Ted Callaway and the "55 feet"--Genius!

[Donald Willis]

Ted Callaway and the "55 feet"--Genius!

Mr. Dulles:  [The suspect] was going south on Patton?
Ted Callaway:  On the WEST [emphasis added] side of the street.
Rep. Ford:  You saw him run from about the taxicab [at 10th & Patton]...
Callaway:  Across the street, up this sidewalk. (v3p353)

Sam Guinyard:  [The suspect] come down Patton until he got to five feet from the corner of Jefferson and then he went across to the west corner on Jefferson.
Mr. Ball:  What side of the street did you see him coming down on?
Guinyard:  When he come down... it would be the EAST [emphasis added] side. (v7p397)

This west side/east side conundrum I always found curious, though not quite compelling, as apparently most everyone else has also found it, or it would have been brought up more often. Just a simple mix-up.  

However, in looking at it more closely, I can't quite envision how such a contretemps could happen.  Callaway and Guinyard were both on the east side of the street.  Guinyard testifies that the gunman got to "about 10 feet from me" (p398).  But--four times--Callaway testifies that the gunman crossed the street, early on, near Patton (v3p353).  I think Ball got the point, thank you.  Callaway "figured [the man] was about 55 feet from him when he passed." (v7p398)  Supposedly, the two were near the east sidewalk at the same time,  and saw the same man.  (Guinyard:  "We was together" [p398].) 

At 10 feet, Callaway, certainly, could have identified the type of gun, simply by its look--revolver or automatic.  But at 55 feet, Callaway says that he could tell the type of gun only by the way the man held it--in the "raised pistol position...[with] his left hand going toward the butt of the gun, like the way you'd load an automatic." (With Malice p78)  It was apparently he who told DPD Patrolman Summers that the man was "apparently armed with a 32 dark finish automatic pistol." (DPD radio-log transcription/CE 1974 p74)

At 55 feet, that was apparently just a wild, wrong guess.  But Guinyard clung to his "east side" version, even when counsel informed him re Callaway's version:   "Well," he maintained, "[the gunman] crossed over after he crossed the driveway" (p398), which was more than two-thirds of the block, on Patton, from 10th.  (In his diagram, Myers has Callaway at the north end of that driveway--before the crossover point described by Guinyard ([WMp83].)  Yes, according to Guinyard, then, Callaway would also, at one point, have been just about 10 feet from the man.

We see which witness that counsel Joseph Ball favored, in this gentleman's disagreement, when the latter invokes Callaway's "55 feet" during Guinyard's testimony.  Hint, hint.  Guinyard must have been a little disconcerted by Callaway's reported witnessing here.  Even after Guinyard says "east side" (p397), Ball tries to correct Guinyard's "mistake":  "And [Oswald] was across the street from you, wasn't he?"  Guinyard:  "No, we was on this side of the street."  Ball:  "He was on the east side of the street?"  Ah!  Guinyard:  "Yes, sir.  And he was on the east side of the street until he got across our driveway." (p398)

The Ball monkey wrench fails.  His leading-the-witness favoritism backfires and--along with Guinyard's plucky persistence in the face of a determined lawyer and possible backlash from his boss, Callaway--tips the scales the other way.  What would Guinyard have to gain, anyway, by sabotaging Callaway's reloading scenario?  At one point, he too endorses a "pistol up" image, but not Callaway's left-hand-towards-the-gun-butt reloading.  Guinyard has the gunman *unloading*, not reloading.  In fact, Guinyard testifies, "I never did see him use his left hand" (v7p397).  But it all comes back to "10 feet"... If the Callaway version were correct, why would Guinyard have to be, shall we say, weaned off "55 feet" and reloading?  No logical reason.

However, plenty of reason to have Callaway weaned off "10 feet", if that were the correct version.  "10 feet" makes the weapon an automatic.   I'm not saying that Callaway was in any way leaned on--he always seemed happy to assist the police.  Witness his superfluous call re the Tippit shooting on the latter's police radio, and the Great Car Chase with Scoggins. That "dark finish automatic pistol" had to be neutralized.  Did Callaway change his story in order to help nail Oswald?  Different definitions of "good citizen" may come into play here...

And all Callaway had to do was to go to the other side of the street, or, more precisely, have the gunman go to the other side.  And if he was willing to do that in order to help out, he might also have been glad to ID Oswald as the east side/west side gunman.  And it certainly would have bolstered the government's case if the latter somewhat resembled Oswald, who, after all--Callaway may have been reminded--murdered the President.  

But why the startling lack of coordination between the respective testimonies of Callaway and Guinyard?  How could Ball, that is, have blundered into his "And he was across the street from you, wasn't he?", as if he, Ball, knew the answer and was expecting Guinyard just to confirm it.  He put himself, and Callaway, out on a limb, and Guinyard cut it off.  Ball must have been pissed.  It's as if much thought had gone into developing Callaway's story, and Guinyard had been neglected until showtime.  Or the Guinyard version had been developed in a vacuum, by some moron unfamiliar with what was going on with Callaway, Benavides, and the Davises.  In any event, Ball is left lying, rather bruised, on the ground.  But the Patton Street train wreck, or timber wreck, is instructive in its glimpse into the behind-the-scenes workings of the wheels of "justice".

On the other (Callaway) hand... Misplaced brilliance: to wit, the inventive conspirers having Callaway testify that the guy with the gun was so very, very far away from him, from, that is, his ears as well as from his eyes--across an apparently very, very noisy street--that he could not quite make out what the man was trying to tell him.  An inspired invention.  The audible reinforcing the visible.  I imagine Ball wished they'd shared their brilliance with Guinyard...

(Note:  Well-placed brilliance:  The comparable scene at the end of "La Dolce Vita", with Marcello unable to make out what the "Umbrian angel" is saying to him.  Not that I think that the conspirers took their cue from Fellini and his writers, who were waxing existential here, rather touchingly.)

dcw

[Tony Krome]

Best answered with another question. Why would the gunman feel so comfortable walking up to within 10 feet of Callaway? Ample opportunity to cross Patton beforehand.

[Alan Ford]

3 hours ago, Tony Krome said:

Best answered with another question. Why would the gunman feel so comfortable walking up to within 10 feet of Callaway? Ample opportunity to cross Patton beforehand.

Because he probably wasn't the shooter of Officer Tippit. That guy had already run off down the alley off Patton.

I suspect this second guy asked Mr. Callaway if he had seen where that man went. Mr. Callaway having nothing to give him, said no. So the man shrugged impatiently and continued on down Patton.

Both men-------------the one he had seen + the one he hadn't seen------------were later fused by Mr. Callaway into 'Oswald'. Much cleaner for all concerned.

Unfortunately, Mr. Sam Guinyard didn't get the memo.

[Alan Ford]

Just came across this posted elsewhere:

I doubt Mr. Callaway received such a friendly social call!

[Donald Willis]

10 hours ago, Alan Ford said:

Just came across this posted elsewhere:

I doubt Mr. Callaway received such a friendly social call!

Wry note..  As the policeman's friend, he would have been one of the four!  Just heard about this on acj... It suggests a lot more behind-the-scenes stuff... But it was a little too late to have Guinyard correct his WC testimony.  Maybe they just wanted to intimidate him into keeping his mouth shut, although a few of the horses as I say were already out of the barn.

[Donald Willis]

15 hours ago, Tony Krome said:

Best answered with another question. Why would the gunman feel so comfortable walking up to within 10 feet of Callaway? Ample opportunity to cross Patton beforehand.

I myself had always wondered that about Guinyard's version of the encounter.  I see Alan Ford has an answer to your question.  However, I think the main point to make is that the presence of an automatic on Patton was covered up, by both Callaway and Guinyard, each in his own inimitable way.  Now, the question is, Was it covered up because it was used to shoot Tippit or because the authorities simply didn't want any ambiguity?  I mean that perhaps Alan is right, and it was a vigilante with an automatic.  I have gone back and forth on the question on whether an automatic was the murder weapon.  The Patton story makes me lean back to, Yes, one was.  I mean, the authorities went to a LOT of trouble to counter the two references to "automatic" on the police radio--they enlisted the Davises, too, who, I believe, saw only a vigilante (headed towards the alley, though, not towards Jefferson).  So you got Davis, Davis, Callaway, Guinyard, and Benavides all crying, Revolver!  But of those five, I think only Benavides saw the actual killer, for certain, though the Patton boys might have, too...The key is Benavides:  Did he pick up four automatic shells, in the street (10th, that is), as one Det. Leavelle report says--though it doesn't specify number or type of shells--or just two revolver shells, in the yard?  We will probably never know--Benavides said nothing on the record until his testimony--though he seems to have given the DPD and the FBI his story on 11/22, but the reports have been mislaid for some 60 years...

[Alan Ford]

38 minutes ago, Donald Willis said:

Wry note..  As the policeman's friend, he would have been one of the four!  Just heard about this on acj... It suggests a lot more behind-the-scenes stuff... But it was a little too late to have Guinyard correct his WC testimony.  Maybe they just wanted to intimidate him into keeping his mouth shut, although a few of the horses as I say were already out of the barn.

'Keep your mouth shut---------------you've done enough damage already'