Interesting

[Jeff Royle]

Does anyone find it interesting that 10 squad cars, 24 cops and the news media all showed up for a man who allegedly didn't buy a matinee ticket at a movie theatre?

 

 

Edited February 28 by Jeff Royle

[Greg Doudna]

I believe all those police showed up because they wanted to apprehend a suspected cop-killer at large (who also could be involved in the JFK assassination due to the timing). When Oswald resisted and had a gun on him and punched McDonald, that was regarded as pretty good reason to think they got the right guy (the cop-killer of Tippit), later (in their view) confirmed with identifying him as Oswald from TSBD. 

Dozens of officers already in Oak Cliff in hot pursuit of an armed cop-killer at large, converging on false leads until they thought they got him at the Theatre.

Nothing strange about the law enforcement response, including the independent confirmed self-disclosures of two of the arresting officers, McDonald and Bentley, that they each considered shooting Oswald then and there themselves during the arrest, but didn’t (each said) out of concern for the risk of injuring a fellow officer on the other side of Oswald from the bullet going through if they had. 

Or in the confession of an officer later to having gratuitously beaten Oswald and proud of it, after Oswald had been subdued, after all officers and FBI Barrett swore in same day statements that no police brutality had been witnessed. And as Capt. Westbrook in command overseeing the arrest later told in Sneed, yes there was undisclosed beating of Oswald but Oswald had it coming from shooting JFK, so the nerve of Oswald that he would complain of police brutality which he deserved. 

I don’t think there was any advance plot to frame Oswald on Tippit. It was pure arrest of the wrong guy by mistake in that theater, then stitch him up after the arrest. The right guy was in the balcony, not Oswald seated on the ground level who was already in the theater as a paid-ticket customer and never was in the balcony. The guy in the balcony had killed Tippit and would have killed Oswald next if police had not arrived and arrested Oswald. The police let the guy in the balcony go without preserving record of his name or contact information.

The officer in charge who had the written list of theater patron addresses including the guy in the balcony, and “lost” that written information without turning it in, said in Sneed he probably knew Ruby better than any other officer on the Dallas Police force. By coincidence, if Oswald was not the killer of Tippit which there is more than reasonable doubt he wasn’t, it would be someone connected to Ruby as on the shortest list of suspects. 

By a further coincidence, Ruby had a recently-arrived self-confessed mob-associated hitman in his employ on a cash off-the-books basis whose alibi is weak for Fri Nov 22 and who fit the general physical description of Oswald and is separately known to have been mistakenly identified as Oswald by some witnesses, who fled Dallas hitchhiking for Michigan less than 24 hours later for no sensibly explained reason. 

Once the narrative on Oswald had gotten traction in a big way nationwide later on Nov 22 and the next day, it was not going to be rolled back on Oswald re Tippit, even if there was some awareness by a few officers that he could have been innocent on Tippit. Also, police cooking of evidence, to the extent it happens, often involves cases where the police believe the guy did it and want to produce some evidence to show the judge to get the guy put away.

[Jeff Royle]

The man who shot Tippit (not Oswald) escaped and was chased by two witnesses, one of them later told the press about the chase; Tippit's killer ran into a fundamentalist Baptist church, which was shortly surrounded by Dallas PD squad cars and policemen covering every entrance.  They waited without entering until a radio call came in announcing Oswald's arrest at the Texas theater.  They left immediately without entering the Baptist church despite the presence of two witnesses who had chased the killer there.

[Paul Cummings]

I find it interesting LHO got popcorn but nothing to drink with it. 

[Joe Bauer]

On 2/28/2024 at 10:49 AM, Jeff Royle said:

Does anyone find it interesting that 10 squad cars, 24 cops and the news media all showed up for a man who allegedly didn't buy a matinee ticket at a movie theatre?

 

 

I've actually laughed thinking about how the Texas Theater became DPD response Grand Central station at rush hour so quickly. Yes, Tippit had been shot just minutes before and JFK just one and a half hour earlier...and the DPD was in all out frantic BOLO alert mentality mode. 

Still when the shoe store manager/salesman called in and/or one of the theater employees called in...they simply mentioned that a man who was acting suspiciously walked by the shoe store and then went into the movie theater without paying. They didn't tell the police..."hey, I think the man who shot JFK and Tippit might be sitting in the theater seats?

The DPD BOLO radio dispatches were not heard by the public. The news on the radio didn't broadcast a general public warning like that as well. The shoe salesman didn't hear about the Tippit shooting. He didn't hear that the police were looking for a 30 year old, 5 foot - ten inch JFK assassination suspect running the streets of Oak Cliff. Yet, in just minutes everybody from everywhere were racing to the theater. Heck, even Hugh "Clark Kent" Aynesworth flew down there in just minutes of the initial employee call in.

Edited February 29 by Joe Bauer

[Joe Bauer]

1 hour ago, Paul Cummings said:

I find it interesting LHO got popcorn but nothing to drink with it. 

Oswald liked going to the movies. Marina testified he would take her to them occasionally and he would even go by himself. And I would guess that Oswald (like all young American boys raised in the 1950's) went to see the movies. Starting at the age of 5 or 6 I did that exact thing. And by myself. Our local theater charged only 25 to 35 cents. Weekends were great. Double features with 20 minutes of cartoons in between. Hercules films with Steve Reeves, Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin, Abbott and Costello, cheap special effects Japanese monster movies like Godzilla and Mothera. Lots of traditional monster movies like Frankenstein, Dracula, Wolf Man... giant ants, giant crabs, giant tarantula... "The Incredibly Shrinking Man" ... the BLOB ... you name it. 

My mom would give me a little extra to buy candy and popcorn. My teeth rotted out from eating things like sugar daddys, rollos, Nickos, JuJu Bees, etc.  every weekend for years. Chugging Coke. I probably became a diabetic to a degree by my teen years I think.

One day in the packed weekend kiddie film show some sadistic minded kid threw his sugar daddy at the screen in the middle of the movie. It stuck right there in the middle. The theater manager/owner was so mad he left it up there the rest of the day. My point being that going to the theater was for sure a regular entertainment thing for Oswald from a very young age as was typical in those days.

Heck, Oswald was apparently so relaxed when he got in and found a seat he decided to make it a real treat and buy some popcorn to boot. He already drank a Dr. Pepper just 1 and 1/2 hours earlier in the lunch room of the TXSB depository building...so that may explain his not getting another with his popcorn? Some rational points to consider... don't you think?

Edited February 29 by Joe Bauer

[Ron Bulman]

On 2/28/2024 at 12:49 PM, Jeff Royle said:

Does anyone find it interesting that 10 squad cars, 24 cops and the news media all showed up for a man who allegedly didn't buy a matinee ticket at a movie theatre?

 

 

Yes, not only the number of but who some of the cops were.  Pinky Westbrook out of the personnel department.  Buddy Walthers of the Sheriff's Office (Decker had told them to go out and watch the parade but not participate in JFK's protection, that was a city responsibility, not a county one), Bardwell Odum of the FBI.  Seems like there was another odd one there.  

There was a theory I read of years ago that Tippit was killed to draw attention to Oak Cliff, both to catch the supposed killer of the president and draw attention by law enforcement away from downtown.  So conspirators could escape.  

If I remember right, Officer Leavelle (handcuffed to Oswald when he was shot) told author Joseph McBride the JFK killing was no worse to them than a nixxer killing in South Dallas, but everybody wanted to catch a cop killer.  

[Joe Bauer]

4 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

If I remember right, Officer Leavelle (handcuffed to Oswald when he was shot) told author Joseph McBride the JFK killing was no worse to them than a nixxer killing in South Dallas, but everybody wanted to catch a cop killer.  

I believe I heard Leavelle say this in an interview as well. Many DPD cops could care less about JFK's brutal slaughter that day. Because of his ( JFK's ) liberal stance on segregation.