"Oswald, Tippit, and Carl Mather in Oak Cliff"

[Greg Doudna]

Update Jan 9, 2024. I have removed the article by that title from my website pending rewrite. 

Edited January 9 by Greg Doudna

[Donald Willis]

Vary good.  A missing piece of the Oak Cliff story found...

[Tony Krome]

Found this guy who is supposed to be a younger Mather (unconfirmed)

[Miles Massicotte]

Greg,

A really interesting article, as always. It's funny how Carl Mather should in a certain sense have always been the most likely candidate for the person in the car, but was discounted. A recurring theme in the JFKA seems to be mixing up the colors of various important automobiles, does it not? In any case, unless there is some other provenance of the license plate number yet to be discovered, the fact that it links to a family who were personal friends with Tippet is too much of a coincidence to ignore. 

I also find the connection between Carl Mather, Collins Radio, and Oswald fascinating. Mather, as I have read in James Douglass's book, never spoke to the FBI, but did speak to the HSCA only under the condition of immunity from prosecution, which is interesting in and of itself, considering (according to Douglass) Collins Radio's history as a CIA contractor and Mather's personal electronics work on Air Force Two for LBJ. 

So, that you are able to draw a connection between Mather and Oswald at the Texas Theater seems to be inviting a certain can of worms to be opened. 

On the point of Mather resembling Oswald: just for fun I asked an AI to age up the picture of Mather in your article so it might match his age in 1963 a bit more closely. Here is the result, for fun, side by side with Oswald. I think it would be easy enough to mistake the two. 

 

[Greg Doudna]

Thanks for these comments. Yes, it was striking to me that the most obvious candidate for identification of a person in a car with license plates registered to Carl Mather seemed not to have previously been considered: Carl Mather. That Mather face does have an "Oswald-like" look to it such that one can well imagine mechanic T.F. White's reaction when he saw a photograph of Oswald on the news the night of Nov 22. Of course for some reason Oswald, a somewhat generic and nondescript young white male in appearance, prompted many claims of mistaken claims of sightings on the part of persons who had no prior knowledge of him. 

The immunity from prosecution detail you mention Miles, yes, that is interesting for the obvious question analogous to when someone takes the Fifth, in court one is not supposed to find that prejudicial but everyone wonders, "what are they afraid will come out about them?" 

I did not press that point in my paper (beyond passing reference to the immunity) though for this reason: lack of knowledge whether that was usual and a formality (a wise policy if so to encourage all witnesses called by HSCA to be uninhibited in talking)--whether that was general or specific from HSCA to Mather, and whether that was HSCA's initiative or requested by an attorney for Mather, the circumstances of that. Maybe someone knows that information but I do not. 

[Miles Massicotte]

A few things. On the one hand, it does not seem that granting immunity functioned the same as pleading the 5th in regards to the HSCA. From the HSCA final report: 

"The procedures of a congressional hearing also affected the committee's assessment of the risks and dangers inherent in its addressing all four issues it had tentatively identified. The procedures of a congressional hearing are fundamentally different than those in a judicial context. A few clear examples are sufficient to demonstrate the differences. First, there is no impartial judge presiding over the congressional proceeding. An objection that a committee member's question is impertinent is in fact ruled upon by the chairman of the committee. Second, a "target" in a congressional hearing may be compelled by a grant of immunity to testify despite his claim of the fifth amendment. In a trial, a defendant may not be compelled to take the stand and testify." (emphasis mine)

So in other words immunity would not protect Mather from having to reveal information, it would simply protect him from being prosecuted for it.

On the other hand, also from the HSCA: 

“The Commission itself failed to utilize the instruments of immunity from prosecution and prosecution for perjury with respect to witnesses whose veracity it doubted.”

So, while I don't know how frequently they granted witnesses immunity for HSCA hearings, considering that they criticized the WC for this very thing it probably indicates that it was a tool they were willing to use and did indeed use, though how often I don't know.

In any case, in some respects it is like pleading the 5th in that it is not fair to draw conclusions from it. But it is interesting given that Carl Mather is otherwise a very ordinary witness. Why seek immunity? Anyway it strikes me as curious.

Edited January 1 by Miles Massicotte

[Tom Gram]

2 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

I did not press that point in my paper (beyond passing reference to the immunity) though for this reason: lack of knowledge whether that was usual and a formality (a wise policy if so to encourage all witnesses called by HSCA to be uninhibited in talking)--whether that was general or specific from HSCA to Mather, and whether that was HSCA's initiative or requested by an attorney for Mather, the circumstances of that. Maybe someone knows that information but I do not. 

I looked into this at one point but don’t remember all the details. I’m pretty sure the HSCA granted immunity like you said as a formality to prevent witnesses from taking the fifth. These executive session transcripts suggest that immunity was granted for witnesses that the HSCA suspected may have had some level of criminal involvement in the case, but also just as a contingency in case something came up that required it. 

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=261#relPageId=11

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=282#relPageId=12

I found this folder in the Armstrong archive. It has Mather’s immunity grant (p. 25) but there’s also a 2/19/77 report on a phone interview with Wes Wise where he recounts an interesting dinner with the Mathers: 

Wise said he later had dinner with this couple in the company of someone from CBS. He said that while his wife was fairly calm the husband was “so upset” and “agitated” that he was unable to eat. The man explained his nervousness by saying that the circumstances indicated a nearly unbelievable coincidence, namely, that the car belonging to a friend of Officer Tippit’s was reportedly used by LHO in making his escape. Wise said he was not prepared to say whether or not he believed the man’s innocent explanation at that time or now. Wise indicated it is one of the questions that remain unanswered which make him feel a new investigation would be in order. [Underline in original]

https://digitalcollections-baylor.quartexcollections.com/Documents/Detail/lho-arrested-at-texas-theater-nov.-22-24-1963-wes-wise/688777?item=688800

Mather’s interview and lots of other relevant docs are in the same folder. 

The immunity grant is dated 5/31/78, and Mather was interviewed on 3/28/78. The memo to Blakey from over a year earlier on the Wise phone interview seems to have triggered the HSCA’s interest in this story, but why the heck did they wait so long to interview Mather? Why’d they get immunity for him after the initial interview? Why did they never depose him?

The immunity application document dated 5/19/78 is on page 57 of the folder. It says they are applying for an order to grant immunity and to compel Mather to testify.

On pages 67-68 of the folder there is a RIF listing for a 5/11/78 interview with Wes Wise. There was another Wise interview too on 11/2/78.

The RIFs for the May interview are 180-10108-10136 and 180-10071-10248: the first is a 5-page outside contact report and the second is a 3-page interview summary. Both are listed as open in full but I couldn’t find anything on MFF, which is the case with a lot of HSCA numbered files that were released in the 90s. 

The November and May Wise interviews are cited in the HSCA report. Wise supposedly retold the dinner story in the November interview, but the May interview citation doesn’t quite seem like enough to cover 5+ pages of content: 

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=84#relPageId=42 (48 and 49) 

Based on the timing, it looks like the immunity request for Mather may have been triggered by the 5/11/78 Wise interview, so it could be worth tracking down.

Edited January 1 by Tom Gram

[Tony Krome]

From Greg's article;

Tippit was killed in Oak Cliff ca. 1:15 pm. The first mention of Tippit by name on police radio occurred at 1:28 pm, when it was reported that Tippit was dead at Methodist Hospital (Myers, With Malice, 247). News of Tippit by name was first broadcast on commercial radio at 1:49 pm

Is this correct? What type of radio did Brewer have? Or was there an earlier commercial radio report that didn't name Tippit but mentioned an officer?

Edited January 1 by Tony Krome

[Greg Doudna]

5 hours ago, Tony Krome said:

From Greg's article;

Tippit was killed in Oak Cliff ca. 1:15 pm. The first mention of Tippit by name on police radio occurred at 1:28 pm, when it was reported that Tippit was dead at Methodist Hospital (Myers, With Malice, 247). News of Tippit by name was first broadcast on commercial radio at 1:49 pm

Is this correct? What type of radio did Brewer have? Or was there an earlier commercial radio report that didn't name Tippit but mentioned an officer?

Tony -- As Myers recounts it by about 1:31 pm there was news radio reporting that an officer had been killed but the name was being voluntarily withheld by news stations until the family could be notified, even though police had learned the name of the one of their own who had fallen from police radio by 1:28 pm. The broadcast of the name at 1:49 by one news station (NBC affiliate WBAP-TV in Fort Worth) broke the voluntary news stations' protocol of the others. Myers tells the stories of Tippit family members hearing of the death of J.D. over the radio, phoning Marie Tippit to tell her the news reports, Marie phoning the police to ask what was going on, being told over the phone in response that it was true her husband had been shot and was dead. I don't know that anyone knows for sure what kind of radio Brewer had but most people other than reporters do not normally have police radio.

From Myers, With Malice, pp. 738-739 n. 617: "[the shooting of Officer Tippit] was very likely broadcast at about 1:31 p.m. over KBOX radio. There were five major radio stations covering the Dallas area--WFAA (670 AM), WBAP (820 AM), KRLD (1080 AM), KBOX (1480 AM), and KLIF (1190 AM). All of them routinely monitored the Dallas police radio. A review of archival recordings made by the four radio stations show that neither the shooting in Oak Cliff nor its location was broadcast until after Oswald was arrested at 1:51 p.m. [emphasis Myers']. However, the archival recordings of two of the radio stations--WFAA and KBOX--do not cover the entire assassination period. The WFAA recordings begin at 1:47 P.M.; KBOX recordings begin at 1:35 P.M. A 1:59 P.M. KBOX report from newsman Sam Pate, repeats information known to have been previously broadcast, including a report about the Tippit shooting ("Moments ago a police officer reported to have been shot down at Tenth and Patton in the Oak Cliff area. Several squads of police, approximately twenty men, ordered to the Oak Cliff area. A late word shows that the police officer was dead on arrival at Methodist Hospital.") This KBOX report on the Tippit shooting was probably broadcast earlier on KBOX shortly after 1:31 p.m. when it was reported over the Dallas police radio that Tippit was DOA at Methodist Hospital (...) KLIF archival radio recordings show that at 1:27 p.m. KLIF announcers began reporting the 'strong rumor' that the President was dead. The official announcement came eight minutes later, at 1:35 p.m."

[Greg Doudna]

Thanks Miles Massicotte and Tom Gram for the comments and references relevant to the immunity issue, makes sense.

Tom I found in your link to the Armstrong archive file the Feb 19, 1977 HSCA interview of Wesley Wise interesting. I note the reason the suspicious car came to the attention of mechanic White--so far as this account goes--was not from seeing the car driving at speed or recklessly (that in mechanic White's telling he saw after the car left, not before it arrived). Rather it was in a context of police sirens blaring, a fugitive at large in the assassination of President Kennedy (heightened tension and suggestibility), and the car looked unusual to mechanic White in the way it was parked at the El Chico Restaurant, not the way a normal person would park to go eat in the restaurant. (Was what mechanic White interpreted as the driver seeking to "hide" from police in the way his car was situated a misinterpretation of a driver positioning his car so as to get the best view of pedestrian traffic on N. Beckley?)

"The mechanic [White] said he was working in the garage listening to the radio accounts of the assassination and their reports that the suspect was still at large when he heard sirens blaring as police cars were all over the area. The mechanic went outside and looked around. He noticed a man sitting in an irregularly parked car in the restaurant parking lot slightly hidden by a billboard (either hidden from him or from the road, or both). This man appeared to be hiding from the police cars which were patrolling the streets. The circumstances combined to make the mechanic suspicious of the man so he crossed the street to get a better look. When he was at a distance of about 10-15 yards the man in the car turned in his seat and faced him head on, giving him a good look at his face. The man was wearing a white "T" shirt. The man took the license number of the car and made a mental note of its description. Later than night or the next day the man saw a picture of LHO on the television news and recognized LHO as being the man he saw in the car in the parking lot. The mechanic was afraid to go to the authorities and had not done so when Mr. Wise and Mr. Pate (or someone from CBS) came to talk to him about what he knew. Wise talked him into going with them to the F.B.I. together with the note which he was still carrying which contained the license number of the car he saw.

"The authorities traced the license to a car in a driveway in Garland (an area northeast of the city, in the opposite direction from Oak Cliff). They spoke with a woman in the house where the car was parked and discovered that she could not account for the whereabouts of the car at the time it was reportedly seen by the mechanic. She could account for the car about an hour and a half after that. An hour and a half afterward her husband had gotten into the car i a parking lot of Collins Radio in Garland. The husband got into the car in response to the wife's request that he come home. It turns out that this couple were good friends with the Tippitts and had been called by Mrs. Tippitt to be with her when she learned of her husband's death." (https://digitalcollections-baylor.quartexcollections.com/Documents/Detail/lho-arrested-at-texas-theater-nov.-22-24-1963-wes-wise/688777?item=688797)

Also, on that last detail, Myers says it is not accurate or correct that the Mathers received any phone call from Mrs. Tippit that day, and is convincing on that point citing the Tippit home's phone records (With Malice, 796 n. 1204).

That means the Mathers learned of Tippit's death over the news and suggests the Mather family (Carl and Barbara and two children) drove all the way from Garland to Mrs. Tippit's home in Oak Cliff without calling in advance. Under the circumstances I do not know whether that would be unusual or not. Maybe it was better that way than calling. Upon arrival one could go to the door and gently find out whether company for Marie Tippit was wanted, if not drive away.     

[Stu Wexler]

FWIW:  I am not a car guy. But a  Falcon apparently looks a lot like like a Mercury Comet. The Lincoln-Mercury involved someone purporting to be Oswald test driving a *Red* Comet. Probably means nothing.

[Tom Gram]

8 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

Thanks Miles Massicotte and Tom Gram for the comments and references relevant to the immunity issue, makes sense.

Tom I found in your link to the Armstrong archive file the Feb 19, 1977 HSCA interview of Wesley Wise interesting. I note the reason the suspicious car came to the attention of mechanic White--so far as this account goes--was not from seeing the car driving at speed or recklessly (that in mechanic White's telling he saw after the car left, not before it arrived). Rather it was in a context of police sirens blaring, a fugitive at large in the assassination of President Kennedy (heightened tension and suggestibility), and the car looked unusual to mechanic White in the way it was parked at the El Chico Restaurant, not the way a normal person would park to go eat in the restaurant. (Was what mechanic White interpreted as the driver seeking to "hide" from police in the way his car was situated a misinterpretation of a driver positioning his car so as to get the best view of pedestrian traffic on N. Beckley?)

"The mechanic [White] said he was working in the garage listening to the radio accounts of the assassination and their reports that the suspect was still at large when he heard sirens blaring as police cars were all over the area. The mechanic went outside and looked around. He noticed a man sitting in an irregularly parked car in the restaurant parking lot slightly hidden by a billboard (either hidden from him or from the road, or both). This man appeared to be hiding from the police cars which were patrolling the streets. The circumstances combined to make the mechanic suspicious of the man so he crossed the street to get a better look. When he was at a distance of about 10-15 yards the man in the car turned in his seat and faced him head on, giving him a good look at his face. The man was wearing a white "T" shirt. The man took the license number of the car and made a mental note of its description. Later than night or the next day the man saw a picture of LHO on the television news and recognized LHO as being the man he saw in the car in the parking lot. The mechanic was afraid to go to the authorities and had not done so when Mr. Wise and Mr. Pate (or someone from CBS) came to talk to him about what he knew. Wise talked him into going with them to the F.B.I. together with the note which he was still carrying which contained the license number of the car he saw.

"The authorities traced the license to a car in a driveway in Garland (an area northeast of the city, in the opposite direction from Oak Cliff). They spoke with a woman in the house where the car was parked and discovered that she could not account for the whereabouts of the car at the time it was reportedly seen by the mechanic. She could account for the car about an hour and a half after that. An hour and a half afterward her husband had gotten into the car i a parking lot of Collins Radio in Garland. The husband got into the car in response to the wife's request that he come home. It turns out that this couple were good friends with the Tippitts and had been called by Mrs. Tippitt to be with her when she learned of her husband's death." (https://digitalcollections-baylor.quartexcollections.com/Documents/Detail/lho-arrested-at-texas-theater-nov.-22-24-1963-wes-wise/688777?item=688797)

Also, on that last detail, Myers says it is not accurate or correct that the Mathers received any phone call from Mrs. Tippit that day, and is convincing on that point citing the Tippit home's phone records (With Malice, 796 n. 1204).

That means the Mathers learned of Tippit's death over the news and suggests the Mather family (Carl and Barbara and two children) drove all the way from Garland to Mrs. Tippit's home in Oak Cliff without calling in advance. Under the circumstances I do not know whether that would be unusual or not. Maybe it was better that way than calling. Upon arrival one could go to the door and gently find out whether company for Marie Tippit was wanted, if not drive away.     

Wise seems to have had a lot to say to the HSCA. They interviewed him three different times on this matter. If you manage to track down the 5/11/78 and 11/2/78 interviews let us know - should be interesting reading. 

This is speculation, but it sure looks to me like the May interview is the source of the Committee’s immunity request for Mather. That HSCA report citation states that Wise turned over his own original notes from the El Chico speech in that interview, with the license number and description of a 1957 Plymouth 4-door. 

The following week the committee decides to get immunity for Mather and an order compelling him to testify…but they supposedly never called him to testify. Maybe once they had actual evidence of Mather’s license number they decided to bring him in? 

The 3-page 5/11 Wise interview summary RIF description has “Leads” in the subject line. I bet my lunch money one of those leads was to depose Mather, but it never happened for whatever reason. What changed their mind? 

[Greg Doudna]

On 1/1/2024 at 10:11 PM, Stu Wexler said:

FWIW:  I am not a car guy. But a  Falcon apparently looks a lot like like a Mercury Comet. The Lincoln-Mercury involved someone purporting to be Oswald test driving a *Red* Comet. Probably means nothing.

That is interesting. The man who test-drove the new red Comet Caliente at the Downtown Lincoln Mercury on Sat Nov 2 who represented himself as Oswald, may have actually been Curtis Craford or someone like him working in mob interests for the purpose of framing Oswald in advance, by means of the “three weeks” later when he told the dealership he would come into money and pay cash for the car. There may or may not have been a second mob-related person already inside that dealership, the recently employed Lawrence who reportedly claimed as a prior reference a dealership in New Orleans that was later found to be a bogus reference. Lawrence is the salesman who made sure on Nov 22 that the Nov 2 “Oswald” event was reported to the FBI when the rest of the dealership management were not intending to report it. Lawrence however later denied he had been in New Orleans etc. 

The “Oswald” figure on Nov 2 unreasonably wanted the dealership to give him a new car with nothing down based on an unverified verbal promise of cash in three weeks. He had to know that request would be a nonstarter and would not succeed. But what if the dealership (dealerships always hungry for sales) had told him, “we will hold this car for you (the new red Comet Caliente) for three weeks until—what day did you say? Oh, Nov 20 or 21?—That will be just fine, sir.” “Then so long as you are able to make a reasonable down payment we will work out the rest of things then.”

And in this scenario in the best case “Oswald” (who is not Oswald) walks out paper in hand, and those at the dealership witness that “Oswald” will pick up the red Comet Caliente about the time of the assassination. In the event that did not happen, the dealership did not offer that, but what if it had? Then the assassination happens Nov 22 from Oswald’s workplace; police find his rifle, that he had sold on Nov 11, on the sixth floor; and a red getaway car is discovered to have been reserved by Oswald three weeks earlier.

Edited January 12 by Greg Doudna

[Greg Doudna]

UPDATE

How the article was wrong

I have removed the article from my website. Although there was no mistake on the license plate number, and there is no mistake that that license plate was registered to Carl Mather of Collins Radio Co., friend of Tippit murdered that day, I believe I got wrong other key points in that paper. Specifically: 

• Got the car wrong. The paper argued the car was the blue 1957 Plymouth of Carl Mather's to which the license plate was registered, and argued that that overrode mechanic White's reporting that the car was a red car of a different make (1961 Ford Falcon). In fact the car was a red car, had to be. Mechanic White said it was and would hardly have gotten that wrong. Furthermore, reporter and later Dallas mayor Wes Wise confirmed he was told from the outset that the car was red by Mack Pate, the owner of the garage and mechanic White's employer, and it is implied that Mack Pate also had personally seen and confirmed the car was red. Therefore, there was no mistake on either the license plate number or the difference in color and make of the car. Both are facts. The car was not the car legally attached to that license plate. The license plate went to Carl Mather, but the car was not Carl Mather's. 
• Got the timing wrong. In the paper I accepted 2:00 pm based on that time estimate from mechanic White plus linkage to the time of arrest of Oswald causing a missed meeting with Oswald in the Texas Theatre. But a criticism from a commentator named "NoTrueFlags" hit home to me. He said the timing of my article was wrong because of the linkage of the suspicious car's activity to police sirens, which were active in the ca. 1:20 to 1:40 pm range, whereas there is no reason there would be sirens at 2:00. I believe that criticism is correct. Both mechanic White and Mack Pate told of police sirens, and the suspicious car's actions as in response to those sirens. Also, I noticed from later interviews of Wes Wise by William Kelly and James Douglass that mechanic White told his boss, Mack Pate, about the suspicious car when Pate returned from lunch, which was before mechanic White crossed the street and got the license plate number. The detail of Mack Pate's return from lunch is not time-stamped, but 2:00 sounds a little later than most people have lunch, 1:30 not so much. 
• Probably got the purpose of the car being there wrong. In the paper I linked Oswald inside the theater looking to meet someone, with Mather in the car waiting or "killing time" in a nearby parking lot for a scheduled time of a meeting in the theater with Oswald. That Oswald inside the theater was there to meet someone is not changed (the witness of Jack Davis), but the suspicious car at the El Chico Restaurant as the other half of that expected meeting no longer makes good sense. The accounts of Wise, Pate, and White are of police sirens and a red car at high speed which went past the El Chico Restaurant on Davis, then returned and pulled in to the El Chico, but did not park normally but unusually behind a billboard or sign looking like the driver and car were hiding. A leisurely waiting for a scheduled meeting still an hour or so away would not involve driving at high speed or parking suddenly and abnormally. 
• And finally, may have gotten the driver of the car wrong. With the first point establishing that the car was not Carl Mather's (even though the license plate was), the timing being earlier than Oswald's arrest, and the behavior of the car being strange--these severely call into question that the driver was Carl Mather. The one detail about the driver is mechanic White thought it was Oswald from a look at his face, which since it was not Oswald means it was someone who looked enough like Oswald to be mistaken for Oswald. I thought the photo of Carl Mather qualified as satisfying that description, but the weak point is there are other possibilities for mistaken identifications of Oswald, so the driver's identity is indecisive, and is not assuredly Mather. It is difficult to imagine why, if it was Carl Mather, he would intentionally switch a license plate from his own car to someone else's borrowed car, then drive that borrowed car with his license plate on it which would trace back to him if it were seen (not to mention it being illegal to do so). The conclusion is the driver was probably someone other than Mather and that the bewilderment of Carl and Barbara Mather may be genuine. It does remain however to explain why their license plate was on a different car in Oak Cliff on the day their friend Tippit was murdered.     

REVISED ARGUMENT

The sighting of Carl Mather's license plate in Oak Cliff on Nov 22, 1963 as evidence of a criminal conspiracy in the murder of Officer Tippit

The license plate number seen by mechanic White was no mistake and is overlooked evidence of the existence of a criminal conspiracy in the death of officer Tippit and likely intent to kill of Oswald the same day in the Texas Theatre.

The logic is this. The license plate number is no mistake. The plates go to a blue 1957 Plymouth belonging to Carl Mather of Collins Radio. Yet the red car seen by mechanic White was not Carl Mather’s car. Someone surreptitiously took the license plates from Carl Mather’s blue 1957 Plymouth, replaced them with some other plates on that 1957 Plymouth such that the Mathers did not notice, and put Mather’s plates on a different red car, the car that was seen in Oak Cliff by mechanic White. 

There is no rational reason why Mather would do that himself, if he were the driver of the red car. Therefore Mather was not the driver and was unwitting to the use of his license plates in that manner.

The red car with Mather’s license plates then was used for some purpose in Oak Cliff on Nov 22, 1963. 

At some point between Nov 22 and Dec 4, 1963, the license plates registered to Carl Mather's car were surreptitiously replaced back on Mather’s blue 1957 Plymouth, to be seen correctly on that car by the FBI on Dec 4. Whatever the purpose of having those plates on the red car on Nov 22 was no longer operable after Nov 22 or soon after Nov 22.

The choice to surreptitiously appropriate use of license plates from a car of Carl Mather was made in advance of Nov 22. From this it may be concluded that the ones who appropriated those license plates knew of the Mather connection with Tippit, knew that Tippit was slated to be killed, and were party to the killing of Tippit. That is why the Mather connection to Tippit revealed by that license plate number on the day Tippit was killed is not coincidence.

Oswald went to the Texas Theatre to meet someone there. The identity of the person he was to meet is not known. There is no reason to suppose Carl Mather was in Oak Cliff that day until he and Barbara and their children drove to the home of Mrs. Tippit late that afternoon to console her following her husband’s murder.

It is possible to conjecture a three-way nexus between Carl Mather of Collins Radio, officer Tippit, and Oswald. The Mather-Tippit connection is clear. Oswald may be speculated to have a possible Collins Radio connection as a possible outgrowth of his earlier contact with retired Navy admiral and Collins vice-president Bruton, and more recently Oswald’s anticipation of possible employment at Collins Radio. Three things may suggest a relationship of Tippit and Oswald: first, they both patronized the same restaurant for coffee on workday mornings, the Dobbs House near Oswald’s rooming house but abnormally out of the way for Tippit; second, it may have been Tippit's patrol car which honked its horn in front of Oswald's rooming house at 1:00 pm Nov 22 looking for him; and third, both Tippit and Oswald were arguably slated to be killed by the same people on Nov 22.

A notebook carried on the person of Ruby employee Craford—the suspected gunman in the Tippit killing--had written on one page two items. The first was: “Mr. Miller Friday 15 people Collins Radio Co.” That may be speculated to be a cryptic reference to Oswald’s planned meeting in the Texas Theatre on Nov 22: Mr. Mather, Fri Nov 22, 15 o’clock/3 pm, Collins Radio.

The second item on that page reads in full: “Cody—City Hall”. That reference would be to Dallas Police officer Joe Cody, who according to his account in Sneed’s No More Silence was up to his ears with Ruby. The very gun that Ruby used to kill Oswald on Sunday morning Nov 24 did not belong to Ruby but was registered to Joe Cody who had bought it and given it to Ruby. (What are police friends for?) Cody was scheduled to be a character witness for Ruby in Ruby’s trial for the murder of Oswald.  

It is tempting to speculate that both of those references in Craford’s personal notepad, carried on his person wherever he went, could be information relevant to the killers in Oak Cliff of Nov 22.

The killing of Tippit may have been carried out by Craford. The killing of Oswald may have been intended to be carried out also by Craford if that intention had not been interrupted by Oswald’s arrest. Craford fled Dallas the next day, and the day after that Craford’s boss, Ruby, killed Oswald.

The killers of Tippit who also intended to kill Oswald had the use of a red car of unknown origin and unidentified purpose, and there was an unidentified driver of it, seen in the El Chico Restaurant parking lot by mechanic White perhaps in the ca. 1:30 to 1:45 pm time range on Nov 22. 

The identity of the driver of that red car is not known. Mechanic White thought he looked like Oswald but that could be true of a number of men.

Although identifications of the red car and its driver—and knowledge of its intended purpose that day—are unknown, the non-innocent and non-mistaken presence on that red car of the license plates of Carl Mather, friend of officer Tippit killed the same hour that red car was seen, is evidence of the existence of a criminal conspiracy underlying the killing of Tippit and likely intended of Oswald that day, and that that car and its driver were involved.

Edited January 12 by Greg Doudna

[Tom Gram]

4 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

The logic is this. The license plate number is no mistake. The plates go to a blue 1957 Plymouth belonging to Carl Mather of Collins Radio. Yet the red car seen by mechanic White was not Carl Mather’s car. Someone surreptitiously took the license plates from Carl Mather’s blue 1957 Plymouth, replaced them with some other plates on that 1957 Plymouth such that the Mathers did not notice, and put Mather’s plates on a different red car, the car that was seen in Oak Cliff by mechanic White.

I don’t know man. Wes Wise’s original notes from the El Chico on the information he received from “Pate and the mechanic” supposedly just had the Mather license number and “1957 Plymouth 4-Door”. No further description. That’s a heck of a coincidence on the car for it to have been a different car. Someone would’ve had to take the plates off of Mather’s ‘57 Plymouth and put them on another ‘57 Plymouth.

White noticed the make and model of the car - an exact match for Mather’s car - and he got the license plate correct. The “red” detail first pops up in the FBI interviews. If Wise’s notes are authentic, it seems to imply that White and possibly Pate noticed the car model and license number but were paying less attention to the color at the time. 

Wise sure seems to have suspected it was Mather driving the car. His story about Mather basically having a panic attack at dinner seems credible; and Mather’s excuse for his “nervousness” seems like total bs. Wise definitely had the impression that Mather was lying…