There were TWO witnesses who inexplicably passed up a chance to ID Oswald on Friday the 22nd

[Donald Willis]

There were TWO witnesses who inexplicably passed up a chance to ID Oswald on Friday the 22nd  (alt.con.jfk & ed forum 10/9/23)

I've long known that WW Scoggins was with the police early in the day on the 22nd, and thus, if he'd seen the perp--as he said he did--he logically would have ID'd Oswald on the evening of the 22nd.  

But there's also evidence right in fellow witness Domingo Benavides' testimony that he, too, for some reason, could have ID'd the suspect, but did not formally ID Oswald at a lineup, not just that day, but ever.  He hemmed and hawed about reporters and this & that:
"[The police] asked me if I could identify him, and I said I don't think I could. At this time I was sure, I wasn't sure that I could or not. I wasn't going to say I could identify and go down and couldn't have."

But other parts of his testimony indicate that he certainly could have identified the suspect.  He was closer to him than was Mrs. Markham:
Mr. BELIN. Let me ask you now, I would like to have you relate again the action of the man with the gun as you saw him now.
Mr. BENAVIDES. As I saw him, I really---I mean really got a good view of the man after the bullets were fired, he had just turned. He was just turning away 
(v6p449)

"I really got a good view of the man..." But did Benavides see his face?:
Mr. Benavides:  I would say he is about your complexion, sir.  Of course he looked, his skin looked a little bit ruddier than mine. (p451)

"Complexion"--Benavides, then, got a good view of his face.  In the end, his explanations as to why he did not ID Oswald on Friday don't pass muster.  

In the absence of a credible explanation from Benavides himself as to why he did not ID Oswald, we are left with the strong possibility that he did not ID him because Oswald was not the man that he saw.  But of course the DPD could not accept that ruinous (for them) explanation.  Hence, Benavides' hem-and-haw act.

dcw

[Ron Bulman]

5 hours ago, Donald Willis said:

his skin looked a little bit ruddier than mine. (p451)

I think I saw a picture of Benavides recently, but I can't remember.  Did he have a ruddy complexion?  Oswald's was somewhat that way.  That is a astute observation, from a distance of how may feet?

[David Josephs]

13 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

I think I saw a picture of Benavides recently, but I can't remember.  Did he have a ruddy complexion?  Oswald's was somewhat that way.  That is a astute observation, from a distance of how may feet?

[Michael Kalin]

On 10/9/2023 at 3:44 PM, Donald Willis said:

In the absence of a credible explanation from Benavides himself as to why he did not ID Oswald, we are left with the strong possibility that he did not ID him because Oswald was not the man that he saw.  But of course the DPD could not accept that ruinous (for them) explanation.  Hence, Benavides' hem-and-haw act.

The following item from Joseph McBride's Into the Nightmare raises "the strong possibility" to a certainty. Leavelle's SOR's "did not see suspect" meant Benavides "did not see Oswald," Leavelle's only suspect, whom he framed.

Quote

As was mentioned in Chapter 7, Mark Lane said in 1966 that when he and director Emilio de Antonio went to Dallas earlier that year to film Rush to Judgment, they found "All the tension is where Tippit was killed." They asked one key witness, Domingo Benavides, who was closest to Tippit when he was shot, whether he could identify the man who killed Tippit. Benavides replied, "Of course, I was ten or fifteen feet away. Of course I could. I told that to the Dallas police but they did not bring me to the lineup." But after the Dallas police learned the filmmakers had contacted Benavides for an interview, Benavides did not show up for the filming.
Into the Nightmare [460-1]

Details were spelled out in a 1966 Ramparts article.

Quote

Earlier this year Mark Lane located Domingo Benavides, a witness to the shooting whose brother was mysteriously killed (see above), and arranged to meet him at Lane's motel for a filmed interview the next morning; Lane offered him $100. That night two men from the homicide squad came to the motel and inquired of Lane's film crew why they were so interested in Benavides. "What did you offer our boy $100 for?" they asked. According to the film crew, the policemen knew the exact time of Benavides' appointment with Lane, implied Benavides would not be there, and generally showed a great deal more concern about their footage on the Tippit murder than about the killing of Kennedy. Benavides never showed up.
Ramparts Magazine
The Legacy of Penn Jones, Jr. by David Welsh
https://www.unz.com/print/Ramparts-1966nov-00039 p.47

There is no room for doubt as to who informed the police. Same man who informed the FBI about Benavides' Vaganov encounter engineered by Berendt. Benavides himself.

Benavides' promotion from a nobody to Bowley's substitute and official murder eye-witness must have irritated Leavelle no end, and forced the brain police to maintain heavy pressure on Benavides to toe the line. In this regard the bravado of Benavides' WC testimony shows great courage. The putdown of Callaway drove home the point that Callaway had not seen the actual killer. The quirky description of the killer based on Belin's appearance implied that the killer did not resemble Oswald. That was as far as Benavides dared push the matter. Disclosing what he actually witnessed probably would have required a death wish. I suspect even tacking on the tale of the red Ford was a perilous step.

Edited October 21, 2023 by Michael Kalin

[Donald Willis]

On 10/21/2023 at 7:17 AM, Michael Kalin said:

The following item from Joseph McBride's Into the Nightmare raises "the strong possibility" to a certainty. Leavelle's SOR's "did not see suspect" meant Benavides "did not see Oswald," Leavelle's only suspect, whom he framed.

Details were spelled out in a 1966 Ramparts article.

There is no room for doubt as to who informed the police. Same man who informed the FBI about Benavides' Vaganov encounter engineered by Berendt. Benavides himself.

Benavides' promotion from a nobody to Bowley's substitute and official murder eye-witness must have irritated Leavelle no end, and forced the brain police to maintain heavy pressure on Benavides to toe the line. In this regard the bravado of Benavides' WC testimony shows great courage. The putdown of Callaway drove home the point that Callaway had not seen the actual killer. The quirky description of the killer based on Belin's appearance implied that the killer did not resemble Oswald. That was as far as Benavides dared push the matter. Disclosing what he actually witnessed probably would have required a death wish. I suspect even tacking on the tale of the red Ford was a perilous step.

Yes, apparently pretty gutsy, like Scoggins offering an alternate scenario to his The cops wouldn't listen to me, so I just left..  That vehicle seems to be the key to the whole thing.

[Karl Kinaski]

Benavides to Belin: He (the Tippit killer) looked like you. 🙂 

David W. Belin:

[Alan Ford]

Friends, one is struck by a curiously insistent little motif in the key shooting eyewitness stories: partial and/or momentary blindness.

Mrs. Markham covering her eyes with her hands
Mr. Scoggins' view being obscured by a bush and then he scrambles to hide outside his cab
Mr. Benavides ducking down in his truck

Not a single person gets a continuous view of the unfolding events: Officer pulls over - officer talks to man - officer gets out of car - man shoots officer - man stands over officer - man flees the scene

Everywhere we look-------or rather: everywhere the witnesses look--------we get ellipses.

Look, for example, at the curiously ambiguous wording in Mr. Scoggins' 3/16/64 FBI interview report:

It's almost as if Mr. Scoggins cannot quite state categorically that there weren't in fact TWO men rather than just one