"This will do fine": Oswald sees the coast is clear, exits cab as Whaley nears 1026 N. Beckley

[Donald Willis]

"This will do fine":  Oswald sees the coast is clear, exits cab as Whaley nears 1026 N. Beckley

Both the Warren Report & Dale Myers have cab driver William Whaley drop Oswald off at Neely & N. Beckley, three blocks south of his rooming house, although he told Whaley that he wanted to go to 500 N. Beckley, five blocks south.  Oswald would seem to have two goals in mind here:  He wants to pick up a pistol, but he also wants to make sure, first, that there are no cops or cop cars in front of 1026 N. Beckley.  To achieve this latter goal, all he has to do is survey the scene from the cab as it drives south from Neches/El Dorado/Zangs, towards 1026.  The cab does not even have to go as far as 1026.  To this end, as Whaley describes it:  "I opened the back door [of the cab].  [Oswald] shut the back door and said he wanted to sit in the front." (11/23/63 affidavit)  It's pretty clear that Oswald wants--almost demands--the best, widest view of the scene before him.  And he gives the 500 N. Beckley address as a drop-off point, just in case he sees activity around 1026.  If there is, then Whaley just keeps driving, and, obviously, Oswald won't be going back to 1026 for a while.  He will not, that is, double back, on foot, from either 500 or 700 N. Beckley (i.e., Neely & N. Beckley).  "The boy got out of the cab", Whaley continues, "and walked in front of the cab at an angle south on Beckley Street."  Angled across the street, that is, to 1026 N. Beckley.  See CE 371:  Asked to put an "X" on a map for the point at which he left Oswald off, Whaley makes a big "X" on the intersection of N. Beckley & Neches/El Dorado/Zangs, different names for streets which are in fact continuous.  And in a filmed interview for "Four Days in November", Whaley says that he carried [Oswald] off across the viaduct, turned left at the 500 block of North Beckley."  Neches/Zangs actually intersects with 1000 N. Beckley.  But apparently Whaley assumed that the location of the new drop-off point was, as originally agreed, "500 N. Beckley".  

Upshot:  ETA N. Beckley, 12:51 (as per "With Malice" p380).  The 1000-block drop-off point for Oswald reduces the walk time (at about 2 minutes per block) from about 6 or 7 minutes to one minute.  ETA rooming house, then, about 12:52.  ET departure from rooming house, about 12:55.  ETA 10th & Patton, after a circa 13-minute walk, 1:08.  Unaccounted-for length of time between Oswald's estimated arrival time there and Tippit's: about seven minutes.  Unaccounted for because Oswald was elsewhere, perhaps halfway to the Texas Theater.

It's all there in Whaley's original affidavit and his "X".

[Paul Cummings]

Who saw LHO with Whaley?

[Donald Willis]

5 hours ago, Paul Cummings said:

Who saw LHO with Whaley?

Good question, though who at either end--the depot and Neches & Neely--would have seen them together?  Did the depot lady ever come forward?  I used to discount Whaley's testimony entirely, but his "front seat" and his renegade "X" won me over.  That changes the whole complexion of the 10th & Patton story.  Those unaccounted-for 7 minutes...

[Paul Cummings]

No one saw LHO enter or exit the cab but somehow it's just a given that he did.

[Donald Willis]

5 hours ago, Paul Cummings said:

No one saw LHO enter or exit the cab but somehow it's just a given that he did.

I could go with "didn't" and return to my original take that McWatters took Oswald all the way to Oak Cliff, but Whaley's confusion between "Neches" and the "500 block" seems legit.  All because his "advisors" wanted Oswald to have gotten to 10th & Patton about the same time as Tippit, not 7 minutes earlier, which latter phenomenon would have taken some 'splainin', or at least some LN speculation... Either way, Oswald wasn't near 10th & Patton at all that Friday...