Tippit: a second officer present at the Tippit killing

[Greg Doudna]

The argument that there was another officer at the scene of the Tippit killing, at the time of the Tippit killing

That there was an officer present at the Tippit scene, other than Tippit, is presented by Myers in With Malice from a source that Myers appears to assess as high quality in terms of credibility, even though the source is not identified. Italics emphasis is from Myers.

"Recently, it was learned that there was a Dallas police officer who had frequented the Tenth and Patton area and, in fact, was there at the time of Tippit's murder. According to sources a Dallas police officer was involved in a tryst with a married woman on the afternoon of November 22, 1963, in a house that overlooked the Tippit murder scene. At the sound of the shots, the officer looked out a window and observed the killer fleeing the scene. Reportedly, the officer positively identified the gunman as Lee Harvey Oswald; however, the story never crept beyond a handful of lawmen for fear of unintentionally exposing the relationship. The story was confirmed in 1996 by a high ranking Dallas official who stated that the 'information received was sufficient to cause belief.'"

"'This person's credibility level was high,' the official remarked, 'because after all is said and done, you're not going to get yourself any favorable publicity from it. There's not motive for saying it if it weren't true.' Only a handful of people were aware of the story and as far as the official knew it was never made available to officers investigating Tippit's death." (Myers, Without Malice, 374).

The endnotes: "Author interview of Dallas official. The exact address of the encounter was not determined" (n 1124), and, "Jim Leavelle, the former homicide detective who led the investigation into Tippit's death, reported in 1996 that he was unaware of the story" (n. 1125).

There already were two prior independent statements of witnesses consistent with an officer having an affair at that location. The first is Scoggins, the cab driver parked on Patton near the corner of Tenth, who said he usually ate lunch in his car at that location and was familiar with a cruiser also commonly there when he was (lunch time). Myers I think is right that that would not have been Tippit, that Tippit conducting an affair or otherwise being regularly at that location during working hours in agreement with Scoggins' description is not too likely on practical grounds. Scoggins had no idea who the officer of the cruiser was that was often there at the same time he was and his natural first thought was that it was Tippit, but that could easily be simply erroneous conclusion. In fact Myers suggests Scoggins' police officer frequenting that location regularly more likely would be this officer of the affair noted above, rather than Tippit (p. 374).

The second was Virginia Davis of the corner of Tenth and Patton, who--incredibly--told the Warren Commission in her testimony that Tippit's car "was parked between the hedge that marks the apartment house where he lives in and the house next door." Virginia Davis herself told Myers in 1997 that she did not know at the time where Tippit lived or had any idea who Tippit was, and that the WC statement of her published testimony was not what she meant, and she doubted she had said that. However, Virginia Davis's odd attributed statement in 1964 and clarification in 1997 do not necessarily contradict the possibility that she was referring to the same thing Scoggins may have been referring: an officer who was not Tippit seen frequenting that particular house, and therefore mistakenly assumed by Virginia Davis to have been living there, two houses away from Virginia Davis.

The Doris Holan story

A third reported witness claim, this one of directly witnessing a police cruiser in the vicinity of the east-west alley behind the houses on the north side of Tenth St, Doris Holan, reported via Brownlow and Pulte (no direct written or taped statement) just before she died of cancer in 2000, was the subject of a seven-month investigation by Myers which brought out significant new information (https://jfkfiles.blogspot.com/2020/11/doris-e-holan-and-tippit-murder.html). Myers found Doris's son, Lad Holan, and did other interviews and digging for facts, and devastatingly refuted that Doris Holan was living on Tenth Street in November 1963; she could not have been in a position to see what was claimed since she was not living at the location claimed. The Holan family--Doris Holan and three children--had lived at the claimed Tenth Street location in 1962, but in November 1963 Mrs. Holan and her children were living in an apartment on the corner of Patton and the east-west alley between Patton and Jefferson. That address where they were living the day Tippit was killed is what Lad told Myers, and Myers verified it from city directory information. Myers concluded there was nothing to the Doris Holan story of witnessing a cruiser going forward, then backing up in the driveway back to the alley behind the houses on Tenth. Myers also discovered and proved, surprisingly against the claim of son Lad, that Doris was home that day at the time the Tippit killing occurred. (Lad had said his mother was not home, but photos of Doris's car parked there on Patton immediately in front of her apartment and then gone later that afternoon established that.) Both of these points brought forth by Myers--the true location where Doris Holan lived on Nov 22, 1963, and that Doris Holan was home during the hours of the Tippit killing--are rock-solid from the evidence Myers shows, and neither of these facts (so important to what is to follow, from my point of view), would have become known--perhaps ever--if not for Myers. 

With this preamble in praise of Myers' unexcelled production of solid research and establishment of facts with respect to the Tippit killing, here on this point I will go in a different direction than Myers in assessment of or interpretation of those facts that nobody would have known if Myers had not brought to light and established them.

For Myers concludes that if Doris Holan did not live on Tenth Street, that is the death of the Doris Holan story, full stop. But step back for a moment and think about the implications of what Myers has shown, the true location of where Doris Holan lived: Doris Holan's apartment, on the second storey of a building on Patton most here have seen many times in photos, looks directly out over Patton. Myers established that Doris Holan was home. She worked at night, would come home and sleep. If she was home, which she was, and heard the shots, which she would have, it would be surprising if she had not gone to her window and looked out, right on to Patton where Callaway and the killer had their interaction. With all of the work put into correctly establishing that Doris Holan's apartment did not overlook the Tippit cruiser scene, it has not been considered what Doris Holan would have seen from her true vantage point overlooking Patton--looking eastward directly into the east-west alley between Tenth and Jefferson behind the houses where the Tippit cruiser was. 

Therefore what I think most likely happened is Doris Holan did hear the shots, did go to her front window, and did see something on Patton and in the alley across the street which would have been in her line of sight. She told her story to Brownlee and Pulte who did not tape record or have her write a written statement of her words, but re-told what she told them, and they did so in the belief that she was speaking from the wrong vantage point, of the E. 10th address. The suggestion here is that Doris Holan's story is garbled and embellished by this second-hand hearsay retelling--as told by interviewers who were thinking of a vantage point of view that was wrong--but that, contra Myers, there is something to Doris Holan's story if read with this in mind, that it is garbled and that Doris Holan was living on Patton not on Tenth. 

I think Doris Holman, who had line of sight to the alley and backyards of the Tenth Street houses, saw a cruiser in that alley, in the process of leaving the scene, in the moments after the shots that killed Tippit. The man walking that she saw was not connected to the cruiser but was Callaway, even though both the cruiser and Callaway on foot were in the same alley. She saw the cruiser moving toward Patton, while she saw Callaway on foot moving toward Patton as well, without those two being connected. Then Doris Holan gives a version of the same Callaway/killer interaction that Acquila Clemons and Callaway described--of Callaway waving "go on" as Acquila saw it, with Callaway saying he had waved and said, "Hey man, what's going on?" Doris Holan told of this same thing from her vantage point from where she actually was that afternoon, on Patton.

A second man walked down the driveway in a dark blue jacket. Mrs. Holan claimed the second man was about the same height as the man in the white jacket but much heavier--weighing well over two hundred pounds.

The "man in the white jacket" is the killer on Patton. The "second man ... much heavier, weighing well over two hundred pounds" is Callaway, 200-plus pounds. Callaway said he was wearing a suit that day; the "dark blue jacket" would be Callaway's suit jacket. Immediately following the shots Callaway ran from his place of business across the street from Mrs. Holan in the direction of Patton which is approximately the path of the alley. I believe when Brownlee and Pulte report Mrs. Holan saying "driveway" that was influenced by Brownlee's and Pulte's mistaken understanding of where Mrs. Holan lived, and that Mrs. Holan actually said or meant "the alley", the east-west alley. The backyard of the house where the Tippit cruiser was parked would also have been visible to Mrs. Holan's line of sight from her Patton apartment--(I believe so, from looking at the 1964 FBI aerial photo)--so it is a little unclear the exact movements of the car Mrs. Holan saw which had "the cherry on top"--a cruiser. But I believe Doris Holan witnessed someone in a cruiser leaving the scene immediately after hearing the shots--consistent with the story that an officer had been there of the affair. Of that cruiser behind the house, Doris Holan saw some going forward, then backing up the other way. Those movements as viewed from a distance could be someone getting a parked car maneuvred out of a parked position to leave, or it could be (as I surmise) the car was moving forward westward (in Mrs. Holan's direction) in the alley with intent to leave, but then saw action of Callaway and the killer on Patton and decided, "maybe better to reverse direction and leave by the other end", and backed up in the alley (backing up because no room to turn around easily in the alley) until able to turn around and exit at the other end. 

Three versions of the same Callaway/fleeing gunman exchange

This is the secondhand telling of Doris Holan's story which I think is another version of the Ted Callaway and Acquila Clemons stories of Callaway's interaction with the fleeing killer, on Patton.

Mrs. Holan told Brownlow that the heavy-set man in the blue jacket turned down the driveway and walked out into the middle of the street . . . and then he turned to the man in the white jacket, Brownlow said, "and began to do this (gesturing with his arm as if to say 'Go on')--like telling him to leave, get out of there."

Here is Ted Callaway:

"'I heard shots coming from the direction behind the lot there,' Callaway said. 'Well, I come running of the side of the porch and toward the sidewalk that runs along Patton. Before I got to the sidewalk, I could see this taxi cab parked down on Patton. I saw the cabdriver [Scoggins] beside his cab, and I saw this man [the Tippit killer] run through this hedge up there on the corner [corner 10th and Patton, the Davis sisters-in-law apartments]. He runs from the yard--jumped the little hedge--and at the time he had a gun in his right hand (...) The man then cut from one side of the street to the other. That would be the east side of Patton over to the west side of Patton. I went the remaining distance, probably fifty feet in all, to the sidewalk on Patton Street, and watched the man come south on Patton toward me. The man was not in a dead run, but rather a good trot (...) I hollered out to him, 'Hey man, what the hell's going on?' That's exactly what I was wondering. At first, I thought he was a plain clothes officer. That's the first thing that entered my mind, that maybe he was after somebody. That's why I hollered at him. If I'd thought he had just killed somebody, I certainly would not have done that. So, he slowed his pace--almost halted for a minute--and turned and looked at me. He appeared to be very pale, but not excited. He said something to me, which I could not understand, and shrugged his shoulders as if to say he did not know what was happening. Then, he slowed down and started walking." (Myers, With Malice, 130-132)

Here is Acquila Clemons in the 1960s interview by Mark Lane on Utube. Acquila, standing and crying, was placed by another witness at the northwest corner of Patton and Tenth, with a clear line of sight of Patton where she saw the gunman and Callaway.

"Yes there was one on the other side of the street. All I know is he told him to go on. (waves hand outward) He told him to go on. (motions outward) He said, 'go on' (waves outward) (...) They weren't together, they went this way from each other. (extends both arms in opposite directions) The one that did the shooting went this way (extends one arm one way). The other one went straight down past the street that way (extends other arm the other way)."

Following Callaway's exchange with the gunman on Patton in which Callaway had called out, then watched the gunman go around to the west on Jefferson, Callaway turned around, returned to the sidewalk (if he had gone beyond it into the street), and walked north on the sidewalk of Patten to Tenth, then east to the site of the Tippit cruiser. But as it would appear to an observer looking out the window of Mrs. Holan's second-storey apartment on the corner of Patton and that alley, Callaway would have looked at first like he was headed back "up the alley", as he turned around and started to walk back the way he came. By this reconstruction, that would be the last Mrs. Holan saw of Callaway from that window, for at that point--in Mrs. Holan's story as told secondhand--she then left the window and got dressed so she could go outside and went to the scene on Tenth. But in her final moments at the window I think Mrs. Holan saw Callaway turn around--after the killer had continued north on Patton--and leaving the window before seeing Callaway walk north on the sidewalk, interpreted what she saw, as Callaway going back up the alley, even though Callaway actually turned north on the Patton sidewalk toward Tenth. But Mrs. Holan did not see that because she had left the window and was now getting dressed.

It will never be known for sure how much of the Doris Holan story is garbled and/or embellished, or mixed up with things told out of order, through Brownlow's mediation and the assumption on the part of the mediators doing the retelling that Mrs. Holan was speaking from a Tenth Street location line of sight. There is no tape or written statement by which to know Mrs. Holan's exact words, what she actually said. But I do not think her story is fabricated out of whole cloth. Again, we would not know what her true vantage point was (on Patton), or that she was home that day in a position to see, if it were not for Myers' own research itself. While showing the Brownlee and Pulte version of Doris Holan's story had numerous problems and incongruities and was based on the wrong address assumption, what was missed after that deconstructive work was focus on what Doris Holan would have seen and credibly did see from her actual vantage point. If she was there and was home that day, which she was, it would be extraordinary if she would not go to the window to look out after hearing the shots. And if she did do what any normal person would do upon hearing those shots, look out the window, it would be extraordinary if she did not witness, did not see Callaway out there on Patton, and probably the killer too on Patton, and their interaction. Which is what is there in Mrs. Holan's story if one sorts through the garbling in the secondhand versions by which the story comes to us. And consider that if she is giving a version of seeing the Callaway/killer shouting interaction, that was not possible for Mrs. Holan to have witnessed from the vantage point of the Tenth Street address mistakenly assumed by Brownlow and Pulte and all who have relied upon that version of Doris Holan's story. It becomes explicable--starts to make sense--only after Myers' work in establishing where Mrs. Holan actually was living at the time Tippit was killed.

And so this is a roundabout way, after making this argument for rehabilitation of the Mrs. Holan story with a different interpretation, to say that Doris Holan becomes a witness to, testimony of, a police cruiser not Tippit's in the immediate vicinity of the Tippit killing, at the time of the Tippit killing, in agreement with the three other sources suggesting the same of above. A fifth possible testimony to the same, Guinyard who allegedly told Brownlow in 1970 that he saw a police car in the alley, unfortunately cannot be verified at all. On the one hand, who knows if he told Brownlow that, maybe he did, maybe he didn't. On the other hand, given these other lines pointing to the same thing, it is plausible that he did. An objection that Guinyard did not volunteer that detail to FBI or the Warren Commission when being questioned I do not think has much weight in itself. 

[Ron Bulman]

Long post I've not yet time to read.  But does it consider 3 officers, including Tippit?  The one driving the car between the two houses, and the one who got out of it  to inspect the effects of the shots.  

Edited September 4, 2021 by Ron Bulman

[Greg Doudna]

Here is an aerial photo. The true address of Mrs. Holan, as brought out in Myers' study, was not where it is marked below but was instead the second storey of the northwest corner unit of the big apartment building seen at the left edge of the photo below, at the lower left of the white rectangular tag "Scoggins", the building on the corner of the alley on the west side of Patton (https://jfkfiles.blogspot.com/2020/11/doris-e-holan-and-tippit-murder.html). There is the alley, with view from the second-storey window of Mrs. Holan's apartment not blocked by buildings--she could see a vehicle in that alley coming toward her (toward Patton), then reversing. She could see Callaway whose place of business is just off to the left of this photo, and who came out to Patton. She could see the shouting of Callaway to the Tippit killer right out of her Patton Ave. window, the same interaction told by Acquila Clemons (he said to him, "GO ON!") and told by Callaway ("I shouted to him, 'what's GOING ON?'"). The spot marked "Markham" is where Acquila Clemons was placed by witness Mary Austin (https://jfkfiles.blogspot.com/2020/11/emory-austin-his-daughter-mary-and.html), with direct line of sight to the Callaway/gunman interaction on Patton. The red arrow on the photo marked "police car backed up path", reconstructed from the Mrs. Holan story, is in error, based on an erroneous placement of Mrs. Holan as living across the street from the Tippit cruiser, which was not where she was living in Nov. 1963). That red arrow should be resituated on the alley running east-west, instead of on the driveway running between the houses. (Alternatively, since the actual words of Mrs. Holan's story are not known, known only via hearsay, she would also have been in a line-of-sight position to have seen a car going forward, then backward, in the back yard of 404/406 E. 10th and the driveway there, though Myers questions whether a vehicle parked behind that house or in that driveway would have had ability or access to get to the alley based on it being blocked at the south end by a garage or structure of some kind (visible at the end of the red arrow below), but it does not seem entirely clear whether someone leaving the house for a car parked out back and wanting to leave in a hurry might find a way through to the alley by going around that building structure visible. (Myers cites Lad Holan who says that back yard was fenced, which if total [fenced without any gaps] could mean a car in the driveway could not exit via the alley, but the exact fencing situation does not seem known with certainty.)

 

[Greg Doudna]

There is not even a claim in the hearsay version of Mrs. Holan's story that any person got out of the moving cruiser that she said she saw in the moments following the shooting. In her story, she saw a big 200-plus pound man wearing a blue coat walking on the same "driveway" I say read "alley", who can be identified as suit-wearing 200-plus pound Callaway who would have had nothing to do with the cruiser or its movements. The movements of the cruiser are consistent with an officer present in the 404/406 house--visiting a married lady there not his wife according to the source cited by Myers--who decided to leave in a hurry and vanish rather than identify himself as a witness. 

[Greg Doudna]

I think I can propose a name for the officer who left the scene in a cruiser in the moments following the killing of Tippit. This is new, a name that has not previously been proposed or considered. The irony is that this officer's story giving the basis for the identification has been available in print for over two decades but has been missed.

This is an officer hardly known at all. A search on the Mary Ferrell site turns up practically nothing on him. He has never been the subject of an article or discussion in a book that I have ever seen, except for his story in Sneed, No More Silence (1998), 481-506.

William Courson, Detective, Criminal Investigation, Dallas County Sheriff's Department.

From his story in Sneed, he tells of how he was present in Oak Cliff, not his normal territory, following the killing--of how he had gone to Oak Cliff after checking in to service that day on his own decision, without being directed to go to Oak Cliff or informing by radio that he was going there, an unusual destination decision decided by him, as he tells it, minutes BEFORE the killing of Tippit happened.

He tells of allegedly having driven from his home far to the south of Oak Cliff in his cruiser, in plain clothes, to report into service on his way to downtown Dallas. Just before he gets to Oak Cliff (on his way to downtown Dallas), after checking in but without direction to do so, he decided on his own to turn left which passed through Oak Cliff on his way to somewhere else (he gives an explanation). That is how, he explains, he happened to be right there in Oak Cliff when police radio called for units to converge on the library at Marsalis following the Tippit killing.

As he told it, at his home to the south of Oak Cliff, with no one else at home than him (his wife was at work), he claimed that upon being awakened by a phone call from his wife telling of the JFK assassination, he left immediately to report into duty in order to assist and headed downtown. But oddly and somewhat inexplicably, he put on his old clothes from the day before. In other words, he tells of being at the scene of the Tippit killing that day, at the Texas Theatre when Oswald was arrested et al, in Oak Cliff, wearing his clothes from the day before. He was in street clothes, plain clothes, was not uniformed in his job, but did drive a cruiser.

How many people at home, getting dressed to go to work for a shift, put on their same day-old clothes including same shirt? But wearing yesterday's clothes would be consistent with someone who had stayed overnight somewhere else, then found himself unexpectedly suddenly needing to report to work without opportunity to get home to change in between.

He tells of being at the Marsalis library call, and at the Texas Theatre when Oswald is arrested, and at the scene of Tippit's cruiser on Tenth Street at about 1:30-1:40. (Yet Courson is not identified in any photo at the crime scene in Myers or anywhere else, turned in no known written report, was not called as a witness or record of being interviewed in any of the investigations, his name does not much come up.)

Of course his story could be as he tells it--his decision on his own to drive to Oak Cliff immediately before Tippit was killed for the unrelated reason given; his wearing all-yesterday's clothes when dressing for work at home due to being in such shock over the JFK assassination and hurry (not a second to waste to get a fresh shirt off a hanger).

But we already have, for reasons noted above independently of Courson's story, reason to suppose an officer with a cruiser was at the scene at the time of Tippit's killing other than Tippit, said to be having an affair, witnessed leaving in his cruiser immediately after the shots, who never came forward or has otherwise been identified as someone else.

Here, we have an officer in plain clothes with a cruiser who is in Oak Cliff consistent with the right time, nothing to do with his normal location for work, without having been instructed to go there, who claims he decided on his own to go to Oak Cliff minutes before Tippit was killed, wearing yesterday's clothes.

This is why I think Courson is the person of interest, a candidate for identity of the officer who drove away from the Tippit scene in a cruiser, who did not come forward to tell what he may have seen or known of the circumstances of the killing of Tippit.

The alternative narrative to the one Courson tells in Sneed, might run something like this: he is inside a house on Tenth Street, off duty, cruiser parked somewhere out back. Upon hearing the shots, Courson in his plain clothes--yesterday's plain clothes to be specific--knowing the place will momentarily be crawling with police and seeing his life and career ahead flash before his eyes--leaves immediately in his cruiser, not wanting to be there when the police arrive. He drives south just far enough outside of Oak Cliff to be consistent with looking like he had driven north from his own home to be able to report in, then reports in to service work via radio on his way to the downtown area. But instead of turning right to go downtown he turns left, returning to Oak Cliff (if he had left at all). Now checked in to service and in Oak Cliff, he answers the call at the Marsalis library--wearing his clothes from yesterday because he had been overnight on Tenth Street in Oak Cliff, not at his own home. Courson:

"It was a shock! [news of JFK assassination] At first, I just couldn't believe it and that it had happened in Dallas. So I dressed, put on the old rumpled clothes that I had worn the night before, and within five minutes, since the squad car was at the house, I was on the way to downtown Dallas and checked into service about halfway between DeSoto and Oak Cliff ... I just listened to the radio until I was about halfway into Oak Cliff. I didn't try to break in and check in sooner because of the [radio] traffic ... I had a suspect in mind out in Grand Praire ... he had made a statement, which had gotten to me, that 'He hoped Kennedy got his damn head blown off while he was in Dallas'. This had been just a week or two prior to the time Kennedy came to Dallas. So I thought that if there's that many officers downtown there's no use in my going there, so I thought I'd go out Jefferson Boulevard to Grand Prairie and bring in the suspect ... I hadn't gotten up to Jefferson and Zang around Twelfth Street when I received a call that a suspect had been seen running into the library at Marsalis and Jefferson. In the meantime, I had also gotten a call that a Dallas police officer had been shot near that location. As I was coming up Jefferson, running fast with red lights and siren ... As I stepped out of the car [at the library], a uniformed officer who had seen the red lights and realized that it was an official car, even though I was in the rumpled plain clothes that I had worn the night before, hollered at me and said that it was a false alarm ... So I left there and went to the location where the officer, Tippit, had been shot."

His telling of going to the actual Tippit crime scene and being there about 1:30-1:40 pm (assuming he did) has the benefit of offering an alibi explanation to any stories that might be circulating putting him or his cruiser at the Tippit crime scene. His alibi would be that he was there, the witnesses just were mistaken as to when. 

Courson may even have intentionally given in his Sneed story a version of the odd "move forward, then backward" of the cruiser of the Mrs. Holan story--the odd picture of a cruiser moving backward to the east the entire length of the alley backing out onto Denver which is how Mrs. Holan's description can read. One wonders whether Courson's 1998 Sneed may even have been prompted by the Mrs. Holan story, however garbled that story was--the officer who was there that day, if so, becoming aware that there was street talk, that his cruiser may have been seen backing out of that alley on to Denver that day, from where he would then have driven forward on Denver to turn on to Jefferson. Here is Courson, giving what I think could well be an alibi version to any witness claim that his cruiser had been seen backing out of the alley on to Denver.:

"Tippit's car was on the right hand side of the street facing east while I was on the right side facing west. As I pulled up alongside the car, there was another uniformed officer at the location who was evidently waiting for the wrecker to come and get Tippit's car. I don't recall whether I had heard that he was dead, but I believe I did. As I stepped out of the car, the call came in on Tippit's radio, which was still on, that "The suspect, wearing a white or light colored jacket, has been seen running into the balcony of the Texas Theater." We were only a few blocks from the theater, but I had to back up and turn to get back onto Jefferson. Another officer was headed the same way, so he and I ran a race, my going backwards and his going forward to see who could make that turn to get onto Jefferson first. He was in front of me and went on around to the back of the theater. I'm inclined to believe this was McDonald, the one who eventually captured Oswald, but I'm not sure." (p. 484)

In sum, I think there was an officer who left in a cruiser following the shots that killed Tippit, and I think he may have been William Courson. Courson's story, so to speak, almost fits like a glove, of an otherwise extremely baffling identification which has eluded solution. If this identification solution is convincing, then it itself becomes a sixth line of testimony for the fact of an officer in a cruiser present at the scene of the Tippit killing at the time of the Tippit killing--in that although Courson does not directly put himself at the scene at that time, his story (if the identification is convincing and correct) arguably confirms the story other than by means of direct confession.

William Courson was the brother of Dallas Police motorcycle officer James Courson.

William Courson's job under Sheriff Decker was Detective, Criminal Investigation. His job was to fraternize with and keep tabs on known criminals, involving working at night, visiting night clubs and gangland circles.

He tells of knowing Ruby well as part of his job. He tells a story which although he does not call it such, essentially is of receiving a bribe from Ruby for favorable law enforcement treatment during an arrest (pp. 491-92). He had "probably been in [Ruby's] club two or three times maybe a week or two prior to the assassination" (p. 496).

All of this information on William Courson is solely from the chapter in Sneed. So little is available or known of William Courson. I cannot see that he ever gave a written statement concerning that day to any law enforcement or investigative agency, unlike so many other officers.