DPD Dispatcher Alterations and Tippit Murder

[Robert Burrows]

11 minutes ago, Robert Burrows said:

Truth. Try it sometime. 

P.S. Thank you for all the work you've put into your YouTube channel. It's a great resource.

 

[David Von Pein]

3 hours ago, Robert Burrows said:

P.S. Thank you for all the work you've put into your YouTube channel. It's a great resource.

Thank you.

 

Edited January 7 by David Von Pein

[Donald Willis]

On 1/6/2024 at 1:21 PM, Michael Kalin said:

I can't see how these tracks will help with timing Tippit's murder. The latest end at 12:46, unless the description is wrong.

I agree with Jim that Bowley's watch is an important timepiece, but Markham's clock is even better. She left at 1:04. It takes less than two minutes to walk the 400 feet from 9th to 10th. She was on her way to catch the 1:12 bus. There was no 1:15 bus. She did this every day. This has been covered so many times it's a prodigy of mental opacity that it has to be constantly reestablished.

There were two DPD-radio channels.   My tape of one of them does indeed end very early.  The other goes on past 2pm, I believe, and it covers the Tippit time frame.  And, yes, we can then hear Sgt. Hill calling re his witness at 12th & Bowley, er Beckley.  In his testimony,  he implicitly denied calling or even having been near Beckley.

[Michael Griffith]

On 1/2/2024 at 8:43 AM, Jim Hargrove said:

A new article by John Armstrong shows how the FBI altered DPD dispatch records to change the time of the shooting of J.D. Tippit from 1:10 PM to 1:16 PM, giving Oswald just enough time to walk nearly a mile from his rooming house to 10th & Patton.

https://harveyandlee.net/DPD/Transcripts.html

No WC apologist has yet offered a rational, credible explanation for why Tippit was so far out of his area when all other police officers had understandably been ordered to head to the downtown area. 

Even the 1:16 shooting time requires that we believe that Tippit's killer somehow walked past 10th and Patton before Tippit arrived, then inexplicably turned around and started walking west before Tippit arrived, and then turned around again and resumed his eastward heading, i.e., away from Tippit's car, when he saw Tippit's car approaching. 

[Jim Hargrove]

Thanks, Michael,

No WC apologist has yet explained how Officer Tippit was declared dead at Methodist Hospital in Dallas at 1:15 but shot dead, according to the Warren Commission, several minutes later.  Time Travel is REAL, eh?  

As most WC critics know, there is a TON of supporting evidence that Officer Tippit was killed right around 1:06.  The "Oswald" walking from the boarding house at 1026 N. Beckley starting at roughly 1 pm couldn't have done it.  

Edited January 11 by Jim Hargrove

[Donald Willis]

On 1/10/2024 at 10:08 AM, Michael Griffith said:

No WC apologist has yet offered a rational, credible explanation for why Tippit was so far out of his area when all other police officers had understandably been ordered to head to the downtown area. 

 

That "why" is answered by comparing two sets of DPD radio-log transcriptions.  Sawyer Exh. B duly records a 12:54 exchange between the dispatcher and Tippit:

Disp:   You are in the Oak Cliff area, are you not?

Tippit:  At Lancaster & 8th.

Disp:   You will be at large for any emergency that comes in.

This makes it sound as if Tippit just happened to be in the area, about 8 blocks from 10th & Patton.  But only because the Sawyer Exhibit omitted an earlier order from the dispatcher.  From the later, more complete FBI transcription:

12:46:  Disp:  87 & 78 (Nelson & Tippit), move into Central Oak Cliff area.

(There are two later, inconclusive exchanges between the dispatcher and Nelson.)

The Sawyer Exhibit makes it difficult to determine the omission of the 12:46 order.  The pertinent pages of Sawyer Exhibit A & B are  swapped--the A page is inserted into Exhibit B, and vice versa.  A ends at 12:45 and picks up at 12:48.  B also ends at 12:45 and picks up at... 12:48.  A suspicious person might find this convenient.  THERE ARE NO ENTRIES FOR 12:46 in either A or B.  

The Sawyer Exhibit, most unfortunately, was the transcription used for almost all Commission questioning of DPD officers.  Therefore, this omission was never brought up, to my knowledge, at the hearings.  The 12:46 transmission and its omission from the Sawyer Exhibit almost make it sound as if Tippit was being set up.  Sins of transmission and sins of omission...

 

On 1/10/2024 at 10:08 AM, Michael Griffith said:

No WC apologist has yet offered a rational, credible explanation for why Tippit was so far out of his area when all other police officers had understandably been ordered to head to the downtown area. 

 

 

[Greg Doudna]

2 hours ago, Donald Willis said:

That "why" is answered by comparing two sets of DPD radio-log transcriptions.  Sawyer Exh. B duly records a 12:54 exchange between the dispatcher and Tippit:

Disp:   You are in the Oak Cliff area, are you not?

Tippit:  At Lancaster & 8th.

Disp:   You will be at large for any emergency that comes in.

This makes it sound as if Tippit just happened to be in the area, about 8 blocks from 10th & Patton.  But only because the Sawyer Exhibit omitted an earlier order from the dispatcher.  From the later, more complete FBI transcription:

12:46:  Disp:  87 & 78 (Nelson & Tippit), move into Central Oak Cliff area.

(There are two later, inconclusive exchanges between the dispatcher and Nelson.)

The Sawyer Exhibit makes it difficult to determine the omission of the 12:46 order.  The pertinent pages of Sawyer Exhibit A & B are  swapped--the A page is inserted into Exhibit B, and vice versa.  A ends at 12:45 and picks up at 12:48.  B also ends at 12:45 and picks up at... 12:48.  A suspicious person might find this convenient.  THERE ARE NO ENTRIES FOR 12:46 in either A or B.  

The Sawyer Exhibit, most unfortunately, was the transcription used for almost all Commission questioning of DPD officers.  Therefore, this omission was never brought up, to my knowledge, at the hearings.  The 12:46 transmission and its omission from the Sawyer Exhibit almost make it sound as if Tippit was being set up.  Sins of transmission and sins of omission...

The basic possibilities I see for that 12:46 transmission ordering Tippit into the Oak Cliff area are (less likely) it was retroactively fabricated and dubbed in, for motive of justifying Tippit's presence there so as to preserve the good name of both the DPD and Tippit (and possibly preserve Mrs. Tippit's right to a pension). Or (more likely), Tippit has asked his friend, the dispatcher, to assign him to Oak Cliff that day for some personal reason of Tippit's own, and the dispatcher complies, favor to a friend (doesn't need to know why and doesn't ask why). 

Of course there is a third possibility, that the dispatcher gave that 12:46 transmission for routine reasons of having Oak Cliff covered. 

Is it possible the witnessed visit of Tippit to the Top Ten Records store from where he made phone calls, said to be around 1 pm, occurred just before 12:46 and the 12:46 transmission was responsive to Tippit's request in that phone call?

[Karl Kinaski]

@Jim Hargrove said:

 

Quote

 

A new article by John Armstrong shows how the FBI altered DPD dispatch records to change the time of the shooting of J.D. Tippit from 1:10 PM to 1:16 PM, giving Oswald just enough time to walk nearly a mile from his rooming house to 10th & Patton.

https://harveyandlee.net/DPD/Transcripts.html

 

Good point ... except that neither Harvey nor Lee shot Tippit ... and Lee-Harvey either 😉

Edited January 12 by Karl Kinaski

[Michael Kalin]

Based in part on Duke Lane's lengthy comment posted almost 15 years ago there were four other officers in Oak Cliff before and during Tippit's reassignment.

1. William Mentzel (lunch)
2. Harry Olsen (leave)
3. W. P. Parker ("East Jefferson")
4. J. M. Lewis ("105 Corinth")

Worth reading in full. The question about W.P. Parker -- asking if he was the officer at GLOCO -- is indeed an interesting aside, but the answer is probably no. Five witnesses identified Tippit.

Quote

Dispatch called for 56 twice - once asking if anyone else knew where he was(!) - during the first minute after the shooting, and got no response. It was during this time that 91 - W.D. Mentzel, assigned to central Oak Cliff - called in "clear" from an unexplained traffic call. He later claimed to have called in a "Signal 5" (meal break), and in fact he reported that he went to the Luby's Cafeteria on West Jefferson, and he is not heard on Channel One until after 1:00.

Patrolman W.P. Parker, who was assigned to district 56 in far east Dallas (see map below), called in just before 12:45 to say that he'd be "clear for five." Dispatch acknowledged that and asked his location, which he said was "East Jefferson." A search of all Dallas streets will return only one "Jefferson" anywhere in the city, in Oak Cliff, with East Jefferson only being between Zangs Boulevard and downtown, including the viaduct over the Trinity River.

Parker was somewhere within a mile of central Oak Cliff.

One minute later, JD Tippit was ordered into Central Oak Cliff. Other than a description of the suspect in the downtown shooting, it was the very next transmission originated by dispatch.

Two minutes later, Officer J.M. Lewis, assigned to district 35 in northeast Dallas, calls in "clear," and asked his location says he's at "105 Corinth" (see Google map). When Tippit had been ordered into central Oak Cliff, he'd indicated his location was at Kiest & Bonnie View; he is next heard from nine minutes later at 8th & Lancaster. The most direct and sensible route to take from the first location to the other to go into central Oak Cliff is shown on this map; any other route would involve going through central Oak Cliff first.

Look here to see where 105 Corinth is relative to JD Tippit's route into Oak Cliff, and the approximate time it takes to get there from where Tippit was.

When 35 called in "clear" at 12:47, he was told to "remain in service." Five minutes later - seven minutes after Tippit left Kiest and Bonnie View - he called in again, stating that he'd "go on down that way, downtown," which dispatch agrees to without argument after having previously told him to remain in service, presumably in his own district (if the dispatcher didn't know that 105 Corinth wasn't in district 35, which is hard to believe ... but not as hard to fathom as that dispatch would tell him to "remain in service" in another district 10 miles away!).

Two minutes later, at about 12:54:30, Tippit said he was at 8th and Lancaster.

So, to recap, we have:

12:30 - JFK is shot

12:33± - Dispatch can't raise 56 on the radio

12:44:50± - 56 calls in "clear for five" on East Jefferson ... in Oak Cliff

12:45:00 - Dispatch announces description of downtown shooting suspect. 35 calls in clear immediately after. Dispatch does not respond.

12:45:30± - Tippit is ordered into central Oak Cliff

12:47:00 - 35 calls in "clear" again, gives his location at "105 Corinth" ... also in Oak Cliff

12:52:30± - Tippit passes 105 Corinth

12:52:45± - 35 radios that he's going downtown

12:54:30± - Tippit is at 8th & Lancaster

What makes this even more interesting is that according to dispatcher Murray Jackson several years later on a television broadcast, the reason that he'd ordered Tippit into central Oak Cliff is that Jackson realized that "we were draining resources from Oak Cliff" - in fact, by the time Tippit got his order, there were only three other officers in Oak Cliff besides him and Mentzel, who was presumably(?) at lunch - and there wouldn't be anyone available to answer emergency calls in the area.

Given that, it's odd that one of those remaining officers, W.E. Smith - in district 77 directly west of Tippit's patrol district - was ordered downtown less than a minute after Jackson "realized we were draining resources from Oak Cliff," further draining those resources. And despite the fact that 56 and 35 were in the Oak Cliff area, neither of them was called on to shore up those depleted resources, and 35 was also "allowed" to go downtown (where we can only presume he'd actually gone).

R.C. Nelson, assigned to district 87 southwest of Tippit's district 78 and who was also ordered into central Oak Cliff with Tippit, was nearly in central Oak Cliff when he received the order, on Marsalis at the R.L. Thornton Expressway. Two and a half minutes later at 12:48, he indicated that he was at the "south end [of the] Houston Street viaduct," which Google says is 1.2 miles and three minutes away from his previous location. He was at the north end of Oak Cliff, farther from "central Oak Cliff" than he'd been when he got the order to go there.

Four and a half minutes later, at about 12:52:30, he indicated that he was "out down here" without any question from dispatch either why he was "out" (unavailable) or where "down here" was, but merely a simple "10-4." It later came to pass that "down here" was at the TSBD. (Google thinks it takes five minutes to get there, not 4½.) The only officers officially left in Oak Cliff were Tippit, Mentzel (at lunch) and R.W. Walker, presumably on duty in districts 85 and 86; there is no record of his activities other than his response to Tippit's shooting and being on Jefferson Boulevard within three minutes of the report (he didn't see anyone) and having gotten a description of the Oak Cliff suspect within six.

(The description was of "a white male, about thirty, five eight, black hair, slender, wearing a white jacket, a white shirt and dark slacks.")

At no time during the interval from 12:30 until 1:07 when he radioed in "clear" (available) did dispatchers ever attempt to contact Mentzel, and gave him no instructions until four minutes later when he was sent to investigate an accident at 817 W Davis, remaining there until 1:19 when he cleared and was told of Tippit's shooting. (Dispatch attempted to contact him after the "citizen call" and after twice calling for Tippit, but Mentzel didn't answer.)

There are only two short broadcasts from 35, neither indicating where he was or what he was doing. For all the need to find 56 immediately after the downtown shooting, and to need to know where he was fifteen minutes later when he finally did call in, there were no further broadcasts to or from him through after 2:00.

As interesting(?) asides to all of this, East Jefferson Boulevard winds west and north from central Oak Cliff to join with Zangs Boulevard again about a block east of the former Gloco Station, where Tippit was supposedly sighted before his death. Is it possible that it was actually Officer Parker who was there instead?

Also, for all of the attempts to determine the identity of the driver of the police car seen by Earlene Roberts in front of the rooming house, no officer who filed a report claimed to have been in that area at all. Was Earlene so blind that she could not distinguish a police car from any other, or did someone simply not respond to the investigation entirely truthfully? If the latter, what was there to conceal if they were there on legitimate business? J.M. Lewis reported that he was downtown at the crime scene all afternoon, and W.P. Parker indicated only that he'd manned a (one-officer) "roadblock" in his district.

 

 

PS -- Dylanologists may find William Kelly's subsequent comment amusing.

[Donald Willis]

8 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

The basic possibilities I see for that 12:46 transmission ordering Tippit into the Oak Cliff area are (less likely) it was retroactively fabricated and dubbed in, for motive of justifying Tippit's presence there so as to preserve the good name of both the DPD and Tippit (and possibly preserve Mrs. Tippit's right to a pension). Or (more likely), Tippit has asked his friend, the dispatcher, to assign him to Oak Cliff that day for some personal reason of Tippit's own, and the dispatcher complies, favor to a friend (doesn't need to know why and doesn't ask why). 

That explanation is complicated by the fact that the dispatcher ordered two cops to the area.

 

8 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

Of course there is a third possibility, that the dispatcher gave that 12:46 transmission for routine reasons of having Oak Cliff covered. 

 

But then why, if it was routine, intentionally omit that order from the Sawyer Exhibits?  All sorts of irrelevant and immaterial transmissions were transcribed by Henslee.  But one of the most important was accidentally left out?   Very much doubt.  The 12:46 was included in later transcriptions, in '64.  But too late for the subject of  its purpose to come out at the hearings.  The 12:46 had an inherent bad look--but its original omission is a worse look...

 

 

Is it possible the witnessed visit of Tippit to the Top Ten Records store from where he made phone calls, said to be around 1 pm, occurred just before 12:46 and the 12:46 transmission was responsive to Tippit's request in that phone call?

 

[Greg Doudna]

1 hour ago, Donald Willis said:

That explanation is complicated by the fact that the dispatcher ordered two cops to the area.

I don't know if the conjecture is right, but the point you name here would not oppose it, because suppose Tippit did ask his friend Murray Jackson the dispatcher to assign him to Oak Cliff as a favor, for whatever personal reason. Dispatcher Jackson might combine the instruction to Tippit with some other officer. He would include Tippit in otherwise routine dispatching movements. Your point about the 12:46 being left out of the early Sawyer exhibits because it had a bad look sounds plausible--if Jackson had done so as a personal favor that might not have been wanted to look into too closely if Tippit's reason for the request had not been job-related or was otherwise considered personal or sensitive. Is it possible the 12:46 was missed in the Sawyer transcription for some mundane reason such as the sound quality wasn't clear to the transcriber or something?

The two things that look to me like "apparent facts" (meaning looks to be that way) are that Tippit was looking for Oswald in Oak Cliff before it was otherwise known Oswald was in Oak Cliff, and I believe when Tippit went to Tenth and Patton where he was killed it was to meet someone at a certain time in front of a certain address, and he was flagged down upon arrival, lured out of his car and killed, having gone into a trap. 

Both of those almost necessarily assume it was not random accident that Tippit was assigned to Oak Cliff in the 12:46 assuming the 12:46 is legitimate. Then the question becomes what mechanism accounts for that non-random assignment of Tippit, and the simplest and most economical, that is least complicated, mechanism I see is Tippit asked Murray Jackson to do that. We know Murray Jackson and Tippit went back with history and friendship (Murray Jackson said he became an officer because of Tippit personally) so it is easy to imagine Jackson would do that favor if asked, done in such a way folded into routine police activity (hence naming two officers not just Tippit in that 12:46).

Is it technically easily feasible for that 12:46 to have been secondarily dubbed in, an after-the-fact forgery of the dispatcher's instruction, retroactively legitimizing Tippit's presence in Oak Cliff? But whose voice would be used (Jackson's himself witting to the forgery?), and how would it be done in a way that would escape detection? 

[Donald Willis]

6 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

I don't know if the conjecture is right, but the point you name here would not oppose it, because suppose Tippit did ask his friend Murray Jackson the dispatcher to assign him to Oak Cliff as a favor, for whatever personal reason. Dispatcher Jackson might combine the instruction to Tippit with some other officer. He would include Tippit in otherwise routine dispatching movements. Your point about the 12:46 being left out of the early Sawyer exhibits because it had a bad look sounds plausible--if Jackson had done so as a personal favor that might not have been wanted to look into too closely if Tippit's reason for the request had not been job-related or was otherwise considered personal or sensitive. Is it possible the 12:46 was missed in the Sawyer transcription for some mundane reason such as the sound quality wasn't clear to the transcriber or something?

The two things that look to me like "apparent facts" (meaning looks to be that way) are that Tippit was looking for Oswald in Oak Cliff before it was otherwise known Oswald was in Oak Cliff, and I believe when Tippit went to Tenth and Patton where he was killed it was to meet someone at a certain time in front of a certain address, and he was flagged down upon arrival, lured out of his car and killed, having gone into a trap. 

Yes, either that or Tippit got close enough to 10th & Patton to have heard the shots, and checked it out.

6 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

Both of those almost necessarily assume it was not random accident that Tippit was assigned to Oak Cliff in the 12:46 assuming the 12:46 is legitimate. Then the question becomes what mechanism accounts for that non-random assignment of Tippit, and the simplest and most economical, that is least complicated, mechanism I see is Tippit asked Murray Jackson to do that. We know Murray Jackson and Tippit went back with history and friendship (Murray Jackson said he became an officer because of Tippit personally) so it is easy to imagine Jackson would do that favor if asked, done in such a way folded into routine police activity (hence naming two officers not just Tippit in that 12:46).

Is it technically easily feasible for that 12:46 to have been secondarily dubbed in, an after-the-fact forgery of the dispatcher's instruction, retroactively legitimizing Tippit's presence in Oak Cliff? But whose voice would be used (Jackson's himself witting to the forgery?), and how would it be done in a way that would escape detection? 

 

[Michael Kalin]

20 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

The two things that look to me like "apparent facts" (meaning looks to be that way) are that Tippit was looking for Oswald in Oak Cliff before it was otherwise known Oswald was in Oak Cliff, and I believe when Tippit went to Tenth and Patton where he was killed it was to meet someone at a certain time in front of a certain address, and he was flagged down upon arrival, lured out of his car and killed, having gone into a trap.

The first thing is confirmed by Joseph McBride's 1992 interview of Edgar Lee Tippit, who mentioned another officer was also assigned to hunt down Tippit. This is described in Into the Nightmare. If you don't have the book, McBride's essay, "Dale Myers, With Malice: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Murder of Officer J. D. Tippit" at Kennedys & King, explains everything while trashing Myers' desperate attempt to torpedo the conclusion by attacking the old man's mental condition.

Section II follows. The other officer was Mentzel, disclosed in section III. No mere coincidence that just before 1PM they were located one block from each other when both made phone calls, after which Mentzel was sidelined by an automobile accident and Tippit hastened to his doom.

This is a genuine breakthrough that dispels much unfounded speculation.

Quote

II. Edgar Lee Tippit's revelations

Let's start with what Myers calls "The big revelation." I report that Officer Tippit's murder did not stem from a random encounter with Oswald but from his assignment by the Dallas Police Department to hunt down Oswald shortly after the 12:30 p.m. assassination in downtown Dallas. Within fifteen minutes of that event and until his death at about 1:09 p.m., Tippit was seen by a number of eyewitnesses racing ever more frantically around suburban Oak Cliff, clearly searching for someone until his fatal encounter with parties other than Oswald on East Tenth Street. Some early coverage of the events of November 22, 1963, and various articles and books over the years speculated that Tippit might have been tracking Oswald, but strongly supporting evidence emerged when I interviewed Edgar Lee Tippit at his home in rural Clarksville, Texas, in December 1992.

Mr. Tippit, who was then a vigorous, mentally alert ninety years old and would live to the age of 104, had been a farmer most of his life when I went to see him and was still working on farming chores. Mr. Tippit told me that shortly after November 22, another Dallas policeman had come to see J. D.'s widow, Marie, and told her what had happened. As I write, "Tippit's father told me he had been informed by Marie Tippit, the officer's widow, that J. D. and another officer had been assigned by the police to hunt down Oswald in Oak Cliff. According to Edgar Lee, 'They called J. D. and another policeman and said he [Oswald] was headed in that direction. The other policeman told Marie.' ...

"Edgar Lee made another important revelation in our interview. He told me what Marie learned from that other policeman about why he had not made it to the scene of the shooting on Tenth Street: 'The other boy stopped – he would have got there but he had a little accident, a wreck. They both started, but J. D. made it. He'd been expecting something. The police notified them Oswald was headed that way.'"

No source should be taken at face value, including one so close to the subject. So I carefully compared Mr. Tippit's account to other reliable documentation about the activities of his son J. D. and other police officers in Dallas and Oak Cliff during that time period. I found that Mr. Tippit's account squared with the other pertinent information, and that he provided the strongest evidence to explain what his son's mission was that afternoon and how it went awry. Into the Nightmare discusses various suspects in the officer's shooting and identifies three as highly suspicious persons of interest in the ambush (DPD Officer Harry Olsen, Jack Ruby-connected hoodlum Darrell Wayne [Dago] Garner, and Ruby himself), while exonerating others who have been brought forth as suspects, including Oswald, Tippit's mistress Johnnie Maxie Witherspoon, and her husband Stephen (Steve) Thompson, Jr.

Myers conveniently, and falsely, tries to discredit Edgar Lee Tippit by claiming that he was suffering from "a dash of dementia" when I interviewed him and therefore cannot be trusted. Mr. Tippit told me he had never been interviewed before. In one of the end notes to the first edition of With Malice, published while Edgar Lee was still living, Myers wrote, "Little is known about Tippit's parents, Edgar Lee and Lizzie Mae Tippit." That situation could have been corrected if Myers, who claims he has been researching the Tippit case since 1978, had ever interviewed Mr. Tippit, but the second edition also shows no sign that happened. Perhaps Myers was reluctant to find out what Edgar Lee had to say. As a source for the allegation that Mr. Tippit was demented, Myers cites Joyce Tippit DeBord, a sister of J. D. whom he reports having interviewed on July 11, 2013. That was ten days after Myers ordered a copy of my book. So he apparently felt the belated need to quickly dig up a family source willing to help him discredit Mr. Tippit and his revealing interview.

I had a wide-ranging interview of several hours with Mr. Tippit and found him lucid, articulate, and forthcoming. He showed no apparent difficulty recalling events or topics I asked about, and when he did not remember something specific (such as the name of the officer who briefed Marie Tippit), he told me so, a mark of his honesty and a bolstering of his clear recollection of other names and information. In the course of my more than fifty years as a journalist and my long experience as a biographer, I have interviewed many elderly people, including numerous men and women in their nineties and beyond. I have found that, contrary to ageist assumptions, many have still been mentally sharp. For Myers, though, an elderly man's honesty is a sign of "dementia."

The strangest part of Myers's attack is that he seems to essentially endorse Mr. Tippit's account even while smearing his cognitive abilities and my reporting. Myers describes Edgar Lee's story as "slightly skewed" and "no doubt a slightly scrambled version of true events," while accepting his report that an officer came to see Marie Tippit to explain what happened and told her he was prevented from getting to the scene of the shooting because of a traffic accident. I suggest in Into the Nightmare that the two officers may have been trying to kill Oswald if not take him into custody. Myers denies that Tippit and the other officer were "part of some secret Dallas police hit squad bent on rubbing out Oswald." The fact that Oswald was soon murdered in the custody of dozens of Dallas policemen and that he may have narrowly escaped that fate while captured in the Texas Theatre shortly after the Tippit killing for which he was scapegoated suggests it is not far-fetched to ask whether the police may have been out to eliminate Oswald that afternoon. And when I interviewed former Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade in January 1993, he lent further corroboration to this account of an earlier than officially acknowledged pursuit of Oswald, telling me, "Somebody reported to me that the police already knew who he [Oswald] was, and they were looking for him."

 

Edited January 13 by Michael Kalin

[Greg Doudna]

46 minutes ago, Michael Kalin said:

The first thing is confirmed by Joseph McBride's 1992 interview of Edgar Lee Tippit, who mentioned another officer was also assigned to hunt down Tippit. This is described in Into the Nightmare. If you don't have the book, McBride's essay, "Dale Myers, With Malice: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Murder of Officer J. D. Tippit" at Kennedys & King, explains everything while trashing Myers' desperate attempt to torpedo the conclusion by attacking the old man's mental condition.

Section II follows. The other officer was Mentzel, disclosed in section III. No mere coincidence that just before 1PM they were located one block from each other when both made phone calls, after which Mentzel was sidelined by an automobile accident and Tippit hastened to his doom.

This is a genuine breakthrough that dispels much unfounded speculation.

Just to be clear, although I think Tippit was looking for Oswald, it is not because of the Edgar Lee Tippit statement, nor do I think the Dallas Police Department ordered Tippit to look for Oswald, nor do I believe the Dallas Police Department was engaged in an attempt to track down and murder Oswald, nor do I believe Mentzel was ordered to look for Oswald or was looking for Oswald different from the known general police response to the assassination. 

The Edgar Lee Tippit statement I believe was a simple misunderstanding in hearsay transmission. We were looking for the president's killer ... we were looking for Oswald ... easy to substitute one for the other when later describing what happened in retrospect, retelling that description, retransmitted hearsay twice. A secret covert Dallas Police Department plot to kill Oswald in advance of knowing he was the publicly accused assassin? No. And Mentzel covertly part of a secret Dallas Police order to track down Oswald and kill him, covered up--but he told it openly to Marie Tippit who told it openly to Edgar Lee who told it openly to McBride? 

No, I don't buy that. 

Its not that anybody was lying. Its not that Edgar Lee Tippit was senile. Its just normal hearsay transmission error, not more complicated than that. Then erroneously interpreted and wrong conclusions drawn from it by McBride.

Mentzel, due to freak accident, thinking it could have been him instead of Tippit shot, like anyone wondering if he could have done something differently, wracked with grief, guilt conscience of the survivor, expressing remorse to Marie Tippit... and then those words of grief get all twisted out of its meaning in a conspiracy book.  

My reason for thinking Tippit was seeking out Oswald--not as certainty but looks like it--is Tippit acting on his own not Dallas Police orders in that search, the search itself based on the behavior reported of Tippit: of the gas station watching; the Top Ten Records stop hurried rush to make a phone call; the sighting of a patrol car honking in front of Oswald's rooming house by Earlene Roberts, blind in one eye and poor vision in the other, seeing the number of the patrol car as "107" as mistake for Tippit's patrol car's actual number, "10" and Tippit's patrol car being about the only patrol car that could be. 

I put that together with a hunch that Tippit and Oswald knew each other prior to the assassination, but not via any Dallas Police Department conspiracy. That from the witness of waitress Mary Dowling at the Dobbs House Restaurant near Oswald's rooming house saying not only that Oswald drank coffee there mornings but also that Tippit, whom she knew from before, was a regular for early morning coffee too, even though that location was way out of Tippit's way and makes little sense--was there some relationship to Oswald in that coincidence of location and timing? And I believe it was not simply Tippit who was premeditated slated for execution on Nov 22 but Oswald as well in the Texas Theatre--neither of those planned slayings planned or ordered by the Dallas Police Department (then successfully covered up all this time ever since), but both executions intended by killers who, if there were individual police officers involved that was rogue not Department sanctioned. I think the Dallas Police by arresting Oswald on Nov 22 saved Oswald's life from those who were intent on killing him that day, from the same killers of Tippit ("killers" plural even though only one gunman, because the gunman as a contract killer was not acting on his own).

And if there was advance intent to kill both Tippit and Oswald the same day by the same killers, the question as always is what was the motive to kill Tippit. And although I know of no evidence for an answer to that question, my default hypothesis is he must have had deadly knowledge of some kind, the same reason key witnesses are often killed, and one possible explanation could be prior interaction with Oswald which he had wittingly or unwittingly leaked or informed to the killers of JFK.

It doesn't matter whether this particular tentative take of mine is convincing ... that's not the point. The point is I do not buy into the interpretation McBride presents that you echo above. Just wanted to make that clear, that's all. 

[Michael Kalin]

2 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

The Edgar Lee Tippit statement I believe was a simple misunderstanding in hearsay transmission. We were looking for the president's killer ... we were looking for Oswald ... easy to substitute one for the other when later describing what happened in retrospect, retelling that description, retransmitted hearsay twice. A secret covert Dallas Police Department plot to kill Oswald in advance of knowing he was the publicly accused assassin? No. And Mentzel covertly part of a secret Dallas Police order to track down Oswald and kill him, covered up--but he told it openly to Marie Tippit who told it openly to Edgar Lee who told it openly to McBride? 

No, I don't buy that. 

Its not that anybody was lying. Its not that Edgar Lee Tippit was senile. Its just normal hearsay transmission error, not more complicated than that. Then erroneously interpreted and wrong conclusions drawn from it by McBride.

It's easy enough to pettifog unwanted spoken information into something more palatable, but a sound basis for doing so should be provided. Something more supportive than recourse to "normal transmission errors" is required. The information transmitted via Edgar Lee actually passes the test of conforming to established facts. Your speculative belief system does not undermine this.

For the record, the section of Into the Nightmare that describes this episode is MANHUNT, beginning on page 426.