What happened to Tippit's Notebook?

[Steve Thomas]

From:

CD 1285 DPD "Departmental Manual of Operating Procedure

Responsibilities and Duties of a Patrolman in the Patrol Division Page 45

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=11680#relPageId=48

 

J.D Tippit was a Patrolman in the Second Platoon, Patrol Division, Southwest Area Substation

https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh19/pdf/WH19_Batchelor_Ex_5002.pdf

 

I don't ever remember seeing it, or anybody ever quoting from it.

Steve Thomas

 

Edited October 8, 2023 by Steve Thomas

[Paul Brancato]

Great question Steve. Wonder if anyone knows? First thing that comes to my mind is his ‘alibi’ for where he was late morning on Nov 22. Since he was supposedly bringing a shoplifter into a police station, and as I recall there are no official records of that incident, only the shop owners decade later statement to the effect that Tippit was the officer who showed up in response to his phone call to the police reporting the shoplifter, such a notebook might clarify this.

[Gerry Down]

11 minutes ago, Paul Brancato said:

Great question Steve. Wonder if anyone knows? First thing that comes to my mind is his ‘alibi’ for where he was late morning on Nov 22. Since he was supposedly bringing a shoplifter into a police station, and as I recall there are no official records of that incident, only the shop owners decade later statement to the effect that Tippit was the officer who showed up in response to his phone call to the police reporting the shoplifter, such a notebook might clarify this.

Hmm, wonder what happened to the shoplifter. Did Tippit drop him off at his home and have a word with one of his parents?

[Joe Bauer]

I do not know Tippit's educational background but I surmise from general reading he wasn't the most literate of persons.

If so, one might reasonably contemplate the possibility that writing detailed reports of his daily call activities might not have been of Tippet's favorite police patrolmen duties?

Still, would have been interesting to have read at least a few of his report takings.

That list of personnel of the DPD is so extensive in number it's kind of exhausting to go through it.

What, 1,000 employees?  Their yearly budget must have been huge.

Noticed dozens of stenographers. Not one was called into Captain Will Fritz's interrogations of Oswald?

Noticed the name of a patrol officer who was listed as serving in the same Southwest station area as Tippit in 1963 - Tommy Tilson.

It was a relatively small group. I would imagine Tilson knew Tippit as well as any other same station beat cop.

Tilson testified in the "Trial Of Lee Harvey Oswald" documentary where famous attorneys Gerry Spence and Vincent Bugliosi squared off.

Tilson was never asked by either Spence or Bugliosi whether he knew Tippit as a same beat location fellow officer.

Tilson later dated famous LBJ mistress Madeline Brown.

One thing you will never find in any J.D. Tippit note takings; his affair with married waitress Johnny Witherspoon.

She worked in a restaurant in Tippet's beat area. At one point, Witherspoon reportedly lived very close to the Tippet murder scene location.

Wasn't Roscoe White also employed by the Dallas PD in 1963? He wasn't on the extensive list above.

Just some anecdotal tidbits.

Edited October 9, 2023 by Joe Bauer

[Steve Thomas]

2 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:

Great question Steve. Wonder if anyone knows? First thing that comes to my mind is his ‘alibi’ for where he was late morning on Nov 22. Since he was supposedly bringing a shoplifter into a police station, and as I recall there are no official records of that incident, only the shop owners decade later statement to the effect that Tippit was the officer who showed up in response to his phone call to the police reporting the shoplifter, such a notebook might clarify this.

Paul,

He might have explained the stop at the gas station, and his attempted use of the phone at the record store.

Steve Thomas

[Jean Ceulemans]

7 hours ago, Joe Bauer said:

I do not know Tippit's educational background but I surmise from general reading he wasn't the most literate of persons.

If so, one might reasonably contemplate the possibility that writing detailed reports of his daily call activities might not have been not one of Tippet's favorite police patrolmen duties?

Still, would have been interesting to have read at least a few of his report takings.

That list of personnel of the DPD is so extensive in number it's kind of exhausting to go through it.

What, 1,000 employees?  Their yearly budget must have been huge.

Noticed dozens of stenographers. Not one was called into Captain Will Fritz's interrogations of Oswald?

Noticed the name of a patrol officer who was listed as serving in the same Southwest station area as Tippit in 1963 - Tommy Tilson.

It was a relatively small group. I would imagine Tilson knew Tippit as well as any other same station beat cop.

Tilson testified in the "Trial Of Lee Harvey Oswald" documentary where famous attorneys Gerry Spence and Vincent Bugliosi squared off.

Tilson was never asked by either Spence or Bugliosi whether he knew Tippit as a same beat location fellow officer.

Tilson later dated famous LBJ mistress Madeline Brown.

One thing you will never find in any J.D. Tippit note takings; his affair with married waitress Maxie Witherspoon.

She worked in a restaurant in Tippet's beat area. At one point, Witherspoon reportedly lived very close to the Tippet murder scene location.

Wasn't Roscoe White also employed by the Dallas PD in 1963? He wasn't on the extensive list above.

Just some anecdotal tidbits.

@Joe Bauer I have not found his notebook; but his personnel file is online, some of that stuff is interesting

Contents of the Personnel File / Tippit : https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth340537/m1/1/?q=tippit

Tippit's Personnel file 113 pages (front and back; so 1/2): https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth337817/?q=tippit

T. Personnel file 118 pages :  https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth337457/?q=tippit

T. Personnel file 45 pages : https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth338410/?q=tippit

T. Complaints and recommendations 49 pages : https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth337475/?q=tippit

T. Injuries, applications, etc  95 pages : https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth338395/?q=tippit

 

Edited October 8, 2023 by Jean Ceulemans

[James Keane]

Joseph McBride writes in ‘Into the Nightmare’ about Tippit having a clipboard in his car with an open notebook. He writes that Jim Leavelle confirmed he did not inspect it (Chapter 7, p259 on kindle version).  

Sergeant WE Barnes also stated in his Warren Commission testimony that he did not read the ‘clipboard’ which he described as a place where officers keep notes and keep the names of wanted suspects. 

From description above it sounds like this is what you are referring to in your post? 

[Gerry Down]

One possibility is that here is an officer holding Tippits notebook (and revolver) after the Tippit shooting:

https://images.app.goo.gl/41PTFGyXnc92kM5j8

Tippit may have had the notebook in his hand as he went to question Oswald and then fell on top of the notebook when Oswald shot him.

[Steve Thomas]

45 minutes ago, James Keane said:

From description above it sounds like this is what you are referring to in your post? 

James,

It sure sounds like it.

I would have thought that that was something that somebody would have wanted to subpoena.

I don't remember it being among the DPD case file materials that the DPD turned over to the Texas State Attorney General in CD 81.

Steve Thomas

[Jean Ceulemans]

20 hours ago, Gerry Down said:

One possibility is that here is an officer holding Tippits notebook (and revolver) after the Tippit shooting:

https://images.app.goo.gl/41PTFGyXnc92kM5j8

Tippit may have had the notebook in his hand as he went to question Oswald and then fell on top of the notebook when Oswald shot him.

D

 

Edited October 9, 2023 by Jean Ceulemans

[Greg Doudna]

Probings in an attempt to crack why the Tippit notebook and clipboard went missing

What an interesting question Steve T. Joseph McBride, Into the Nightmare, pp. 258-59, says,

"Surely it [the clipboard] would have been an important piece of evidence to study for possible leads. Some (including Belin, who took Barnes' testimony) have said there is a photo of a man's head visible on the board in the police photo, and that Tippit could have been searching for that man, but close inspection of the photo shows that the shape is the clip itself, holding what appears to be an open notebook."

So there become two missing items, not one: the clipboard, and the notebook. McBride, 259, interviewed Leavelle, who was at the crime scene, who told him, "I didn't look at that [clipboard], and I didn't trace it".

According to McBride, Leavelle told him that "inspecting the car was Sergeant Barnes's job. Barnes told the commission that 'we never read his clipboard ... I couldn't tell you what was on the clipboard.' The clipboard, which was never brought forward as evidence, would have been considered part of the equipment of the car, Leavelle said, like the shotgun Tippit carried in it."

Say what?? Tippit's notebook would not have been considered "part of the equipment of the car". And even if the physical clipboard itself was, the papers on the clipboard would not have been. 

Yet those papers disappeared. 

After no Dallas Police investigating officer even was curious enough to take a look at the top page, just to, you know, see if there might be anything there that might be a lead on the murder. All those police, and nobody looked at that clipboard, which disappeared. 

That does not pass the smell test. I do not believe it--that no one looked at what was written on the top page of that clipboard, and that by a wholly unrelated coincidence those papers disappeared.

Some provisional and tentative analyses:

• the lack of curiosity to look at the top visible sheet, let alone all the sheets, of that clipboard, combined with the disappearance of all of those sheets, and Tippit's officer's notebook, from being preserved, does not sound like accident or incompetence but purposeful.
• Leavelle himself is the prime suspect for (a) looking at the top page--or the page of the notebook held open under the clip on top of the clipboard if that is the way Tippit had it in the moments before his death; (b) saw something deemed inappropriate to become part of the public record in the investigation of the murder of a fellow officer; and (c) withheld or diverted it from any other officer seeing it.

What might have been written there that would account for that response?

A name of a woman?

Or just a street address, such as the street address of a house in front of which Tippit may have pulled over to meet someone who was waiting for him on the sidewalk?

Sometimes one loose thread can clear up another loose thread, such that in the calculus of loose threads of cases, 1 + 1 can sometimes = 0, instead of 2.

In the present case, there are two other loose threads: one is a known coverup (or else sophisticated attempt to feign one), reported by Myers of high-level knowledge that there was another officer witness, name not disclosed, present at the Tippit crime scene, as a witness to the Tippit killer, who was there supposedly having an affair with a married woman. At high levels (internal to Dallas law enforcement) that was covered up so as to protect the married woman's good name, supposedly (the alleged reason told to Myers for covering up this incendiary information and highly improper failure to report if true). This coverup is not speculated, it is reported by Myers attributed to a high-level anonymous witness the identity of which Myers has never revealed.

The second loose end is the anonymous waitress at Austin's Bar B Q, where Johnnie Witherspoon, with whom Tippit had had an affair, also worked, in the anonymous waitress's filmed interview in Shattered Friday. She said Witherspoon lived on 10th Street near where Tippit was killed. That apparently was not actually true, however that waitress who worked in the same circles and knew the gossip thought it was true. Officer Tilson, one of the officers of Tippit's station, in later years told Myers he heard that from other officers and believed it, but was not speaking from personal knowledge. There are more interviews and information on the Tippit-Witherspoon saga in McBride's book than Myers'. Austin's owner, Austin Cook, told McBride, "I've heard that she lived over close to where he was [when] Oswald killed him, but I don't know". Johnnie Witherspoon told McBride that in November 1963 that "she was indeed living in Oak Cliff, but she was evasive about the address: 'It wasn't twenty miles away. Probably three to five miles. I never lived on Tenth Street or even close ... I never lived on Tenth and not within three miles, four miles, or five miles ... people have vivid imaginations" (Into the Nightmare, 292). 

Let's assume (as I do assume as most likely) that the truth is as Johnnie said, and the gossip that she lived on Tenth was not correct (certainly neither city directory information nor direct witness has ever confirmed that gossip), and that the gossip that she did live on Tenth stemmed from some urban-legend genre of story that went viral.

Leavelle himself, not as speculation but confessed fact in his own words, covered up the Tippit-Witherspoon affair, even though it came out later. The fact of the affair is completely established, such that Myers, friend of and sympathetic to the family, in his book does not dispute that there was an affair, but tells it in the most sympathetic and sensitive way possible to Mrs. Tippit, even to the point of denying unconvincingly what is pretty likely a second fact, that the Tippit-Witherspoon affair produced a child.

But back to Leavelle. McBride asked Leavelle "if he had heard the rumors about Tippit and his mistress in 1963". Leavelle's answer to McBride: "We knew about it but didn't put it out ... it was known by some of his close friends, but it wasn't known department-wise. I talked to the girl. She didn't deny it. Who gives a sh-it? It's his business, it's her business" (p. 290).

That coverup on Leavelle's part is acknowledged fact, but it also may have had nothing to do with the Tippit murder case. But the second coverup, the one reported by Myers of an officer present at the Tippit crime scene and a witness, in an affair with a different married woman, definitely has to do with the Tippit murder case, and also was covered up. By who? Myers isn't saying to the present day, even though he knows who told him. To that extent Myers, although he did not create the coverup, is now accessory to that coverup, perhaps valuing keeping his word to someone who may now be dead, over disclosing that particular information in the interests of history.

Who was Myers' secret source? Well, absent disclosure from Myers it may never be known, but I will say who I think is the most likely suspect: it sounds to me a lot like Leavelle (who is now dead). It all fits very well with Leavelle, as someone who would be in a position to know; he was interviewed by Myers as a named source on other things; Leavelle has a track record of covering up exactly this genre of secret; and even the language reported by Myers of his source sounds to me a little like the way Leavelle would talk and explain things (Myers, With Malice, 2013 edn, 374). Perhaps anticipating this very focus of suspicion as to the identity of the source, Myers adds in his footnote (note 1125) this denial that it was Leavelle, from Leavelle: "Jim Leavelle, the former homicide detective who led the investigation into Tippit's death, reported in 1996 that he was unaware of the story." I do not see Myers taking a personal position in his book on whether he believes that denial. There it stands. I don't think Leavelle's denial bears significant weight, given that that is what would be expected of him if Leavelle was the source (and I don't think Leavelle was above prevarication).  

But to conjecture how these threads might be drawn together--

I suspect what was on that Tippit clipboard and/or notebook was a street address at or near the location where Tippit was killed, with or without accompanying written information. It may not have been clear to whoever saw that clipboard why Tippit would have the address where he was killed written down on a clipboard or in his notebook prior to his being killed there. If Leavelle saw that--and perhaps it is plausible he indeed may have been the first, and in this case also the last, to look at and take possession of that notebook?--Leavelle might not himself know for sure why that address was there, but he might have suspected or figured that it might have to do with a woman even if it was unclear from what Tippit wrote, if Tippit's womanizing was otherwise known to Leavelle unrelated to the Tippit killing. If Leavelle suspected that was in the background of Tippit's stop that day it would be very much in keeping with officers' loyalty, and consideration to Tippit's bereaved family, et al, to just mercifully (as Leavelle might self-interpret it) not "go there".

Leavelle, responsible for at least one, and I think very possibly both, of the two coverups related above, then, for the good of the family, the late officer Tippit's own reputation, and that of the Dallas Police Department in the national spotlight over the JFK assassination, simply saw to it that the clipboard and notebook never were turned in as evidence and not seen again.

And although I suspect what was on the Tippit clipboard was a 10th Street address where he was killed, I do not assume that necessarily involved womanizing in this instance (even if someone seeing Tippit's notebook and clipboard might not know one way or the other).

On other grounds, I believe the circumstances of Tippit's killing are well argued to be Tippit was lured into an ambush there at Tenth and Patton where he was killed in a professional killing, by a killer there waiting for Tippit's arrival at a particular time, accounting for the back and forth on the sidewalk when the killer saw Tippit's car arriving and flagged Tippit down, not vice versa as commonly supposed. 

That's my attempt to make sense of the missing clipboard and notebook of Tippit, on the basis of highly incomplete information. 

Edited October 9, 2023 by Greg Doudna

[Sean Coleman]

JD’s dash mounted pad and it’s uncanny resemblance to a mugshot.

ps. It’s a bulldog clip. How boring.

Edited November 15, 2023 by Sean Coleman

[Larry Hancock]

Someone here with law enforcement experience should comment but my understanding is that the patrol car clipboards contained hot items for each day, outstanding warrants related to the patrol area , stolen car tag numbers, recent robbery suspects, recent complaints from local residents that might server as something to watch for - basically prompts for the patrol officer to be watching for during the days duty.  Having a mug shot of a suspect at the top of the clipboard would make perfect sense if the clipboards were used that way in Dallas. 

 

[Gerry Down]

19 minutes ago, Larry Hancock said:

Someone here with law enforcement experience should comment but my understanding is that the patrol car clipboards contained hot items for each day, outstanding warrants related to the patrol area , stolen car tag numbers, recent robbery suspects, recent complaints from local residents that might server as something to watch for - basically prompts for the patrol officer to be watching for during the days duty.  Having a mug shot of a suspect at the top of the clipboard would make perfect sense if the clipboards were used that way in Dallas. 

 

Sounds like the briefing that is held at the start of each working shift at the police station. The officers sit down in front of the sergeant and he/she updates them on what has been going on at the station since their last shift and what/who to keep an eye out for on their upcoming shift. I guess its possible patrol officers such as Tippit were handed a print-out sheet during such briefings and he would then affix the print-out to the clip board in his patrol car to remind him of the things to keep an eye out for on that shift. 

The only thing about that is that such info would generally be considered private. And by having it on a clipboard in the front seat of his patrol car, its possible any member of the public could read what was on the clipboard anytime the officer left the car such as to eat at a restaurant such as the Dobbs restaurant or Austins Barbeque in the case of Tippit. And members of the public being able to see such info could create all kinds of operational problems. 

[Steve Thomas]

32 minutes ago, Larry Hancock said:

 outstanding warrants related to the patrol area , stolen car tag numbers, recent robbery suspects, recent complaints from local residents that might server as something to watch for

 

Larry,

BOLO.

To my untrained eye, it looks like there is only one piece of paper on that clipboard.

I still wonder about the notebook where he was supposed to be keeping notes of other things he did that day.

Steve Thomas