Two Oswalds in the Texas Theater

[Karl Hilliard]

On 8/28/2019 at 3:57 AM, Steve Thomas said:

 

 

This is from the Sheriff Department's Dispatch Tapes - CE 705 p. 379.

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1134#relPageId=405&tab=page

  I don't know who 44 and 35 are, or how 35 knew this, but between 1:40 and 1:50, units 24, 61, 25, and 29 responded that they were out at the Theater. 44 said he was enroute. By 1:51, Units 103, 104 and 23  are also there. (That's what? eight Sheriff's Deputies?) By 1:53 the suspect is in custody.

 

 

Something I have always wondered about...Was city and county [sheriff] broadcasts simultaneously audible? I mean why weren't the transcripts all in one? Also there was something called a "hotline". Where is the transcript of that? Because I would like to know how an entire regiment of cops managed to converge instantaneously on a theater based on the word of someone that a suspicious guy sneaked in there. Whether it was one Oswald or two or eight of them, it seems as though it was all pre-arranged.

[David Andrews]

Just for the sake of a recap at this point:

Do we feel that one of the Oswalds at Texas Theater was one of two men who killed Tippit?  The one seen by Brewer-Postal-Burroughs?

If not, why was it necessary for two Oswalds to be at the theater at once?  JC Brewer could have just told a bigger lie and sworn to Julia Postal that a man had sneaked in when he hadn't.

If I were the Oswald hustled out the back door, I'd worry that I'd never be seen again once front-door Oswald was in custody.  That might lead to me not show up for work that day, or at least to leave by rear exit earlier.

For the plotters, that's an awful close proximity for two Oswalds, perhaps the closest they were ever brought together in their lives.  Even in a darkened theater, more persons than Butch Burroughs and Bernard Haire might have seen that.  An overzealous herd of cops could have hustled then both out the front door, or shot one and arrested the other - a lot of risk there for results that could have been gotten with lies, bribes and threats.

Edited September 7, 2019 by David Andrews

[Steve Thomas]

On 9/7/2019 at 9:36 AM, Jim Hargrove said:

 

It's interesting about Westbrook saying he was "possibly" the senior officer there.  I think his testimony is full of untruths, and I still think Westbrook was most likely the guy who "lost" the names of theater patrons.  After all, he gave the order to get the names.  Wouldn't he be the logical guy to receive what he ordered?

Deleted

Edited March 3, 2023 by Steve Thomas

[Jim Hargrove]

Steve,

Your command of DPD documents is really helpful, but you’ll probably agree that we’re not going to find out who deep-sixed the theater patrons list in those pages.  I still believe it was Westbrook, who I think was a co-conspirator in both murders that day. 

Westbrook, who claimed he had to walk several times that afternoon because he didn’t have access to a car, nevertheless happened to be near the Texaco station when the Eisenhower-style jacket was found and said that he “turned the jacket over to one of the officers” but couldn’t remember who; Westbrook just happened to be standing at 10th and Patton with one of the two “Oswald/Hidell” wallets in his hand; Westbrook just happened to be the first cop (or close to it) to arrive at the Texas Theater (his car was parked directly in front of the theater entrance); Westbrook just happened to be in his office when Gerald Hill brought a certain .38 pistol, and on and on.

You may well be right about Cunningham, but this sort of thing just strikes me as the sort of things many cops do when they’re trying to cut corners and cover their… patooties.  I’m sticking to my belief that Westbrook was all over this thing.

[Jim Hargrove]

3 hours ago, David Andrews said:

Just for the sake of a recap at this point:

Do we feel that one of the Oswalds at Texas Theater was one of two men who killed Tippit?  The one seen by Brewer-Postal-Burroughs?

If not, why was it necessary for two Oswalds to be at the theater at once?  JC Brewer could have just told a bigger lie and sworn to Julia Postal that a man had sneaked in when he hadn't.

If I were the Oswald hustled out the back door, I'd worry that I'd never be seen again once front-door Oswald was in custody.  That might lead to me not show up for work that day, or at least to leave by rear exit earlier.

For the plotters, that's an awful close proximity for two Oswalds, perhaps the closest they were ever brought together in their lives.  Even in a darkened theater, more persons than Butch Burroughs and Bernard Haire might have seen that.  An overzealous herd of cops could have hustled then both out the front door, or shot one and arrested the other - a lot of risk there for results that could have been gotten with lies, bribes and threats.

David, here’s what I believe, and I think I *mostly* speak on behalf of John A. here.

The American-born LHO killed Tippit and then went to the theater, climbing up the balcony stairs, to lead the police there.  (I should say that John is not convinced of this reason.  Paul Joliffe believes his job may have been to somehow get the .38 pistol to the other Oswald.)  The smaller, Russian-speaking LHO had already been in the theater for at least 15 minutes, where he was seated on the main floor and moved about looking for a contact he was told would be there.

We believe that American-born LHO was taken out the back of the theater.  Your question about that Oswald worrying about his immediate health is something John and I have talked about several times.  John’s answer is that the American-born LHO had a number of immediate family members, at least some of whom had to be in on the original spy game for the “defection.”   Their reactions, had he disappeared or been suddenly hit by a bus, would be unpredictable.

The Russian-speaking Oswald, on the other hand, had no one at all; just a phony mom who, as the world soon learned, knew very little about her “son.”  The Russian-speaking Oswald was totally expendable.

[David Andrews]

59 minutes ago, Jim Hargrove said:

David, here’s what I believe, and I think I *mostly* speak on behalf of John A. here.

The American-born LHO killed Tippit and then went to the theater, climbing up the balcony stairs, to lead the police there.  (I should say that John is not convinced of this reason.  Paul Joliffe believes his job may have been to somehow get the .38 pistol to the other Oswald.)  The smaller, Russian-speaking LHO had already been in the theater for at least 15 minutes, where he was seated on the main floor and moved about looking for a contact he was told would be there.

We believe that American-born LHO was taken out the back of the theater.  Your question about that Oswald worrying about his immediate health is something John and I have talked about several times.  John’s answer is that the American-born LHO had a number of immediate family members, at least some of whom had to be in on the original spy game for the “defection.”   Their reactions, had he disappeared or been suddenly hit by a bus, would be unpredictable.

The Russian-speaking Oswald, on the other hand, had no one at all; just a phony mom who, as the world soon learned, knew very little about her “son.”  The Russian-speaking Oswald was totally expendable.

Thanks.  What is to be made of the witnesses who say two men killed Tippit?

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

I'm sorry for getting Jim all worked up by pointing out that the most obvious explanation for Burroughs' and Haire's statements is that the incident they saw was George Applin's encounter with the police.

I'm grateful that Jim has admitted, at last, that he was wrong to state that Burroughs had claimed to have seen an arrest in the balcony. Burroughs did not claim to have seen an arrest in the balcony, but merely an encounter (which must have happened on the ground floor, since Burroughs does not appear to have gone up to the balcony) that he misinterpreted, many years later, as an arrest. For most of us, Burroughs' mistake is easy to understand, just as Jim's mistake is easy to understand. People make mistakes sometimes.

The police reports from the day after the arrest of Oswald also have a non-sinister explanation. Jeff Stanton pointed it out in this thread:

http://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t2051-time-to-kill-another-myth-there-was-no-second-oswald-arrested-at-the-theater

It's important to note that the police reports and Butch Burroughs' account from three decades after the event cannot all be accurate, though they can all be inaccurate:
- According to any number of reliable sources, the real, historical, one and only Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested on the ground floor.
- According to Burroughs, someone else, who resembled Oswald, was also arrested on the ground floor.
- According to the police reports, someone named Oswald was arrested in the balcony.

If, like Jim, we believe that no witnesses to supernumerary Oswalds can ever make mistakes and that all of these accounts are therefore 100% accurate and truthful, that makes three Oswalds. Yup, three identical Oswalds, all arrested in the same building at the same time. It's true, I tell you!

Why did the authorities have all three Oswalds arrested and escorted out of the Texas Theater, thereby generating a trail of police reports and witness statements which gave away their dastardly imposter plan? Why didn't they let two of the three Oswalds sneak out quietly or stay and watch the film, so that the dastardly plan wouldn't be discovered? Were they insane or just really, really stupid?

What do we know about the third Oswald arrested in the Texas Theater? Can Jim tell us the man's name? I suspect that the man was in fact Harlee Oswald, an Arabic-speaking Bolivian refugee motorcyclist with sloping shoulders and a fake mastoidectomy defect. But where exactly was Harlee arrested? Was he the fake Oswald who was arrested on the ground floor, as the 100% accurate Burroughs claimed? Or was he the fake Oswald who was arrested in the balcony, as the 100% accurate police reports claimed?

More importantly, did Harlee have a mother named Marguerite, just like the other two Oswalds? Was she slim or dumpy, or something in between? Are the rumours true that Harlee had a fake brother named Robert and a fake wife named Marina? How did Harlee, who was born and brought up in Bolivia, manage to learn Arabic?

Why did both of the fake Oswalds and both of the fake Marguerites and the fake Robert and the fake Marina all vanish from the face of the earth immediately after the assassination? Were they all beamed up into the same spaceship that was later used for the exhumation, and taken to Roswell? And did Jim ever find out who made the mess in the spare bedroom?

I suggest that Jim goes down on his knees and humbly beseeches his guru (praise be unto him!) to bless his followers with a gracious official edict on these important points of doctrine, so that the few remaining devotees of the 'Harvey and Lee and Harlee' cult can be certain that their beliefs are sound and they don't end up being excommunicated for swallowing a load of feeble, self-contradictory nonsense and turning their guru's theory into a laughing stock.

[Jim Hargrove]

On 9/7/2019 at 12:41 AM, Karl Hilliard said:

I saw that ROKC thread. If they mean well, it seems like it's in a mean spirited way.

Mr. B. might take time out from misrepresenting me and busily pointing to banned forum member Greg Parker’s site and at least pretend to be interested in exploring here some element of the Kennedy Assassination that extends beyond his endless outrage about the Harvey and Lee Menace®.  People like Greg Parker and Mr. B. have been trying to shut me up for roughly two decades now, and the more names I'm called, the more insults they hurl at me, the more I'm convinced I'm right.

[Jim Hargrove]

13 hours ago, David Andrews said:

Thanks.  What is to be made of the witnesses who say two men killed Tippit?

I think the second guy was a plain clothed cop, and we can finally understand why only a few witnesses saw him.  The secret was revealed late last century by Mrs. Doris Holan, who wasn’t called to testify by any government agency but instead was tracked down by private researchers Bill Pulte and Michael Bronlow.

Mrs. Holan lived on the 2nd floor at 409 E Tenth Street (see image below), directly across the street from the Tippit shooting. Tippit’s patrol car was parked directly in front of the very narrow driveway between two houses at 404 E. 10th & 410 E. 10th.  Because the driveway was so narrow, and Tippit’s car blocked much of the view of it, few people were able to see what Mrs. Holan saw from her second story window (enabling her to clearly see over the top of Tippit’s car).

Mrs. Holan saw a second police car not far from Tippit's but mostly hidden in the narrow driveway!

(Megathanks to David Josephs for preparing this image)

From the November 22 page of HarveyandLee.net:

Seconds after shots were fired, Mrs. Holan saw a man (probably Capt. Westbrook) emerge from the 2nd police car and walk toward Tippit's body lying in the street, apparently to see if he (Tippit) was alive or dead.  In 1990 a resident of the neighborhood was interviewed by JFK researcher Prof. Bill Pulte, on the condition of anonymity. This resident said that he heard that a man walked down the driveway and approached Tippit just after the shooting.  In January, 1968, Playboy Magazine interviewed Jim Garrison. In response to the Garrison interview a reader wrote to Playboy and said, “I read Playboy's Garrison interview with perhaps more interest than most readers. I was an eyewitness to the shooting of policeman Tippit in Dallas on the afternoon President Kennedy was murdered. I saw two men, neither of them resembling the pictures I later saw of Lee Harvey Oswald, shoot Tippit and run off in opposite directions. There were at least half a dozen other people who witnessed this. My wife convinced me that I should say nothing, since there were other eyewitnesses. Her advice and my cowardice undoubtedly have prolonged my life--or at least allowed me now to tell the true story...” (Playboy, January 1968, Vol. 15, No 1, pg 11. Mrs. Acquilla Clemmons (interview August, 1964) said that after the shooting she saw the killer wave to the other man and they departed the scene in two different directions. This is a clear indication that the killer (LEE Oswald) and the occupants of the 2nd police vehicle were co-conspirators in the murder of Officer Tippit.

From her 2nd floor bedroom Mrs. Holan hurried downstairs to the 1st floor and outside the house. She watched the man standing beside Tippit as he began to retrace his path up the driveway to the 2nd police car, and then backed up the car into the alley. The 2nd police vehicle quickly and quietly left before witnesses began to arrive at the scene. Sam Guinyard, who worked at the Harris Motor Company, directly south and across the alley from Virginia and Barbara Davis' home (400 E. 10th), apparently saw the 2nd police car. In 1970 Guinyard told JFK researcher Michael Brownlow that he saw a police car in the alley shortly after Tippit was shot. 

 

[Paul Bacon]

20 hours ago, David Andrews said:

Thanks.  What is to be made of the witnesses who say two men killed Tippit?

I'm new to the forum and I know you've been at this for a long time, but have you, by chance, read this: http://harveyandlee.net/Tippit/Tippit.html?  It'll tell you what John Armstrong's ideas about it are.

Just my 2 cents, but I was quite wowed by it.  For me, it answered all kinds of questions I had about what went down with the Tippit killing.  I read it slowly, while imagining how it fit with the greater conspiracy.  Personally, after reading it, I was even more dismayed at the depth of the malevolence in the whole conspiracy--sadder but wiser.

Edited September 8, 2019 by Paul Bacon
correct spelling for Tippit

[David Andrews]

I know it, Paul - but as I said, operationally it would be a big risk to have two Oswalds in one theater with a lot of cops charging around, many unwitting of the plot.  I guess it was a big-risk day, especially if one believes that an Oswald was to be killed in the theater while resisting arrest.

Hell, maybe it was "Kill either one - we don't care."  But would that not have crossed the balcony Oswald's mind?

What if they had a dead-twin-Oswalds back-up story to blame on the Russians, just in case?

Also - if we believe one Oswald went to the theater to give the other the pistol, then we have to believe that the two were aware of each other and had met at least once before.  In that case, why the business of the torn dollar bills and the orchestra-seat Oswald searching for an unknown contact in the dark, if he'd already collected the pistol from his double?

Edited September 8, 2019 by David Andrews

[Guest Rich Pope]

On 7/18/2019 at 9:58 PM, Ron Bulman said:

James Douglass in JFK and The Unspeakable presented a pretty compelling case for such. 

Butch Burroughs, the concession stand operator, and person left in charge of operations at the time, "startled me in his interview by saying he saw a second arrest occur in the Texas Theater, "only three or four minutes later."  pg. 292.  "Burroughs said the second man ''looked almost like Oswald, like they were brothers or something."  Burroughs saw the second Oswald placed under arrest and handcuffed.  …taken out the back of the theater.

Bernie Haire of Berine's Hobby House, two doors east of the theater went outside when he saw police cars congregating.  When he couldn't see what was happening because of the crowd he went to the alley out back.  It too was full of police cars.  "stopped outside the rear door and witnessed what he thought for decades was the arrest of Oswald"  "brought a young white man out … put him in a police car and drove off."  Told in 1987 Oswald had been taken out the front entrance he was shocked.

Burroughs told Douglass he sold Oswald pop corn at 11:15, the exact time the warren omission claimed Tippitt was shot (it was earlier, a whole different story).  In 1987 he told Jim Marrs (Crossfire) she sold Oswald the popcorn at 11:10.

Some members of the Dallas Police Department knew two Oswald's were arrested, they participated in the second arrest.  They knew and participated in a conspiracy to cover it up with their silence.

Ron,

Very interesting post.  Thanks!  

[Guest Rich Pope]

On 7/19/2019 at 4:08 AM, Jim Hargrove said:

During author James Douglas's 2007 interview of Butch Burroughs,  Burroughs said that he saw two different people arrested in the Texas Theater.  He saw the arrest of Classic Oswald® and then, "three or four minutes later," watched as the Dallas police arrested "an Oswald lookalike."  Burroughs added that the second man arrested "looked almost like Oswald, like he was his brother or something."

As we all know, Classic Oswald was arrested on the main floor of the Texas Theater.  But for nearly two decades now, I’ve posted on my website about John Armstrong’s research two DPD docs showing a “Lee Harvey Oswald” was also arrested in the balcony.

Jim, you wrote, "As we all know, Classic Oswald was arrested on the main floor of the Texas Theater."  Is this to mean that this is what the government is saying or is this what the JFK research community is claiming?

[Guest Rich Pope]

On 7/25/2019 at 1:26 AM, Cory Santos said:

Wait now Ruby was at the theater? Lol.  I would not give that witness any credibility.

I've always wondered why Oswald would head for the TT to meet his handler when there was a safe house directly behind the boarding house where Oswald was renting a room.

[Paul Bacon]

2 hours ago, David Andrews said:

I know it, Paul - but as I said, operationally it would be a big risk to have two Oswalds in one theater with a lot of cops charging around, many unwitting of the plot.  I guess it was a big-risk day, especially if one believes that an Oswald was to be killed in the theater while resisting arrest.

Everything about the conspiracy was very audacious.  I'm thinking the conspirators were very confident that they could control the narrative, especially with the unsophisticated Dallas cops and the "respect" for higher authority that was prevalent in those days , but I take your point. 

2 hours ago, David Andrews said:

Hell, maybe it was "Kill either one - we don't care."  But would that not have crossed the balcony Oswald's mind?

It was probably important to kill "classic" Oswald (thank you Jim Hargrove).  They spent so much time setting him up to take the fall for a good reason.  As for Lee Oswald, he'd been hanging out with the likes of Frank Sturgis, et. al.  And, from my reading, was a man full of hubris and arrogance.  He may have felt quite confident in his usefulness, particularly after having killed Tippit with Westbrook.

2 hours ago, David Andrews said:

Also - if we believe one Oswald went to the theater to give the other the pistol, then we have to believe that the two were aware of each other and had met at least once before.  In that case, why the business of the torn dollar bills and the orchestra-seat Oswald searching for an unknown contact in the dark, if he'd already collected the pistol from his double?

It was an interesting idea that Lee's job was to get the pistol to Harvey, but, for me, it's easier to believe that it was Westbrook's task to plant the pistol as John Armstrong suggests.