Oswald's Light-Colored Jacket

[Michael Griffith]

Just now, Bill Brown said:

Look.  This is real simple.  In addition to trying to change the subject, you said that Whaley did not choose Oswald at the lineup; that he chose Knapp.

But, you were completely unaware that Whaley said that the man he chose was bawling out the police and complaining about being placed in lineups alongside teenagers.

Perhaps you should stop commenting on subjects that you are clueless on.

So my direct question to you (AGAIN), do you believe Knapp was bawling out the police or were you wrong to say Whaley chose Knapp?  It's one or the other.

Holy cow! You just can't admit anything, can you?

WHALEY told the WC that he chose the No. 2 man, and WHALEY said that that man was the third man to come out, and WHALEY wrote on his timesheet that he picked up the passenger at 12:30, and Montgomery's handwritten statement from Whaley did *not* say that Whaley chose No. 3.

It is really simple. You keep ducking the real issues. And, no, I was not unaware that Whaley said that Oswald was bawling out the police over the lineup, but you were apparently unaware of the contradictions in Whaley's identification and you're still ducking them, or else you knew about them but chose to ignore them.

Anyone not blinded by WC worship can see in Whaley's testimony that he was all over the place about his identification and was clearly trying to qualify it with all sorts of caveats and disclosures about the lineup, about the man he chose, and how his statements were taken. 

We'll just keep going around in circles because you will keep up the silly pretense that Whaley's "identification" was straightforward and definite and because you will keep ignoring the obvious problems with his identification and with the lineup, and the enormous problem of the 12:30 pickup time on his timesheet.

 

 

[Bill Brown]

5 minutes ago, Michael Griffith said:

Holy cow! You just can't admit anything, can you?

WHALEY told the WC that he chose the No. 2 man, and WHALEY said that that man was the third man to come out, and WHALEY wrote on his timesheet that he picked up the passenger at 12:30, and Montgomery's handwritten statement from Whaley did *not* say that Whaley chose No. 3.

It is really simple. You keep ducking the real issues. And, no, I was not unaware that Whaley said that Oswald was bawling out the police over the lineup, but you were apparently unaware of the contradictions in Whaley's identification and you're still ducking them, or else you knew about them but chose to ignore them.

Anyone not blinded by WC worship can see in Whaley's testimony that he was all over the place about his identification and was clearly trying to qualify it with all sorts of caveats and disclosures about the lineup, about the man he chose, and how his statements were taken. 

We'll just keep going around in circles because you will keep up the silly pretense that Whaley's "identification" was straightforward and definite and because you will keep ignoring the obvious problems with his identification and with the lineup, and the enormous problem of the 12:30 pickup time on his timesheet.

 

 

 

I can't admit anything?  What are you talking about?

 

I have discussed what you are calling "the contradictions in Whaley's identification" for a decade before I ever heard of you.

 

You keep wanting to take the conversation to these contradictions, to improper lineups, to Whaley's confusion on what number Oswald was in the lineup, Whaley's log book, etc... all to avoid saying that you were wrong, that Whaley obviously picked Oswald because Whaley tells us (which you admit you were unaware of) that he picked out the guy who was bawling out the police.

 

So again, simple question...

 

Do you believe Knapp was bawling out the police or were you wrong to say Whaley chose Knapp?  It's one or the other.

 

I'll answer it for you, since you're afraid to.

 

Whaley picked out the man who was bawling out the police.  The man who was bawling out the police was Lee Oswald.  Whaley picked Lee Oswald.

 

Your statement that Whaley actually picked out Knapp was foolish.

 

[Greg Doudna]

Fingerprints

Bill, you stated earlier certainty that even though the gunman who killed Tippit was seen with his hands near the top of the right front passenger door--with hands seen touching the window there according to a witness--that fingerprints found twenty minutes later in that exact location most certainly did NOT (you assert) come from the Tippit killer.

Your extraordinary assertion of certainty on this was explicitly said to be because of the linkage in which one single individual left fingerprints both at that location and at one other location where the killer of Tippit also was close to and may have been, the right front fender of the Tippit patrol car. You stated the killer of Tippit most certainly did NOT leave those fender fingerprints, therefore you argued logically it followed the killer did not leave any of the fingerprints at the right front passenger door either where a witness said he was seen leaning in with his arms and hands on the car, twenty minutes before those prints were lifted.

How astonishing is your certainty on this! That a person acknowledged and witnessed to be in close proximity to an area of the car with their hands within inches of the prints--you just know they did not touch there. You claim to know that, as certainty, as if it is a fact. That is what you claim.

Now the unspoken elephant in the room is there is a fact upon which you and I are agreed: that those prints have been found definitively to be from someone other than Oswald; Oswald is excluded as having left those prints. If the shooter left those prints, Oswald is exculpated right there, hands down, no pun intended.

An outside person not knowing better might suspect you, the defender par excellence of the Oswald-killed-Tippit case, just possibly might be influenced in your certainty concerning this matter of the fingerprints by your certainty that Oswald was that shooter, and therefore cannot have left those prints, in a reverse-engineering backward logic. However, that is not your stated reason. An outside person might think maybe that could be your real reason, but since that is not admitted, other bogus reasons may be grasped to frame the desired conclusion: the dogmatic claim of certainty that the killer did not leave those prints.

It was not easy to get you to state reasons for your statement of certainty when I asked, but now that you have answered the question of "why", you give two reasons which have no substance as a basis for certainty that someone did not leave fingerprints.

These two reasons you have given have not been claimed by anyone else on earth as proof for the conclusion of negative certainty you are claiming. You cannot cite Myers citing the two reasons you have given for a negative certainty, and I am quite sure Myers never will, because the two reasons you have given evaporate under the mildest of scrutiny. They do not establish the certainty that you claim to conclude from those two reasons. 

First, you have repeated like a mantra: "no witnesses saw".

Well hell's bells Bill, no witness was in a position to see the killer touch the right front fender if he had. Helen Markham from her position could not see through the car to have seen the fender below her line of sight on the other side of her. Who else was even looking? Or if they were, from a block distant on the other side of the street, the right front fender on the passenger's side also would be blocked from their view, and it was quite a distance, and are you sure they have noticed? How many witnesses do you think were even looking at the right front fender of the car during the moments of the shooting?

How long does it take to touch the top of a fender of a car and not be noticed when no one is looking?  

Citing "no witnesses saw" when no witnesses would have seen (and no witness saw whoever put those prints there in any case) is unbelievably weak for you to cite as a basis for certainty that someone who could have been next to a fender of a car did not touch that fender and leave the fingerprints found there twenty minutes later.

And second, your only other reason given, you express a lack of ability to imagine how it could be that a man standing near a right front fender, with hands which could have been immediately over the position of the fingerprints in a standing position if he was that far forward, might in the course of a shooting over the hood, have had some occasion to place a hand on that fender, whether in a momentary intentional crouch for balance, as part of a momentary stumble, for momentary balance while reaching down to pick up something, or some other unknown cause.

You just can't imagine that any of those are possible! That's your reason for claiming certainty the killer's hands never touched the car there!

You don't deny that the killer could have been at that right front fender with his hands immediately above where the prints were found when the killer was in a standing position.

You simply deny capability to imagine how he could have touched that fender even if he was standing right there. Because if you could imagine that that was possible, then there would no longer be certainty that it didn't happen, and there would be gone your reason for ruling out that the killer left the fingerprints found at the passenger door. 

The analogy with the abandoned jacket, C162

Do you think the jacket found in the parking lot of the gas station, C162, was abandoned by the killer?

I do. What about you? Of course you do.

But the same arguments you are citing as stated reasons for certainty that the killer of Tippit did not leave fingerprints on the patrol car in the same way would logically prove the killer of Tippit was not the owner of the C162 jacket.

Just imagine if C162, let us say hypothetically, had been found not to belong to Oswald as a conclusive finding of fact for some reason.

I can just hear you then using the same arguments against linking C162 to the killer of Tippit, as you are now using against linking the fingerprints to the killer of Tippit.

No witness saw the killer throw the C162 jacket under the car in the parking lot behind the gas station, you would say.

"You have failed to prove any scenario by which the killer threw that jacket there", I can hear you saying, with equal bombast and certainty as in the case of the fingerprints.

Its the same thing, same nature of argument. It is parallel.

Both are circumstantial arguments as to actions reconstructed to bring about the physical evidence, in ways not directly witnessed. 

The difference is you are gung-ho (and properly so) concerning one of these, the case of C162, but argue the opposite in the case of the fingerprints.

What is the variable that accounts for the opposing treatments of these two roughly parallel cases? In both cases involving a non-witnessed but circumstantial-evidence situation? 

I think we both know what the variable is that accounts for the difference in treatment. One of the two has been excluded as being Oswald. The other hasn't. 

Explains it all?

A reasonable person would say it is ludicrous to say something certainly did not happen in a situation where there is absolutely no disproof that something did not happen, other than a claim that you cannot imagine how a killer of Tippit might have been at the position of that fender, and reached for a moment with a free hand as he stumbled, or crouched, or reached down to pick up something, or took a step beyond the right front fender (still on the passenger side) to get a line-of-sight shot into Tippit's head (from the killer's side of the car), while Tippit was prone on the ground.

Any of those scenarios could involve putting a handprint on a fender for balance or by accident. Just for a moment. So quick, none of the witnesses not in a position to have seen anyway, would notice.

You cite your lack of imagination of seeing how someone known to be standing near a fender, and who could have been standing directly over it, could have put a hand on that fender for any reason, as your basis for certainty that he did not touch. 

Your claim of certainty that the killer was not the individual who left those fingerprints on the Tippit patrol car twenty minutes before they were lifted makes no more sense than if someone cited the same two reasons to you as proof of certainty that the killer of Tippit did not abandon the C162 jacket. 

You would reject such an argument, and rightly so.

And I reject your parallel argument applied to the fingerprints, and rightly so.

 

Mr. BENAVIDES - The other man was standing to the right side of the car, riders side of the car, and was standing right in front of the windshield on the right front fender. And then I heard the shot.  

Mrs. MARKHAM. I saw the man come over to the car very slow, leaned and put his arms just like this, he leaned over in this window and looked in this window. 
Mr. BALL. He put his arms on the window ledge? 
Mrs. MARKHAM. The window was down. 
Mr. BALL. It was? 
Mrs. MARKHAM. Yes, sir. 
Mr. BALL. Put his arms on the window ledge? 
Mrs. MARKHAM. On the ledge of the window.  

Mrs. MARKHAM. That is right. And the man went over to the car, put his hands on the window-- 
Mr. DULLES. The window was open? 
Mrs. MARKHAM. Leaned over like this. 
Mr. DULLES. Let me see. Was that on the right-hand side of the car, or where the driver was? 
Mrs. MARKHAM. It was on the opposite side of the car. 
Mr. DULLES. Opposite side of the car from the driver, yes. 
Mrs. MARKHAM. Yes. The window was down, and I know it was down, I know, and he put his arms and leaned over, I don't know what they were talking about, I didn't hear it. Then he stepped back in a few minutes, stepped back two steps. 

Jimmy Burt:

"[The killer of Officer Tippit] put his hands on the right side of the car as he leaned down and talked in the window." (interview of Jimmy Burt by Al Chapman, 1968, cited Myers, With Malice, 776)

Twenty minutes later prints found there.

Not from Oswald. 

[Charles Blackmon]

44 minutes ago, Greg Doudna said:

 

These two reasons you have given have not been claimed by anyone else on earth as proof for the conclusion of negative certainty you are claiming.

A negative cannot be proven. Everybody knows this except apparently B.B.

[Michael Griffith]

On 4/15/2023 at 3:57 PM, Bill Brown said:

I can't admit anything?  What are you talking about?

I have discussed what you are calling "the contradictions in Whaley's identification" for a decade before I ever heard of you.

You keep wanting to take the conversation to these contradictions, to improper lineups, to Whaley's confusion on what number Oswald was in the lineup, Whaley's log book, etc... all to avoid saying that you were wrong, that Whaley obviously picked Oswald because Whaley tells us (which you admit you were unaware of) that he picked out the guy who was bawling out the police.

So again, simple question...

Do you believe Knapp was bawling out the police or were you wrong to say Whaley chose Knapp?  It's one or the other.

I'll answer it for you, since you're afraid to.

Whaley picked out the man who was bawling out the police.  The man who was bawling out the police was Lee Oswald.  Whaley picked Lee Oswald.

Your statement that Whaley actually picked out Knapp was foolish.

You're still evading the key issues and doing so in a disingenuous manner. Let's see if we can unpack the situation with Whaley with a series of factual observations.

-- Whaley repeatedly told the WC that he picked the No. 2 man. The No. 2 man was Knapp. Whaley also specified that the man he chose was the third man to come out, which was Knapp, not Oswald. In so doing, Whaley correctly described how the police had the lineup members enter the lineup. 

-- Whaley said he identified Oswald as his passenger and said Oswald was bawling out the police over the unfairness of the lineup, but Whaley then kept insisting that he picked the No. 2 man, that the man he picked was the third man out, and revealed some serious irregularities about the statements that the police took from him (two handwritten and one typed). 

-- The first handwritten statement, the one written by Montgomery, says nothing about Whaley choosing the No. 3 man, i.e., Oswald.

-- Whaley's account of Oswald's bawling out the police over the lineup has justifiably been cited for decades as proof that the lineups were unfair.

-- Whaley recorded on his timesheet that he picked up his passenger at 12:30. This pickup time categorically rules out Oswald as the passenger. So, the WC floated the flimsy argument that Whaley erred  by a whopping 17 minutes, and that Whaley recorded his pickup times in 15-minute increments, which was false. Then, the WC contradicted its own lame argument by saying that Whaley picked up Oswald at 12:47. They said 12:47 because they knew they couldn't get Oswald to Whaley's cab earlier than that. Yet, Whaley recorded that he picked up the passenger at 12:30, and his other entries showed no sign of a 15-minute-increment pattern.

-- Whaley's description of the passenger's clothing contradicted the clothing that the WC said Oswald was wearing. 

-- An honest judge would have had, at a minimum, serious doubts about the validity of the lineup and the admissibility of Whaley's contradictory "identification."

Edited April 16, 2023 by Michael Griffith

[Bill Brown]

2 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

You're still evading the key issues and doing so in a disingenuous manner. Let's see if we can unpack the situation with Whaley with a series of factual observations.

-- Whaley repeatedly told the WC that he picked the No. 2 man. The No. 2 man was Knapp. Whaley also specified that the man he chose was the third man to come out, which was Knapp, not Oswald. In so doing, Whaley correctly described how the police had the lineup members enter the lineup. 

-- Whaley said he identified Oswald as his passenger and said Oswald was bawling out the police over the unfairness of the lineup, but Whaley then kept insisting that he picked the No. 2 man, that the man he picked was the third man out, and revealed some serious irregularities about the statements that the police took from him (two handwritten and one typed). 

-- The first handwritten statement, the one written by Montgomery, says nothing about Whaley choosing the No. 3 man, i.e., Oswald.

-- Whaley's account of Oswald's bawling out the police over the lineup has justifiably been cited for decades as proof that the lineups were unfair.

-- Whaley recorded on his timesheet that he picked up his passenger at 12:30. This pickup time categorically rules out Oswald as the passenger. So, the WC floated the flimsy argument that Whaley erred  by a whopping 17 minutes, and that Whaley recorded his pickup times in 15-minute increments, which was false. Then, the WC contradicted its own lame argument by saying that Whaley picked up Oswald at 12:47. They said 12:47 because they knew they couldn't get Oswald to Whaley's cab earlier than that. Yet, Whaley recorded that he picked up the passenger at 12:30, and his other entries showed no sign of a 15-minute-increment pattern.

-- Whaley's description of the passenger's clothing contradicted the clothing that the WC said Oswald was wearing. 

-- An honest judge would have had, at a minimum, serious doubts about the validity of the lineup and the admissibility of Whaley's contradictory "identification."

 

You're still evading the key issues and doing so in a disingenuous manner. Let's see if we can unpack the situation with Whaley with a series of factual observations.

 

I'll be happy to discuss any of this with you just as soon as you admit that you were wrong to say that Whaley, during the lineup, picked out Knapp and not Oswald.

 

Once you (finally) admit this, we can move forward.

 

[Bill Brown]

7 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

Fingerprints

Bill, you stated earlier certainty that even though the gunman who killed Tippit was seen with his hands near the top of the right front passenger door--with hands seen touching the window there according to a witness--that fingerprints found twenty minutes later in that exact location most certainly did NOT (you assert) come from the Tippit killer.

Your extraordinary assertion of certainty on this was explicitly said to be because of the linkage in which one single individual left fingerprints both at that location and at one other location where the killer of Tippit also was close to and may have been, the right front fender of the Tippit patrol car. You stated the killer of Tippit most certainly did NOT leave those fender fingerprints, therefore you argued logically it followed the killer did not leave any of the fingerprints at the right front passenger door either where a witness said he was seen leaning in with his arms and hands on the car, twenty minutes before those prints were lifted.

How astonishing is your certainty on this! That a person acknowledged and witnessed to be in close proximity to an area of the car with their hands within inches of the prints--you just know they did not touch there. You claim to know that, as certainty, as if it is a fact. That is what you claim.

Now the unspoken elephant in the room is there is a fact upon which you and I are agreed: that those prints have been found definitively to be from someone other than Oswald; Oswald is excluded as having left those prints. If the shooter left those prints, Oswald is exculpated right there, hands down, no pun intended.

An outside person not knowing better might suspect you, the defender par excellence of the Oswald-killed-Tippit case, just possibly might be influenced in your certainty concerning this matter of the fingerprints by your certainty that Oswald was that shooter, and therefore cannot have left those prints, in a reverse-engineering backward logic. However, that is not your stated reason. An outside person might think maybe that could be your real reason, but since that is not admitted, other bogus reasons may be grasped to frame the desired conclusion: the dogmatic claim of certainty that the killer did not leave those prints.

It was not easy to get you to state reasons for your statement of certainty when I asked, but now that you have answered the question of "why", you give two reasons which have no substance as a basis for certainty that someone did not leave fingerprints.

These two reasons you have given have not been claimed by anyone else on earth as proof for the conclusion of negative certainty you are claiming. You cannot cite Myers citing the two reasons you have given for a negative certainty, and I am quite sure Myers never will, because the two reasons you have given evaporate under the mildest of scrutiny. They do not establish the certainty that you claim to conclude from those two reasons. 

First, you have repeated like a mantra: "no witnesses saw".

Well hell's bells Bill, no witness was in a position to see the killer touch the right front fender if he had. Helen Markham from her position could not see through the car to have seen the fender below her line of sight on the other side of her. Who else was even looking? Or if they were, from a block distant on the other side of the street, the right front fender on the passenger's side also would be blocked from their view, and it was quite a distance, and are you sure they have noticed? How many witnesses do you think were even looking at the right front fender of the car during the moments of the shooting?

How long does it take to touch the top of a fender of a car and not be noticed when no one is looking?  

Citing "no witnesses saw" when no witnesses would have seen (and no witness saw whoever put those prints there in any case) is unbelievably weak for you to cite as a basis for certainty that someone who could have been next to a fender of a car did not touch that fender and leave the fingerprints found there twenty minutes later.

And second, your only other reason given, you express a lack of ability to imagine how it could be that a man standing near a right front fender, with hands which could have been immediately over the position of the fingerprints in a standing position if he was that far forward, might in the course of a shooting over the hood, have had some occasion to place a hand on that fender, whether in a momentary intentional crouch for balance, as part of a momentary stumble, for momentary balance while reaching down to pick up something, or some other unknown cause.

You just can't imagine that any of those are possible! That's your reason for claiming certainty the killer's hands never touched the car there!

You don't deny that the killer could have been at that right front fender with his hands immediately above where the prints were found when the killer was in a standing position.

You simply deny capability to imagine how he could have touched that fender even if he was standing right there. Because if you could imagine that that was possible, then there would no longer be certainty that it didn't happen, and there would be gone your reason for ruling out that the killer left the fingerprints found at the passenger door. 

The analogy with the abandoned jacket, C162

Do you think the jacket found in the parking lot of the gas station, C162, was abandoned by the killer?

I do. What about you? Of course you do.

But the same arguments you are citing as stated reasons for certainty that the killer of Tippit did not leave fingerprints on the patrol car in the same way would logically prove the killer of Tippit was not the owner of the C162 jacket.

Just imagine if C162, let us say hypothetically, had been found not to belong to Oswald as a conclusive finding of fact for some reason.

I can just hear you then using the same arguments against linking C162 to the killer of Tippit, as you are now using against linking the fingerprints to the killer of Tippit.

No witness saw the killer throw the C162 jacket under the car in the parking lot behind the gas station, you would say.

"You have failed to prove any scenario by which the killer threw that jacket there", I can hear you saying, with equal bombast and certainty as in the case of the fingerprints.

Its the same thing, same nature of argument. It is parallel.

Both are circumstantial arguments as to actions reconstructed to bring about the physical evidence, in ways not directly witnessed. 

The difference is you are gung-ho (and properly so) concerning one of these, the case of C162, but argue the opposite in the case of the fingerprints.

What is the variable that accounts for the opposing treatments of these two roughly parallel cases? In both cases involving a non-witnessed but circumstantial-evidence situation? 

I think we both know what the variable is that accounts for the difference in treatment. One of the two has been excluded as being Oswald. The other hasn't. 

Explains it all?

A reasonable person would say it is ludicrous to say something certainly did not happen in a situation where there is absolutely no disproof that something did not happen, other than a claim that you cannot imagine how a killer of Tippit might have been at the position of that fender, and reached for a moment with a free hand as he stumbled, or crouched, or reached down to pick up something, or took a step beyond the right front fender (still on the passenger side) to get a line-of-sight shot into Tippit's head (from the killer's side of the car), while Tippit was prone on the ground.

Any of those scenarios could involve putting a handprint on a fender for balance or by accident. Just for a moment. So quick, none of the witnesses not in a position to have seen anyway, would notice.

You cite your lack of imagination of seeing how someone known to be standing near a fender, and who could have been standing directly over it, could have put a hand on that fender for any reason, as your basis for certainty that he did not touch. 

Your claim of certainty that the killer was not the individual who left those fingerprints on the Tippit patrol car twenty minutes before they were lifted makes no more sense than if someone cited the same two reasons to you as proof of certainty that the killer of Tippit did not abandon the C162 jacket. 

You would reject such an argument, and rightly so.

And I reject your parallel argument applied to the fingerprints, and rightly so.

 

Mr. BENAVIDES - The other man was standing to the right side of the car, riders side of the car, and was standing right in front of the windshield on the right front fender. And then I heard the shot.  

Mrs. MARKHAM. I saw the man come over to the car very slow, leaned and put his arms just like this, he leaned over in this window and looked in this window. 
Mr. BALL. He put his arms on the window ledge? 
Mrs. MARKHAM. The window was down. 
Mr. BALL. It was? 
Mrs. MARKHAM. Yes, sir. 
Mr. BALL. Put his arms on the window ledge? 
Mrs. MARKHAM. On the ledge of the window.  

Mrs. MARKHAM. That is right. And the man went over to the car, put his hands on the window-- 
Mr. DULLES. The window was open? 
Mrs. MARKHAM. Leaned over like this. 
Mr. DULLES. Let me see. Was that on the right-hand side of the car, or where the driver was? 
Mrs. MARKHAM. It was on the opposite side of the car. 
Mr. DULLES. Opposite side of the car from the driver, yes. 
Mrs. MARKHAM. Yes. The window was down, and I know it was down, I know, and he put his arms and leaned over, I don't know what they were talking about, I didn't hear it. Then he stepped back in a few minutes, stepped back two steps. 

Jimmy Burt:

"[The killer of Officer Tippit] put his hands on the right side of the car as he leaned down and talked in the window." (interview of Jimmy Burt by Al Chapman, 1968, cited Myers, With Malice, 776)

Twenty minutes later prints found there.

Not from Oswald. 

 

Bill, you stated earlier certainty that even though the gunman who killed Tippit was seen with his hands near the top of the right front passenger door--with hands seen touching the window there according to a witness--that fingerprints found twenty minutes later in that exact location most certainly did NOT (you assert) come from the Tippit killer.

 

Two things....

 

One...  The witnesses who said Oswald had his hands on the door were Helen Markham and Jimmy Burt.  Markham, from her position (across the street, 150 feet away and on the other side of the car from the passenger door), couldn't really know such a thing to be true.  She made an assumption, Greg.  Burt, a block east of the patrol car and also across the street, could not know such a thing to be true.  He made an assumption, Greg.

 

Two... Even if the killer's prints were lifted off of that door and the killer touched that door, that does not automatically mean that the prints lifted off of the door belonged to the killer.  Really, I shouldn't have to point out such a thing.

 

 

Well hell's bells Bill, no witness was in a position to see the killer touch the right front fender if he had. Helen Markham from her position could not see through the car to have seen the fender below her line of sight on the other side of her.

 

That's exactly right.  Markham couldn't see the fender just the same as she couldn't see the door.  So then why do you feel it's okay to use her as proof that the killer laid his hands on the passenger door?  

 

Edited April 16, 2023 by Bill Brown

[Bill Brown]

7 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

Fingerprints

Bill, you stated earlier certainty that even though the gunman who killed Tippit was seen with his hands near the top of the right front passenger door--with hands seen touching the window there according to a witness--that fingerprints found twenty minutes later in that exact location most certainly did NOT (you assert) come from the Tippit killer.

Your extraordinary assertion of certainty on this was explicitly said to be because of the linkage in which one single individual left fingerprints both at that location and at one other location where the killer of Tippit also was close to and may have been, the right front fender of the Tippit patrol car. You stated the killer of Tippit most certainly did NOT leave those fender fingerprints, therefore you argued logically it followed the killer did not leave any of the fingerprints at the right front passenger door either where a witness said he was seen leaning in with his arms and hands on the car, twenty minutes before those prints were lifted.

How astonishing is your certainty on this! That a person acknowledged and witnessed to be in close proximity to an area of the car with their hands within inches of the prints--you just know they did not touch there. You claim to know that, as certainty, as if it is a fact. That is what you claim.

Now the unspoken elephant in the room is there is a fact upon which you and I are agreed: that those prints have been found definitively to be from someone other than Oswald; Oswald is excluded as having left those prints. If the shooter left those prints, Oswald is exculpated right there, hands down, no pun intended.

An outside person not knowing better might suspect you, the defender par excellence of the Oswald-killed-Tippit case, just possibly might be influenced in your certainty concerning this matter of the fingerprints by your certainty that Oswald was that shooter, and therefore cannot have left those prints, in a reverse-engineering backward logic. However, that is not your stated reason. An outside person might think maybe that could be your real reason, but since that is not admitted, other bogus reasons may be grasped to frame the desired conclusion: the dogmatic claim of certainty that the killer did not leave those prints.

It was not easy to get you to state reasons for your statement of certainty when I asked, but now that you have answered the question of "why", you give two reasons which have no substance as a basis for certainty that someone did not leave fingerprints.

These two reasons you have given have not been claimed by anyone else on earth as proof for the conclusion of negative certainty you are claiming. You cannot cite Myers citing the two reasons you have given for a negative certainty, and I am quite sure Myers never will, because the two reasons you have given evaporate under the mildest of scrutiny. They do not establish the certainty that you claim to conclude from those two reasons. 

First, you have repeated like a mantra: "no witnesses saw".

Well hell's bells Bill, no witness was in a position to see the killer touch the right front fender if he had. Helen Markham from her position could not see through the car to have seen the fender below her line of sight on the other side of her. Who else was even looking? Or if they were, from a block distant on the other side of the street, the right front fender on the passenger's side also would be blocked from their view, and it was quite a distance, and are you sure they have noticed? How many witnesses do you think were even looking at the right front fender of the car during the moments of the shooting?

How long does it take to touch the top of a fender of a car and not be noticed when no one is looking?  

Citing "no witnesses saw" when no witnesses would have seen (and no witness saw whoever put those prints there in any case) is unbelievably weak for you to cite as a basis for certainty that someone who could have been next to a fender of a car did not touch that fender and leave the fingerprints found there twenty minutes later.

And second, your only other reason given, you express a lack of ability to imagine how it could be that a man standing near a right front fender, with hands which could have been immediately over the position of the fingerprints in a standing position if he was that far forward, might in the course of a shooting over the hood, have had some occasion to place a hand on that fender, whether in a momentary intentional crouch for balance, as part of a momentary stumble, for momentary balance while reaching down to pick up something, or some other unknown cause.

You just can't imagine that any of those are possible! That's your reason for claiming certainty the killer's hands never touched the car there!

You don't deny that the killer could have been at that right front fender with his hands immediately above where the prints were found when the killer was in a standing position.

You simply deny capability to imagine how he could have touched that fender even if he was standing right there. Because if you could imagine that that was possible, then there would no longer be certainty that it didn't happen, and there would be gone your reason for ruling out that the killer left the fingerprints found at the passenger door. 

The analogy with the abandoned jacket, C162

Do you think the jacket found in the parking lot of the gas station, C162, was abandoned by the killer?

I do. What about you? Of course you do.

But the same arguments you are citing as stated reasons for certainty that the killer of Tippit did not leave fingerprints on the patrol car in the same way would logically prove the killer of Tippit was not the owner of the C162 jacket.

Just imagine if C162, let us say hypothetically, had been found not to belong to Oswald as a conclusive finding of fact for some reason.

I can just hear you then using the same arguments against linking C162 to the killer of Tippit, as you are now using against linking the fingerprints to the killer of Tippit.

No witness saw the killer throw the C162 jacket under the car in the parking lot behind the gas station, you would say.

"You have failed to prove any scenario by which the killer threw that jacket there", I can hear you saying, with equal bombast and certainty as in the case of the fingerprints.

Its the same thing, same nature of argument. It is parallel.

Both are circumstantial arguments as to actions reconstructed to bring about the physical evidence, in ways not directly witnessed. 

The difference is you are gung-ho (and properly so) concerning one of these, the case of C162, but argue the opposite in the case of the fingerprints.

What is the variable that accounts for the opposing treatments of these two roughly parallel cases? In both cases involving a non-witnessed but circumstantial-evidence situation? 

I think we both know what the variable is that accounts for the difference in treatment. One of the two has been excluded as being Oswald. The other hasn't. 

Explains it all?

A reasonable person would say it is ludicrous to say something certainly did not happen in a situation where there is absolutely no disproof that something did not happen, other than a claim that you cannot imagine how a killer of Tippit might have been at the position of that fender, and reached for a moment with a free hand as he stumbled, or crouched, or reached down to pick up something, or took a step beyond the right front fender (still on the passenger side) to get a line-of-sight shot into Tippit's head (from the killer's side of the car), while Tippit was prone on the ground.

Any of those scenarios could involve putting a handprint on a fender for balance or by accident. Just for a moment. So quick, none of the witnesses not in a position to have seen anyway, would notice.

You cite your lack of imagination of seeing how someone known to be standing near a fender, and who could have been standing directly over it, could have put a hand on that fender for any reason, as your basis for certainty that he did not touch. 

Your claim of certainty that the killer was not the individual who left those fingerprints on the Tippit patrol car twenty minutes before they were lifted makes no more sense than if someone cited the same two reasons to you as proof of certainty that the killer of Tippit did not abandon the C162 jacket. 

You would reject such an argument, and rightly so.

And I reject your parallel argument applied to the fingerprints, and rightly so.

 

Mr. BENAVIDES - The other man was standing to the right side of the car, riders side of the car, and was standing right in front of the windshield on the right front fender. And then I heard the shot.  

Mrs. MARKHAM. I saw the man come over to the car very slow, leaned and put his arms just like this, he leaned over in this window and looked in this window. 
Mr. BALL. He put his arms on the window ledge? 
Mrs. MARKHAM. The window was down. 
Mr. BALL. It was? 
Mrs. MARKHAM. Yes, sir. 
Mr. BALL. Put his arms on the window ledge? 
Mrs. MARKHAM. On the ledge of the window.  

Mrs. MARKHAM. That is right. And the man went over to the car, put his hands on the window-- 
Mr. DULLES. The window was open? 
Mrs. MARKHAM. Leaned over like this. 
Mr. DULLES. Let me see. Was that on the right-hand side of the car, or where the driver was? 
Mrs. MARKHAM. It was on the opposite side of the car. 
Mr. DULLES. Opposite side of the car from the driver, yes. 
Mrs. MARKHAM. Yes. The window was down, and I know it was down, I know, and he put his arms and leaned over, I don't know what they were talking about, I didn't hear it. Then he stepped back in a few minutes, stepped back two steps. 

Jimmy Burt:

"[The killer of Officer Tippit] put his hands on the right side of the car as he leaned down and talked in the window." (interview of Jimmy Burt by Al Chapman, 1968, cited Myers, With Malice, 776)

Twenty minutes later prints found there.

Not from Oswald. 

 

You simply deny capability to imagine how he could have touched that fender even if he was standing right there. Because if you could imagine that that was possible, then there would no longer be certainty that it didn't happen, and there would be gone your reason for ruling out that the killer left the fingerprints found at the passenger door. 

 

How about this... I am asking you to speculate, so feel free... In one or two paragraphs, please explain how it all goes down where the shooter placed his hand on the right front fender.  Remember, it must make sense and it must be reasonable.

 

I say the killer had no cause to ever touch the right front fender.  Make it make sense that he would.

 

YOU are the one who said that the killer touched the right front fender.  You placed a percentage of probability, something like 95% or whatever it was.  I say that's a bunch of bull.

 

[Bill Brown]

7 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

Fingerprints

Bill, you stated earlier certainty that even though the gunman who killed Tippit was seen with his hands near the top of the right front passenger door--with hands seen touching the window there according to a witness--that fingerprints found twenty minutes later in that exact location most certainly did NOT (you assert) come from the Tippit killer.

Your extraordinary assertion of certainty on this was explicitly said to be because of the linkage in which one single individual left fingerprints both at that location and at one other location where the killer of Tippit also was close to and may have been, the right front fender of the Tippit patrol car. You stated the killer of Tippit most certainly did NOT leave those fender fingerprints, therefore you argued logically it followed the killer did not leave any of the fingerprints at the right front passenger door either where a witness said he was seen leaning in with his arms and hands on the car, twenty minutes before those prints were lifted.

How astonishing is your certainty on this! That a person acknowledged and witnessed to be in close proximity to an area of the car with their hands within inches of the prints--you just know they did not touch there. You claim to know that, as certainty, as if it is a fact. That is what you claim.

Now the unspoken elephant in the room is there is a fact upon which you and I are agreed: that those prints have been found definitively to be from someone other than Oswald; Oswald is excluded as having left those prints. If the shooter left those prints, Oswald is exculpated right there, hands down, no pun intended.

An outside person not knowing better might suspect you, the defender par excellence of the Oswald-killed-Tippit case, just possibly might be influenced in your certainty concerning this matter of the fingerprints by your certainty that Oswald was that shooter, and therefore cannot have left those prints, in a reverse-engineering backward logic. However, that is not your stated reason. An outside person might think maybe that could be your real reason, but since that is not admitted, other bogus reasons may be grasped to frame the desired conclusion: the dogmatic claim of certainty that the killer did not leave those prints.

It was not easy to get you to state reasons for your statement of certainty when I asked, but now that you have answered the question of "why", you give two reasons which have no substance as a basis for certainty that someone did not leave fingerprints.

These two reasons you have given have not been claimed by anyone else on earth as proof for the conclusion of negative certainty you are claiming. You cannot cite Myers citing the two reasons you have given for a negative certainty, and I am quite sure Myers never will, because the two reasons you have given evaporate under the mildest of scrutiny. They do not establish the certainty that you claim to conclude from those two reasons. 

First, you have repeated like a mantra: "no witnesses saw".

Well hell's bells Bill, no witness was in a position to see the killer touch the right front fender if he had. Helen Markham from her position could not see through the car to have seen the fender below her line of sight on the other side of her. Who else was even looking? Or if they were, from a block distant on the other side of the street, the right front fender on the passenger's side also would be blocked from their view, and it was quite a distance, and are you sure they have noticed? How many witnesses do you think were even looking at the right front fender of the car during the moments of the shooting?

How long does it take to touch the top of a fender of a car and not be noticed when no one is looking?  

Citing "no witnesses saw" when no witnesses would have seen (and no witness saw whoever put those prints there in any case) is unbelievably weak for you to cite as a basis for certainty that someone who could have been next to a fender of a car did not touch that fender and leave the fingerprints found there twenty minutes later.

And second, your only other reason given, you express a lack of ability to imagine how it could be that a man standing near a right front fender, with hands which could have been immediately over the position of the fingerprints in a standing position if he was that far forward, might in the course of a shooting over the hood, have had some occasion to place a hand on that fender, whether in a momentary intentional crouch for balance, as part of a momentary stumble, for momentary balance while reaching down to pick up something, or some other unknown cause.

You just can't imagine that any of those are possible! That's your reason for claiming certainty the killer's hands never touched the car there!

You don't deny that the killer could have been at that right front fender with his hands immediately above where the prints were found when the killer was in a standing position.

You simply deny capability to imagine how he could have touched that fender even if he was standing right there. Because if you could imagine that that was possible, then there would no longer be certainty that it didn't happen, and there would be gone your reason for ruling out that the killer left the fingerprints found at the passenger door. 

The analogy with the abandoned jacket, C162

Do you think the jacket found in the parking lot of the gas station, C162, was abandoned by the killer?

I do. What about you? Of course you do.

But the same arguments you are citing as stated reasons for certainty that the killer of Tippit did not leave fingerprints on the patrol car in the same way would logically prove the killer of Tippit was not the owner of the C162 jacket.

Just imagine if C162, let us say hypothetically, had been found not to belong to Oswald as a conclusive finding of fact for some reason.

I can just hear you then using the same arguments against linking C162 to the killer of Tippit, as you are now using against linking the fingerprints to the killer of Tippit.

No witness saw the killer throw the C162 jacket under the car in the parking lot behind the gas station, you would say.

"You have failed to prove any scenario by which the killer threw that jacket there", I can hear you saying, with equal bombast and certainty as in the case of the fingerprints.

Its the same thing, same nature of argument. It is parallel.

Both are circumstantial arguments as to actions reconstructed to bring about the physical evidence, in ways not directly witnessed. 

The difference is you are gung-ho (and properly so) concerning one of these, the case of C162, but argue the opposite in the case of the fingerprints.

What is the variable that accounts for the opposing treatments of these two roughly parallel cases? In both cases involving a non-witnessed but circumstantial-evidence situation? 

I think we both know what the variable is that accounts for the difference in treatment. One of the two has been excluded as being Oswald. The other hasn't. 

Explains it all?

A reasonable person would say it is ludicrous to say something certainly did not happen in a situation where there is absolutely no disproof that something did not happen, other than a claim that you cannot imagine how a killer of Tippit might have been at the position of that fender, and reached for a moment with a free hand as he stumbled, or crouched, or reached down to pick up something, or took a step beyond the right front fender (still on the passenger side) to get a line-of-sight shot into Tippit's head (from the killer's side of the car), while Tippit was prone on the ground.

Any of those scenarios could involve putting a handprint on a fender for balance or by accident. Just for a moment. So quick, none of the witnesses not in a position to have seen anyway, would notice.

You cite your lack of imagination of seeing how someone known to be standing near a fender, and who could have been standing directly over it, could have put a hand on that fender for any reason, as your basis for certainty that he did not touch. 

Your claim of certainty that the killer was not the individual who left those fingerprints on the Tippit patrol car twenty minutes before they were lifted makes no more sense than if someone cited the same two reasons to you as proof of certainty that the killer of Tippit did not abandon the C162 jacket. 

You would reject such an argument, and rightly so.

And I reject your parallel argument applied to the fingerprints, and rightly so.

 

Mr. BENAVIDES - The other man was standing to the right side of the car, riders side of the car, and was standing right in front of the windshield on the right front fender. And then I heard the shot.  

Mrs. MARKHAM. I saw the man come over to the car very slow, leaned and put his arms just like this, he leaned over in this window and looked in this window. 
Mr. BALL. He put his arms on the window ledge? 
Mrs. MARKHAM. The window was down. 
Mr. BALL. It was? 
Mrs. MARKHAM. Yes, sir. 
Mr. BALL. Put his arms on the window ledge? 
Mrs. MARKHAM. On the ledge of the window.  

Mrs. MARKHAM. That is right. And the man went over to the car, put his hands on the window-- 
Mr. DULLES. The window was open? 
Mrs. MARKHAM. Leaned over like this. 
Mr. DULLES. Let me see. Was that on the right-hand side of the car, or where the driver was? 
Mrs. MARKHAM. It was on the opposite side of the car. 
Mr. DULLES. Opposite side of the car from the driver, yes. 
Mrs. MARKHAM. Yes. The window was down, and I know it was down, I know, and he put his arms and leaned over, I don't know what they were talking about, I didn't hear it. Then he stepped back in a few minutes, stepped back two steps. 

Jimmy Burt:

"[The killer of Officer Tippit] put his hands on the right side of the car as he leaned down and talked in the window." (interview of Jimmy Burt by Al Chapman, 1968, cited Myers, With Malice, 776)

Twenty minutes later prints found there.

Not from Oswald. 

 

Do you think the jacket found in the parking lot of the gas station, C162, was abandoned by the killer?

I do. What about you? Of course you do.

 

Yes, I believe the jacket found behind the Texaco was ditched by the killer.  But there's no way it can ever proven to a certainty.

 

 

But the same arguments you are citing as stated reasons for certainty that the killer of Tippit did not leave fingerprints on the patrol car in the same way would logically prove the killer of Tippit was not the owner of the C162 jacket.

Just imagine if C162, let us say hypothetically, had been found not to belong to Oswald as a conclusive finding of fact for some reason.

I can just hear you then using the same arguments against linking C162 to the killer of Tippit, as you are now using against linking the fingerprints to the killer of Tippit.

No witness saw the killer throw the C162 jacket under the car in the parking lot behind the gas station, you would say.

"You have failed to prove any scenario by which the killer threw that jacket there", I can hear you saying, with equal bombast and certainty as in the case of the fingerprints.

Its the same thing, same nature of argument. It is parallel.

 

You've completely missed the point.  This is where you're goofing up.

 

I have never stated that it is a fact that the jacket found behind the Texaco was most definitely the killer's jacket.

 

The point that I have made, over and over again, is this....

 

Forget Tenth and Patton.  Forget the jacket found behind the Texaco station.  Oswald left the rooming house on Beckley, zipping up a jacket as he went out the door.  He is seen on Jefferson in front of the shoe store with no jacket.  Why would Oswald ditch the jacket between the rooming house on Beckley and the shoe store on Jefferson?

 

 

The difference is you are gung-ho (and properly so) concerning one of these, the case of C162, but argue the opposite in the case of the fingerprints.

 

No. Read above.

 

 

Edited April 16, 2023 by Bill Brown

[Greg Doudna]

3 hours ago, Bill Brown said:

You've completely missed the point.  This is where you're goofing up.

I have never stated that it is a fact that the jacket found behind the Texaco was most definitely the killer's jacket.

But you allow that its possible, you don't raise all sorts of objections, to that jacket as the killer's jacket. You "believe the jacket found behind the Texaco was ditched by the killer.  But there's no way it can ever proven to a certainty."

Which is a fair assessment.

You do not allow for the same possibility with the fingerprints coming from the killer, as you do for that jacket coming from the killer. 

That is what is inconsistent. They really are parallel issues in principle.

I do not claim certainty on fingerprint grounds alone that the killer left those fingerprints. In parallel with you on the jacket, I "believe the fingerprints found on the Tippit patrol car were put there by the killer. But there's no way it can ever [be] proven to a certainty".

Echoing your wording.  

Edited April 17, 2023 by Greg Doudna

[Bill Brown]

15 minutes ago, Greg Doudna said:

But you allow that its possible, you don't raise all sorts of objections, to that jacket as the killer's jacket. You "believe the jacket found behind the Texaco was ditched by the killer.  But there's no way it can ever proven to a certainty."

Which is a fair assessment.

You do not allow for the same possibility with the fingerprints coming from the killer, as you do for that jacket coming from the killer. 

That is what is inconsistent. They really are parallel issues in principle.

I do not claim certainty on fingerprint grounds alone that the killer left those fingerprints. Like you, I "believe the fingerprints found on the Tippit patrol car were put there by the killer. But there's no way it can ever [be] proven to a certainty".

Echoing your wording.  

 

You do not allow for the same possibility with the fingerprints coming from the killer, as you do for that jacket coming from the killer. 

 

Correct.  Because Oswald was identified by multiple witnesses as being the man they saw either shoot Tippit or run from the scene with a gun in his hands.  Oswald left the rooming house in a jacket.  Oswald is seen in front of the shoe store with no jacket.  Oswald's gun is linked, through ballistic testing, to the shells found at the scene.  Microscopic fibers found inside one of the sleeves of the jacket matched test fibers removed from Oswald's arrest shirt.

 

In other words, the evidence points to Oswald as being Tippit's killer.  The evidence points to Oswald ditching his jacket.  A jacket was found with matching fibers to the shirt he was wearing.  Marina Oswald said the jacket found behind the Texaco was her husband's jacket.

 

Regarding the prints on the patrol car, there is no evidence that the killer touched the right front fender.  The killer probably didn't even touch the door, but that part doesn't really matter.

 

You said it was a 95% certainty, or a 99% certainty (I don't recall what percentage of certainty you used), that the prints on the right front fender belonged to the killer.  That was a nonsensical statement.  You have no grounds for making such a statement.

 

There is solid evidence that the jacket was Oswald's.  There is no evidence at all that the prints on the right front fender belonged to the killer.

 

 

I do not claim certainty on fingerprint grounds alone that the killer left those fingerprints. Like you, I "believe the fingerprints found on the Tippit patrol car were put there by the killer. But there's no way it can ever [be] proven to a certainty".

Echoing your wording.  

 

Just for clarity, I do not believe even for a second that the prints lifted off the patrol car belonged to Tippit's killer.  I know what you meant to say here but others could be confused (especially considering this crowd here on this forum).  Please try to be more clear from now on.

[Greg Doudna]

2 hours ago, Bill Brown said:

How about this... I am asking you to speculate, so feel free... In one or two paragraphs, please explain how it all goes down where the shooter placed his hand on the right front fender.  Remember, it must make sense and it must be reasonable.

I say the killer had no cause to ever touch the right front fender.  Make it make sense that he would.

YOU are the one who said that the killer touched the right front fender.  You placed a percentage of probability, something like 95% or whatever it was.  I say that's a bunch of bull.

The basic point on the fender is that those are from the same individual who put the prints on the passenger door where the killer was seen leaning in and Helen Markham says she saw his arms up leaning on to the car. 

We know the killer was in proximity to both locations just twenty minutes before the prints were lifted. It doesn't matter whether any witness saw hands on the car directly, or whether the one or two who say they did are reliable; the killer was there, had opportunity. He had means: his two hands. He did not have motive but no motive is needed in nearly all fingerprint cases, they are accidental. 

The positive argument is an inference from a negative argument: that the fender prints are not a likely position for anyone to put their hand on to. Yet someone did. Who could that possibly be?

Well, we have one item of information, a factual finding: it was the person who put their hands on the right front passenger door. Just for whatever reason moved back and away from that passenger door, and went to the right front of the car, and put their hand on that fender there. Now what individual who would have been in proximity to Tippit's patrol car does that sound like? 

You can object that you cannot imagine why anyone standing next to a fender of a car would reach down and touch it. But that objection applies to all others, including the one who actually did touch it. Your objection objects to too much. Your objection suggests that all humans are excluded from having left fingerprints on that fender because you cannot imagine why any human would want to put their hand on that fender.

The point is there are multiple ways someone could touch a fender they are standing next to.

You ask me for a scenario. If I give a scenario you are going to jump all over pointing out (correctly) that it isn't proven and I have no proof for it. You will confuse my answering your question of possible scenario as if I am saying that is the way it happened.

I have already given a few in passing--the stumble and recovery ... the reaching out for balance in a momentary crouch ... 

But here is a possible scenario, so long as you understand I don't know how it happened exactly, am not claiming to know, and don't feel I need to claim to know.

A possible analysis

First a finding of fact: the prints on the right front fender were a right handprint from a right hand.

Therefore (reasoning), if that was the gunman, the gunman was left-handed, since the hand on the fender would be for balance from the free hand not the hand holding the gun. 

So imagine a left-handed gunman. This accounts for movement of the gunman further forward past the windshield than if shooting from the right hand, since the left hand is on the left side. To get a good shot across the windshield with a left hand, the shooter will be at least halfway or more forward toward the front of the car. (And Benevides, a good-quality witness only a few feet away, seems in his wording to put the shooter at the right front fender location on the passenger side of the car explicitly.)

Now imagine one wants to explain that bullet right in the right temple in terms other than a fortuitously lucky accident. That shot so perfect for a coup de grace except there was no point-blank or contact shot coup de grace. That can be known as fact (I am indebted here to Steve Roe for a private discussion on this point of the autopsy, not that he agrees with or is responsible for the rest of my interpretation)--it can be known as a fact, not speculation, that there was no point-blank or contact coup de grace shot into Tippit because a pointblank shot would have left powder and the autopsy found none at that wound.

And a contact shot pressed into the skin in some cases might not leave powder but if so will always result in stellated triangular skin tears due to pressure under the skin, which is not the case either in the Tippit temple wound.

Therefore, no pointblank or contact coup de grace, excluded on autopsy grounds alone. Moriarty of HSCA was just on a wrong path on that. Anything I may have said before on a pointblank or contact coup de grace was in error, it didn't happen that way. 

But imagine a killing by an experienced shooter (i.e. not Oswald). In which this was an execution, a hit, not a passion or impulse killing. In which Tippit did not call over the gunman, but Tippit, familiar in the neighborhood and someone knew when and where he would be, and the gunman called Tippit over as Tippit may have arrived for some other purpose, the gunman from the sidewalk flagged him down. The back and forth in directions seen by the witnesses is just the gunman, having arrived there walking from the east, was going back and forth to get to the patrol car as the patrol car slowed, to get to the window to speak to Tippit. The gunman flagged down Tippit, Tippit did not flag down the pedestrian. Then Tippit was ambushed and killed and it was Tippit going into an ambush.

In that killing then imagine that it matters to the shooter that the victim not survive, not be able to talk before dying. Assume the gunman is an experienced accurate shot with a snub-nosed .38, acquired through practice.

Go back to the odd fact: there is that perfectly placed right temple bullet hit, so perfect for a head shot, yet ... second fact: it did not get there from an up-close point-blank or contact shot (autopsy finding). But it looks a little too good and perfect to be coincidental or accidental as in hit by accident there as Tippit was falling backward. It just looks so perfect, a shot right into the brain, instant death, he ain't gonna say dying words to anyone now, same effect as if there had been a pointblank or contact coup de grace finale shot. 

Reconstruction: the killer not only went to the right front corner of the car where Benavides' testimony seems to place him and not inconsistent with Helen Markham, but goes a foot or two still further beyond the front of the car, still in that right front fender proximity, but just enough in front to fire at Tippit from ca. 20 feet away (or however many feet it was) to Tippit now prone on the ground with his right temple exposed to line of fire from the shooter. The shooter puts a head shot into Tippit's head not over the hood hitting an upright Tippit while he was falling, but from just in front of the car on his side from ca. 20 feet, into the right temple of Tippit who is down and on the pavement (from ca. 20 feet), with the shot hitting that accurately because the shooter is experienced and accurate. 

It is a coup de grace at ca. 20 feet, so to speak.

In agreement with the witnesses who saw the gunman at that right front area of the car before backing off to the sidewalk on Tenth in his known path. In agreement with the autopsy, lack of stellate wound and lack of powder ring or tattooing in agreement with ca. 20 feet away. Right into the temple--not accidental but intentional from a shooter capable of that accuracy with a snub-nosed .38 at ca. 20 feet. 

With that final shot to Tippit's head which hit in the temple from just in front of the right front fender, that bullet's hitting Tippit in the brain confirmed visually by the shooter at ca. 20 feet, mission accomplished, shooter then leaves, back to the sidewalk as seen by Benavides and the gunman picked up by other witnesses as he went west on Tenth and south on Patton as known. 

A left-handed shooter uses his right hand on the fender for balance in an intentional partial crouch for momentary peering around the front of the car to ensure it is safe to do so before moving out bodily into the open a foot or two in front of the car to fire a single shot at Tippit's head when Tippit is prone on the ground, from at ca. 20 feet.

It happens so fast, its all over, all the shots, in seconds.

There is the handprint on that fender, from his right hand, balance for a moment.

It is a more satisfying explanation for the bullet in the right temple than the explanation of hitting in such a perfect position by accident as Tippit was falling from upright.

Edited April 17, 2023 by Greg Doudna

[Bill Brown]

24 minutes ago, Greg Doudna said:

The basic point on the fender is that those are from the same individual who put the prints on the passenger door where the killer was seen leaning in and Helen Markham says she saw his arms up leaning on to the car. 

We know the killer was in proximity to both locations just twenty minutes before the prints were lifted. It doesn't matter whether any witness saw hands on the car directly, or whether the one or two who say they did are reliable; the killer was there, had opportunity. He had means: his two hands. He did not have motive but no motive is needed in nearly all fingerprint cases, they are accidental. 

The positive argument is an inference from a negative argument: that the fender prints are not a likely position for anyone to put their hand on to. Yet someone did. Who could that possibly be?

Well, we have one item of information, a factual finding: it was the person who put their hands on the right front passenger door. Just for whatever reason moved back and away from that passenger door, and went to the right front of the car, and put their hand on that fender there. Now what individual who would have been in proximity to Tippit's patrol car does that sound like? 

You can object that you cannot imagine why anyone standing next to a fender of a car would reach down and touch it. But that objection applies to all others, including the one who actually did touch it. Your objection objects to too much. Your objection suggests that all humans are excluded from having left fingerprints on that fender because you cannot imagine why any human would want to put their hand on that fender.

The point is there are multiple ways someone could touch a fender they are standing next to.

You ask me for a scenario. If I give a scenario you are going to jump all over pointing out (correctly) that it isn't proven and I have no proof for it. You will confuse my answering your question of possible scenario as if I am saying that is the way it happened.

I have already given a few in passing--the stumble and recovery ... the reaching out for balance in a momentary crouch ... 

But here is a possible scenario, so long as you understand I don't know how it happened exactly, am not claiming to know, and don't feel I need to claim to know.

A possible analysis

First a finding of fact: the prints on the right front fender were a right handprint from a right hand.

Therefore (reasoning), if that was the gunman, the gunman was left-handed, since the hand on the fender would be for balance from the free hand not the hand holding the gun. 

So imagine a left-handed gunman. This accounts for movement of the gunman further forward past the windshield than if shooting from the right hand, since the left hand is on the left side. To get a good shot across the windshield with a left hand, the shooter will be at least halfway or more forward toward the front of the car. (And Benevides, a good-quality witness only a few feet away, seems in his wording to put the shooter at the right front fender location on the passenger side of the car explicitly.)

Now imagine one wants to explain that bullet right in the right temple in terms other than a fortuitously lucky accident. That shot so perfect for a coup de grace except there was no point-blank or contact shot coup de grace. That can be known as fact (I am indebted here to Steve Roe for a private discussion on this point of the autopsy, not that he agrees with or is responsible for the rest of my interpretation)--it can be known as a fact, not speculation, that there was no point-blank or contact coup de grace shot into Tippit because a pointblank shot would have left powder and the autopsy found none at that wound.

And a contact shot pressed into the skin in some cases might not leave powder but if so will always result in stellated triangular skin tears due to pressure under the skin, which is not the case either in the Tippit temple wound.

Therefore, no pointblank or contact coup de grace, excluded on autopsy grounds alone. Moriarty of HSCA was just on a wrong path on that. Anything I may have said before on a pointblank or contact coup de grace was in error, it didn't happen that way. 

But imagine a killing by an experienced shooter (i.e. not Oswald). In which this was an execution, a hit, not a passion or impulse killing. In which Tippit did not call over the gunman, but Tippit, familiar in the neighborhood and someone knew when and where he would be, and the gunman called Tippit over as Tippit may have arrived for some other purpose, the gunman from the sidewalk flagged him down. The back and forth in directions seen by the witnesses is just the gunman, having arrived there walking from the east, was going back and forth to get to the patrol car as the patrol car slowed, to get to the window to speak to Tippit. The gunman flagged down Tippit, Tippit did not flag down the pedestrian. Then Tippit was ambushed and killed and it was Tippit going into an ambush.

In that killing then imagine that it matters to the shooter that the victim not survive, not be able to talk before dying. Assume the gunman is an experienced accurate shot with a snub-nosed .38, acquired through practice.

Go back to the odd fact: there is that perfectly placed right temple bullet hit, so perfect for a head shot, yet ... second fact: it did not get there from an up-close point-blank or contact shot (autopsy finding). But it looks a little too good and perfect to be coincidental or accidental as in hit by accident there as Tippit was falling backward. It just looks so perfect, a shot right into the brain, instant death, he ain't gonna say dying words to anyone now, same effect as if there had been a pointblank or contact coup de grace finale shot. 

Reconstruction: the killer not only went to the right front corner of the car where Benavides' testimony seems to place him and not inconsistent with Helen Markham, but goes a foot or two still further beyond the front of the car, still in that right front fender proximity, but just enough in front to fire at Tippit from ca. 20 feet away (or however many feet it was) to Tippit now prone on the ground with his right temple exposed to line of fire from the shooter. The shooter puts a head shot into Tippit's head not over the hood hitting an upright Tippit while he was falling, but from just in front of the car on his side from ca. 20 feet, into the right temple of Tippit who is down and on the pavement (from ca. 20 feet), with the shot hitting that accurately because the shooter is experienced and accurate. 

It is a coup de grace at ca. 20 feet, so to speak.

In agreement with the witnesses who saw the gunman at that right front area of the car before backing off to the sidewalk on Tenth in his known path. In agreement with the autopsy, lack of stellate wound and lack of powder ring or tattooing in agreement with ca. 20 feet away. Right into the temple--not accidental but intentional from a shooter capable of that accuracy with a snub-nosed .38 at ca. 20 feet. 

With that final shot to Tippit's head which hit in the temple from just in front of the right front fender, that bullet's hitting Tippit in the brain confirmed visually by the shooter at ca. 20 feet, mission accomplished, shooter then leaves, back to the sidewalk as seen by Benavides and the gunman picked up by other witnesses as he went west on Tenth and south on Patton as known. 

A left-handed shooter uses his right hand on the fender for balance in an intentional partial crouch for momentary peering around the front of the car to ensure it is safe to do so before moving out bodily into the open a foot or two in front of the car to fire a single shot at Tippit's head when Tippit is prone on the ground, from at ca. 20 feet.

It happens so fast, its all over, all the shots, in seconds.

There is the handprint on that fender, from his right hand, balance for a moment.

It is a more satisfying explanation for the bullet in the right temple than the explanation of hitting in such a perfect position by accident as Tippit was falling from upright.

 

The positive argument is an inference from a negative argument: that the fender prints are not a likely position for anyone to put their hand on to. Yet someone did. Who could that possibly be?

 

You seem to be under the mistaken impression that the prints lifted from the patrol car (both the passenger door and the right front fender) MUST be associated with the shooting.

 

It's like you think it's an impossibility that no one else could have touched those two places on the car EXCEPT the man who killed Tippit.

 

[Michael Griffith]

19 hours ago, Bill Brown said:

You're still evading the key issues and doing so in a disingenuous manner. Let's see if we can unpack the situation with Whaley with a series of factual observations.

I'll be happy to discuss any of this with you just as soon as you admit that you were wrong to say that Whaley, during the lineup, picked out Knapp and not Oswald.

Once you (finally) admit this, we can move forward.

Uh, well, the problem is that my statement is defensible based on Whaley's own WC testimony. I did not say that Whaley said that he chose Knapp. On the other hand, writing quickly and wanting to move on to the point about the pickup time in the timesheet, I did not explain the basis of my comment that Whaley chose Knapp. I should have explained that although Whaley said he chose Oswald he also repeatedly said that he chose the No. 2 man and that the No. 2 man was Knapp, not Oswald. I should have also explained that Whaley even specified that the man he chose was the third man to come out to the lineup, and that this was Knapp, not Oswald. And I should have added that Whaley even correctly noted that the men entered the lineup from left to right, which makes it even more puzzling that Whaley kept insisting that he chose the No. 2, and that he stuck to this even when confronted with the typed police statement that said he chose the No. 3 man.

To address your rather dishonest nit-picking, I've edited that statement in my original reply to read as follows:

Quote

Whaley's "identification" of Oswald at the police lineup was questionable. Although at one point Whaley told the WC that he selected Oswald, he also repeatedly insisted that he selected the No. 2 man and that the man he selected was the third man to come out into the lineup. The No. 2 man, the man who came out third into the lineup, was not Oswald but was an eighteen-year-old named David Knapp. Whaley also gave contradictory testimony about his police statement. The first statement taken from Whaley, handwritten by Officer Montgomery, said nothing about Whaley having chosen the No. 3 man (Oswald was the No. 3 man). 

To all but the willfully blind, it is obvious that Whaley had doubts, if not guilt, about his "identification" of Oswald in the lineup and was dropping fairly obvious hints that there was something wrong with his "identification." 

The real crux of the matter is that Whaley's "identification" of Oswald in the police lineup was hardly "positive" when considered in light of Whaley's WC testimony and the irregularities in the police statements taken from Whaley.

This, in turn, takes us back to the crucial 12:30 pickup time noted in Whaley's timesheet, which categorically rules out Oswald as the passenger. 

[Greg Doudna]

19 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

The basic point on the fender is that those are from the same individual who put the prints on the passenger door where the killer was seen leaning in and Helen Markham says she saw his arms up leaning on to the car. 

We know the killer was in proximity to both locations just twenty minutes before the prints were lifted. It doesn't matter whether any witness saw hands on the car directly, or whether the one or two who say they did are reliable; the killer was there, had opportunity. He had means: his two hands. He did not have motive but no motive is needed in nearly all fingerprint cases, they are accidental. 

The positive argument is an inference from a negative argument: that the fender prints are not a likely position for anyone to put their hand on to. Yet someone did. Who could that possibly be?

Well, we have one item of information, a factual finding: it was the person who put their hands on the right front passenger door. Just for whatever reason moved back and away from that passenger door, and went to the right front of the car, and put their hand on that fender there. Now what individual who would have been in proximity to Tippit's patrol car does that sound like? 

You can object that you cannot imagine why anyone standing next to a fender of a car would reach down and touch it. But that objection applies to all others, including the one who actually did touch it. Your objection objects to too much. Your objection suggests that all humans are excluded from having left fingerprints on that fender because you cannot imagine why any human would want to put their hand on that fender.

The point is there are multiple ways someone could touch a fender they are standing next to.

You ask me for a scenario. If I give a scenario you are going to jump all over pointing out (correctly) that it isn't proven and I have no proof for it. You will confuse my answering your question of possible scenario as if I am saying that is the way it happened.

I have already given a few in passing--the stumble and recovery ... the reaching out for balance in a momentary crouch ... 

But here is a possible scenario, so long as you understand I don't know how it happened exactly, am not claiming to know, and don't feel I need to claim to know.

A possible analysis

First a finding of fact: the prints on the right front fender were a right handprint from a right hand.

Therefore (reasoning), if that was the gunman, the gunman was left-handed, since the hand on the fender would be for balance from the free hand not the hand holding the gun. 

So imagine a left-handed gunman. This accounts for movement of the gunman further forward past the windshield than if shooting from the right hand, since the left hand is on the left side. To get a good shot across the windshield with a left hand, the shooter will be at least halfway or more forward toward the front of the car. (And Benevides, a good-quality witness only a few feet away, seems in his wording to put the shooter at the right front fender location on the passenger side of the car explicitly.)

Now imagine one wants to explain that bullet right in the right temple in terms other than a fortuitously lucky accident. That shot so perfect for a coup de grace except there was no point-blank or contact shot coup de grace. That can be known as fact (I am indebted here to Steve Roe for a private discussion on this point of the autopsy, not that he agrees with or is responsible for the rest of my interpretation)--it can be known as a fact, not speculation, that there was no point-blank or contact coup de grace shot into Tippit because a pointblank shot would have left powder and the autopsy found none at that wound.

And a contact shot pressed into the skin in some cases might not leave powder but if so will always result in stellated triangular skin tears due to pressure under the skin, which is not the case either in the Tippit temple wound.

Therefore, no pointblank or contact coup de grace, excluded on autopsy grounds alone. Moriarty of HSCA was just on a wrong path on that. Anything I may have said before on a pointblank or contact coup de grace was in error, it didn't happen that way. 

But imagine a killing by an experienced shooter (i.e. not Oswald). In which this was an execution, a hit, not a passion or impulse killing. In which Tippit did not call over the gunman, but Tippit, familiar in the neighborhood and someone knew when and where he would be, and the gunman called Tippit over as Tippit may have arrived for some other purpose, the gunman from the sidewalk flagged him down. The back and forth in directions seen by the witnesses is just the gunman, having arrived there walking from the east, was going back and forth to get to the patrol car as the patrol car slowed, to get to the window to speak to Tippit. The gunman flagged down Tippit, Tippit did not flag down the pedestrian. Then Tippit was ambushed and killed and it was Tippit going into an ambush.

In that killing then imagine that it matters to the shooter that the victim not survive, not be able to talk before dying. Assume the gunman is an experienced accurate shot with a snub-nosed .38, acquired through practice.

Go back to the odd fact: there is that perfectly placed right temple bullet hit, so perfect for a head shot, yet ... second fact: it did not get there from an up-close point-blank or contact shot (autopsy finding). But it looks a little too good and perfect to be coincidental or accidental as in hit by accident there as Tippit was falling backward. It just looks so perfect, a shot right into the brain, instant death, he ain't gonna say dying words to anyone now, same effect as if there had been a pointblank or contact coup de grace finale shot. 

Reconstruction: the killer not only went to the right front corner of the car where Benavides' testimony seems to place him and not inconsistent with Helen Markham, but goes a foot or two still further beyond the front of the car, still in that right front fender proximity, but just enough in front to fire at Tippit from ca. 20 feet away (or however many feet it was) to Tippit now prone on the ground with his right temple exposed to line of fire from the shooter. The shooter puts a head shot into Tippit's head not over the hood hitting an upright Tippit while he was falling, but from just in front of the car on his side from ca. 20 feet, into the right temple of Tippit who is down and on the pavement (from ca. 20 feet), with the shot hitting that accurately because the shooter is experienced and accurate. 

It is a coup de grace at ca. 20 feet, so to speak.

In agreement with the witnesses who saw the gunman at that right front area of the car before backing off to the sidewalk on Tenth in his known path. In agreement with the autopsy, lack of stellate wound and lack of powder ring or tattooing in agreement with ca. 20 feet away. Right into the temple--not accidental but intentional from a shooter capable of that accuracy with a snub-nosed .38 at ca. 20 feet. 

With that final shot to Tippit's head which hit in the temple from just in front of the right front fender, that bullet's hitting Tippit in the brain confirmed visually by the shooter at ca. 20 feet, mission accomplished, shooter then leaves, back to the sidewalk as seen by Benavides and the gunman picked up by other witnesses as he went west on Tenth and south on Patton as known. 

A left-handed shooter uses his right hand on the fender for balance in an intentional partial crouch for momentary peering around the front of the car to ensure it is safe to do so before moving out bodily into the open a foot or two in front of the car to fire a single shot at Tippit's head when Tippit is prone on the ground, from at ca. 20 feet.

It happens so fast, its all over, all the shots, in seconds.

There is the handprint on that fender, from his right hand, balance for a moment.

It is a more satisfying explanation for the bullet in the right temple than the explanation of hitting in such a perfect position by accident as Tippit was falling from upright.

Bill you asked for a scenario, said it was ok to speculate. I gave one, what do you think? How do you rate this one and do you still hold it is certain that a gunman at a right front passenger window and then right front fender can be excluded as the person who touched the car on the right front fender? 

Separate question: would you give a scenario on how you can imagine a different person might reasonably leave fingerprints in those two locations,  unlike the gunman whom you have said is excluded as that person? Thanks.