The 1:22pm DPD radio message translates as The jacket was planted and the witness transplanted (revision)

[Donald Willis]

The 1:22pm DPD radio message translates as The jacket was planted and the witness transplanted (revision)

It seems that all I'm doing these days is correcting myself.  James DiEugenio caught me in a blatant error on another thread.  I caught myself re another error on the first version of this thread.  I trusted a DPD transcription of their own radio logs (CE 705).  But, digging out my old tape recording of said logs (provided about 25 years ago by Dave Dix, from I believe, the Minnesota Public Library), I found that the 1:22 transmission did NOT say just "300 E. Jefferson", but "300 block of E. Jefferson".  I have incorporated the new (old) information accordingly and made the necessary changes...

1:22pm DPD radio message translates as The jacket was planted and the witness transplanted (revision)

First faint clue:  DPD Sgt. G.D. Henslee transcribes the first line of the transmission thusly:  "Have a description of the suspect on Jefferson."  Actually, the transmission runs, "We have a description on this suspect over here on Jefferson."  The omitted "over here" makes it sound like the sender, Officer Roy Walker, is actually on Jefferson. Is there a problem with that?  Oh, yes.
 
Second faint clue:  But, first, continuing the text of the 1:22 transmission:  "Last seen about 300 block of E. Jefferson.  He's a white male, about 30, 5'8", black hair, slender, wearing a white jacket, white shirt, and dark slacks". (DPD radio-logs tape)  And note that the dispatcher, at 1:26, has the suspect "going west on Jefferson from the 300 block". (CE 705 p22)

Third faint clue:  At 1:19:05, the dispatcher tells Walker to check out 501 E. 10th at Denver (WMp105).  Then, at 1:19:59, he tells Walker "The suspect's running west on Jefferson from the location" (DPD radio logs/WMp109).  When, at 1:21:37, Walker radioes "I haven't seen anything on Jefferson yet" (DPD radio logs), the dispatcher again directs him to "501 E. 10th at Denver" (CE 705p20/WM p113).  Finally, at 1:22:36, Walker radios his "over here" description.  From his 1:21:37 transmission, we know that Walker was, at the time, on Jefferson.  But we don't know, from his radio transmissions, whether he was ever at 10th & Patton.  He doesn't correct or follow-up the dispatcher's "10th at Denver", after either of the latter's advisories.

Fourth (getting somewhere) clue:  Dale Myers insists that Walker met and talked to Warren Reynolds at the murder scene:  "Reynolds returned to 10th & Patton at about [1:20], despite Reynolds' testimony to the contrary" (p112).  True, in 1983, Walker told Myers that he did meet Reynolds, about 1:22.  However, he adds, "One of the used car lot operators saw the incident... Warren Reynolds" (p114).  The latter never said that he saw the shooting--Walker's memory fails him here.

And Reynolds would hardly have been the one to tell Walker, "Last seen about 300 block of E. Jefferson".  Ruinously for him, Walker told Myers that it was "Reynolds [who] gave me the description of the gunman" (p114).  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 block of E. Jefferson" witness.  (Reynolds' suspicious man may not have been the gunman at all, but a vigilante trailing the gunman.)  Myers, then, with one hand, was simply extending Walker's witness-identity deception, despite his own text and frame grabs which, with the other hand, expose said deception!  Myers giveth and Myers taketh away.

Fifth (gathering steam) clue:  Myers then "buttresses" the invented Walker/Reynolds confab with yet another out-of-thin-air incident, based on the word of... no one at all:  "Warren Reynolds, who had come with [Sgt. Bud Owens & Assistant DA Bill Alexander] from 10th & Patton, pointed to an old house near the Texaco station..." (p120)  Alexander did not testify to the Warren Commission, and Owens, in his Commission testimony, did not mention bringing along a witness to the Texaco area.  None of the principals, then--Reynolds, Walker, Alexander, Owens--can support Myers' two little vignettes re Reynolds going to and leaving the scene of the crime circa 1:20 and 1:22.  Thin air.

Sixth (Eureka!) clue:  Relocation, relocation, relocation.  Why would Walker and Myers go to so much trouble to falsely identify and relocate a witness?  Well, what other witness or witnesses were "over here on Jefferson"?  (Pat Patterson was with Reynolds, so he was most probably an old-house witness, too.)

Robert and Mary Brock were, in effect the gatekeepers of the parking-lot suspect.  Mary Brock was the only witness who clearly stated that she "last observed [the suspect] in the parking lot directly behind" the service station. (WM p551)  They may have seen the suspect, but not in the parking lot, and certainly not doffing his jacket.  Because at 1:22, he was reported "seen about 300 block of E. Jefferson", still wearing his "white jacket".  Certainly worth Walker's false identification of his witness, and Myers' subsequent, false relocation of him elsewhere.  Two wrongs and no right.
  
And the first transmission--at 1:21--re the Texaco location was the dispatcher's "Subject just passed 401 E. Jefferson" (CE 705p21), the last address, going west, before the 300 block.  One of the Brocks must have been its source, as well as the source for "300 block of E. Jefferson".

Seventh clue:  At 1:26, Sgt. Gerald Hill reported from 12th & Beckley, "Have a man in the car with me that can identify the suspect if anybody gets... one." (CE 1974 p63)  About 1:23, at the Tippit scene, according to Hill's testimony, "Another person came up [and] told us the man had run over into the funeral home parking lot", which was opposite the Texaco station (v7p48).  Sgt. Bud Owens similarly testified that, at the "scene of the shooting... we were informed by a man whom I do not know that the suspect that shot Officer Tippit had run across a vacant lot toward Jefferson" (v7p79).  Someone, then, from the Texaco area--Hill and Owens both garbled the where of it--had run down to where the police were first congregating.  And Hill, clearly, immediately, took this man near to where the man had last seen the suspect, the 300 block of E. Jefferson.

Eighth clue:  But there must have been a big problem--retrospectively--with this witness.  In fact, there is, in Hill's testimony, an implicit, hapless denial that he even had a witness or that he had even radioed from 12th & Beckley, even though it's on the record.  On the record, Gerald!  Both the FBI transcription (see above) and Myers (p124) acknowledge that Hill sent the 1:26 message.  Hill testified, falsely, that, about 1:25, he left the Tippit scene and "whipped around the block.  I went down to the first intersection east of the block where all this incident occurred and made a right turn and traveled one block and came back up on Jefferson", where he met Owens at the Texaco/old-house site (v7p48).  The harried Warren Commission did not have time to check out every DPD-spun tale. 

Who was Hill's radioactive witness, whom, figuratively, he dare not touch, or acknowledge, let alone name?  Myers apparently knew, hence his totally unsupported relocation of that witness (as well as Officer Walker) from Crawford & Jefferson to 10th & Patton.  This is called throwing the hounds off the scent.  But by fallaciously drawing a witness away from the Crawford area, Myers unintentionally draws attention to that area.  And Hill and Owens suggest, clumsily, but perhaps basically accurately, that a person from Texaco ran down to 10th & Patton.

Reynolds was looking east from Crawford area.  But Hill's witness was looking west, towards Beckley.  Now who could have gotten a pretty good look at the fleeing suspect, good enough to have estimated height, weight, race, and age, and described the man's clothing?  Who could have seen him that closely--seen him as, say, he passed the Texaco station?  Robert and/or Mary Brock, of course.  Walker doesn't indicate the sex or number of his witnesses ("We have a description"), so it could have been either of the Brocks who contacted the dispatcher about the same time as did Walker. 

And, just as the WFAA-TV footage of Reynolds exposes the Walker lie, so it exposes the Brocks' lies.  As noted above, Mrs. Brock stated that she informed Reynolds that "she last observed [the suspect] in the parking lot directly behind Ballew's Texaco Service Station".  Clearly, she did *not* so inform him, not without some strong input from Reynolds, who had his own story to tell and was telling it to the cops, that day, and would have told it to her.  But she failed to give herself and her husband a lifeline out of the Reynolds morass.  A frame-grab is worth a thousand words.  Moral:  Don't hitch your wagon to Warren Reynolds.
    
Despite their apparent proximity to the suspect, neither Brock was invited either to attend a lineup or to testify for the Commission.  It might have been too easy, then, for people to connect the dots: "over here on Jefferson", "300 block of E. Jefferson", the Brocks.  As the witnesses closest to both the 300 block of E. Jefferson and to the parking lot, the Brocks had to be downplayed, had to be weaned off Jefferson and weaned onto the parking lot.  (Sgt. Hill didn't just downplay them--he vaporized them, or one of them.)  More publicity would have meant more scrutiny, prickly questions.  (On that same day--Jan. 21, 1964--Reynolds himself was slipping further into the morass:  For his part, he misleadingly told the FBI then that he "last observed the individual to turn north" by the service station:  "[The Brocks] informed him the individual had gone through the parking lot." [FBI interview report/WMp544]  Naively, he apparently thought that the WFAA footage had been deep-sixed.)

In sum:  The jacket was planted, the Texaco jacket witnesses were transplanted, Oswald was, beyond doubt, being framed for Tippit's murder, and Dale Myers was last seen imploding.

[Evan Marshall]

Trying to interpret polica jargon without being a veteran officer of that agency is pretty unlikely. I joined Detroit PD in 1969 fresh out college and it was whole language that took years to master. And retired from Detroit Homicide as a sgt in 1989.

Edited December 24, 2023 by Evan Marshall

[Michael Kalin]

On 12/23/2023 at 5:15 PM, Donald Willis said:

Reynolds was looking east from Crawford area.  But Hill's witness was looking west, towards Beckley.  Now who could have gotten a pretty good look at the fleeing suspect, good enough to have estimated height, weight, race, and age, and described the man's clothing?

Donald, not sure I'm getting the drift. Are you implying Robert Brock was Hill's "man in the car with me that can identify the suspect if anybody gets him" at 12th & Beckley? On the strength of their respective FBI reports Mary was the better Brock to fill this role except for the fact that she wasn't a man. Previously Scoggins was a viable candidate, and nothing I know eliminates the possibility it was Benavides.

The FBI kept subornees on a leash. We know about Benavides' call back to the mother ship relative to Vaganov, also Reynolds' relative to Lane, and Mary Brock after moving to Lubbock likewise stayed in touch. She called in on 7/9/64 after George Nash requested an interview. No FBI objection, a telephone interview ensued, but it must have been tepid stuff. The Brocks do not appear in "The Other Witnesses."

The surprising contact was Guinyard's request for protection on 10/29/64. He was brushed off, but why would he call unless the FBI had put the idea in his head at some point? The catch is there's no FBI report of a Guinyard interview, or evidence that one occurred.

[Donald Willis]

2 hours ago, Michael Kalin said:

Donald, not sure I'm getting the drift. Are you implying Robert Brock was Hill's "man in the car with me that can identify the suspect if anybody gets him" at 12th & Beckley? On the strength of their respective FBI reports Mary was the better Brock to fill this role except for the fact that she wasn't a man. Previously Scoggins was a viable candidate, and nothing I know eliminates the possibility it was Benavides.

The FBI kept subornees on a leash. We know about Benavides' call back to the mother ship relative to Vaganov, also Reynolds' relative to Lane, and Mary Brock after moving to Lubbock likewise stayed in touch. She called in on 7/9/64 after George Nash requested an interview. No FBI objection, a telephone interview ensued, but it must have been tepid stuff. The Brocks do not appear in "The Other Witnesses."

The surprising contact was Guinyard's request for protection on 10/29/64. He was brushed off, but why would he call unless the FBI had put the idea in his head at some point? The catch is there's no FBI report of a Guinyard interview, or evidence that one occurred.

I had thought, previously, that it was Scoggins with Hill--the former did testify that he went with cops.  Maybe it was Scoggins.  But probably not Benavides--he was up north, by the temple, not south, near Jefferson.  Whoever it was was political dynamite, or Hill wouldn't have disassociated himself altogether from the 1:26 transmission.  It was nice that the cover-up crew made it so obvious that there was a serious problem there.  But it's up to us to figure out what exactly that problem was.  Hill and Owens, in testimony, hint that whoever it was ran into the two of them at the Tippit site after coming down from the Texaco area.  That fits Brock, but could also, yes, fit Scoggins.  I now favor Brock because he and the missus went along with Reynolds' false testimony (and statements) that he saw the suspect going towards the parking lot.  That was dynamite which blew up in the faces of Reynolds, Brock, Brock, and Patterson, when the WFAA-TV footage was resurrected.

[Michael Kalin]

On 12/27/2023 at 12:08 AM, Donald Willis said:

I now favor Brock because he and the missus went along with Reynolds' false testimony (and statements) that he saw the suspect going towards the parking lot.  That was dynamite which blew up in the faces of Reynolds, Brock, Brock, and Patterson, when the WFAA-TV footage was resurrected.

Can you reconcile Brock's role of Hill's eyewitness with the FBI report of his 1/21/64 interview?

Quote

ROBERT BROCK was shown a photograph of LEE HARVEY OSWALD, at which time he advised he could not positively identify same as being identical with the individual who had passed him at Ballew's Texaco Service Station.

 

Edited December 28, 2023 by Michael Kalin

[Donald Willis]

9 hours ago, Michael Kalin said:

Can you reconcile Brock's role of Hill's eyewitness with the FBI report of his 1/21/64 interview?

 

Hill and the FBI-report Brock can't be reconciled.  Hill & his witness are up on Beckley.  Brock has the suspect going "into the parking lot".  Brock & the TV-footage Reynolds also can't be reconciled.  The man they saw did NOT go into the lot, he went into the old house, as per the footage.  The TV Reynolds trumps the parking-lot Reynolds and Brock.  Thus there were no witnesses that we know of who saw the suspect headed towards the lot. I think that that's the most important point here.  Who and what Hill's witness was is, yes, open to debate.  He could be--as I used to maintain--Scoggins.  Or even--long shot--the person that Myers says he was--Harold Russell.  But as far as we know, the Brocks were in the best position to see someone heading up the next block, towards Beckley.  However, after the fact, Scoggins and Callaway drove up to Beckley, but seemed to go north there, rather than south, where Hill reported from 12th & Beckley.  So, yes, I could accept Scoggins again as Hill's witness.  And the Brocks were simply roped into the Reynolds story--like him, switching the site from the old house to the parking lot.  

[Michael Kalin]

5 hours ago, Donald Willis said:

The TV Reynolds trumps the parking-lot Reynolds and Brock.  Thus there were no witnesses that we know of who saw the suspect headed towards the lot. I think that that's the most important point here.

Total agreement. The WFAA footage trumps an entire ream of FBI reports.

5 hours ago, Donald Willis said:

Who and what Hill's witness was is, yes, open to debate.  He could be--as I used to maintain--Scoggins.  Or even--long shot--the person that Myers says he was--Harold Russell.  But as far as we know, the Brocks were in the best position to see someone heading up the next block, towards Beckley.

Yes, it could be Scoggins, still can't see why not Benavides. The ALT was not distant. This is a compact area consisting of two contiguous square blocks (each less than 500x500) and the immediate periphery.

Russell is a dubious choice -- all he did was "point out the area where he had last seen the man with the pistol," never leaving this area, not even when he "went into a nearby drug store" on Crawford. The constable's substation at 12th & Beckley is about 1800 feet distant from Crawford & Jefferson by car, far from the area of the crime.
https://maps.dcad.org/prd/dpm/

5 hours ago, Donald Willis said:

However, after the fact, Scoggins and Callaway drove up to Beckley, but seemed to go north there, rather than south, where Hill reported from 12th & Beckley.

Here's where the game gets rough. The cab chase is not only bizarre in and of itself but also muddled by a heap of unresolved reports & witness statements including many versions of what actually happened. Since it's not the subject of this thread I'll mention two reasons why Callaway's role is greatly exaggerated and let it go at that.
1. Scoggins said the man who commandeered the cab was young (strike one) and looked like a cop (strike two).
2. The individual who picked up Tippit's gun was unknown to Harold Russell (strike three).

Edited December 29, 2023 by Michael Kalin

[Donald Willis]

20 hours ago, Michael Kalin said:

Total agreement. The WFAA footage trumps an entire ream of FBI reports.

Yes, it could be Scoggins, still can't see why not Benavides. The ALT was not distant. This is a compact area consisting of two contiguous square blocks (each less than 500x500) and the immediate periphery.

Russell is a dubious choice -- all he did was "point out the area where he had last seen the man with the pistol," never leaving this area, not even when he "went into a nearby drug store" on Crawford. The constable's substation at 12th & Beckley is about 1800 feet distant from Crawford & Jefferson by car, far from the area of the crime.
https://maps.dcad.org/prd/dpm/

Here's where the game gets rough. The cab chase is not only bizarre in and of itself but also muddled by a heap of unresolved reports & witness statements including many versions of what actually happened. Since it's not the subject of this thread I'll mention two reasons why Callaway's role is greatly exaggerated and let it go at that.
1. Scoggins said the man who commandeered the cab was young (strike one) and looked like a cop (strike two).
2. The individual who picked up Tippit's gun was unknown to Harold Russell (strike three).

You're the first person I know of (besides myself, that is) who gives the WFAA footage the weight it deserves.  Most researchers (including Myers) go on as if it didn't exist, and keep giving a pass to the Brocks, Patterson, & Reynolds.  

I think it was mainly Callaway who exaggerated Callaway's importance.  For instance, he bad-mouthed Scoggins, saying the latter's nervousness was the reason that they lost the suspect.  But Scoggins, in a later I think it was FBI report, told them that cops or security officers stopped the two & took over.  And an added passage in Myers' revision of "With Malice" confirms the latter version of the Scoggins/Callaway story--it was in fact two security officers, Holmes & Wheless, who headed off S&C.  

There are of course two conflicting Benavides stories--in, first, his WC testimony, and, then, in that found in early police reports by Poe/Jez and Leavelle.  In his own testimony, he says that he last saw--around the corner of the Davis house--the suspect traveling on the east side of Patton, toward "the office".  But that seems to be as close as he got to Jefferson (in the hearings version).  In the earlier 11/22 version, he winds up at the ALT.  You can't square those two versions, and I have to go with the early reports, since Benavides' affidavits & statements seem to have disappeared, leaving the way open for him to say anything the next year.  Either way, though, he seemed not to have gone in a southwest direction at all, toward the Texaco area.  Unless he really did see a suspect going west on Patton, and later followed up on that...

But, as I've said, the main thing here is that we now know that no known witness saw a suspect headed towards or though the parking lot.  (Yes, I'm discounting more recent reports of fresh Texaco witnesses!)  That doesn't rule out that the perp dropped the jacket there.  Perhaps the DPD simply wanted a witness or two, and manufactured three of them.  On the other hand, that certainly doesn't rule out that the jacket was planted.

[Michael Kalin]

Benavides' WC testimony is an obvious mass of fabrications & send-ups. To my chagrin I long believed his role was augmented by the suborners, all because of a childish reading comprehension error of a single word -- "church" in the Poe/Jez report. When you straightened me out the pieces of his fragmented story began to come together. I am grateful for this, also in agreement that he probably was not the eyewitness in Hill's car.

17 hours ago, Donald Willis said:

But Scoggins, in a later I think it was FBI report, told them that cops or security officers stopped the two & took over.  And an added passage in Myers' revision of "With Malice" confirms the latter version of the Scoggins/Callaway story--it was in fact two security officers, Holmes & Wheless, who headed off S&C. 

Scoggins refers to the cops in two places:

Quote

At about the time they left, he noticed some other officers were arriving at the scene. While they were looking for OSWALD, they met some officers in the area, not at the scene, told them what they had seen and that they had the officer's gun. They were returned to the scene by these officers.
FBI 3/17/64

We cruised around several blocks looking for him, and we--one of these police cars came by and this fellow who was with me stopped it, and we got back in the car and went back up to the scene, and he give them the pistol, and that time is when I found out he wasn't an officer.
WC 3H337

But the chase was first reported by Callaway on day one, and these statements by Scoggins were made down the line. They differ significantly from Myers' version of the chase divulged from the dead son of a dead security officer. In effect the statements serve much the same purpose as Benavides' red Ford, used by Moriarty as a peg on which he hung his tall Tatum tale.

Starting at the beginning...

1. Callaway's 11/22/63 DPD statement: We got into his cab, number 213 and drove up Patton to Jefferson and looked all around, but did not see him.
2. Callaway's 12/3/63 SS statement: We turned west on 10th and south on Crawford to Jefferson and then west on Jefferson to Beckley where we turned north.

Immediate problem! Did he really not know which way he went on day one? More likely he went nowhere -- route #1 was dictated by DPD, soon modified, probably by the FBI who quickly succeeded DPD as the lead framing agency after Oswald's murder.

Note -- Scoggins never identified Callaway as his passenger.

Drawing my brakes for now, not sure you want to continue down this road. If you do, it's likely to be a long detour.

[Donald Willis]

3 hours ago, Michael Kalin said:

Benavides' WC testimony is an obvious mass of fabrications & send-ups. To my chagrin I long believed his role was augmented by the suborners, all because of a childish reading comprehension error of a single word -- "church" in the Poe/Jez report. When you straightened me out the pieces of his fragmented story began to come together. I am grateful for this, also in agreement that he probably was not the eyewitness in Hill's car.

Scoggins refers to the cops in two places:

But the chase was first reported by Callaway on day one, and these statements by Scoggins were made down the line. They differ significantly from Myers' version of the chase divulged from the dead son of a dead security officer. In effect the statements serve much the same purpose as Benavides' red Ford, used by Moriarty as a peg on which he hung his tall Tatum tale.

Starting at the beginning...

1. Callaway's 11/22/63 DPD statement: We got into his cab, number 213 and drove up Patton to Jefferson and looked all around, but did not see him.
2. Callaway's 12/3/63 SS statement: We turned west on 10th and south on Crawford to Jefferson and then west on Jefferson to Beckley where we turned north.

Immediate problem! Did he really not know which way he went on day one? More likely he went nowhere -- route #1 was dictated by DPD, soon modified, probably by the FBI who quickly succeeded DPD as the lead framing agency after Oswald's murder.

Note -- Scoggins never identified Callaway as his passenger.

Drawing my brakes for now, not sure you want to continue down this road. If you do, it's likely to be a long detour.

Just want to add:  Looking at the Hill/Walker transmissions from the viewpoint of the suborners... Hill's was a big deal.  The suborners (I like that designation) did not just have him mis-identify his witness, they had him, implicitly, deny that he even had a witness and made a call re same.  Why would a transmission from 12th &  Beckley seem so potentially explosive?  Depends on the particular witness.  Nothing explosive re Harold Russell.  Nor, I think, Benavides--surely, the suborners would like to have had the latter looking down Jefferson rather than 10th to the ALT.  But Scoggins' first take on what he did after he & Callaway returned to the scene (left immediately for taxi HQ) would have been exploded by being exposed as Hill's witness.  (If he hadn't exploded it himself by his 2nd take (got in a car with cops).  And Brock's parking-lot story would have been exploded, too, with perhaps an even louder bang.  So, as I've said, I think it comes down to... Scoggins or Brock.  Nuff said for now.

[Michael Kalin]

Still at the beginning, Callaway's 11/22/63 DPD affidavit identified the cab not the driver. His 2/26/64 FBI statement flatly denied that he knew who drove the cab:

Quote

He said that he never learned the identity of this cab driver, and after they were unable to locate the man he had observed with the pistol, he and the cab driver returned to the scene where Patrolman TIPPIT had been shot and he turned TIPPIT's gun over to Dallas police officers who were at the scene and told them what he knew about the shooting.

It is inexplicable that the cab driver & car salesman did not recognize each other since the former habituated the dominoes club across the street from the latter's POB. A month later WC briefing handled half of the problem, and Callaway without prompting named Scoggins in his testimony [3H354], but Scoggins refused to play ball to the end.

[Michael Kalin]

The man in the middle who might have settled all this was Bowley, but he was vague on this subject, apparently did not even observe Callaway make his superfluous, belated DPD call on #10's radio. If he had confirmed this man was the same man who picked up Tippit's gun it would have cemented Callaway's credentials as the posse commander, but no source I'm familiar with supports this identification.

Forced underground by the FBI, Bowley did not resurface until the HSCA investigation 14 years later.

From Bowley's 12/2/63 DPD affidavit:

Quote

As we picked the officer up, I noticed his pistol laying on the ground under him. Someone picked the pistol up and laid it on the hood of the squad car. When the ambulance left, I took the gun and put it inside the squad car. A man took the pistol out and said, "Let's catch him." He opened the cylinder, and I saw that no rounds in it had been fired. This man then took the pistol with him and got into a cab and drove off.

Sounds like the "someone" who "picked the pistol up and laid it on the hood of the squad car" and the "man [who] took the pistol out" were two different people.

Callaway told the WC he did both:

Quote

I picked the gun up and laid it on the hood of the squad car, and then someone put it in the front seat of the squad car. Then after I helped load Officer Tippit in the ambulance, I got the gun out of the car and told this cabdriver, I said, "You saw the guy didn't you?" He said, yes.
3H354

But ambulance driver Butler told the HSCA on 9/25/77:

Quote

I went to the back of the ambulance where I noticed a pistol lying in the street by the left front tire of the squad car. I picked up the pistol and placed it on the hood and/or fender of the squad car.

Compare Bowley's 11/12/77 HSCA statement:

Quote

Recognizing the man as being a police officer Bowley stated he found the officer's revolver on the ground under him. The weapon was out of its holster and near the officer's right hand. Bowley picked the weapon up and placed it on the front seat of the scout car.

It's quite the muddle of contradictory witness statements, but it gets even better. When Joseph McBride interviewed Bowley in 1992 his DPD affidavit puzzled him:

Quote

After reading the affidavit, Bowley told me, "I don't remember that part about the pistol. I really don't."
Into the Nightmare [247]

Memories dim as time rolls on. Even Bowley's simple 1977 HSCA statement that "he and his 12 yr old daughter were driving past the scene of the Tippit shooting" is subject to revision.

In another interview included in a pro-WR propaganda video Bowley stated, "I parked a good ways back because I didn't want my 12 year old daughter to see it."

"Driving past" is the opposite of a "good ways back," and there's no way to reconcile the disparate memories. This instance is trivial and not worth dwelling on, but other contradictions involve non-frivolous subject matter.
 

Edited January 1 by Michael Kalin

[Donald Willis]

5 hours ago, Michael Kalin said:

The man in the middle who might have settled all this was Bowley, but he was vague on this subject, apparently did not even observe Callaway make his superfluous, belated DPD call on #10's radio. If he had confirmed this man was the same man who picked up Tippit's gun it would have cemented Callaway's credentials as the posse commander, but no source I'm familiar with supports this identification.

I gotta go with Sgt. Croy, who heard that a cab driver had picked up the gun.  Scoggins was the posse commander, I believe...

 

5 hours ago, Michael Kalin said:

Forced underground by the FBI, Bowley did not resurface until the HSCA investigation 14 years later.

From Bowley's 12/2/63 DPD affidavit:

Sounds like the "someone" who "picked the pistol up and laid it on the hood of the squad car" and the "man [who] took the pistol out" were two different people.

Callaway told the WC he did both:

But ambulance driver Butler told the HSCA on 9/25/77:

Compare Bowley's 11/12/77 HSCA statement:

It's quite the muddle of contradictory witness statements, but it gets even better. When Joseph McBride interviewed Bowley in 1992 his DPD affidavit puzzled him:

Memories dim as time rolls on. Even Bowley's simple 1977 HSCA statement that "he and his 12 yr old daughter were driving past the scene of the Tippit shooting" is subject to revision.

In another interview included in a pro-WR propaganda video Bowley stated, "I parked a good ways back because I didn't want my 12 year old daughter to see it."

"Driving past" is the opposite of a "good ways back," and there's no way to reconcile the disparate memories. This instance is trivial and not worth dwelling on, but other contradictions involve non-frivolous subject matter.
 

 

[Michael Kalin]

On 1/2/2024 at 12:43 AM, Donald Willis said:

I gotta go with Sgt. Croy, who heard that a cab driver had picked up the gun.  Scoggins was the posse commander, I believe...

Not sure I grok this. Is the argument that Scoggins left the scene twice with Tippit's gun, first immediately post murder, second post ambulance?
 

[Donald Willis]

2 hours ago, Michael Kalin said:

Not sure I grok this. Is the argument that Scoggins left the scene twice with Tippit's gun, first immediately post murder, second post ambulance?
 

Something like that.  I'd say definitely post-murder, when I think that Markham & the Davises first saw him.  Unlike most CTs, that is, I think that Markham got to the scene a bit later than she was supposed to have, not a bit earlier.  And she saw Scoggins bending over Tippit's body to pick up the gun, and she thought he was the perp checking on his handiwork.  With all the covering-up and confusion, though, can hardly say for sure... By the time, though, that Scoggins & Callaway were leaving the scene, the latter may have had the pistol.