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The Tippit Witnesses --- Part I

Gil Jesus

By Gil Jesus
in JFK Assassination Debate

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Gil Jesus

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The Witnesses
By Gil Jesus ( 2021 )



Two eyewitnesses saw the shooting and seven eyewitnesses saw the gunman leave the scene with the revolver in hand. These nine witnesses positively identified Lee Harvey Oswald as the man they saw. ( Report, pg. 20 )



First, I'll take on the two witnesses who the Commission claimed saw the shooting : Helen Markham and William Scoggins.



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 ( # 1 ) consisted of three police employees and Oswald.
 







For her "positive identification" she chose Oswald even though she testified under oath that she hadn't seen him before, including at the murder scene. ( 3 H 310 )
 

 
 


So why would Mrs. Markham identify Oswald if she had never seen him before ? Because she was being pressured by the Dallas Police to choose one of the men in the lineup.

She testified that she was surrounded by policemen in the lineup room. ( 3 H 310 )

"..and they kept asking me, which one, which one." ( 3 H 311 )


The fact that they kept pressuring her to pick one indicates that her choice of Oswald was NOT a positive identification. It implies that she hesitated before her choice because she knew that the man she saw kill Tippit was NOT in the lineup. Her testimony that when she picked Oswald she "got weak" and "just kind of fell over" (ibid.) may have been from the fact that she knew she had just identified an innocent man.


But Markham left a clue that the man she saw was not Oswald by failing 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 "18 yo" with a red complexion and wearing dark trousers.

Then she denied she ever said it.
 



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.
 

She told reporters that the killer was short, stocky and had bushy hair. Then denied she said that.

In a telephone interview, she told attorney Mark Lane that the killer was short, not too heavy and had bushy hair. ( 7 H 502 )

Then denied she ever talked to Lane.

Mrs. Markham's description of the killer changed drastically from interview to interview.

So you have to question, what exactly DID she see ?



WILLIAM SCOGGINS
 





The second witness who the Commission said saw the shooting was William Scoggins, a cab driver who was parked on the corner of Patton Ave. and 10th St. taking his lunch break.

Scoggins' cab was in the path of the killer as he fled.

But Scoggins neither saw the shooting nor the face of the killer. When he heard the shots and saw the smoke, he bailed out of his cab.

He testified that he did not see the killer's face before the shooting and at the time of the shooting his view of the killer was obstructed by shubbery. ( 3 H 325 )
 





Scoggins testified that he heard three or four shots and they were fast.

I was excited when I heard them shots...so I started to get out...I must have seen him ( Tippit ) fall as I was getting out of my cab and in the process of getting out of my cab I seen this guy coming around so I got out of sight. ( ibid. )

But other witnesses said the killer walked around the back of the cruiser up to the front and shot Tippit point blank in the head.

So how could Scoggins see Tippit fall and the killer run by his cab in the short time it took for him to get out ?

He couldn't. By the time the killer passed Scoggins' cab, he would have been outside squatting alongside it.


I saw him kind of coming toward me around that cutoff , through there and he never did look at me. He looked over his left shoulder like that as he went by. It seemed like I could see his face, his features and everything, you see. ( 3 H 327 )


It SEEMED like he could see his face ? Either he did or he didn't.

Scoggins' cab was to the right of the killer, so if the killer looked over his LEFT shoulder as he passed the cab, how could Scoggins' have seen his face ?


Again, he couldn't have.


For his "positive identification" Scoggins picked Oswald out of a lineup that included two teenagers and a Mexican.




 

In addition, Scoggins identified Oswald after seeing his photo in the morning paper. ( 3 H 334 )



After viewing the live lineups, Scoggins was shown a photographic lineup of 4 or 5 men by the FBI. Commission Document 5, pg 77 is an FBI report that says that Scoggins was shown a photograph of Oswald and "could not be sure" that the man he saw in Oak Cliff was Oswald.
 



In fact, not only was he not sure the man was Oswald, he picked another photo as the man he saw.

"he gave me some pictures...I think I picked the wrong picture...after I got through looking at them and I says, I told them one of these two pictures is him...and the one who was actually him looked like an older man than he was to me......he told me the other one was Oswald." ( 3 H 335 )


Scoggins testified that the photo he saw of Oswald looked too old to be the man he saw.


Why on earth would the FBI show him a photographic lineup if he had already positively identified Oswald in a live lineup ?



Coming in Part II: The Commission's Magnificent Seven

Edited by Gil Jesus
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Gil Jesus Mentor

Gil Jesus

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14 hours ago, Micah Mileto said:

😀 Afterwards will you be putting all of these into one file?

Yes. It's just so long and takes a while to research. I spend the week researching and the weekend posting. When it's done I'll have it on my website ( gil-jesus.com) in one narrative or I can e-mail you a copy  in an Wordpad .rtf file if you message me with your e-mail address.

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