What Helen Markum didn't see

[Duke Lane]

Duke, A cab driver's function is to look for pedestrians. Even if Scoggins dropped his sandwhich on the floorboard and reached to pick it up he would have seen the killer coming from the West towards the intersection or seen the killer cross in front of his cab or seen the killer walking to the spot where the killer and Tippit met up.

I follow and agree with your reasoning, but not your conclusion. One could say that a cop's job is to catch speeders, and even if he was eating lunch in a diner, he'd notice and pursue one. Not so. People do "turn off" their normal, job-time reactions when they know they're not going to utilize their training.

Scoggins was eating lunch in a quiet neighborhood, not cruising or standing in line for a fare. There is no guarantee that, because he might "normally" notice people walking by (would he? Or would he only notice those that approached his cab?), he would always notice people or all people. I drove a cab years ago for a while, and can't say one way or the other ... but don't think I noticed everyone just because they were nearby, and sometimes I was taken by surprise when someone knocked on the window.

To me the fact that Scoggins doesn't notice the killer until just before shots are fired is the same thing as saying he did not see the killer cross in front of his cab or at any time or location prior.

... In this way it becomes a FACT to me and one a lawyer would prove out in court.

Conjecture might be the way things become "fact" to some people, but it is not either one that an attorney could prove in court, nor the way an attorney establishes fact. Consider:

Q:

Sir, can you tell me from your own experience, can fish swim?

A:

Yes, sir, I've seen many fish swim.

Q:

Several kids of fish, large and small?

A:

Yes, sir. Guppies and goldfish and trout and crappies, even sharks and whales.

Q:

Thank you. Are you also a swimmer?

A:

Yes, sir, lettered in swimming in high school as a matter of fact.

Q:

So what kind of a fish are you?

A:

I'm not a fish, sir.

Q:

Yet you testified that fish swim and so do you, so you are stating the fact that you are a fish. Let's test that fact. Bailiff, please flush this witness down the commode ....

Had Scoggins been asked if he'd seen the shooter walk across in front of his cab, and he'd said yes, he had, then a fact has been established (subject to argument, of course). Likewise, had he been asked and replied in the negative, again a fact might have been established. He was not, and so none was.

As far as it goes, what you've said ("Scoggins [didn't] notice the killer until just before shots are fired [ergo] he did not see the killer cross in front of his cab or at any time or location prior") is an inference and not a fact established. To move from inference to fact, a follow-up question would be necessary:

Q:

You stated that you first noticed the killer when you looked up after hearing the shots. We have testimony that he, moments prior to the shooting, stepped from the curb or onto the curb directly in front of where your cab was parked. Did you see the killer - or anyone - at any time in front of your cab at any time prior to the time you heard the shots?

The answer to this question (or one similar) might be a step toward establishing the fact, but counsel's failure to ask the clarifying question leaves it as an inference only. In point of fact, Scoggins might have replied to such a question that, just moments before the shooting, he had, in fact, dropped his sandwich on the floor and had to root around under the seat to find it for a minute or so, so if the man had passed in front of his cab, he would not have been able to see him.

... Also, I don't remember seeing curbs on Patton as it runs South to Jefferson in any photos so Helen M. couldn't have seen the killer cross Patton behind the cab, and step up on to the curb. She never even acknowledges the cab being there. I can believe almost nothing of what Helen Markum says about this event. I don't think this is a minor point. IMO Ozwald wasn't the killer----Case Closed.

Is it a fact that the cab wasn't there because Helen Markham didn't say she saw it? She walked the same way every day, saw cars parked on the streets in her very own neighborhood, so one would think that a big, bright yellow Checker cab would stand out in her observations ... wouldn't you? You might think so, but you'd be speculating. Without checking, I don't recall if Markham was specifically asked if she saw the cab, so her silence on the matter does not establish that she didn't see it, but only that she didn't mention it unbidden. (Enough other people testified to its being there that the fact was nevertheless established.)

I'm not sure how ground-level, six-inch curbing might have interfered with anyone's seeing a nearly-six-foot man anywhere, as much as perhaps a five-foot tall Checker cab might. But since Markham didn't see (or say she saw) the cab, then it wasn't there and wasn't an obstacle anyway. To paraphrase a luminary personality in this history of this case (upon the occasion of his hearing that it wasn't possible for a six-foot man to have shot from the storm drain on Elm Street), there were a lot of pissed-off little people scurrying around Oak Cliff, too, apparently!

We do agree, however, that it wasn't Lee Oswald who shot and killed JD Tippit.

PS - As to the curbing, see CD630 at the Mary Ferrell Foundation site.

Edited February 27, 2007 by Duke Lane

[Duke Lane]

... I don't remember seeing curbs on Patton as it runs South to Jefferson in any photos so Helen M. couldn't have seen the killer cross Patton behind the cab, {Someone may prove me wrong if they have photos of the complete intersection} and step up on to the curb.

Here's a photo: CD630, page 9. You'll find others as well, tho' I'm not certain about which or whether any others will show curbing.

[Charles Black]

After having completely re-read this entire thread, and having considered both some sound points and speculations of some researchers whom I hold in high regard, I realized that my re-reading yielded exactly what I thought that it would.

Forty three years after the fact, we still do not know who killed Tippit, what he looked like, from which direction was he coming, where was he heading, in exactly which direction did he flee, what he was wearing, were there more than one assassins, at what time the shots were fired, what Tippit was really doing in Oak Cliff, and a great many other important questions.

Most importantly, we do not know that Tippit's murder was in any way connected to the JFK assassination.

What has beeen attempted, but in my opinion never proven, is that if LHO did in fact shoot Tippitt, it is unlikely that he would have done so had he not shot JFK. In other words this is theoretically the "proof of the pudding" !

However in my honest opinion, we have "neither proof nor pudding", and none is likely to be forthcoming. Tippit may have been "collateral damage" in the murder of JFK , or he may have had a personal enemy that wanted him so assuredly dead, that the murderer took the time to stand over him

and administer a coup de grace, rather than immediately flee. This is pure speculation, but it is possible that Tippit was in the area only to answer this man's personal challenge. That may be why Tippit's gun was drawn.

We have a hell of a lot of smoke and mirrors in this case. Perhaps some planned and others coincidence !

Also, do we really know that the .38 special ammunition said to have been in Oswald's posession, which were made by the same manufacturers of the ammo that killed Tippit is factual. The Dallas PD used .38 special weapons, and there was probably an abundance of various ammo makes among the policemen. There is also no evidence chain of posession, regarding the "hulls" that were supposedly picked up at the murder scene. As a matter of fact, there is a great deal of controversy that also surrounds those.

Charlie Black

[Steve Thomas]

Duke,

Is it a fact that the cab wasn't there because Helen Markham didn't say she saw it? She walked the same way every day, saw cars parked on the streets in her very own neighborhood,

Just for my own curiousity...

Helen lived at 328 E. 9th, which would have put her at 9th and Crawford?

Do you know why she was coming down Patton?

Did her bus headed to downtown not stop at Crawford and Jefferson?

Just curious.

Steve Thomas

[Duke Lane]

Is it a fact that the cab wasn't there because Helen Markham didn't say she saw it? She walked the same way every day, saw cars parked on the streets in her very own neighborhood,

Just for my own curiousity...

Helen lived at 328 E. 9th, which would have put her at 9th and Crawford? Do you know why she was coming down Patton? Did her bus headed to downtown not stop at Crawford and Jefferson? Just curious.

Good questions, and which only today - not having read your post, BTW - was I curious enough to find out the answer.

As we know, the address SE corner of 10th & Patton where Tippit was shot is 400 E 10th. A block east lived the Wrights, on the opposite side of the street, at 501 E 10th. Clearly, the start of each block is at the low end of each hundred, so one assumes that it would be a high number across the street, but that's not so since there are only a few homes on each block.

Commission Document 630, page 4, shows a map of the immediate area, at the upper edge of which is a building marked "WASHATERIA." In front of it are two numbers, 328 and 330; Helen lived at 328½, which was the upper level. It is at the corner of 9th & Patton, one block north of the murder scene. Helen only walked a block on her way to the bus before the killing took place.

Somewhere else in that document, I think, is a photo of the front of Markham's home. I'd been surprised to see that it was on the corner of the street. I, too, figured that it must've put it at the SW corner of 9th & Crawford, even tho' the number of the home would seem to have put it in the block immediately west of Patton. US addresses don't always have clear delineations between them such that there is always a "500 block" that is one block long, followed by the "600 block" and preceded by the "400 block." I figured either the addresses weren't "logical" that way, or else there was an alleyway there dividing the block since 328 "had" to have been half-way down the block. Not so: the block ends at 330.

CD 630(h) indicates that "the distance from the front door of the washateria at 328 East 9th Street to the northwest corner of the intersection at East 10th and Patton Streets was walked and timed and this time was two minutes and thirty seconds." This, basically, was to determine how long it took Mrs Markham to leave the front door of her residence and get to the corner where she witnessed a murder.

Remember that Helen did not indicate that she had stopped and spoken with anyone, or that she had been diverted from her intended travel to the bus stop in any way. While the latter may be possible, I would think the former unlikely simply because that person would have been contacted to ascertain when Helen had gotten to the corner, ergo what time Tippit was shot.

Today I was in the neighborhood, parked my truck and walked it myself at a "normal" pace. It took me ONE minute and 30 seconds, perhaps a little longer, but only by a few seconds. I walked it four times at different paces and it never took me longer than UNDER two minutes, even sauntering like I was watching the birds in the trees, stopping to smell the roses and doing anything but worrying about catching my bus.

I don't know who actually walked it back on March 17, 1964, but whoever it was had clearly been celebrating St Paddy's Day and must have been reeling down the street, doubling back, and generally having trouble walking to have taken so long to get there. But hey, it added a minute to the time LHO had to get there, so it must've been a good thing, eh? Hence the term "close enough for government work?"

I'm nearly 50 years old, not the picture of shining health (quad bypass a couple of years ago, so at least in better shape than I was!), so if anything, I probably walked it slower than than the then-under 40 Helen Markham, and certainly not appreciably faster.

But, oh: to answer the question, the reason why she was walking down Patton and not Crawford was that she lived at the corner of 9th & Patton, and Crawford was a block away in the wrong direction!

[J. Raymond Carroll]

Today I was in the neighborhood, parked my truck and walked it myself at a "normal" pace. It took me ONE minute and 30 seconds, perhaps a little longer, but only by a few seconds. I walked it four times at different paces and it never took me longer than UNDER two minutes, even sauntering like I was watching the birds in the trees, stopping to smell the roses and doing anything but worrying about catching my bus.

The inquiry continues, and thank you for conducting this reenactment.

Any comments on my earlier question:

What I would like to ascertain is how close to (or how far from) the intersection a person (anyone with normal or corrected vision who was looking straight ahead) would be when the intersection first comes comes into view.

?

[Duke Lane]

Any comments on my earlier question:

What I would like to ascertain is how close to (or how far from) the intersection a person (anyone with normal or corrected vision who was looking straight ahead) would be when the intersection first comes comes into view.

?

No, none except to say that anyone with reasonable vision can - and presumably could, depending upon how many cars were parked on the street at the time - see the corner of 10th & Patton from the corner 9th & Patton with reasonable clarity. What they'd actually notice, on the other hand, is subject to pure speculation.

I did notice someone doing something at the old 400 E 10th lot (now vacant) from the corner of 9th & Patton, but I could not make out what it was until I'd gotten much closer (it was someone trimming along the fenceline). Since he wasn't a police car (or even as big as one), and didn't have brake lights on his tail, I can't guesstimate how much sooner I'd have noticed him if he'd had, or been able to tell what he'd been doing.

I do tend to speculate, however, that if he'd been a she ...!

[Steve Thomas]

Duke,

I have deliberately re-arranged the text of your response.

Hope you don't mind too much.

But, oh: to answer the question, the reason why she was walking down Patton and not Crawford was that she lived at the corner of 9th & Patton, and Crawford was a block away in the wrong direction!

Thank you. It was a puzzlement.

Today I was in the neighborhood, parked my truck and walked it myself at a "normal" pace. It took me ONE minute and 30 seconds, perhaps a little longer, but only by a few seconds. I walked it four times at different paces and it never took me longer than UNDER two minutes, even sauntering like I was watching the birds in the trees, stopping to smell the roses and doing anything but worrying about catching my bus.

It's nice to talk to a fellow researcher who takes the time to "smell the roses"

Thanks again,

Steve Thomas

[J. Raymond Carroll]

I do tend to speculate, however, that if he'd been a she ...!

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a healthy woman in her late thirties is designed by nature to have a male companion. Move over, Jane Austin.

Helen Markham was designed by nature, given her solitary marital situation, to be on the lookout for a likely male. From a distance

she would surely have spotted a male pedestrian well before she herself stopped for traffic on the northwest corner of Tenth & Patton.

My interest is determining an approximation of the time elapsed between Markham's first sighting of the pedestrian (presumably

the gunman) and her arrival at the corner. It strikes me as entirely possible that the man could easily have walked to the designated crime scene and waited there in the time between Markham's first sighting of him and her sighting of the police car.

If the killer was "lying in wait" for Tippit, he would not want the shooting in, say, the middle of an intersection, therefore he would walk away from the corner, and eliminate the chance of being spotted by a police cruiser on Jefferson

[Duke Lane]

It's nice to talk to a fellow researcher who takes the time to "smell the roses"

D'ain't no roses on dat day-uh street! Wish I'd had my camera with me, but it was sort of unexpected being there.

[Duke Lane]

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a healthy woman in her late thirties is designed by nature to have a male companion. Move over, Jane Austin.

Helen Markham was designed by nature, given her solitary marital situation, to be on the lookout for a likely male. From a distance she would surely have spotted a male pedestrian well before she herself stopped for traffic on the northwest corner of Tenth & Patton.

My interest is determining an approximation of the time elapsed between Markham's first sighting of the pedestrian (presumably the gunman) and her arrival at the corner. It strikes me as entirely possible that the man could easily have walked to the designated crime scene and waited there in the time between Markham's first sighting of him and her sighting of the police car.

If the killer was "lying in wait" for Tippit, he would not want the shooting in, say, the middle of an intersection, therefore he would walk away from the corner, and eliminate the chance of being spotted by a police cruiser on Jefferson.

I can agree with the latter part, but the first? There are many women in my life who would brain me for agreeing with you!!

When she might have earliest seen the killer would largely depend upon where he came from. If he had been either walking westbound from Denver toward Patton, it would have presumably have been later than if he'd been coming eastbound from Crawford and had to cross a yard and street directly in front of Markham. If he had been stationary until he'd seen the police cruiser - say, on the porch of the house that Tippit "lived in?" - then he might not have been noticeable at all.

It would seem that motion - rather than gender! - would have been been what attracted her notice. If he'd been waiting patiently for the cruiser to come along, and his clothing not being something to attract attention (neutral colors, as they were), then the only thing left would seem to be gender. I don't think Helen's sense of smell was that acute!!

As to police cruisers on Jefferson ... what police cruisers could have been on Jefferson? Remember that Tippit was called there because - according to one of the dispatchers, Hensley I'm thinking - "resources had been drained from Oak Cliff" in response to the downtown shooting, so there were no cruisers that could've seen him.

If he was "lying in wait" for Tippit, it could only have been because he'd known that there were no cruisers in the area. Since JD was assigned to a different area a few miles away, it would have been a pretty dumb place for him to "lie in wait," don't you think? I mean, Kiest and Bonnieview would seem like a better choice, somewhere in Tippit's patrol area, no?

But ... wait!!

You're not suggesting that the killer knew there were no cops in the area, and that Tippit would be sent to central Oak Cliff, so it really was a good lying-in-wait location ... or (ohmigod!) that the dispatchers deliberately cleared Oak Cliff so that Tippit could be sent to the area where said gunman was lying in wait for his appareance, are you?

Since that couldn't possibly be true, it proves that Oswald shot JD Tippit - and that only Oswald could have shot him, all while trying to escape so he could get caught. QED. Rosetta Stone and all that. Plain as the face on your nose!

Gosh, why didn't I think of that sooner so I could've avoided this carpal tunnel syndrome I've gotten trying to convince people otherwise? What was I thinking?!?

Case closed. You can log off the forum now and cancel your membership, there's nothing left to discuss.

[J. Raymond Carroll]

As to police cruisers on Jefferson ... what police cruisers could have been on Jefferson? Remember that Tippit was called there because - according to one of the dispatchers, Hensley I'm thinking - "resources had been drained from Oak Cliff" in response to the downtown shooting, so there were no cruisers that could've seen him.

I am assuming that the killer and his associates, wherever they were located, planned to kill a cop in the Oak Cliff area and make it appear to be the work one Lee Oswald. I am further assuming that they knew that Lee was in the area and that they had the ability to monitor the police radio.

If the purpose of the exercise was simply to strengthen the case against Lee to compensate for the weakness of the case against him as assassin, then it would not matter to them which Dallas cop they happened to murder. One "poor dumb cop" would fit the bill as well as another, and Tippit may have drawn the short straw when he announced that he was at Kiest & Bonneview and later at Lancaster and Eighth(? I've probably got the sequence wrong here) You know this territory better than anyone -- would knowing Tippit's last two reference points be sufficient to tell the killers where he was likely headed, assuming they had heard the dispatcher direct him to move into Central Oak Cliff?

I recall from Sylvia Meagher that there was another cop nearby who was out for lunch at a diner on Jefferson, as I recall. Since you have studied the area, does it appear that by monitoring both the 10th and Jefferson ends of Patton St, it was only a matter of time before either Tippit or the other cop showed up on one or the other street?

Incidentally, I mentioned a possible police cruiser only as one example of the kind of interruption that the killer(s) would want to eliminate. If their knowledge of police activity in the area came solely from monitoring radio traffic, perhaps they could not eliminate entirely the possibility that some unanticipated cruiser could come by, or some other threat to a successful escape, hence the advisability of murdering Tippit away from the intersection, once the killer saw him approach from his vantage point on the corner of Tenth & Patton, as described by Markham.

[Duke Lane]

I am assuming that the killer and his associates, wherever they were located, planned to kill a cop in the Oak Cliff area and make it appear to be the work one Lee Oswald. I am further assuming that they knew that Lee was in the area and that they had the ability to monitor the police radio.

If the purpose of the exercise was simply to strengthen the case against Lee to compensate for the weakness of the case against him as assassin, then it would not matter to them which Dallas cop they happened to murder. ... I recall from Sylvia Meagher that there was another cop nearby who was out for lunch at a diner on Jefferson, as I recall. Since you have studied the area, does it appear that by monitoring both the 10th and Jefferson ends of Patton St, it was only a matter of time before either Tippit or the other cop showed up on one or the other street?

... If their knowledge of police activity in the area came solely from monitoring radio traffic, perhaps they could not eliminate entirely the possibility that some unanticipated cruiser could come by, or some other threat to a successful escape, hence the advisability of murdering Tippit away from the intersection, once the killer saw him approach from his vantage point on the corner of Tenth & Patton, as described by Markham.

I fear that at least part of my point was obscured by apparent sardonicism, and that is that there is absolutely no sense in "lying in wait" at that particular area unless one were fairly certain that there would soon be something coming along that was worth lying in wait for.

From that, you can eliminate anyone who had a strictly personal grudge against Tippit, such as a jealous husband, because there would be no reason to suspect that Tippit - whose assigned area was a couple of miles south, and whose lunch time had already passed - would be in that area at all that day, and much less so after the shooting downtown when everyone was on high alert.

Well, almost everyone ... but more on that later.

As to the likelihood of Tippit or WD Mentzel (the cop who was regularly assigned to this patrol area, and who was about a mile away having lunch at Luby's Cafeteria) or any other cop eventually coming to that intersection, I'd say that the chances are pretty good they would ... if the killer had about six months to wait around! That's an exaggeration, of course, but the point is that the neighborhood is (not even now) particularly high-crime, and the streets aren't particularly high-traffic (even today), and so would not necessarily be patrolled with high frequency. If a patrol goes through that intersection once every day, I'd be surprised, and much more so if one went through at near the same time every day. Today or then.

Even had one come by, it would've been Mentzel's car on patrol, not Tippit's. Mentzel, however, was at lunch (theoretically unknown to anyone simply listening in on a police monitor) ... and he was, incidentally, the only Dallas patrol officer who took lunch (during "normal lunch hours") that day, in the only patrol district that "police resources were being drained from" that hour (far from true) and consequently the only district that required an officer from another patrol district to be assigned, "at large" or otherwise, to cover it.

This is, of course, purely coincidental.

Another coincidence is that Mentzel and Tippit were not the only patrol officers in the district at that time, compounding the question as to why Tippit needed to be assigned there. In point of fact, another officer had radioed in that he was "clear [of the car] for five [minutes]" on "East Jefferson" - which is only in Oak Cliff - less than one minute before Tippit was first contacted and ordered into the very same district (along with RC Nelson, who disregarded his orders and broadcast the fact - unchallenged - even as he was doing so). That officer was at least 10 miles from his assigned patrol area (if he was, in fact, the officer assigned to that number).

Mentzel, (co)incidentally, finished his lunch and went back on patrol immediately before Tippit's shooting, and was then ordered to investigate an accident on West Davis, which he failed to find.

So to summarize:

• WD Mentzel, assigned to districts 93 and 94, took lunch just about the time that JFK's motorcade was going through downtown Dallas; he was the only patrol officer to go on lunch at this critical time (this based on the assumption of a 30- to 45-minute lunch break that he completed at about 1:00, the time of his next broadcast, and his 12:25 broadcast that he was "clear" following having been "on traffic" and his next transmission just before 1:07). It is likewise presumed that he went to lunch prior to 12:30 since he later stated that he did not hear about the downtown shooting until he was finishing lunch, thus did not hear it on the radio;
  
• At 12:28, Unit 56 (WP Parker, in far SE Dallas, by the Garland and Mesquite town lines) radios in about "traffic" involving a '56 Chevy. Dispatch attempts to respond shortly thereafter, but does not get an answer, prompting the question from dispatch: "Anyone know where 56 is?"
  
• At 12:44, Unit 56 (Parker?) reports that he's "clear for five," and dispatch asks his location. He responds that he's at "East Jefferson" (which is only in Oak Cliff) in patrol district 94 (Mentzel's), 10 miles from his own patrol district;
  
• At 12:45 - just seven broadcasts from dispatch later - the dispatcher radios Tippit, who reports being at Kiest and Bonnieview, to "move into central Oak Cliff" because - according to the dispatcher's later comments - "resources were being drained from Oak Cliff"
  
• At 12:54, Tippit is again contacted and reports being at "Lancaster and Eighth," which coincidentally can be reached at normal speed in about eight-and-a-half minutes driving up Bonnieview (which becomes 8th) from Kiest.
  
• Meanwhile, Harry Olsen is out on the sidewalk in front of an "estate" he's guarding on 8th "a couple of blocks from Stemmons" (Lancaster is two blocks off of the highway) and "receives a phone call" from a friend of an "elderly aunt" of a motorcycle cop assigned to the motorcade (which aunt years later becomes a deceased man whose identity is unknown);
  
• Sometime between 1:00 and 1:04, dispatch asks Tippit (who is supposed to be patrolling "at large") for his location. Tippit does not respond.
  
• At 1:04, Mentzel finishes lunch and radios being "clear" following his lunch;
  
• At 1:11, Mentzel responds to a "Signal 7" (accident) at 817 W Davis (point "B" on the map), about 10 blocks (1.2 miles) from 10th & Patton (point "C"). Unit 222, VR Nolan, also responds from his location at Sylvan & Colorado (point "A") less than a mile away;
  
• At 1:16, Tippit's shooting is reported by TF Bowley on Channel 1. Tippit has been dead for several minutes at this time.
  
• Unit 56 (Parker?) does not broadcast again at any time through 2:13. Later reports indicate that the officer(s) assigned to District 56 remained in that district setting up roadblocks following Kennedy's assassination.
  

So some reasonable questions would seem to be:

• Why was WD Mentzel the only officer at lunch while Kennedy's motorcade was travelling through Dallas?
  
• Why was #56 in Oak Cliff? And where did he go afterward?
  
• After not hearing from #56 for 16 minutes and then asking his location, why would a dispatcher not realize that he was in Oak Cliff and far from his assigned area?
  
• Why after hearing that #56 was in Oak Cliff would a dispatcher "realize" that resources were being "drained" from that area and assign two other officers, both from other districts farther south, into it?
  
• Why was Oak Cliff the only patrol district throughout the city that was assigned "additional" coverage when most other districts' officers responded to the "Signal 19" (shooting) call to "all units" to "report downtown?"
  
• Why did RC Nelson disregard his order to move into central Oak Cliff, and why did dispatch not say anything when Nelson told them that he was crossing the viaduct into downtown (away from Oak Cliff) and later that he was "out down here" at TSBD in blatant disregard of his orders?
  
• Why was dispatch concerned with Tippit's location when he was only supposed to be patrolling "at large" around central Oak Cliff?
  

The questions lead to more, including whether the killer was aware of Tippit's being in Oak Cliff because the killer himself was a cop (or was brought there by a cop) who was listening to his own police radio, and thus could be assured that no other police cruisers would come along? Was Tippit in fact having a dalliance with someone who lived three houses from where Scoggins - who "just saw him every day" - was having lunch, and two houses away from the Davis sisters-in-law, one of whom said that he'd been shot "in front of the hedgerow between the house next door and the one he lives in," and if so, were others aware of it (as former officer Tom Tilson has claimed)? Was Tippit ordered into Oak Cliff because it was assumed that, given the chance to be "at large," he would attempt to visit his paramour? Was the killer "killing time" walking around the area waiting for Tippit to finally show up, thus explaining both why neither Scoggins nor Markham noticed him cross Patton and why he was apparently seen by Jimmy Burke (and Markham's son) walking west from Denver Street? Was Tippit in the act of pulling over in front of his paramour's house when he saw someone he recognized and acted as if he was pulling over not to visit his girlfriend, but to greet - "real friendly like" - said unexpected acquaintence? Who was the woman standing on the porch of her home that Frank Wright said had exclaimed "oh, they've shot him!" before going back inside ... perhaps said presumed paramour who may have reconciled with her estranged husband later that very same day? Was Tippit's shooting merely a personal grudge that was carried out serendipitously, the act of a desperate assassin afraid of apprehension, or perhaps a deliberate - and quite successful - attempt to divert police attention away from Dealey Plaza as "one of their own" was shot in the line of duty? Nothing, no other crime of any magnitude, has the emotional impact of a cop-killing and will evoke a massive response by other officers to the exclusion of any other duty; it would have been the most perfect diversion possible. If that's so, who planned it and ordered that Tippit be sent to his death? Is it plausible that it was serendipity that a cop - Tippit - showed up where a shooter was in the simple hope that one could be shot and draw a massive response of cops to the one area of town where a missing TSBD employee happened to live?

Or did Oswald do it?

[Duke Lane]

[Duplicate post]

[Gene Kelly]

My 2 cents and five fundamental points, although not deeply steeped in research on this , as others: The murder of Tippit is just way too coincidental to be unrelated. Keeping it simple, (1) its still unsolved... and the evidence was poorly handled and maintained, (2) the witnesses are inconsistent and enignmatic, plus some were ignored, misquoted or outright threatened; (3) the proximity of this murder to Oswald's rooming house (and Ruby's apartment) is awfully awfully interesting, a strange part of town yet so close to Dealey Plaza. Plus, I see no credible motive (for LHO), but (4) its perfectly logical to 'create' a cop killing (45 minutes after the assasination of a president) to shine a bright light on the suspect. What more compelling incriminating evidence could there be - to convince a shocked public - than a related cop killing associated with our beloved president, in such close timing to the assasination, to drive home cause and effect? This fourth point really resonates with me... if we buy a setup and masterful intrigue (i.e. professional treatment by Lansdale and Conein), its the perfect way to quickly solve the crime, clear the Plaza and send a large contingent of the Dallas Police force (in force, with God on their side) to apprehend the assasin. Lastly, (5) all within 1-2 hours... the most controversial muder of the century, wrapped up in an hour or so! It stinks to high heaven, and (unlike the Warren Commission), I don't buy it. Rosetta Stone, indeed.