1:22pm DPD radio message translates as The Jacket Was Planted, Folks--and that ain't all

[Alan Ford]

3 hours ago, Michael Kalin said:

Myers' interview of Dodie Dean's descendants is not trustworthy for reasons discussed in Greg's "Lee Harvey Oswald's two jackets and why the Tippit killer's jacket was not one of them" thread. Nothing in the present thread offers a firm foundation for conclusions based on this voice from the long dead. My 6/8/23 comment:

Two months later the FBI interviewed Reynolds, Patterson, the Brocks & Roger Ballew. Dodie is conspicuously absent. Why? Surely they knew where she was and at some point decided to consign her to oblivion. Most likely they did not consider her a credible source.

"Most likely"? Where do you get that from, Mr. Kalin? If she really found the/a jacket where she said she did, then she would have been a most inconvenient witness. The 'investigators' would have had very good reason to "consign her to oblivion"------------just as they did, for instance, with most of the Texas Theatre patrons.

Edited November 8, 2023 by Alan Ford

[Ron Bulman]

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[Michael Kalin]

8 hours ago, Alan Ford said:

"Most likely"? Where do you get that from, Mr. Kalin? If she really found the/a jacket where she said she did, then she would have been a most inconvenient witness. The 'investigators' would have had very good reason to "consign her to oblivion"------------just as they did, for instance, with most of the Texas Theatre patrons.

In terms of proximity she was a better Oswald eyewitness than either of the Brocks or the auto crowd. Whipping the jacket story into shape to conform to requirements if deemed necessary would have been a simple matter for the FBI. From Myers' article:

Quote

Mrs. Dean got a good look at the man who passed her at less than ten feet and positively identified him as Lee Harvey Oswald.

When did Dodie die? The article does not provide age information about her, ditto the daughters. Why not?

[Alan Ford]

52 minutes ago, Michael Kalin said:

In terms of proximity she was a better Oswald eyewitness than either of the Brocks or the auto crowd. Whipping the jacket story into shape to conform to requirements if deemed necessary would have been a simple matter for the FBI.

Her worth as an 'Oswald' eyewitness would have been destroyed if she gave the wrong jacket color.

Re. further details from Mr. Myers: you know how that goes-----------he shows what he wants to show, as he wants to show it.

[Greg Doudna]

More on the shedding of the jacket at Ballew's Texaco

There is another report of an eyewitness in the parking lot seeing the gunman taking off the jacket that has received little attention. It is secondhand hearsay so there is possibility of error or garbling in transmission, but the witness herself underlying the hearsay sounds very credible.

I quote from the document I have in printout form from a year or so ago but unfortunately I am unable to remember or give a link to where I found it. The only link I have for it is a dead link. It is part of a file of William Pulte papers and documents. It is an email dated Jan 18, 1999, from Pulte to Harry Livingstone. It reads:

"A Mrs. Slider had lunch from 12:30 - 1:30 on Nov. 22, 1963. She worked at the phone company and went home for lunch each day. On Nov. 22 she got back to her parking area early, perhaps as early as 1:10. She parked, for a monthly fee, on the lot behind the Texaco station, well known to researchers as the location where the white jacket was found.

"The lot behind the station (north of the station) was owned by the Texaco station owner. It was just south of the east-west alley running between and parallel to Jefferson and 10th. The block in question is the one west of Patton and east of Crawford.

"Mrs. Slider had pulled into the lot from Crawford and parked facing north, i.e. facing the alley and the rear of the Abundant Life Temple. She was accustomed to leaving her car about 1:25, to get back to her place of work by 1:30. Seeing that she had gotten back earlier than usual, she began to read a book. A moment or so later, she was startled to see a man running down the alley westward toward Crawford; the man was running at top speed.

"Recall that she had parked facing north toward the alley and the church complex just north of the alley. The man slowed down for a second to 'shed his jacket' according to Mrs. Slider. After removing the jacket, which he dropped in the alley, she saw that the man was wearing a T-shirt, not the tan shirt Lee Oswald was wearing when arrested in the Texas Theater.

"Racing past her, the man turned right (north) at Crawfored and she lost sight of him. About two minutes later, she saw six or seven men running in the same direction; some were uniformed, some were not. Some had handguns, some had 'long guns'. This group of men also turned right and were lost from sight."

My analysis: this is another witness of the Tippit killer and the jacket being dropped at Ballew's Texaco. Rather than suppose this is a third distinct claimed drop location for the jacket at Ballew's Texaco, different from the reported find spot and the tire rack of the Doretha Dean story, consider reading this as a version of the Doretha Dean story.

First consider where she was parked. Here is an aerial photo of the parking lot of Ballew's Texaco and the surrounding streets and buildings..

In this photo south is up, north is down. (For purposes of this description for convenience Crawford and Patton are considered due north and south; to the extent that may not be perfectly accurate pls correct accordingly.) The Dallas Police reported the jacket was found under a car parked angled facing southeast in the viewer's top line of parked cars north of (below) the Texaco. Below (north) of that is a double row of parked cars. The top cars of that row are angled facing northeast. That is where Mrs. Slider may plausibly have parked, in one of those spots, as she is said to have been "facing north" as she sat in her car.

Imagine Mrs. Slider sitting at the wheel of her car facing northeast in one of the parking spots of that row. She has a view toward the left side of her front field of view of the Abundant Life Temple, the huge unmarked building next to the lettering "Crawford" above. She has a view toward the right side of her front field of view of where the Tippit killer came out from the narrow passageway between Ballew's Texaco and Mrs. Dean's Dairy Mart. That passageway might also have been called in this account confusingly an "alley" other than the east-west alley parallel to Tenth.

We know the Tippit killer did come running north through that passageway between Ballew's Texaco and the Dairy Mart (did not come running from the east of the east-west alley) on other grounds. Mrs. Slider would have been in a position to see him come out from that passageway in front of her, toward the right of her front field of view, as he came out of that passageway along the east side of Ballew's Texaco with Dean's Dairy on the other side, the passageway where the tire rack was.

Imagine the Tippit killer comes out of that passageway bursting into Mrs. Slider's view--she looks up and sees him emerge out into the parking lot, then he stops. The man hesitates, then she sees him taking off or completing taking off his jacket and either steps back momentarily to toss it on to the tire rack, or drops it on the ground there near the base of the tire rack at the north end of that passageway just before he comes out visibly into the parking lot. She sees him dropping or "shed[ding]" the jacket there. 

Then the man, without a jacket, now according to the hearsay of Mrs. Slider in T-shirt only (presumably white), runs past her going out to the east-west alley and west on that alley to Crawford and right on Crawford as she tracked him with her eyes. 

The "six or seven men running in the same direction", some uniformed, carrying guns, "about two minutes later" would be police arriving at the scene shortly after. They are not directly chasing the man (it is "two minutes" delay, the running killer is gone and not in sight). Instead they are going to behind the antique store where they mistakenly think the killer may have gone. When Mrs. Slider is said to have said "this group of men also turned right and were lost from sight" rather than envision that as those police en masse running out to and turning right on Crawford, consider that may be description of that group of police coming north through the passageway between the Texaco and Dean's Dairy, and turning right there, to go to the back of the furniture store, where police searched next.

In other words, allowing for garbling in transmission in the hearsay and two possibilities for the meaning of the "alley" in the story, this is a heretofore-underreported story (e.g. no mention of Mrs. Slider in Myers' With Malice) of a live witness in that parking lot who saw the Tippit killer shedding his jacket, and it can be read in agreement with the Doretha Dean story of the direction of the killer's movements and the tire rack initial location of the shed jacket.

In the Doretha Dean story, Mrs. Dean immediately went out the front of her store (Dean's Dairy) on Jefferson, looked around the corner north in that passageway and saw the leaving at the other end. According to her daughters' retelling of her story, Mrs. Dean then saw the jacket on the tire rack where the killer had just abandoned it, and lifted it up and took it in her own hands, before turning it over to the police when the police arrived.

Here is a photo that day, Nov 22, 1963, of the passageway and the tire rack, looking north. The tire rack pointed by Myers' arrow can be seen at the end just before the killer would come out into the view of Mrs. Slider sitting in her parked car behind the building to the west, facing northeast where she would see him as he came out.   

The killer's motivation in shedding the jacket would be to change outward appearance, meaning ditching it there could be logical before he ran through open space continuing out to Crawford.

The discrepancy between Mrs. Slider's reported certainty that the killer was not wearing the brown shirt seen by Brewer when the killer ran past Brewer's store into the Texas Theatre, but was (according to Mrs. Slider if that is reported accurately) wearing a (presumed white) T-shirt instead, is curious. However there are some minutes unaccounted for, with the whereabouts and actions of the killer in those minutes unknown, between his being last seen leaving Ballew's Texaco at Crawford, and next seen passing Brewer's store on Jefferson before entering the Texas Theatre into the balcony. Either: there is an error in the hearsay of Mrs. Slider's story on that detail; or the killer changed appearance once again by putting on a brown shirt; or it wasn't the killer seen by Brewer running past his store who went into the theatre balcony. (I do not think it was the third option, therefore reason it was either the first or second.) 

And still another version of the killer's shedding of that same jacket

There is a still possible further version of the jacket at Ballew's Texaco, later in the same Jan 18, 1999 Pulte to Livingstone email document. Rather than take this at face value as some anomalous further unexplained story I suspect this is some garbled earlier version of the Doretha Dean story (i.e. two chains of hearsay transmission not just one in this case of the Doretha Dean story, with lots of room in hearsay "telephone tag"-genre transmission for errors to be introduced). Here it is:

"Beginning in 1981, Greg Lowrey has canvassed everyone he could locate who was living or working on 10th St. and on Jefferson on Nov. 22, 1963. Two women who lived in an old house on Jefferson told Lowrey that they had found a dark jacket lying in the alley at the location Mrs. Slider had indicated. They found the jacket within an hour or so of the murder. They hung it on a fence post. Later, they noticed that the jacket had been removed."

OK, I like to be a "clumper" when it comes to disparate witness stories which bear key similarities, see variants of the same story in the minor contradictions and details, rather than a "splitter"--interpret differences in details in similar-sounding witness stories as evidence of doppelganger persons and events, multiplication of events.

Rather than a distinct dropped, abandoned, then refound jacket in the same location (Ballew's Texaco), my first assumption is--however it is to be interpreted--this is a version of the one known dropped and abandoned jacket at that Texaco station that day of all the other stories.

The "two women" could be Mrs. Dean and one of her daughters. Suppose it is one of the daughters telling Greg Lowrey in the early 1980s an earlier version of the very story that the same daughter or her sister may have contacted and told Myers in 2019.

The "fence post" could be other language for the tire rack. Finding the "dark jacket lying in the alley at the location Mrs. Slider had indicated" (did one or both of the women of Lowrey's source compare notes with Mrs. Slider?--I am not sure how to interpret or who was claiming knowledge that it was the "location Mrs. Slider had indicated").

The "within an hour or so of the murder" could be a response of, say, the daughter of Doretha to the natural question an interviewer such as Greg Lowrey would ask (as he speaks to her at the door in his door-to-door canvassing...), when did this happen. The daughter, not knowing the exact timing or minute, but making the point that it was right after the Tippit killing not some later occasion, says, "oh, it was right away, a little after, within that first hour, not later...", something like that (remember this is memory nearly three decades after the fact).

The details of a woman (women); the same location of the jacket spot as Mrs. Slider saw; the finding of an abandoned jacket there; occurring within 0-60 minutes after the Tippit killing; a lifting of the jacket to "h[a]ng it on a fence post" by a woman (women); the jacket later gone ... those are the details that to me cumulatively evoke the Doretha Dean story itself, as it could have been told to Lowrey by one of the daughters.

If so, note these variants of the same event reported four different ways:

• Mrs. Slider story (hearsay): killer drops jacket on the ground (reconstructed near or next to the tire rack)
• Doretha Dean story (hearsay): killer set jacket on the tire rack, Doretha lifted the jacket off the tire rack, handled it and turned it over to police
• "two women" Greg Lowrey source (hearsay from Greg Lowrey): they (read: one of the women) lifted the jacket off the ground and put it on a "fence post" (read: lifted from the ground and put on the tire rack?)
• Dallas Police version (Nov 22, 1963, police report document and several officer testimonies): an unknown officer, never named, never identified, who never came forth, was reported to have found the jacket under the front of a parked car a few yards away from the location of the tire rack and handed it to named, reporting officers who reported it. (That odd DPD reporting--no photo or name of finder of the jacket where it was found in situ--may have functioned to conceal, at least for the moment, uncertainty and/or irregularity in chain of custody of the find of that jacket which a good defense attorney would have capitalized upon in any trial setting. That DPD reporting occurred prior to the suspect's, Oswald's, untimely murder, at a time when there was intent to obtain physical evidence useable at trial.) 

In short, I believe all four of these are versions of the same jacket shed by the same individual, and there are elements of truth in all four, related to this same jacket and the circumstances of how it came to be there and its find.

Let the "splitters" have at it and argue from discrepancies in details that these are two or three or four different jackets, or two or three or four distinct unrelated stories--all involving an abandoned jacket at the same Ballew's Texaco the afternoon of the Tippit killing. Let the "splitters" show why discrepencies in details in decades-later hearsay witnesses' stories are evidence of multiplying doppelganger jackets!

I'm a "clumper". All four of these stories are versions of the same shed jacket, the same original event! That's my interpretation here! Simple solution. 

[Michael Kalin]

On 11/8/2023 at 5:54 AM, Alan Ford said:

Her worth as an 'Oswald' eyewitness would have been destroyed if she gave the wrong jacket color.

No loss of worth, the eyewitness part was independent of adventitious details such as the color of the jacket, which already ranged from light gray to tan. What difference would another color make?

WC interrogators & WR authors were primarily interested in a muster & enumeration of eyewitnesses. WR's "The Killing of Patrolman J. D. Tippit" omits mention of the jacket altogether, ignoring, among other things, the FBI's contrived attribution of eyewitness status to Patterson of the throwdown event.

Related FBI reports post-dated Oswald's demise so there was no need to strive for a foolish consistency in every particular. Besides, multiple witnesses' statements lose credibility if they sync exactly on every point.

Relative to Greg's clumping, again he omits the likely explanation. The jacket was planted by Westbrook's DPD subordinates.

Small correction -- per Myers the tire rack photo was taken on 11/23/63, but the presence of a tire rack next to a garage means nothing.

Edited November 9, 2023 by Michael Kalin

[Alan Ford]

On 11/8/2023 at 9:53 PM, Greg Doudna said:

More on the shedding of the jacket at Ballew's Texaco

There is another report of an eyewitness in the parking lot seeing the gunman taking off the jacket that has received little attention. It is secondhand hearsay so there is possibility of error or garbling in transmission, but the witness herself underlying the hearsay sounds very credible.

I quote from the document I have in printout form from a year or so ago but unfortunately I am unable to remember or give a link to where I found it. The only link I have for it is a dead link. It is part of a file of William Pulte papers and documents. It is an email dated Jan 18, 1999, from Pulte to Harry Livingstone. It reads:

"A Mrs. Slider had lunch from 12:30 - 1:30 on Nov. 22, 1963. She worked at the phone company and went home for lunch each day. On Nov. 22 she got back to her parking area early, perhaps as early as 1:10. She parked, for a monthly fee, on the lot behind the Texaco station, well known to researchers as the location where the white jacket was found.

"The lot behind the station (north of the station) was owned by the Texaco station owner. It was just south of the east-west alley running between and parallel to Jefferson and 10th. The block in question is the one west of Patton and east of Crawford.

"Mrs. Slider had pulled into the lot from Crawford and parked facing north, i.e. facing the alley and the rear of the Abundant Life Temple. She was accustomed to leaving her car about 1:25, to get back to her place of work by 1:30. Seeing that she had gotten back earlier than usual, she began to read a book. A moment or so later, she was startled to see a man running down the alley westward toward Crawford; the man was running at top speed.

"Recall that she had parked facing north toward the alley and the church complex just north of the alley. The man slowed down for a second to 'shed his jacket' according to Mrs. Slider. After removing the jacket, which he dropped in the alley, she saw that the man was wearing a T-shirt, not the tan shirt Lee Oswald was wearing when arrested in the Texas Theater.

"Racing past her, the man turned right (north) at Crawfored and she lost sight of him. About two minutes later, she saw six or seven men running in the same direction; some were uniformed, some were not. Some had handguns, some had 'long guns'. This group of men also turned right and were lost from sight."

My analysis: this is another witness of the Tippit killer and the jacket being dropped at Ballew's Texaco. Rather than suppose this is a third distinct claimed drop location for the jacket at Ballew's Texaco, different from the reported find spot and the tire rack of the Doretha Dean story, consider reading this as a version of the Doretha Dean story.

First consider where she was parked. Here is an aerial photo of the parking lot of Ballew's Texaco and the surrounding streets and buildings..

In this photo south is up, north is down. (For purposes of this description for convenience Crawford and Patton are considered due north and south; to the extent that may not be perfectly accurate pls correct accordingly.) The Dallas Police reported the jacket was found under a car parked angled facing southeast in the viewer's top line of parked cars north of (below) the Texaco. Below (north) of that is a double row of parked cars. The top cars of that row are angled facing northeast. That is where Mrs. Slider may plausibly have parked, in one of those spots, as she is said to have been "facing north" as she sat in her car.

Imagine Mrs. Slider sitting at the wheel of her car facing northeast in one of the parking spots of that row. She has a view toward the left side of her front field of view of the Abundant Life Temple, the huge unmarked building next to the lettering "Crawford" above. She has a view toward the right side of her front field of view of where the Tippit killer came out from the narrow passageway between Ballew's Texaco and Mrs. Dean's Dairy Mart. That passageway might also have been called in this account confusingly an "alley" other than the east-west alley parallel to Tenth.

We know the Tippit killer did come running north through that passageway between Ballew's Texaco and the Dairy Mart (did not come running from the east of the east-west alley) on other grounds. Mrs. Slider would have been in a position to see him come out from that passageway in front of her, toward the right of her front field of view, as he came out of that passageway along the east side of Ballew's Texaco with Dean's Dairy on the other side, the passageway where the tire rack was.

Imagine the Tippit killer comes out of that passageway bursting into Mrs. Slider's view--she looks up and sees him emerge out into the parking lot, then he stops. The man hesitates, then she sees him taking off or completing taking off his jacket and either steps back momentarily to toss it on to the tire rack, or drops it on the ground there near the base of the tire rack at the north end of that passageway just before he comes out visibly into the parking lot. She sees him dropping or "shed[ding]" the jacket there. 

Then the man, without a jacket, now according to the hearsay of Mrs. Slider in T-shirt only (presumably white), runs past her going out to the east-west alley and west on that alley to Crawford and right on Crawford as she tracked him with her eyes. 

The "six or seven men running in the same direction", some uniformed, carrying guns, "about two minutes later" would be police arriving at the scene shortly after. They are not directly chasing the man (it is "two minutes" delay, the running killer is gone and not in sight). Instead they are going to behind the antique store where they mistakenly think the killer may have gone. When Mrs. Slider is said to have said "this group of men also turned right and were lost from sight" rather than envision that as those police en masse running out to and turning right on Crawford, consider that may be description of that group of police coming north through the passageway between the Texaco and Dean's Dairy, and turning right there, to go to the back of the furniture store, where police searched next.

In other words, allowing for garbling in transmission in the hearsay and two possibilities for the meaning of the "alley" in the story, this is a heretofore-underreported story (e.g. no mention of Mrs. Slider in Myers' With Malice) of a live witness in that parking lot who saw the Tippit killer shedding his jacket, and it can be read in agreement with the Doretha Dean story of the direction of the killer's movements and the tire rack initial location of the shed jacket.

In the Doretha Dean story, Mrs. Dean immediately went out the front of her store (Dean's Dairy) on Jefferson, looked around the corner north in that passageway and saw the leaving at the other end. According to her daughters' retelling of her story, Mrs. Dean then saw the jacket on the tire rack where the killer had just abandoned it, and lifted it up and took it in her own hands, before turning it over to the police when the police arrived.

Here is a photo that day, Nov 22, 1963, of the passageway and the tire rack, looking north. The tire rack pointed by Myers' arrow can be seen at the end just before the killer would come out into the view of Mrs. Slider sitting in her parked car behind the building to the west, facing northeast where she would see him as he came out.   

The killer's motivation in shedding the jacket would be to change outward appearance, meaning ditching it there could be logical before he ran through open space continuing out to Crawford.

The discrepancy between Mrs. Slider's reported certainty that the killer was not wearing the brown shirt seen by Brewer when the killer ran past Brewer's store into the Texas Theatre, but was (according to Mrs. Slider if that is reported accurately) wearing a (presumed white) T-shirt instead, is curious. However there are some minutes unaccounted for, with the whereabouts and actions of the killer in those minutes unknown, between his being last seen leaving Ballew's Texaco at Crawford, and next seen passing Brewer's store on Jefferson before entering the Texas Theatre into the balcony. Either: there is an error in the hearsay of Mrs. Slider's story on that detail; or the killer changed appearance once again by putting on a brown shirt; or it wasn't the killer seen by Brewer running past his store who went into the theatre balcony. (I do not think it was the third option, therefore reason it was either the first or second.) 

And still another version of the killer's shedding of that same jacket

There is a still possible further version of the jacket at Ballew's Texaco, later in the same Jan 18, 1999 Pulte to Livingstone email document. Rather than take this at face value as some anomalous further unexplained story I suspect this is some garbled earlier version of the Doretha Dean story (i.e. two chains of hearsay transmission not just one in this case of the Doretha Dean story, with lots of room in hearsay "telephone tag"-genre transmission for errors to be introduced). Here it is:

"Beginning in 1981, Greg Lowrey has canvassed everyone he could locate who was living or working on 10th St. and on Jefferson on Nov. 22, 1963. Two women who lived in an old house on Jefferson told Lowrey that they had found a dark jacket lying in the alley at the location Mrs. Slider had indicated. They found the jacket within an hour or so of the murder. They hung it on a fence post. Later, they noticed that the jacket had been removed."

OK, I like to be a "clumper" when it comes to disparate witness stories which bear key similarities, see variants of the same story in the minor contradictions and details, rather than a "splitter"--interpret differences in details in similar-sounding witness stories as evidence of doppelganger persons and events, multiplication of events.

Rather than a distinct dropped, abandoned, then refound jacket in the same location (Ballew's Texaco), my first assumption is--however it is to be interpreted--this is a version of the one known dropped and abandoned jacket at that Texaco station that day of all the other stories.

The "two women" could be Mrs. Dean and one of her daughters. Suppose it is one of the daughters telling Greg Lowrey in the early 1980s an earlier version of the very story that the same daughter or her sister may have contacted and told Myers in 2019.

The "fence post" could be other language for the tire rack. Finding the "dark jacket lying in the alley at the location Mrs. Slider had indicated" (did one or both of the women of Lowrey's source compare notes with Mrs. Slider?--I am not sure how to interpret or who was claiming knowledge that it was the "location Mrs. Slider had indicated").

The "within an hour or so of the murder" could be a response of, say, the daughter of Doretha to the natural question an interviewer such as Greg Lowrey would ask (as he speaks to her at the door in his door-to-door canvassing...), when did this happen. The daughter, not knowing the exact timing or minute, but making the point that it was right after the Tippit killing not some later occasion, says, "oh, it was right away, a little after, within that first hour, not later...", something like that (remember this is memory nearly three decades after the fact).

The details of a woman (women); the same location of the jacket spot as Mrs. Slider saw; the finding of an abandoned jacket there; occurring within 0-60 minutes after the Tippit killing; a lifting of the jacket to "h[a]ng it on a fence post" by a woman (women); the jacket later gone ... those are the details that to me cumulatively evoke the Doretha Dean story itself, as it could have been told to Lowrey by one of the daughters.

If so, note these variants of the same event reported four different ways:

• Mrs. Slider story (hearsay): killer drops jacket on the ground (reconstructed near or next to the tire rack)
• Doretha Dean story (hearsay): killer set jacket on the tire rack, Doretha lifted the jacket off the tire rack, handled it and turned it over to police
• "two women" Greg Lowrey source (hearsay from Greg Lowrey): they (read: one of the women) lifted the jacket off the ground and put it on a "fence post" (read: lifted from the ground and put on the tire rack?)
• Dallas Police version (Nov 22, 1963, police report document and several officer testimonies): an unknown officer, never named, never identified, who never came forth, was reported to have found the jacket under the front of a parked car a few yards away from the location of the tire rack and handed it to named, reporting officers who reported it. (That odd DPD reporting--no photo or name of finder of the jacket where it was found in situ--may have functioned to conceal, at least for the moment, uncertainty and/or irregularity in chain of custody of the find of that jacket which a good defense attorney would have capitalized upon in any trial setting. That DPD reporting occurred prior to the suspect's, Oswald's, untimely murder, at a time when there was intent to obtain physical evidence useable at trial.) 

In short, I believe all four of these are versions of the same jacket shed by the same individual, and there are elements of truth in all four, related to this same jacket and the circumstances of how it came to be there and its find.

Let the "splitters" have at it and argue from discrepancies in details that these are two or three or four different jackets, or two or three or four distinct unrelated stories--all involving an abandoned jacket at the same Ballew's Texaco the afternoon of the Tippit killing. Let the "splitters" show why discrepencies in details in decades-later hearsay witnesses' stories are evidence of multiplying doppelganger jackets!

I'm a "clumper". All four of these stories are versions of the same shed jacket, the same original event! That's my interpretation here! Simple solution. 

A most thought-provoking exploration, Mr. Doudna, thank you!

So annoying that (as with the Mrs. Dean story) we get no mention of the color/shade of the shed jacket from (hearsaid) Mrs. Slider.

The 'two women', however, do offer the descriptor "dark".

Now, assuming that we can indeed 'clump'..................

Cf Mrs. Earlene Roberts on the jacket Mr. Oswald had put on when leaving the rooming-house: "I recall the jacket was a dark color" (12/5/63). But! As you point out, Mr. Oswald's ditching of his jacket should have shown Mrs. Slider the 'arrest shirt', not just a t-shirt. (NB: we cannot rule out the possibility that the man Mrs. Slider saw was wearing a short-sleeved light-colored open-neck shirt, and mistook it for a t-shirt. Cf. the man seen at the SN window nearly an hour prior..........)

And----------------of course--------------there is the other little detail to factor in: Mr. Oswald was already in the Texas Theatre by ~1:25pm (Mrs. Slider's timestamp for her sighting).

-------------------------

Speaking of time, ~1:25pm is quite a few minutes after the Tippit shooting. Doesn't sound like this man has just come running straight from Tenth. Further support perhaps for the notion that what Mrs. Dean actually heard and saw (contra Mr. Myers) was the fleeing Tippit killer having to vacate his first hideout (the furniture store, where he'd hidden for several minutes) because of the arrival of someone in pursuit of him who had tracked him to there?

Edited November 13, 2023 by Alan Ford

[Donald Willis]

On 11/8/2023 at 1:53 PM, Greg Doudna said:

More on the shedding of the jacket at Ballew's Texaco

There is another report of an eyewitness in the parking lot seeing the gunman taking off the jacket that has received little attention. It is secondhand hearsay so there is possibility of error or garbling in transmission, but the witness herself underlying the hearsay sounds very credible.

I quote from the document I have in printout form from a year or so ago but unfortunately I am unable to remember or give a link to where I found it. The only link I have for it is a dead link. It is part of a file of William Pulte papers and documents. It is an email dated Jan 18, 1999, from Pulte to Harry Livingstone. It reads:

"A Mrs. Slider had lunch from 12:30 - 1:30 on Nov. 22, 1963. She worked at the phone company and went home for lunch each day. On Nov. 22 she got back to her parking area early, perhaps as early as 1:10. She parked, for a monthly fee, on the lot behind the Texaco station, well known to researchers as the location where the white jacket was found.

"The lot behind the station (north of the station) was owned by the Texaco station owner. It was just south of the east-west alley running between and parallel to Jefferson and 10th. The block in question is the one west of Patton and east of Crawford.

"Mrs. Slider had pulled into the lot from Crawford and parked facing north, i.e. facing the alley and the rear of the Abundant Life Temple. She was accustomed to leaving her car about 1:25, to get back to her place of work by 1:30. Seeing that she had gotten back earlier than usual, she began to read a book. A moment or so later, she was startled to see a man running down the alley westward toward Crawford; the man was running at top speed.

"Recall that she had parked facing north toward the alley and the church complex just north of the alley. The man slowed down for a second to 'shed his jacket' according to Mrs. Slider. After removing the jacket, which he dropped in the alley, she saw that the man was wearing a T-shirt, not the tan shirt Lee Oswald was wearing when arrested in the Texas Theater.

"Racing past her, the man turned right (north) at Crawfored and she lost sight of him. About two minutes later, she saw six or seven men running in the same direction; some were uniformed, some were not. Some had handguns, some had 'long guns'. This group of men also turned right and were lost from sight."

My analysis: this is another witness of the Tippit killer and the jacket being dropped at Ballew's Texaco. Rather than suppose this is a third distinct claimed drop location for the jacket at Ballew's Texaco, different from the reported find spot and the tire rack of the Doretha Dean story, consider reading this as a version of the Doretha Dean story.

First consider where she was parked. Here is an aerial photo of the parking lot of Ballew's Texaco and the surrounding streets and buildings..

In this photo south is up, north is down. (For purposes of this description for convenience Crawford and Patton are considered due north and south; to the extent that may not be perfectly accurate pls correct accordingly.) The Dallas Police reported the jacket was found under a car parked angled facing southeast in the viewer's top line of parked cars north of (below) the Texaco. Below (north) of that is a double row of parked cars. The top cars of that row are angled facing northeast. That is where Mrs. Slider may plausibly have parked, in one of those spots, as she is said to have been "facing north" as she sat in her car.

Imagine Mrs. Slider sitting at the wheel of her car facing northeast in one of the parking spots of that row. She has a view toward the left side of her front field of view of the Abundant Life Temple, the huge unmarked building next to the lettering "Crawford" above. She has a view toward the right side of her front field of view of where the Tippit killer came out from the narrow passageway between Ballew's Texaco and Mrs. Dean's Dairy Mart. That passageway might also have been called in this account confusingly an "alley" other than the east-west alley parallel to Tenth.

We know the Tippit killer did come running north through that passageway between Ballew's Texaco and the Dairy Mart (did not come running from the east of the east-west alley) on other grounds. Mrs. Slider would have been in a position to see him come out from that passageway in front of her, toward the right of her front field of view, as he came out of that passageway along the east side of Ballew's Texaco with Dean's Dairy on the other side, the passageway where the tire rack was.

Imagine the Tippit killer comes out of that passageway bursting into Mrs. Slider's view--she looks up and sees him emerge out into the parking lot, then he stops. The man hesitates, then she sees him taking off or completing taking off his jacket and either steps back momentarily to toss it on to the tire rack, or drops it on the ground there near the base of the tire rack at the north end of that passageway just before he comes out visibly into the parking lot. She sees him dropping or "shed[ding]" the jacket there. 

Then the man, without a jacket, now according to the hearsay of Mrs. Slider in T-shirt only (presumably white), runs past her going out to the east-west alley and west on that alley to Crawford and right on Crawford as she tracked him with her eyes. 

The "six or seven men running in the same direction", some uniformed, carrying guns, "about two minutes later" would be police arriving at the scene shortly after. They are not directly chasing the man (it is "two minutes" delay, the running killer is gone and not in sight). Instead they are going to behind the antique store where they mistakenly think the killer may have gone. When Mrs. Slider is said to have said "this group of men also turned right and were lost from sight" rather than envision that as those police en masse running out to and turning right on Crawford, consider that may be description of that group of police coming north through the passageway between the Texaco and Dean's Dairy, and turning right there, to go to the back of the furniture store, where police searched next.

In other words, allowing for garbling in transmission in the hearsay and two possibilities for the meaning of the "alley" in the story, this is a heretofore-underreported story (e.g. no mention of Mrs. Slider in Myers' With Malice) of a live witness in that parking lot who saw the Tippit killer shedding his jacket, and it can be read in agreement with the Doretha Dean story of the direction of the killer's movements and the tire rack initial location of the shed jacket.

In the Doretha Dean story, Mrs. Dean immediately went out the front of her store (Dean's Dairy) on Jefferson, looked around the corner north in that passageway and saw the leaving at the other end. According to her daughters' retelling of her story, Mrs. Dean then saw the jacket on the tire rack where the killer had just abandoned it, and lifted it up and took it in her own hands, before turning it over to the police when the police arrived.

Here is a photo that day, Nov 22, 1963, of the passageway and the tire rack, looking north. The tire rack pointed by Myers' arrow can be seen at the end just before the killer would come out into the view of Mrs. Slider sitting in her parked car behind the building to the west, facing northeast where she would see him as he came out.   

The killer's motivation in shedding the jacket would be to change outward appearance, meaning ditching it there could be logical before he ran through open space continuing out to Crawford.

The discrepancy between Mrs. Slider's reported certainty that the killer was not wearing the brown shirt seen by Brewer when the killer ran past Brewer's store into the Texas Theatre, but was (according to Mrs. Slider if that is reported accurately) wearing a (presumed white) T-shirt instead, is curious. However there are some minutes unaccounted for, with the whereabouts and actions of the killer in those minutes unknown, between his being last seen leaving Ballew's Texaco at Crawford, and next seen passing Brewer's store on Jefferson before entering the Texas Theatre into the balcony. Either: there is an error in the hearsay of Mrs. Slider's story on that detail; or the killer changed appearance once again by putting on a brown shirt; or it wasn't the killer seen by Brewer running past his store who went into the theatre balcony. (I do not think it was the third option, therefore reason it was either the first or second.) 

And still another version of the killer's shedding of that same jacket

There is a still possible further version of the jacket at Ballew's Texaco, later in the same Jan 18, 1999 Pulte to Livingstone email document. Rather than take this at face value as some anomalous further unexplained story I suspect this is some garbled earlier version of the Doretha Dean story (i.e. two chains of hearsay transmission not just one in this case of the Doretha Dean story, with lots of room in hearsay "telephone tag"-genre transmission for errors to be introduced). Here it is:

"Beginning in 1981, Greg Lowrey has canvassed everyone he could locate who was living or working on 10th St. and on Jefferson on Nov. 22, 1963. Two women who lived in an old house on Jefferson told Lowrey that they had found a dark jacket lying in the alley at the location Mrs. Slider had indicated. They found the jacket within an hour or so of the murder. They hung it on a fence post. Later, they noticed that the jacket had been removed."

OK, I like to be a "clumper" when it comes to disparate witness stories which bear key similarities, see variants of the same story in the minor contradictions and details, rather than a "splitter"--interpret differences in details in similar-sounding witness stories as evidence of doppelganger persons and events, multiplication of events.

Rather than a distinct dropped, abandoned, then refound jacket in the same location (Ballew's Texaco), my first assumption is--however it is to be interpreted--this is a version of the one known dropped and abandoned jacket at that Texaco station that day of all the other stories.

The "two women" could be Mrs. Dean and one of her daughters. Suppose it is one of the daughters telling Greg Lowrey in the early 1980s an earlier version of the very story that the same daughter or her sister may have contacted and told Myers in 2019.

The "fence post" could be other language for the tire rack. Finding the "dark jacket lying in the alley at the location Mrs. Slider had indicated" (did one or both of the women of Lowrey's source compare notes with Mrs. Slider?--I am not sure how to interpret or who was claiming knowledge that it was the "location Mrs. Slider had indicated").

The "within an hour or so of the murder" could be a response of, say, the daughter of Doretha to the natural question an interviewer such as Greg Lowrey would ask (as he speaks to her at the door in his door-to-door canvassing...), when did this happen. The daughter, not knowing the exact timing or minute, but making the point that it was right after the Tippit killing not some later occasion, says, "oh, it was right away, a little after, within that first hour, not later...", something like that (remember this is memory nearly three decades after the fact).

The details of a woman (women); the same location of the jacket spot as Mrs. Slider saw; the finding of an abandoned jacket there; occurring within 0-60 minutes after the Tippit killing; a lifting of the jacket to "h[a]ng it on a fence post" by a woman (women); the jacket later gone ... those are the details that to me cumulatively evoke the Doretha Dean story itself, as it could have been told to Lowrey by one of the daughters.

If so, note these variants of the same event reported four different ways:

• Mrs. Slider story (hearsay): killer drops jacket on the ground (reconstructed near or next to the tire rack)
• Doretha Dean story (hearsay): killer set jacket on the tire rack, Doretha lifted the jacket off the tire rack, handled it and turned it over to police
• "two women" Greg Lowrey source (hearsay from Greg Lowrey): they (read: one of the women) lifted the jacket off the ground and put it on a "fence post" (read: lifted from the ground and put on the tire rack?)
• Dallas Police version (Nov 22, 1963, police report document and several officer testimonies): an unknown officer, never named, never identified, who never came forth, was reported to have found the jacket under the front of a parked car a few yards away from the location of the tire rack and handed it to named, reporting officers who reported it. (That odd DPD reporting--no photo or name of finder of the jacket where it was found in situ--may have functioned to conceal, at least for the moment, uncertainty and/or irregularity in chain of custody of the find of that jacket which a good defense attorney would have capitalized upon in any trial setting. That DPD reporting occurred prior to the suspect's, Oswald's, untimely murder, at a time when there was intent to obtain physical evidence useable at trial.) 

In short, I believe all four of these are versions of the same jacket shed by the same individual, and there are elements of truth in all four, related to this same jacket and the circumstances of how it came to be there and its find.

Let the "splitters" have at it and argue from discrepancies in details that these are two or three or four different jackets, or two or three or four distinct unrelated stories--all involving an abandoned jacket at the same Ballew's Texaco the afternoon of the Tippit killing. Let the "splitters" show why discrepencies in details in decades-later hearsay witnesses' stories are evidence of multiplying doppelganger jackets!

I'm a "clumper". All four of these stories are versions of the same shed jacket, the same original event! That's my interpretation here! Simple solution. 

Mrs. Slider's narrative is very intriguing.  But, first, yes, the timing is off if she is watching the killer run and doff his jacket.  Ten minutes after the shooting... running at top speed.  In order for her story to work at all, she has to be parked and alert by about 1:16, 1:18 if the killer took Patton to Jefferson.  Let's say she was.  The 7 or so pursuers actually tallies with the Poe-Jez same-day report and with her seeing them come from the alley.  By which latter I mean the actual alley running all along the block between 10th & Jefferson from Patton to Crawford.  Refer to Mrs. Markham and Jimmy Burt, who both saw who they thought was the perp entering the alley *off* Patton.  But I think 1:16-1:18 would be a little early for any cops with guns to be part of the chase.  So, intriguing as Mrs. Slider is, I'm afraid she is, finally, just adding to the confusion.  Yes, I may be too, what with my jacket decoy running down Jefferson, and Benavides & Scoggins running down the alley after the actual killer.  There are too many damn variables!  Again, many answers to our questions were probably contained in the "missing" FBI & DPD reports/affidavits made out by Benavides on 11/22... 

[Alan Ford]

On 11/8/2023 at 9:53 PM, Greg Doudna said:

 

"A Mrs. Slider had lunch from 12:30 - 1:30 on Nov. 22, 1963. She worked at the phone company and went home for lunch each day. On Nov. 22 she got back to her parking area early, perhaps as early as 1:10. She parked, for a monthly fee, on the lot behind the Texaco station, well known to researchers as the location where the white jacket was found.

"The lot behind the station (north of the station) was owned by the Texaco station owner. It was just south of the east-west alley running between and parallel to Jefferson and 10th. The block in question is the one west of Patton and east of Crawford.

"Mrs. Slider had pulled into the lot from Crawford and parked facing north, i.e. facing the alley and the rear of the Abundant Life Temple. She was accustomed to leaving her car about 1:25, to get back to her place of work by 1:30. Seeing that she had gotten back earlier than usual, she began to read a book. A moment or so later, she was startled to see a man running down the alley westward toward Crawford; the man was running at top speed.

Have just realized I misread what Mr. Doudna posted here: the sighting of the man is not timestamped to ~1:25pm but quite a bit earlier, "perhaps as early as 1:10".

Apologies!

[Michael Kalin]

12 hours ago, Donald Willis said:

So, intriguing as Mrs. Slider is, I'm afraid she is, finally, just adding to the confusion.  Yes, I may be too, what with my jacket decoy running down Jefferson, and Benavides & Scoggins running down the alley after the actual killer.  There are too many damn variables!  Again, many answers to our questions were probably contained in the "missing" FBI & DPD reports/affidavits made out by Benavides on 11/22... 

Just so, far too many variables. Preparation for the Tippit murder was defective, and the ensuing cockup (constrained by the lone nut imperative) inevitable. Only recourse for the suborners was to haphazardly flood the zone, and proclaim a miracle that the successive official overlays carried the weight of conviction. Abject failure resulted based on their own documents, and much of the subsequent freelance work both pro & con made matters worse.

For my part, after coming around to the startling conclusion that Benavides played a dynamic role at the murder scene, research continues into shredding the layers. However, resources are sparse, and help is hard to find. The grim reaper may hone his scythe, but massive confusion shields the impostors.

Edited November 15, 2023 by Michael Kalin

[Alan Ford]

On 11/3/2023 at 5:28 AM, Donald Willis said:

Walker was apparently unaware that TV film footage has turned up showing Reynolds telling police at the scene that he last saw a suspicious man going into the back of an old house near the Texaco station (WM p131).  Reynolds, then, could not have been Walker's "300 E. Jefferson" witness, a full block west of the house.  (Reynolds' suspicious man may not have been the gunman at all, but a vigilante trailing the gunman.) 

I still maintain that this last thought (which I've taken the liberty of placing in bold) is what brings clarity to the mess. And again, what Mrs. Dean heard and saw becomes---------and makes things----------intelligible.

TWO men. The man seen by multiple witnesses going all the way down Patton and then turning on to Jefferson was in a white/gray jacket. He was NOT the shooter of Officer Tippit: that guy, wearing a tan jacket, had already come on to Patton from Tenth before him and had turned off into the alley. The guy in the white/gray jacket was looking for him.

Mr. BALL. What did he do when you hollered at him?
Mr. CALLAWAY. He slowed his pace, almost halted for a minute. And he said something to me, which I could not understand. And then kind of shrugged his shoulders, and kept on going.

"He said something to me, which I could not understand"-------------------I suspect Mr. Callaway has served up a face-saving elision here. If this man was White/Gray Jacket Guy, then he could well have been asking Mr. Callaway, 'Did you see a guy just come this way?' Mr. Callaway either said no, or told him he'd gone down that alley. If the former, then White/Gray Jacket Guy's shrug is saying 'Well, thanks for nothing'. If the latter, then he's making an on-the-spot call to keep going to Jefferson, hook a right and try to catch up with him that way.

I think Mrs. Dean did find a jacket, and that it was tan in color.

Edited November 15, 2023 by Alan Ford

[Alan Ford]

The glaring discrepancy between 'Oswald's' route as narrated by Mr. Callaway vs. Mr. Guinyard is no minor detail.

It suggests strongly IMO that Mr. Callaway is giving us a 'best of both' routes: Tan Jacket Guy's and White/Gray Jacket Guy's. He knows that other witnesses saw a guy in a tan jacket cross west over Patton and turn off into the alley. But he only saw White/Gray Jacket Guy, who stayed east on Patton and went all the way down to Jefferson. So, in his WC testimony, he tries clumsily to cover both bases, twice over:

---------The man crossed west on Patton AND kept on going

---------The man was wearing a "light TANNISH gray windbreaker jacket.

Unfortunately for him,

i. He is flatly contradicted by Mr. Guinyard

ii. The radio broadcast, based on Mr. Callaway's own on-the-scene information, says only "light gray Eisenhower-type jacket"

Edited November 15, 2023 by Alan Ford

[Donald Willis]

On 11/14/2023 at 6:36 PM, Michael Kalin said:

Just so, far too many variables. Preparation for the Tippit murder was defective, and the ensuing cockup (constrained by the lone nut imperative) inevitable. Only recourse for the suborners was to haphazardly flood the zone, and proclaim a miracle that the successive official overlays carried the weight of conviction. Abject failure resulted based on their own documents, and much of the subsequent freelance work both pro & con made matters worse.

For my part, after coming around to the startling conclusion that Benavides played a dynamic role at the murder scene, research continues into shredding the layers. However, resources are sparse, and help is hard to find. The grim reaper may hone his scythe, but massive confusion shields the impostors.

Well-stated.  But after my post above I started thinking (finally!).  As for myself, then--after said thinking--I now believe that there is no real need to chart the whole Oak Cliff Tale.  All I need, and have, is Scoggins' double-answer, in his WC testimony, to what he did after he & Callaway returned to the scene, circa 1:22.  His first, Myers-approved answer was that he immediately returned to cab HQ when no cops would talk to him.  Hence, his supposed elusiveness when it came to the moment of the Friday lineups.  The second response--ignored by Myers--in that same testimony, was that he left the scene in a police car to embark on a 2nd (actually 3rd, I think, after a brief, early chase on foot, perhaps in coordination with Benavides) search for the perp.  FBI guy Barrett's noting that Scoggins' cab was still at the scene when he, Barrett, got there, about 1:40 (that arrival is on film), proves Scoggins' 2nd take was the correct one.  Ah! consilience.  (Myers oh-so-conveniently forgets what Barrett told him.)  Scoggins, then, was with the cops as early as 1:24 on Friday, and at that time was eager to cooperate with them.  By the time of the evening lineups, it appears that he was not so cooperative, and would not ID Oswald, whether or not he got near an actual lineup.  In sum:  Scoggins saw the perp, and it was not Oswald.  I'd say Case Closed right there, but the Benavides aspect of the Oak Cliff Tale is also critical, and missing documents preclude closing that end of the case.

[Donald Willis]

On 11/15/2023 at 1:16 AM, Alan Ford said:

I still maintain that this last thought (which I've taken the liberty of placing in bold) is what brings clarity to the mess. And again, what Mrs. Dean heard and saw becomes---------and makes things----------intelligible.

TWO men. The man seen by multiple witnesses going all the way down Patton and then turning on to Jefferson was in a white/gray jacket. He was NOT the shooter of Officer Tippit: that guy, wearing a tan jacket, had already come on to Patton from Tenth before him and had turned off into the alley. The guy in the white/gray jacket was looking for him.

Mr. BALL. What did he do when you hollered at him?
Mr. CALLAWAY. He slowed his pace, almost halted for a minute. And he said something to me, which I could not understand. And then kind of shrugged his shoulders, and kept on going.

"He said something to me, which I could not understand"-------------------I suspect Mr. Callaway has served up a face-saving elision here. If this man was White/Gray Jacket Guy, then he could well have been asking Mr. Callaway, 'Did you see a guy just come this way?' Mr. Callaway either said no, or told him he'd gone down that alley. If the former, then White/Gray Jacket Guy's shrug is saying 'Well, thanks for nothing'. If the latter, then he's making an on-the-spot call to keep going to Jefferson, hook a right and try to catch up with him that way.

I think Mrs. Dean did find a jacket, and that it was tan in color.

I like this alternate take on the Callaway/suspect encounter.  I'd go with Callaway said "No"...

[Donald Willis]

On 11/15/2023 at 1:31 AM, Alan Ford said:

The glaring discrepancy between 'Oswald's' route as narrated by Mr. Callaway vs. Mr. Guinyard is no minor detail.

It suggests strongly IMO that Mr. Callaway is giving us a 'best of both' routes: Tan Jacket Guy's and White/Gray Jacket Guy's. He knows that other witnesses saw a guy in a tan jacket cross west over Patton and turn off into the alley. But he only saw White/Gray Jacket Guy, who stayed east on Patton and went all the way down to Jefferson. So, in his WC testimony, he tries clumsily to cover both bases, twice over:

---------The man crossed west on Patton AND kept on going

---------The man was wearing a "light TANNISH gray windbreaker jacket.

Unfortunately for him,

i. He is flatly contradicted by Mr. Guinyard

ii. The radio broadcast, based on Mr. Callaway's own on-the-scene information, says only "light gray Eisenhower-type jacket"

I've always been puzzled/intrigued by a seemingly slight contradiction between Callaway & Guinyard.  Callaway has the suspect/vigilante crossing Patton before he gets to Jefferson.  As I recall, Guinyard has him going all the way down Patton on the south side of the street, to Jefferson, almost bumping into him at one point.  Did they see two different suspects??