Denny Zartman Posted March 16 Share Posted March 16 This is a reference for articles, books, videos and other information about Dallas police officer Roscoe White and his possible involvement in the killings of President Kennedy and Officer Tippit. These are as many sources as I was able to find, listed mostly chronologically. There may be other articles, books, ect. out there, and this list may not be comprehensive. I hope to keep it updated. In the next post I'll try to summarize what I believe are some of the key aspects of the Roscoe White story. If you know of any other references regarding Roscoe White, please share them in the comments. - I Was Mandarin… by Gary Cartwright Texasmonthly.com 1990 https://www.texasmonthly.com/politics/i-was-mandarin/ - Who Speaks For Roscoe White? By David B. Perry The Third Decade Dperry1942.com 1991 http://dperry1943.com/roscoew.html - YouTube - “JFK: The West Texas Connection 1992 - the Ricky/Roscoe White tale” Channel 2 KMID-TV Midland/Odessa, Texas 1993 Uploaded by Vince Palamara 2021 https://youtu.be/-1ssAkLLapc?si=jqpI8pAta635e-pG - Double Cross: The Explosive Inside Story Of The Mobster Who Controlled America By Sam Giancana and Chuck Giancana Pg 335 1992 - Nightmare In Dallas By Beverly Oliver Pages TBD 1994 - Treachery In Dallas By Walt Brown Pgs 39, 67, 147-149, 189, 191, 193-194 1995 - Oswald Talked: The New Evidence In The JFK Assassination By Ray and Mary La Fontaine Chapter 11 - White Lies Pgs 319-349 1996 - YouTube - “Michael Brownlow interviews B.W. (Bobby) Hargis Part 1 / 2” 2003 Uploaded by gbm hon 2022 https://youtu.be/047rHDKqqxA?si=o7GgyFjxabr3B2fm - Roscoe White - Fact or Fiction? By Steve Gerlach Johnmccarthy90066.tripod.com 2005 http://johnmccarthy90066.tripod.com/id748.html - Roscoe White: Shooter of JFK, J.D. Tippit and member of the ‘JFK Witness Elimination Team’ By crappygovernment JFKplayersandwitnesses.wordpress.com 2013 https://jfkplayersandwitnesses.wordpress.com/2013/07/17/roscoe-white-shooter-of-jfk-j-d-tippit-and-member-of-the-jfk-witness-elimination-team/ - Problems in Black and White By C.A.A. Savastano 2015 or 2019 https://www.tpaak.com/problems-in-black-and-white - JFK FILES - The Roscoe White Story: Grassy Knoll Assassin Or Hoax? By Ralph Thomas Amazon Kindle 210 pgs 2018 - Entry on Roscoe White Spartacus-educational.com 1997 Updated 2020 http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKwhiteR.htm - The Lone Star Speaks: Untold Texas Stories About The JFK Assassination By Sara Peterson and K.W. Zachry Chapter 69 - Voices For Roscoe White Chapter 70 - More Voices For Roscoe White Pgs 450-462 2020 - Admitted Assassin: Roscoe White And The Murder Of President Kennedy By Ricky White, J. Gary Shaw and Brian K. Edwards 340 pgs 2023 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Denny Zartman Posted March 16 Author Share Posted March 16 (edited) Summary: This is a general overview of what I believe are some of the key facts, events, and mysteries surrounding Roscoe White and his possible involvement in the deaths of President Kennedy and Officer Tippit. This summary is by no means comprehensive. It is intended to help others who may be interested in the subject get up to speed. There is more information out there to consider and further research is necessary. (The “green book” alone could probably use its own dedicated thread.) - Roscoe Anthony “Rock” White was born in 1935 in Glenwood, Arkansas. In 1956, at age 21, Roscoe worked for 2.5 months at Convair Corporation, a division of General Dynamics. At the time a man named John Mason Lankford was the director of security. Lankford would go on to become a Special Agent for the Office of Naval Intelligence, based in Fort Worth, Texas. Lankford was the person who verified Roscoe's employment with Convair when Roscoe was being considered for employment with the Dallas Police Department. Lankford would also play a security role in Dallas pre and post assassination. Roscoe joined the Marines in February 1957 and served in the same division as Lee Harvey Oswald. In August 1957, Roscoe traveled on the USS Bexar, a ship going from San Diego, California to Yokosuka, Japan. Oswald was on the same ship. Roscoe left the Marines via hardship discharge on December 4, 1962. Roscoe began working full time as an insurance agent in Dallas, Texas on December 7, 1962. On December 12, the Dallas Police Department initiated a background check on Roscoe as a precursor to possible employment. Roscoe’s wife Geneva worked for Jack Ruby for a short time in the fall of 1963, a fact she later attempted to deny. Geneva only admitted it after a picture of her and Ruby was published in Time magazine. Roscoe was hired by the Dallas Police Department on October 7, 1963. Lee Harvey Oswald started working at the Texas School Book Depository on October 18. Ruth Stapleton, Gary Mack, and Jack White (no relation) are among the individuals and researchers that posit a shooter can be seen behind the stockade fence in the Mary Moorman photo. This alleged figure has been described as a hatless police officer, and has been dubbed “Badge Man.” Alleged “Babushka Lady” witness Beverly Oliver claimed that she recognized “Geneva’s husband” on the grassy knoll just after the assassination. Witness Ed Hoffman reported seeing four men moving about behind the grassy knoll fence during the assassination, one of the men being a uniformed police officer. In 2003, former Dallas motorcycle officer Bobby Hargis seemed to confirm that he encountered Roscoe on the grassy knoll moments after Kennedy's assassination. Roscoe attended Dallas Police Academy December 4, 1963 to February 28, 1964, and served as a police officer from February 29, 1964 to October 17, 1965. Reportedly, no one knows what division Roscoe served in during his time as a Dallas police officer. I’ve seen it said that he worked in photography, but to my knowledge this has not been definitively confirmed by any documents or witnesses. In 1966 Roscoe & Geneva sold their home and moved into a new one - a house that just happened to be less than 400 feet away from the home of J.D. Tippit’s widow, Marie. Roscoe died after being burned in a 1971 workplace explosion. According to the FBI, the owner of the business had a $300,000 insurance policy on Roscoe. In the 24 hours before he died, Roscoe reportedly said to Reverend Jack Shaw that he (Roscoe) believed the explosion wasn't an accident. Dick Adair, another employee who was injured non-fatally in the same explosion, also said he believed the explosion wasn't accidental. Roscoe reportedly made several comments that Shaw interpreted as referring to undercover work performed during Roscoe's time in the Dallas police department. “He sure let me know that he was doing something more than normal police business.” Among Roscoe's belongings discovered after his death were a diary in which he claims to have killed Kennedy and Tippit; $200,000 in bearer bonds; and approximately forty photos of JFK related evidence, including a third backyard photo featuring Oswald in an alternate pose. This photo was allegedly previously unknown to investigators even though the pose matched that of a white silhouette “cut out” photo template and a test photo recreation featuring Dallas Police Detective Bobby Brown. Some researchers have since argued that Roscoe might have been the body portion of the backyard photos. In 1990, Roscoe's son Ricky found a sealed canister in the attic of Roscoe’s parents' abandoned home. The canister held multiple items, including an old shorthand textbook/workbook that had seemingly been flipped upside down and converted into a scrapbook (referred to as “the green book”) of some JFK assassination related newspaper photos and hand-written notations. Also discovered in the canister were one of Roscoe's Marine Corps dog tags as well as three cable messages dated 1963 with Roscoe's military serial number and addressed to the name “Mandarin.” According to Roscoe’s son Ricky, the diary identified “Mandarin” as Roscoe's code name. There were discoveries in 1993 near Van Horn, Texas, a west Texas town close to the Mexican border. It seems Roscoe visited Van Horn with his family prior to the JFK assassination in what have been described as “hunting trips.” The items found near Van Horn included high-powered 1940’s era radio equipment connected to a large antenna, and approximately 2,000 empty 6.5mm rifle casings. After filing a Freedom of Information Act request in 1990, Roscoe’s son Ricky learned that the FBI had 46 pages of information on Roscoe. Of the 46 pages, 26 were withheld as classified. Of the 20 pages released, 19 were blacked out. - There are some issues and problems with the Roscoe White story. - The “diary” in which Roscoe allegedly detailed his killing of Kennedy and Tippit has since gone missing (reportedly just after a visit by an FBI agent.) - Roscoe's widow Geneva, despite her proven connection to Jack Ruby, seems to be an unreliable witness. Because of this, I have attempted not to include her claims in this summary. It appears that Geneva was given 26 sessions of electroshock therapy between 1966 and 1971. Geneva was strongly suspected of creating a poorly made fake diary after the alleged first diary went missing. This faked second diary seems to have had the effect of undermining the confidence of the JFK assassination research community regarding the entire Roscoe White story. - The so-called “green book” makeshift scrapbook was initially referred to as a witness elimination book. Researchers now seem to doubt that it was a witness elimination book. - There is an additional story from an alleged witness by the name of Mike Robinson that I think should be noted for comprehensiveness sake: Robinson says that, as a teenager in 1963, he overheard an incriminating bathroom conversation about Oswald and Tippit at the Dallas Police Department in the hours after the assassination. One of the participants in this conversation might have been Roscoe. But it is important to take into consideration the fact that Robinson's memory was recovered via hypnosis. Edited March 19 by Denny Zartman Added information Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Denny Zartman Posted March 16 Author Share Posted March 16 YouTube - “Michael Brownlow interviews B.W. (Bobby) Hargis Part 1 / 2” 2003 Uploaded by gbm hon 2022 Transcript from 7:41 - 8:42 BROWNLOW: Now Hargar, let's clear up one thing real quickly: When you got up to the grassy knoll, up by the little retainer wall, and you looked over… HARGIS: Mmm hmm. BROWNLOW: …and you said you saw some people. Now, as the years have went by Officer Hargis, especially since 1974, a man who I knew - as you, being a police officer. I met him in s… I met him the year he was… died. Some people say he was killed or murdered. I don't know. Roscoe White was a Dallas police officer. You knew him, right? HARGIS: Yes. Uh, huh. BROWNLOW: And you know all these years these books have been written by many researchers, they have claimed there was a man behind the fence they call the Badgeman on the grassy knoll. HARGIS: No. BROWNLOW: And they said he shot the president. And a lot of them say it was Roscoe White. Now, Officer Hargis, being one of the few people to know that Roscoe White was on the grassy knoll - when you saw him, what was he doing? HARGIS: Roscoe White was doing like I was doing, looking for someone who (unclear) the shot. He couldn't tell just like I couldn't… BROWNLOW: That's right. HARGIS: …where the shot was coming from. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greg Doudna Posted March 16 Share Posted March 16 (edited) Denny, I have the new Admitted Assassin book. I believe there probably was a physical diary of Roscoe White but the claim that an original Nov 22 entry in that diary spoke of killing JFK and Tippit I believe is BS. Also, the Savastano article in your link above is pretty good in debunking that the FBI would have stolen the diary. More likely someone disappeared it rather than have it be opened to examination to find nothing sensational and also authentic, at the same time, there. About half of Admitted Assassin is a detailed publication and exposition of the green scrapbook later found in the metal canister. Here there are similarities to the rollout of the Lafitte datebook published in Coup in Dallas. In both cases, no authentication or forensic testing or disclosure thereof; potential for huge sums of money if the artifact can be believed genuine; similarity in page after page of cryptic words, short phrases, mysterious allusions, given detailed commentary, made the center of discussion while simultaneously bypassing and resisting basic prior issues of authenticity. The similarities between the scrapbook and the datebook are such that it is tempting to speculate these two artifacts might stem from common origins, both seeking to utilize and bamboozle and consume energies of families and conspiracy-oriented researchers not themselves the hoaxers or fabricators. Consider just this: page 196 of Admitted Assassin discusses page 10 of the green scrapbook, which has a photo of Abraham Lincoln with the head torn off. Quoting Admitted Assassin, which frequently makes favorable direct comparisons to the Lafitte datebook as if citing parallel credible evidence: ”Interestingly, a Lincoln-head penny with a hole through the head of President Lincoln’s image was found taped inside the previously mentioned 1863 datebook of Pierre Lafitte.” Then a photo is shown of a “Penny taped inside Pierre Lafitte’s datebook” with a hole drilled through Lincoln’s head. Both the scrapbook alleged to be a mysterious, cryptic scrapbook of Roscoe White, and the Pierre Lafitte datebook with alleged cryptic allusions of Lafitte in 1963 to later JFK lore and names and etc, share the use of almost poetic allusive mysterious short phrases, with aura of profundity and deep significance. That “style” is common to both texts, and both texts emerged first to known existence in their present forms in the 1990s even though in the Lafitte datebook case that was only first published after Albarelli’s death a couple of decades later, and in the case of this Roscoe White scrapbook, in 2023, 33 years after discovery of the artifact, and giving almost an appearance of attempting to consciously associate with the Lafitte datebook. In both cases it might be suspected a real notebook/datebook of the person credited in 1963 possibly with a few innocuous genuine entries was utilized or appropriated and a later hoax with additional writing built up upon that. A red flag in the Admitted Assassin presentation concerns the sensational alleged military orders to Roscoe White found in the same metal canister of the green scrapbook. Apparently there was some forensic evaluation done of those military orders and the finding reported was consistent with forgery. However, the authors of Admitted Assassin do not disclose that with transparency and publication of that report. Compare the Lafitte datebook and a forensic ink analysis that was done and remains a tightly-held secret with public threats of punishing legal consequences if any scientist involved in such testing were to dare go public into the sunlight with that secret data which goes to the heart of the authenticity question. Edited March 17 by Greg Doudna Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe Bauer Posted March 17 Share Posted March 17 The photo of Geneva showing Jack Ruby her wares proves she knew Ruby to some degree personally. Why in the world did Geneva White have to undergo 26 electro-shock therapy sessions? You'd think her husband might have had some protective concerns for her having her brain electrocuted so often. I've heard that at a certain point...too many electroshock treatments could sometimes equate into an electro-lobotomy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe Bauer Posted March 18 Share Posted March 18 On 3/16/2024 at 1:28 AM, Denny Zartman said: After filing a Freedom of Information Act request in 1990, Roscoe’s son Ricky learned that the FBI had 46 pages of information on Roscoe. Of the 46 pages, 26 were withheld as classified. Of the 20 pages released, 19 were blacked out. If this claim by Ricky White is true, one must consider Roscoe White a person of interest to a high level degree. If Roscoe White was a nobody in the entire affair...why in the world would there be 46 pages of information accumulated by the FBI on him. And why in the world would they hold back 26 pages and black out 19 more? Common sense tells you there was something far more intriguing about Roscoe White than nothing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sean Coleman Posted March 18 Share Posted March 18 (edited) Roscoe was a naughty boy a very naughty boy Edited April 10 by Sean Coleman Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe Bauer Posted March 18 Share Posted March 18 (edited) Similar stances. Roscoe White was first hired by the Dallas PD when? October 1963? He didn't even begin academy training until December, 1963? My main question would be where was two month hire White assigned on 11,22,1963 in his DPD duties? How did two month new pre-academy recruit Rosco White end up on top of the grassy Knoll where Officer Hargas claimed he saw White there within just a couple of minutes after the shooting? Was he assigned Dealey Plaza patrol duties that day? Or, was he back at the DPD building when the shooting occurred and ran there in that short time? There were 100 other locations the DPD assigned their men on the JFK motorcade route that day. White just happened to get Dealey Plaza duty? Hargas knew White by sight? Hargas had been with the DPD for years. He gets to know White well enough to recognize him on sight after maybe just 1 and 1/2 months of White's hiring? Did their duty assignments and locations bring them in contact with each other? Edited March 18 by Joe Bauer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Denny Zartman Posted March 19 Author Share Posted March 19 8 hours ago, Joe Bauer said: If this claim by Ricky White is true, one must consider Roscoe White a person of interest to a high level degree. If Roscoe White was a nobody in the entire affair...why in the world would there be 46 pages of information accumulated by the FBI on him. And why in the world would they hold back 26 pages and black out 19 more? Common sense tells you there was something far more intriguing about Roscoe White than nothing. I agree @Joe Bauer . Transcript 1:27:28 - 1:28:15 Larry Howard: On August the 6th of 1990, the JFK Assassination Information Center in Dallas, Texas had a news conference that was world wide. We had Ricky there to tell his story about his father, Roscoe White. The next day, in the newspapers in Dallas and all over the world, the CIA, the FBI, and the Dallas Police Department said Roscoe White was a nobody. We filed a Freedom of Information Act to find out if this nobody has any FBI documents on him. If he was a nobody, he shouldn't have any. Reporter: But the FBI did have information on Roscoe White; a total of 46 pages. 26 of those were withheld because they were classified. And out of the 20 pages researchers did receive, 19 had been blacked out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Denny Zartman Posted March 19 Author Share Posted March 19 As cited in "Admitted Assassin", Pierre Lafitte’s date book for 1963 (see the 2021 book “Coup In Dallas” by H.P. Albarelli) apparently has two entries where the name/word “White” is mentioned. I have “Coup In Dallas”, but I have not been able to confirm this yet. Perhaps @Leslie Sharp might be able to help clarify this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Denny Zartman Posted March 19 Author Share Posted March 19 7 hours ago, Sean Coleman said: Roscoe was a naughty boy a very naughty boy Worthy of note. Thanks, @Sean Coleman Others have also mentioned that they see more of a similarity between Roscoe's squareish chin and the chin in the backyard photo than Oswald's more pointed chin in other photos. Of course it's well known that among the people who argue the backyard photos were faked that there is an apparent faint line just below the mouth. I've seen discussions where people have remarked about Oswald's odd leaning in the backyard photo. I had never really considered it unusual, but I guess it is distinctive with almost all his weight on the right leg like that. And there's no doubt the stance in the Roscoe beach photo is the same. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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