Reconstruction of the shots in the Tippit killing

[Michael Kalin]

15 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

What is it you can cite of the contents of that destroyed, now non-existent, interview document of 11/22/63, that can contribute information to anything, if what you hold is correct? i.e. where do you go with it if it was as you say? 

The destruction of both statements given by Benavides (to DPD & FBI) indicates that the content contradicted details of what became WR's official narrative concerning Tippit's murder. Bowley, who appeared on Leavelle's witness list, was eliminated from the scene & superseded by Benavides.

In other words, the upshot was Bowley's banishment to the ether while Benavides, a DPD non-entity, rose to the status of major participant (WR pp.166-7). It follows that both DPD & FBI statements did not support his fulfillment of this role.

Edited August 22, 2022 by Michael Kalin

[Michael Kalin]

8 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

This is calculation direct from the Tippit autopsy measurements reported by Dr. Rose, and can be done by anyone, bypassing Myers' schematics. The question here is the upward angle of elevation starting from where the bullet entered if Tippit were upright. The angles calculated assume the bullet enters at the same angle or path the bullet takes after entering the body (in reality bullets do not always continue straight).

The procedure lacks precision, too many estimated values & assumptions to produce a valid result, including the glossed over problem of projectile deflection, described in Wikipedia:

Gunshot wounds can be particularly devastating compared to other penetrating injuries because the trajectory and fragmentation of bullets can be unpredictable after entry.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunshot_wound

[Ian Lloyd]

29 minutes ago, Michael Kalin said:

The destruction of both statements given by Benavides (to DPD & FBI) indicates that the content contradicted details of what became WR's official narrative concerning Tippit's murder. Bowley, who appeared on Leavelle's witness list, was eliminated from the scene & superseded by Benavides.

In other words, the upshot was Bowley's banishment to the ether while Benavides, a DPD non-entity, rose to the status of major participant (WR pp.166-7). It follows that both DPD & FBI statements did not support his fulfillment of this role.

Wow, really? Is that all true?

[Michael Kalin]

7 hours ago, Ian Lloyd said:

Wow, really? Is that all true?

Yes! The FBI wanted no part of Bowley, probably because of strong Ruby ties and DPD affidavit that said he arrived at the scene at 1:10 pm. Subbing him out and Benavides in was so crudely handled that the WC had to be duped into attributing the citizen's call from #10 to the latter even though the voice is Bowley's:

 It was Benavides, using Tippit's car radio, who first reported the killing of Patrolman Tippit at about 1:16 p.m.: "We've had a shooting out here." (WR p.166)

Here's a link to the radio recording (40:55).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaL-dnXCOPs

Edited August 22, 2022 by Michael Kalin

[Bill Brown]

On 8/17/2022 at 7:55 PM, Greg Doudna said:

I think Acquilla Clemons was describing Callaway and the gunman, not Callaway and Oswald. Her descriptions may not be perfect but the gunman who killed Tippit may well have been a little shorter than Oswald, enough that it could be borderline considered "short" for a man; that has other witness support.

Hi Greg.

 

I don't think Clemons got to the corner in time to see the brief exchange between the killer and Callaway.  The exchange between these two men took place about two-thirds of the way down Patton toward Jefferson.

 

One, I'm not sure Clemons got to the corner in time to be looking that far down Patton to see the exchange.

 

Two, Clemons doesn't describe the exchange as happening that far from the shooting scene.

 

[Greg Doudna]

23 hours ago, Bill Brown said:

Hi Greg.

I don't think Clemons got to the corner in time to see the brief exchange between the killer and Callaway.  The exchange between these two men took place about two-thirds of the way down Patton toward Jefferson.

One, I'm not sure Clemons got to the corner in time to be looking that far down Patton to see the exchange.

Two, Clemons doesn't describe the exchange as happening that far from the shooting scene.

Bill, a decent comment but after restudy of the Shirley Smith interview transcript and the Mark Lane video interview, I think it remains correct that Clemons was describing the gunman/Callaway interaction that happened on Patton, as you say about two-thirds down Patton toward Jefferson.

A first point is Clemons never directly said the exchange happened on Tenth even though that has always been assumed. On the timing, Myers' blog post of Nov 16, 2020 on the story of then 12-year old Mary Little, has this from Mary. After hearing the shots when inside her house with her stepfather, Emory Austin, in their house on Patton next to the nw corner of Patton and Tenth:

"Her step-father reiterated, 'No, that's not a backfire. That was gunfire.'

"Mary ran out the front door and saw a black maid [= Acquilla Clemons] approaching the northwest corner of Tenth and Patton from the west.

"Mary ran up to her. She was bawling and taking the white apron she was wearing and wringing her hands with it, saying, 'Oh my god! What's happening? First the president and now this!' ...

"Mary told me that she looked to her left and saw a police car. The door of the squad car was wide open and a policeman was laying near the left front tire. She later said that once she arrived at the corner of Tenth and Patton, she was focused on the police car to her left and that had she simply turned to look south down Patton, she might have seen Lee Harvey Oswald [sic] making his escape."

(Comment: note the timing of when and where Acquilla Clemons is in this account.)

"Mary walked toward the police car parked further down Tenth Street, adding that the black maid never crossed Patton to get any closer to the car but instead remained on the northwest corner of Tenth and Patton.

"As the twelve-year old approached the fallen officer, she saw a bullet wound in his right temple, but no other wounds. The wound in the temple had a trickle of blood coming from it.

"A lady came out of a white, wooden two-story house, located directly across the street from the police car, carrying a blanket. She said, 'Oh my god! Oh my god! Just throw this over him! Throw it over him! The woman then retreated to her home.'

"Suddenly a white man appeared on the scene, coming from the east end of the block [= Callaway?], but that was all she remembered about him. She didn't see anyone using the police radio or any other people at the scene other than the three she described--the black maid, the woman with the blanket, and the man. Mary believed she was the third person to arrive on the scene. After throwing the blanket over the officer, she returned to the corner where the black maid was still standing ... she saw the black maid go back to the house on Tenth Street where she was taking care of an elderly man and woman ... Mary said that the house that the black maid returned to was the second one west of the intersection of Tenth and Patton and that it was located on the north side of the street."

In the Shirley Martin transcript, Clemons tells of seeing the gunman on "that corner" across from her, with the reference being either the southeast or the southwest corner of Tenth and Patton. So far as I can tell, Clemons never claims to have seen the gunman shooting, Tippit falling, etc. anything before her repeated telling of seeing the gunman "at that corner". 

Twice Shirley Martin tries to get Clemons to say there were two men "at that corner", a second man with the gunman at the corner. Each time Clemons declines to confirm that, indicating that is not where Clemons saw the second man.

Question: ... They were both on that same corner?

Clemmons: I don't know. All I know he was talking to (------) who done the shooting (------). He was talking to a tall guy on the other side of the street with yellow khakis and a white shirt on, but I don't know whether he was in on it or he was just going to get out of the way or something. I don't know because I had to go back in [her house] and tend to him [the elderly man for whom she was caring].

Repeatedly Clemmons refers to the location of the second man--the only information on where the second man was located--as "on the other side of the street". But the other side of which street?

Everyone has assumed that means the other side of Tenth, with some image of the second man running east on Tenth and the gunman running west before turning the corner of Patton. But no other witness saw any man running east on Tenth, and Clemons' testimony seems to have her first see the gunman at the corner of Tenth and Patton, after which the gunman ran south on Patton which is where Clemons would have been able to see, from where Clemons was positioned on the nw corner of Tenth and Patton according to Mary Little. The "other side of the street" then becomes the other side of Patton, with the gunman on the west side, and Callaway on the east side. (The capital letters below are in the Shirley Martin transcript.)

"Question: I mean he [gunman] didn't go right up that street? [MEANING UP PATTON TOWARDS JEFFER.

"Clemmons: No. The other one did. The one who done the shooting went across there ...

(. . .)

Question: The other one went up that..Patton?

Clemmons: Yeah. He went up (-------). He may have been just a boy getting out of the way.

Clemons later refers to coming out (= from her house or porch?) and seeing the gunman "unloading his gun and reload[ing] it".

Clemmons: I can't remember. (I was afraid. He frightened me. To come out and) see him unloading his gun and reload it. (. . .) He acted like he wanted to shoot me. (. . .) I didn't pay his hair any attention. I was getting out of his way a 'cause I didn't know. See I was pretty close to him. Between that (telegram) post and that tree loading his gun..on this side. And I was on this side of the walk standing right there and I didn't want him to be shooting me.

Question: You didn't hear them yell or say anything?

Clemmons: No. I heard no more than I heard that lady call [= Helen Markham screaming 'he shot him']. She told me to look at the man shooting the police. (. . .) she was closer than I [to the Tippit cruiser/body of Tippit] because she runned in front of me and I went down there when..when I went down there, there wasn't anybody there but her. I guess she was there. I don't know. It was all excitement.

Question: Did a lot of people come running out?

Clemmons: Yes, they did. Police and everybody. It looked like a..I don't know. There was so many policemen you couldn't walk out there. But I don't know. I don't know...

Later Clemons gives the clearest indication that at the time of the shooting of Tippit she was sitting on the front porch, though I cannot find any claim of Clemons that she saw the Tippit cruiser stop, Tippit get out, Tippit get shot, etc.

"I got tired, come out here [on the porch?], and sit down here [on the porch?], and then that happened.

I conclude what Acquilla Clemons saw was not different from what others saw happen, and that what she describes as the second man was Callaway on Patton with the interaction Callaway described, which Acquilla Clemons also saw and described.

I think Acquilla Clemons saw the Callaway and gunman interaction, and Clemons may have gone to the Tippit cruiser scene very briefly before hurrying back to the elderly man for whom she was caring. In Myers' blog post of Nov 19, 2020 on the Doris Holan story (https://jfkfiles.blogspot.com/2020/11/doris-e-holan-and-tippit-murder.html), Myers quotes Lad Holan, Jr. The reference below to "a couple of black women" to me supports Clemons did go to the Tippit cruiser (in agreement with what Clemons said; in disagreement with Mary Little).

"When he [Lad Holan Jr.] got closer, he saw that a Dallas police officer was lying in the street next to the police car. He ran up to the car, not knowing what had happened. The squad car door was open and the police radio was blaring, but the car wasn't running. Tippit was skill bleeding when he arrived. Three to six people were rushing about in a panic--a couple of black women and two or three white women." 

The reconstruction would be that Acquilla Clemons saw the exchange of the second man and the gunman, from her position at the corner of Tenth and Patton and that that exchange happened south on Patton, before she continued east on Tenth to the Tippit cruiser, and then returned to the house where she was working.

Also in that same Nov 19, 2020 blog post Myers deconstructs the Doris Holan story as told by Brownlow and Pulte based on showing evidence that in Nov 1963 Doris Holan did not live at 409 E. Tenth Street as Brownlow and Pulte were presenting it. Myers proves where the Doris Holan family actually was living at that time which was 113-1/2 S. Patton Ave, second story of the building right on the nw corner of the east-west alley between Tenth and Jefferson, with the front of their living quarters facing east overlooking Patton. Brownlow and Pulte gave an oral hearsay rendition of what Doris Holan told them just before Doris Holan died of cancer. Because of the screwup on the address--Brownlow and Pulte shaping their retelling of Holan's account in light of the mistaken address assumption--what Doris Holan actually told Brownlow and Pulte may have been garbled in the Brownlow/Pulte transmission. From Doris Holan's vantage point looking out her window from where she actually did live she would have been in a perfect position to have seen the gunman and Callaway interchange on Patton, and I believe in the garbled oral-retelling transmission of Brownlow/Pulte there may be another version of the same encounter which Acquilla Clemons saw and told (and of which Callaway, a participant in that encounter, told). The story of Doris Holan, filtered through her memory and distorted in Brownlee/Pulte's oral retelling, is mixed in with claims of seeing a second patrol car doing strange backing up and forward motions in a driveway (= is that "driveway" the alley running east-west between Tenth and Jefferson, looking almost directly across from Doris Holan's line of sight from her window overlooking Patton?). But bypassing that, is it possible the below is Doris Holan from 113-1/2 Patton telling of seeing the gunman and Callaway on Patton? This is Myers describing and then quoting what Brownlow said Doris Holan said:

"As she [Doris Holan] watched the man in the white jacket [= gunman], a second man walked down the driveway [= alley?] in a dark blue jacket [= Callaway with his jacket now on?] Mrs. Holan claimed the second man was about the same height as the man in the white jacket but much heavier--weighing well over two-hundred pounds [= Callaway?] (. . .)

"[quoting Brownlow] 'And then he [heavy-set man in the blue jacket = Callaway?] turned to the man in the white jacket,' Brownlow said, 'and began to do this (gesturing with his arm as if to say 'Go on')--like telling him to leave, get out of there. She said, that's when the man in the white jacket turned to his left and proceeded toward Patton."

As Myers proves, Doris Holan could not have seen the above occur on Tenth Street (as Brownlow and Pulte presented it) because Doris Holan was not living on Tenth Street. But where Doris Holan was living, and was present that day at the time of the Tippit killing, as Myers broke the story and showed, on Patton, is in agreement with her story as told by Brownlee and Pulte that she ran to her window and looked out and saw what she saw--which would have been (unknown to Pulte and Brownlow) on Patton. Underneath the garbling and misreporting, Doris Holan was in an excellent position to have seen the gunman/Callaway interchange, and may have seen it and told of it, even though Pulte and Brownlow garbled her story including where it took place. The story of Doris Holan sounds somewhat similar to the story of Acquilla Clemons, and in Doris Holan's case can only have occurred on Patton.

Edited August 24, 2022 by Greg Doudna

[Bill Brown]

Greg,

 

Clemons stated that after their encounter, one of the two men went straight down Tenth Street.  She is not speaking about the encounter between the killer and Callaway, which occurred damn near all the way down Patton by Jefferson.

[Greg Doudna]

53 minutes ago, Bill Brown said:

Clemons stated that after their encounter, one of the two men went straight down Tenth Street.  She is not speaking about the encounter between the killer and Callaway, which occurred damn near all the way down Patton by Jefferson.

What's your reference on that Bill?

[Bill Brown]

4 minutes ago, Greg Doudna said:

What's your reference on that Bill?

The Rush To Judgement interview with Mark Lane.

[Greg Doudna]

2 hours ago, Bill Brown said:

The Rush To Judgement interview with Mark Lane.

OK found it. Its not in the book, Rush to Judgment. I checked index references to Clemons, not there. But it is in the video clip interview by Mark Lane of Acquilla Clemons, at 1:05-1:45, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTjq7jz8b5g.

Lane: Was there any other man there?

Clemons: Yes, the one on the other side of the street. All I know, he told him to go on (gesturing)

Lane: Mrs. Clemons, the man who had the gun, did he make any motion at all to the other man across the street?

Clemons: No more than told him to go on (motions)

Lane: So he waved his hand--

Clemons: Yes, he said go on (gesturing)

Lane: And then what happened with the man with the gun?

Clemons: He unloaded and reloaded.

Lane: And what did the other man do?

Clemons: Man kept going--straight down the street.

Lane: And then did they go in opposite directions?

Clemons: Yes, they were--they weren't together. They went this way from each other (gesturing). The one done the shooting went this way (gesturing). Other one went straight down Tenth Street that way (gesturing).

OK Bill no dispute on the words but I am going to offer a different interpretation than you are assuming. I see no evidence Clemons saw anything before the gunman at "the corner" "unloading and reloading". I think Clemons saw the Callaway/gunman exchange on Patton with the gunman going further south on Patton, and Callaway coming down to Tenth and east on Tenth, or as Clemons put it of Callaway, "straight down Tenth that way", which is exactly where Callaway did go, to the Tippit cruiser. 

I will agree she does not specifically speak of going around a corner, or a turn, and "kept going--straight down the street" (and across the street from the gunman) could sound like a man already heading eastward on the north side of Tenth who has the waving interaction with the gunman and continues heading eastward (on the north side of Tenth). The wording is ambiguous in that sense.

But that reading makes little sense, because who is that phantom man that no other witness tells of, who is just in front of Helen Markham, and Acquilla Clemons, and Mary Little, already heading east and keeping going heading east from "across the street" from the southeast corner of Patton and Tenth? 

No such interaction, no such witness is known. In Clemons' known transcripts and accounts, there is nothing in what she says which places the interaction at the site of the cruiser itself. At the earliest it is when the gunman is at the corner, "unloading and loading". But I read it as happening after that. The gunman is on the west side of Patton headed south, and Callaway is on the east side of Patton heading north and then, as Clemons puts it, "went straight down Tenth that way" (east, on the south side, toward the Tippit cruiser). 

Recall from the Myers interview of Mary Little, just after the blanket was thrown over Tippit's body, before the ambulance arrived, with Mary at the site of the cruiser, and in Mary's telling, Acquilla Clemons is back at the northwest corner of Tenth and Patton. Mary Little: "Suddenly a white man appeared on the scene, coming from the east end of the block, but that was all she remembered about him."

That's Acquilla Clemons' second man that she saw who "went straight down Tenth Street that way [eastward] (gesturing)". The "tall" (and thin, got that wrong if it is Callaway, but got "tall" right) Callaway. At the time Clemons was, in Mary Little's account, in position to see Callaway and the gunman go in the opposite directions as she described, on opposite sides of the street--the gunman south on Patton, and Callaway in the opposite direction (to) east on Tenth.

This interpretation aligns Clemons' testimony with movements of known persons at the crime scene in accord with other testimony, rather than a necessity to postulate a phantom different person seen only by Clemons and by no one else among the people who were there at the same time as Clemons. Myers' suggestion of witness Frank Cimino on Tenth I do not think will work since Cimino did not head east on Tenth and also never saw or interacted with the gunman. 

Helen Markham never saw the interaction of gunman/second man that Clemons described. Mary Little did not. Frank Cimino did not. Lad Holan, Jr., nothing. These were all Tenth Street witnesses. But Mary Little did see a man--Callaway--coming east on Tenth in the identical direction of movement Clemons gave for her second man, after the gunman/Callaway interaction which the other Tenth Street witnesses never saw, but which Acquilla Clemons, because of where she was positioned and looking, did see. 

[Bill Brown]

11 minutes ago, Greg Doudna said:

OK found it. Its not in the book, Rush to Judgment. I checked index references to Clemons, not there. But it is in the video clip interview by Mark Lane of Acquilla Clemons, at 1:05-1:45, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTjq7jz8b5g.

Lane: Was there any other man there?

Clemons: Yes, the one on the other side of the street. All I know, he told him to go on (gesturing)

Lane: Mrs. Clemons, the man who had the gun, did he make any motion at all to the other man across the street?

Clemons: No more than told him to go on (motions)

Lane: So he waved his hand--

Clemons: Yes, he said go on (gesturing)

Lane: And then what happened with the man with the gun?

Clemons: He unloaded and reloaded.

Lane: And what did the other man do?

Clemons: Man kept going--straight down the street.

Lane: And then did they go in opposite directions?

Clemons: Yes, they were--they weren't together. They went this way from each other (gesturing). The one done the shooting went this way (gesturing). Other one went straight down Tenth Street that way (gesturing).

OK Bill no dispute on the words but I am going to offer a different interpretation than you are assuming. I see no evidence Clemons saw anything before the gunman at "the corner" "unloading and reloading". I think Clemons saw the Callaway/gunman exchange on Patton with the gunman going further south on Patton, and Callaway coming down to Tenth and east on Tenth, or as Clemons put it of Callaway, "straight down Tenth that way", which is exactly where Callaway did go, to the Tippit cruiser. 

I will agree she does not specifically speak of going around a corner, or a turn, and "kept going--straight down the street" (and across the street from the gunman) could sound like a man already heading eastward on the north side of Tenth who has the waving interaction with the gunman and continues heading eastward (on the north side of Tenth). The wording is ambiguous in that sense.

But that reading makes little sense, because who is that phantom man that no other witness tells of, who is just in front of Helen Markham, and Acquilla Clemons, and Mary Little, already heading east and keeping going heading east from "across the street" from the southeast corner of Patton and Tenth? 

No such interaction, no such witness is known. In Clemons' known transcripts and accounts, there is nothing in what she says which places the interaction at the site of the cruiser itself. At the earliest it is when the gunman is at the corner, "unloading and loading". But I read it as happening after that. The gunman is on the west side of Patton headed south, and Callaway is on the east side of Patton heading north and then, as Clemons puts it, "went straight down Tenth that way" (east, on the south side, toward the Tippit cruiser). 

Recall from the Myers interview of Mary Little, just after the blanket was thrown over Tippit's body, before the ambulance arrived, with Mary at the site of the cruiser, and in Mary's telling, Acquilla Clemons is back at the northwest corner of Tenth and Patton. Mary Little: "Suddenly a white man appeared on the scene, coming from the east end of the block, but that was all she remembered about him."

That's Acquilla Clemons' second man that she saw who "went straight down Tenth Street that way [eastward] (gesturing)". The "tall" (and thin, got that wrong if it is Callaway, but got "tall" right) Callaway. At the time Clemons was, in Mary Little's account, in position to see Callaway and the gunman go in the opposite directions as she described, on opposite sides of the street--the gunman south on Patton, and Callaway in the opposite direction (to) east on Tenth.

This interpretation aligns Clemons' testimony with movements of known persons at the crime scene in accord with other testimony, rather than a necessity to postulate a phantom different person seen only by Clemons and by no one else among the people who were there at the same time as Clemons. Myers' suggestion of witness Frank Cimino on Tenth I do not think will work since Cimino did not head east on Tenth and also never saw or interacted with the gunman. 

Helen Markham never saw the interaction of gunman/second man that Clemons described. Mary Little did not. Frank Cimino did not. Lad Holan, Jr., nothing. These were all Tenth Street witnesses. But Mary Little did see a man--Callaway--coming east on Tenth in the identical direction of movement Clemons gave for her second man, after the gunman/Callaway interaction which the other Tenth Street witnesses never saw, but which Acquilla Clemons, because of where she was positioned and looking, did see. 

Greg, are you aware of just how far Callaway was down Patton when he walked out to the sidewalk and had the encounter with the gunman?  It's quite a ways down from the corner of Tenth and Patton.  I was being conservative when I said it was two-thirds of the way down the block (from the intersection of Tenth and Patton).  It was more like three-fourths of the way down Patton, i.e. almost to the corner of Jefferson Blvd. and Patton.

 

Clemons says nothing about the other man (who you are claiming is Callaway) first making his way all the way up the three-fourths of a block on Patton just to even get to Tenth so that he could then go "straight down Tenth Street that way".

 

It wasn't Callaway.

 

[Greg Doudna]

13 minutes ago, Bill Brown said:

Greg, are you aware of just how far Callaway was down Patton when he walked out to the sidewalk and had the encounter with the gunman?  It's quite a ways down from the corner of Tenth and Patton.  I was being conservative when I said it was two-thirds of the way down the block (from the intersection of Tenth and Patton).  It was more like three-fourths of the way down Patton, i.e. almost to the corner of Jefferson Blvd. and Patton.

Clemons says nothing about the other man (who you are claiming is Callaway) first making his way all the way up the three-fourths of a block on Patton just to even get to Tenth so that he could then go "straight down Tenth Street that way".

It wasn't Callaway.

Who do you think it was?

[Michael Kalin]

On 8/24/2022 at 11:52 AM, Greg Doudna said:

As Myers proves, Doris Holan could not have seen the above occur on Tenth Street (as Brownlow and Pulte presented it) because Doris Holan was not living on Tenth Street. But where Doris Holan was living, and was present that day at the time of the Tippit killing, as Myers broke the story and showed, on Patton, is in agreement with her story as told by Brownlee and Pulte that she ran to her window and looked out and saw what she saw--which would have been (unknown to Pulte and Brownlow) on Patton.

Myers makes a solid case that Doris Holan resided on Patton not Tenth the day of the Tippit murder, but no case at all that she was home when it occurred. Her son, Myers' chief witness Lad Holan, told Myers:

--Asked if his mom was home when he arrived at the apartment, Lad said, “I don’t remember. I don’t think she was home. I really don’t.”

She liked to go out drinking with Bill.

Incidentally, Lad throws a spanner into the works concerning the standard version of Callaway's activities that day:

--Lad recalled that at some point in time (perhaps in the days that followed), “somebody was asking if we saw them chasing Oswald. But no, we didn’t see anybody chase Oswald.” Lad told me that someone said, “Somebody stole his [Tippit’s] gun."

This creates problems for the generally accepted sequence of events which has Callaway grabbing Tippit's gun after helping load the corpse into the ambulance, then commandeering Scoggins' cab. It couldn't have happened that way if the gun had already left the scene while the ambulance was still there.

[Greg Doudna]

On 8/25/2022 at 1:23 PM, Bill Brown said:

Greg, are you aware of just how far Callaway was down Patton when he walked out to the sidewalk and had the encounter with the gunman?  It's quite a ways down from the corner of Tenth and Patton.  I was being conservative when I said it was two-thirds of the way down the block (from the intersection of Tenth and Patton).  It was more like three-fourths of the way down Patton, i.e. almost to the corner of Jefferson Blvd. and Patton.

Clemons says nothing about the other man (who you are claiming is Callaway) first making his way all the way up the three-fourths of a block on Patton just to even get to Tenth so that he could then go "straight down Tenth Street that way".

It wasn't Callaway.

What difference does it make how far it was from Acquilla Clemons, if she saw it? All that matters is she tells of seeing an interchange, and Callaway and the killer then went opposite directions in the directions she gestured and told in words: the killer south on Patton, Callaway east on Tenth (after north on Patton). Unless you are arguing that Acquilla Clemons did not see anything, she had to have seen something in accord with known movements of known persons, and Callaway is the one person at the Tippit crime scene seen running east on Tenth. Your objection becomes reduces to a criticism that Acquilla Clemons could not have referred to Callaway running east on Tenth because if it was Callaway she saw, you require Clemons to have described it in cumbersome manner such as, "first he ran north on Patton, then he went straight down Tenth", instead of Clemons' shorter and simpler, "he went straight down Tenth". What Clemons says of the second man is what Callaway did do, following an opposite-sides-of-street shouted exchange with the gunman just as Clemons described. You have offered no suggestion of anyone other than Callaway that Clemons could have seen running east on Tenth following a Callaway-like interaction with the gunman. In the absence of any good alternative, I consider the matter settled that Acquilla Clemons' second man was Callaway. 

[Greg Doudna]

On 8/26/2022 at 7:35 AM, Michael Kalin said:

Myers makes a solid case that Doris Holan resided on Patton not Tenth the day of the Tippit murder, but no case at all that she was home when it occurred. Her son, Myers' chief witness Lad Holan, told Myers:

--Asked if his mom was home when he arrived at the apartment, Lad said, “I don’t remember. I don’t think she was home. I really don’t.”

I think four things support Doris Holan was home when Tippit was killed. First, Lad Jr. says "I don't remember" (her not being home). Second, Myers showed that at 1:45 pm her car was photographed parked on Patton near her apartment that day but then a later photograph by 4:15 pm showed her car was not in the earlier parked position,  indicating her car in front of where she lived had been moved some time between 1:45 pm and 4:15 pm that day. That prima facie suggests she was home, to account for her car having been driven away in that time frame. Third, the account transmitted via Brownlow and Pulte in which Mrs. Holan said she was home, heard the shots, looked out and saw, etc.--not to be taken in every detail the way Brownlow/Pulte retold it, but rather as a garbled account of Mrs. Holan telling some story of what she saw that day from the perspective of where she lived on the second story at 113-1/2 S. Patton.

And fourth and finally, the story of Mrs. Holan's youngest son, a 10-year old, quoted by Brownlow and Pulte, the story of his having bicycled west on Tenth to the scene of the Tippit cruiser and seeing his mother there, and then the story of him telling his mother of hearing about a stabbing at 12th and Marsalis or 10th and Marsalis. The story is an independent support for Doris Holan being home that day, then going to the scene of the Tippit cruiser. (Incidentally, on the fight/stabbing story of the 10-yr. old Holan boy, a while ago I figured out that that was nothing other than a hearsay version of the ambulance taking away Tippit, which the boy had heard someone tell somewhere else before he arrived to the Tippit scene and saw and told his mother. That is why there is no police record or evidence of any fight or stabbing at 10th and Marsalis just about the same exact time Tippit was shot--it was another version of the same thing, the Tippit slaying and removal by ambulance, as the news spread like wildfire through hearsay in the neighborhood with garbling thereof.)

So I see these things as weighing in favor of Doris Holan was at home as she is reported to have claimed, and then walked to the scene of the Tippit cruiser as her youngest son is reported to have claimed, against which there is no hard evidence she was not at home, nothing stronger against than Lad Jr's "I don't think she was" although he directly qualified that with "I don't remember". Therefore my verdict: she was there, and the issue is not whether she was there but is it possible to get behind the Brownlow/Pulte hearsay to what Doris Holan might actually have told of what she saw from her true second-story vantage point looking out over Patton after she heard the shots, and of course then how to interpret that.