THE BAD BOYS OF OAK CLIFF -- PART I

[Gil Jesus]

THE BAD BOYS OF OAK CLIFF
By Gil Jesus ( 2021 )

Most major American cities have areas that are considered the "bad section of town". In such areas, the crime rate is higher and police endeavor to make their presence known in order to deter crime.
Having spent some time as a police officer myself, I understand how it all works. I find nothing suspicious or sinister about the Dallas Police dispatching J.D. Tippit to Oak Cliff. They just wanted coverage in a high crime area while the officer assigned to that area was at lunch.
One of the problems with such high crime areas is that the residents tend to not want to get involved as witnesses. Many of them fear retribution from perpetrators or their allies.
The Oak Cliff section of Dallas was not without its share of young criminals and troublemakers. Several of these come to the forefront as we examine the murder of Dallas Police Officer J.D. Tippit.
How bad of an area of the city was Oak Cliff ?  The two teenagers who were used as "fillers" in the 4th police lineup with Oswald were residents of Oak Cliff. ( 7 H 201 )

Two other such Oak Cliff criminals just happened to be "witnesses" to the Tippit murder: 
William Arthur Smith and Jimmy Earl Burt. 
Although they were supposed to have been together, their stories differ greatly. And the evidence does not support either of their versions of what happened.
They were also two young men with troubled pasts, Smith was on probation for auto theft and Burt was AWOL from the Army.
Smith lived on the next street from murder witness Helen Markham and was a friend of her son James, who was out on parole from prison for a burglary at the time of the murder.
If any of these guys were caught by police with a firearm in their possession, it would have been a violation of their parole or probation and meant jail time. For Burt, it would have meant at least a year in the brig.
These guys ran together and were real "sh*t-bums".
Having been at the murder scene, they should have been treated as "persons of interest" instead of witnesses. Under normal circumstances, with their police records, they would have been.

As I researched this, I wondered if any of them could have been the real killer of J.D. Tippit. If these guys were as bad as the record shows, they had to be known to police. 
Especially the Robbery and Homicide Divison.
There had to be mugshots on these guys.
But were they known to Tippit ? 
Could the prospect of prison be the motive that cost Officer Tippit his life ?
Could this have been the reason why Mrs. Markham's story had changed every time she told it ? Was she protecting someone she knew ? Was she fearful the killer was from the neighborhood and knew who she was and would kill her ? Was her contradictory descriptions of the killer a mixture of  TWO men ?
 

I believe that the threats and assaults that the witnesses received AFTER Oswald was arrested are evidence that the killer was from the neighborhood and still at large.

Many other witnesses came forward who saw a "man with a gun" after the shooting had occurred, but never saw the actual murder.
Only one witness saw the actual killer in the act: Helen Markham.

HELEN MARKHAM
The Commission's star witness to the Tippit murder was Helen Louise Markham, a 47 year old mother of five who was on her way to catch the 1:15 bus to to her waitress job. 
Her bus stop was a block away from the murder scene and she had stopped at the corner of Patton Ave. and 10th St. to allow traffic to pass before she crossed. 
Mrs. Markham witnessed that the police cruiser had stopped alongside a young man who had been walking and that the man walked over to the passenger door of the cruiser and seemed to have a conversation with the officer. 
According to her testimony, the man then backed away from the cruiser and the officer got out of the car slowly. When the officer got to about the front wheel of the cruiser, the man pulled a gun and shot him three times.
The fact that this occurred unexpectedly in front of her very eyes caused Mrs. Markham to go into a state of shock, by her own admission, she could not move or speak.
In the hours after the murder, Mrs. Markham's state of mind can only be described as "hysterical". Was this because she saw a policeman murdered and the killer was someone she knew and threatened to kill her ?
Mrs. Markham was taken to police headquarters to view a lineup before she could fully regain her composure. 
That lineup consisted of three police employees and Oswald.
She chose Oswald even though she testified under oath that she had never seen him before in her life. ( 3 H 310 )

 
Mrs. Markham also failed to identify the jacket and shirt in evidence as the same jacket and shirt worn by the killer. ( 3 H 312 )
In fact, her sworn affidavit taken on November 22nd gave NO description of the killer to the Dallas Police other than that he was a "young white man".
 
In her statement to the FBI on the same day, Mrs. Markham described Tippit's killer as an "18yo" with a red complexion and wearing dark trousers.
 
But in a video interview on my Youtube Channel, she says the killer had a ruddy complexion and wore a light shirt, a brown jacket and light grey trousers.

Mrs. Markham's description of the killer changed drastically from interview to interview. Granted, she saw something she didn't want to see, that is the murder of a policeman. 
But you have to question, what exactly DID she see ?
Perhaps her memory became clouded because the killer threatened to kill her. Officer Joe M. Poe's supplemental report dated 11-22-63 indicated just that.

 
If Mrs. Markham recognized the killer as someone from the neighborhood and the killer recognized her and threatened to kill her, her terror and subsequent hysteria can certainly be understood.
Likewise, her ever changing story.

WILLIAM SCOGGINS
One of the witnesses who didn't actually see the shooting but heard the shots and saw smoke was William Scoggins, a cab driver who was parked on the corner of Patton Ave. and 10th St. taking his lunch break.
Scoggins was parked around the corner from the murder scene and in the path of the killer as he fled.
In his testimony, Scoggins may have left a clue that Tippit's murderer was from the neighborhood. He said that he didn't pay much attention to the man, that he was "just used to see him every day" ( 3 H 325 ).

How could Oswald be the killer and in this neighborhood every day when after October 14th  he was working everyday at the Texas School Book Depository and the housekeeper at his rooming house said he never went out ?
 

Of course, the Commission never asked Scoggins what he meant by this. They didn't want to know.

WARREN REYNOLDS
Further evidence that Tippit's killer was someone from the neighborhood and still at large comes from the attempted murder of witness Warren Reynolds.
Reynolds worked at his brother's dealership, Reynolds Motor Company located at 500 E. Jefferson.
On November 22, 1963, Reynolds saw a man with a gun running south on Patton Ave. He then allegedly followed  the man on the opposite side of the street as the man went west on West Jefferson Blvd. He said he lost the man behind a gas station on Crawford St.

On 23rd January, 1964, Reynolds was himself the victim of a violent attack. As he went into the basement of the dealership to shut off the lights for the night, he was shot in the head by someone with a .22 caliber rifle who was lying in wait for him.
No charges were ever brought against anyone in this attack. A suspect was picked up but he had an alibi and passed a polygraph exam so the police released him.
Reynolds survived the attack and made a full recovery. 

In March, 1964, Reynolds had a meeting with General Edwin Walker who read his story in the paper and was interested in talking with him. During this meeting, he admitted to Walker that contrary to the newspaper article "he did not finger Oswald." (CE 2587, pg. 2 )

Later that month, a man tried to get Reynolds' 9 year old daughter Terri into his car by offering her money. She ran away and reported the incident to her parents. (ibid., pg.3)

Understandably, this made Reynolds "apprehensive" to stick to his original story.
If the attempted murder of him wasn't enough, the attempted kidnapping of his daughter was the straw that broke the camel's back. 

He changed his mind and identified Oswald as the man he had seen running from the scene of the crime. He then testified such to the Warren Commission.

ACQUILLA CLEMONS

On my Youtube Channel, there is a 1966 interview by attorney Mark Lane of witness Acquilla Clemons. Mrs. Clemons heard the shots and ran out into the street and saw two men on opposite sides of the street. 

She said the man she saw with the gun was "short and kind of chunky" and the other was tall, thin and had a white shirt on and light colored khakis. 
She claimed that she never told anyone what she saw.
In spite of this, two days after the shooting, she was told by a plain clothes "man with a gun" to "keep quiet" or she might get hurt. 
Were the authorities warning her that the killer lived in the neighborhood and was still at large ? 

Coming in Part II: ALIAS SMITH AND BURT
 

Edited August 30, 2021 by Gil Jesus

[Ron Bulman]

Didn't Acquilla Clemons disappear shortly after the Mark Lane interview?

[Larry Hancock]

Fascination analysis Gil, thanks...looking forward to more...

[David Andrews]

Gil, any thoughts on the stabbing alleged to have taken place a block away from 10th and Patton, with the victim said to have been spirited away by car?

It was a fraught day and a bad neighborhood...but two acts of violence in one midday hour?

[Gil Jesus]

3 hours ago, David Andrews said:

Gil, any thoughts on the stabbing alleged to have taken place a block away from 10th and Patton, with the victim said to have been spirited away by car?

It was a fraught day and a bad neighborhood...but two acts of violence in one midday hour?

Dave, I never heard about this stabbing before. Seems to me that they should have dispatched a cruiser to the hospital to interview the victim and another to the scene of the stabbing to get statements from any witnesses. Having done some police/fire/ambulance dispatching myself, I believe that would have been the normal procedure.

I wonder, did they ever dispatch any cruisers to investigate ? Maybe I can check the transcripts.

[David Andrews]

1 hour ago, Gil Jesus said:

Dave, I never heard about this stabbing before. Seems to me that they should have dispatched a cruiser to the hospital to interview the victim and another to the scene of the stabbing to get statements from any witnesses. Having done some police/fire/ambulance dispatching myself, I believe that would have been the normal procedure.

I wonder, did they ever dispatch any cruisers to investigate ? Maybe I can check the transcripts.

 

https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/why-officer-tippit-stopped-his-killer

Approximately 1:05 p.m.

As the unknown white male proceeds west and crosses the intersection of 10^th and Marsalis, a major disturbance suddenly breaks out at that corner. Bill Drenas, author of the 1998 article Car #10 Where Are You?, mentioned that a person near the scene of the Tippit shooting told investigator Bill Pulte that, “If you are planning to do more research on Tippit, you should find out about the fight that took place at 12^th & Marsalis a few minutes before Tippit was killed.” The interviewee spoke only on the condition of anonymity.

Harrison Livingstone, in his 2006 book The Radical Right and the Murder of John F. Kennedy, adds more crucial detail about this mysterious neighborhood altercation. “There are neighborhood reports of a disagreement at the intersection of 12^th & Marsalis,” writes Livingstone, “a few minutes before Tippit was killed. Tippit was headed precisely toward 12^th & Marsalis when he left Lancaster & 8^th (the report of the 12^th & Marsalis argument is from someone whose identity needs to be protected).

“The late Cecil Smith witnessed this fight which was actually at 10^th & Marsalis (my emphasis). One of the two individuals was stabbed, but it was never investigated, apparently … just two blocks east from where Tippit was shortly murdered.” The fight also occurred, let it be known, at the same time and location the unknown gunman in the light jacket, white shirt, and dark trousers is passing on his way two blocks west to the fast approaching scene of the fatal Tippit shooting.

But it was not until Dallas researchers Michael Brownlow and Professor William Pulte made public their findings in a 2015 Youtube video that we get the full scoop on this most unusual so-called “fight.”

Brownlow said it was actually three men and a woman who jumped on another man at the corner, who was then “violently” stabbed. The wounded man, bleeding profusely, was then inexplicably thrown into the back of a blue Mercury Monterey which sped away from the scene. Many people witnessed the assault. 10^th & Marsalis was a commercial corner, with an auto parts store, a plumbing supply store, and other nearby businesses such as the barber shop and restaurant. It was Indian summer, pre-air conditioning days, and most of these businesses had telephones within easy reach. Neighbors and teens home from school also allegedly witnessed the noisy and bloody altercation. (See also, Joseph McBride, Into the Nightmare, pp. 447-48)

Emergency phones calls were obviously placed to the Dallas Police, although you won’t find any mention of this incident in the DPD call logs for 11/22/63. Why not?

Gil  - I think someone on this or another thread suggested that this incident was the reason Tippit stopped the Andrews vehicle (no relation) and checked the back seat. 

Edited August 31, 2021 by David Andrews

[Joseph McBride]

Gil, I generally admire your work, but this statement

is just absurd and caused me to have to re-read it

more than once to realize you actually wrote it: "Having spent some time as a police officer myself, I understand how it all works. I find nothing suspicious or sinister about the Dallas Police dispatching J.D. Tippit to Oak Cliff. They just wanted coverage in a high crime area while the officer assigned to that area was at lunch."

The officer who allegedly went to lunch was William Mentzel, but in fact he and Tippit

were dispatched by the DPD before 12:45 p.m. to hunt down Oswald. Mentzel's

story about lunch is ridiculous on its face and obviously a cover story. Mentzel became

involved in an auto accident nearby and said he regretted Tippit got hit instead.

Nothing suspicious or sinister in any of this? The time frame and the order to hunt down

Oswald in Oak Cliff well before the DPD officially knew who he was (they actually had 

been surveilling him for quite some time, and he was an FBI informant)

show that Tippit and Mentzel and the DPD itself were involved in the conspiracy

to pin the JFK assassination on Oswald (if not more).

Edited August 31, 2021 by Joseph McBride

[Greg Doudna]

On the 10th and Marsallis fight, so far as I can tell that stems entirely from no more than two claimed sources: the first and most important was a boy, the younger brother of Lad Holan, Jr., I do not know the name of the younger brother but according to Dale Myers' interviews with family members this Holan boy was ten years old at the time. Although formally anonymous, it is fairly clear to me this was Brownlow's and/or Pulte's unnamed source. This boy did not see any such fight but says he was told of it. Brownlow claimed another source, Cecil Smith, told similarly but that source is dead with no known direct quotation or statement on this point (and no way to know he was no more than repeating the Holan boy's story learned from the Holan boy). No witnesses or police records have ever come forth of such a fight occurring at about the same time as the Tippit killing, only two blocks away, very odd if it happened.

I think the Holan boy, who was at 10th and Marsallis on his bicycle before he returned home to the scene of Tippit's death where he saw his mother, heard a garbled report of the Tippit killing itself and the loading of the body of Tippit into the ambulance, and this hearsay as heard by the 10-year-old, with some distortion in details, became misunderstood as if it was a separate incident. In short, the story was neither invented by the 10-year old nor was there any knife stabbing at 10th and Marsallis either; the 10-year-old indeed had been told or had learned something on his way home but it was a distorted version of what had just happened with Tippit, with some details not right, in the minutes following the Tippit killing as word spread through the neighborhood. He told his mother and his friends what he had learned or been told, not realizing what he had heard that morning on his way home was a confused report of the Tippit killing itself. 

[Gil Jesus]

8 hours ago, Joseph McBride said:

Gil, I generally admire your work, but this statement

is just absurd and caused me to have to re-read it

more than once to realize you actually wrote it: "Having spent some time as a police officer myself, I understand how it all works. I find nothing suspicious or sinister about the Dallas Police dispatching J.D. Tippit to Oak Cliff. They just wanted coverage in a high crime area while the officer assigned to that area was at lunch."

The officer who allegedly went to lunch was William Mentzel, but in fact he and Tippit

were dispatched by the DPD before 12:45 p.m. to hunt down Oswald. Mentzel's

story about lunch is ridiculous on its face and obviously a cover story. Mentzel became

involved in an auto accident nearby and said he regretted Tippit got hit instead.

Nothing suspicious or sinister in any of this? The time frame and the order to hunt down

Oswald in Oak Cliff well before the DPD officially knew who he was (they actually had 

been surveilling him for quite some time, and he was an FBI informant)

show that Tippit and Mentzel and the DPD itself were involved in the conspiracy

to pin the JFK assassination on Oswald (if not more).

I was speaking from experience. I have no evidence that the DPD sent officers into Oak Cliff to hunt down Oswald.

It sounds like you're saying that Tippit was hunting down Oswald, but Oswald got him first.

I'm saying that Oswald wasn't even there and Tippit's killer was someone else. I think that's where we differ.

Edited August 31, 2021 by Gil Jesus

[Gil Jesus]

12 hours ago, David Andrews said:

 

https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/why-officer-tippit-stopped-his-killer

Approximately 1:05 p.m.

As the unknown white male proceeds west and crosses the intersection of 10^th and Marsalis, a major disturbance suddenly breaks out at that corner. Bill Drenas, author of the 1998 article Car #10 Where Are You?, mentioned that a person near the scene of the Tippit shooting told investigator Bill Pulte that, “If you are planning to do more research on Tippit, you should find out about the fight that took place at 12^th & Marsalis a few minutes before Tippit was killed.” The interviewee spoke only on the condition of anonymity.

Harrison Livingstone, in his 2006 book The Radical Right and the Murder of John F. Kennedy, adds more crucial detail about this mysterious neighborhood altercation. “There are neighborhood reports of a disagreement at the intersection of 12^th & Marsalis,” writes Livingstone, “a few minutes before Tippit was killed. Tippit was headed precisely toward 12^th & Marsalis when he left Lancaster & 8^th (the report of the 12^th & Marsalis argument is from someone whose identity needs to be protected).

“The late Cecil Smith witnessed this fight which was actually at 10^th & Marsalis (my emphasis). One of the two individuals was stabbed, but it was never investigated, apparently … just two blocks east from where Tippit was shortly murdered.” The fight also occurred, let it be known, at the same time and location the unknown gunman in the light jacket, white shirt, and dark trousers is passing on his way two blocks west to the fast approaching scene of the fatal Tippit shooting.

But it was not until Dallas researchers Michael Brownlow and Professor William Pulte made public their findings in a 2015 Youtube video that we get the full scoop on this most unusual so-called “fight.”

Brownlow said it was actually three men and a woman who jumped on another man at the corner, who was then “violently” stabbed. The wounded man, bleeding profusely, was then inexplicably thrown into the back of a blue Mercury Monterey which sped away from the scene. Many people witnessed the assault. 10^th & Marsalis was a commercial corner, with an auto parts store, a plumbing supply store, and other nearby businesses such as the barber shop and restaurant. It was Indian summer, pre-air conditioning days, and most of these businesses had telephones within easy reach. Neighbors and teens home from school also allegedly witnessed the noisy and bloody altercation. (See also, Joseph McBride, Into the Nightmare, pp. 447-48)

Emergency phones calls were obviously placed to the Dallas Police, although you won’t find any mention of this incident in the DPD call logs for 11/22/63. Why not?

Gil  - I think someone on this or another thread suggested that this incident was the reason Tippit stopped the Andrews vehicle (no relation) and checked the back seat. 

This incident, if true, proves my point that Oak Cliff was a bad place and there was nothing sinister about them wanting police coverage in that area. I have no evidence that shows otherwise.

Thanks for that info. It certainly would make sense. He didn't have to be dispatched. It could have been that a passerby may have stopped him and told him about it. And if the man was walking in a direction TOWARDS the cruiser and turned around when he saw it, that would have been suspicious enough a reason to stop him, IMO. If it was me and I was looking for a man with a knife, I would have done the same thing he did when he stopped the man: a threshold inquiry followed by a request to have the man empty his pockets on the hood of the cruiser. I've done it before.

I would have also called dispatch to tell them what I had, which he tried to do twice at 1:08.

The fact that he started to pull his gun from his holster tells me that he recognized he was in trouble albeit too late.

The fact that he was shot in the head after being shot 3 times tells me he knew his killer and that killer wanted to make sure Tippit didn't tell anyone the name of the person who shot him.

I don't find that Tippit did anything wrong or out of the ordinary in encountering this man.

Edited August 31, 2021 by Gil Jesus

[Steve Thomas]

Gil,

It has always intrigued me that the two times Oswald went "missing" in his life, he wound up resurfacing in Oak Cliff.

The first was the missing two weeks between October 19-November 3, 1962, and the second time between September 25-October 3, 1963,

in the 1963 incident, Ruth Paine allegedly dropped Oswald off in downtown Dallas on October 7th to look for a job and a place to live, He winds up on foot at Mary Bledsoe's place on Marsalis with clothes on hangers hanging on his back.

Did he go looking for a job carrying his clothes?

Why Oak Cliff?

How did he know so much about the neighborhood  layout?

Steve Thomas

 

 

[Gil Jesus]

4 minutes ago, Steve Thomas said:

Gil,

It has always intrigued me that the two times Oswald went "missing" in his life, he wound up resurfacing in Oak Cliff.

The first was the missing two weeks between October 19-November 3, 1962, and the second time between September 25-October 3, 1963,

in the 1963 incident, Ruth Paine allegedly dropped Oswald off in downtown Dallas on October 7th to look for a job and a place to live, He winds up on foot at Mary Bledsoe's place on Marsalis with clothes on hangers hanging on his back.

Did he go looking for a job carrying his clothes?

Why Oak Cliff?

How did he know so much about the neighborhood  layout?

Steve Thomas

 

Interesting questions. I've been out looking for jobs several times in my life but I've never carried my wardrobe with me. It seems like when he was homeless, he spent time at a local YMCA. Could someone there have told him about a place that was available ? Maybe he left those clothes at the YMCA while he was looking for a place to stay.

Just a thought.

 

[Joseph McBride]

As I write at length in my book INTO THE NIGHTMARE,

Oswald did not shoot Tippit. I'm not sure why you think I make that claim,

because I don't. I remain baffled as to why you think the

order of Tippit (and Mentzel) into Oak Cliff was innocent on

the part of the DPD rather than conspiratorial.

[Gil Jesus]

8 hours ago, Joseph McBride said:

As I write at length in my book INTO THE NIGHTMARE,

Oswald did not shoot Tippit. I'm not sure why you think I make that claim,

because I don't. I remain baffled as to why you think the

order of Tippit (and Mentzel) into Oak Cliff was innocent on

the part of the DPD rather than conspiratorial.

Because I've read the transcripts of the radio transmissions and listened to the dictabelt at the same time. Unless they were speaking in code, I can't find anything that leads me to think they were sent to Oak Cliff to purposely hunt Oswald down. I can't find any evidence that the Dallas Police knew Oswald was in Oak Cliff on November 22nd. The address the TSBD had for him was 605 Ellsbeth St., an old address. he got his mail through a post office box and he didn't get the job through the Texas Employment Commission. Without info from their informants in the USPS and the TEC, the FBI couldn't track him.

That's why Hosty went to the Paine's house around November 1st and again a week later.

I suppose they could have gotten the location of his rooming house through the phone number that Marina gave Agent Hosty if Hosty shared that with them. But that's only speculation, I've seen no evidence of that. And if they in fact knew where he lived there was no need to hunt him, all they had to do was to get a arrest warrant and go pick his ass up, or stake his rooming house out and grab him when he came outside. They didn't have to put one of their own in mortal danger.

I thought you were proposing the scenario that they were out to kill Oswald, but Oswald got Tippit first. My apologies for the error.

 

[Joseph McBride]

Tippit and Mentzel were using telephones that

day besides the DPD radio. Oswald was an

FBI informant and had spoken with the

FBI at least two or three times in November

1963 before the assassination, probably

keeping them informed about the plot he

had infiltrated without knowing he was being set up as the patsy. The DPD also was aware of Oswald and his whereabouts, and,

as you know, a police car showed up outside

his Oak Cliff rooming house about 1 p.m. and honked its horn. Marie Tippit told

Edgar Lee Tippit what Mentzel told her about

the hunt for Oswald he and J. D. were ordered by the DPD to make

shortly after the assassination, by at least 12:45 (Oswald was not officially

identified until about 2:10 p.m. at the downtown police station).

I recommend you read my 2013 book INTO THE NIGHTMARE,

which goes into all of this in detail.

Edited August 31, 2021 by Joseph McBride