The Tippit Witnesses: A "Positive Identification" ?

[Gil Jesus]

What a lot of people don't realize is how important clothing is to the "positive identification" of a suspect. Unless you can prove that the suspect changed clothes AFTER committing the crime, the identification of a suspect's clothes is secondary only to facial recognition in a witness' identification of a suspect.

So how did the Tippit witnesses fare in identifying Oswald's clothing as those worn by the killer 

( A note for the newbies: Keep in mind that Oswald's tan jacket is Commission Exhibit 162, his blue jacket is Commission Exhibit 163 and the shirt he was arrested in is Commission Exhibit 150. )


The Jacket

Helen Louise Markham

Mr. BALL. I have here an exhibit, Commission Exhibit 162, a jacket. Did you ever see this before ?

Mrs. MARKHAM. No I did not. ( 3 H 312 )



Barbara Jeanette Davis

Mr. BALL. I have a jacket, I would like to show you, which is Commission Exhibit 162. Does this look anything like the jacket that the man had on that was going across your lawn ?

Mrs. DAVIS. No sir. ( 3 H 347 )



Virginia Davis testified that the killer wore a "light brown tan jacket" ( 6 H 457 ) but she was never shown CE 162 and asked to identify it.

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

William Scoggins testified that CE 162 was too light and the killer's jacket was darker. ( 3 H 328 )

When shown the CE 162 jacket, Ted Callaway testified that he thought the killer's jacket "had a little more tan to it". ( 3 H 356 )

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


The Commission failed to mention in its Report that witnesses had described the Tippit killer's jacket as a sport jacket, dark in color and of a rough fabric, all descriptions that did not match the jacket in evidence.

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


The Shirt

Mr. BALL. I show a shirt here, which is Exhibit 150. Did you ever see a shirt the color of this ?

Mrs. MARKHAM. The shirt that this man had, it was a lighter looking shirt than that. ( 3 H 312 )



Mr. BALL. I show you a shirt, which is Commission Exhibit 150. Was that---does that shirt look like something he had on, that the man had on who went across your lawn ?

Mrs. DAVIS. I thought that the shirt he had on was lighter than that. ( 3 H 347 )



Benavides testified that Tippit's killer wore a dark shirt but he didn't know what color. He was never asked to identify CE 150 as the shirt he saw.

Callaway, Virginia Davis and Scoggins could not identify the CE 150 shirt as the shirt Tippit's killer was wearing because they all claimed to have not been able to see the shirt.

So these seven witnesses ( including William Smith ), who the Commission counted among those who made a "positive identification" of Oswald as the killer of Officer J.D. Tippit, never made a positive identifcation of his clothing.

In addition, three Jefferson Ave. witnesses who saw the gunman as he fled the Tippit murder, L.J. Lewis, B.M. Patterson and Harold Russell, were never called to testify.

A fourth Jefferson Ave. witness, Warren Reynolds did testify and in spite of his alleged observance and following of the man with the gun, he was never shown the shirt and jacket and asked to identify them.

That's eleven witnesses who saw the man who executed Tippit and did not identify Oswald's jacket and shirt as those worn by the killer.

And as I said before, if you can't positively identify the suspect's clothing, you can't positively identify the suspect.

Unless you can prove that he changed his clothes after the murder, which he didn't.
 

The FBI was careful which witnesses it selected to appear before the Commission and Commission Counsel was careful not to ask certain questions of witnesses.

And under those circumstances, the evidence indicates that Tippit's killer was not Oswald.

[Ron Ege]

Gil, thanks.  As usual - an excellent presentation/analysis.  Had LHO been allowed his day in court, his lawyer would've had a field day with those witnesses.  After all these decades, I would think that most would finally, begrudging for some I am sure, give up trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, maintaining that Oswald killed Tippit. 

[Gil Jesus]

1 minute ago, Ron Ege said:

Gil, thanks.  As usual - an excellent presentation/analysis.  Had LHO been allowed his day in court, his lawyer would've had a field day with those witnesses.  After all these decades, I would think that most would finally, begrudging for some I am sure, give up trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, maintaining that Oswald killed Tippit. 

Thanks Ron. I think that's the reason why the police conspired with Ruby to kill Oswald. They couldn't let this case go to trial. They had to nip it in the bud before they lost custody of Oswald to the Sheriff's Department. Ruby wanted to talk, he had something he wanted to say but he couldn't say it in Dallas. It's too bad we'll never know what that was.

[Joe Bauer]

13 minutes ago, Gil Jesus said:

Thanks Ron. I think that's the reason why the police conspired with Ruby to kill Oswald. They couldn't let this case go to trial. They had to nip it in the bud before they lost custody of Oswald to the Sheriff's Department.

I agree.

[Ron Ege]

18 minutes ago, Gil Jesus said:

Thanks Ron. I think that's the reason why the police conspired with Ruby to kill Oswald. They couldn't let this case go to trial. They had to nip it in the bud before they lost custody of Oswald to the Sheriff's Department. Ruby wanted to talk, he had something he wanted to say but he couldn't say it in Dallas. It's too bad we'll never know what that was.

Gil, your thoughts exactly parallel my own.  In '63, I was 20, a USAF E-3, and admittedly naive.  In '67, I bought and read SIX SECONDS IN DALLAS.  Finishing it, I knew something wasn't right; my misguided trust of the government's righteousness then disappeared.  My decades long "hobby" has been reading/researching anything (CT and LN) that I can, regarding the JFK assassination. 

Oswald killing Tippit, IMHO, is a non sequitur.  I believe that anyone with experience shooting handguns, who is not a trained killer, should have great pause believing that LHO would have the mental where-with-all to very calmly execute Tippit, as described by several witnesses.  Handguns are close up and personal, unlike a long gun, where one is 10s if not scores of yards away -your target not looking you square in the eye.  The evidenced based MO speaks of an assassin.  

Relative to the rifle, I would just please ask those who believe that LHO was the shooter, he who allegedly hit his target two out of three times using the dilapidated MC - please do buy yourself the same model with the same scope.  Practice if you will, until the cows come home.  You will not come close to duplicating the official story.  Yes, I remember the Infinite Monkey Theorem.

One other point.  Surely, I believe, the genesis of the "Oswald Legend" was LHO's USMC enlistment.  After the required ONI background investigation, he was granted a Secret clearance.

In '61, much like Oswald, I was also granted a security clearance (Top Secret) by the USAF after an Office of Special Investigations (OSI) background check, which was required by my forthcoming job (after training) in intelligence gathering.  I maintained that clearance for over 29 years, until I retired.

Secret (like Oswald) or Top Secret - it would not have mattered a whit.  Had I gone around immersing myself in the literature and then espousing my admiration of Marxism/communism to anyone who would listen, that would've raised a huge red flag.

If my immediate supervisor was somehow not aware, one of my coworkers would've reported me; in that era ('56 enlistment for LHO, just five years later for me) the USAF did not draft, and if memory serves, neither did the USMC.  The Cold War was in high gear, and we young men were quite patriotic.  My sergeant would've immediately gone to his superior, who would've ensured that I was relieved of my duties forthwith, and my security clearance would've been "pulled".  

Even if the OSI could not prove that my interest was anything more than a "hobby", there would've been NO chances taken.  If I were to have been extremely fortunate - General Discharge.  If not - Undesirable Discharge.

That did not happen to Oswald; he maintained his clearance.  Ergo, it follows that there was a good reason for his behavior to be ignored.  Indeed, early on, he was selected to be an intelligence operative, groomed as such, and remained "in training", until the time of his hardship discharge request, signaling that he was ready for his next assignment.

Given the above, not surprisingly, his request for a hardship discharge was approved in a matter of weeks.  A-a, back in the day, that also would NOT have happened.  The military invests a lot of money in its members and takes very seriously, suddenly appearing "sob stories" and investigates the "if, how, and why for" of such a request.  That should've taken a few months.

 

  

 

[Gil Jesus]

3 hours ago, Ron Ege said:

that anyone with experience shooting handguns, who is not a trained killer, should have great pause believing that LHO would have the mental where-with-all to very calmly execute Tippit, as described by several witnesses.  Handguns are close up and personal, unlike a long gun, where one is 10s if not scores of yards away -your target not looking you square in the eye.  The evidenced based MO speaks of an assassin.  

 

 

  

 

Great point and if I could add some logisitics to what made up a successful Presidential assassination at that time :

The first logistic is that in the previous three successful Presidential assassinations, the choice of weapon by all three assailants was a handgun. This is because the handgun is concealable and allows the killer to get within point blank range of his victim.

The second logistic is the distance from the victim that concealment of the weapon allowed: all three victims were killed from a distance of three feet or less. 

The third logistic is when the assailant struck: all three victims were either stationary or walking at a normal pace of 2 1/2 miles per hour. Lincoln was seated, McKinley was in a receiving line and Garfield was walking in a train station.

All three assassins had a motive for killing the President, something Oswald did not have.

All of the Commission's nonsense about shooting at a moving target with a bolt action rifle at 85 yards being "an easy shot", is just that, nonsense. It took a skill so special, that even it's own rifle "masters" could not duplicate Oswald's performance in speed and accuracy in spite of their having every advantage that Oswald did not have.

[Bill Brown]

On 8/20/2022 at 9:08 AM, Gil Jesus said:

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

Belin showed Benavides CE-162 (Oswald's light-colored jacket) but mistakenly called it CE-163.

 

Why would Belin show a Tippit witness the jacket later found inside the Depository (CE-163) instead of the jacket found a little over a block from the Tippit shooting scene allegedly worn by the fleeing gunman (CE-162)?

 

Isn't it more logical to you that Belin misspoke, showing Benavides CE-162 and accidentally calling it CE-163?

Edited August 23, 2022 by Bill Brown