Into the Nightmare: A Milestone

[James DiEugenio]

Jack M on Tatum continued:  

What Tatum describes next was seen by no other witnesses.

Tatum looked in his rearview mirror and saw the policeman laying in the street. The gunman, still on the passenger side of the squad car, walked to the rear of Tippit’s car, hesitated, came around the back of the car, then walked up along the driver’s side of the car … and shot Tippit one final time at close range. (McBride, p. 496)

The gunman, according to Tatum, then looked around, surveyed the situation, and started a slow run west in Tatum’s direction. Tatum put his car in gear, drove forward down 10^th Street to avoid danger, and kept his eye on the gunman in the rearview mirror.

Tatum said he could see the gunman very clearly and that the corners of his mouth curled up, like in a smile, which was distinctive and made this individual stand out. Then, Tatum delivers his punch line, the big money words the PBS audience is waiting for:

“And I was within 10-15 feet of that individual and it was Lee Harvey Oswald.”

Now, to the casual viewer of this PBS documentary, Mr. Tatum has just laid to rest any and all the conspiracy theories surrounding the murder of J.D. Tippit—and has apparently put the final nail in the coffin of Lee Harvey Oswald. Tatum is so smooth in his delivery, so convincing, so sincere: 10-15 feet? How could he have not identified Oswald?

[James DiEugenio]

Jack M on Tatum continued:  

Frontline and PBS should be ashamed for having filmed this charade and then presenting it to the American public as fact. (The reader can see this interview at Youtube, under the title, “J. D. Tippit Murder Witness Jack Tatum”) Since the entire interview was shot from within Tatum’s vehicle, the viewer can’t see that, according to Tatum’s own description of events, the gunman was likely never closer than 100 feet of Mr. Tatum’s alleged position (in red). Here is the overhead satellite view of that intersection today, with the distance legend in the lower right corner (blue arrow points to 20 ft.):

According to a study cited by the Innocence Project, after 25 feet face perception diminishes. At about 150 feet, accurate face identification for people with normal vision drops to zero.

Could Jack Tatum, while watching a fleeing gunman in his rearview mirror from 100 feet or more away (and remember, Tatum said he drove forward again as the gunman approached), have been able to tell that the corners of the gunman’s mouth turned up? Positively ID him as Lee Harvey Oswald? A gunman in a rearview mirror who was ducking behind trees, bushes, Mr. Scoggins’ yellow cab, and all the while brandishing a pistol?

[James DiEugenio]

More on the tall tales of Mr. Tatum. 

Oh, yes, Mrs. Markham. Tatum first said he simply drove away and left the scene of the Tippit slaying. Later he explained that he came back to help poor Mrs. Markham, eventually driving her to a police station to give her statement. A noble gesture to be sure. Only problem is, DPD records indicate that Mrs. Markham was taken to DPD headquarters by Office George Hammer, not Mr. Tatum.

Tatum’s assertion that “Oswald” came within 10-15 feet of him may be an exaggeration of colossal proportion. However, Tatum’s other claim that “Oswald” circled the squad car and then shot Tippit—basically point blank “execution style”—is as absurd as anything Mrs. Markham told the Warren Commission in 1964. Yes, the eyewitness testimony in general was both conflicting and contradictory. Yes, Benavides and Scoggins missed witnessing crucial pieces of the crime as they went ducking for cover. And we can only guess at what Mrs. Markham actually saw. But while the eyewitness testimony may have been difficult if not impossible to reconcile, the ear witness testimony remained extremely consistent.

Witness after witness described Tippit as being killed by a fusillade of shots. They all heard basically the same thing: Pow pow pow pow.

 

Edited August 2, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[James DiEugenio]

Jack M sums up Mr. Tatum: 

Today, under analysis, his testimony has the quality of paper mache. Tatum saw things no one else saw and heard things no one else heard. And his identification of Oswald simply has little or no credibility from that distance. His alleged escorting of Markham is also dubious. It’s almost as if he was a salesman. The ruse, a highly pernicious one, has apparently succeeded—at least so far. Yet, in spite of all this—and because of late Frontline producer Mike Sullivan—his twist on critical events is continually presented as fact.

Let me add my own summary:  anyone today who tries to sell you on Mr. Tatum should not be trusted.

 

Edited August 2, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[Ron Bulman]

I had to laugh at myself.  I have the book, have read this, and never caught the fact Tatum saw all this through his Rear View Mirror.  This would have been laughed off by the defense in a trial.

For some reason it made me think of Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window.  Sorry to distract.

 

[James DiEugenio]

Nice one Ron.

As anyone can see so far, its pretty clear that the DPD was in the business of intimidating witnesses in the Tippit case.

That Edgar Lee Tippit's testimony to Joe McBride appears to be truthful. In that it can be backed up on more than one line.

That you will not see Nelson or Mentzel in the WR.

That the radio transcripts are questionable.

That the case presented by the Commission was not even supported by their own lawyers.

And as we have seen above, there is good reason for that.

Finally, the HSCA discovery of Tatum was stillborn, and the PBS use of him was very much ill  advised.

I don't think I have to deal with wrong way Calloway since Gil Jesus had done a nice job on him.

So I will now get to the point of what I think actually happened.

 

Edited August 2, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[James DiEugenio]

In my opinion, the fact that Thames TV allowed Vince Bugliosi, Tony Summers and Paul Hoch (the consultants) to include the Tippit case in the London TV trial was only more indicative of just how bad that show was.

The Tippit case should never be forensically or legally included with the JFK case in any discussion of the crimes of that day.

They are two separate cases.  As many have shown on this forum, you cannot even prove by any reasonable time table that Oswald was at the scene.  As we will also show, there simply is not a chain of custody on the alleged weapon.

I would argue that it was almost well nigh impossible for Oswald to be at the scene.  Remember, Roger Banister had just cracked the 4 minute mile in 1959. As Gil Jesus has shown no witness places the shooting of Tippit as late as the WR does. The most reliable witness, to my thinking, Bowley, proves it happened before 1:10 PM.

The reason I think Bugliosi insisted on including the Tippit case in the trial was to provide motive he did not have.  In other words, Oswald shot Tippit: therefore he had to have killed Kennedy out of fear.

Edited August 2, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[Joseph McBride]

Detective Jim Leavelle, the lead detective in the Tippit

case, told me it had nothing to do with the assassination.

Well, it did, partly in the sense that the DPD twisted

and falsified it to make Oswald seem guilty of both crimes.

He was arraigned only for the Tippit murder, not for

the murder of President Kennedy, although he was

charged with both crimes and was guilty of neither.

Also, Leavelle's statement was what would be called

in Watergate terms a "modified, limited hangout," because

Tippit was lured into a police trap while he and fellow

Officer Mentzel were hunting down Oswald as the patsy in the

assassination, from over an hour before the DPD

apprehended Oswald and at a time when they allegedly

did not know his identity. But in fact they knew who

he was and where he lived (and so on). There is more than one

reason that could have led the DPD to set up that trap. I

discuss these in INTO THE NIGHTMARE.

Edited August 2, 2022 by Joseph McBride

[Joseph McBride]

On the legal concerns of Warren Commission staff member Alfredda Scobey, etc., from my book INTO THE NIGHTMARE:

 

 

A SHAM INVESTIGATION

 

The Warren Report, which devotes much of its space to Lee Harvey Oswald’s biography, material largely irrelevant to the actual case, is devoid of much detail about J. D. Tippit or any real probing of the highly confusing and incomplete physical and eyewitness evidence surrounding the officer’s shooting. Sylvia Meagher refers to the commission’s “profound lack of interest in Tippit” and adds in her 1967 book, “We know strangely little about Tippit.” The commission’s lack of curiosity can be explained, at least in part, by its preordained conclusion that Oswald shot both men and by the fact that the Tippit killing was treated as one of the primary pieces of evidence that Oswald shot Kennedy. The reasoning was so circular it could cause vertigo.

The extent to which the commission was reluctant to conduct a genuine investigation of the Tippit killing is revealed in some of its unpublished documents. It was not until May 8, 1964 -- five months after the commission was formed and more than halfway through its investigation -- that a staff member, Alfredda Scobey (a protégée of Georgia senator and commission member Richard Russell), wrote a memo to General Counsel J. Lee Rankin stating, “As far as I can tell, none of the areas is responsible for handling any of the background or connections of Officer Tippit. Since he has been linked to both Oswald and Ruby by various rumors and since he was a principle [sic] figure in the events of November 22, I was wondering if any investigation of him has been undertaken.”

Rankin handwrote a note on her memo to assistant counsel Howard P. Willens: “Mr. Willens -- Please follow up.” Willens had been responsible in December 1963 for drawing up the areas of investigation that teams of Warren Commission lawyers would pursue, and came up with six such areas. As Edward Jay Epstein notes in Inquest, “This plan, it should be noted, did not provide for a separate investigation into the murder of Dallas Policeman J. D. Tippit. Instead, the Tippit investigation was considered to be part of the Area II investigation of the identity of the President’s assassin.” Thus, it was decided ahead of time that Tippit would be viewed only as having being slain by Oswald, the primary, if not sole, focus of the commission’s sham “investigation.” Rankin also responded to Scobey’s memo of concern by writing FBI director J. Edgar Hoover on May 11 to request that the Bureau conduct “a limited background investigation” of Tippit, including investigation of his record in the Dallas Police Department and interviewing of his family and his associates in and outside the police force. Rankin concluded, however, by stressing:

 

In the course of each of these interviews, as well as any others which you believe are appropriate, we would like the Bureau to inquire whether Officer Tippit had any associations with Lee Harvey Oswald or Jack L. Ruby. As I am sure you are aware, this request is designed to obtain certain basic information which can be relied upon to refute unfounded allegations which have developed in the course of this investigation.

 

In other words, the commission didn’t want to be told any bad news about Tippit. The slain patrolman had, after all, been given a hero’s funeral televised live in Dallas, and both Robert Kennedy and President Johnson had called his widow to express their condolences and admiration for what was then thought to be his bravery in confronting the fleeing assassin. Jacqueline Kennedy also exchanged warmly emotional correspondence with Marie Tippit and sent her an inscribed photo of the Kennedy family.

  Hoover replied in kind to Rankin’s request for a sham investigation, filing a nineteen-page report submitted by the Dallas FBI office eight days later. The report was published in Volume XXVI of the commission’s supplementary materials. (This is how the request and the report are reassuringly described, apparently without consciously facetious intent, by Bugliosi in Reclaiming History: “Because the Warren Commission’s investigation of the assassination was so very comprehensive, it even included a ‘limited background investigation’ of Officer J. D. Tippit and found nothing suspicious.”) The FBI report indeed gives the appearance of thoroughness in its coverage of the basic biographical data on Tippit and his family members but is superficial and scanty on the question of whether Tippit could have been involved with Oswald and Ruby, relying on predictable denials by Tippit’s widow and his fellow policemen.

Tippit was dutifully described by his immediate supervisor for the last ten years of his life, Sergeant Calvin Bud Owens, as

 

a morally upright person and a person about whom he had never heard anything derogatory. Sergeant OWENS rated TIPPIT as an average officer in work performance, who was well-liked, used good common sense and, as such, was a “good officer.” According to OWENS, TIPPIT had off-duty, part-time jobs [as a security guard] at Austin’s Barbecue and Stevens Park Theatre and, because of this, “didn’t have time to do any wrong.” TIPPIT was a devoted family man, who spent what free time he had either at home or with relatives. TIPPIT was well-liked by all the other officers. . . . OWENS described TIPPIT as a quiet, shy person.

 

These generally rosy descriptions do not match evidence subsequently developed suggesting that Tippit was a policeman of below-average rather than average performance (in eleven years on the force, he had never received a promotion) and other evidence that Tippit had been carrying on an extramarital affair and appeared to be chronically overextended financially, working the extra jobs to help pay the mortgages on two houses. The FBI reported Owens told them that “TIPPIT appeared to be resigned to the fact that, because of his limited education, he would be unable to advance very far within the Police Department, and TIPPIT appeared satisfied with his work. OWENS stated he believes TIPPIT took promotional examinations, but had no information as to the results, but believes that the lack of promotion was due to a lack of education.” Dallas Police Detective Morris Brumley, a boyhood friend of Tippit’s who attended school with him in Clarksville, told the FBI in 1964 that Tippit was “not ‘sharp enough’ to pass promotional examinations given by the Police Department.” Rio Sam Pierce, a lieutenant in the patrol division who “knew him fairly well,” told Larry A. Sneed for No More Silence, “Tippit was just a plain home boy who shuffled as he walked and seldom made eye contact. After many years as a patrolman, he was never promoted because of that inability to make eye contact and because he couldn’t do well on tests. Promotion required a written exam and an interview. In both cases, he would have failed.”

The Warren Report describes Tippit as “an officer with a good record during his more than 11 years with the police force” and quotes Chief Curry’s testimony that Tippit was “a very fine, dedicated officer.” Curry went on to paint a slightly qualified portrait of

 

a rather quiet, serious-minded young man. He seemed to be very devoted to his family, and he was an active church man. . . . He was not a real aggressive type officer. In fact, he seemed to be just a little bit shy, if you were to meet him, I believe, shy, retiring type, but certainly not afraid of anything. I think in his personnel investigation it showed that during, as he was growing up, sometimes his shyness was mistaken for perhaps fear, but that it only took a time or two for someone to exploit this to find out it wasn’t fear. It was merely a quiet, shy-type individual.

 

In light of the myriad problems with the physical and witness evidence, it is unlikely that if Oswald had lived, he could have been convicted of the Tippit killing or, indeed, in the assassination of the president. Scobey admitted as much when she offered her own partial dissent from the Warren Commission’s sloppy case in her article “A Lawyer’s Notes on the Warren Commission Report” in the January 1965 issue of the American Bar Association Journal. The former commission staff member, who had resumed her distinguished career in the Georgia bar, writes that a defense attorney, had Oswald lived, would have been able to exclude a great deal of evidence from a trial. She points out that many pieces of evidence had been improperly obtained or otherwise made known by the police in a manner prejudicial to Oswald. Furthermore, many of the links allegedly connecting him with various criminal activities, including both the assassination and the April 10, 1963, attempt on the life of Major General Edwin Walker, only existed in the accounts of Oswald’s widow, Marina, who could not have testified against her husband in court. (Scobey hints at the elements of coercion Marina faced from authorities but does not discuss how the widow’s cooperation had been obtained partly through threats of deportation to her native USSR. Marina’s many conflicting statements over the years, as she came to change her public views as to whether her husband was guilty of killing Kennedy, render her various accounts of the case and her husband’s character virtually unusable for the historical record.)

As for the Tippit murder, Scobey writes:

 

There remains the question of whether the Tippit murder would be admissible. As a subsequent similar offense it would be excluded. As part of a subsequent escape attempt it could not be shown until it first had been shown that an effort was being made to arrest him. Here the prosecution might succeed, on the proposition that the description being circulated of the President’s assassin was sufficient to raise an inference that Tippit intended to hold Oswald for questioning. However, the testimony of Mrs. Helen Markham, an eyewitness standing on the street corner, was merely that after the men talked, Tippit got out of the car on one side and Oswald walked forward on the other and shot him.
This witness was hysterical. Her initial description of Oswald, as well as facts she stated regarding the time of the occurrence, was inaccurate [Scobey’s point about the time discrepancy is dubious; see Chapter 13]. Her original identification of Oswald in a line-up occurred after she had been given sedatives, and she remained hysterical for several hours after the event. The admissibility of the Tippit murder, accordingly, is at least arguable.

Assuming it to be admissible, however, as part of the general flight picture, the transcripts show the usual contradictions which arise to plague the prosecution. Domingo Benavides, the eyewitness closest to Oswald, refused to identify him. . . . [Scobey goes on to discuss problems with the witness accounts given by Barbara Jeanette Davis and Virginia Davis, William W. Scoggins, and William Whaley, and with the police line-ups.] Oswald’s remonstrances against being placed with other persons in the line-up were so pronounced that any person could have picked him out as the accused without ever having seen him before. There are, however, a number of other witnesses who, while they did not see the actual shooting, did see Oswald leave the scene, and who would not be easy to attack.

 

Though Scobey tries her best to prop up the Warren Report’s case against Oswald, her honesty in admitting its flaws makes her sporadic efforts on behalf of the commission seem labored (her reference to witnesses who saw Oswald leave the scene, for instance, fails to note that their identifications of him were as tainted as those by Scoggins and Whaley). Indeed, it is hard to argue with Meagher’s conclusion in Accessories After the Fact: “In an adversary proceeding, the prosecution would have been hard put to sustain the validity of any of the arguments posed in the Warren Report, and defense counsel would have delighted in demolishing the so-called evidence, point by point.”

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 2, 2022 by Joseph McBride

[Benjamin Cole]

2 hours ago, Joseph McBride said:

On the legal concerns of Warren Commission staff member Alfredda Scobey, etc., from my book INTO THE NIGHTMARE:

 

 

A SHAM INVESTIGATION

 

The Warren Report, which devotes much of its space to Lee Harvey Oswald’s biography, material largely irrelevant to the actual case, is devoid of much detail about J. D. Tippit or any real probing of the highly confusing and incomplete physical and eyewitness evidence surrounding the officer’s shooting. Sylvia Meagher refers to the commission’s “profound lack of interest in Tippit” and adds in her 1967 book, “We know strangely little about Tippit.” The commission’s lack of curiosity can be explained, at least in part, by its preordained conclusion that Oswald shot both men and by the fact that the Tippit killing was treated as one of the primary pieces of evidence that Oswald shot Kennedy. The reasoning was so circular it could cause vertigo.

The extent to which the commission was reluctant to conduct a genuine investigation of the Tippit killing is revealed in some of its unpublished documents. It was not until May 8, 1964 -- five months after the commission was formed and more than halfway through its investigation -- that a staff member, Alfredda Scobey (a protégée of Georgia senator and commission member Richard Russell), wrote a memo to General Counsel J. Lee Rankin stating, “As far as I can tell, none of the areas is responsible for handling any of the background or connections of Officer Tippit. Since he has been linked to both Oswald and Ruby by various rumors and since he was a principle [sic] figure in the events of November 22, I was wondering if any investigation of him has been undertaken.”

Rankin handwrote a note on her memo to assistant counsel Howard P. Willens: “Mr. Willens -- Please follow up.” Willens had been responsible in December 1963 for drawing up the areas of investigation that teams of Warren Commission lawyers would pursue, and came up with six such areas. As Edward Jay Epstein notes in Inquest, “This plan, it should be noted, did not provide for a separate investigation into the murder of Dallas Policeman J. D. Tippit. Instead, the Tippit investigation was considered to be part of the Area II investigation of the identity of the President’s assassin.” Thus, it was decided ahead of time that Tippit would be viewed only as having being slain by Oswald, the primary, if not sole, focus of the commission’s sham “investigation.” Rankin also responded to Scobey’s memo of concern by writing FBI director J. Edgar Hoover on May 11 to request that the Bureau conduct “a limited background investigation” of Tippit, including investigation of his record in the Dallas Police Department and interviewing of his family and his associates in and outside the police force. Rankin concluded, however, by stressing:

 

In the course of each of these interviews, as well as any others which you believe are appropriate, we would like the Bureau to inquire whether Officer Tippit had any associations with Lee Harvey Oswald or Jack L. Ruby. As I am sure you are aware, this request is designed to obtain certain basic information which can be relied upon to refute unfounded allegations which have developed in the course of this investigation.

 

In other words, the commission didn’t want to be told any bad news about Tippit. The slain patrolman had, after all, been given a hero’s funeral televised live in Dallas, and both Robert Kennedy and President Johnson had called his widow to express their condolences and admiration for what was then thought to be his bravery in confronting the fleeing assassin. Jacqueline Kennedy also exchanged warmly emotional correspondence with Marie Tippit and sent her an inscribed photo of the Kennedy family.

  Hoover replied in kind to Rankin’s request for a sham investigation, filing a nineteen-page report submitted by the Dallas FBI office eight days later. The report was published in Volume XXVI of the commission’s supplementary materials. (This is how the request and the report are reassuringly described, apparently without consciously facetious intent, by Bugliosi in Reclaiming History: “Because the Warren Commission’s investigation of the assassination was so very comprehensive, it even included a ‘limited background investigation’ of Officer J. D. Tippit and found nothing suspicious.”) The FBI report indeed gives the appearance of thoroughness in its coverage of the basic biographical data on Tippit and his family members but is superficial and scanty on the question of whether Tippit could have been involved with Oswald and Ruby, relying on predictable denials by Tippit’s widow and his fellow policemen.

Tippit was dutifully described by his immediate supervisor for the last ten years of his life, Sergeant Calvin Bud Owens, as

 

a morally upright person and a person about whom he had never heard anything derogatory. Sergeant OWENS rated TIPPIT as an average officer in work performance, who was well-liked, used good common sense and, as such, was a “good officer.” According to OWENS, TIPPIT had off-duty, part-time jobs [as a security guard] at Austin’s Barbecue and Stevens Park Theatre and, because of this, “didn’t have time to do any wrong.” TIPPIT was a devoted family man, who spent what free time he had either at home or with relatives. TIPPIT was well-liked by all the other officers. . . . OWENS described TIPPIT as a quiet, shy person.

 

These generally rosy descriptions do not match evidence subsequently developed suggesting that Tippit was a policeman of below-average rather than average performance (in eleven years on the force, he had never received a promotion) and other evidence that Tippit had been carrying on an extramarital affair and appeared to be chronically overextended financially, working the extra jobs to help pay the mortgages on two houses. The FBI reported Owens told them that “TIPPIT appeared to be resigned to the fact that, because of his limited education, he would be unable to advance very far within the Police Department, and TIPPIT appeared satisfied with his work. OWENS stated he believes TIPPIT took promotional examinations, but had no information as to the results, but believes that the lack of promotion was due to a lack of education.” Dallas Police Detective Morris Brumley, a boyhood friend of Tippit’s who attended school with him in Clarksville, told the FBI in 1964 that Tippit was “not ‘sharp enough’ to pass promotional examinations given by the Police Department.” Rio Sam Pierce, a lieutenant in the patrol division who “knew him fairly well,” told Larry A. Sneed for No More Silence, “Tippit was just a plain home boy who shuffled as he walked and seldom made eye contact. After many years as a patrolman, he was never promoted because of that inability to make eye contact and because he couldn’t do well on tests. Promotion required a written exam and an interview. In both cases, he would have failed.”

The Warren Report describes Tippit as “an officer with a good record during his more than 11 years with the police force” and quotes Chief Curry’s testimony that Tippit was “a very fine, dedicated officer.” Curry went on to paint a slightly qualified portrait of

 

a rather quiet, serious-minded young man. He seemed to be very devoted to his family, and he was an active church man. . . . He was not a real aggressive type officer. In fact, he seemed to be just a little bit shy, if you were to meet him, I believe, shy, retiring type, but certainly not afraid of anything. I think in his personnel investigation it showed that during, as he was growing up, sometimes his shyness was mistaken for perhaps fear, but that it only took a time or two for someone to exploit this to find out it wasn’t fear. It was merely a quiet, shy-type individual.

 

In light of the myriad problems with the physical and witness evidence, it is unlikely that if Oswald had lived, he could have been convicted of the Tippit killing or, indeed, in the assassination of the president. Scobey admitted as much when she offered her own partial dissent from the Warren Commission’s sloppy case in her article “A Lawyer’s Notes on the Warren Commission Report” in the January 1965 issue of the American Bar Association Journal. The former commission staff member, who had resumed her distinguished career in the Georgia bar, writes that a defense attorney, had Oswald lived, would have been able to exclude a great deal of evidence from a trial. She points out that many pieces of evidence had been improperly obtained or otherwise made known by the police in a manner prejudicial to Oswald. Furthermore, many of the links allegedly connecting him with various criminal activities, including both the assassination and the April 10, 1963, attempt on the life of Major General Edwin Walker, only existed in the accounts of Oswald’s widow, Marina, who could not have testified against her husband in court. (Scobey hints at the elements of coercion Marina faced from authorities but does not discuss how the widow’s cooperation had been obtained partly through threats of deportation to her native USSR. Marina’s many conflicting statements over the years, as she came to change her public views as to whether her husband was guilty of killing Kennedy, render her various accounts of the case and her husband’s character virtually unusable for the historical record.)

As for the Tippit murder, Scobey writes:

 

There remains the question of whether the Tippit murder would be admissible. As a subsequent similar offense it would be excluded. As part of a subsequent escape attempt it could not be shown until it first had been shown that an effort was being made to arrest him. Here the prosecution might succeed, on the proposition that the description being circulated of the President’s assassin was sufficient to raise an inference that Tippit intended to hold Oswald for questioning. However, the testimony of Mrs. Helen Markham, an eyewitness standing on the street corner, was merely that after the men talked, Tippit got out of the car on one side and Oswald walked forward on the other and shot him.
This witness was hysterical. Her initial description of Oswald, as well as facts she stated regarding the time of the occurrence, was inaccurate [Scobey’s point about the time discrepancy is dubious; see Chapter 13]. Her original identification of Oswald in a line-up occurred after she had been given sedatives, and she remained hysterical for several hours after the event. The admissibility of the Tippit murder, accordingly, is at least arguable.

Assuming it to be admissible, however, as part of the general flight picture, the transcripts show the usual contradictions which arise to plague the prosecution. Domingo Benavides, the eyewitness closest to Oswald, refused to identify him. . . . [Scobey goes on to discuss problems with the witness accounts given by Barbara Jeanette Davis and Virginia Davis, William W. Scoggins, and William Whaley, and with the police line-ups.] Oswald’s remonstrances against being placed with other persons in the line-up were so pronounced that any person could have picked him out as the accused without ever having seen him before. There are, however, a number of other witnesses who, while they did not see the actual shooting, did see Oswald leave the scene, and who would not be easy to attack.

 

Though Scobey tries her best to prop up the Warren Report’s case against Oswald, her honesty in admitting its flaws makes her sporadic efforts on behalf of the commission seem labored (her reference to witnesses who saw Oswald leave the scene, for instance, fails to note that their identifications of him were as tainted as those by Scoggins and Whaley). Indeed, it is hard to argue with Meagher’s conclusion in Accessories After the Fact: “In an adversary proceeding, the prosecution would have been hard put to sustain the validity of any of the arguments posed in the Warren Report, and defense counsel would have delighted in demolishing the so-called evidence, point by point.”

 

 

 

 

 

I have read JM's account of the Tippit case, and many years later remain still impressed by the detail and skeptical but fair examination of evidence.

“In an adversary proceeding, the prosecution would have been hard put to sustain the validity of any of the arguments posed in the Warren Report, and defense counsel would have delighted in demolishing the so-called evidence, point by point.”--SM, quoted by JM.

In present-day settings, this is why it is important to very skeptically entertain government commissions and committees, and their presentations. When no defense is present, prosecutorial fantasies and narratives can be stated as fact, without contradiction. 

 

[Bill Brown]

On 8/1/2022 at 2:41 PM, James DiEugenio said:

This is what I mean about Markham.  She was out there alone for 20 minutes before anyone showed up?

Talk about a confused witness.

BTW, the instance about the two police cars in front of her house before her husband refused to have her speak to Salandria, that was not later.  It was in 1964.

Again, in the real world, witness intimidation can get a case thrown out, and the people who do the intimidating can be charged. But this is the WC, the fairy tale world. A world of sea lions.

PS In the Benson book, which is pretty reliable, it says she claimed to be the only witness there for 20 minutes with the dying office, talking with him ("he tried to talk to me", she said) before anyone else arrived.  As Benson notes, virtually everyone else said TIppit died instantly, and that a crowd of people gathered. (pp. 281-82)

Why do you make the leap from Markham saying "he tried to talk to me" to Markham saying that she talked to him for 20 minutes like you said a couple days ago?  Please explain.

[Bill Brown]

On 7/31/2022 at 6:59 PM, James DiEugenio said:

Warren Reynolds was also a witness who said he chased the assailant after the shooting.

Reynolds had Benavides syndrome.

Initially he failed to identify Oswald.

After he was shot, his memory was replenished and he did identify  Oswald. (McBride, p. 305)

Before he was shot in the head, Reynolds told the FBI that he was of the opinion that the man he saw running with a gun in his hands was Lee Oswald.

[Bill Brown]

16 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Let us be more clear about this witness intimidation.  From the Tippit article by Jack Myers at K and K:

Decades later, Dallas researcher Michael Brownlow tracked down Mr. Reynolds, who was still in the business of selling cars. At first, Reynolds would not admit who he was. But after Brownlow had gained his trust, the researcher asked Mr. Reynolds why he had suddenly changed his testimony regarding his identification of Oswald.

“Because I wanted to live,” Reynolds admitted bluntly.

Brownlow is a proven li@r and none of his claims are substantiated, including this one above.

Edited August 2, 2022 by Bill Brown

[Bill Brown]

16 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Jack M on Tatum continued:  

Frontline and PBS should be ashamed for having filmed this charade and then presenting it to the American public as fact. (The reader can see this interview at Youtube, under the title, “J. D. Tippit Murder Witness Jack Tatum”) Since the entire interview was shot from within Tatum’s vehicle, the viewer can’t see that, according to Tatum’s own description of events, the gunman was likely never closer than 100 feet of Mr. Tatum’s alleged position (in red). Here is the overhead satellite view of that intersection today, with the distance legend in the lower right corner (blue arrow points to 20 ft.):

According to a study cited by the Innocence Project, after 25 feet face perception diminishes. At about 150 feet, accurate face identification for people with normal vision drops to zero.

Could Jack Tatum, while watching a fleeing gunman in his rearview mirror from 100 feet or more away (and remember, Tatum said he drove forward again as the gunman approached), have been able to tell that the corners of the gunman’s mouth turned up? Positively ID him as Lee Harvey Oswald? A gunman in a rearview mirror who was ducking behind trees, bushes, Mr. Scoggins’ yellow cab, and all the while brandishing a pistol?

Good grief.  Apparently you (and Jack Myers) are completely unaware that Tatum's account indeed has him ten to fifteen feet from Oswald at one point.

 

Tatum is saying that he was that close to Oswald as he drove right past Tippit's stopped patrol car as Tippit and Oswald were talking.  Tatum even said Oswald had his hands in his jacket pockets at this time.

 

Tatum is NOT saying that he was ten to fifteen feet from Oswald after the shooting.

 

Jim, you really should stop commenting on the Tippit case until you have become a little more versed on the subject.  

[Charles Blackmon]

40 minutes ago, Bill Brown said:

Before he was shot in the head, Reynolds told the FBI that he was of the opinion that the man he saw running with a gun in his hands was Lee Oswald.

This would need to be substantiated. Every source I have read about what Warren Reynolds said is he would not identify the man he saw fleeing as Oswald, until after he was shot in the head and his family received death threats then he suddenly fingered Oswald. No real surprise considering the threats.