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Could a Dallas cop have been one of the shooters?


Guest Mark Valenti

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I am posting this link here since your are talking about DPD. I know thats it is from mcadams site , you don´t need to comment that.

Car 10 Where Are You?

Why was tippet so far away from his patol area when he was killed?

The simplest and most direct answer, I suppose, is that he was sent there.

The next question might be, "Why was he sent there?" which actually gives rise to three questions depending upon emphasis:

  1. Why was he sent there? This is the preferred form of the question, since it gives rise to the typical answer being that he was a good cop, a trusted cop, a dependable cop, an observant cop and an obedient cop, hence if you were looking for anyone to be able to track down the assassin, Tippit would be your man.
  2. Why was he sent there? This is actually a better question because it would require the answer to "why was nobody sent anywhere else?" Was there a special rule in effect that said the Presidential assassins only fled through older neighborhoods to the south? Or that they only fled on foot, and never by train or bus or plane?
  3. Why was he sent there? The first part of the answer is that he was an obedient cop, and the second part is that he was a predictable man.

Thanks to some people who clearly asked one too many questions, it can probably be said who it was who shot him, and a good case can be made for why he - or any cop - was shot at all. And those answers would probably help to make sense of why Helen Markham described Tippit as being "real friendly like" to the man he'd pulled up beside.

Having said all of that, returning to the original question since there's been no additional info, here's another poser:

If Marrion Baker was the first law enforcement officer who was to the upper floors of TSBD (with Roy Truly), and if Luke Mooney was the second (other than his partner), who were the two plain clothes officers who came down ... before Mooney got all the way up?

Answer that and ask the question that heads this thread again ....

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Duke,

Having said all of that, returning to the original question since there's been no additional info, here's another poser:

If Marrion Baker was the first law enforcement officer who was to the upper floors of TSBD (with Roy Truly), and if Luke Mooney was the second (other than his partner), who were the two plain clothes officers who came down ... before Mooney got all the way up?

Answer that and ask the question that heads this thread again ....

They may have been with Herbert Sawyer.

Marion Baker said that he ran into Sawyer on his way back down from the roof. Said he even stopped the elevator and spoke to Sawyer.

Sawyer: "And I went with a couple of officers and a man who I believed worked in the building. The elevator was just to the right of the main entrance, and we went to the top floor, which was pointed out to me by this other man as being the floor that we were talking about."

I believe that the "man who worked in the building" was William Shelley.

Mr. SHELLEY - "Yes; Mr. Truly left me guarding the elevator, not to let anybody up and down the elevator or stairway and some plainclothesmen came in; I don't know whether they were Secret Service or FBI or what but they wanted me to take them upstairs, so we went up and started searching the various floors.

Mr. BALL - Did you go up on the sixth floor?

Mr. SHELLEY - Yes, sir.

I can't remember anyone saying that they accompanied Sawyer though.

Steve Thomas

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Duke,
Having said all of that, returning to the original question since there's been no additional info, here's another poser:

If Marrion Baker was the first law enforcement officer who was to the upper floors of TSBD (with Roy Truly), and if Luke Mooney was the second (other than his partner), who were the two plain clothes officers who came down ... before Mooney got all the way up?

Answer that and ask the question that heads this thread again ....

They may have been with Herbert Sawyer.

Marion Baker said that he ran into Sawyer on his way back down from the roof. Said he even stopped the elevator and spoke to Sawyer.

Sawyer: "And I went with a couple of officers and a man who I believed worked in the building. The elevator was just to the right of the main entrance, and we went to the top floor, which was pointed out to me by this other man as being the floor that we were talking about."

I believe that the "man who worked in the building" was William Shelley.

Mr. SHELLEY - "Yes; Mr. Truly left me guarding the elevator, not to let anybody up and down the elevator or stairway and some plainclothesmen came in; I don't know whether they were Secret Service or FBI or what but they wanted me to take them upstairs, so we went up and started searching the various floors.

Mr. BALL - Did you go up on the sixth floor?

Mr. SHELLEY - Yes, sir.

I can't remember anyone saying that they accompanied Sawyer though.

I'll have to review Baker's testimony on Sawyer, unless you've got it handy? What is interesting in the above is that Sawyer said that the elevator "was just to the right of the main entrance." That would NOT have been the elevators that were in the northwest corner of the building, at the back, a damn sight farther than "just to the right of the main entrance."

How did Sawyer describe his activities once inside the building? Do they coincide with those described by Shelley? How long after the shooting did he enter? Was either Sawyer or Shelley present when the hulls or gun were found upstairs? Am I remembering correctly that Baker went back into the building after his initial sprint to the top floors, after which he left? Which time was it that he saw Sawyer?

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Duke,

They may have been with Herbert Sawyer.

Marion Baker said that he ran into Sawyer on his way back down from the roof. Said he even stopped the elevator and spoke to Sawyer.

Sawyer: "And I went with a couple of officers and a man who I believed worked in the building. The elevator was just to the right of the main entrance, and we went to the top floor, which was pointed out to me by this other man as being the floor that we were talking about."

I believe that the "man who worked in the building" was William Shelley.

Mr. SHELLEY - "Yes; Mr. Truly left me guarding the elevator, not to let anybody up and down the elevator or stairway and some plainclothesmen came in; I don't know whether they were Secret Service or FBI or what but they wanted me to take them upstairs, so we went up and started searching the various floors.

Mr. BALL - Did you go up on the sixth floor?

Mr. SHELLEY - Yes, sir.

I can't remember anyone saying that they accompanied Sawyer though.

Steve Thomas

Steve,

In looking over the testimony of both Sawyer and Baker, there's some confusion over which floor Sawyer actually went to ... maybe. Work with me on this and maybe we'll get it figured out ....

Sawyer said exactly as you'd quoted him on 6H317. Asked to clarify later on the same page where the elevator he'd gotten on was -

Mr. BELIN
. Well, when you say you got into the elevator, where was the elavator as you walked in the front door?

Mr. SAWYER
. It was to the right.

Mr. BELIN
. to the right?

Mr. SAWYER
. Yes, sir.

Mr. BELIN
. Was it a freight elevator or a passenger elevator?

Mr. SAWYER
. To the best of my recollection, it was a passenger elevator.

Mr. BELIN
. Did you push for the top button in that elevator?

Mr. SAWYER
. Well, I don't know who pushed it, but we went up to the top floor.

Mr. BELIN
. You went up to the top floor that elevator would go to?

Mr. SAWYER
. That's right. ...

Mr. BELIN
. Now when you got off, you say you went into the back there into a warehouse area?

Mr. SAWYER
.
Storage area; what appeared to be a storage area
.

Mr. BELIN
.
Did you go into any place other than
a warehouse or storage area?

Mr. SAWYER
. No.

Mr. BELIN
. Was there anything other than a warehouse or storage area there?

Mr. SAWYER
. Well, to one side I could see an office over there with people in it. Some womeon that apparently were office workers.

Mr. BELIN
. Now Inspector, what did you do then?

Mr. SAWYER
. Well, I didn't see anything that was out of the ordinary, so I
immediately came back downstairs
to check the security on the building.

The elevator that was to the right of the main entrance was a passenger elevator that rode up only as far as the second floor where there were indeed office space and women who were office workers, and at the back of which floor was indeed "storage space." It wasn't "warehouse space," as Belin insisted to use even after Sawyer had corrected him, but "storage space" just as he said.

Sawyer never said he went farther up into the building either by stair or by elevator, but rather said that after he hadn't seen anything suspicious on the floor he'd gotten off of the elevator onto, he "immediately came back downstairs" and went outside. There is nothing in what Sawyer said to indicate that he ever went any higher than the second floor, and stated explicitly that he did not go anyplace other than the storage ("or warehouse") area.

Belin, however, did insist on his having gone higher, asking just a couple of questions after the above quote: "Did you give those instructions [to cover the entrances of the building] before or after you came down from the fourth floor or the top floor?" Sawyer never said he went higher than the highest floor that the passenger elevator at the front of the building, to the right of the main entrance, could take him, which would only be to the second floor. He didn't push the button, someone else did, so he couldn't say whether there were two buttons or ten, or how far up the elevator went except to the top of its travel.

Belin's insistence on Sawyer having gone higher may be from his recollection of deposing Marrion Baker a few weeks before:

Mr. BAKER
. As we descended, somewhere around-we were still talking and I was still looking over the building.

Mr. BELIN
. As the elevator was moving?

Mr. BAKER
. Yes, sir; downward.

Mr. BELIN
. All right.

Mr. BAKER
.
The next thing that I noticed was Inspector Sawyer, he was on one of those floors there
, he is a police inspector.

Mr. DULLES
. City of Dallas Police?

Mr. BAKER
. Yes, sir. And he was on, I really didn’t notice which floor he was on, but that is the first thing I saw as we descended how this freight elevator, you know, it has got these picket boards in front of it and it has got it open so far, and it seemed to me like we stopped for a moment and I spoke to him and I told him that I had been to the roof, and there wasn’t anything on the roof that would indicate anybody being up there, and then we started on down.

Mr. BELIN
. Did you stay on the elevator while you spoke to him?

Mr. BAKER
. Yes, sir.

Mr. BELIN
. Do you remember what floor it was that you spoke to him on or how many floors down that you went from the top before you saw him?

Mr. BAKER
. No, sir; not at that time. It
seemed to me like it was on either the third or the fourth floor
. ...

Mr. BELIN
. When you continued moving on the elevator after you talked to Inspector Sawyer how far did you go on the elevator?

Mr. BAKER
. We went to the, I believe it would be the first floor there.

Mr. BELIN
. All right. You got off the elevator then?

Mr. BAKER
. Yes, sir.

Since Baker did continue going downward after speaking with Sawyer, then we can say with certainty that he saw Sawyer above the first floor. Since Sawyer said, tho', that he never went anywhere other than the storage area on the floor he'd gotten off the elevator onto, then there is no reason to think that Baker saw him anywhere other than on the second floor, even despite what it may have "seemed to" him to have been some four months later.

Do you see any indication that Sawyer had climbed or ridden higher than what he'd said? The only possibility that I see is his running into the "man I believed worked in the building" since the floor they'd gotten off the elevator onto "was pointed out to me by this other man as being the floor that we were talking about. We had talked about the fifth floor." There were, however, no offices on the fifth floor, and the elevator inside the main entrance didn't go that high anyway, so ...?

Sawyer seems to have been something of a simple man - lacked a half-year of high school to graduate, and when asked why he'd headed west on Main Street after the motorcade had gone by, he replied without guile that it was "because that was the way my car was pointed at the time I got in!" - but clearly not stupid. He'd been on DPD for 23 years in 1964, and was just 47 years old, and was hardly a patrolman anymore, but "up there" in the ranks. How then can we reconcile his statements with his age and experience?

Added on edit: I forgot to mention that, beginning on 6H319 is something of a reconstruction for the record of Sawyer's timings, noting that he "had not at least completely left [his] car by 12:34." He did not have to wait for the elevator he rode upstairs, it was on the first floor, and "doubt[ed] if [he] took over a minute at the most" looking around on the floor he'd gone to. "How long it took to go up, it couldn't have been over 3 minutes at the most from the time we left, got up and back down," or as Belin estimated, "no sooner than 12:37 if you heard the call at 12:34." From that point onward, he was outside.

An interesting question is why Belin saw fit to place Sawyer on "the fourth floor or top floor" when Sawyer said that he'd ridden an elevator that only went to the second floor and no higher, and when he didn't say he'd gone to any other floor. I read that question and thought, "Where did I miss that?" Looking back, I found nothing about the fourth floor in Sawyer's testimony. Where, other than from Baker's testimony two weeks earlier (Baker's March 25, 1964 testimony to Sawyer's on April 8, 1964), was "the fourth floor" established?

Finally, for the sake of mentioning it, Sawyer seemed to think that perhaps Sgt D.V. Harkness had been one of the officers who had gone up the elevator with him, but according to Harkness' testimony, he did not go into the building and did not have anything to do with Sawyer other than to put Amos Euins into Sawyer's car, and telling Sawyer that he'd done so.

Edited by Duke Lane
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  • 1 year later...
Interview with former sheriff Bowles:

Question : I enclosed two photos of a man waiting for a station wagon some minutes after the assassination (published in COVER-UP, Gary Shaw). You can see a man on the grassy knoll and the station wagon coming toward him.

BOWLES : How could anyone seem to be waiting for a station wagon? Perhaps they were as easily waiting for a…whatever. If you are thinking about the station wagon which was supposed to have been seen leaving the area, there could have been several, as they were quite popular here. It definitely was not Oswald, as he was positively identified by the bus driver, and his presence (Oswald’s) was presumed confirmed by the bus transfer slip in Oswald’s possession. The transfer was in Oswald’s possession when he was arrested, and he made no alibi to disclaim ownership. Further, the transfer was traced to that bus operator, and it was a timely issue.

Question : Do you know about Deputy Sheriff Harry Weatherford waiting on the roof a building near assassination site with a rifle?

BOWLES : Yes, Harry Weatherford was on the roof with a second deputy, and he had a rifle. They were assigned there for security. My first recollection of the suggestion that Weatherford might have been implicated was from the imagination of Penn Jones who, so far as I know, never worried about the other deputy. It would seem strange that a hit man would be stationed with a living witness. It does not fit reason.

Question : Were there any rifles on the roof of the Texas School Book Depository?

BOWLES : There was no rifle on the roof. The only weapon found at the Texas School Book Depository was Oswald’s Italian Carcano and the wrapper it had been concealed in, but no curtain rods anywhere. All the references to a Mauser were the erroneous comment made by an unqualified observer. That person vaguely (meaning he had no personal knowledge) called the rifle a Mauser, as opposed to, say a 30-30, or a 30-06 or a .22 or what ever. In truth, he had no specific or factual reason to say Mauser; he just said it, and everyone zeroed in as though that individual suddenly became the world’s most renowned firearms identification expert. This was an inaccurate statement on his singular part. There was no Mauser.

Question : I enclosed a photo of a man picking up a bullet in the grass on Elm Street. Do you know the man?

BOWLES : I cannot reply to your scenario about Buddy Walthers and any others and anything they might have picked up, or, if anything, its disposition.

Question : Were the bullet casings found at the Tippit murder scene were from a revolver or automatic pistol? A witness of the murder first said that he could not say that Oswald was the one who shot Tippit. Some months later, he was shot in the head by Darrell Wayne Garner. Afterwards, the witness could identify Oswald as the shooter.

BOWLES : The empty casings found where Oswald dumped them were a mixed assortment of .38’s, the incorrect manufacturer for the UK licensed Smith & Wesson revolver purchased by, and in the possession of Lee Oswald when he was arrested. Further, the gun had been reloaded with, and Oswald had in his pockets, the same collection of ammunition. There is no factual record of any officer finding .45 casings. I have no knowledge of Darell Wayne Garner. To the contrary, it is rather conclusive that Oswald shot Tippit.

Question : The was a clipboard in Tippit’s car. Do you know where it is?

BOWLES : Who said that Tippit had a clipboard? There were no city issue clipboards, and it was not all that common for an officer to have one.

Question : I enclosed a photocopy of a page of a book (The Crime of the Century), a Dallas Police Department document says that just days before November 22, 1963, two policemen saw somebody aiming a rifle on the grassy knoll.

BOWLES : Advance staff of the Secret service, with Dallas P.D. Intelligence officers scouted the route to determine what safe guards were appropriate. I seem to recall one of these people pointing to the east. According to one’s imagination, he could have been ‘pointing’ rather than ‘aiming’. As a consequence of this routine security check, two uniformed officers were assigned to guard the railroad overpass. They were not carrying a rifle, and I don’t remember that they were not publicly named. More important, a document as you mention would in no manner be proof of anything, least of which, a conspiracy. Evidence is made of sterner stuff.

Question : I enclosed a blow-up of the Moorman that shows a policeman behind a fence on the grassy knoll. He seems to be shooting. The blow-up was made by Jack White.

BOWLES : The power of suggestion can do strange things. There was no police officer, in or out of uniform, nor was there any other person to fire a shot from the grassy knoll. President Kennedy was killed by a head-shot from the right rear, fired by Oswald from the Texas School Book Depository. Unfortunately for conspiracy buffs, that’s all there is to it.

_____________________

Wasn't a .30-06 casing, crimped for a sabot round, found in '75 on the roof of the County Records Building?

Didn't detective Roger Craig say he saw the word "Mauser" stamped on the barrel of (one of) the rifle(s) found on the sixth floor of the TSBD?

--Thomas

_____________________

Edited by Thomas Graves
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The men who shot from the TSBD could have been dressed like plainclothes detectives. Instead of rushing down after the shooting, arousing suspicion, they could have waited long enough to make it plausible for plainclothes detectives to have arrived at the scene, then calmly walked down the stairs, right past any other arriving LE types, and left the scene.

However, this would not explain how they were unobserved by any employees before the shooting (no witness reported seeing such persons), nor the sighting of a black man at one of the windows with rifle in hand before the shooting.

I don't recall this ever being mentioned or discussed before, but were there any black policemen or deputies in Dallas in 1963? I've never seen one in a photo.

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I don't recall this ever being mentioned or discussed before, but were there any black policemen or deputies in Dallas in 1963? I've never seen one in a photo.

Ron,

The Dallas Police Department first hired black officers in 1946, there were only two of them.

By 1948, four were serving under a white officer and they were only allowed to deal with other blacks.

In 1967, Charles Batchelor instigated a campaign to recruit more black officers.

In 1963, the DPD had 11 black officers.

FWIW.

James

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The men who shot from the TSBD could have been dressed like plainclothes detectives. Instead of rushing down after the shooting, arousing suspicion, they could have waited long enough to make it plausible for plainclothes detectives to have arrived at the scene, then calmly walked down the stairs, right past any other arriving LE types, and left the scene.

However, this would not explain how they were unobserved by any employees before the shooting (no witness reported seeing such persons), nor the sighting of a black man at one of the windows with rifle in hand before the shooting.

Actually, your first observation is quite right: two "plainclothes officers" came down the stairs, passing Luke Mooney, who was on his way up. Mooney was the first cop (actually, sheriff's deputy) to enter onto the sixth floor, within just a couple of minutes of the shooting; the only one on the record to be upstairs before him was Baker. So who were the two on the way down, and from where? They were not part of the investigation, given the timing.

Getting in unobserved was a simple matter of getting on the elevator with Jack Daugherty and riding upstairs with him while everyone else was outside or going outside to watch the parade. Anyone going down from the upper floors would not have been able to signal an ascending elevator to go down on, and the freight elevator was on the fifth floor already with its doors open, rendering it inoperable. They wouldn't have been able to see anyone going up in the closed passenger elevator. No need to be sneaking around in air conditioning ducts.

Getting out was accomplished by waiting on the fifth floor at the elevators where both were parked until Truly called up to "send that elevator down here" (nobody did), then riding the elevator down while T&B were clamoring up the stairs. When they arrived on the fifth floor, T&B took one elevator up to the seventh floor; the other had descended, "plainclothes officers" and Jack within. They only descended to the third or fourth floor - T&B could not hear it operating because of the noise they were making on the enclosed wooden stairwell - after T&B had gotten above them.

Jack - who Walt Brown charitably calls the "village idiot" - was the inside guy with full access to the building and with a set of keys. He was Truly's "pet," it seems, and came in every day an hour before everyone else to check the boiler pipes and such. He testified to having been on the fifth and sixth floors during the time of the shooting, and may have "suggested" to Bonnie Ray Williams to go downstairs with his buds to watch the parade to keep the other two out of sight and unidentifiable ... if, that is, they didn't worry about that, just warn that colored boy to keep his mouth shut if he knows what's good for him.

They were not constrained by the timing of having to run downstairs to meet Baker in the lunch room, and thus had plenty of time to hide the Carcano. Any other weapons could have been left in an office - such as that of Warren Caster, who'd had two rifles in the building earlier that week (the day before, was it?) and was showing them around (he says he took them home, but how do we know for certain?) - or even a storage closet on their way downstairs. While DPD did a "floor-by-floor" search of the building, there is no indication that they did an office-by-office or closet-by-closet (or under-every-desk) search at all.

(Caster was one of only six employees of the companies in the building who were absent from the TSBD that noontime, the others being Jack Cason - the president of TSBD - who had gone home for lunch; Helen Palmer, who had taken the day off and had seen JFK at Love Field, and who came to TSBD afterward; Frankie Kaiser, who'd gone to the dentist; Vicky Davis and Dottie (Mrs James L.) Lovelady, who were out for the day. The last three never came to TSBD that day; the others all did.)

Whoever they were coming down as Mooney went up, they didn't raise Mooney's suspicions, nor apparently did they raise anyone else's. Who they were and where they went - and why Mooney thought they were plainclothes officers (maybe they were carrying rifles?) - is anyone's good guess. My bet is that Jack scared up Ozzie, and the "plainclothes" guys hustled him out of the building, but I've got no proof of that. The rest is - and has always been - part of the record ... absent the inferences, of course.

Edited by Duke Lane
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Duke Lane Posted Today, 08:03 AM

QUOTE(Ron Ecker @ Sep 4 2007, 05:53 PM)

The men who shot from the TSBD could have been dressed like plainclothes detectives. Instead of rushing down after the shooting, arousing suspicion, they could have waited long enough to make it plausible for plainclothes detectives to have arrived at the scene, then calmly walked down the stairs, right past any other arriving LE types, and left the scene.

However, this would not explain how they were unobserved by any employees before the shooting (no witness reported seeing such persons), nor the sighting of a black man at one of the windows with rifle in hand before the shooting.

Actually, your first observation is quite right: two "plainclothes officers" came down the stairs, passing Luke Mooney, who was on his way up. Mooney was the first cop (actually, sheriff's deputy) to enter onto the sixth floor, within just a couple of minutes of the shooting; the only one on the record to be upstairs before him was Baker. So who were the two on the way down, and from where? They were not part of the investigation, given the timing.

Getting in unobserved was a simple matter of getting on the elevator with Jack Daugherty and riding upstairs with him while everyone else was outside or going outside to watch the parade. Anyone going down from the upper floors would not have been able to signal an ascending elevator to go down on, and the freight elevator was on the fifth floor already with its doors open, rendering it inoperable. They wouldn't have been able to see anyone going up in the closed passenger elevator. No need to be sneaking around in air conditioning ducts.

Getting out was accomplished by waiting on the fifth floor at the elevators where both were parked until Truly called up to "send that elevator down here" (nobody did), then riding the elevator down while T&B were clamoring up the stairs. When they arrived on the fifth floor, T&B took one elevator up to the seventh floor; the other had descended, "plainclothes officers" and Jack within. They only descended to the third or fourth floor - T&B could not hear it operating because of the noise they were making on the enclosed wooden stairwell - after T&B had gotten above them.

Jack - who Walt Brown charitably calls the "village idiot" - was the inside guy with full access to the building and with a set of keys. He was Truly's "pet," it seems, and came in every day an hour before everyone else to check the boiler pipes and such. He testified to having been on the fifth and sixth floors during the time of the shooting, and may have "suggested" to Bonnie Ray Williams to go downstairs with his buds to watch the parade to keep the other two out of sight and unidentifiable ... if, that is, they didn't worry about that, just warn that colored boy to keep his mouth shut if he knows what's good for him.

They were not constrained by the timing of having to run downstairs to meet Baker in the lunch room, and thus had plenty of time to hide the Carcano. Any other weapons could have been left in an office - such as that of Warren Caster, who'd had two rifles in the building earlier that week (the day before, was it?) and was showing them around (he says he took them home, but how do we know for certain?) - or even a storage closet on their way downstairs. While DPD did a "floor-by-floor" search of the building, there is no indication that they did an office-by-office or closet-by-closet (or under-every-desk) search at all.

(Caster was one of only six employees of the companies in the building who were absent from the TSBD that noontime, the others being Jack Cason - the president of TSBD - who had gone home for lunch; Helen Palmer, who had taken the day off and had seen JFK at Love Field, and who came to TSBD afterward; Frankie Kaiser, who'd gone to the dentist; Vicky Davis and Dottie (Mrs James L.) Lovelady, who were out for the day. The last three never came to TSBD that day; the others all did.)

Whoever they were coming down as Mooney went up, they didn't raise Mooney's suspicions, nor apparently did they raise anyone else's. Who they were and where they went - and why Mooney thought they were plainclothes officers (maybe they were carrying rifles?) - is anyone's good guess. My bet is that Jack scared up Ozzie, and the "plainclothes" guys hustled him out of the building, but I've got no proof of that. The rest is - and has always been - part of the record ... absent the inferences, of course.

Duke,

I like where you're going with this. I agree in particular with the fact that there was way too much activity on the 5th and 6th floors of the TSBD, just before, during and after 12:30 on 11/22/63, for no one not to have seen any type of suspicious activity. Jarman, Norman et al. testified about the shots being fired from the 6th floor, whilst they were observing the presidential motorcade from the 5th floor. I can't put my finger on it, but I am willing to bet my hat that either some key observations were left out of their testimony on purpose or these gentlemen were told in advance what to say.

For one thing, as mentioned not too long ago in a different thread, that foot steps would have been clearly heard from the 5th floor, whilst the alledged gunman was hastily taking his weapon to the other end of the floor to hide it between boxes. The steps would have been heard despite the presence of numerous boxes filled with books. After all at least one of the fellows on the 5th floor could hear the shell casings fall onto the plywood floor as the shots were being fired.

http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/...s_the_Testimony

Don Thomas' article above.

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Duke,

I like where you're going with this. I agree in particular with the fact that there was way too much activity on the 5th and 6th floors of the TSBD, just before, during and after 12:30 on 11/22/63, for no one not to have seen any type of suspicious activity. Jarman, Norman et al. testified about the shots being fired from the 6th floor, whilst they were observing the presidential motorcade from the 5th floor. I can't put my finger on it, but I am willing to bet my hat that either some key observations were left out of their testimony on purpose or these gentlemen were told in advance what to say.

For one thing, as mentioned not too long ago in a different thread, that foot steps would have been clearly heard from the 5th floor, whilst the alledged gunman was hastily taking his weapon to the other end of the floor to hide it between boxes. The steps would have been heard despite the presence of numerous boxes filled with books. After all at least one of the fellows on the 5th floor could hear the shell casings fall onto the plywood floor as the shots were being fired. ...

It is only the alleged gunman who had to do anything hastily. Anyone in the scenario I'd drawn had just about as much time as it would take for Marion Baker to get to the sixth floor to do whatever they had to do and walk down to the fifth floor. That's not to suggest that they knew they had, say, two minutes before the cop got there, but certainly they had to consider the possibility that someone would eventually show up up there.

I was just reading that Itek had analyzed photos of the "sniper's nest window" and determined that there was activity in terms of changing the box setup "within the first two minutes" of the shooting. The only conclusion to be reached from that is that it wasn't Oswald doing it; the inferences are myriad.

Incidentally, Jack Daugherty always took "the full hour" for lunch, but "went back to work" immediately after eating his sandwich on that particular day. I'm amazed that, given his activities during the shooting period, that Jack Daugherty wasn't even considered as a possible accomplice to Oswald, and the fact remains that his actions did provide the means of escape for others, whether or not they actually provided the fact of escape.

It is only his diminished mental/emotional capacity that seems to have enabled him to have been exempt from scrutiny over all these years. Otherwise, I don't understand why he hadn't been.

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I agree that too little is known about Daugherty.

Wasn't he a witness to LHO entering the building alone on 11-22, but NOT CARRYING A PACKAGE?

Jack

That is true, Jack. Saying that was a mistake on his part though, attributable to his being "the village idiot."

What's more, though, is that he had "means" and "opportunity" that LHO did not: access to the paper and taping machine when nobody else was there. Troy Eugene West, the shipping clerk, said that he was "always" at his table, only leaving to make a pot of coffee when he arrived at 8:00 a.m. and presumably - as Harold Weisberg put it - to complete "the necessary functions of life." He even ate his lunch at the table.

Thus, he presumably would have known if LHO had been able to get to it, which he said LHO did not. Moreover, as you also know, the tape was the now-old fashioned wet-adhesive style that ran through a machine that wet the adhesive as it was dispensed from the machine. The tape, once installed, could not be taken from it without getting it wet; taking tape from a fresh, unused roll would have called attention to that roll having been used (it could have been wet with a sponge, for example, if it wasn't run through the machine).

Jack D arrived an hour before anyone else.

Perhaps significantly, a former TSBD employee (ca. 1963) has said privately that Jack "always acted as if he knew something about the assassination that nobody else did." I believe that, in fact, he did. I'm only surprised that nobody else has glommed onto this in 45 years.

Roy Truly corroborated much of Jack's testimony, especially with regard to his coming in early, his being on the fifth and sixth floors during lunch, and Jack's taking the elevator down as he and Baker were coming up the stairs. The only question is whether Truly's mad rush into the building and his yelling up the shaft to "send the elevator down" was a signal to the guys upstairs that the cops were in the building and they needed to be ready to come down.

The argument against that is that Truly continued to run upstairs when Baker stopped to confront LHO, and that instead of making LHO out to be "a person of interest" he told Baker instead that he was "okay."

On the other side of the coin, he did point out LHO as being "absent" when LHO was far and away not the only person "absent" during the "roll call" that not only didn't take place, but couldn't have taken place since many TSBD employees were prevented from returning into the building by police after the shooting. These are in addition to people like Charles Givens, who'd been up the street with an employee from the TSBD warehouse (behind the main TSBD building, north on Houston), and one or two women who'd gone to the bank and gone shopping while the parade was going by (see CE1381).

Truly's report of LHO not being present, however, may have been based on a report by another employee (his dog-showing pal Bill Shelley?), in which case the employee also didn't take the factors into account of all of these other people "missing" as well.

Incidentally, one of the female TSBD employees was the subject of a second "re-enactment" that is not part of the common knowledge, that it took her only a minute or so to reach a spot where she, too, had seen LHO on the second floor, possibly in the hallway leading to the lunch room. I want to say that this was Victoria Adams, but I can't swear to it at the moment.

Bottom line: there was someone else on the sixth floor that nobody knows about, probably doing the shooting ... not LHO. In fact, it would not particularly surprise me if Jack D hadn't shot off a couple of rounds, tho' the purpose of that was more to fire the gun and to draw attention to the window rather than to actually hit anybody (e.g., the "Tague bullet" which may or may not have been the one that ricocheted off of the storm sewer cover on the plaza). This potentially as a "reward" to "the village idiot" who was one of very few able-bodied men to actually be discharged from a stateside post in the Army during WWII (1942): this was his long-sought opportunity to "defend his country" as he was not allowed to during the war, this time against that "commie" Kennedy, who was going to "surrender the US to Russia" if allowed to live.

They were, however, seen by a Dallas sheriff, possibly the only man alive today who can identify them.

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[...] (T)wo "plainclothes officers" came down the stairs, passing Luke Mooney, who was on his way up. Mooney was the first cop (actually, sheriff's deputy) to enter onto the sixth floor, within just a couple of minutes of the shooting; the only one on the record to be upstairs before him was Baker. So who were the two on the way down, and from where? [...] Whoever they were coming down as Mooney went up, they didn't raise Mooney's suspicions, nor apparently did they raise anyone else's. Who they were and where they went - and why Mooney thought they were plainclothes officers (maybe they were carrying rifles?) - is anyone's good guess. [...]

__________________________

If Mooney wasn't suspicious of the two "plainclothes officers" coming down the stairs, it's my guess that he knew them.

--Thomas

__________________________

Edited by Thomas Graves
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This potentially as a "reward" to "the village idiot" who was one of very few able-bodied men to actually be discharged from a stateside post in the Army during WWII (1942): this was his long-sought opportunity to "defend his country" as he was not allowed to during the war, this time against that "commie" Kennedy, who was going to "surrender the US to Russia" if allowed to live. (Duke Lane)

Duke,

Do you know if Daugherty was a Sunset graduate from 1937 and at the time of his discharge, held the rank of Staff Sergeant?

James

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