Turnabout: Guinyard undercuts Callaway undercuts Guinyard

[Donald Willis]

Turnabout:  Guinyard undercuts Callaway undercuts Guinyard

In "Ted Callaway & the '55 feet'", we found Sam Guinyard contradicting, compellingly, Callaway's claim that the latter was, at the closest, about 55 feet away from the man with the gun, who (said Callaway) was running down the west side of Patton.  Never to be outdone--Callaway wasn't shy about criticizing fellow witnesses like W.W. Scoggins and Domingo Benavides--Callaway, in turn--with the west-side story assigned (and apparently happily accepted by) him--Callaway undercut Guinyard's claim that the latter saw the gunman knocking out shells all along the (east) sidewalk of Patton.  

Guinyard:  "Just as [the gunman] come around the corner on Patton, he cut through the yard and missed the corner on 10th... He came through there running and knocking empty shells out of his pistol... [Benavides] picked up all them empty hulls that come out of the gun..."
Counsel Ball:  "Where were they?"
Guinyard:  "Laying across the yard as he kicked them out all around the sidewalk." (v7pp397-399)

Callaway:  "[The gunman] had come through this yard and cut behind this taxicab, over to this side of [Patton]... the west side of the street..." (v3p353)  Nowhere in his testimony does Callaway mention the man discarding shells.  Again, an inexplicable little contretemps.  Of course, if Callaway had backed Guinyard's story of the shells, he would have, at the same time, negated his own story of a "mistake" re an automatic, which he could not or would not then have made.  That is, he could not have seen both manual discarding of shells *and* loading of an automatic.  The Guinyard story cannot be reconciled with the Callaway story.  Ironic, because, individually, the two stories have the same goal--positing the presence of a revolver on Patton.

Now if Guinyard had cut off his story of the shells right at the point where the gunman is discarding them, it might have had some traction.  However...

A lesser implication of Guinyard's testimony is that he pointed out the shells on Patton to Benavides.  But another, more serious one is that Benavides picked up *all* the shells the shooter left behind.  Benavides himself testified that he picked up shells only from the front yard, on 10th; Guinyard says that Benavides picked up shells on Patton, too.  That is, the shells that the Davises testified that they pointed out or picked up.  Guinyard is undercut by everyone on this point.

Guinyard doth witness too much, it seems.  Like Callaway, he seems to be bending over backwards, in his own way, to help the police nullify reports of an automatic at the scene.  Callaway has the gunman shunted over to the west side of Patton; Guinyard brings him right back, scattering shells on the east side.  They can't both be wrong.  Or can they?

They can--they effectively make a hash of each other's testimony.  Together, they have the gunman running down both sides of the street, at the same time, shouting from one side, discarding shells on the other side.  The magic Oswald.  Both, in fact, ID'd Oswald in a lineup, but it can't be ruled out that, once again, they were just trying their darnedest to help out the authorities.  If they can't agree on what they saw, it's hard to take their word re *who* they saw.  And was it the shooter, an accomplice, or some vigilante with a gun?  Maybe the two were *not* together, and one saw the shooter or an accomplice, the other saw a vigilante.

At any rate, the man, or one of the men, thus spotted was wielding an automatic, although the detritus of the respective, dueling testimonies of Guinyard and Callaway was meant to suggest, but oh so haplessly, that the gunman--whoever or whatever he was--was wielding a revolver.  Both versions were credibly undercut, Callaway's by Guinyard, Guinyard's by everyone else.  Even his buddy Benavides ("Donnie") couldn't help him.

dcw

[Alan Ford]

3 hours ago, Donald Willis said:

They can--they effectively make a hash of each other's testimony.  Together, they have the gunman running down both sides of the street, at the same time, shouting from one side, discarding shells on the other side.  The magic Oswald.  Both, in fact, ID'd Oswald in a lineup, but it can't be ruled out that, once again, they were just trying their darnedest to help out the authorities.  If they can't agree on what they saw, it's hard to take their word re *who* they saw.  And was it the shooter, an accomplice, or some vigilante with a gun?  Maybe the two were *not* together, and one saw the shooter or an accomplice, the other saw a vigilante.

Mr. Willis, I think much clarity on the Callaway-Guinyard hash can be achieved if we start with the first known Patton-fact and move out from there.

That first known Patton-fact is a simple one: A man was seen running into an alley off Patton

Now let's look at the route from Tenth to Jefferson Mr. Callaway gives 'Oswald':

Mr. Guinyard gives 'Oswald' the same destination (Jefferson), but a different route there:

Looking again at Mr. Callaway's 'Oswald' route, we can see that it is kinda-sorta true, for

• its first half is the exact route of the man who turned off into the alley

• its second half is the route (albeit on the wrong side of the street) of the man who went all the way down Patton.

Mr. Guinyard told the plain truth as to what he saw. Mr. Callaway served up a composite of both men seen on Patton.

His attempt in his WC testimony to improve upon his on-the-scene description of the jacket's color ("light gray"--->"tannish light gray") is a dead giveaway.

Did the creation of this Callawayan composite have the large advantage (for him, for the 'investigation') of putting 'Oswald' at a nice distance across the street (automatic not close enough for recognition)? Yep. But was that the reason for the creation of the composite? Doubtful IMO.

I think Mr. Callaway probably saw only the second man (Mr. All The Way Down Patton: Gray Jacket) but heard afterwards about the first man (Mr. Alley: Tan Jacket). He will have established very quickly that day that he was not quite the Eyewitness to History he wanted to be. Corrective measures in the self-heroicizing line were in order.

The truth-telling Mr. Guinyard contradicts the limelight-loving Mr. Callaway's WC story because Mr. Callaway's WC story is cock-and-bull-------------a bit like if Mr. Howard Brennan, painfully conscious of the Euins kid's insistence that the SN shooter was 'colored', had told the WC that the shooter looked biracial, with the left side of his face white but the other dark-complected.