses to be properly deposed under oath (and in secret), and the new evidence properly evaluated to see if there is anyone living who can be indicted for a crime related to the murder of Officer Tippit or the President.

Other books with solid evidence and new witness testimony have forced the law to act, when otherwise it wouldn't, and perhaps, just maybe Joe McBride's book could kick in that legal mechanism that needs a jump start to get the wheels of justice to begin moving.

Bill Kelly

That might be worth doing. As you know, Dallas County now has an excellent DA, Craig Watkins,

who is rectifying many of Henry Wade's injustices. It would be up to Mr. Watkins whether to

reopen the case if he feels there is sufficient reason to do so. A grand jury could be convened. It is hard getting

convictions on cold cases going so far back, but perhaps not impossible.

I have posted about this a few times. I met the DA at a legal seminar a few years back. When I mentioned the assassination he look like he might faint. We all remember the comments he publicly made when first elected -that he never believed the WC-. I suspect that lead to some ..."talking to" by officials higher than the DA, to back the heck off that notion. Watkins has been dead silent on the subject since. I have written to him three times to no avail.

Dawn

[Dawn Meredith]

Is the evidence and new witness statements in the book strong enough to reopen the Tippit case?

That might be worth doing. As you know, Dallas County now has an excellent DA, Craig Watkins, who is rectifying many of Henry Wade's injustices. It would be up to Mr. Watkins whether to reopen the case if he feels there is sufficient reason to do so. A grand jury could be convened. It is hard getting convictions on cold cases going so far back, but perhaps not impossible.

Why on Earth would any sensible and rational District Attorney (or other court/law official) in Dallas County have any desire--or reason--to reopen the Tippit murder case when such overwhelming evidence exists that Lee Harvey Oswald--and only Oswald--was responsible for the death of Officer J.D. Tippit?

A D.A. would have to be totally off his rocker to just totally toss aside all the evidence brought forth by the DPD, the Warren Commission, and the HSCA that indicates beyond all possible doubt that the murder of Tippit was solved by 7:10 PM CST on the very day that murder occurred.

Just the suggestion of reopening the Tippit murder case (of all cases) is beyond laughable. It's farcical.

JFK-Archives.blogspot.com/J.D. Tippi

Yes, all very funny.

Edited July 28, 2013 by Dawn Meredith

[Karl Kinaski]

Into the Nightmare is a great book, a monumental book, and an authoritative assimilation of 40 years of what everyone, off and on the record, has argued about the Kennedy assassination, plus what author Joseph McBride himself concludes.

Into the Nightmare: My Search for the Killers of President John F. Kennedy and Officer J.D. Tippit by Joseph McBride.

By Gerald Peary.

(...)

I had no idea that McBride, for many decades, has had an obsessive interest far far from cinema studies (well, except for Oliver Stone’s JFK and the Zapruder film). As many others, he’s been haunted to know, and strived to find out, who really killed JFK. Yes, McBride has been a conspiracy theorist since 1982 on the sly, with only a few close friends knowing it. He’s led an extraordinary double life: movie guy by day, a JFK sleuth by night, on weekends, on vacations, whenever. By God, he has read EVERYTHING ever written about the Kennedy assassination, from absorbing each word of the Warren Commission, through multi-volume government reports, to classified and de-classified documents, to dozens and dozens of books, both on the right and left. The smart, responsible ones but also the nutty ones, the paranoid ones, the exploitative ones. And, on his own dime, he has flown to Washington for research, many times to Dallas, and to small-town Texas, checking out every lead, every witness.

Finally, finally, McBride spills all! After literally 30 years on the case! So that he can say exactly what he wants to say, with no editorial interference, he, whose books have come out under the imprint of Simon & Schuster and other prestigious imprints, has self-published Into the Nightmare: My Search for the Killers of President John F. Kennedy and Officer J.D. Tippit. It’s 600-plus packed pages of what McBride has learned and concluded about what happened in Dallas on that tragic day in 1963. Although I have reservations about some of his determinations, I am in total awe of this book. Have I ever read any tome so extraordinarily researched? Many pages feel each like two years of grueling investigation.

So let me get it out: Into the Nightmare is a great book, a monumental book, and an authoritative assimilation of 40 years of what everyone, off and on the record, has argued about the Kennedy assassination, plus what McBride himself concludes. Has a Pulitzer Prize ever gone to a self-published work?

(...)

... McBride moved to the left, especially after living in LA and covering venal Hollywood for Variety. And he learned unpleasantries about Mr. Kennedy, the ardent Cold Warrior who, at home, was timid about enforcing civil rights. Still, the author explains, he remained a fan of this literate, witty President. JFK was shifting to the center on foreign affairs in his last days, wishing to extricate himself from Vietnam and, post-Bay of Pigs, becoming estranged by those who demanded an all-out invasion of Cuba. As with many who’ve written of the Kennedy murder, McBride posits that the most likely killers were ultra-rightist anti-Castroites angered that the President had betrayed their cause.

Killers, with an “s.” More than one. The most persuasive sections of Into the Nightmare are those which recontruct what happened at Dealey Plaza. Contrary to the Warren Report, there were, McBride proves, a spray of bullets, not one, which fell on JFK and Texas Governor John Connally; and they were from the front and back and not from the Texas Book Depository. Two or three assassins worked together. And, no, none of them was Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald was, McBride’s favorite term, “a patsy,” and when, in captivity, he screamed out his innocence, that’s because he was. Without a lawyer present, Oswald was questioned for many hours by Dallas police who—surprise!—didn’t tape record what was said. Meanwhile, ghoulish things were happening at the hospital morgue, where JFK lay. There’s lots in the book, and it seems creepily credible, about how doctors mucked about with Kennedy’s head, removing bullets so that only one was left. The one ostensibly coming from the rifle of Oswald.

(...) But where I can’t get aboard with McBride is about the conspiratorial involvement of policeman J. D. Tippit, the second person killed that day allegedly by Oswald. I agree with McBride that Tippit’s executor seems to be someone other than fall guy Lee Harvey. But I think this could have been a random killing in always-bloody Dallas.

that Tippit’s executor seems to be someone other than fal

Practically everything McBride learns through the years about Tippit’s personality seems to be character evidence that Tippit had nothing to do with the assassination. He was a Kennedy voter who, many say, was pretty stupid, a dullard, a nobody in the police force. Why would he be picked out of hundreds of Dallas police, many publicly fascist, to take part in the assassination plot? There is no record of him walking about saying right-wing, traitorous things. And his wife, who no one connects with any conspiracy, said he came home and ate lunch the day he was shot down.

If he was involved in shooting JFK (McBride thinks this is possible) or, much more likely, in hunting down Oswald to liquidate him, why would he have gone first for a BLT with his spouse?

Peary: Mr. Kennedy, the ardent Cold Warrior....

Huuu...???

Peary: ​By God, he (McBride) has read EVERYTHING ever written about the Kennedy assassination,

Really?: than McBride must be God...

Gerald Peary: I love McBride’s book, but I’m not convinced by what he believes so strongly: that J. D. Tippit’s murder is the “Rosetta Stone” of the Kennedy assassination.

I ll second that...

KK

[Karl Kinaski]

edit

Edited July 30, 2013 by Karl Kinaski

[J. Raymond Carroll]

Oswald practically confessed to J.D. Tippit's murder, as discussed here:

"They Say It Just Takes A Second To Die"

David, old chap, didn't your mother tell you not to trust HEARSAY?

Hearsay is not admissible in court, as a general rule,

From DVP's website:

LEE HARVEY OSWALD -- "What is this all about? I know my rights. .... Police officer been killed? I hear they burn for murder."

C.T. WALKER -- "You might find out."

LEE HARVEY OSWALD -- "Well, they say it just takes a second to die."

[Via Warren Commission testimony of Dallas Police Officer C.T. Walker;

at 7 H 40 and 7 H 41.]

I say David, old chap, do you have any CORROBORATION for this ridiculous claim?