The Witness

[Gil Jesus]

"There were no witnesses, although a 14 year old boy in a neighboring house claimed that immediately after the shooting he saw two men, in separate cars, drive out of a church parking lot adjacent to Walker's home." ( Report, pg. 183 )


And that's all the Warren Report says about Walter Kirk Coleman, the 14-year old neighbor of General Edwin A. Walker.


On the evening of April 10, 1963, he was working with his godfather, 19 year old Ronald Andries, building shelves in his room, when he heard a loud bang sometime between 9 and 10 pm.

In the original Dallas Police Tucker/Norvell report dated on the day of the shooting, Coleman's location is described as "sitting in the back room of his home". ( 24 H 39 )
A summary report submitted by Dallas Police Captain O.A. Jones dated 12/31/63, indicates that Coleman "heard a shot from his room". ( 24 H 38 )

He ran outside and looked over a stockade fence into the Mormon church parking lot that adjoined General Walker's property. He saw two men getting into two cars and leaving the parking lot.
One was a light green 1949 or 50 Ford and the other was a 1958 Chevrolet, black with a white stripe down the side.

The next day, a follow-up interview of Coleman was done by Dallas detective W.E. Chambers.

In that interview, Coleman told Chambers that he was in a "back room" when he heard the sound and thought it was of a blowout but Andries said it was a gun shot. ( 24 H 41 / CE 2001 )

This indicates that Coleman's reaction to the noise was not instantaneous and that he and Andries had a short conversation about the noise they heard before Coleman reacted.

He then ran out back, climbed the fence and saw a a "middle size" man "with long black hair" getting into either a '49 or '50 Ford light green or light blue. The Ford "took off in a hurry".

But in this version the 1958 Chevy became an "unknown make or model" black with a white stripe.

Coleman gave no description of the man in the Chevy.

Coleman told Chambers that his name had already appeared in the newspapers as a witness and he feared for his safety. He was so fearful that he made Chambers promise not to give the info from the interview to the papers. The Dallas Police supplied a detail officer in an unmarked car to ease the Coleman family's worries about his safety.

Coleman's position at the time he heard the shot and the distance of the men from the fence at the time he saw them is crucial in determining whether or not either or both men should be considered suspects in the shooting.

His changing of the description of the second car from a 1958 Chevrolet to a vehicle of "unknown make and model" just the following day, together with the concern for his safety and police protection afforded him, indicates that his life was threatened and may be the reason for that change.

In fact, he was told to keep his mouth shut.

During his testimony before the Commission, General Walker accused the Commission and FBI of blocking his access to Coleman:

"...as far as I am concerned, our efforts are practically blocked. I would like to see at least a capability of my counsel being able to talk to these witnesses freely and that you or the FBI give a release on them with respect to being able to discuss it as it involves me."
( 11 H 416 )
General WALKER. ..... I was told by others that tried to get to him that he has been advised and wasn't talking, and that he had been advised not to talk.
Mr. LIEBELER. When was that, General Walker, do you remember?
General WALKER. Oh, it's been at least 3 or 4 months ago.
Mr. LIEBELER. Do you know who told him he wasn't supposed to talk to anybody?
General WALKER. No; I don't. It is my understanding some law enforcement agency in some echelon.
( 11 H 417 )
General WALKER. ......people would like to shut up anybody that knows anything about this case. People right here in Dallas.
( 11 H 419 )

Coleman's description of the '58 Chevy is verified in a June 8, 1964 FBI interview of 15 year old Scott Hansen, who was attending a Boy Scout meeting at the Mormon church on the night of the Walker shooting.
Hansen told the FBI that he saw a black-over-white '58 Chevy in the parking lot that night and that he had seen it there on a previous Wednesday. ( CD 1245, pg. 113 )


Evidence of FBI manipulation


Manipulation of what Coleman saw

On June 4-5, 1964, ( over a year after the shooting ) FBI Agents Robert Barrett and Ivan Lee interviewed Coleman.

In that interview, the agents reported that Coleman told them that there were several "discrepancies" with the original Tucker/Norvell report.

This time, Coleman changed the color of the '58 Chevy from black with a white stripe to black over white. He said that the Ford didn't leave the scene in a hurry and its color was either white or light beige, not light green or light blue. ( CD 1245, pg. 117 )

In addition, Coleman gave detailed descriptions of the men he saw for the first time.

The man in the Ford glanced back at him, so Coleman got a good look at him. He described him as a white male, 19-20 years of age, about 5-10 and weighing 130 lbs with dark bushy hair, a long nose and "real skinny". He was wearing khaki pants and a sports shirt with figures in it. ( CE 2958, pg. 105 )

Coleman described the man in the '58 Chevy as 6-1 and 200 lbs, dark long sleeved shirt and dark pants. That's all the description he could give.

But the descriptions of what Coleman saw were not the only things that changed from the original report.


FBI manipulation of Coleman's position

The FBI report said that Coleman was "standing at an outside door at the time of the shot". ( 26 H 440 )
The FBI needed to shorten Coleman's response time in order to show that the two men he saw couldn't have been involved in the shooting.

To do so, the agents measured the distance and timed Coleman in a re-enactment. The FBI found that the distance from the rear door of

Coleman's house to the stockade fence was 14 feet and it took Coleman a grand total of 2 seconds to get there. ( 26 H 439 )

The FBI measured from the alley entrance to the Walker property to the alley entrance of the church parking lot at 35 feet. It measured the distance of where Coleman said the 1950 Ford was to the alley entrance of the church parking lot at 45 feet. That's a distance of 80 feet, far too long for someone to have traveled in a time of 2 seconds. Likewise, they measured the distance from the 1958 Chevrolet to the alley entrance of the church parking lot at 21 feet, for a total of 56 feet, again, an impossible distance to travel in 2 seconds. ( ibid. )

On its face, the FBI report would seem to prove that the two men Coleman saw had nothing to do with the shooting, because their positions when he saw them, at 80 feet and 56 feet from the Walker property, could not have been travelled in the two seconds the FBI said it took for Coleman to get from his back door to the fence.

But if Coleman was sitting in his bedroom, had short conversation about the noise with Andries and ran out the back door of the house, "stepped up on a bicycle which was leaning against the fence" ( 26 H 437 ) and looked over it, it's very likely that a 12 second response time would not have been out of the realm of possibility. Such a response would have allowed a running man to travel 84 feet and been in the exact time frame with what Coleman said he saw.

If Coleman could do 14 feet in 2 seconds, a running man at the same speed could have done 80 feet in less than 12 seconds. ( 11.42 secs. )

Such timing could make both of these men suspects in the shooting. But the FBI couldn't have that.

On the one hand, the Commission accepted that the two men Coleman saw could not have gotten that far enough away from the fence in 2 seconds to have done the shooting, but it had no problem accepting that Oswald was able to escape the scene completely undetected in the same two seconds.

I submit to the reader that Oswald could not have vanished from behind the fence that quickly if he were "beamed up" by the starship Enterprise.

Finally, the June 1964 FBI interview of Coleman revealed that he told them that neither man he saw resembled Oswald. ( 26 H 438 )

As a result, he was never called to give testimony to the Warren Commission.
 

[Joe Bauer]

My two cents:

If this boy and his older teen age "Godfather?" heard the boom shot sound while they were involved working in the boy's bedroom, stopped doing this and even commented on the unusual sound, with the young boy then running out of his room and house to and across an open space ( even if just 10 or 12 feet ) to a fence between this boy's home and a church building and parking lot and then straddling a bicycle to lift himself high enough to get a clear view ... that would be plenty of time for either of the two running men to reach their cars and vrooom away as the boy claimed.

And here is a common sense question.

Why would one or maybe even two men be running to their cars in the church lot or Walker driveway ( or driving quickly away) like these two supposedly did, at all?

Running ( instead of walking - even quickly ) indicates some urgency on their part.

Motivated by what? An emergency phone call?

The men were clearly not connected to the church in anyway it appears. They weren't boy scouts or their fathers. They weren't regular neighbors or visiting acquaintances of Walker.

When you couple a booming shot sound loud enough to inspire the room working boy next door to drop what he was doing to see for himself what may have caused the boom along with two men running or at least driving away from the lot just after... something unusual obviously happened in that area just before the men got in their cars and drove away.

No less worthy of logical suspicion than Oswald's tale of simply running away and along some railway tracks and then burying his rifle there?

When Oswald retrieved his buried rifle he must have done so using a bus for transportation as he said he did to get to Walker's residence. Was it in a case when he boarded the bus to bring it back to his apartment where Marina and Jeannie DeMohrenschildt found it in the closet?

Or did he break it down and hide this in a big flasher type raincoat instead of his Eisenhower short cut jacket he normally wore?

 

 

Edited May 17, 2022 by Joe Bauer

[John Butler]

On 5/16/2022 at 9:08 AM, Gil Jesus said:

There were no witnesses, although a 14 year old boy

and,

On 5/16/2022 at 9:08 AM, Gil Jesus said:

Finally, the June 1964 FBI interview of Coleman revealed that he told them that neither man he saw resembled Oswald.

I suspect none of the 14 year-old and below kids were believed about what they saw during the JFKA, and before in the Walker incident.

[Pat Speer]

Thanks, Gil. This is the kind of research I greatly admire. A comparison between initial statements and subsequent statements is always helpful in understanding the big picture. In this case, rightly or wrongly, there was a witness who'd suggested Oswald did not shoot at Walker. He may have been full of beans. But the prosecutor's zeal of the FBI and WC led them to distort (or even change) what he said, and help sell the Oswald did it theory.

I've always said the possibility Oswald shot at Walker suggests he would not have shot at Kennedy. That's not how assassins work. When Bremer couldn't get Nixon he went after Wallace, not McGovern. Someone as politically-minded as Oswald knew damn well that Kennedy was better than the alternative. For him to shoot at both Walker and Kennedy would suggest an equivalence between the two, when they were in fact polar opposites. Now it could be said Oswald saw them as the same. But every bit of evidence regarding Oswald's politics suggests he did not. 

[Gil Jesus]

On 5/17/2022 at 11:56 AM, Pat Speer said:

I've always said the possibility Oswald shot at Walker suggests he would not have shot at Kennedy. That's not how assassins work. When Bremer couldn't get Nixon he went after Wallace, not McGovern. Someone as politically-minded as Oswald knew damn well that Kennedy was better than the alternative. For him to shoot at both Walker and Kennedy would suggest an equivalence between the two, when they were in fact polar opposites. Now it could be said Oswald saw them as the same. But every bit of evidence regarding Oswald's politics suggests he did not. 

And that's an excellent point. He shot at right-wing extremist Walker and killed the man ( JFK )

who forced him out of the military for indoctrinating troops with his right-wing views.

I agree. It makes no sense.

[Gil Jesus]

On 5/17/2022 at 11:03 AM, Joe Bauer said:

My two cents:

If this boy and his older teen age "Godfather?" heard the boom shot sound while they were involved working in the boy's bedroom, stopped doing this and even commented on the unusual sound, with the young boy then running out of his room and house to and across an open space ( even if just 10 or 12 feet ) to a fence between this boy's home and a church building and parking lot and then straddling a bicycle to lift himself high enough to get a clear view ... that would be plenty of time for either of the two running men to reach their cars and vrooom away as the boy claimed.

And here is a common sense question.

Why would one or maybe even two men be running to their cars in the church lot or Walker driveway ( or driving quickly away) like these two supposedly did, at all?

Running ( instead of walking - even quickly ) indicates some urgency on their part.

Motivated by what? An emergency phone call?

The men were clearly not connected to the church in anyway it appears. They weren't boy scouts or their fathers. They weren't regular neighbors or visiting acquaintances of Walker.

When you couple a booming shot sound loud enough to inspire the room working boy next door to drop what he was doing to see for himself what may have caused the boom along with two men running or at least driving away from the lot just after... something unusual obviously happened in that area just before the men got in their cars and drove away.

No less worthy of logical suspicion than Oswald's tale of simply running away and along some railway tracks and then burying his rifle there?

When Oswald retrieved his buried rifle he must have done so using a bus for transportation as he said he did to get to Walker's residence. Was it in a case when he boarded the bus to bring it back to his apartment where Marina and Jeannie DeMohrenschildt found it in the closet?

Or did he break it down and hide this in a big flasher type raincoat instead of his Eisenhower short cut jacket he normally wore?

 

 

Good questions, Joe. I've never met anyone who buried their rifle or shotgun and was able to use it afterward without cleaning it first.

Here's a litlle interesting tidbit I ran across:

One of the cars the kid described was a 49 or 50 Ford. He also described the man who got in the car as young. ( 19 yo )

One block from the Tippit murder scene lived 21 yo Jerry Pat Shelley at the apartment house at 511 E. 10th St. The Dallas Police answered a call from a neighbor who didn't like him complaining that Shelley had parked and abandonned his car, a 1950 Ford, in front of her house. The police ended up taking the car to impound. 

( Dallas Police Box 1, pg. 284 )

No description of the car is given, only that he bought the car from Conley Motors on an unspecified date.

I'm interested if he owned the car at the time of the Walker shooting and the Tippit murder and wonder of this could have been the "'50-51 grey maybe a Plymouth" reported by Frank Wright.

[Jim Hargrove]

The evidence handling of the entire Walker shooting is an obvious scam designed to implicate Oswald.

In the photos below, CE 573 is a bullet allegedly dug out of Walker’s house.  CE 399 is the infamous “Magic Bullet” Oswald allegedly used to shoot at JFK.  Note that they are both copper jacketed bullets.

Sure look similar, don’t they?  

But as you can see in the original report filed by Dallas police, it was a steel-jacketed bullet dug out of Mr. Walker's house. Somehow it transformed itself into a copper jacketed bullet!  It’s another Magic Bullet!

[Joe Bauer]

Gil, did the boy mention seeing these two cars and drivers driving "out from" or at least "away from" the church parking lot and away through through the entrance alley and just seconds after the shot?

Were there any other people visible in this area during the time the boy witnessed the two men there?

And did this " Jerry Pat Shelley" normally park his 50 Chevy in the church parking lot or the alley leading out from it?

Was there no other more convenient street or carport parking available to him and others residing in his apartment house?

And would there be any reason why Jerry Pat Shelley would need to go into the church parking lot, and then turn around to come back out via the alley? At 10 at night?

How did Lee Oswald get the rifle to Walker's residence discreetly using public bus transportation? Another "paper wrapped curtain rods" affair?

And same bringing it back to his apartment?

George DeMohrenschildt cracked a "joke" to Lee when his wife told him about discovering Oswald's rifle in the apartment closet.

Something to Oswald about him possibly taking a pot shot at Walker?

That comment by George DeMohrenschildt to Oswald right at that time is a mind blowing one imo.

The fact that G DeM would "instantly" connect Lee to the Walker shooting simply by seeing his rifle "shouts" G DeM's foreknowledge and suspicion that it was Lee who took that shot.

Obviously G DeM heard much from Oswald in their personal one-on-one talks that made him think it was Lee who did this.

George and Jeanie DeM high tailed it out of Dallas and even Texas soon after the rifle finding incident.

I can imagine their conversation when they got home from the Oswald's that evening.

Jeanne to George " Can you believe that guy?" Buying and keeping a rifle like that?"

"You asked him ( Lee ) if he may have taken a pot shot at Walker? Why would you say such a crazy thing like that? What do you know that made you say that?"

"If he did, that's it...we are getting as far away from that lunatic as we can and I mean right away!"

"We can't be seen as so closely associated with him and unfortunately Marina if that nut is ever picked up for that shooting."

G DeM to Jeanne " Relax, nobody is going to pick up Lee for that."

"But, maybe we should take a trip to Haiti right now anyway." 

" maybe I can even swing some sort of oil deal with that "Poppa Doc" Duvalier character while we are there? And the help is super cheap there too."

Jeanne was the boss in that family.

 

 

Edited May 18, 2022 by Joe Bauer

[Gil Jesus]

On 5/18/2022 at 1:52 PM, Joe Bauer said:

Gil, did the boy mention seeing these two cars and drivers driving "out from" or at least "away from" the church parking lot and away through through the entrance alley and just seconds after the shot?

The 50 ford he saw leaving "in a hurry" but when the FBI interviewed him, the story changed to just leaving.

The guy in the 58 Chevy looked like he was bent over the front seat puitting something on the rear floor.

Were there any other people visible in this area during the time the boy witnessed the two men there?

Not to my knowledge.

And did this " Jerry Pat Shelley" normally park his 50 Chevy in the church parking lot or the alley leading out from it?

He lived near the Tippit murder but they never checked to see if he was connected with the church or the Boy Scout troop.

Was there no other more convenient street or carport parking available to him and others residing in his apartment house?

Apparently not. He parked his cars in the street.

And would there be any reason why Jerry Pat Shelley would need to go into the church parking lot, and then turn around to come back out via the alley? At 10 at night?

How did Lee Oswald get the rifle to Walker's residence discreetly using public bus transportation? Another "paper wrapped curtain rods" affair?

And same bringing it back to his apartment?

George DeMohrenschildt cracked a "joke" to Lee when his wife told him about discovering Oswald's rifle in the apartment closet.

Something to Oswald about him possibly taking a pot shot at Walker?

That comment by George DeMohrenschildt to Oswald right at that time is a mind blowing one imo.

The fact that G DeM would "instantly" connect Lee to the Walker shooting simply by seeing his rifle "shouts" G DeM's foreknowledge and suspicion that it was Lee who took that shot.

Obviously G DeM heard much from Oswald in their personal one-on-one talks that made him think it was Lee who did this.

George and Jeanie DeM high tailed it out of Dallas and even Texas soon after the rifle finding incident.

I can imagine their conversation when they got home from the Oswald's that evening.

Jeanne to George " Can you believe that guy?" Buying and keeping a rifle like that?"

"You asked him ( Lee ) if he may have taken a pot shot at Walker? Why would you say such a crazy thing like that? What do you know that made you say that?"

"If he did, that's it...we are getting as far away from that lunatic as we can and I mean right away!"

"We can't be seen as so closely associated with him and unfortunately Marina if that nut is ever picked up for that shooting."

G DeM to Jeanne " Relax, nobody is going to pick up Lee for that."

"But, maybe we should take a trip to Haiti right now anyway." 

" maybe I can even swing some sort of oil deal with that "Poppa Doc" Duvalier character while we are there? And the help is super cheap there too."

Jeanne was the boss in that family.

Good questions, all. I wish I knew the answers.

 

 

 

[Joe Bauer]

44 minutes ago, Gil Jesus said:

 

?