Oswald's Jacket

[Bill Brown]

4 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

Bill, 

As Stu says, Davis says at 8:00, "he set down by me--close to me", before he got up and moved to sit by someone else.

The "opening credits" is in either the Marrs or Burroughs interview of Davis. In this Sixth Museum video he says at 7:18 concerning the timing that he thought Oswald had sat near him when the movie was just about to come on: "the movie had already come on--had--just about to come on I think it was--and this person came in, and almost sat down behind me ... he was like going down in a sitting motion, changed his mind and moved two seats over ... to my right ... he set down by me--close to me"

 

"Davis says at 8:00, "he set down by me--close to me", before he got up and moved to sit by someone else."

 

Correct.

But, that isn't what you stated a few posts back.  You stated that Oswald sat next to Davis.  But Davis didn't say that; he says Oswald sat down a couple seats away from him.  Just watch the interview, for crying out loud.

 

"The "opening credits" is in either the Marrs or Burroughs interview of Davis. In this Sixth Museum video he says at 7:18 concerning the timing that he thought Oswald had sat near him when the movie was just about to come on: "the movie had already come on--had--just about to come on I think it was..."

 

Again, Davis says nothing AT ALL about Oswald sitting next to him during the film's opening credits.  I'm not sure how many times I'm going to have to repeat myself for you guys to get it.  When trying to determine a timeline for Oswald arriving inside the theater, this stuff matters.

 

Edited April 4 by Bill Brown

[Greg Doudna]

Bill, do you have a comment on whether Oswald removed his jacket before or after he entered the theater and sat down three seats away from Davis just before the movie came on (at 1:20 pm), as Davis thought the timing was? 

On Brewer 15 minutes later, do you think it is possible Brewer could have misidentified Oswald in the theater as the man he saw through the glass door out front of his store? 

Or do you exclude that as beyond the realm of reasonable possibility—that a witness intending to be truthful could possibly misidentify a person as Oswald who wasn’t? 

[Bill Brown]

22 minutes ago, Greg Doudna said:

Bill, do you have a comment on whether Oswald removed his jacket before or after he entered the theater and sat down three seats away from Davis just before the movie came on (at 1:20 pm), as Davis thought the timing was? 

On Brewer 15 minutes later, do you think it is possible Brewer could have misidentified Oswald in the theater as the man he saw through the glass door out front of his store? 

Or do you exclude that as beyond the realm of reasonable possibility—that a witness intending to be truthful could possibly misidentify a person as Oswald who wasn’t? 

 

First, let me ask you a question.

What time do you think the house lights came on?

 

[Greg Doudna]

1 hour ago, Bill Brown said:

First, let me ask you a question.

What time do you think the house lights came on?

I would assume around the time of first police arrival, maybe around 1:40 or so, unless you know better. Why? 

[Bill Brown]

Just now, Greg Doudna said:

I would assume around the time of first police arrival, maybe around 1:40 or so, unless you know better. Why? 

I think it was even a little later than 1:40, but okay.

In the interview Jack Davis gave to Gary Mack, what gives you the impression that the scenario where the man tried to sit beside Davis (and eventually sat briefly a couple seats away) took place over 20 minutes before the lights came on?

[Greg Doudna]

57 minutes ago, Bill Brown said:

I think it was even a little later than 1:40, but okay.

In the interview Jack Davis gave to Gary Mack, what gives you the impression that the scenario where the man tried to sit beside Davis (and eventually sat briefly a couple seats away) took place over 20 minutes before the lights came on?

Davis said he thought it happened just before the movie started, that is just before the 1:20 main feature started. I have already quoted that twice and gave the exact second on the Sixth Floor video to find it. Did you not check that? Why are you asking then? 

Maybe your question should be why did Davis think ca 1:20 was when Oswald sat down near him. Why do you suppose Davis thought that? 

Of course it is possible witnesses can be mistaken.

Such as possibly Brewer’s identification of Oswald as the man in front of the glass doors of his store at 1:35? 

Edited April 4 by Greg Doudna

[Bill Brown]

20 minutes ago, Greg Doudna said:

Davis said he thought it happened just before the movie started, that is just before the 1:20 main feature started. I have already quoted that twice and gave the exact second on the Sixth Floor video to find it. Did you not check that? Why are you asking then? 

Maybe your question should be why did Davis think ca 1:20 was when Oswald sat down near him. Why do you suppose Davis thought that? 

Of course it is possible witnesses can be mistaken.

Such as possibly Brewer’s identification of Oswald as the man in front of the glass doors of his store at 1:35? 

I believe the man Davis saw was indeed Oswald.  However, Davis' description of the scenario doesn't have Oswald in the theater for over 20 minutes.  In other words, I believe Davis is describing Oswald, just not as early as he is describing.  Hell, his memory was not clear on pretty much everything, quite frankly (and why would it be?).

 

As for the man seen by Brewer, of course any eyewitness can be wrong.  Only a fool would say otherwise.  But, all we have to go on in this "man in front of the shoe store ducking police cars" scenario are the words and descriptions of Johnny Brewer and he (Brewer) was very adamant that the man he saw ducking into the store front was the same man he saw taken out by police.

 

I guess you actually believe that Brewer saw one man out in front of his store and pointed out a completely different man inside the theater and this man inside the theater just happens to be the same guy seen by multiple eyewitnesses fleeing the Tippit scene and is the same guy who worked inside the Depository building and was no longer there.

 

You do agree, don't you, that Brewer, when he pointed out the guy inside the theater, had no idea that this guy was an employee of the Depository and would later be positively identified by multiple eyewitness as the man fleeing the Tippit scene with a gun in his hand.  Right?

 

If so, then it's just pretty damn bad luck for Oswald that Brewer picked him out over other men inside the theater at that moment (though admittedly there weren't many patrons).  It seems that you would have us believe that Brewer simply pointed out the man who most resembled the man he saw out in front of his store versus pointing out the man he claims he actually did see.

 

It's only your wishful thinking, in order to get Oswald off the hook for killing a cop.  You have no reason whatsoever to believe that the man seen by Brewer out in front of his shoe store was someone other than Oswald.  

 

 

[Greg Doudna]

7 minutes ago, Bill Brown said:

I believe the man Davis saw was indeed Oswald.  However, Davis' description of the scenario doesn't have Oswald in the theater for over 20 minutes.  In other words, I believe Davis is describing Oswald, just not as early as he is describing.  Hell, his memory was not clear on pretty much everything, quite frankly (and why would it be?).

As for the man seen by Brewer, of course any eyewitness can be wrong.  Only a fool would say otherwise.  But, all we have to go on in this "man in front of the shoe store ducking police cars" scenario are the words and descriptions of Johnny Brewer and he (Brewer) was very adamant that the man he saw ducking into the store front was the same man he saw taken out by police.

I guess you actually believe that Brewer saw one man out in front of his store and pointed out a completely different man inside the theater and this man inside the theater just happens to be the same guy seen by multiple eyewitnesses fleeing the Tippit scene and is the same guy who worked inside the Depository building and was no longer there.

You do agree, don't you, that Brewer, when he pointed out the guy inside the theater, had no idea that this guy was an employee of the Depository and would later be positively identified by multiple eyewitness as the man fleeing the Tippit scene with a gun in his hand.  Right?

If so, then it's just pretty damn bad luck for Oswald that Brewer picked him out over other men inside the theater at that moment (though admittedly there weren't many patrons).  It seems that you would have us believe that Brewer simply pointed out the man who most resembled the man he saw out in front of his store versus pointing out the man he claims he actually did see.

It's only your wishful thinking, in order to get Oswald off the hook for killing a cop.  You have no reason whatsoever to believe that the man seen by Brewer out in front of his shoe store was someone other than Oswald.  

That is a fair argument Bill. I respond:

You started by saying forget Oswald as killer of Tippit or JFK on your jacket question. Now here it comes back in to establish to you the correctness of Brewer’s identification of Oswald as the man in front of his shoe store. 

Just to take up one point. Given that deputy sheriff Bill Courson mistakenly thought a man inside the theater coming down from the balcony at about 1:40 was Oswald, who was not Oswald (Courson in Sneed on that), do you think it is unreasonable that another witness, Brewer, could mistakenly pick out Oswald as the man who passed Brewers store and went into the balcony of the theater at 1:35 (the same man Courson saw)?

If Roger Craig could be mistaken on his “Oswald” fleeing the TSBD in a station wagon, maybe Brewer could be mistaken in his “Oswald” in front of his store through the glass doors?

And no it wasn’t coincidence that if Brewer fingered by mistake the wrong one of two similar men in the theater that day, incorrectly Oswald on the main level instead of the correct man who went from the shoe store into the balcony at 1:35, that Brewers mistake fingered the suspected assassin of JFK.

You are arguing from the improbability of that coincidence. I will agree (I think with you on this) that it was indeed coincidence that there was a sufficiently roughly resembling man to Oswald in the theater, to have fooled Courson. 

But it would not be coincidence that the man at Brewers shoe store went into the balcony of that theater, because the reason would be to kill Oswald who was in that theater. And the reason to kill Oswald would be related to what happened at the TSBD with JFK and Oswald. 

If the man who went into the balcony at 1:35 (who was the man in front of Brewers store) is interpreted as a professional killer in a failed intended execution attempt of Oswald at the theater that succeeded two days later from Ruby on Sunday morning, some of what seems so incongruous could begin to make sense. 

[Bill Brown]

5 minutes ago, Greg Doudna said:

That is a fair argument Bill. I respond:

You started by saying forget Oswald as killer of Tippit or JFK on your jacket question. Now here it comes back in to establish to you the correctness of Brewer’s identification of Oswald as the man in front of his shoe store. 

Just to take up one point. Given that deputy sheriff Bill Courson mistakenly thought a man inside the theater coming down from the balcony at about 1:40 was Oswald, who was not Oswald (Courson in Sneed on that), do you think it is unreasonable that another witness, Brewer, could mistakenly pick out Oswald as the man who passed Brewers store and went into the balcony of the theater at 1:35 (the same man Courson saw)?

If Roger Craig could be mistaken on his “Oswald” fleeing the TSBD in a station wagon, maybe Brewer could be mistaken in his “Oswald” in front of his store through the glass doors?

And no it wasn’t coincidence that if Brewer fingered by mistake the wrong one of two similar men in the theater that day, incorrectly Oswald on the main level instead of the correct man who went from the shoe store into the balcony at 1:35, that Brewers mistake fingered the suspected assassin of JFK.

You are arguing from the improbability of that coincidence. I will agree (I think with you on this) that it was indeed coincidence that there was a sufficiently roughly resembling man to Oswald in the theater, to have fooled Courson. 

But it would not be coincidence that the man at Brewers shoe store went into the balcony of that theater, because the reason would be to kill Oswald who was in that theater. And the reason to kill Oswald would be related to what happened at the TSBD with JFK and Oswald. 

If the man who went into the balcony at 1:35 (who was the man in front of Brewers store) is interpreted as a professional killer in a failed intended execution attempt of Oswald at the theater that succeeded two days later from Ruby on Sunday morning, some of what seems so incongruous could begin to make sense. 

 

Let me ask you... is it your belief that the man seen by Brewer in front of the shoe store was Larry Crafard?

 

[Greg Doudna]

1 hour ago, Bill Brown said:

Let me ask you... is it your belief that the man seen by Brewer in front of the shoe store was Larry Crafard?

Curtis Craford is my main suspect, yes. Ticks most of the major boxes. The sticking point is of course the match of the shell hulls to the revolver, and the mix of two brands of bullets used by the Tippit killer and the mix of the same two brands of bullets reported in Oswald's revolver. 

I don't consider the witnesses a particularly decisive sticking point in themselves, since all are weak with the possible exception of Scoggins. There are quite a number of them, true, but a multiple of weak witnesses does not add up to a strong witness. And the arguably single strongest Tippit gunman witness, Benavides, gave several specifics which disagree with Oswald and weigh in favor of exoneration. Benavides in weight is equal to about the combined weight of all the other witnesses put together. Maybe that's a slight overstatement, but I don't think by much. 

And Scoggins has recently been shown, I believe, to be a compromised witness because of the recent report of his grandson's credible story of his grandfather (Scoggins) having been asked by a Ruby associate that day to have his cab parked there at a certain time, which is why Scoggins was eating lunch in his cab that day when the killing of Tippit happened. That does not mean Scoggins had anything to do with, or foreknowledge, of the killing, only that somebody mob-related wanted an escape vehicle on standby.

Then it goes back to the shell hulls and the bullets, which can only be explained, if Oswald was innocent of Tippit, as involving substitutions in both cases. The argument for substitutions suffers from no direct positive evidence (i.e. confession) of substitutions, but on the other hand an argument can be made that there was overwhelming motive (LBJ himself: "you have your man"), and a possible argument for plausibility involving something internal to the Dallas office of the FBI. I used to suspect possibly Dallas Police malfeaseance in physical evidence manipulation but have more recently come to consider that maybe there was not significant overt physical evidence cooking on the part of DPD, that the focus of scrutiny might better be focused on the Dallas FBI office, and not everyone in it, but maybe two or even only one in that office and a witting supervisor, something like that. We know Hoover was thick with LBJ and we know the FBI was capable of lying (e.g. the coverup and destruction of the Oswald note to Hosty). And persuasive to me have been some of the points made in Pat Speer's deep-dives of evidence analyses; some of his hits land home on the Dallas office of the FBI. And if the FBI was cooking evidence in one instance, there could be more. By cooking evidence the hypothesis would be in the conduit of conveyance between Dallas and arrival in D.C. to the FBI lab. The FBI Lab in D.C. I assume for several reasons is clean, i.e. they accurately analyzed what they were given, but it is what they were given--sent from Dallas--which is the weak link. 

And the agent in the Dallas FBI office associated with handling and conveyance of physical evidence of most interest, Drain, ironically was known for publicly accusing the Dallas Police Crime Lab of fabricating physical evidence, so much so that the Warren Commission itself suspected the Dallas Police Department of fabricating physical evidence. How ironic would it be if the Dallas Police were actually clean of Drain's accusation, and Drain was accusing others of what he himself was doing.

On the mix of the bullet brands. The killer of Tippit used the two brands (R and W, Remington-Peters and Winchester-Western), verified by the bullets taken from Tippit's body in the autopsy. But only one brand, W's only, were found among 5 bullets taken from Oswald's pocket. Perhaps W's only is the true original state of the Oswald bullet evidence, pockets and revolver both. All that needs to be supposed is a substitution of 3 R's replacing 3 W's live bullets from the revolver. Since 1+1 (R and W) were given to the Secret Service on I think Sun afternoon, Nov 24, this would be the terminus ad quem, latest possible, for the substitutions of that to have happened, with the odd conveyance of those two bullets to the Secret Service (no good reason for that I have ever heard explained) being for the actual purpose (possibly) of establishing evidence of mixed-brands for Oswald that early. 

By late Friday night Nov 22 there was overwhelming motive to fix the case around Oswald's guilt, considered nothing less than a national security imperative, from the direct order of LBJ on down.

By Sun mid-day Nov 24 with Oswald dead and in no position to fight back (and no harm to a living defendant), all restraints could be off in the drive to wrap up Oswald good, by fair means or foul. Again, nothing less than perceived as a national security imperative. Also, it is a mistake to think that evidence cooking is done only by people who know someone is innocent. I believe the majority, not all but the majority, of evidence cooking that does happen in police and crime lab circles is done in cases of people the evidence-cookers believe are guilty, or bad people. Sometimes prosecutors just need that little extra boost of evidence to show in court to put somebody bad away, I believe is the operable logic. Just trying to be helpful in the public interest.

The FBI was tasked with total control of the investigation, was the investigating arm of the Warren Commission. The Dallas Police were ordered to turn everything over to the FBI. The FBI was centrally controlled, local offices essentially micromanaged from headquarters, Hoover and crew in hands-on management. 

On the shell hulls from 10th and Patton match to Oswald's revolver, the hypothesis would be substitutions and forged replication of officers' marks on those hulls prior to conveyance to the FBI lab in D.C. The FBI lab (verified later by the HSCA ballistics panel) would accurately find that the hulls were fired from Oswald's revolver because they were. They just weren't the same hulls found at the Tippit crime scene, would be the hypothesis.

And then I go to the paper-bag revolver found tossed in a downtown Dallas street in the early morning hours of Sat Nov 23 of the same caliber that killed Tippit, as my suspected actual murder weapon of Tippit, not Oswald's revolver, and I correlate the disappearance of that revolver (FBI Dallas office suspected involvement), Craford being in a car driving in that area of town in the same early morning hours of Sat Nov 23, and Craford's sudden hightailing out of Dallas a few hours later for Michigan.    

 

[Tom Gram]

1 hour ago, Greg Doudna said:

I used to suspect possibly Dallas Police malfeaseance in physical evidence manipulation but have more recently come to consider that maybe there was not significant overt physical evidence cooking on the part of DPD, that the focus of scrutiny might better be focused on the Dallas FBI office

Why do you suspect the Dallas FBI over the DPD? The DPD were provably corrupt and are known to have fabricated evidence in other cases with much lower stakes. The Oswald case was the most high pressure murder case in the history of America. 

There are also multiple examples of attempted coerced confessions. The worst one I know of is a DPD officer literally shot a guy in the head in the 70s trying to get him to confess. 

Add to that all the credible suspicions about Day and the handling of the crime scene, and I think the DPD is the #1 suspect for any evidence tampering in the JFK case, by far. 

[Bill Brown]

18 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

Curtis Craford is my main suspect, yes. Ticks most of the major boxes. The sticking point is of course the match of the shell hulls to the revolver, and the mix of two brands of bullets used by the Tippit killer and the mix of the same two brands of bullets reported in Oswald's revolver. 

I don't consider the witnesses a particularly decisive sticking point in themselves, since all are weak with the possible exception of Scoggins. There are quite a number of them, true, but a multiple of weak witnesses does not add up to a strong witness. And the arguably single strongest Tippit gunman witness, Benavides, gave several specifics which disagree with Oswald and weigh in favor of exoneration. Benavides in weight is equal to about the combined weight of all the other witnesses put together. Maybe that's a slight overstatement, but I don't think by much. 

And Scoggins has recently been shown, I believe, to be a compromised witness because of the recent report of his grandson's credible story of his grandfather (Scoggins) having been asked by a Ruby associate that day to have his cab parked there at a certain time, which is why Scoggins was eating lunch in his cab that day when the killing of Tippit happened. That does not mean Scoggins had anything to do with, or foreknowledge, of the killing, only that somebody mob-related wanted an escape vehicle on standby.

Then it goes back to the shell hulls and the bullets, which can only be explained, if Oswald was innocent of Tippit, as involving substitutions in both cases. The argument for substitutions suffers from no direct positive evidence (i.e. confession) of substitutions, but on the other hand an argument can be made that there was overwhelming motive (LBJ himself: "you have your man"), and a possible argument for plausibility involving something internal to the Dallas office of the FBI. I used to suspect possibly Dallas Police malfeaseance in physical evidence manipulation but have more recently come to consider that maybe there was not significant overt physical evidence cooking on the part of DPD, that the focus of scrutiny might better be focused on the Dallas FBI office, and not everyone in it, but maybe two or even only one in that office and a witting supervisor, something like that. We know Hoover was thick with LBJ and we know the FBI was capable of lying (e.g. the coverup and destruction of the Oswald note to Hosty). And persuasive to me have been some of the points made in Pat Speer's deep-dives of evidence analyses; some of his hits land home on the Dallas office of the FBI. And if the FBI was cooking evidence in one instance, there could be more. By cooking evidence the hypothesis would be in the conduit of conveyance between Dallas and arrival in D.C. to the FBI lab. The FBI Lab in D.C. I assume for several reasons is clean, i.e. they accurately analyzed what they were given, but it is what they were given--sent from Dallas--which is the weak link. 

And the agent in the Dallas FBI office associated with handling and conveyance of physical evidence of most interest, Drain, ironically was known for publicly accusing the Dallas Police Crime Lab of fabricating physical evidence, so much so that the Warren Commission itself suspected the Dallas Police Department of fabricating physical evidence. How ironic would it be if the Dallas Police were actually clean of Drain's accusation, and Drain was accusing others of what he himself was doing.

On the mix of the bullet brands. The killer of Tippit used the two brands (R and W, Remington-Peters and Winchester-Western), verified by the bullets taken from Tippit's body in the autopsy. But only one brand, W's only, were found among 5 bullets taken from Oswald's pocket. Perhaps W's only is the true original state of the Oswald bullet evidence, pockets and revolver both. All that needs to be supposed is a substitution of 3 R's replacing 3 W's live bullets from the revolver. Since 1+1 (R and W) were given to the Secret Service on I think Sun afternoon, Nov 24, this would be the terminus ad quem, latest possible, for the substitutions of that to have happened, with the odd conveyance of those two bullets to the Secret Service (no good reason for that I have ever heard explained) being for the actual purpose (possibly) of establishing evidence of mixed-brands for Oswald that early. 

By late Friday night Nov 22 there was overwhelming motive to fix the case around Oswald's guilt, considered nothing less than a national security imperative, from the direct order of LBJ on down.

By Sun mid-day Nov 24 with Oswald dead and in no position to fight back (and no harm to a living defendant), all restraints could be off in the drive to wrap up Oswald good, by fair means or foul. Again, nothing less than perceived as a national security imperative. Also, it is a mistake to think that evidence cooking is done only by people who know someone is innocent. I believe the majority, not all but the majority, of evidence cooking that does happen in police and crime lab circles is done in cases of people the evidence-cookers believe are guilty, or bad people. Sometimes prosecutors just need that little extra boost of evidence to show in court to put somebody bad away, I believe is the operable logic. Just trying to be helpful in the public interest.

The FBI was tasked with total control of the investigation, was the investigating arm of the Warren Commission. The Dallas Police were ordered to turn everything over to the FBI. The FBI was centrally controlled, local offices essentially micromanaged from headquarters, Hoover and crew in hands-on management. 

On the shell hulls from 10th and Patton match to Oswald's revolver, the hypothesis would be substitutions and forged replication of officers' marks on those hulls prior to conveyance to the FBI lab in D.C. The FBI lab (verified later by the HSCA ballistics panel) would accurately find that the hulls were fired from Oswald's revolver because they were. They just weren't the same hulls found at the Tippit crime scene, would be the hypothesis.

And then I go to the paper-bag revolver found tossed in a downtown Dallas street in the early morning hours of Sat Nov 23 of the same caliber that killed Tippit, as my suspected actual murder weapon of Tippit, not Oswald's revolver, and I correlate the disappearance of that revolver (FBI Dallas office suspected involvement), Craford being in a car driving in that area of town in the same early morning hours of Sat Nov 23, and Craford's sudden hightailing out of Dallas a few hours later for Michigan.    

 

 

Thanks for the reply, Greg.

Here's the thing...

Brewer said that the man who he saw in front of his store was about 5'9", about 150 pounds (what was Crafard's height/weight?) and wearing a brown outer shirt and a T-shirt underneath.

Oswald's autopsy report stated he was 5'9", 150 pounds.  And we know he was wearing a brown shirt with a T-shirt underneath.

I'm saying that if the man seen by Brewer was Crafard, then it's one hell of a coincidence that the clothing this man was wearing happened to match the clothes Oswald was wearing.

 

[Greg Doudna]

6 hours ago, Bill Brown said:

Thanks for the reply, Greg.

Here's the thing...

Brewer said that the man who he saw in front of his store was about 5'9", about 150 pounds (what was Crafard's height/weight?) and wearing a brown outer shirt and a T-shirt underneath.

Oswald's autopsy report stated he was 5'9", 150 pounds.  And we know he was wearing a brown shirt with a T-shirt underneath.

I'm saying that if the man seen by Brewer was Crafard, then it's one hell of a coincidence that the clothing this man was wearing happened to match the clothes Oswald was wearing.

The FBI had Craford at 5'8" and 150 pounds (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10486#relPageId=153).

Deputy Sheriff Courson who passed a man coming down from the balcony at ca. 1:40, who he mistakenly thought was Oswald (who was not Oswald), who was probably the man of Brewer's shoe store who went into the theater into the balcony at 1:35--Courson said that non-Oswald man (whom he, like Brewer, took for Oswald) was wearing a "plaid" shirt, without saying its color.

Brewer's testimony on the shirt color could have been influenced by what he saw the arrested Oswald wearing. However, Julia Postal also said she saw the same man wearing a brown shirt when he went by her (in her Warren Commission testimony).  

I think the brown shirt that Julia Postal saw on that man who went by her into the theater and into the balcony, was the same plaid shirt Courson saw on the same man minutes later passing by Courson coming down from that balcony. 

Practically none of the Tenth and Patton witnesses identified Oswald's brown shirt, CE 150, as the color tone of the shirt of the Tippit killer, with the exception of Guinyard who positively identified Oswald's brown arrest shirt CE 150 as the very shirt he said he saw Oswald wearing when Oswald walked right in front of Guinyard on Guinyard's side of the street (?). And Guinyard was also the only one of about a dozen Tenth and Patton witnesses to unequivocally call the color of the Tippit killer's jacket "gray". (Nearly all of the other witnesses said it was an off-white light tan more or less, as CE 162 visibly is today, but for some reason the Warren Commission felt it important to insist on calling the off-white light-tan colored CE 162 jacket "gray" even if the only way it actually looks "gray" is if viewed under unnatural bluish-hue fluorescent lighting!) It is not too great a leap to imagine Guinyard as a scared African-American in 1963 deep south Dallas who as survival instinct was only too willing to try to give the answers wanted.  

• Barbara Davis. Mr. BALL. I show you a shirt which is Commission Exhibit No. 150. Was that--does that shirt look anything like something he had on, that the man had on who went across your lawn? Mrs. DAVIS. I thought that the shirt he had on was lighter than that. 
• Virginia Davis. No memory of the shirt.
• Tatum: told HSCA Moriarty the killer was not wearing any shirt other than a white T-shirt.
• Callaway: said he could not see the shirt, only a white T-shirt, because the shirt was being worn open.
• Helen Markham. Mr. BALL. I show you a shirt here, which is Exhibit 150. Did you ever see a shirt the color of this? Mrs. MARKHAM. The shirt that this man had, it was a lighter looking shirt than that. Mrs. BALL. The man who shot Tippit? Mrs. MARKHAM. Yes, sir; I think it was lighter. 
• Scoggins: "Mr. SCOGGINS: ...and he had on a light shirt. Mr. Belin. A light shirt? Mr. Scoggins. I wouldn't say it was white, but--Mr. BELIN. Would the shirt be lighter than Exchibit 150 or about the same color or darker or would Exhibit 150 look anything like the shirt you thought he was wearing, if you know? Mr. SCOGGINS. No, I don't, so I couldn't answer that.

The Scoggins testimony is of particular interest as credibly seeing the shirt fairly close, calling it "light" (unspecified color) and distinguishing that "light" shirt (unspecified color) from the white T-shirt. 

Provisional conclusion: two colored shirts of two men, Oswald's a darker-colored brown, the Tippit killer's shirt a lighter-colored--color unspecified in the witnesses above but by default a lighter-colored brown on the strength of Julia Postal's testimony and the implication of the witnesses above that the killer's shirt differed from Oswald's CE 150 in lighter tone, not the color itself being in the brown spectrum since the witnesses did not volunteer that.

[Greg Doudna]

On 4/4/2024 at 8:41 PM, Tom Gram said:

Why do you suspect the Dallas FBI over the DPD? The DPD were provably corrupt and are known to have fabricated evidence in other cases with much lower stakes. The Oswald case was the most high pressure murder case in the history of America. 

There are also multiple examples of attempted coerced confessions. The worst one I know of is a DPD officer literally shot a guy in the head in the 70s trying to get him to confess. 

Add to that all the credible suspicions about Day and the handling of the crime scene, and I think the DPD is the #1 suspect for any evidence tampering in the JFK case, by far. 

You could be right. What has swayed me is the FBI was in direct line or chain of command from Hoover-LBJ on a national security control and interpretation of the case. 

Edited April 6 by Greg Doudna

[Robert Morrow]

On 11/6/2021 at 10:11 AM, Gil Jesus said:

Oswald's Jacket
By Gil Jesus ( 2021 )
 

https://gil-jesus.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/ce162_comparison.jpg

"The jacket that Oswald was wearing at the time of the slaying of Tippit was a light-gray jacket....The jacket that was subsequently found in a parking lot and identified as Oswald's was a light-gray one." ( Report, pg. 653 )

Another lie. The jacket found was identified as a white one. I'll get into that later.
With regard to Commission Exhibit 162, the Commission printed all of its photographic evidence in black and white. In doing so, it could claim that the jacket in the photograph was gray. But years later, color photographs were released of the jacket showing the color to be tan.
 

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Even with the change of color, the Warren Commission apologists continue to call this jacket gray and contended that it belonged to Lee Harvey Oswald.

The Commission concluded that Oswald was wearing this jacket at the time of the Tippit shooting. It's finding was based on 1.) the jacket being described and identified by witnesses at or near the scene, 2.) its finding by Captain W.R.Westbrook of the Dallas Police minutes after the shooting under a parked car about a half a block from the murder scene and 3.) its identification by Marina Oswald as having been her husband's.

But a closer examination of the evidence indicates that 1.) the witnesses identifications of the killer's jacket do NOT match the jacket in evidence and those witnesses could not identify CE 162 as the jacket they saw, 2.) the jacket was NOT found by Captain Westbrook, 3.) Oswald's ownership of the jacket was never established beyond a reasonable doubt and 4.) Witness testimony showed the jacket was nowhere near the Tippit murder scene.

The witnesses

Two witnesses described the jacket that the killer wore as a white jacket: Helen Markham and Barbara Jean Davis. When shown the CE 162 jacket, Mrs. Markham said that she had never seen it before ( 3 H 312) and Mrs. Davis, when asked if it was the jacket worn by Tippit's killer replied, "No."( 3 H 347 )

Domingo Benevides identified Oswald's BLUE jacket ( CE 163 ) as the one the killer wore. ( 6 H 453 )

Cab driver William Scoggins failed to identify CE 162 as the jacket he saw. ( 3 H 328 )

Virginia Davis was never asked to identify CE 162 as the jacket the killer wore.

Ted Callaway failed to identify CE 162 as the jacket the man with the gun was wearing. ( 3 H 356 )

William Arthur Smith remembered that the killer wore "..a sport coat of some kind...." ( 7 H 85 )

The Commission ignored the fact that two witnesses remembered the jacket as a sport coat or sport jacket although it was impossible for anyone to confuse the jacket in evidence as a sport coat.
 

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Only Sam Guinyard, who lied under oath, identified the jacket CE 162 as the jacket the man with the gun wore.

The other seven witnesses either did not describe the gray jacket accurately, failed to identify it as the jacket the killer wore or identified the wrong jacket.

Because the witnesses' descriptions of the jacket were so wide ranging, the Commission was forced to admit that "the eyewitnesses vary in their identification of the jacket" ( Report, 175-176 )

The Commission failed to report, however, that witnesses had described the jacket as a sport jacket, dark in color and of a rough fabric, all descriptions that did not match the jacket in evidence.

The Commission also failed to report that this same group of witnesses failed to identify Oswald's shirt ( CE 150 ) as the one the killer wore.

In addition, three witnesses who were not at the Tippit murder scene were asked to identify the "gray" jacket.
William Whaley identified the jacket as the one Oswald was wearing in his cab before he got to his roominghouse, where he actually put it on. ( 2 H 260 )

Housekeeper Earlene Roberts failed to identify the jacket as the one Oswald put on when he left his room, testifying that Oswald's jacket was darker. ( 6 H 439 )

Buell Wesley Frazier, a co-worker who gave Oswald rides to Irving on Friday nights, was unable to recognize the jacket as being Oswald's. ( 2 H 238 )

The Commission failed to report that ten of the eleven witnesses who were asked to identify CE 162 either did not describe it accurately, failed to identify it as the jacket the killer wore, identified the wrong jacket or could not recognize the jacket as having been Oswald's.

Such a failure in reporting allowed the Commission to assert that "there is no doubt, however... that the man who killed Tippit was wearing a light-colored jacket." (Report, pg. 176 )

Discovery

Central to the discovery of evidence in a murder case is the establishing of who found the evidence. This is the foundation for the creation of a "chain of custody" of the evidence. It is imperative for a witness or the discoverer of evidence to mark that evidence for future identification.

The idea behind recording the chain of custody is to establish that the alleged evidence is in fact related to the alleged crime, rather than having, for example, been "planted" fraudulently to make someone appear guilty.

The documentation of evidence is key for maintaining a chain of custody because everything that is done to the piece of evidence must be listed and whoever came in contact with that piece of evidence is accountable for what happens to it.
 

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The Commission credited Captain W.R. Westbrook of the Dallas Police with finding the jacket.

"Westbrook walked through the parking lot behind the service station and found a light-colored jacket lying under the rear of one of the cars. Westbrook identified Commission Exhibit 162 as the light-colored jacket which he discovered underneath the automobile." ( Report, pg. 175 )

But in his testimony, Westbrook denied having been the one who found it. He claimed that someone, who may or may not have been a police officer, pointed it out to him. ( 7 H 115 )

The Report also does not mention that another police officer, T.A.Hutson, witnessed the discovery of the jacket:

"...while we were searching the rear of the house in the 400 block of East Jefferson...a white jacket was picked up by another officer. I observed him as he picked it up and it was stated that this was probably the suspect's jacket..." ( 7H 30-33 )

Hutson testified that he did not know who the officer was who picked it up. ( 7 H 33 )

Robert Brock, a mechanic at the Ballew Texaco Station who helped search the parking lot told the FBI that " a Dallas,Texas police officer, name unknown, had located a jacket underneath a 1954 Oldsmobile which was parked in parking space # 17." ( 19 H 182 )

In his written report of December 3, 1963, Hutson failed to mention the finding of this jacket. ( 24 H 239-240 )Likewise, Westbrook failed to mention the jacket in his report. ( ibid., pg. 246 )

In fact, there is no report from any police officer who claimed to have found the jacket or was present when the jacket was found.

According to the transcript of the police radio broadcasts, the first mention of the discovery of the jacket comes from Dallas unit # 279, Officer J.T. Griffin of the second platoon, Traffic Division at 1:25 pm. ( 20 H 490 )

The second platoon consisted of 12 motorcycle officers including J.T.Griffin and T.A.Hutson. ( 19 H 131 )

If Griffin found the jacket, how could Hutson not know him if they were part of the same 12 man platoon ?
And why didn't Griffin make a report of the jacket ?

Dallas Police Captain George M. Doughty told the FBI that it was Westbrook who found the jacket "on an open parking lot west of Patton St". ( CD 205, pg. 206 )

But the transcript of the police broadcasts show that Westbrook ( Unit # 550 ) was at the library at Marsalis just before 1:40 pm and did not know that the jacket had been recovered.
 

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This evidence means that Westbrook was NOT present when the jacket was discovered.
In addition, there are only two sets of initials from the Dallas Police on the jacket: those of Capt. Doughty and Sgt. W.E. "Pete" Barnes.
Westbrook's initials are not on it.
 

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I was shocked to find that Doughty was never called to give testimony, never asked to give an affidavit and during his testimony, Barnes was never asked a question about the jacket.

That's your chain of possession: no one knows who found it and the people in whose possession it was were never asked about it.

That's some evidence.

Evidence ?

If CE 162 is legitimate, it was in the hands of the Dallas Police 20 minutes before Oswald was arrested. But the police never confronted him with the jacket.

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If they had the jacket and suspected that he had worn it during the Tippit murder, why didn't they let him wear it during the police lineups when he was complaining about not having a jacket to wear ? ( Report, pg. 625 )

It certainly would have been to their advantage and helped the witnesses identify him.

And why didn't the police show the CE 162 jacket to the witnesses who came to view the lineups ?

Of course it makes sense that they wouldn't have done that if they 1.) knew it wasn't the jacket the Tippit killer was wearing or 2.) they didn't have it in their possession.

During his interrogation, Oswald told Capt. Fritz that he had gone to his apartment to change his shirt and trousers. ( Report. 604-605 )

Fritz never asked him about wearing a jacket. Why not ?

In fact, during the lineups and the interrogation, the Dallas Police acted as though there were no jacket, grey, tan or white.

A weak case of ownership

"The jacket belonged to Lee Harvey Oswald. Marina Oswald stated that her husband owned only two jackets, one blue and the other grey. The blue jacket was found in the Texas School Book Depository and was identified by Marina Oswald as her husband's. Marina Oswald also identified Commission Exhibit 162, the jacket found by Captain Westbrook, as her husband's second jacket." ( Report, pg. 175 )

An unsupported identification by Marina Oswald, who changed her testimony on other matters, is hardly enough to make a case for ownership.

Even though she admitted that he owned a grey and a blue jacket, she "cannot recall that Oswald ever sent either of these jackets to a laundry or cleaners anywhere. She said she can recall washing them herself." ( CE 1843 , 23 H 521 )

If there was ever evidence that proved CE 162 was not Oswald's jacket, it was the laundry tags.

The laundry tags

CE 162 contains two laundry tags, a dry cleaning tag marked "B9738" on the bottom of the jacket and a laundry tag marked "030" on the collar.

If Marina identified the grey jacket as Oswald's and said she washed it herself, how could she not have seen the tags when she washed it ?

And if she recognized them, why didn't she identify it by the tags ?

The FBI tried to trace the tags and found that the B9738 tag had been printed by a Tag-O-Lectric tagging machine and the 030 tag had been printed with a National Laundry tagging machine. ( CD 868 )

Their investigation covered 424 laundries in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and another 293 in the New Orleans area. Not only was the FBI unable to locate the origin of the laundry marks, they were unable to establish that Oswald ever took the jacket to any of those cleaners.

In effect, their failure to connect the jacket with a laundry weakened their case that the jacket belonged to Oswald.

In addition, their investigation showed that none of Oswald's other clothing contained any tags from a laundry, and thus there was no evidence that Oswald ever used a a laundry or dry cleaning service. ( CD 868, pg. 5 )

Not satisfied with the outcome of their investigation and hellbent to prove Oswald guilty for the murder of Tippit, the FBI turned their efforts onto the manufacturer of the jacket, Maurice Holman.

They were hoping the manufacturer could tell them where the jacket was purchased, but they found out that the jacket was sold almost exclusively on the West Coast, with the exception of one large department store in Philadelphia.

There's no evidence that Oswald had ever been to Philadelphia and the only time he was on the West Coast was when he was wearing fatigues in the Marine Corps.

Why did this long, exhaustive and unsuccessful effort to link the tan jacket to Oswald fail to do so ? Was it just impossible to trace or was it that the jacket belonged to someone else ?

The white jacket
 

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Initial police broadcasts described the Tippit killer as wearing a white jacket. These broadcasts were based on the descriptions given by Helen Markham and Barbara Davis to Officer J.M. Poe.

On my youtube channel I have a video from which the above photo was taken, showing a Dallas Police officer with the jacket found. The jacket appears to be white and after haggling with experts in the field of light, shadows and photography, I decided to do a little test of my own.

Behind the jacket to the right is a 1959 Oldsmobile. I took the exterior color chart for the '59 Olds and changed it to greyscale. I found that only two colors available on that year Oldsmobile could come close to the jacket.

They were Crystal Green and Polaris White. ( red stars )
 

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Unless the jacket in the picture was light green, it was white.

More evidence that the jacket recovered was white comes from the transcript of the Dallas Police broadcasts. At 1:25 PM, motorcycle officer J.T. Griffin ( 279 ) reports that they "got his white jacket... he had a white jacket on... we believe this is it." ( 17 H 411 )

Officer T.A. Hutson was present when the jacket was found and also described it as white.
...a white jacket was picked up by another officer. I observed him as he picked it up and it was stated that this was probably the suspect's jacket..." ( 7H 30-33 )

That's two police officers describing a jacket that they're looking at with their own two eyes. One has the jacket in his possession.

They described it as white. Not tan, not grey.

This is not an error they could have made.

The Dallas Police Coverup

On November 28, 1963, the Dallas Police released evidence to FBI Agent Vincent E. Drain. Among those items listed on the evidence sheet was the "grey" jacket.

A comparison of the Dallas Police and FBI copies of that sheet indicate that the Dallas Police covered up when it was submitted. The FBI copy, found on page 253 in Volume 24, has a Dallas Police notation covering over the time and date when the evidence was submitted. ( red circle )
 

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Its notation said, "This is a list of evidence that was released to the FBI from our crime lab 11-28-63."

But the Dallas Police copy ( above, right ) notes the time and date as 3pm on November 22, 1963.
It's obvious that the Dallas Police tried to cover up when the jacket was found. There may have been a reason for that.

Witness testimony puts Oswald's grey jacket nowhere near the Tippit murder scene

Wesley Frazier told the FBI that on the evening before the assassination, he gave Oswald a ride to Irving and that Oswald was wearing "....a reddish shirt and a grey jacket, waist length". ( CD 7, pg. 294 )

Marina Oswald confirmed that Lee was wearing the grey jacket when he arrived at the Paine residence on the evening of Thursday, November 21st ( 1 H 122 ).

Marina testified that she did not see Oswald dress on the morning of the 22nd, but she told him to "put on something warm on the way to work" and could only say that it was "quite possible" that Oswald wore his heavier BLUE jacket to work on the morning of the 22nd ( ibid. ).

The evidence, however, leaves little doubt that he did.

Linnie Mae Randle, Frazier's sister, testified that Oswald's blue jacket ( CE 163 ) was the jacket he was wearing when he came to her house on the morning of the 22nd for a ride to work. ( 2 H 250 )

In addition, Randle's testimony is supported by the fact that Oswald's blue jacket was found in the Texas School Book Depository on December 16, 1963 when the "Domino Room" was being cleaned. ( CD 205, pg. 209 ).

If the witnesses are correct and Oswald wore his grey jacket to Irving on the evening of the 21st and switched jackets to the heavier blue jacket on the morning of the 22nd, then there's no way his grey jacket could have ended up under an Oldsmobile in a parking lot.
It was at the Paine residence in Irving, where the Dallas Police were searching at around the same time Oswald's "grey" jacket was being entered into evidence

Coincidence ? Or is this what the Dallas Police tried to hide from the FBI ?

Detective Guy F. Rose led the search of the Paine residence on the afternoon of November 22nd. He testified that he "called Captain Fritz on the phone and told him what I had found out there." ( 7 H 229 )

What did he find, a grey jacket ? Did Oswald tell them the grey jacket was out there ? Was Rose calling to say they found it ? 

The Commission never asked.

Conclusion


CE 162 is not grey, it is not Oswald's and it was not found by Capt. Westbrook.

It was not sold in any of the cities where Oswald lived. The FBI searched 717 laundries in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and in New Orleans and could not connect the jacket with any laundry in those cities.

The witnesses who knew Oswald had never seen him wearing it. The housekeeper at his roominghouse who saw him that day could not identify it as the jacket he wore when he left.

When shown the jacket, ten of the eleven witnesses who saw Tippit's killer during or immediately after the murder, described a jacket that was either darker or lighter.

Not CE 162.

The Commission's only "proof" that the jacket belonged to Oswald was the identifcation by Marina. But for a couple of reasons, this identification is not on solid ground.

First of all, Marina's testimony would have been inadmissible had Oswald gone to trial.

Secondly, she admitted that she made false statements to federal agents, thus damaging her credibility:
"Most of the questions were put to me by the FBI. I do not like them too much. I didn't want to be too sincere with them. Though I was quite sincere and answered most of their questions. They questioned me a great deal and I was very tired of them." ( 1 H 28 )


To the Warren Commission, Marina Oswald implied that she lied to the FBI agents because she disliked the FBI.

One of those lies involved her preposterous claim that Oswald attempted to assassinate Richard Nixon at a time when Nixon was nowhere near Dallas. Her version was that only her restraining him in the bathroom prevented him from satisfying his bloodlust.

And although this story fell apart at every point, the Commission never questioned Marina's credibility because it needed her to burn Oswald on the public record.

None of Marina's allegations or identifications should be accepted as truth unless it is backed up by convincing independent evidence.
In the case of CE 162, it is not.

In addition, the investigation of the laundry tags revealed that the owner of the CE 162 jacket was not from the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

Neither was he from New Orleans.

In short, in spite of the FBI's best efforts, there's no evidence that the jacket is connected to Oswald.
The overwhelming evidence is conclusive that the tan CE 162 jacket 1.) DID NOT belong to Oswald and 2.) was NOT found by Capt. Westbrook.

 

T.F. Bowley of the Tippit shooting scene said that people were saying Tippit's shooter WAS WEARING A TAN JACKET:

QUOTE

Asked in which direction he was told the man had run, Bowley said, “There were quite a few people saying different things at the time. All I remember is that it seemed like they said he had a tan jacket on and he run down the street thataway [i.e., going west down East Tenth]. I don’t recall any conversation other than that one guy had run.” Bowley remembered ten or twelve people being at the scene, including ones who fit the descriptions of two other important witnesses, Helen Markham and Domingo Benavides.

UNQUOTE

[Joseph McBride, Into the Nightmare, pp. 244-252]

“THE ALL-IMPORTANT TIMING”

 By Joseph McBride

[Into the Nightmare, pp. 244-252]

Author Joseph McBride:

QUOTE

 Oswald had been seen by his housekeeper, Earlene Roberts, entering the Oak Cliff rooming house at 1026 North Beckley Avenue at “around 1 o’clock, or maybe a little after” and staying in his tiny room for “maybe not over 3 or 4 minutes” before going outside and “standing on the curb at the bus stop.” So he probably left the rooming house around 1:04, and he then waited outside for an undetermined length of time. If he had caught the bus, it would have taken him back downtown, but he clearly was not there to catch a bus. And yet despite this time constraint presented by Roberts’s account, the official version of the shooting was that Tippit was killed at “approximately 1:15.” Even that generously late estimate would not have given Oswald sufficient time to reach that location on foot. Unless Oswald was given a ride to the Tippit killing site by some as-yet undiscovered accomplice or unwitting party, which might or might not indicate he was part of a conspiracy, clearly he could not have reached the site by the time the Warren Commission assigned to the shooting. If Tippit died several minutes earlier than the official version has it, as the evidence actually indicates, this would further serve to vindicate Oswald.

Was Oswald waiting at the bus stop near his rooming house for a ride from someone? No one knows for sure. Roberts testified that a Dallas police car had stopped outside about 1 p.m. when “Oswald came in the house and went to his room,” and that it honked its horn twice. “Right direct in front of that door -- there was a police car stopped and honked. . . . It was parked right in front of the house. And then they just eased on. . . . [I]t stopped directly in front of my house and it just ‘tip-tip.’ . . . Just kind of a ‘tit-tit’ -- twice.” She went to the door and looked and couldn’t see who it was; she was blind in one eye but thought two officers were in the car. Although some researchers indeed have speculated that it was Tippit driving that honking squad car -- Anthony Summers wonders in his 1998 book Not in Your Lifetime, “Can it be that Tippit drove Oswald to the spot where the policeman was murdered?” -- Tippit most likely was occupied elsewhere in Oak Cliff at the time the police car made what may have been some kind of as-yet-unexplained signal outside Oswald’s rooming house.

I’ve repeatedly walked possible routes from the rooming house to the site of the Tippit killing. The distance of nine-tenths of a mile between those locations is clearly a walk of about fifteen minutes. No one reported seeing a man running, or even walking, that route until the meeting between Tippit and his killer or killers moments before the shooting. David Belin himself timed the walk between those two locations at “17 minutes and 45 seconds at an average walking pace,” though he called that the “long way around route” and also described a more direct route without giving the timing. The Warren Report shaves time off Roberts’s recollections and Belin’s own pace in order to get Oswald there more quickly: “If Oswald left his roominghouse shortly after 1 p.m. and walked at a brisk pace, he would have reached 10th and Patton shortly after 1:15 p.m.” Assassination researcher Dave Perry, whose work largely has been devoted to debunking conspiracy theories, reported making the walk in between eleven and sixteen minutes, depending on the route and not including half a minute spent walking from the bus stop. That still wouldn’t get Oswald there in time to kill Tippit.

Further complicating the official account is that the initial Homicide Report filed by DPD patrol division Captain Cecil E. Talbert at 5 p.m. on November 22 states, “Deceased driving Squad Car #10 east on Tenth stopped to interrogate a suspect who was walking west on Tenth” (the report also misspells the dead officer’s name as “Tippitt”). Oswald would have been walking east if he were coming directly from his rooming house. But Armstrong in Harvey & Lee notes that four witnesses claimed to have seen Oswald walking west on Tenth Street shortly after 1 p.m., including a barber named Clark at a shop at 620 East Tenth, two blocks north of Ruby’s apartment. Ruby lived at 223 South Ewing Street.

What did witnesses say about the time of the shooting? We can begin with Helen Markham, who became the star witness of the Warren Commission in the Tippit killing despite numerous problems with her account. She said she was at the intersection of East Tenth and Patton, walking toward Jefferson Boulevard to catch a bus to work, when she witnessed the shooting (although, as we will later discuss, whether she actually was where she said she was in those moments is questionable). In the affidavit she signed for the police on November 22, Markham gave the time Tippit pulled over “a young white man” as “approximately 1:06.” She similarly told the commission in March 1964, “I wouldn’t be afraid to bet it wasn’t 6 or 7 minutes after 1” when she approached the intersection. Earlier that March she told the FBI that before she left the building where she lived at 328 1/2 East Ninth Street, she had been trying to reach her daughter on the pay phone from the washateria on the ground floor until she looked at the wall clock and saw that it was 1:04 and she had to leave to catch the bus. Markham worked as a waitress in downtown Dallas at the Eat Well Cafe (or Restaurant). She was regularly scheduled to begin work at 2:30 p.m., and the FBI reported that the bus she would catch at Patton and Jefferson was scheduled to arrive that Friday at 1:12. The FBI timed Markham’s walk from her residence to the corner of East Tenth and Patton at two and a half minutes. That would accord exactly with her recollection of the time of the shooting.

Further verification of the actual time frame of the Tippit shooting came from Temple Ford (T. F.) Bowley, who was described by Meagher as “the only known witness who deliberately checked the time.” Bowley, who said he came upon the scene at 1:10, shortly after Tippit was shot, was not called to testify before the commission, and though he had talked with the police at the scene and gave an affidavit to the DPD on December 2, 1963, when we spoke at his Dallas home in December 1992, he had never before seen his affidavit. He also spoke to HSCA investigators, but he said our interview was the only one he had ever given in person to anyone else. (Bowley since then has become more visible, and in 2010 was honored by the DPD with a Citizen’s Certificate of Merit for his actions in reporting the Tippit shooting.)

Bowley told me that on November 22, 1963, he had just turned west onto East Tenth Street approaching the scene of the Tippit shooting after having picked up his twelve-year-old daughter, Kathryn, at school. They were headed toward a nearby telephone company office where his wife was working. He was driving to pick her up for a family vacation in San Antonio. He said he stopped his station wagon several houses down when he saw the officer lying on the street, “because I didn’t want my little girl to see all of it.” Kathryn Bowley Miles recalled in 2013 that she did see part of the crime scene and seemed to indicate that their car was closer to Tippit than her father remembered: “It was disturbing for a young girl to see a man lying in the street. As we pulled up to the police car I remember my daddy saying to me, ‘Stay in the car.’ I did stay in the car but we had pulled up just in front of the police cruiser so I was witness to this event and it has stayed with me all these years. My father NEVER talked about it and when asked about it his answers then (and even now) were terse.”

T. F. Bowley was familiar with first aid from working as an installer of business systems for telephone companies (he was an employee of Western Electric at the time), so he went to see if he could help the officer. He gathered that he had arrived “just momentarily” after the shooting but said that Tippit “was laying there when I turned the corner, so he may have been there five minutes, for all I know. I didn’t see him fall. People had already gathered, so some amount of time had elapsed. Now how much is anybody’s guess -- a couple of minutes at least. And then it took me a little bit of time to walk up there.

“I didn’t see the guy [the gunman] or hear any shots or anything. I just noticed the [squad] car was parked, and [Tippit] was laying beside it, and some other people had already got there before I did. I know [Tippit] hadn’t been there long, because people were still millin’ around like a bunch of startled goats. They said they’d seen the guy run down the street.” Asked in which direction he was told the man had run, Bowley said, “There were quite a few people saying different things at the time. All I remember is that it seemed like they said he had a tan jacket on and he run down the street thataway [i.e., going west down East Tenth]. I don’t recall any conversation other than that one guy had run.” Bowley remembered ten or twelve people being at the scene, including ones who fit the descriptions of two other important witnesses, Helen Markham and Domingo Benavides.

Bowley said, “At that time, of course, there was no association with what was going on downtown in my mind; it didn’t occur to me. The officer was lying by the left front wheel of his car. He was laying face down. We [he and another unidentified man] turned him over.” The other people “looked like they were all scared to touch him. In the excitement, I didn’t really notice wounds. I don’t recall seeing any wounds or blood. His eyes were open.” But Bowley could see that Tippit (who had been shot in the head and chest) was “beyond help” and appeared to be dead. He and other witnesses found Tippit’s service revolver lying under him, out of his holster, which made Bowley think “It looked like he had attempted to draw it.” Greg Lowrey, who talked with numerous witnesses, disputed the claim that Tippit had pulled his gun out of his holster, and pointed out that if the officer had not drawn his gun, it could indicate he was not wary of his killer when he left the car to talk with him.

UNQUOTE

Edited April 6 by Robert Morrow