Tag: TIPPIT SHOOTING

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The Death of Tippit – Part 3

By John Washburn

My prior articles covered unusual movements of particular police officers in the period up to the death of Tippit and the 20 or so minutes immediately afterward. 

The focus of this article is whether those officers also display peculiarities in the period up to and including the arrest of Oswald at the Theater.

THE MOBIL GARAGE AT 10^TH AND BECKLEY

In my William Mentzel article, I gave a reason why Tippit would drive from Top Ten Records to E 10th Street via Sunset Avenue rather than the more obvious route via West 10^th.  I deduced that because the Sunset route was the route Louis Cortinas said he took to get from Top Ten Records to the Tippit murder scene at 400 block E10th, on hearing of the shooting there. The route via Sunset would avoid the traffic lights at W 10^th Street and Zang Boulevard. Those at Top Ten Records who saw Tippit leave there said he left at speed, hence it follows that Tippit would also have gone for the fastest route.

I posited that he rendezvoused with Mentzel at E 10th and Beckley at 1:07 pm before then setting off to an ambush further east along E 10th approximately two minutes later. [https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/the-missing-calls-of-officer-mentzel-pt-1]

The testimony of Officer Hutson (credit to Education Forum member Steve Thomas) reveals that there was a Mobil gas station at 10^th and Beckley. This map shows the current site.

HUTSON, HAWKINS AND BAGGETT

The testimony of Officer Hutson (Vol VII p 26)  was taken at 9:00 am April 3, 1963 by Counsel Belin. Hutson said that he arrived at that gas station with officers Hawkins and Baggett. Hutson said the other two officers got out of the car to make a landline call and were inside the premises when the alarm regarding a suspect at the Marsalis Library came over the patrol radio. Hutson said he sounded the siren to get their attention. That event occurred at approximately 1:30 pm.

Hutson had appeared in my prior article because his Warren Commission testimony contradicted Reserve Sgt. Croy’s description of traffic conditions on Main Street. Hutson’s testimony set out how he, as a three-wheel motorcycle patrol officer, hitched a car ride with Hawkins and Baggett after he’d arrived in Oak Cliff. He did that as his clutch had burnt out.

Hutson’s testimony indicates that he arrived at the 400 block of E Jefferson sometime before 1:30 pm and then went to the Mobil location with Hawkins and Baggett from where he heard the library call (which turned out to be a false alarm) on patrol radio at 1:30 pm. 

Hutson’s testimony also indicates there may be calls missing from the tape and transcripts. He said, “I believe they gave us a call for us to call. I mean, their number to call in.” 

No such calls remain on transcribed tapes. 

Contrast that with Officer Hawkins, who omitted any mention of the Mobil incident. His testimony (WC Vol VII, p. 91) was taken at 9:50 am on 3 April 1963 by Counsel Ball.  I set out the relevant extract so as to convey the lack of precision in his movements and the glaring omission of the incident at the Mobil Garage.

Mr. BALL. Tell me, did you receive any instructions as to what to do?

Mr. HAWKINS. No, sir, I did not.

They called—I heard a citizen come in on the radio and state that an officer had been shot, and it looked like he was dead.

We had just finished the accident at this time, and I was driving an officer, Baggett, and I proceeded to Oak Cliff to the general vicinity of the call after checking out with the dispatcher, stating that we were proceeding in that direction.

We arrived in Oak Cliff, and there were several squads in the general vicinity of where the shooting had occurred- different stories had come out that the person was- the suspect had been seen in the immediate vicinity.

Mr. BALL. Did you go to 10th and Patton?

Mr. HAWKINS. We drove by 10th and Patton—we didn’t stop at the location.

Mr. BALL. What did you do then?

Mr. HAWKINS.  We circled the vicinity around Jefferson and Marsalis and in that area, talking to several people on the street, asking if they had seen anyone running up the alley or running down the street, and then they received a call, or I believe Officer Walker put out a call that he had just seen a white man running to the Oak Cliff Library, at which time we proceeded to this location. Officer Hutson had gotten into the car with us when we arrived in Oak Cliff, and there were three of us in the squad car- Officer Baggett, Officer Hutson, and myself.

Mr. BALL. Hutson is also a patrolman?

Mr. HAWKINS. Yes, sir.

Mr. BALL. A uniformed patrolman?

Mr. HAWKINS. Yes, sir; he is a three-wheel officer. We went to the library, and this turned out to be an employee of the library who had heard of the news and was apparently running in the library to tell the other employees there.

We then, after this checked out, we then continued circling in the area around 10th and Patton and Marsalis and Jefferson.

We then heard on the police radio that a suspicious person was at the TexasTheatre, and at this time, we proceeded to the theatre.

Ball – one of the more challenging of all counsel – would not have been aware of this omission because Hawkins’ testimony was taken in the same hour with different counsel.

Hawkins, referring to ‘circle[d] the vicinity of Marsalis and Jefferson’, which is where the library was, avoids the fact he’d been half a mile west at the gas station and that Hutson had to set off the siren to get him out of the shop  

Hawkins’ actions also need to be seen in the light of the call he put out on Channel 2, DPD time 1:30 pm. Bear in mind that there is no reference to Westbrook directly or indirectly before this call on either Channel 1 or 2.

221 (Patrolmen R. HAWKINS and E. R. BAGGETT) Can you give Captain WESTBROOK any information as to where he was shot?

Dispatcher (Henslee). Repeat. 

221 (Patrolmen R. HAWKINS and E. R. BAGGETT) Can you give Captain WESTBROOK any information as to where this happened?

Dispatcher (Henslee). In the 400 block of East 10^th near Patton.

15 (Captain C. E. TALBERT). Did you say he was DOA (Dead On Arrival) at Methodist?

The wording indicates Hawkins was with Westbrook in person to make that call on his behalf. But Hawkins’ question is extraordinary given that Westbrook, by his Warren Testimony, already knew the location where Tippit was shot. It had been on patrol radio, and Owens drove him there. Hawkins also knew the location. He’d been to 10^th and Patton and drove by the murder scene.

The dispatcher seems to have done a double take. The first question, “where was he shot” could be interpreted as was he “shot in the head”?  But the rephrasing the second time around, “where this happened,” removed such ambiguity.  

Hawkins should have wondered why he had to ask the same question twice. As we shall see, Hawkins is also a person of interest as he handcuffed Oswald on arrest. 

It is not possible to ascertain whether by 1:30 pm, Channel 2 DPD time was in step with real time or Channel 1’s still tampered time. However, there is a benchmark. 

Both Channels had a command to cut sirens on Hines Boulevard. The odd Westbrook call was a minute before that. The library call – where Hutson places them at Mobil – was a minute after the Hines call. That odd call on Channel 2, therefore, times as approximately 1:28 pm, which fits with Westbrook’s second arrival in Oak Cliff.

To recap on the calls that were on Channel 1.

1:29     The Hines cut sirens call.

1:30     CT Walker. “223, he’s in the library at Jefferson — east 500 block Marsalis and Jefferson”. That is the time Hutson, Hawkins, and Baggett were at the Mobil gas station, 10^th and Beckley.

1:31     Owens. “We’re all at the library”.

1:35     Westbrook (550) made a call “What officer have you got commanding this area over here where this officer was shot?” area over here where this officer was shot?” Then Owens and others return to 410 E 10^th. There is then more WFAA-TV (Reiland) footage, which showed Westbook, Poe, Owens, and Croy examining a wallet at the scene. 

Westbrook testified that after the library incident, he was in the vicinity of Crawford Street and Storey Street. Those locations are, respectively, two blocks and one block from the Mobil gas station. He gave the Warren Commission no clear reason why he would have been there. 

Mr. BALL. Now, you came from the library—where is that library?

Mr. WESTBROOK. The library is at Marsalis and Jefferson, sir. It must be here on Turner Plaza, right here.

Mr. BALL. You drove west on Jefferson, did you?

Mr. WESTBROOK. We drove west on Jefferson.

Mr. BALL. And you got out of the car where?

Mr. WESTBROOK. We got out of the car about here [indicating].

Mr. BALL. At what street?

Mr. WESTBROOK. It was between two streets, and I would say it was between this Storey and Crawford.

Mr. BALL. Why did you get out of the car at that time?

Mr. WESTBROOK. Just more or less searching- just no particular reason- just searching the area.

Mr. BALL. You were just looking around to see what you could see?

Mr. WESTBROOK. Yes, and at this time, I had a shotgun—I had borrowed a shotgun from a patrolman.

Mr. BALL. Where did you go when you got out of the car?

Mr. WESTBROOK. I walked through, and this is a car lot or a parking area, right along in here, and I don’t know whether I am wrong on my location or not, but I think I’m right.

SUMMARY

Summarising all of that in order to try to make some sense of it. 

Westbrook arrived in Oak Cliff twice. The first time, he arrived with Owens. He then went back to the Depository, returning in Car 207. On his second arrival in an unmarked car, he made contact with Hawkins, and at approximately 1:28 pm, he asked Hawkins to put out a call on Channel 2, which gave the impression this was his first arrival in Oak Cliff. 

Hawkins then went to the Mobil gas station and made a landline call. Westbrook was then in the area towards the Mobil gas station. Thereafter, Westbrook was present for the discovery of a planted wallet at the Tippit murder scene, and then Westbrook also discovered a jacket.

Westbrook later tried to cover up the finding of the jacket and the wallet. Hawkins covered up making a call from the Mobil garage and placed himself six blocks away to the east. 

WESTBROOK, THE JACKET, and WALLET

Westbrook’s subterfuge is betrayed by the Reiland TV film (the wallet) and the submission to the Warren Commission regarding the jacket. As Henry Hurt so ably pointed out, this jacket had two laundry marks on it.  The FBI visited over 700 establishments in Dallas and New Orleans.  They could not find one that could match either mark. (Reasonable Doubt, p. 151) Further, the FBI could not find any other article of Oswald’s clothing with a laundry or dry-cleaning mark. As Hurt also notes, the Commission made no mention of the extensive –and failed- FBI effort to find a match.  In a real investigation, Westbrook would have been pointedly interrogated about this lacuna.

The evidence would seem to suggest a situation whereby Hawkins, Westbrook, and others were communicating to put the final phase of the original plan in place. As many have theorized, the plan being the elimination of Oswald at the Texas Theater; after the appearance of a decoy to give the impression that Oswald had arrived on his own shortly before his arrest.  Were that the intended plan, then there would be the unexpected difficulty of more officers being in the area due to the impromptu killing of Tippit, and the decoy being on the run from the Tippit murder scene.

An operation like that would require two things. A group of accomplice officers would need to be the first to arrive at the Texas Theater, to secure the decoy and deal with Oswald. Meanwhile, other officers would need to be distracted to go elsewhere by false alarms. 

There is support for both in the evidence. 

From Hutson’s testimony:

Mr. Hutson. Yes, sir. Then, we left that location as we were proceeding west on East Jefferson, and as we approached the 100 block of East Jefferson, the radio dispatcher said that a suspect had just entered the Texas Theater.

The 100 block of E Jefferson was just two blocks east of the Theater, which was in the 200 block of W Jefferson. East and West Jefferson meet at Beckley. That indicates Hawkins was already headed west towards the Texas Theater before the radio dispatch call at 1:45 pm made it a place of interest. 

However, Hawkins said of that,

We then heard on the police radio that a suspicious person was at the Texas Theatre, and at this time we proceeded to the theatre.”

Hawkins omitted that he was headed towards the Texas Theater, before the call on police radio.  

NO FUGITIVE BUT FALSE ALARMS

There were also false alarms. It is relevant which officers made those false alarms. 

For the fugitive – by the Warren Commission version of events – to have got to the Texas Theater on foot, he would have had to cross the six lanes of Zang Boulevard and the four lanes of Beckley Avenue. Either crossing would be conspicuous. Also, something Commission zealots do not like to admit, the distance from 10^th and Patton to the theatre is significantly less than from the Beckley boarding house to the Tippit murder scene. It was possible to get there in 10-11 minutes.

Assistant Counsel Liebeler commented on that. 

“Then I was surprised to learn that the police radio did not send out information about the suspect being in the Texas Theater until 1:45, about 30 minutes after the police first learned of the Tippit killing from Benavides over Tippit’s radio. What were Oswald and Brewer doing during this 30 minutes? Oswald was strangely inactive during this period, considering all that he had done in the 45 minutes following the assassination.”

Let us speculate: a reason for the lack of detection in that half hour because the fugitive was being held safely – in a vehicle – before the final part of the tableau was played out?

Altogether, there were four false alarms directing police to the east and north of the Tippit murder scene, away from Beckley and Zang. Each false alarm was made by a person of interest, and as covered later, each person was one of the early arrivals at the theater.

1. The furniture stores in 400 block E Jefferson, the alarm led by Hill,
2. Officer McDonald put out a call telling people to go to the (Abundant Life) Church at E10th and Crawford, 
3. CT Walker put out an announcement that the fugitive was in the Library at Marsalis and Jefferson. 
4. At approximately 1:40 pm, Westbrook (using 550) put out an announcement: 550: …and work to North Jefferson. We’ve got a witness that seen him go north.

BACK TO MENTZEL

Despite Tippit being shot in Mentzel’s district 91, Mentzel himself made no declaration on the radio of where he was until after Oswald was arrested.

Until the Texas Theater (west of Beckley and Zang) became a point of interest after 1:40 pm, it’s difficult to see why Mentzel would – legitimately – stay away from the area of action, which was east of Beckley and Zang. 

Mentzel didn’t play an overt role in the arrest of Oswald, but he was in the vicinity of the theater. That’s apparent because after Oswald was arrested, Mentzel offered, over patrol radio, to deal with the car CT Walker had left behind at the theater. Walker having got into the car which carried Oswald to City Hall.

Again, let us speculate: could the purpose of Hill’s call “12^th and Beckley” have been to signal to confederates that the fugitive had been picked up safely? 12^thand Beckley was 250 yards from Hardy’s Shoe Store, 213 W Jefferson, two blocks north and one block west. Was Mentzel harboring the fugitive, having rendezvoused with Hill?

But prior to that, in my Mentzel article, there was a gap in my assumption as to the form of a trigger that could have caused Tippit to head east at the right time after a rendezvous with Mentzel. The “right time” being after the components of the ambush were in place.

I had deduced that Tippit was taking landline instruction from the phone at Top Ten Records, on East Jefferson.  Tippit merely needed to listen rather than saying anything.  This was at approximately 1:00 pm, departing two or three minutes later at speed. 

Mentzel, per CE 2645, was talking on the landline at Luby’s Cafeteria, also on E Jefferson, a short distance to the west of Top Ten Records. I assumed a rendezvous at the 10^th and Beckley (the Mobil Gas station) as that would account for several things.  

Firstly, why did Tippit leave Top Ten at speed only to then drive slowly along E 10th to his demise? The inference I drew was that he may have gotten new instructions by a rendezvous.

Secondly, Edgar Tippit, the victim’s father,  told author Joe McBride that an officer–all but certain Mentzel–was working with his son during Tippit’s last minutes alive. (McBride, Into the Nightmare, pp. 427-30) Both men were a short distance apart at Top Ten and Luby’s, close enough for a simple rendezvous.

However, if the objective was to get Tippit to 10^th and Beckley as a trap, then Mentzel would hardly be able to walk up to Tippit to say, “let’s go to E10^th and Beckley”. The fact that there was a landline at the gas station at E 10^th and Beckley ameliorates the problem. Mentzel, or possibly Tippit himself, would have been able to make a landline call from there, and that would have been the trigger for Tippit to head east.

Mentzel’s story that he was using the landline at Luby’s to get through to DPD HQ provided some cover for his having been seen using that landline.  Similarly, Mentzel’s statement in CE 2645 that he was cruising in the area of Zang and W10^th would give a degree of cover if it were to come out he’d been seen at the gas station on Beckley and E10th (those two locations are 150 yards apart). 

WHY DID TOP TEN ONLY EMERGE IN 1981?

The story regarding Tippit and Top Ten records didn’t come out until Earl Golz wrote about it in 1981. Some Dallas police officers must have known about Tippit and Top Ten. Louis Cortinas said he drove straight to the Tippit murder scene on hearing on the radio he had been shot. It would be apparent to him that he’d been one of the last people to see Tippit alive. Wouldn’t he have reported that at the scene?

But this memorandum from 3 December 1963 was sent by Carl Walters, a clerk to the Warren Commission, to the FBI Special Agent in Charge, Dallas Office. It concerns a phone call from a “John D Whitten” stating that Oswald was seen in Top Ten Records the morning of the assassination.

The Memorandum has the annotation “No Action – Oswald was at work all morning 11/22/63”. 

So, Top Ten Records was a place of interest in December 1963, and that memorandum provided evidence that Oswald was impersonated on the morning of the assassinations at a place in proximity to the Texas Theater. I return to this point later since there is also evidence that police officers searched the Texas Theater on the morning of the assassination. 

Interestingly, a John Whitten was a CIA officer assigned by CIA Director Richard Helms to review the CIA records on Oswald. Was he the source of the information? There is no – local – John Whitten in the Dallas City Directory for 1963. Researcher Bill Simpich thinks it is.

Whitten’s preliminary finding that Oswald acted alone was delivered by Helms to President Lyndon Johnson the day Oswald was shot by Jack Ruby, 24 November 1963 [https://www.history-matters.com/essays/frameup/WhatJaneRomanSaid/WhatJaneRomanSaid_5.htm]

Whitten continued the investigation with a staff of 30. On December 6, Whitten read an FBI report on Oswald showing that the FBI had information about Oswald’s links with pro-Castro Cuban groups, which neither the FBI nor Helms had communicated to his investigation. He complained to Helms and James Angleton that this information rendered his initial conclusion “completely irrelevant”.

Helms took the investigation away from Whitten and handed it to Jim Angleton.

Whitten testified to the HSCA in 1979 that as soon as he learned he had been denied key files on Oswald, he complained to Helms. That was around Christmas time 1963. 

Whitten was never promoted again and took off to Vienna in self-imposed exile.  According to Jeff Morley, he became a singer.

THE ARREST – THE OFFICERS ENTERING THE TEXAS THEATER

A document for the FBI, written by James Bookhout, of 30 November 1963 states that Officers CT Walker, Hutson, McDonald and Hawkins were in on the arrest of Oswald.[https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/9/4607/7460709/content/arcmedia/dc-metro/rg-272/605417-key-persons/mcdonald_m_n/mcdonald_m_n.pdf]

But Westbrook put himself there by his own account, as did Hill.

CT Walker on 2 December 1963 said [https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth339462/] he entered with Hutson and McDonald but omitted Hawkins. 

Hawkins on 2 December 1963 said  [https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth338399/m1/1/] he entered with Hutson, McDonald, and CT Walker.

McDonald on 3 December 1963 said [https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth340009/] he entered with “three others”. 

Hutson on 3 December 1963 said [https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth338138/m1/1/] he entered with Hawkins and CT Walker but omitted McDonald.

By the time of their Warren Commission testimonies, there were some changes to what these people said. Only CT Walker said the same as in December 1963. McDonald named three officers and said he entered with CT Walker, Hutson and Hawkins. Hutson again said he had entered with Hawkins but clarified that CT Walker and McDonald were joining them on the floor of the theater.  Hutson’s testimony is clearly articulated, internally consistent, and consistent with radio. It undermines those superior officers, displaying a pattern of inconsistent accounts. 

Jerry Hill, in his 5 December 1963 statement, stated [https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth337082/m1/1/] that he entered the front of the theater with Agent Bob Apple (there was no Warren testimony for Apple to check against). He immediately went to the balcony. Hill said Captain Talbert was there and asked if the roof had been checked. In that statement, Hill also said that the radio message that a suspect was in the theater came out at 1:55 pm. However, that call was, in fact, at 1:45 pm, and even the tampered DPD tape had corrected the time by then. 

McDonald said 2:00 pm was the time of entering the Texas Theater. That’s wrong – the time of entry was 1:50 pm. By 2:00 pm, Oswald was already being taken to City Hall. CT Walker said the 1:45 pm radio call was at 2:00 pm. Hawkins and Stringer were silent on the time. 

Contrast that with the 3 December 1963 statement of Hutson, who correctly puts the time of the 1:45 pm call as 1:45 pm. 

For Hill, McDonald, and CT Walker to all be adding 10-15 minutes to the real time is consistent with parties adding time to make the time of Tippit’s shooting appear later than it was. But in so doing, they did not realize that there would later be transcripts where the time stamps would synchronise with real time.  Because by 1:45 pm, those events were publicly verifiable. 

Making matters worse for Hill, McDonald, and CT Walker, is the fact that the three-quarter hour of 1:45 pm is a pretty easy time to remember.

HUTSON PULLED A GUN

Back to Hutson’s testimony, which said: [https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth338138/]

Mr. Hutson. Yes, sir. Then, we left that location as we were proceeding west on East Jefferson, and as we approached the 100 block of East Jefferson, the radio dispatcher said that a suspect had just entered the Texas Theatre.

…then……

Mr. HUTSON. We pulled up to this location, and I was the first out of the car to hit the ground. As I walked up to the fire exit doors, Officers Hawkins and Baggett were getting out of the car, and the door to the theater opened, and this unknown white male was exiting. I drew my pistol and put it on him and told him to put up his hands and not to make a move, and he was real nervous and scared and said: “I am not the one. I just came back to open the door. I work up the street at the shoe store, and Julia sent me back to open the door so you could get in.” I walked up and searched him briefly, and I could see by the description and his clothes that he wasn’t the person we were looking for. Then I entered the theater from this door, and Officer Hawkins with me, and Officer Baggett stayed behind to cover the fire exit door. We walked down the bottom floor of the theater, and I was joined there by Officer Walker by me, and as we walked up the north aisle from the center section, I observed Officer McDonald walking up the south aisle from the center section, and we observed two suspects sitting near the front in the center section.

Mr. BELIN. You were on the right center or the left center?

Mr. HUTSON. I was on the left center.

Mr. BELIN. That would be the left center,

Hutson testified at 9:00 pm on April 3, 1964. CT Walker testified on the same day at 1:30 pm. Both of these testimonies were taken by Belin. The timing of those testimonies is relevant. Belin asked Walker whether anyone drew a gun on entry. But Walker, despite claiming to have entered with Hutson, only referred to himself as having a gun. 

McDonald testified that he drove to the front of the theater and then walked to the rear of the theatre, where he met Hutson, Hawkins, and CT Walker. But McDonald too failed to mention the incident of the pulling of the gun. 

That indicates that only Hutson and Hawkins initially entered the theater, but CT Walker and McDonald for some reason pretended that they’d entered at the same time. 

WESTBROOK

Westbrook’s discrepancies were again legion. He said to the Warren Commission and in a report dated 3 December 1963 [https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth338798/] that he, Stringer, and FBI Agent Barrett (there was no Warren testimony for either of those two) went in a squad car with an unknown officer driving to the rear alley of the theater. Westbrook failed to mention Hutson and the gun incident with the shoe shop employee Brewer. Westbrook also said that there were two or three cars at the rear. But Hawkin’s 1:47 pm radio message said that there were five cars at the rear. 

Barrett, on November 23, 1963, filed an FBI report. [page 3: https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/9/4607/7460709/content/arcmedia/dc-metro/rg-272/605417-key-persons/mcdonald_m_n/mcdonald_m_n.pdf] He refers to entering via the front and made no reference to Westbrook.

Ewell said that Westbrook drove him to the front of the theater with Stringer in an unmarked car.

However, Sgt. Stringer, on 3 December 1963, said that he was questioning a boy in the 100 block of S Patton with an officer when the alert at the Texas Theater came through. And that officers Hawkins and Baggett drove him to the alley at the rear of the theater. [https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth337160/m1/1/]

Stringer lied. Firstly, he was not at South Patton the minute before the Texas Theater call came through. He was on Crawford Street putting out the message on the radio regarding the examination of the jacket. Second, he did not arrive with Bagget and Hawkins; Hutson did. Third, he made no mention of Hutson pulling the gun on the person who opened the theater rear door.

By that, Westbrook and Stringer were both lying about the method of arrival and the point of entry. No one else supports either of their accounts other than Hawkins. Who, by the time of his Warren Commission testimony, had changed his December story to add Westbrook.

“Mr. BALL. Where did you park?

Mr. HAWKINS. I parked my squad car in the alley at the rear of the theater.

Mr. BALL. Then, what did you do? 

Mr. HAWKINS. Officer-I believe Officer McDonald was at the back door at the time, and Officer Hutson and Captain Westbrook and Officer Walker and myself went in the rear door. All went to the rear door, and at this time we saw a white male there and began talking to him and he identified himself as being the manager of a shoe store next door and that he was the person who had noted the suspicious acting on the suspect, and he at that time was brought into the rear of the theater and on the stage.” 

To summarize: Hawkins had put out a strange call for Westbrook and then made a land-line call from the Mobil garage at 10^th and Beckley at 1:30 pm. Hawkins’ car was the closest to the theater at the time of the 1:45 pm call, already heading towards it. CT Walker and McDonald were in the theater very soon after (or possibly before, via the front). Westbrook was pretending he had entered the back of the theater, avoiding the fact he’d driven and parked at the front. All of those irregularities indicate that there was more going on than merely the arrest of Oswald. 

A HYPOTHESIS

It might be that certain officers – all of whom later lied on one matter or other – did not need to rely on the message on patrol radio that a person had entered the Texas Theater if they already knew what was to happen next.

Those officers were Westbrook, McDonald, Hill, CT Walker, and Hawkins. Four of whom had issued false alarms, and one had made a landline call from the Mobil gas station.

That then takes us back to the proposition that there were two persons of interest in the Texas Theater. Oswald, who–according to employee Butch Burroughs–had been there from just after 1 pm on the first floor; and the decoy, who entered at about 1:40 pm and went to the balcony. With that, Oswald was taken out of the front, the other out the back. 

Is there further evidence for this hypothesis? Yes. The choreography of officer movements and the layout of the theater are relevant.

THE BALCONY, DOWNSTAIRS, THE FRONT AND THE BACK

The first radio reports had the suspect being in the balcony of the Texas Theater. Butch Burroughs said Oswald was in the theater from just after 1:00 pm. Bernard Haire said an Oswald lookalike was taken out of the back. Officer Stringfellow filed a report saying Oswald was arrested in the balcony.

The balcony of the Texas Theater was accessed from stairs at the front of the Jefferson Street foyer, or by an external fire exit in the alley at the rear. The main floor of the theater was accessed either from the main doors at the back of the foyer or ground level fire exits opening to the alley at the rear. It was also possible to get from the outside front to the outside back, and vice versa, via an outside tunnel alley. 

It is not disputed that Oswald was arrested on the first floor and left via the front. But if the fugitive was in the balcony and taken out via the back, the question is who went up there to deal with that and who assisted with that person being taken out the back.

Hill admitted he went in via the front and up to the balcony. Westbrook seems to have covered up that he, too, entered via the front. McDonald seems to have parked at the front, and then either gone in via the front entrance, or used the rear entrance via the tunnel alley. 

Hutson’s testimony reveals an odd command from Westbrook:

Mr. HUTSON. The gun was taken from the suspect’s hand by Officer McDonald and somebody else. I couldn’t say exactly. They were all in on the struggle, and Officer Hawkins, in other words, he simultaneously, we decided to handcuff him. We had restrained him after the pistol was taken, but he was still resisting arrest, and we stood him up and I let go of his neck at this time and took hold of his right arm and attempted to bring it back behind him, and Officer Hawkins and Walker and myself attempted to handcuff him. At this time, Sgt. Jerry Hill came up and assisted as we were handcuffing. Then Captain Westbrook came in and gave the order to get him out of here as fast as you can and don’t let anybody see him, and he was rushed out of the theater. I was in the row of seats behind. I saw Officer Walker and Sgt. Jerry Hill had hold of him, and that is the last I ever saw him. 

As emphasized: Why would Westbrook say, “don’t let anybody see him”? That order was not obeyed for Oswald. Oswald was seen and filmed leaving the front of the theater. Did Hutson overhear Westbrook referring to a second person who would be taken out the back?

But before dealing with that, another question arises. Why did the Theater staff not inform the audience and shut for the day once it was apparent the President had been shot and was dead? Wouldn’t such an outcome be a risk to any plan to make the theater the place for Oswald’s arrest?

The testimony of Julie Postal, the ticket seller, has points of interest regarding that theory:

Mrs. POSTAL. No, sir; I was looking up, as I say, when the cars passed, as you know, they make a tremendous noise, and he ducked in as my boss went that way to get in his car.

Mr. BALL. Who is your boss?

Mrs. POSTAL. Mr. John A. Callahan.

Mr. BALL. Where did you say he was?

Mrs. POSTAL. Yes; I say, they bypassed each other, actually, the man ducked in this way, and my employer went thataway, to get in his car.

By that, Callahan, who managed the theater, not only didn’t shut the theater, but got in his car after Postal purportedly saw someone “duck in”.  Elsewhere, she had denied seeing someone duck in herself, but here she said he passed Callahan. That oddity can’t be dismissed as just her observation. Detective LT Cunningham said:

We were questioning a young man who was sitting on the stairs in the balcony when the manager told us the suspect was on the first floor. (Report to Chief J. E. Curry 12/03/63)

Detective John B. Toney said: There was a young man sitting near the top of the stairs, and we ascertained from manager on duty that this subject had been in the theater since about 12:05 PM. (Report to Chief J. E. Curry 12/03/63)

However, Julia Postal testified that the Theater opened at 12:45 pm. The “manager” can’t have been Butch Burroughs, he wasn’t the manager, and he said he saw no one that early. (Jim Marrs, Crossfire, pp. 353-54) 

Greg Parker has published some background to the ownership of the Texas Theater [https://gregrparker.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Texas-Theatre-mysteries-5-1.pdf?595453&595453] which links Callahan and the theater ownership to right-wing interests. Why would Callahan absent himself from the scene of a major event, which had caused his staff to call the police, at precisely the point it was heating up?

LAURA KITTRELL

Laura Kittrell was a Texas Employee Commission employee who had interviewed Oswald in connection with his seeking work in October 1962 and again in October 1963.

She gave a dossier of evidence to the HSCA, “the Kittrell manuscript”. The handwritten notes at the beginning are transcribed in type towards the end [https://digitalcollections-baylor.quartexcollections.com/Documents/Detail/sightings-of-lho-oct.-1963/687524?item=687528].

Kittrell’s father, William Henderson Kittrell, had been secretary of the Democratic Executive Committee of Texas, and she took 22 November 1963 off work to attend the Kennedy lunch at the Trade Mart. She said when she returned to her office the following week, her files had been taken by the FBI. She said that all the records relating to her interviews with Oswald in October 1963 were omitted from the Warren Commission report.

Kittrell thereafter took an interest in the assassination and interviewed Tom Bowden, the former caretaker of the Texas Theater, in 1976. He told her something remarkable: that on the morning of the assassination, police officers searched the theater. (See page 166 of the dossier). 

The dossier also shows how Kittrell’s interest was active well before the Warren Commission had reported. 

A Department of Justice Attorney, Barefoot Sanders, sent information from Kittrell to Warren Commission Counsels Jenner and Liebeler on April 9, 1964, stating, “I enclose a message of some length which I had the Secret Service pick up from Miss Laura Kittrell. Since this seems to concern an area of inquiry of the Commission in which you two are interested, I am forwarding it to you for your consideration and perusal” (page 5 of the dossier).

The dossier shows she wrote to J Edgar Hoover, and that on December  26, 1963, she wrote to Senator Robert Kennedy. She wrote to Robert Kennedy again on June 4, 1965, in frustration that she had not been called to testify for the Warren Commission. Her letter to Kennedy was sent from his office to Hoover, who wrote to Kennedy on August 27, 1965, stating, “there is some question as to her emotional stability”. 

Hoover’s response also casts doubt as to whether she had contact with the Secret Service. But the letter from Barefoot Sanders confirms that she had. 

The attachment Sanders sent is missing from the dossier. The letter from Hoover downplays her father’s political connections. But page 156 of the dossier shows Earl Golz of the Dallas Morning News stating that the father was prominent and had been acquainted with Roosevelt, Truman, and John F Kennedy. The effect of Hoover’s inaccurate letter to Robert Kennedy was to cast doubt on Kittrell and throw him off the scent. The Warren Commission files do not have a file for Kittrell. Kittrell said that the first person she met in October 1962 was Oswald but that the second person she met in October 1963 didn’t have the same bearing (page 166 of the dossier). 

She said that Oswald himself on  October 4, 1962 “looked very military as neat as a pin” and was “trim, energetic, compact and well-knitted” but the second person she saw on 22 October 1963 behaved badly and said he was “a trifling, shirtless, good-for-nothing lout who sprawled oafishly over his chair”. She was trained in asking questions to identify potential Social Security fraud.

As Kittrell’s interest can be pinned with certainty as early as December 1963, then her statements and interest cannot be put down to ‘conspiracy theories’ that grew as a result of the Warren Commission report. The report wasn’t published until September 1964. 

Kittrell said that the first Oswald in 1962 was the person all now know as Oswald. She said he had taken an aptitude test twice and on the verbal reasoning part of that test scored 126 and 127. She said that was the level expected from a college graduate, as the normal range was 100-120.

Kittrell also noted that Oswald’s second child was born on 20^th October 1963. She stated that it was quite strange for him to be at the Employment Commission on 22^nd October 1963, given that plus the fact he already had a job at the Depository. She, therefore, suspected fraud of some kind. 

BURT GRIFFIN AND CRAFARD

That all indicates that at some time before 9 April 1964, Kittrell had independently reached the same conclusion as some Commission staff. What was it?

A memo from Burt Griffin to staff, March 13, 1964, stated that Laverne “Larry Crafard” was one of four persons who they suspected might be impersonating Oswald. [https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/the-tippit-tapes-a-re-examination]

The dossier contains an FBI document dated  August 17, 1965 (page 37 of the dossier), which summarizes the issues. That document states that Kittrell later saw a photograph of Crafard in the Warren Commission papers, and she said he was the person she had interviewed as “Oswald” in October 1963.  It was Counsel Jenner who had asked Ruth Paine on March 20, 1964 (Vol III  p 94) whether Oswald resembled Crafard, and she said he did. 

Further, the Commission Staff note of March 10, 1964, had specifically asked for questioning regarding any discrepancies in the appearance and habits of Oswald at 1026 N Beckley and at Mary Bledsoe’s house (see my earlier article)

[https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/mary-bledsoe-and-the-bus-part-2]

Especially relevant is the Commission staff giving attention to Crafard being a possible decoy for the set-up of Oswald. But not calling Kittrell to the stand. The dossier shows that Kittrell was asked by the person she interviewed in October 1963 if she had visited the State Fair. She said no. Crafard told the FBI that he came to Dallas with the State Fair on 15 October 1963 and was a roustabout for a side show. (Crafard Exhibit 5226, Warren Commission, [https://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh19/pdf/WH19_Crafard_Ex_5226.pdf] ). If it was Crafard, did he ask that question to ensure she would not remember seeing him in that role?

If what Kittrell said is true, then she would indicate two things.

Firstly, Crafard–as the Commission suspected–was impersonating Oswald in Dallas in November 1963. 

Secondly, on the morning of 22 November 1963, the manager of the Texas Theater was in some way made aware of the police using his building for some purpose later in the day.

Overall, Kittrell’s actions and attention would make redundant any plan to involve her in painting a story of an unstable Oswald.  She would be a woman who not only wasn’t duped but was dangerous.

PUTTNG IT ALL TOGETHER

The evidence I have set strongly suggests a group of police officers involved in the planned assassination of Kennedy involving:

• getaway operations, as set out in earlier articles,
• safe movement of Oswald in a Rambler to the Texas Theater (likely assisted by Officer Nelson),
• staking out the Texas Theater (Mentzel),
• evidence planting at the depository (led by Hill).

That was supplemented by a decoy operation which involved the Marsalis bus. Otherwise, why single it out? That element of the operation was supposed to involve Tippit who, as with the other patrol officers, was under the command of Sgt. Hugh Davis. 

A plan to have Oswald portrayed as a decoy lone assassin – who would be eliminated at the Texas Theater having been duped – would require another decoy. Oswald would carry the risk of absconding if he made his own way to the Texas Theater, if he figured what was really happening. But securing Oswald’s passage by chaperoning him goes against a lone nut narrative. That is why a second decoy would be needed to give the appearance that Oswald had made his own way to the Theater, via 1026 N Beckley, walking and on public transport. 

The purpose of visiting 1026 N Beckley would be to explain how ‘Oswald’ had managed to acquire a jacket (having left the Depository without one) as well as a pistol. 

I posit that the Texas Theater operation was supposed to involve Tippit, Mentzel and McDonald, (all under the command of Sgt. Davis), CT Walker and Hawkins (both traffic division). Walker, like Mentzel, was in the area of Oak Cliff at the time of the assassination of Kennedy, near E Jefferson and E10th. Captain Westbrook had the seniority to be the center of co-ordinated corruption of the DPD for that plan. 

The successful operation in Dallas may have been a back-up “off the shelf” operation for the prior unexecuted plans to assassinate Kennedy in Chicago on November 2, 1963, and in Tampa on November 18, 1963. The other two may also have been dress rehearsals for the successful attempt in Dallas.

Per Exhibit 5002, Hill was not formally allocated to Westbrook’s bureau for November. But Hill was working out of Westbrook’s office. Was Hill’s role one of shifting the allocation of officers and leaning on officers to participate?

If Tippit had turned mid-operation, then he would have become a liability to everyone else involved. From 12:30 pm, everyone with any involvement would be guilty of conspiracy to assassinate the President. It would follow that Westbrook would have to go along with and organise an operation to improvise and associate the decoy with the ambush of Tippit. Hutson not going along with that is more evidence that he was not a confederate. Was his chance presence in Hawkins’ car – due to his burned-out clutch – and thence his presence for the arrest of Oswald a factor in Oswald not being killed in the Texas Theater? 

Indeed, was the absence of Tippit also a problem? If his role was protecting the decoy on the way to the theater, then it would follow that he would be the right person to deal with the decoy at the theater. According to work done by Bill Drennas, Tippit himself was seen at Top Ten Records on the morning of the assassinations. [https://www.jfk-assassination.net/top10.htm]

If Oswald had been killed at the Theater, then there would have been no TV coverage of him saying he was a “patsy”. There would have been no identity parades. Jack Ruby would not have needed to kill him. Jack Ruby’s role would have been invisible. So would Larry Crafard’s presence in Dallas. 

What is certain is that Hutson’s presence in Hawkins’ car has enabled us to observe that Hawkins was lying. Just as Owens’ evidence shows that Croy, Hill, and Westbrook were lying, too.

WHERE WAS DAVIS?

In addition to that, there is a missing officer to consider, Sgt. Hugh Davis. CE 2645 says: 

“On May 27, 1964. HUGH F. DAVIS, Sergeant, Dallas, Texas, Police Department, advised that on November 22, 1963, he was the supervising sergeant assigned to Districts 80 and 90, of Platoon 2, which was working the 7:00 am to 3:00 pm. shift that month. Sergeant DAVIS advised he recalled at the time of the assassination call he was driving Unit Number 179, an unmarked car, and was dispatched thereafter to the Texas School Book Depository at Elm and Houston Streets, where he remained until 3:45 P.M. that afternoon. Sergeant DAVIS advised that the course of his travels took him nowhere near 1026 North Beckley in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963.”

The reference to Districts 80 and 90 omitted that Davis had – by the testimony of Owens – taken over control of Tippit (District 78). There is a further discrepancy concerning the command and supervision of southwest Dallas that day. That is apparent from a study of the patrol district numbers and call sign system.

Southwest Dallas comprised patrol districts 71-99, Downtown 101-119, Northwest 21-39, and Northeast 41-69. Call signs that ended in zero, being 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100, 110, were for supervisory use for the next 9 numbers. So, call sign 70 would be the supervisor for 71-79 districts, etc. There were no districts 00 to 09 or 11 to 19. Those were used for senior officers higher up the chain of command. Because Owens replaced southwest Dallas Lieutenant Fulgham, Owens was allocated call sign 19. 

Call sign 70 was allocated to Sgt Samuel E Varner, reported in CE 5002 as in “Special Enforcement Detail”. 80 was allocated to Sgt Hugh Davis. 90 wasn’t allocated that day as Davis was in overt control of 81-89 and 91-99. 

Therefore, by that system, Sgt. Varner (70) was in supervisory charge of districts 71-79, hence Tippit (78). Sgt. Owens (19) was in commanding charge of Varner and Davis.

Looking back to what Owens said to the FBI on 20 May 1963. [https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/the-tippit-tapes-a-re-examination]

“Sergeant OWENS advised he could not furnish any information as to when or how TIPPIT’s assignment from District 78 had been changed as he, OWENS, had gone to lunch and had not returned during the time that TIPPIT’s assignment had been changed.”

Owens then stated that Tippit’s command (78) changed to the same command as Angell (81). That was the command of Davis. 

Varner makes no impact on the patrol radio tapes. Varner also has no mention in CE2645. By what Owens said and the absence of Varner in any patrol radio traffic, it seems Davis took supervisory control over all of southwest Dallas, 70s, 80s, and 90s. On the basis that Davis was in charge of so many officers, one would expect a radio presence from him. 

Davis (80) said “Clear” at 12:38 pm. There is then a call to 80 (Davis) at 12:42 pm, 80 says “80 Code 5,” which is en route. That call is missing from all transcripts, including the independent Shearer/Kimball transcript. That call was 30 seconds before Angell announced he was “still Lansing and 8^th”. There is then no message from Davis for the rest of the day. 

The next mention of Davis is from Owens at 1:42 pm, who asked, “is 80 in service?”. Despatch then called “80”, Owens then said “think he was called to Elm and Central. We need somebody to notify the officer’s wife”. There are then no more calls to, from, or about Davis. 

Hence, Davis was invisible from 12:42 pm (by what remains on the tapes). That is extraordinary given what was going on in Southwest Dallas and given he had supervisory control of all officers there, including the one who was shot. 

The matter of contacting a dead officer’s wife isn’t trivial. So why would someone supervising an out-of-the-ordinary number of patrol officers be incommunicado at the Depository? Was Davis, being the covert commander of Tippit, the person Tippit wished to meet face to face after he left Gloco, heading down Lancaster at speed?  Was this who Mentzel was communicating with?

If Westbrook and Hill set up the decoy element of the ambush of Tippit, then someone would have likely been setting up the killing itself. Witnesses at the murder scene said that Tippit behaved as if he knew the person who shot him. Could it have been someone on the force like policeman Harry Olsen? (McBride, p.584 ) The drive from Olsen’s house-guarding location near Lansing and 8^th to the murder scene was just 500 yards via the Lansing alley.

The positions of Lewis (35) and Parker (56) also require similar analysis to the above. There was no supervisor with call sign 50, which is who Parker should have been accountable to. Sgt. Putnam (60), as a possible substitute for 50 was allocated to other duties.

Bearing in mind that Parker was supposed to be 20 miles away in Garland, northeast Dallas, it is odd that immediately after the radio blackout at 12:30 pm, the Dispatcher asked at 12:33 pm, “Anyone know where 56 is?” That is not an obvious priority question given that the President had just been shot in Downtown Dallas. Making matters worse, when Parker did reply at 12:44 pm, he said he was at “East Jefferson”. Far out of the district and in Southwest Dallas.

Childon (30) would have been in supervisory control of Lewis, but he had no presence on the radio. That could be explained by the fact that the 31-39 patrol districts contained both the Trade Mart (the intended location for Kennedy’s luncheon speech) and Love Field Airport. The patrolling of Northwest and Downtown Dallas was understandably distracted by the visit of Kennedy. Southwest Dallas was not..

I have previously concluded that the Dispatcher Murray Jackson cannot have made the 12:45 pm radio call to Tippit and Nelson. This order sent Tippit to an area in Oak Cliff that was far away from where he was supposed to be.  It also sent patrolman Roger Nelson there, but he never arrived.  The order was not on the first transcript sent to the Warren Commission, which left the question: what was TIppit doing so far out of his area? I also conclude that there were so many irregularities regarding out-of-position officers and silent officers that Jackson could not have been unaware of them all.

Why did Jackson not question why there were so many discrepancies occurring in the 71-99 patrol districts of southwest Dallas? That being the part of Dallas with no exposure to any part of the planned Kennedy visit and motorcade. Those were discrepancies which occurred before the assassination of Kennedy, and then before, as well as after, the assassination of Tippit. 

Warren Commission apologists tend to take all police officer evidence as fact and then discredit the inconvenient evidence of those ordinary members of the public who contradicted the Warren Commission line. 

But any version of events that doesn’t take account of Tippit’s changed command, his actual locations, the lies of particular police officers, as well as tampered tapes will never get close to the truth. 

Click here to read part 1.

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The Death of Tippit – Part 2 – The Timeline and Tapes

By John Washburn

Both Hill and Westbrook’s testimonies confuse the sequences and timelines of particular events. The discovery of the jacket behind Ballew is a particularly relevant marker, as are the various false alarms. Hill even put the jacket discovery in the wrong place.

To help unpick the confusion, listed below are events from the 12:44 All Points Bulletin (APB) to the time officers announced they were outside the Texas Theater. 

Times are taken from the DPD tapes, adjusted to real-time between 12:54 and 1:16 pm (where time was tampered slowly) and again after 1:16 where time was tampered fast.

12:44          APB with description of suspect

12:48          Hill “enroute” to TSBD, in car 207 arrives by 12:50 pm 

12:53         Tippit says he’s at “Lansing 8^th” 

12:56         260 (Harkness) “Get us 508 (Barnes – Crime Lab) down to Texas School Book Depository”. Shells have been found.

12:56         508 (Barnes) is en route to deal with the shells found and ‘crime scene’. 

1:00           Unanswered call to Tippit

1:04           “91 clear” Mentzel. (Per CE2645 at Luby’s) time 3 minutes difference)

1:04           “78” Tippit. Appears twice on CD 280 transcript but disappears in subsequent transcripts. (1:07 DPD time 3 minutes difference)

1:07           Mentzel is asked to do traffic call. Does not go to accident as offloads to Nolan. Is at Beckley and 10^th per CE 2645, a Mobil gas station (1:11 DPD time 4 minutes difference)

1:09           Tippit was shot, driving eastwards from direction of Beckley and 10^th, the Mobil gas station.

1:10           Bowley at the shooting scene arrived having left RL Thornton School Singing Hills at 12:55 pm with daughter (a 13–15-minute drive mainly on freeway). Waits for safety until making radio call (Bowley affidavit of 2 December 1963)

1:10           Fugitive ran onto Jefferson (Lewis, Patterson, Russell, and Reynolds FBI interviews and Warren Commission testimony of Reynolds.) 

1:11           Lewis called DPD. Russell arrived at murder scene. Said Police car arrived in 5 minutes

1:11/1:12  Bowley call. (1:18/1:19 DPD time 7-8 minutes difference). Ambulance arrives exactly 1 minute after Bowley has given the location as, “What’s, what, 404 E10th” 15 seconds after he started his call.

1:14           “Suspect running west on Jefferson”. (Lewis has phoned and Dispatch put the call out) (19:30 DPD time 5:30 minutes difference)

1:14           “19 is en route” (DPD time 1:19-1:20)

1:15           “19 will be en route shortly”

1:16           “85 (RW Walker): “We have a description on this suspect over here on Jefferson, last seen about 300 block of East Jefferson. He’s a white male, about 30, 5’8”; black wavy hair, slender, wearing a white jacket, white shirt, and dark slacks”. (DPD 1:22).

1:16           Poe and then Owens arrive at 410 E10th. “105, we’ve arrived”. “19 is code 6”. (1: 22. DPD 6 minutes difference*). Westbrook and Alexander were with Owens.

1:20           279 says “got jacket in parking lot of garage across from Dudley Hughes.”. (DPD 1:25 5 minutes difference*). Westbrook had found the jacket under a car.

1:20           Hill says on patrol radio he’d already been at the scene and saw the ambulance pass in front when Hill was on his way. 

1:21           Hill says at 12th Beckley with ‘a witness’. (DPD 1:26-1:27 5 minutes difference*)

1:21           Owens is at Ballew “One of the men here at the service station that saw him seems to think he’s in this block, the 400 block of East Jefferson behind this service station. Would you give me some more squads over here?”
DPD (DPD 1:26 5 minutes difference*) told Warren Commission a jacket had been thrown down. Russell for second FBI interview said he went back to that scene with a policeman.

1:28           111 (Officer Pollard said suspect was seen running west in the alley between Jefferson and 10^th) (DPD 1:32 4 minutes difference*)

1:29           Owens. “We’re shaking down these old houses here in 400 Block E Jefferson.” (DPD 1:33 4 minutes difference*). Per WC testimony Owens stayed outside covering. Per WFAA-TV Dallas footage (Reiland the reporter – see later), Hill instigated that search, and then the search moved to the Marsalis Library) *

1:29           Channel 2 221 (Patrolmen R. HAWKINS and E. R. BAGGETT) Can you give Captain WESTBROOK any information as to where he was shot?

1:29           McDonald “Send squad over here to Tenth and Crawford to check out this church basement” *.” (DPD 1:33 1:27 4 minutes difference*)

1:30           CT Walker. “223, he’s in the library at Jefferson — east 500 block Marsalis and Jefferson” * (DPD 1:34 4 minutes difference). That is the time Hutson, Hawkins, and Baggett (see later) were at the Mobil gas station, 10^th and Beckley.

1:31           Owens. “We’re all at the library” (DPD 1:34 3 minutes difference)

1:35           Westbrook (550) made a call “What officer have you got commanding this area over here where this officer was shot?” Then Owens and others return to 410 E 10^th. There is then more WFAA-TV (Reiland) footage which showed Westbrook, Poe, Owens, and Croy examining a wallet at the scene. 

1:40           Westbrook put out a call “and work to North Jefferson. We’ve got a witness that seen him go north. *

1:41           Hill 550/2: The shells at the scene indicate that the suspect is armed with an automatic .38, rather than a pistol.

1:42           Hill (550/2) put out a call on Channel 2. “A witness reports that he was last seen in the Abundant Life Temple about the 400 block. We are fixing to go in and shake it down”*

1:42           Owens (19) asks where 80 (Davis is).

1:44           Hill (550/2) put out a call on Channel 2. “No that’s not the right one.” The Abundant Life Temple was a false alarm.

1:44           Stringer (551 put out a call on Channel 2. “The jacket the suspect was wearing over here on Jefferson bears a laundry tag with the letter B 9738. See if there is any way you can check this laundry tag.” Per Ewell that was at the curb of Crawford Street.

1:45           Radio call that suspect seen entering Texas Theater.

1:47           Hawkins (call sign 211) put out a call “there’s about five squads back here [rear of the Texas Theater] with me now”. 

The asterisked events at 1:29,1:30,1:40 and 1:42 were all false alarms (covered later).

II

As set out in my Tippit Tapes article [https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/the-tippit-tapes-a-re-examination] time was tampered with before the shooting of Tippit with the effect of placing Bowley’s call at 1:11 pm as 1:18-1:19 pm. After 12:55 pm most time stamps are missing, and a few erroneous time stamps appear. Time was slowed down. The reason for that is that anyone leaving 1026 N Beckley at 1:04 pm on foot couldn’t have arrived to kill Tippit at 1:09 pm. 

Researcher Dale Myers says he timed the tape and a stopwatch and put Bowley’s call as at 1:17 pm 41 seconds. However, it’s difficult to reconcile that exercise with the Minnesota Library version of the patrol radio tapes on YouTube. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1-CXd9qdIQ&t=1551s]

That tape starts at 12:15 pm and runs for 1 hour 1 minute with a minute of a stuck repeat just before Bowley’s call which was 3 ½ minutes before the end of the tape. Hence by simple arithmetic, with only an hour of calls, there could be no events on the tape that occurred after 1:15 pm. Bowley’s is 56 ½ minutes from the start, making it 1:11 pm. 

The tape has a 7-minute discrepancy by 1:11 pm which gradually accumulates after 12:54 pm when time stamps begin to disappear systematically. A real interval of 17 minutes was stretched to 24 minutes. 

With time having been sped up, the opposite effect can be observed after Bowley’s call. The consequences of that are apparent in at least two places. By the speeded-up tampered time, Owens appears to have arrived only 3 minutes after the start of Bowley’s call. But in real time it took 4-5 minutes. Owens appears, by DPD time, to have arrived at the library false alarm only one minute after he was “shaking down the houses” in 400 E Jefferson, and simultaneously to CT Walker calling the false alarm. But in real time the interval is 2 minutes.

That can be explained as the tamperers needing to resynchronize with real-time at approximately 1:45 pm because of third-party verifiability of the time of events at the Texas Theater. Time speeds up, thus a real interval of 34 minutes is condensed to 27 minutes.

The 3 December 1963 statement of Hutson correctly put the time of the 1:45 pm call saying a suspect had entered the Texas Theater as 1:45 pm. This is where real-time and DPD time resynchronized in the first transcript, Secret Service Copy CD-290.

But on  December 5, 1963, Hill said that the radio message that a suspect was in the theater was 1:55 pm. McDonald said on December 2, 1963, that 2:00 pm was the time of entering the Texas Theater. C.T. Walker said on 2 December 1963 the 1:45 pm radio call was 2:00 pm.

The date of those officers asserting these false timings is relevant. The first transcript appeared as Secret Service Copy CD-290 dated December 3, 1963. That version did have a 1:45 pm time stamp as the relevant time. But time stamps for 1:18, 1:40, and 1:45 present in CD 290 disappear in the 6 March and 11 August transcripts and from the tape. The 1:45 call sits midway between the 1:44 and 1:46 time stamps in these later versions.

By that evidence, the tampering strategy was still fluid in the first week of December 1963. Therefore some officers, who presumably knew they had to add 10 minutes to time to give a false account for Tippit’s time of death, carried on adding 10 minutes to the time of events at the Texas Theater not knowing that time would end up not tampered! 

Only Hutson didn’t lie on time and as set out later Hutson was only in on Oswald’s arrest by chance. Was Hutson a reason why Oswald left the Texas Theater alive?

OWENS’ VS EWELL’S ACCOUNT VS WESTBROOK’S

Back to the discrepancies in how people arrived at the Tippit murder scene.

Ewell said:- “I left the location at the School Book Depository and jumped into a car driven by Captain Westbrook with Sergeant Stringer. I rode in the back seat as we sped across into Oak Cliff by taking the Houston Street Viaduct right beside the Dallas News.

When we arrived in Oak Cliff, I got a chance to go into a convenience store, McCandles’ Minute Market it was called in those days, just down from the Marsailles [sic] Public Library, and I did get to make a phone call to the city desk asking them to send me a photographer. They didn’t know what I was doing in Oak Cliff. This particular editor was too overpowered by what was going on downtown to pay any attention to what I was trying to tell him, and I know I came out saying, “You know I’ve got to have a photographer out here!”

As I stepped out of this convenience store, next door to it was a two-story boarding house, and there I saw Bill Alexander with an automatic pistol stalking across the balcony very carefully. Alexander always impressed me because, being an assistant district attorney, he was one of those guys from the prosecutor’s office that you saw with the cops. He was a squad car prosecutor. You very seldom saw the district attorney outside of his office.

From there we proceeded to a side street down from where they said J.D. Tippit had been shot not far from East Jefferson. There was another police car there as they were examining a jacket next to the curb which had apparently been located by one of the policemen after Oswald had thrown it down as he ran toward Jefferson. I had a jacket just like it. I remember it as being a light tan windbreaker. I was with Westbrook as we all went over to examine the jacket because it was the only tangible thing we had at the moment that belonged to the killer. In fact, I held the jacket in my hands. I remember that they were talking about a water mark on it that was obviously made by a dry cleaning shop.

They were discussing it when the report came in that the person they thought might be the police officer’s assailant had gone into the Texas Theatre. Now we were on East Jefferson, so I’m thinking that we were about five blocks from that location. Immediately, Captain Westbrook and Sergeant Stringer ran back to their car, which was across the street, and I ran to jump in the backseat. By that time, they were already turning out and accelerating. When I got in the backseat with the door still hanging open, I came out of the car hanging onto the door. They slowed down long enough for me to get back in, as I could have been flung out against the gravel into a curb if I hadn’t held on.

Anyway, when we arrived at the Texas Theatre, we parked right in front and everybody jumped out and went into the lobby. There were other police cars getting there, too. I was very familiar with the Texas Theatre, having lived close by back when we were a younger married couple. At that time, they had some kind of stairway up to the balcony, and I remember somebody kept shouting, “Turn on the house lights! Will somebody please turn on the house lights?”

At 1:44 pm there was this call on Channel 2, which corroborates what Ewell said, which is particularly relevant to time. 

551 (Sergeant H.H. Stringer)         “The jacket the suspect was wearing over here on Jefferson bears a laundry tag with the letter B 9738. See if there is any way you can check this laundry tag.”

The place Ewell describes his arrival, “McCandles Minute Market”, and where he made a phone call can be deduced. It was adjacent to the building Alexander was investigating, a “furniture store”. 409 E Jefferson was described in the 1961 Dallas Directory as “One Stop Drive in Grocery” (later to become Dean’s Dairy Way). Next to that, westwards, was 401 E Jefferson, the Texaco garage. Next to it eastwards 413 ½ an apartment building, and then 417 S&J Used Furniture Exchange. 

Ewell’s account is consistent with patrol radio and also WFAA-TV reporter Ron Reiland. Reiland in the TV film described Sgt. Hill as instigating the search of what Reiland called “antique shops”. Reiland says:-. 

“Another man, Officer Hill, and several others ran into the front of the building with drawn pistols. I ran around the back of the building with my camera in hopes that if they flushed this man that we were looking for, he would come out the back door right into the face of the camera.”

This is from the WFAA-TV broadcast, “A Year Ago Today”, November 22, 1964, at 36.20 minutes. [https://youtu.be/DBOvB5RKDOo?si=TYNIGZLvlzZb0DJa]

Ewell describes the examination of the jacket on the curb, which would be Crawford Street. Ewell was not describing the discovery of the jacket as that occurred in the parking lot near the alley before 1:21 pm.

Ewell’s description of events around the time of his arrival – which he said was with Westbrook driving – places it no earlier than the events around 1:30 pm (real-time). Whereas Owens said he arrived in Oak Cliff with Westbrook and that time was 1:16 pm. 

Owens and Ewell could both have been telling the truth if Westbrook had done the journey twice in quick succession. The first journey was exactly as Owens said, and arriving at 1:16 pm in Owens’ car. The second journey was exactly as Jim Ewell said, and for that second journey, Westbrook had acquired the unmarked car that Ewell said Westbrook later drove to the front of the Texas Theatre. 

A need, and the means, for Westbrook to go back to the Depository would be car 207. The car would have to be removed from Oak Cliff, or else it would stick out like a sore thumb. I therefore posit that Westbrook very shortly after arriving with Owens rendezvoused with car 207 (Hill) somewhere near the alley west of Crawford and took car 207 back to the Depository. 

If Westbrook revealed how he’d arrived twice it would destroy the alibi for car 207. That explains why in his evidence he would conflate the two journeys into one. Thus turning Owens into an unknown officer, leaving out Ewell and Alexander, but adding Stringer. 

By doing that, Westbrook would also have to lie about his method of arriving at the Texas Theater. He couldn’t admit – which was Ewell’s account – that he’d driven the unmarked car parked at the front. That would undermine everything, including his dubious story of walking from City Hall. 

WESTBROOK – THE ALLEY AND THE JACKET

In the extract of his testimony above Westbrook omitted his activities during the 14 minutes after he had arrived with Owens (1:16 pm). Westbrook first tried to mention only the library debacle (1:30 pm). Counsel Ball was aware of that omission, so he asked a question he knew the answer to.

Mr. BALL. So, what did you do after that?

Mr. WESTBROOK. I went back to the city hall and resumed my desk.

Mr. BALL. Did you ever find some clothing?

Mr. WESTBROOK. That was before, Mr. Ball.

Mr. BALL. When was that?

Mr. WESTBROOK. Actually, I didn’t find it-it was pointed out to me by either some officer that-that was while we were going over the scene in the close area where the shooting was concerned. Someone pointed out a jacket to me that was laying under a car and I got the jacket and told the other to take the license number.

Mr. BALL. When did this happen? You gave me a sort of a resume of what you had done. But you omitted this incident.

Mr. WESTBROOK. I tell you what-this occurred shortly-let me think just a minute. We had been to the library and there is a little bit more conversation on the radio-I got on the radio and I asked the dispatcher about along this time, and I think this was after the library situation, if there had been a command post set up and who was in charge at the scene, and he, told me Sergeant Owens, and about that time we saw Sergeant Owens pass. 

Mr. BALL. What do you mean by “command post”?

Westbrook was struggling. Why? Because the call announcing that the jacket of the fugitive was found in the parking lot of Ballew Texaco Service Station, 401 E Jefferson, was ten minutes earlier than the library incident – at approximately 1:20 pm. (Call sign 279 being Officer Mackie or Griffin.) 

279   We believe we’ve got this suspect on shooting this officer out here. Got his white jacket. Believe he dumped it on this parking lot behind this service station at 400 block East Jefferson across from Dudley Hughes and he had a white jacket on. We believe this is it.

DIS:   10-4. You do not have the suspect. Is that correct?

279: No, just the jacket, laying on the ground. 

DIS:   10-4.

Having been caught out Westbrook then said:

Mr. BALL. Was that before you went to the scene of the Tippit shooting?

Mr. WESTBROOK. Yes, sir; that was before we went to that scene.

Mr. BALL. That was after you left the library?

Mr. WESTBROOK. After we left the library. I got out of the car and walked through the parking lot.

Mr. BALL. What parking lot?

Mr. WESTBROOK. I don’t know-it may have been a used-car lot.

Mr. BALL. On what street?

Mr. WESTBROOK. It was actually on Jefferson, but the place where this jacket was found would have been back closer to the alley, Mr. Ball.

Mr. BALL. The alley of what?

Mr. WESTBROOK. Between Jefferson and whatever the next street is over there.

Mr. BALL. Tenth Street is the street north.

Mr. WESTBROOK. What street?

Mr. BALL. You see, the street directly north of Jefferson is 10th Street.

Mr. WESTBROOK. It would be between Jefferson and 10th Street?

Mr. BALL. And where with reference to Patton?

Mr. WESTBROOK. Well, it would be toward town,

Westbrook was obfuscating and changing the subject and there is a sense of exasperation in the tone of Ball. Westbrook couldn’t have gone to the parking lot to find the jacket after the library incident, as the jacket had been found before. What occurred after the library incident was it being discussed on Crawford Street. 

But making matters worse for him he: did find the jacket. An FBI report of 3 December 1963 states:

“Captain Doughty stated that this jacket was found by Captain Westbrook of the Dallas Police Department in an open parking lot west of Patton Street between 10^th and Jefferson Streets, Dallas, Texas.”

[https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10672#relPageId=209&search=%22doughty%22_and%20%22westbrook%22]

The police record of the jacket was filed by Westbrook at 3 pm on the 22nd. Note it has Westbrook’s name at the top. [https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth339366/m1/1/]

But the same document submitted to the Warren Commission has Westbrook’s name obscured by a tilted strip attached over his name, in a way no other documents are.  (Vol XXIV CE2003, p117.) [https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh24/pdf/WH24_CE_2003.pdf]

If one looks carefully, only the words at the top “SUBMITTED TOO”, survived for the Warren Commission. The words “DPD Personnel Office” have not survived, despite being darker ink strikes in the original DPD version of the document. Those words cannot have been obscured accidentally, merely by a strip placed over those words at that angle. Nor by a parallel strip, as the words “OFFICER” and “OF” would also have survived. 

The words on the strip that say it was released from “our” – DPD – Crime Lab on 28 November 1963 are superfluous. Both versions lower down state that the evidence was released to Vince Drain of the FBI on 28 November 1963.

III

For the HSCA in 1978, Westbrook admitted to finding the jacket. He said: “[he] was behind this location [Ballew] with Stringer when they found the jacket under the parked car across the alley from the rear of the church. Doesn’t recall disposition of the jacket.”

So, by this, Westbrook found the jacket in the parking lot. Before the radio call at 1:20 pm, announcing it had been found. If Westbrook for the HSCA was correct, then how did Stringer arrive? Was he the other person in car 207 with Hill that tooted outside 1026 N Beckley?

When Westbrook was interviewed by author Larry Sneed in 1988 he’d again forgotten Stringer’s name. But he placed himself finding the jacket having been in the alley. 

“…I started walking up the alley, and I can’t even remember who the officers were at the time, one officer, whether he was with me or whether he was coming the other way, I can’t recall; but he said, ‘Look! There’s a jacket under the car.’ I think it was an old Pontiac sitting there if I remember right. So, I walked over and reached under and picked up the jacket, and this eventually turned out to be Oswald’s jacket.”

To summarise. Westbrook, who had arrived at the scene with Owens, has a hole in his story, concerning his whereabouts from 12:45 pm to 1:11 pm and then again after 1:16 pm to at least 1:30 pm. He tried to not mention the jacket to Ball and is defensive when it is brought up. He oscillates between the finding of the jacket just before 1:21 pm, with the discussion of the jacket at 1:44 pm. That is consistent with his conflating his two arrivals.

All references on patrol radio Channel 1 describing the fugitive who ran down Patton and then E Jefferson including the finding of the jacket at 1:21 pm say it was white and that the fugitive had a white shirt. There was no mention of tan, gray, or any other color. But the jacket Westbrook submitted as evidence with the cleaning tag was gray. Jacket-less Oswald himself was wearing a brown shirt when arrested.

If Westbrook falsified the jacket submission in his submission of 3:00 pm on November 22, 1963, it would follow he may have falsified other evidence submitted at the same time. The question, therefore, arises whether Westbrook did find a jacket before 1:20 pm because he’d rendezvoused with car 207 and essentially planted it to then announce finding it. A corollary then arises: whether by the time he’d left Oak Cliff and then come back, he had a reason to switch the jacket. (A reason for there being two jackets is offered later.) 

A map is useful to place the alley into perspective, as it’s the same alley where Doris Holan saw a police car shortly before Tippit was shot.

WESTBROOK AND THE WALLET

Westbrook omitted another incident from his testimony. At approximately 1:35 pm, WFAA-TV Dallas filmed police officers looking at a wallet Owens was holding. The news coverage referred to it as Oswald’s wallet.

FBI agent Bob Barrett asked him, ‘Do you know who Lee Harvey Oswald is?’ And, ‘Do you know who Alek Hidell is?’

Barrett confirmed that in this video interview of 22 February 2011. [https://emuseum.jfk.org/objects/33007] At 34 minutes in, Barrett describes driving to the Tippit murder scene in his own car and seeing Westbrook with the wallet in his hand. 

FBI Agent Hosty said: “Westbrook called Barrett over and showed him the wallet and [the] identifications…Westbrook took the wallet into his custody [and] Barrett told me [Hosty] that if I had been at the scene with Westbrook, I would have immediately known who Oswald was.”

There is no reference to any wallet on the radio tapes, the Warren Commission Report, papers, or police records. It does not feature in the evidence in CE 2003 that was filed by Westbrook at 3:00 pm on 22 November 1963. 

The account that Westbrook found the wallet is consistent with the radio call from Westbrook at 1:35 pm asking where Owens is, Owens then returning to the murder scene from the library to deal with it, and then Westbrook – inconveniently – being filmed. 

Westbrook discovering the wallet that no other bystander or officer had found in the previous 26 minutes after Tippit was shot is suggestive of more evidence planting. And in this case then losing it before 3:00 pm, as it does not appear in the report that recorded the finding of the jacket filed at 3:00 pm. The official account was that the link with Oswald and 1026 N Beckley as an address was not made until after 3:00 pm when police and sheriffs arrived at the Paine residence in Irving. 

But Earlene Roberts said the police arrived looking for Oswald at 1026 N Beckley shortly after 1:30 pm (Affidavit of Earlene Roberts, 5 December 1963 https://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh7/pdf/WH7_Roberts_aff.pdf). She had been joined by Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, who timed their arrival 10 minutes after hearing Kennedy was dead from the radio as they were sitting in their car. CBS Radio put its announcement out at 1:22 pm, faster than Walter Cronkite on US network TV at 1:38 pm.

Not only did the Johnsons put the police there just after 1:30 pm, but Mr Johnson said it was for the murder of Tippit. 

Mr. BELIN, All right. In any case, this man, O. H. Lee, came to rent a room from you or from your wife?

Mr. Johnson. Yes.

Mr. BELIN. Could you describe how you came to find out that this man had another name other than O. H. Lee?

Mr. Johnson. Well, it was when the officers came looking for him.

Mr. BELIN. When was this?

Mr. Johnson. Uh-after Tippit was shot, the police_____

Mr. BELIN. This would have been on November 22, 1963.

Mr. Johnson. Yes.

Mr. BELIN. And can you state what happened?

Mr. Johnson. Well, they just came down there looking for-uh-Oswald.

Mr BELIN. Did they say what his full name was?

Mr. Johnson. Yes I believe they did.

Mr Belin. Lee Harvey Oswald.

Mr Johnson. I believe they did.

The Warren Commission files have a note of 8 March from Norman Redlich which says 

“it would appear that the lead to 1026 N. Beckley would have had to come from some source other than the Paines.”

[https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/6/4606/7460606/content/arcmedia/dc-metro/rg-272/605417-key-persons/johnson_a_c_mr/johnson_a_c_mr.pdf]

Note how Counsel Belin doesn’t press on Redlich’s point. Instead, Belin changed the subject after Johnson’s reference to “after Tippit was shot the police ___” by the inane interruption as to whether this was 22 November. The effect of what Belin did was to change the question from the time to the irrelevant matter of the date.

Westbrook planting “Oswald’s” wallet at the Tippit murder scene after 1:30 pm could have caused detectives to go to 1026 N. Beckley shortly after that. But the wallet by 3 pm was ‘forgotten’. Oswald had a wallet on him on his arrest and two wallets point to a frame-up.

A CONJURING TRICK?

A plan to kill Oswald inside the Texas Theater may have failed for a simple reason. Too many decent officers moved into Oak Cliff as a result of their rational response to the murder of a colleague. Some of those reached the Texas Theater, including Officer Hutson (covered later). Hutson was in physical contact with Oswald for the arrest.

A reason for two jackets – and Oswald was not wearing a jacket on arrest – can be explained by linking with the ill thought through planting of the wallet at the Tippit murder scene. Oswald was not wearing a jacket on arrest. Whoever left 1026 N Beckley had put on a jacket. It would be a logical part of a frame-up to need to have a second jacket for Oswald. That jacket would merely need to be said to have been “found” under the seat; as if Oswald had taken it off in the cinema–with the wallet in it. A frame-up would be complete by taking a dead Oswald’s own wallet from his pants pockets.

If the function of a second jacket was to perpetrate that stunt, then that particular jacket wouldn’t need to be submitted as evidence, nor be identical, given the darkened cinema. The logical one to present as evidence would be the one that the decoy had been wearing in broad daylight. Once he was secure that jacket could have been switched. The wallet with ID in it would in any case be the immediate point of focus. 

It would have helped the narrative if the decoy entering the theater had a jacket on because the evidence indicates that Oswald himself on entry didn’t. It would connect Oswald to what the decoy was wearing.

But the unplanned murder of Tippit caused an ill-thought-through mistake, The decoy wouldn’t be expected to ditch a jacket as the decoy wasn’t intended to participate in a tableau to frame Oswald for the murder of Tippit. That scenario can explain why Westbrook planted the wallet on his second return and later changed the jacket as well as that jacket. It is therefore posited that the muddle over wallets and jackets was a result of improvisation messing up the intended conjuring trick.

Given Westbrook first arrived by car with Owens, he couldn’t have carried the spare jacket – with the wallet inside –with him. It would be an obvious plant. But by approximately 1:30 pm Westbrook had acquired the spare jacket and the wallet. 

HILL AT 12^th AND BECKLEY

There is a further issue. At 1:21 pm under call sign 550/2 and attributed to Hill is:

I’m at Twelfth and Beckley now. Have a man in the car with me that can identify the suspect if anybody gets him.

 

Twelfth and Beckley is 0.6 miles away from the Tippit murder scene, and 0.4 miles from Ballew. There is no further reference on the radio to this witness. 

Hill testified regarding his response to what Owens said on the radio at 1:21 pm:

At this time, about the time this broadcast came out, I went around and met Owens. I whipped around the block. I went down to the first intersection east of the block where all this incident occurred, and made a right turn, and traveled one block, and came back up on Jefferson.

That is describing Hill moving around the sides of the blocks that contained Ballew. But if Hill was meeting Owens at Ballew at 1:21 pm, he couldn’t be at 12^th and Beckley at the same time. 12^th and Beckley is not close to where the witness and action was at Ballew Texaco, as it was a total of 6 blocks away. 

If Hill had indeed found a witness to the fugitive on the run he would not have made the mistake of mixing up Dudley Hughes’s parking lot with that of Ballew. Hill avoided any mention of 12^th and Beckley in his Warren Commission testimony. That leads to an indication that Hill, by, 1:21 pm, was at 12^th and Beckley, and was lying to cover that up. 12^th and Beckley is closer to where Mentzel put himself (see later).

A cop lying persistently in a way that was inconsistent with other honest officers must have been both comfortable being blatant and able to bat off any officer challenging him. Did Hill intimidate officers?

A researcher and Warren Commission advocate Dale Myers – rather than identifying Hill’s pattern of inconsistencies – has tried to explain that 12^th and Beckley call as Hill carrying Harold Russell. [https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/26874-the-wallet-at-the-tippit-scene-a-simpler-solution/page/4/]

Russell worked at Warren Reynolds’ garage which was near the Tippit murder scene where Jefferson is crossed by Patton. Russell was a witness to the fugitive on the run. Russell did not refer to being in a police car in his first FBI statement of 21 January 1964. Myers instead relies on Russell’s FBI interview of 23 February 1964. Russell did then refer to being in a police car. 

However, that doesn’t help the case to account for that call of Hill. Russell had run to the scene of the shooting of Tippit and said that he went in a police car from the Tippit murder scene to the location where Russell had last seen the assailant – which was Ballew at 401 E Jefferson – with officers, plural.

He stated the officers, whose names he did not know, put him in a patrol car and had him point to the area where he had last seen the man with the pistol. RUSSELL stated at this point he left the officers and then went in a nearby drug store and then went about his business and thought no more about it.

 

[https://nara-media-001.s3.amazonaws.com/arcmedia/dc-metro/rg-272/605417-key-persons/russell_harold/russell_harold.pdf])

 

Per the 1961 Dallas City Directory, the nearest drugstore was Skillern’s and Sons, 325 E Jefferson at the junction with Crawford, 10 yards from Ballew. The person to take Russell was Owens. Owens in this call at 1:21 pm was at Ballew, within 5 minutes of arriving at the Tippit murder scene.

One of the men here at the service station that saw him seems to think he’s in this block, the 400 block of East Jefferson behind this service station. Would you give me some more squads over here?

That is not evidence of Hill taking Russell to 12th and Beckley and being there at 1:21 pm. The said researcher also made a song and dance as to how witnesses at Ballew could have known a police officer had been shot by the fugitive, and also made a mystery of who had made the call to police regarding the fugitive. But the answer appears in the same FBI files that the researcher used to vindicate Hill. 

Reynolds’ employee LJ Lewis made the call. [https://nara-media-001.s3.amazonaws.com/arcmedia/dc-metro/rg-272/605417-key-persons/russell_harold/russell_harold.pdf]

While Warren Reynolds ran to Ballew, Russell ran to the murder scene. Owens then took Russell to Ballew arriving by 1:21 pm.  By which time a jacket was found. There’s no mystery in that. The mystery is why Hill was at 12^th and Beckley at 1:21 pm and why Hill was dissembling. 

Another red flag is that Lewis was asked to change his story by a letter from the Commission on 21 August 1964. [www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh21/pdf/WH21_PattersonBM_Ex_B.pdf]

The outcome of the revised affidavit is that Lewis was supposed to have made the call to the police before he saw the fugitive, i.e. merely in response to hearing the shots. But the revision actually makes matters worse. For Lewis to have seen the fugitive after making the labored call, due to the confusion at DPD HQ, the fugitive would have had to linger whilst Lewis made his call.

Of all the things the Warren Commission could have followed up on 21 August 1964 it is very odd it had to be this. And rather than dealing with a ‘discrepancy’ where none existed, it created one. 

FOG AND WITNESS INTIMIDATION

Hagiographical accounts of a tainted police force tend to miss the bigger picture. Indeed, Warren Commission apologists go to great lengths to suggest that Earlene Roberts got the number of the police car ‘207’ wrong. But for her to choose three digits at random which not only matched a DPD police car in service that day but matched the car used by the prevaricator Hill–and given an alibi by the persistently dubious Westbrook–would be statistically improbable. 

The question arises whether Hill and others ever influenced or intimidated witnesses and researchers who might have challenged the circumstances of the Tippit shooting. Someone intimidated, Acquilla Clemons, an important witness to the Tippit murder. And she said they were police.

What is also relevant is that all four witnesses at Reynolds Motors were intimidated. They were Reynolds, Lewis, Patterson, and Russell. 

Warren Reynolds himself was shot in the head on 23 January 1963 and survived. He had told the FBI on 21 January 1964 that he could not identify Oswald as the fugitive. He told the FBI on 3 March 1963 that General Walker had asked to see him, He did not oblige then, but then did see Walker on 8 July 1963. He then appeared before the Warren Commission on 22 July 1963 and said he now did recognize Oswald.

Why would General Walker be involved in such matters? Unless of course, he had an interest in keeping the lid on things. 

General Edwin Walker was the only US General to resign in the 20^th century. He was a far-right segregationist whom Robert Kennedy had committed to a mental institution. Walker was arrested for promoting a race riot at Ole Miss. riots at University of Mississippi. This was after the admission of a black student into the all-white university. Walker claimed that every US President since 1933 had been a communist. Walker had failed to secure the Democratic nomination to be Governor of Texas to John Connally. Such was the then Southern Democratic Party.

Harold Russell’s FBI statement of 23 February 1964 also addresses intimidation directly. (Note. He wrongly assumed that being shot in the head meant being dead). 

 

“RUSSELL stated about one month ago WARREN REYNOLDS, brother of the lot owner, was found shot to death at the car lot. RUSSELL stated after that he began to get worried about what he had seen, because WARREN REYNOLDS had also seen what he had seen the day of the President’s’ death and had gone in the direction where the man with the pistol had gone. When he had disappeared on Jefferson Street and had followed the man with the pistol down the street. RUSSELL stated last Monday JOHNNY REYNOLDS fired him and told him he was firing him because “he did not want to find him shot on the lot like WARREN REYNOLDS “. RUSSELL stated he did not question REYNOLDS and left the lot, but since then has worried that someone is out to shoot him like REYNOLDS because of what he saw. RUSSELL stated he had not received any threats of any kind and did not know if his life was in danger, but was worried about it because of what he saw.”

It is also interesting the reference by Reynolds to “what he saw” rather than merely a matter of identification, which would be “who he saw”. Did Reynolds in looking up the alley, or Russell, see a police car in the alley? There were other witnesses who failed to identify Oswald. Was there something else about what Reynolds saw, that Russell also knew?

What Reynolds, LJ Lewis, Pat Patterson, and Russell saw was clearly a problem. One was shot, one thought he would be too and moved out of Dallas, and the other two had to make late adjustments to their prior testimony. Patterson on 25^thAugust had to say he recognised Oswald when he previously hadn’t. [www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh21/pdf/WH21_PattersonBM_Ex_B.pdf]

From August 1964 the Commission had ceased to be an investigation of the facts and was seeking to twist facts and plug gaps to make things fit the narrative of their conclusions. Something now known to have been written into its unpublished terms of reference.

There was other substantial witness intimidation besides at the car lot. As we have seen Aquila Clemons, who saw the shooting of Tippit, said two men were involved. They ran off in different directions and neither was Oswald. She was visited afterward by a policeman who told her to shut up. Domingo Benavides—another witness to the Tippit killing had a brother who was shot dead in a bar in Dallas in 1964. (Michael Benson, Who’s Who in the JFK Assassination, p. 37) Benavides put that down to mistaken identification of himself. 

As John Kelin notes in his last essay ad Kennedys and King, Helen Markham was another witness who was intimidated. Markham said she put her hands over her eyes on witnessing Tippit being shot. By chance, she also worked at Eat Well Café right by the Carousel Club and Larry Crafard ate there every day.

Assistant Counsel Liebeler flagged the problem with Markham in this way:

I forgot to mention that some question might be raised when the public discovers that there was only one eyewitness to the Tippit killing, that is, one person who saw Oswald kill him. All the rest only saw subsequent events. Mrs.Markham is nicely buried there, but I predict not for long. [https://aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol11/pdf/HSCA_Vol11_WC_3E2_Liebeler.pdf]

 

But what Liebeler didn’t deal with is the fact that Helen Markham told Officers Poe and Jez on their arrival at the scene that “When she went to the aid of the officer the suspect had threatened to kill her.” Officers Poe and Jez filed a report on 22 November to that effect. [http://www.cultor.org/Documents/JFK-Dallas/Box%201/0090-001.gif]

LET US CONJECTURE

There has to be a reason why Westbrook and Croy prevaricated. The benefit to Westbrook of the improbable claim that he had walked may be that some officers had seen him on the street along a part of Elm, at a time later than his arrival at the Depository by car with Stringer. That later time thus connected to Westbrook and Croy getting the decoy off the Marsalis bus, with Westbrook then returning to the Depository and Croy headed to 1026 N Beckley.

Mary Bledsoe (who lived on Marsalis, hence would get a Marsalis bus) said because of the delay to her bus she caught a bus that was behind. On the basis that drivers were disciplined if their buses ran early, then the second Marsalis bus she caught couldn’t have been running early. By that, the McWatters bus was late enough to fall behind the schedule of the next bus. 

With at least a 10-minute interval between buses, then the hold-up at the time and point “Oswald” got off was not less than 10 minutes. But the lady got to Union Station before 1:00 pm. That places disembarkation somewhere between 12:50 pm and 12:55 pm, later than the Warren Commission timeline. That gives a timescale that would fit with alternative arrangements for moving the decoy being triggered at approximately 12:46 pm. 

It would be logical that if there was an impromptu operation to take the decoy off the bus, and car 207 was not used for that, then another car would have dropped the decoy off. Croy’s car.

All of that sits Westbrook arriving at the Depository by or before 12:57 pm having dealt with getting the decoy off the bus who was then taken away by Croy. That timeline would have given Westbrook from 12:57 pm to 1:11 pm time to consider his next steps whilst he was at the Depository. 

By that Hill can have been given verbal command – presumably by Westbrook – at the Depository. Hill then left at 1:02 pm in car 207 and went to 1025 N Beckley.

The 12:44 pm APB description of Oswald would mean that any decoy looking similar couldn’t be waiting outside the rooming house for the indeterminate period it might take for his ride to arrive. Car 207 would need to toot to indicate it had arrived and it was safe to come out. 

Rationally too would be Croy staking out the rooming house – to ensure that the decoy did not get cold feet and disappear.

If Hill was in position behind 410 E 10^th at 1:07 pm, that would sit with Tippit at 10^thand Beckley Mobil garage – where I suggested Mentzel was, being told to set off east along 10^th at 1:07 pm.

By that assumption then it would be Hill and the other officer (Croy or Stringer) who were also seen by Doris Holan in the rear alley behind 410 E 10^th. And one or both were also seen by Virginia Davis immediately after she’d called the police before the ambulance arrived.

Then when the news of Tippit’s murder was put out on the radio, Westbrook got into Owens’ car with Bill Alexander, arriving at 410 E10th at 1:16 pm. Then immediately after arrival, running in the direction of the alley to rendezvous with the occupants of car 207. Planting a jacket. Westbrook then returned car 207 to the Depository, returning to Oak Cliff at approximately 1:29 pm, this time with Ewell and Stringer in Westbrook’s unmarked car. The round trip would take 8-9 minutes.

Trying to move the decoy by car as quickly as possible in order to allow for the elimination of Tippit as soon as possible explains the difficulty the Warren Commission had in replicating those movements, on the assumption it was lone Oswald doing all that by foot, bus, foot, cab, foot and again on foot.

With the decoy no longer in car 207, the only car for him to have been transferred to was Mentzel’s car directly, or via Hill if he had borrowed Poe’s car.

As I showed in my article on Mentzel, Mentzel was at 10^th and Beckley, the Mobil garage, from 1:07 pm. The alley behind E10th ends at Beckley at the piece of land that the garage sat on. Hill’s call makes sense if it was either to advertise to Mentzel where he was, or to advertise to confederates that the switch of cars had occurred. 

HILL AND THE SHELLS

At approximately 1:41 pm and 3-4 minutes before it was announced that a suspect had entered the Texas Theater, Hill said on the radio. 

The shells at the scene indicate that the suspect is armed with an automatic .38, rather than a pistol.

The phraseology Hill used is also unnecessary. If someone thinks someone has been shot with an automatic, then they are shot with an automatic. There’s no need to say, “rather than a pistol”, any more than say “rather than a rifle” or “rather than a shotgun”. Hill’s comment suggests he knew that Oswald would have a pistol and not an automatic, and that was a problem.

Apologists for Hill have also argued that he mistook the shells of a pistol for an automatic. But that isn’t consistent with his emphatic ruling out of a non-automatic weapon. Hill denied to the Commission that he had made that call which by the timing of the transcript was 1:40 pm.

Mr. BELIN. Now, also turning to Sawyer Deposition Exhibit A, I notice that there is another call on car No. 550-2. Was that you at that time, or not, at 1:40 p.m.? Would that have been someone else?

Mr. HILL. That probably is R. D. Stringer [note the manuscript has A.B Stringer, the relevant Stringer is HH Stringer, there was an RD Stringer in the force who does not feature that day: Author’s note ].

Mr. BELIN. That is not you, then, even though it has a number 550-2?

Mr. HILL. Yes; because Stringer quite probably would have been using the same call number, because it is more his than it was mine. Really, but I didn’t have an assigned call number, so I was using a number I didn’t think anybody would be using, which is call 550-2, instead of the Westbrook to Batchelor as it indicates here.

By that deception –which as we shall see was deliberate–he wriggled out of answering the question of automatic versus pistol. 

How do we know it was deliberate? Because later in life Hill admitted, in his 1993 Sixth Floor Museum interview, that he did make that call. He said that it was because of the close proximity of the shells at the murder scene that he assumed they were from an automatic. (Shells from an automatic are self-ejected). But that fails too. Only two shells were found near each other and those were yards apart.

The expression that code “550/2” was “more his [Stringer] than mine” is very odd. None of the police transcripts put calls out as 500/2 as Stringer. The only call of Stringer was the one on Channel 2 using 551. Hill also testified:

I told Poe to maintain the chain of evidence as small as possible, for him to retain these at that time, and to be sure and mark them for evidence, and then turn them over to the crime lab when he got there, or to homicide. 

Despite that command to maintain the chain of custody, it was Hill and Westbrook who broke the chain of custody of the pistol that was purportedly retrieved from Oswald but failed to go off as the firing pin was bent. Hill took the pistol from the Texas Theater and kept it until placing it on Field’s desk. But the personnel department—where Hill was working from at the time– isn’t a crime lab or homicide department. (Michael Benson, Who ‘s Who in the JFK Assassination, p. 185)

The cartridges that Officer Poe had acquired at the Tippit murder scene and marked with his initials disappeared. There were no marks on the ones presented as evidence. This is made even more odd by the fact that Hill allegedly told the officer to mark them for evidence. (Benson, p. 364)

Hill’s confidence in his prevarications on KCRC Radio on 22 November 1963 about his time of arrival at the Tippit murder scene would have been based on his not knowing Earlene Roberts had seen car 207.  And also not knowing there would be a Commission that would have patrol radio transcripts and decent officer testimonies which contradicted his account. 

Hill said in his interview for the Sixth Floor Museum in 1993 that he was working in Westbrook’s office not only dealing with applications but “investigating complaints”. The personnel office would be an ideal place to lean on officers by holding things against them. He may have had the power to make any officers uncomfortable without their being a collaborator. 

A question is why didn’t Hill and Westbrook synchronize their stories as to how they got from the Depository to the Tippit murder scene? There is an answer. Westbrook, by not naming the officer who drove, created wriggle room for forgetfulness as an excuse. Had he and Hill synchronized their false stories to a consistent one, then the uncovering of one as false would bring down the other, proving they were in league. Placed in an invidious position an imperfect option may be the least worst choice. 

Click here to read part 3.

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The Death of Tippit – Part 1 – Where was Westbrook?

By John Washburn

This article follows on from my prior articles. [https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/the-tippit-tapes-a-re-examination] and [https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/the-missing-calls-of-officer-mentzel-pt-1] These identified problems with the DPD tapes and transcripts, as well correcting misinformation regarding the timing of Officer J. D. Tippit being seen at Gloco gas station.

I have not regurgitated or revised anyone else’s prior analysis. I’ve used source data.

The Dallas Police Department in 1963 operated from City Hall, at Harwood and Commerce/ Main Streets. It was the parking basement of City Hall where Jack Ruby shot and killed Lee Oswald on 24 November 1963. The Presidential motorcade turned right at Main Street by City Hall, passing at 12:25pm. 

This three-part series sets out the irregular movements of a handful of police officers in Downtown Dallas from City Hall; from around 12:45pm to the time police were alerted to the murder of Tippit and then proceeded to that scene at 410 E 10th, Oak Cliff.

The command structure of southwest Dallas for 22 November 1963 was changed with Lieutenant Fulgham being sent to traffic school at Northwestern University, Illinois. Sgt. Calvin Owens stood in for him. But overt control over Tippit was changed at some time before 12:30 pm to covert control by Sgt Hugh Davis.

Owens’ Warren Commission testimony has the advantage that it is wholly consistent with what is on the radio tapes and in CE 2645, the allocation of cars and the modified command structure on 22 November 2022. Indeed, Owens was the only person who revealed to the Warren Commission that Tippit’s command had changed over the lunch break. 

Owens asked difficult questions on the radio after Tippit was shot: such as what was he doing in Oak Cliff? His evidence conflicts with that of superior officers who had testimonies that were self-contradictory. His questions also provide reinforcing evidence that the 12:45 pm radio call from dispatcher Murray Jackson calling Tippit to Oak Cliff was an after-the-event fake. Owens wouldn’t have needed to ask had he heard that call. Jackson would have been able to answer if in real time he had given such an instruction.

Owens also asked, on patrol radio in the hour after Tippit was shot, why no one had contacted Tippit’s wife and asked where was Sgt. Davis, the covert supervisor of Tippit. Davis never replied. Why? Where was Davis? 

None of those irregularities that Owens was dropping out were followed up on by the Commission.

Officer Thomas Alexander Hutson displays similar consistency as Owens. He let several cats out of the bag, including that Officers Hawkins and Baggett made a landline call from the Mobil gas station at 10^th and Beckley at approximately 1:30pm. That is the location my Mentzel article [https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/the-missing-calls-of-officer-mentzel-pt-1] placed Mentzel and Tippit at 1:07pm, two minutes prior to Tippit being shot. 

Owens and Hutson are a litmus test of how officers ought to act and testify. 

II

Contrast this to Captain William Westbrook, head of DPD Personnel. His testimony displays either deliberate lies, or the forgetfulness and cognitive dissonance of someone not suited for gainful employment in any police role. If infiltration of DPD needed a senior person with the power to co-opt, coerce and corrupt then Westbrook fits the requirements. His testimony lends itself to suspicion. 

Westbrook’s testimony regarding 22 November 1963 included not being able to remember the name of police officers who drove him to the Tippit murder scene–and later to the Texas Theater (which is and was actually a cinema). This is despite a journalist being in the same car as Westbrook on both occasions, saying the driver was Westbrook himself. The evidence presented here helps explain why Westbrook would have done that. There are also problems with the accounts of how Westbrook, Reserve Sgt. Kenneth H Croy and Sgt. Jerry Hill got to the Tippit murder scene and what they were doing once there. 

Hill was a patrol officer and former head of press relations with DPD. He said he had been seconded to Westbrook’s Personnel Department to ‘investigate complaints’ shortly before 22 November 1963 and to vet “prospective police officers”. Hill was an odd choice for any ethical role (as covered later). He was reported to the FBI by a news reporter in California for false statements made on radio news the evening of 22 November 1963.

Hill tried to attach alibis for himself as a shadow to Sgt. Owens – to account for how Hill got to the Tippit murder scene. Alibis that Owens did not reciprocate. As covered later, appropriating other people’s movements was a recurring trait of Hill.

Sergeant Owens said in his Warren Commission testimony that he drove his patrol car taking Westbrook and Assistant District Attorney Bill Alexander. Three in a car. (WC Vol. II, p. 78).

Hill’s Commission testimony said that he went with Owens driving, DA Bill Alexander and Jim Ewell (a Dallas Morning News reporter) over Commerce Viaduct, and then down Beckley. No mention of Westbrook, but four in a car (WC Vol. VII, p. 43).

Westbrook said in his Warren Commission testimony he went with Sergeant Henry Stringer (his deputy in the personnel office) and an unknown officer who drove. Three in a car. (WC Vol. VII, p. 109).

Jim Ewell said he went with Stringer and Westbrook and said Westbrook drove them over Houston Viaduct past his office at the newspaper. Three in a car and an entirely different route. [https://www.patspeer.com/chapter-4c-shining-a-light-on-day]

Adding to that are discrepancies as to how Westbrook got to the Texas Theater for the arrest of Oswald, and who he was with. 

Ewell said Westbrook took him and Stringer in an unmarked car parked at the front of the theater. Westbrook said he arrived with Sgt. Stringer and FBI Agent Bob Barrett, an unknown squad car driver and parked in the alley at the back. Stringer, in his report of 3 December 1963, said he met an unknown officer in 100 block S Patton who drove him to the rear of the Texas Theater. [https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth340278/m1/1/]

This was an exchange between three Warren Commission staff as the final report was being drafted:

‘How critical of the Dallas police should we be?”. ‘We can’t be critical enough.’: ‘That’s just the problem. If we write what we really think, nobody will believe anything else we say. They’ll accuse us of attacking Dallas’ image. The whole report will be discredited as controversial. We’ve just got to tone it way down.’(William Manchester, The Death of a President t, p. 426)

Despite any “toning down” the Warren Report begs question after question concerning some DPD officers. But the Warren Commission was a case of changing facts to fit a theory, and some DPD witnesses were allowed to make up facts by lying without effective challenge. DPD was protected from being investigated itself. 

The ace syndicated journalist and razor-sharp star of What’s My Line Dorothy Kilgallen wrote on 29 November 1963:

“The case is closed, is it? Well, I’d like to know how in a big smart town like Dallas, a man like Jack Ruby – operator of a striptease honky tonk – could stroll in and out of police headquarters as if it were a health club at a time when a small army of law enforcers was keeping a “tight security guard” on Oswald. Security! What a word for it.”

Witness evidence is not circumstantial; but in any criminal case, a key question is which witnesses to believe. Hence credible police investigation should seek out lies. The DPD didn’t do that –and remarkably – liars included a small coterie of police officers. At the Sergeant level and above to Captain. 

A reason for committing perjury is to avoid revealing worse offenses.

The approach taken here has been to:

 1) identify the stated movements of all relevant police officers from 12:45 pm to the entry into the Texas Theater at 1:45 pm 

2) identify statements and testimonies that are in direct conflict with each other, and 

3) reconcile those with the timeline per the patrol radio tapes, with weight against those officers who provably lie, and weight in favour of those that do not 

4) take statements by members of the public at face value, unless there are signs of coercion. 

The purpose of that is to assess what were the underlying actions and movements that certain officers needed to obscure. Core assumptions carried from the evidence in my prior articles are as follows. 

1. Roger Craig and Butch Burroughs were correct. Oswald left Dealey Plaza by Rambler and was in the Texas Theater just after 1:00 pm and remained there until he was arrested. 
2. Earlene Roberts did see police car 207 outside 1026 N Beckley and it tooted just before the person left at approximately 1:04 pm. 
3. There was an imposter acting as a decoy on the Marsalis bus. That person got off the bus after 12:50 pm, several minutes later than the Warren Commission’s timeline. Because the bus was held up longer because of the backup of traffic on Elm Street. There was no person of relevance in William Whaley’s cab. 
4. Tippit left Gloco gas to go to the vicinity of Lansing Street and 8^th Street where off-duty Officer Olsen was (that patrol district was depleted of its normal patrol officers). Mentzel rendezvoused with Tippit at 10^th and Beckley at 1:07 pm (real-time). Tippit was shot at approximately 1:09 pm. 

If there was premeditated involvement of some police officers in assisting the Kennedy assassination then Tippit’s murder was either similarly premeditated or it was spontaneous. For it to be spontaneous then Tippit, under the covert command of Sgt. Hugh Davis, must have done something whilst at or shortly after leaving Gloco to spark it, which both upset the role he was supposed to play and necessitated his murder. 

I posit that Tippit’s role was to assist a decoy who was playing out Oswald as a supposed ‘lone nut’ fleeing by bus. But that Tippit backed out when he heard on patrol radio that Kennedy had been shot in the head. Tippit then became a major risk to the conspirators. 

Bill Simpich says that events “went south” after the assassination of Kennedy. That is consistent with an assassination that went as planned but was followed by muddled events that weren’t planned. 

If Tippit was murdered without police involvement then it is difficult to explain why there were so many irregularities in how certain officers arrived at the murder scene and what they did when they were there. 

Let’s see how those assumptions play out. 

OWENS AND POE

By the DPD radio only two police cars left the Depository in response to T. F. Bowley’s 1:11 pm call stating Tippit had been shot. Those were the cars of Officer JM Poe with Officer LB Jez (call sign 105) and Sgt. Owens (call sign 19) said he took Westbrook and Deputy DA Bill Alexander. 

Owens said he left the Depository on hearing Bowley’s call and his time of arrival at the Tippit murder scene per the radio (see later) fits with his testimony. He arrived at 1:16 pm, seconds after Officer Poe (call sign 105) who also left from the depository in car 94. Owens’ testimony is wholly consistent with his calls on the tapes, and ambulance travel time.

Poe, like Owens, gave inconvenient testimony. Poe said he’d marked the bullet cartridges found at the Tippit murder scene, which were identified as from an automatic weapon. The cartridges, by the time of the Commission, had no such markings. Thus the story that they could have come from the nonautomatic pistol found on Oswald is now questionable.

Poe also submitted a report (covered later) with Owens on 22 November 1963 regarding murder scene witness Helen Markham. As first responders, she told them that the assailant threatened to kill her. No other subsequent statements or testimony raised that. She never raised that again. Why? If the assailant had been Oswald it would be relevant evidence. But if the assailant wasn’t the dead  Oswald then was she intimidated in giving later evidence?

PART-TIME RESERVE SERGEANT KENNETH HUDSON CROY

 

Croy, owner of a Mobil gas station in Oak Cliff, and a rodeo performer, is an example of putting a DPD hat on someone with all the implied trust that carries. But his testimony takes any credibility relying on that status away. 

Much of Croy’s testimony was made off the cuff because he was only supposed to testify regarding his role on 24 November for the shooting of Oswald. It was only because Croy let slip to the female Commission stenographer that he’d been at the Tippit murder scene that he was then asked about his movements on 22 November. He filed no report on his activities that day. He made no (surviving) announcements on patrol radio. 

His role on 24 November is not fully covered here, other than to say that the level of questioning by Counsel Griffin indicates doubts as to his version of events. Griffin was one of the more curious questioners.

Croy was the officer who organized the roster on 24 November 1963 for those in City Hall regarding the transfer of Oswald to the County Jail. He can be seen on TV footage standing immediately behind Jack Ruby. Croy moves the press pack forward and then Ruby shoots Oswald. Croy forgot the names of officers present despite compiling the roster for who would be present.

Croy’s evidence of 10 am 26 March 1964 (WC Vol XII) warrants a large extract, as his obfuscation and self-contradiction cannot be paraphrased. What is relevant are his said locations and timings. 

Mr. GRIFFIN. Well, now, tell me about the conversation that you had with our court stenographer here prior to coming in here, about Tippit?

Mr. CROY. Oh, it was at the scene over where Officer Tippit was killed, at the scene.

Mr. GRIFFIN. Were you at the scene when Tippit was there?

Mr. CROY. Yes.

Mr. GRIFFIN. Unassigned?

Mr. CROY. Yes.

Mr. GRIFFIN. I take it you are nodding your head?

Mr. CROY. Yes.

Mr. GRIFFIN. What time were you at the scene where Tippit was killed?

Mr. Croy. I watched them load him in the ambulance.

Mr. GRIFFIN. I see. Were you on reserve duty that day?

Mr. CROY. Yes. I was stationed Downtown in the, I believe it was the 1800 or 1900 block of Main Street.

Mr. GRIFFIN. Were you in a patrol car?

Mr. CROY. No; I was on foot.

Mr. GRIFFIN. Were you in uniform?

Mr. CROY. In uniform.

Mr. GRIFFIN. Where were you at the time President Kennedy was shot?

Mr. Croy. Sitting in my car at the city hall. I would guess, I don’t know, because I didn’t know he was shot until, I guess, several minutes after it was.

Mr. GRIFFIN. Is that where you were located when you heard he was shot?

Mr. CROY. No. I was on Main Street trying to go home.

Mr. GRIFFIN. You were driving your car down Main Street?

Mr. CROY. Yes.

Mr. GRIFFIN. About where were you on Main Street?

Mr. CROY. Griffin.

Mr. GRIFFIN. Griffin Street?

Mr. CROY. Yes.

Mr. GRIFFIN. What did you do when you heard that President Kennedy had been shot?

Mr. CROY. I didn’t do anything. I was right in the middle of the street with my car hemmed in from both sides. I couldn’t go anywhere.

Mr. GRIFFIN. As soon as you got unhemmed, what did you do?

Mr. CROY. I went by the courthouse there and there were several officers standing there, and I asked if they needed any help.

Mr. GRIFFIN. Did you drive your car to the courthouse?

Mr. CROY. Yes.

Mr. GRIFFIN. Which courthouse?

Mr. CROY. There was only one courthouse.

Mr. GRIFFIN. There is a county courthouse?

Mr. CROY. There is.

Mr. GRIFFIN. There is a Federal courthouse, also, but this is the one right there by the plaza and near the Texas School Book Depository?

Mr. CROY. The old red courthouse.

Mr. GRIFFIN. On Houston Street?

Mr. CROY. Yes.

Mr. GRIFFIN. Was that the corner of Houston and Main?

Mr. CROY. Houston and Main and Elm.

Mr. GRIFFIN. How long after you heard that President Kennedy was shot did you arrive there?

Mr. CROY. Oh, I guess it took me at least 20 minutes to drive those few blocks.

Mr. GRIFFIN. What time would you say it was when you arrived at the courthouse?

Mr. CROY. I don’t know.

Mr. GRIFFIN. Who did you see when you arrived there?

Mr. CROY. Oh, there was some officers standing on the corner, I don’t know.

Mr. GRIFFIN. Did you inquire of somebody there if you could be of assistance?

Mr. CROY. Yes.

Mr. GRIFFIN. Whom did you inquire of?

Mr. CROY. I don’t know. They were just standing on the corner, and I asked if I could be of any assistance.

Mr. GRIFFIN. Then, what did you do?

Mr. CROY. I proceeded on home.

Mr. GRIFFIN. Which way did you drive home?

Mr. CROY. Out Thornton to Colorado, and Colorado to-I can’t think of the street. It was Marsalis.

Mr. GRIFFIN. Was that-

Mr. CROY. Or Zangs

Mr. GRIFFIN. Thornton to Zangs?

The route Croy said he took to go home wasn’t his way home; which would have been due south from City Hall, not due west. And Inspector Sawyer’s testimony (Vol. VI, p. 315) contradicts Croy’s description of traffic conditions on Main Street. 

Sawyer said he passed down Main from the same blocks after the motorcade passed City Hall. He arrived at the Depository at 12:42 pm. But he also put out a call on the radio stating that any officers on crowd duties on Main (which included Croy) should report to the Depository. He said the only traffic issues on Main were caused by dispersing pedestrians crossing the road.

Officer Hutson also did the same route for the same time period. He said (Vol. VII, p. 26) that he went down Main, on his three-wheeler motorcycle to collect road signs after the passing of the motorcade at Main and Harwood (City Hall). Like Sawyer, he said the issue was pedestrians, not traffic.

Jim Ewell said Officer Valentine had driven him and Hill from City Hall to the Depository in “probably less than two minutes” that too was approximately 12:45 pm (as per Ewell above link [https://www.patspeer.com/chapter-4c-shining-a-light-on-day]). 

Croy said he was on Main Street hemmed in on both sides. That is demonstrably false. Main Street was not only not obstructed it was two-way, with two lanes in each direction. It was Elm Street which was three lanes one-way and became obstructed until traffic was released. Croy therefore seems to have indirectly revealed that he was actually on Elm Street, even further off his route home. Was he trying to conceal that? 

III

Croy’s reference to Griffin Street is interesting. If Croy wasn’t at Griffin and Main Street, but was at Griffin and Elm, then he can be placed close to where the Marsalis bus was held up and the person –a policeman in civilian clothes, who can’t have been uniformed Croy himself–got out of the car to tell the driver of the bus that Kennedy had been shot. 

Croy then said policemen in Dealey Plaza told him he wasn’t needed. But Inspector Sawyer had commanded on the radio that all officers on crowd duties were needed in Dealey Plaza. 

Croy next said he was at Colorado and Zang where he heard the radio call and got to the Tippit murder scene as Tippit’s body was being loaded into the ambulance. But the ambulance was dispatched after a phone call from a neighbor before the patrol radio call of 1:11 pm from Temple Bowley. The ambulance only had to travel 300 yards from the Dudley Hughes Funeral Home in the 400 block of E Jefferson and it arrived at the end of Bowley’s announcement and stayed less than a minute. Dudley Hughes said that from taking the call to delivering Tippit to Methodist Hospital took under 5 minutes. The autopsy request was timed as 1:15 pm. So how could Croy have gotten there by reacting to that call?

Added to that, the immediate neighbor to 410 E10th, Virginia Davis telephoned the police as soon as the shooting had occurred.  She then went outside. The police were already there and the ambulance arrived after that. (WC Vol VI p454). She said:

Mr. BELIN. All right, after this, did police come out there?

Mrs. Davis. Yes; they were already there.

Mr. BELIN. By the time you got out there?

Mrs. DavIs. Yes, sir.

Mr. BELIN. Then what did you do?

Mrs. Davis. Well, we just stood out there and watched. You know, tried to see how it all happened. But we saw part of it.

Mr. BELIN. Then what did you do?

Mrs. Davis. We stood out there until after the ambulance had come and picked him up.

With that in mind, did Croy arrive even earlier? That is before the Bowley radio call had been put out? Or was another police officer either in the vicinity or else very close by when the murder happened? The latter is consistent with Doris Holan seeing police officers in a car at the rear of 410 E10th at the time Tippit was shot. (Joe McBride, Into the Nightmare, pp. 494-95) 

Croy may have been present for the impromptu shooting of Tippit. At best he arrived when he said he did but was covering for another officer (or officers) who were there earlier. 

Croy then said he discharged himself from that scene to go home. He said he then happened to be driving by one block from the Texas Theater when the police first entered. He said he saw action at the front and back but Oswald was not by then arrested. He gave a more detailed description of the action and its progress than would be expected of someone driving on a major thoroughfare (Zang) looking sideways at something happening a block away. 

Croy was asked how he knew that Oswald had not been arrested by then. That tripped him up. He changed his story mid-flow to say he’d been at the Tippit murder scene and had then headed to the Texas Theater because of what he heard on the radio. He was asked why he left that scene (his third self-discharge of the day). He said he wasn’t needed. How would he know if he didn’t stop? 

Croy said he then went to Austin’s Barbecue –two miles further south from the Texas Theater.  He wanted to meet his wife for lunch. He added that she would be cross if he was late. 

When asked how he had arranged lunch he introduced another story.  He said his wife’s car passed him by in Dealey Plaza and that he asked her if she wanted lunch, conversing with her through a car window. 

Ponder this:  Mrs. Croy had been in Dealey Plaza minutes after the President had been shot. And this was followed by the murder of a Dallas policeman.  Would not Croy being late for lunch be a bit trivial? 

To say the least, Croy’s behaviour from at least 12:30 pm to after 2:00 pm is rather unusual.  

WESTBROOK’S OFFICE AND CAR 207

Deputy Chief of Police Charles Batchelor testified on 23 March 1963 and produced Batchelor Exhibit CE 5002. [https://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh19/pdf/WH19_Batchelor_Ex_5002.pdf] That is a pamphlet of DPD personnel for November 1963. It states that the Personnel Bureau comprised at officer level, Captain W.R. Westbrook (In Charge), Sgt H.H. Stringer (Deputy), WM McGee, Detective, Joe Fields, Detective and Patrolman JL Carver.

Hill claimed to have been working in Westbrook’s Bureau on the day of the assassination.  But he does not appear in CE 5002 as being attached to it for November 1963. He is shown as a patrol Sergeant for the Downtown subdistrict, 8:00 am to 4:00 pm day shift.

Also, there is Earlene Roberts’ observation of car 207 outside Oswald’s boarding house tooting at 1:04 pm. This was in her FBI statement of 29 November 1963.  It caused the need for CE 2645, an inventory of officers and cars as an attempt to rule them out of being in the vicinity of 1026 N Beckley around 1:00 pm. CE 2645 is useful evidence as it can be used to identify other discrepancies with cars and officer movements.

Some Warren Commission apologists have sought to say Earlene Roberts was confused in her Warren Commission testimony as to the car number. Well, she wasn’t confused on 29 November 1963, nor was Westbrook’s statement 5 days later. Westbrook said on 4 December 1963 car 207 was Officer Valentine’s car and it had been parked at the Depository. His statement doesn’t actually confirm that it stayed at the Depository after Valentine had arrived in it.[https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth340243/]

Hill was driven from City Hall to the Depository by Officer Valentine (call sign 104) in car 207 with reporter Jim Ewell. They arrived in about 2 minutes by a circuitous route to avoid the traffic. The arrival was also photographed. (Source: Ewell and CE 2645).  

Hill (using code 550/2) announced they were en route on the radio, immediately before the 12:48 pm time stamp. “550/2 and 104 en route to Elm and Houston, code 3.” That time fits with departure being triggered by the 12:44 pm APB with an alleged Oswald-like description in it, and its mention of the Depository. Assistant Warren Commission Counsel Wesley Liebeler said of that alert in internal correspondence about a draft of the Commission’s report on September 6, 1963: 

Following that quote it says that Brennan’s description “most probably” led to the radio alert sent out to police in which the assassin was described. Can’t this be more definite? One of the questions that has been raised is the speed with which the assassin was described, the implication being that Oswald had been picked out as a patsy before the event. The Dallas police must know what led to the radio alert and the description. If they do we should be able to find out. If they do not know, the circumstances of their not knowing should be discussed briefly.

Sgt Gerald Hill said in his testimony:

At this time I went back to the personnel office and told the captain that Inspector Sawyer requested assistance at Elm and Houston Streets. The captain said, “Go ahead and go.” 

“And he turned to another man in the office named Joe Fields and told him to get on down there. “I got on the elevator on the third floor and went to the basement and saw a uniformed officer named Jim M. Valentine doing, as he said, “Nothing in particular.” And I said, “I need you to take’ me down to Elm Street.” “The President has been shot.” 

We started out of the basement to get in his car, and a boy named Jim E. Well [sic Ewell], with Dallas Morning News, had parked his car in the basement and was walking up and asked what was going on, and we told him the President was shot.”

Of all the cars in all the DPD force, Earlene Roberts had come up with that one.

HILL – “THE BIG EXPANSION MOVE”

Hill said in 1993 for the Sixth Floor Museum that his transfer to [https://www.jfk.org/collections-archive/gerald-jerry-l-hill-oral-history/] Westbrook’s department was because the presidential visit was a ‘big expansion move for the police department’. An odd turn of phrase. 

When then asked what his role in the presidential visit was, he said “absolutely nothing”. Does this not seem like a contradiction?

Hill in that interview confirms he went with Officer Valentine to the Depository, but he puts his movements earlier than is apparent from the radio. By the radio, he is en route after 12:45 pm at 12:47 pm. Per Ewell, the ride took 2 minutes [https://kenrahn.com/JFK/History/The_deed/Sneed/Ewell.html] 

Hence Hill arrived at the Depository by approximately 12:50 pm. Hill was photographed leaning out of the window of the Sixth Floor of the Depository. Thus that could have been as early as 12:50 pm. Hill claimed to have found the snipper’s nest and three shells on the Sixth Floor after 1:00 pm with two deputy Sheriffs. Were that true then he’s ruled out of being in car 207 after 1:00 pm. But it wasn’t true.

Deputy Sheriff Like Mooney testified as being the first person to see the shells on the Sixth Floor. (Vol 3 p 19) And he testified Captain Fritz was then the first person to handle them. Mooney places the time as “approaching 1 pm” and testified that he then “hollered down” to get the crime lab on the scene. He made no mention of Hill and said he stayed there “not over 15 or 20 minutes”. Nor did Captain Fritz – head of Homicide mention Hill. Mooney’s time and story are corroborated by the radio call by Sgt. Harkness at 12:56 calling for Barnes (508 – Crime Lab section). Barnes 30 seconds later is signaled as en route. 

Hill’s story fits a pattern of his appropriating other people’s events and playing with timings. If Hill is lying, and it sure seems like he is, then he doesn’t have an alibi after 1:00 pm. But created a false one.

HOW DID HILL ARRIVE IN OAK CLIFF?

Hill’s time and method of arrival at the Tippit murder scene – he said to the Warren Commission it was with Sgt. Owens, DA Alexander, and reporter Ewell – is also a tangled web.  And this is so through his various accounts. Which are rendered dubious by the evidence of Owens, Ewell, and Poe. In fact, no one said they went with Hill. 

One problem for Hill is that the testimony of Owens is consistent with the patrol radio. But Hill’s is not. Owens’ testimony was that the trigger for his departure was Bowley’s first call (which was at 1:11 pm).

Mr. OWENS. No. I told Inspector Sawyer that I was assigned to Oak Cliff and an officer was involved in the shooting, and I was taking off, so I proceeded. I got in my car, and Captain Westbrook and Bill Alexander, an assistant District attorney, also was in the car with me and we started out to-I think the call came out at 400 East 10th or 400 East Jefferson. There was confusion there where the situation was. It was corrected and we went to the scene of the shooting.

By the radio the clarification of the precise address whilst Owens was on his way was at 1:13 pm. Owens arrived at 1:16 pm.  He was the second car responder at the scene, announcing his arrival seconds after Officer Poe, who was carrying Officer Jez. Both Owens and Poe left the Depository, and the most direct route would be over Commerce Street Viaduct, down N Beckley Avenue. Poe’s Commission account was:

Mr. BALL. And what did you find when you got there?

Mr. POE. We found-.

Mr. BALL. What did you see?

Mr. POE. Found the squad car parked toward the curb, and a pool of blood at the left-front wheel of the car. The ambulance had already picked him up and the officer had already left the scene when we arrived. We had – I don’t know how many people there were. Looked like 150 to 200 people around there; and Mrs. Markham, I talked to her first” and we got a description of the man that shot Tippit.

Poe doesn’t mention Owens’ car already being there, which is consistent with the radio calls placing Poe (car 105) arriving a few seconds before Owens (both 1:20 pm by the tape time). 

But Hill testified on the basis he’d arrived with Owens.

“Tippit had already been removed. The first man that came up to me, he said, “The man that shot him was a white male about 5’10”, weighing 160 to 170 pounds, had on a jacket and a pair of dark trousers, and brown bushy hair.” At this point, the first squad rolled up, and that would have been Squad 105 which had been dispatched from Downtown. An officer named Joe Poe, and I believe his partner was a boy named Jez. I told him to stay at the scene and guard the car and talk to as many witnesses as they could find to the incident, and that we were going to start checking the area.”

Hill cannot have been speaking to witnesses before Poe turned up, as Owens, at the earliest, arrived simultaneously with Poe’s arrival. That is in line with Owens never putting Hill in his car anyhow. And there were no other cars announcing arrival at the scene – within a 5-minute window – before or after the arrival of Poe and Owens. This leaves open the possibility that Hill was there already, but is trying to disguise his presence.

HILL INVESTIGATED FOR LYING ON NEWS RADIO

Making matters worse for Hill is that his unpublished Commission file has an FBI note reporting that he had given a false story at 6:45 pm on 22 November 1963 to KCRC-Radio Sacramento. For KCRC he said he went to the murder scene with the ‘acting lieutenant’ (Owens). Hence missing out on Ewell and Alexander. This is the transcript of what he told KCRC:

That call came out – the Acting Lieutenant in Oak Cliff and I were together standing there talking to the Inspector and he ordered us – being that we had all the police in town pulled down there on Elm Street – he ordered us to leave this investigation of the President’s shooting and go to Oak Cliff. We did. When we got out there the officer had already been picked up. We got a description of the suspect and started following his path as best we could.

 

We had information that he was in one of two houses that were vacant over on East Jefferson. We went in over there and called for some more help to cover the buildings and everything. We shook those down and he wasn’t there, and then we got a report that he was in the library at (inaudible) and Jefferson”.

[https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/70/4605/7460570/content/arcmedia/dc-metro/rg-272/605417-key-persons/hill_gerald_l/hill_gerald_l.pdf]

That event can be timed as 1:29 pm (DPD time, 1:33 pm) as Owens said.

DISP           Do you have any information for us, 19?

19                None. We’re shaking down these old houses out down here in the 400 block of East Jefferson right now.

 

But if Hill arrived with Owens that day he’d have had a similar timeline of events to that of Owens. One thing Hill missed out on is the discovery of the discarded jacket sometime before 1:21 pm. Hill did not offer to KCRC at 6:45 pm on 22 November 1963 any explanation of what he did in the intervening 13 minutes.

That KCRC transcript came to the attention of the Commission via Chet Casselman of KSFO on 10 June 1964. And that file has an FBI note of 8 June 1964 where Hill had to admit that some of what he said on the radio was so-called hearsay and false. He had said:

 “The man [Oswald], I understand has resorted to violence before and possibly shot another policeman somewhere”.

Given that Oswald was young and spent a good deal of his adult life outside of the USA and in the Marines, the idea that he had previously shot a policeman could not be credible. Shooting a policeman in the US in 1963 was a rare occurrence. Overall, Hill’s radio interview shows more concern about pinning Oswald for the shooting of Tippit than Kennedy. 

HILL AND THE JACKET IN THE WRONG PLACE

Hill’s story of arriving, and the first action being the search of the houses for KCRC was not the starting point of what he claimed to have done in his testimony to the Warren Commission.  But his testimony flounders. Per the radio transcript witnesses said the man on the run had immediately run down Patton, west along E Jefferson, and then cut through Ballew Texaco Service Station and run into the alley behind. There was then a search of houses in E Jefferson, then there were false alarms regarding the entry to a church and then the library.

The first radio call in that sequence was from Officers Griffin and Mackie at 1:20 pm. It said: “We believe we’ve got this suspect on shooting this officer out here. Got his white jacket. Believe he dumped it on this parking lot behind this service station at 400 block East Jefferson across from Dudley Hughes and he had a white jacket on. We believe this is it.”

But Hill said to the Commission  (and note he is shown the radio transcript): 

 

Mr. HILL. All right, I took the key to Poe’s car. Another person came up, and we also referred him to Poe, that told us the man had run over into the funeral home parking lot. That would be Dudley Hughes’ parking lot in the 400 block of East Jefferson-and taken off his jacket.

Mr. BELIN. You turned this man over to Poe, too?

Mr. HILL. Yes, sir.

Mr. BELIN. I notice in the radio log transcript, which is marked Sawyer Deposition Exhibit A, that at 1:26 p.m., between 1:26 p.m., and 1:32 p.m., there was a call from No. 19 to 531. 531 is your home number, I believe? Your radio home station?

Mr. HILL. Yes.

Mr. BELIN. That says, “One of the men here at the service station that saw him seems to think he is in this block, 400 block East Jefferson, behind his service station. Give me some more squads over here.” “Several squads check out.” Was that you?

Mr. HILL. That was Owens.

Mr. BELIN. Were you calling in at all?

Mr. HILL. No. That is Bud Owens.

Mr. BELIN. You had left Owens’ car at this time?

Mr. HILL. I left Owens’ car and had 105 car at this time.

Mr. BELIN. Where did you go?

Mr. HILL. At this time, about the time this broadcast came out, I went around and met Owens. I whipped around the block. I went down to the first intersection east of the block where all this incident occurred, and made a right turn, and traveled one block, and came back up on Jefferson.

Mr. BELIN. All right.

Mr. HILL. And met Owens in front of two large vacant houses on the north side of Jefferson that are used for the storage of secondhand furniture. By then Owens had information also that some citizen had seen the man running towards these houses. At this time Sergeant Owens was there; I was there; Bill Alexander was there; it was probably about this time that C. T. Walker, an accident investigator got there; and with Sergeant Owens and Walker and a couple more officers standing outside, Bill Alexander and I entered the front door of the house that would have been to the west—it was the farthest to the west of the two shook out the lower floor, made sure nobody was there, and made sure that all the entrances from either inside or outside of the building to the second floor were securely locked. Then we went back over to the house next door, which would have been the first one east of this one, and made sure it was securely locked, both upstairs and downstairs. There was no particular sign of entry on this building at all. At this point we came back out to the street, and I asked had Owens received any information from the hospital on Tippit. And he said they had just told him on channel 2 that he was dead. I got back in 105’s car, went back around to the original scene, gave him his car keys back, and left his car there, and at this point he came up to me with a Winston cigarette package.”

“The next place I went was, I walked up the street about half a block to a church. That would have been on the northeast corner of 10th Street in the 400 block west of the shooting, and was preparing to go in when there were two women who came out and said they were employees inside and had been there all the time. I asked them had they seen anybody enter the church, because we were still looking for possible places for the suspect to hide. And they said nobody passed them, nobody entered the church, but they invited us to check the rest of the doors and windows and go inside if we wanted to. An accident investigator named Bob Apple was at the location at that time, and we were standing there together near his car when the call came out that the suspect had been seen entering the Texas Theatre.”

A giveaway that Hill is not reliable here is that the jacket was not discarded in the parking lot of Dudley Hughes, it was found in the parking lot of Ballew Texaco Service Station which was across Jefferson Boulevard (opposite) from Dudley Hughes.

What Hill appears to have done is misread the transcript that was given to him at the testimony session and was trying to attach his movements to that misunderstanding. Hence, he turned the 1:20 pm call regarding the jacket at the Ballew Texaco Service Station parking lot opposite Dudley Hughes to the jacket being at Dudley Hughes parking lot, something that did not happen. 

Someone who’d been in on the real action wouldn’t make such a mistake by misreading a transcript. It would be held in their head. Hill made the same mistake later in his testimony when he was questioned about Oswald after his arrest:

Mr. BELIN. Any jacket?

Mr. HILL. No, sir; he didn’t have a jacket on at this time.

Mr. BELIN. All right, go ahead.

Mr. HILL. I understand a light-colored jacket was found in the parking lot of the funeral home, as a man had previously stated, but I don’t recall actually seeing this jacket.

 

HILL AND THE FALSE AMBULANCE STORY

 

There is a further problem with Hill’s testimony. This was Owens (19) at approximately 1:21 pm (1:26 DPD time), having arrived at the scene. 

DISPATCH: 19, where did the officer go?

19:               I saw some squads going towards Methodist real fast. I imagine that’s where he is.

That stacks up and Owens was driving. But Hill (using 550/2) had said a minute earlier per the transcript. 

DISPATCH: Have you been to the scene?

550/2:           The officer was already gone when I got there. He was driving car number 10.

DISPATCH: Do you know what ambulance took him? We had three going.

550/2:         No. Dudley Hughes passed in front of me going to Beckley. He looked like he might have had him.

The need for two calls is odd if Hill and Owens had been in the same car. Also odd is the phrase “passed in front of me” as if he was driving, and “the officer was already gone when I got there”, if Hill had been with Owens. It would be “we.” 

The only cars arriving from Downtown able to have seen the Dudley Hughes ambulance would have been Poe’s or Owens. But Owens made no reference to an ambulance, merely squad cars heading in the direction of the hospital. That indicates that by the time Owens was on Beckley the ambulance had already reached the hospital. That is consistent with Tippit having arrived at the hospital at approximately 1:14 pm and being declared dead on arrival by 1:15 pm.

But there is yet another problem. Hill said the ambulance ‘passed in front’ but an ambulance traveling north on Beckley to Methodist wouldn’t pass in front. Paths would cross. 

By the time of his Warren Commission testimony, Hill had corrected the “passed in front” to “passed us”. But he claims to have used 19 (Owens’ number) when the number Hill had used was 550/2. His testimony was:

“In the process of getting the location straight, and I think it was at this point I was probably using 19 call number, because I was riding with him, we got the information correctly that the shooting had actually been on East 10th, and we were en route there.

We crossed the Commerce Street viaduct and turned, made a right turn to go under the viaduct on North Beckley to go up to 10th Street. As we passed, just before we got to Colorado on Beckley, an ambulance with a police car behind it passed us en route to Methodist Hospital.”

Belin clearly gave Hill an easy ride. Hill’s testimony was at odds on that point with the radio transcript, and once again Hill was appropriating something Owens had done. Hill observing Poe as the first squad car to roll up does make sense if Hill had already arrived in car 207 and parked in the rear driveway of 410 E 10^th, accessed by Lansing Alley having dropped the decoy off at a point to the east of the murder scene. That is also consistent with what Virginia Davis said about seeing policemen immediately after she’d called the police, after Tippit was shot, before the ambulance arrived.

Remember, Croy and Hill lied about what they did before and after Tippit was shot. Croy in particular lied about being “hemmed in on both sides” on Main Street, whilst what he described in terms of lane configuration was Elm Street, and Griffin is near where the Marsalis bus was on Elm when “Oswald” (I posit the decoy) got off. 

Hill lied on KCRC to make Oswald look like a serial cop killer. Hill’s biggest problem though was admitting he saw Poe’s car “roll-up”. That would not have happened if he’d arrived with Owens.

On the evidence outlined, Hill had arrived at the Tippit murder scene in car 207 shortly before Tippit was shot and rendezvoused with Westbrook who arrived with Owens, then Westbrook could have told Hill what he saw on his journey in Owens’ car. But Hill only got half the story and hence put an incorrect statement on the radio at 1:20 pm concerning the ambulance. Hill’s aim in doing that was likely to create an alibi to account for how he had got to the scene.

To test that assumption further, Westbrook is relevant, as is what Hill did next. 

WESTBROOK THE FORGETTER

Westbrook said in his Commission testimony of 6 April 1963:

“Mr. WESTBROOK. I was in my office and Mrs. Kinney, one of the Dispatchers, came into the office and told us, and of course-it’s the same as everybody says- we didn’t believe it until a second look at her and I realized it was so, and so, there’s a little confusion right here because everybody became rather excited right quick, but somebody, and I don’t know who it was, came into my office and said they needed some more men at this Texas Depository Building. You know, I didn’t review my report before I came over here I didn’t have a chance. I just came off of vacation and they hit me with this this morning as soon as I got to the office. I can’t recall whether or not it was the Dispatcher’s office, but I think it was-somebody in the Dispatcher’s office had told us they needed some more men at the Texas Depository Building; so I sent the men that were in my office, which were then Sergeants Stringer and Carver, and possibly Joe Fields and McGee, if they were in there; it seems like McGee was, and I think- I sent them to the building, and then I walked on down the hall spreading the word and telling the other people that they needed some men down there, and practically everybody left immediately. I sat around a while-really not knowing what to do because of the-almost all of the commanding officers and supervisors were out of the city hall and I finally couldn’t stand it any longer, so I started to the Texas Depository Building, and believe it or not, I walked. There wasn’t a car available, and so I walked from the city hall to the Depository Building, and I would stop on the way down where there would be a group of people listening to somebody’s transistor radio and I would stop and catch a few false reports, you might say, at that time, until I reached the building. Do you want me to continue on?”

So, by that, Hill who was assigned to Westbrook, left his office at approximately 12:45 pm with Valentine then driving him. 

Westbrook continued:

Mr. Westbrook. After we reached the building, or after I reached the building, I contacted my sergeant Sgt. R. D. Stringer [sic, it is HH Stringer per the Batchelor Exhibit, R D Stringer was a different officer and not a sergeant], and he was standing in front and so then I went into the building to help start the search and I was on the first floor and I had walked down an aisle and opened a door onto an outside loading dock, and when I came out on this dock, one of the men hollered and said there had been an officer killed in Oak Cliff.

Well, then, of course, I ran to my radio because I am the personnel officer, and that then became, of course, my greatest interest right at that time, and so, Sergeant Stringer and I and some patrolman—I don’t recall his name-then drove to the immediate vicinity of where Officer Tippit had been shot and killed.

Of course, the body was already gone, the squad car was still there, and on one occasion as we were approaching this squad car, a call came over the radio that a suspicious person had been sighted running into the public library at Marsalis and Jefferson, so we immediately went to that location and it was a false-it was just one of the actually—-it was one of the employees of the library who had heard the news somewhere on the radio and he was running to tell the other group about Kennedy.

So, we returned to the scene and here I met Bob Barrett, the FBI agent, and Sergeant Stringer and Barrett and I were together, and then an eyewitness to the shooting of the officer from across the street, a lady, came to the car, and she was telling us how this happened.

Mr. BALL. Where was your car parked at that time?

Mr. Westbrook. It wasn’t my car—we didn’t have one. I don’t know where this officer went after he let us out at the scene.

Mr. BALL. An officer drove you down to the scene?

Mr. Westbrook. An officer drove us to the scene.

Mr. BALL. Where were you when this lady came up who was an eyewitness?

Mr. Westbrook. We were at the squad car-Tippit’s squad car-it had never been moved.

Mr. BALL. You were near 10th and Patton?

Mr. Westbrook. And she was telling us what had occurred.

Mr. BALL. Do you remember her name?

Mr. Westbrook. No; the other officers got it.

Westbrook trips himself up more than once. He said he “ran to his radio”, but he’d previously said he didn’t have a car as he’d walked. He refers to stopping on the way for the ““false reports as you might say””. How would he know they were false? 

How could he “start the search” at the Depository? Searching was already underway before 1:00 pm and after a 20-minute plus walk, he couldn’t have started it. (As covered later, the three shells were found before 12:56 pm). His “believe it or not” is defensive. 

Westbrook slipped out “we reached” and then corrected it to “I reached”. Also, if Stringer was already “out the front” then the “I contacted” him makes no sense. Another issue is that with so many officers sharing vehicles to get to the Depository the line that there were no cars available is not credible. 

Researcher and Warren Commission advocate Dale Myers says that:

“Sgt. Henry H. Stringer told me in 1983 that Captain Westbrook rode with him from city hall to the depository along with two other officers – Frank M. Rose, Burglary and Theft Bureau (driving) and Joe Fields, a detective in the Personnel Bureau. They split up upon arrival and helped searched [sic] the TSBD (films support Stringer’s recollection), then got back together just before the call came over the radio about the Tippit shooting. 

Of course, Stringer’s twenty-year-old recollection isn’t as strong as Westbrook’s sworn 1964 testimony, but who knows? More important, in the big scheme of things, what does it matter?” [http://jfkfiles.blogspot.com/2020/11/westbrook-croy-and-tippit-murder.html?m=1]

Myers downplays discrepancies that actually matter a lot. If Stringer was correct then he confirms that Westbrook’s forgetfulness extended beyond forgetting who he’d travelled with, to forgetting whether he walked for 20 minutes or not. And getting all that wrong under oath, plus forgetting people’s names, all this despite being head of personnel. In the “big scheme of things” the fact is that testimonies of certain senior police officers were unreliable. 

There is also a non-sequitur in the Myers extract. The first paragraph (without references in support) claims that there was photographic evidence to back Stringer’s recollection. But by the paragraph immediately afterward things were shrugged off to a ‘but who knows’ about Stringer’s recollection. 

Myers’ approach to vindicating the Warren Commission has the recurring naïve assumption that all police officers were clean and all their testimony was correct. The above demonstrates that this cannot be assumed. Either Stringer, Westbrook, or both were unreliable. In putting out information to support the Warren Commission theory, Myers actually throws up anomalies that serve to undermine it. 

                           THE DPD AND THE STOPPED BUS

Dallas’ overturned prosecutions conducted under the now notorious District Attorney Henry Wade sit with a crime clear-up rate that is consistent with the routine practice of rigging of evidence against defendants. Wade, DA in 1963, had had a prosecution conviction rate of 100% until he lost Roe v Wade (1970).  Wade had withheld evidence in cases where convictions were later overturned. (James DiEugenio, The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today, pp. 196-98)

Had Westbrook with his “sat around a while” and “couldn’t stand it any longer” left as early as 12:50 pm – on foot stopping to hear “false reports”– then he would have arrived after at least 1:10 pm. Adding on “contacting Stringer” with some dwell time at the Depository, his timeline makes it difficult for him to have arrived by the time of Bowley’s call at 1:11 pm and immediately get into the car with the very fast responder Owens. 

Assuming there is also some truth in what Stringer said, then Westbrook didn’t walk but arrived by car at the Depository earlier than his walking story implies, and sought to disguise that, and then departed with Owens. 

Any credible independent police investigation with maps, blackboards/whiteboards, would have seen through the problems with the movements of certain police officers immediately, merely on the basis of the above. So should the Commission. 

Owens actually gave a very strong alibi for Westbrook’s presence when Tippit was shot – which also rules out Westbrook being in car 207 just before Tippit was shot. But Westbrook did not take it up. That begs the question what was Westbrook doing before and after Tippit was shot that made him prevaricate? If all he was doing was covering for Hill, then his own misrepresentations wouldn’t need to be so elaborate before Tippit was shot.

Westbrook was working in civilian clothes that day. He had also just returned to work, saying he had been on vacation. 

Mr. BALL. Do you wear a uniform? 

Mr. WESTBROOK. Well, it is optional. I don’t wear one. 

Mr. BALL. On November 22, 1963, were you assigned any special duty? 

Mr. WESTBROOK. No, sir; other than just my own routine duties. 

Mr. BALL. What were those duties that day? 

Mr. WESTBROOK. 8 15 to 5 15. 

Mr. BALL. And were you in uniform on that day?

Mr. WESTBROOK. No, sir. 

It is peculiar for Ball to have brought up the uniform. But he asked that question after Cecil McWatters testified on 26 March 1964 and 6 days after Milton Jones’ FBI statement. Westbrook’s plain clothes could account for McWatters saying a man stopped the bus, whilst Milton Jones said it was a policeman. Did Ball suspect it might be Westbrook? Croy had given his remarkable testimony prior on 26 March 1963, ten days before Westbrook appeared.

McWatters had told the story of the man stopping the bus which appeared in the Dallas Morning News on 28 November 1963. He said that the man was in work clothes and about 55. Westbrook was an old-looking 46. 

It is therefore posited that Hill and Westbrook likely knew who the intended suspect should be; and that the 12:44 pm APB was itself false evidence from within City Hall and the trigger for what was to follow next. Which was evidence planting at the Depository to frame not only Oswald, but set up the Depository as the origin of all the shots at the motorcade. 

Tippit’s covert position at Gloco immediately after 12:30 pm and Angell, Parker, Lewis, and Nelson in covert positions on other viaduct exits indicate something was planned of the nature of assistance for getaways. To assist in a getaway at a low level merely needs to turn a blind eye. 

If Tippit turned at or before 12:45 pm, and drove to the area of Lansing and 8^th, for a rendezvous with his controllers less than two minutes from Gloco, then it would be imperative to get the decoy off the bus and get him to 1026 N Beckley by whatever means as quickly as possible. That being needed to keep alive the false narrative that Oswald had reached 1026 N Beckley of his own accord.

There has to be a reason why that particular Marsalis bus was singled out, boarded, and held up for over 40 minutes. 

Click here to read part 2.

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Mary Bledsoe and the Bus Pt. 2

By John Washburn

If it was Larry Crafard on the Marsalis bus and the purpose of that journey was to give the impression that a lone Lee Oswald was stopping at 1026 N Beckley to pick up a gun, and be witnessed by Earlene Roberts, then the question arises why Earlene Roberts wouldn’t have realised it wasn’t Oswald she saw if it was Oswald who was staying there. 

The Commission Staff note of 10 March 1964 (page 24, of the Mary Bledsoe file – Click here for document) from Counsels Leon Hubert and Burt Griffin asked David Belin and Joe Ball to investigate whether the behaviour patterns of the person who stayed at 1026 N Beckley matched those of the person who stayed at Mary Bledsoe’s house. 

“In light of our memorandum of 6 March and our previous observations with respect to Earlene Roberts, Mrs. Bledsoe should be carefully examined to ascertain the following:

Whether or not Oswald’s pattern of activities as a roomer while at the Bledsoe house differ in any particular respect from his pattern of activity as described by Mrs. Roberts and Mrs. Johnson at 1026 N. Beckley”

A reason behind all of that conjecture was the link between Jack Ruby and Larry Crafard and the link between Jack Ruby and Bertha Cheek, the sister of Earlene Roberts. 

The note also says about William Whaley the taxi driver who took Oswald to Beckley that Counsel should be: 

“Carefully questioning Whaley with respect to his identification of Oswald including questioning as to identifying scars, marks, dress which might distinguish between Oswald and Crafard or any other persons who may resemble Oswald”. 

There is no evidence Ball or Belin did that. There is also nothing in Earlene Roberts’ testimony session of 8 April 1964 where habits were questioned, such as Oswald speaking Russian. Mary Bledsoe on 2 April 1964 for example did refer to Oswald speaking to his wife on the telephone in a foreign language.

But the glaring omission – particularly in the light of what Mary Bledsoe and Roy Milton Jones said – is that neither Mary Bledsoe, Earlene Roberts nor Mr. & Mrs. Johnson—who owned the Beckley residence– were shown photographs of Crafard and Oswald to clear up any confusion. 

That is even more extraordinary given this exchange with Ruth Paine on 20 March 1964, hence before Mary Bledsoe and Earlene Roberts testified. (Vol III p94)

Mr. JENNER. There have been marked as Commission’s exhibits in this series 451 and 453 to 456, a series of five colored photographs purporting to be photographs of one Curtis LaVerne Crafard, taken on the 28th day of November 1963.

Mrs. Paine would you be good enough to look at each of those, and after you have looked at them, I wish to ask you a question.

Mrs. PAINE. I have looked at them all.

Mr. JENNER. Calling on your recollection of the physiognomy and appearance of Lee Oswald, do you detect a resemblance between the man depicted in those photographs, the exhibit numbers of which I have given, and Lee Oswald?

Mrs. PAINE. Yes; I do.

Mr. JENNER. To the best of your present recollection, do you recall whether you have ever seen the person whose features are reflected on those photographs?

Mrs. PAINE. No; I have not seen him.

The CHAIRMAN. May I see those, please?

Mrs. PAINE. Should I say that one picture in particular struck me as looking similar to Lee?

Mr. JENNER. Yes. When the Chief Justice has concluded his examination I will have you pick out that one in particular. Thank you, sir. When you see it will you give the exhibit number which appears on the reverse side?

Mrs. PAINE. Exhibit No. 153. Clearly the shoulders are broader than with Lee, but it is a quality about the face that recalls Oswald to my mind. Click here for photo.

So, a line of inquiry that Oswald, who was already suspected of being been impersonated in Mexico City, this was complemented by what Ruth Paine said and again by Mary Bledsoe’s observation of a “distorted face”.  Milton Jones’ “dark hair” observation was closed down at just the point it was leading somewhere.

II

Crafard himself was interviewed by Counsel Griffin on 9 April 1964. There’s no mention of him looking like Oswald. That date unfortunately avoided him coming face to face with either Bledsoe, the Johnsons or Roberts whilst waiting to testify. They had testified in the days before. 

Furthermore, when it did come to the cross examination of Mary Bledsoe and Earlene Roberts the Commission failed to identify that the person who stayed at 1026 N. Beckley and the person who stayed at Mary Bledsoe’s had different luggage.

Lee Harvey Oswald lived at Mary Bledsoe’s house from 7 October to 14 October (affidavit of 23 November 1964) and he moved out on Monday 14 October 1963, between 9 and 10am. 

This is her Commission testimony of 2 April 1964.

Mr. BALL. Let me ask you some questions before we commence the grocery store part of it. When you first saw him, did he have his luggage with him?

Mrs. BLEDSOE. Yes.

Mr. BALL. What did he have with him?

Mrs. BLEDSOE, A bag.

Mr. BALL. Will you describe the bag?

Mrs. BLEDSOE. I don’t remember where, seemed like it was a kind of a duffelbag.

Mr. BALL. The kind the men in the service put their clothes in?

Mrs. BLEDSOE. Yes; and had some on his arm, these coathangers, you know.

Mr. BALL. Had some things on a coathanger?

Mrs. BLEDSOE. And had a clock.

Mr. BALL. Had what?

Mrs. BLEDSOE. A clock, wrapped up.

Mr. BALL. What color was this duffelbag?

Mrs. BLEDSOE. I think it was blue.

Mr. BALL. That was the only bag he had with him?

Mrs. BLEDSOE. No, he went off to town and got another one.

Mr. BALL. Then he went off to town and brought another bag back, would you describe that?

Mrs. BLEDSOE. No, I didn’t pay any attention to it.

Mr. BALL. Was it leather or-

Mrs. BLEDSOE. I couldn’t say.

Mr. BALL. Could you give me any idea of the size of it?

Mrs. BLEDSOE. Well, it was big. About like that [indicating].

Mr. BALL. About like that, you mean, oh, 3 feet long, 2 feet, 2½?

Mrs. BLEDSOE. No; about like that.

Mr. BALL. About-

Mrs. BLEDSOE. As well as I remember.

Mr. BALL. About 2 feet long? Was it brown?

Mrs. BLEDSO. I just couldn’t remember. I didn’t pay any attention to it.

Mr. BALL. Do you remember the color?

Mrs. BLEDSOE. No.

Mr. BALL. Do you remember him carrying it into the room?

Mrs. BLEDSOE. Yes; I remember he went in.

Mr. BALL. Now-

Mrs. BLEDSOE. But, I didn’t pay any attention. He rented the room, and I didn’t pay any attention.

Mr. BALl. Did he carry it by a handle, or in his arms?

Mrs. BLEDSOE. I guess he carried it by a handle, but I don’t know.

Mr. BALL. He brought two bags into this room?

Mrs. BLEDSOE. Yes; wasn’t but one when he come in, but next time he went off-

Mr. BALL. He brought another one back?

How did he come out there, do you know?

Mrs. BLEDSOE. I don’t know. I don’t know whether he come here-he come and just knocked on the door. I was in the backyard.

Mr. BALL. After he moved, after he put his bags in his room, did he leave?

Mrs. BLEDSOE. No; he said–—

Mr. BALL. I mean, did he leave to go Downtown to get the other bag?

NIrs. BLEDSOE. Uh-huh, and come back.

Mr. BALL. Did you see him leave?

Mrs. BLEDSOE. No; I didn’t see him.

Mr. BALL. The time he went to get the other bag, did you see him?

Mrs. BLEDSOE. No.

III

Earlene Roberts, the Beckley manager, puts Oswald as moving in on 14 October 1963 between 5pm and 6pm. In her testimony of 8 April 1964 there was this exchange. 

Mr. Ball. Did you rent it to him, or did Mrs. Johnson?

Mrs. Roberts. I rented the room to him.

Mr. Ball. You did?

Mrs. Roberts. She talked to him, and she had to go back to work and that was what I was supposed to do, I rented the rooms she didn’t know what vacancies she had.

Mr. Ball. Did you have “room for rent” sign out in the front?

Mrs. Roberts. Yes.

Mr. Ball. What time of day did he come in there?

Mrs. Roberts. Oh, it was in the early afternoon—I imagine between 1 and 2 o’clock when he came in and looked at the room; and he rented it and paid for it; and then left, and went and got his things and I don’t know-it must have been around 5 or 6 o’clock when he come back in.

Mr. Ball. You say he went and got his things-what did he have with him at first when he came there?

Mrs. Roberts. Just a little satchel bag and some clothes on a hanger.

Mr. Ball. What kind of a satchel bag?

Mrs. Roberts. One of them little zip kinds.

Mr. Ball. What color was it?

Mrs. Roberts. It was just-don’t ask me that for I can’t answer that. It was just a dark bag is all I know.

The light amount of luggage begs the question as to how often the inhabitant of Room 0, 1026 N Beckley actually stayed there. It was so small that it was normally used for grandchildren of Earlene Roberts when visiting.

That evidence that there was an imposter is additional to the evidence of Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig who said he saw a man who he thought was Oswald getting into a Nash Rambler at approximately 12:40pm. Then there were the statements by Texas Theater manager Butch Burroughs that Oswald entered the Theater just after 1:00 pm and then bought popcorn, thus 40 minutes before the fugitive Oswald was said to have entered. The arrest record from Officer Stringfellow said Oswald was arrested in the balcony of the Texas Theater. But Oswald was arrested on the floor and then taken out the front. Adjacent shoe owner Bernard Haire said he had seen Oswald taken out the back entrance and was shocked when years later he saw the photograph of him being taken out the front.

There is even more evidence in the statements of Mary Lawrence, she told the FBI on 5 December 1963 and the DPD on 30 January 1964 that she had seen Oswald with Ruby in the early morning of 22 November in Lucas B&B Downtown Dallas.  She came forward having seen a photograph of Oswald on TV. She said that he had dark hair and she could identify Oswald if he had a scar on his cheek. That detail describes Crafard. A few days after the assassination she received an anonymous telephone call “telling her to get out of town or she would die”. Click here for document.

With Beckley there was another Jack Ruby connection, as Ruby associate Bertha Cheek was the sister of Earlene Roberts.  Ruby could have been aware of the accommodations there – and the presence of a housekeeper. Roberts does describe different behaviour to that Mary Bledsoe did. He wouldn’t talk.

“Mr. BALL. Did you ever talk to him about anything?

Mrs. ROBERTS. No ; because he wouldn’t talk.

Mr. BALL. Did he say “Hello”?

Mrs. ROBERTS. No.

Mr. BALL Or, “Goodbye”?

Mrs. ROBERTS. No.

Mr. BALL. Or anything?

Mrs. ROBERTS. He wouldn’t say nothing.

Mr. BALL. Did you ever speak to him?

Mrs. ROBERTS. Well, yes-I would say, “Good afternoon,” and he would just maybe look at me-give me a dirty look and keep walking and go on to his room.”

 

Mrs. ROBERTS. He would leave on Friday nights-he did say this much-he said, “Now, over weekends I will be out of town.” He didn’t say what town. He said, “I will be going out of town visiting friends.” He would leave Friday morning for work and he wouldn’t come back any more until Monday afternoon.”

 

That is a different behaviour to that described by Mary Bledsoe. Oswald had registered with her as Lee Oswald, not as in 1026 N Beckley, H Lee. And Oswald had discussed his wife and family in Irving, and showing photographs;  which isn’t “friends”, and isn’t the behaviour of someone who “wouldn’t say nothing”. But a problem. if Crafard was an impersonator, was if he opened his mouth, having lost his front teeth in a recent fight. 

Remember: the Commission timeline that needed Oswald to be on the bus for only 4 minutes. Then it required Oswald getting a cab at 12:48 pm from Greyhound bus station on Lamar Street.  Then to be taken by driver William Whaley to the 700 block of N Beckley. 

Was this probable?  Was it even possible?

 

THE CAB

William Whaley – eyewitness

The Commission timeline required a pickup of Oswald at 12:48pm by cab from Greyhound Bus Station at Lamar. That was decided despite the trip sheet manifest showing a 12:30pm pick-up which dropped someone off in the 700 block of N Beckley–6 blocks and 600 yards south of 1026 N Beckley–for a fare of 95 cents (CE382).

A leading question from Counsel Ball led Whaley to say he might be 15 minutes out as he rounded things to the quarter hours/15 minutes. But other rides on the same sheet show that answer to be untrue. It is also doesn’t explain why a 12:48 pm pick-up would be marked as 12:30pm, as on the rounding basis it would be 12:45pm.

However, there is another comment that that scotches the time of 12:48 pm. Whaley’s, trip sheet manifest (CE370) has a 12:00 noon time reservation pick-up from the Travis Hotel for a 12:15 pm drop off at Continental bus station (code #16#) for the minimum fare of 55 cents. With another 55 cents ride at 12:15pm from there dropping off at 12:30pm at Greyhound bus station. 

What is relevant here is whether the actual time of what he marked as a 12:30 pm pickup can also be determined by other means. And it can. This is from Whaley’s testimony (WH Vol 16), and another leading question that gets an inconvenient answer. 

“Mr. Ball. Were you standing at the Greyhound, at your cab stand at the Greyhound, long before you picked up another passenger?

Mr. Whaley. No, sir, there was no one at the Greyhound stand and when I unloaded at the door I just pulled up about 30 feet to the stand and stopped and then I wanted a package of cigarettes, I was out so I started to get out and I saw this passenger coming so I waited for him.”

But he is asked about that journey. He mentions sirens going (the result of the assassination). 

Mr. Whaley. He said, “May I have the cab?” I said, “You sure can. Get in.” And instead of opening the back door he opened the front door, which is allowable there, and got in.

Mr. Ball. Got in the front door?

Mr. Whaley. Yes, sir. The front seat. And about that time an old lady, I think she was an old lady, I don’t remember nothing but her sticking her head down past him in the door and said, “Driver, will you call me a cab down here?” She had seen him get this cab and she wanted one, too, and he opened the door a little bit like he was going to get out and he said, “I will let you have this one,” and she says, “No, the driver can call me one.” So, I didn’t call one because I knew before I could call one, one would come around the block and keep it pretty well covered.

Mr. Ball. Is that what you said?

Mr. Whaley. No, sir; that is not what I said, but that is the reason I didn’t call one at the time and I asked him where he wanted to go. And he said, “500 North Beckley.” Well, I started up, I started to that address, and the police cars, the sirens was going, running crisscrossing everywhere, just a big uproar in that end of townand I said, “What the hell. I wonder what the hell is the uproar?” And he never said anything. So I figured he was one of these people that don’t like to talk so I never said any more to him. But when I got pretty close to 500 block at Neches and North Beckley which is the 500 block, he said, “This will do fine,” and I pulled over to the curb right there. He gave me a dollar bill, the trip was 95 cents. He gave me a dollar bill and didn’t say anything, just got out and closed the door and walked around the front of the cab over to the other side of the street. Of course, traffic was moving through there and I put it in gear and moved on, that is the last I saw of him.

An immediate observation is what sort of fugitive offers to give their cab up? But, by the Commission account, the 12:48 pm pick up of Oswald would have been immediately after a 12:48 pm drop off of the (12:15pm) ride from Continental bus station. 

But Kennedy was shot at 12:30pm and there are Downtown sirens on the DPD police tape immediately after the tape resumes from jamming at 12:33pm. 

Whaley’s comments on first hearing sirens when he had started his journey to 500 N Beckley indicates there were no remarkable sirens at the time of his 12:30 pm drop off – when he started to get out of his car.  But sirens appeared in the early part of the 12:30 pm pick up. That couldn’t have occurred at 12:48 pm as the sirens would have already been going for at least 15 minutes.

IV

Finally, the Commission questioning with this leading question shot itself in the foot with this exchange.  The 12:15 pick-up for 12:30pm drop-off hadn’t even been 15 minutes but 9. 

Mr. BALL. In other words, it took you about 15 minutes to go – 

Mr. WHALEY. It actually took about nine minutes, sir.

Mr. BALL. And you put the trip ending Greyhound around 12:30?

Mr. WHALEY. Yes, sir.

By the arguments the Commission was using to fix the times to suit the timeline then the 12:15pm pick-up – being only 9 minutes – would have been out by 24 minutes, 12:39pm rather than the 12:15pm recorded. 

The story that Oswald took a cab past 1026 N Beckley to the 700 block and then doubled back was explained away by the Commission as some kind of spy craft like technique. But the simple explanation could be that there was no passenger of relevance. Just someone else who got a cab at 12:30 pm who intended to go to 500 N Beckley but got out earlier when the meter showed 95 cents as they wanted to use only a dollar. 

Indeed, the person to quote Whaley “got out and closed the door and walked around the front of the cab over to the other side of the street.” That’s not someone who is heading back to the 1,000 block, that is someone got out and is still heading to their intended destination of the 500 block.

Whaley’s first of two sessions with Ball was on 12 March 1964. He gave evidence again on 8 April 1964. This time Belin was  the attorney (WH Vol. II, pp. 253, 292. Vol. VI, p. 428).

Mr. BELIN. I will take you back to November 22. You turned south on Beckley and then where did you go as you turned south on Beckley?

Mr. WHALEY. I went right up on Beckley headed toward the 500 block.

Mr. BELIN. Then what happened?

Mr. WHALEY. When I got to Beckley almost to the intersection of Beckley and Neely, he said, “This will do right here.” and I pulled up to the curb.

Mr. BELIN. Was that the 500 block of North Beckley?

Mr. WHALEY. No, sir; that was the 700 block.

Mr. BELIN. You let him out not at the 500 block but the 700 block of North Beckley?

Mr. WHALEY. Yes, sir.

Mr. BELIN. Had you crossed Neely Street yet when you let him off?

Mr. WHALEY. No, sir.

Mr. BELIN. About how far north of Neely Street did you let the man off?

Mr. WHALEY. About 20 feet.

In his FBI statement of 29 November 1963, Whaley said he arrived back at Union Station from his N Beckley trip, at 12:45pm as he checked by his watch. He also confirmed that the 12:30 pm passenger “angled south” when he exited the vehicle at 700 block N Beckley. Click here for document.

So Whaley was back at 12:45bpm before he had picked Oswald up at 12:48pm! If it was in fact 1:00 pm then his watch would have to have been 15 minutes slow. But if it was 15 minutes slow he would have been 15 minutes late for his reserved ride at 12:00 noon at the Travis Hotel.

V

It also slipped out that his ID of Oswald in a line up was predetermined. 

“Mr. WHALEY. I signed that statement before they carried me down to see the lineup. I signed this statement, and then they carried me down to the lineup at 2:30 in the afternoon.

Mr. BELIN. You signed this affidavit before you saw the lineup?

Mr. WHALEY. Well, now, let’s get this straight. You are getting me confused.

Mr. BELIN. Now, I will put it this way. There was an FBI reporter, FBI interviewer with you?

Mr. WHALEY. Yes, sir; there was.

Mr. BELIN. And there was an interview with the Dallas Police Department?

Mr. WHALEY. Yes. And Bill Alexander from the District attorney’s office was there, also.

Mr. BELIN. All right, now, the last sentence.

Mr. WHALEY. Let me tell you how they fixed this up. They had me in the office saying that. They were writing it out on paper, and they wrote it out on paper, and this officer, Leavelle, I think that is his name, before he finished and before I signed he wanted me to go with him to the lineup, so I went to the lineup, and I come back and he asked me which one it was, which number it was, and I identified the man, and we went back up in the office again, and so then they had me sign this. That is as near as I can remember.”

Also, Whaley’s separate testimony to Ball on 12 March 1964 has information relating to condition of the passenger’s clothing.

Mr. BALL. Did he look dirty? 

Mr. WHALEY. He looked like his clothes had been slept in, sir, but he wasn’t actually dirty. The T-shirt was a little soiled around the collar but the bottom part of it was white. You have to know those winos, or they will get in and ride with you and there isn’t nothing you can do but call the police, the city gets the fine and you get nothing. 

 

Oswald, even on arrest, didn’t photograph looking like his clothes had been slept in, or a wino. A simple explanation for why someone looks like they’ve slept in their clothes when picked up from a Greyhound Bus station is because they have just arrived off an overnight Greyhound bus!

There is also unmistakable evidence Whaley was intimidated by the DPD. What normal witness is subject to having to pose for a sideways mugshot? Whaley was. Given that DPD licensed cabs in Dallas it’s hardly surprising he might say what was wanted. But in cross examination he let inconvenient things slip. The same as Mary Bledsoe and Cecil McWatters did. Click here for document.

The story of the cab is not only not credible, but the number of holes in it would indicate it wasn’t part of something that was pre-planned. The need to make up a taxi ride to deal with ‘Oswald’ getting off the bus adds weight to a presumption that the need for the person to get off the bus was because of an enforced change of plans. Again, consistent with Tippit messing up plans.

By 12:45pm it had been announced on the police radio that the President’s head “was practically blown off”. That would be a reason for someone getting cold feet. Bill Simpich has said that it seems that “things went south after Kennedy was shot”. 

If it wasn’t Oswald on the bus, and if there was no taxi ride, but the person did go to 1026 N Beckley and was there by 1:00 pm, then there is one strong possibility. That person was driven there following the police intervention to get “Oswald” off the bus.

That will be covered by the next article. 

 

(Photo of Crafard on left and Oswald on right)

---

Mary Bledsoe and the Bus Pt. 1

By John Washburn

This article deals with anomalies in Commission testimonies of police officers.  And also  previously uncommented upon side comments from citizen witnesses, such as Mary Bledsoe, Lee Oswald’s former landlady, and the bus driver Cecil McWatters.

What emerges from all this is that the Marsalis Street bus that Oswald was said to have been on for 4 minutes, that bus was singled out for different treatment than other buses.  And also witnesses Mary Bledsoe and Roy Milton Jones described someone better resembling perhaps Larry Crafard, who worked for Jack Ruby,  than Lee Oswald.

My prior articles have set out how Officers Angell, Parker, Lewis and Nelson were at the ends of strategic viaducts, meaning routes out of Dealey Plaza.  But that none of those positions were by overt order as a reaction to the shots fired at Kennedy. Indeed, R. C. Nelson was in place before 12:30pm, the time of the shooting. 

Commission Exhibit 2645, which was an inventory of police officer movements at around 1:00 pm on 22 November, refers to roadblocks set up in Northeast Dallas, North Dallas and Northwest Dallas in response to the assassination. Those were north and east of the Trinity River. 

But the logical place to place roadblocks, given the routes out of Dealey Plaza, would have been south and west of the Trinity River. But instead of that, several DPD officers were already on that side of the river, out of District. The opposite of setting up a roadblock is being in position to assist a getaway.

II

Below is an FBI map of the supposed getaway route taken by Oswald. But blue stars have been added for the places, where Nelson, J. D. Tippit, Lewis and Parker were: from the top, Commerce St Viaduct (Gloco Service Station), Houston St Viaduct, Cadiz Viaduct, Corinth Viaduct. A green star is the common location of Tippit and Angell at Lansing and Eighth (at different times). A yellow star is where Angell then went. The red line is Tippit’s route from Top Ten Records, up Bishop, along Sunset to Beckley and 10^th, dotted for the final stage to the murder site where he was killed at 1:09pm. The purple dot is Luby’s where William Mentzel was. The red dot is where Mentzel was cruising at 1:07pm. The black star is where Jerry Hill says he was at approximately 1:21pm. 

The map also illustrates that, if Nelson in his position, heard the gunshots at 12:30 pm then service station workers at Gloco could have as well. The time of arrival of Nelson in Dealey Plaza, his then departure and then re-arrival via the Houston Street viaduct would be consistent with that scenario, both timewise and direction. With the one-way system, a car would leave via Commerce Street Viaduct in the Oak Cliff direction and loop back via Houston Street Viaduct. The time between his “clear” and “on south end Houston Street viaduct” is 11-12 minutes hence he’s by then coming from the south. Google maps, which doesn’t assume police car travel time, has 14 minutes for that journey which averaging 20 mph, 11 minutes would be 25 mph.

A possible scenario to consider is that that it wasn’t Oswald escaping Downtown Dallas on the Marsalis bus but an imposter, with the objective of giving the appearance Oswald had left Downtown Dallas by that method, to visit 1026 N Beckley and then go to the Texas Theater. That would breathe meaning into the presence of Tippit at the Gloco station. 

There were two assassination attempts prior to Dallas. Chicago on 2 November 1963 (motorcade cancelled by the Secret Service) and Tampa on 18 November 1963 which did not take place; perhaps due to the heavy protection Kennedy had that day.  A possible patsy for the Chicago plan has been identified as Thomas Vallee, and for Tampa, Gilberto Lopez. Click here for document.

To address the possibility of an imposter, then close attention needs to be on the full statements of witnesses on the bus. Particularly so because whomsoever was on the bus got off Downtown before reaching Gloco, and Tippit left Gloco. 

What is relevant to this line of inquiry are descriptions of the passenger identified as Oswald, the time he got off and the circumstances around the time that he got off. 

ON THE BUS

Mary Bledsoe – eyewitness

Mary Bledsoe, Lee Oswald’s former landlady in Dallas for the five days from 7 October 1963, was the only witness in any way relevant to the shooting of Tippit who knew Oswald before 22 November 1964. She was on the Marsalis bus when the person said to have been Oswald got on and then got off. 

Mary Bledsoe’s testimony of 2 April 1964 (Vol VI, p 439) says two conflicting things concerning the facial appearance of the person.

“He was looking for a job, and called on the phone, wanted different ones, and I got the book, and papers, and tried to look for him a job, because he was a nice-looking boy, and wanted a job”. [p404], 

But she later said of him on the bus. 

“Mr. Ball. Did he look at you as he went by? Did he look at you?

Mrs. Bledsoe. I don’t know. I didn’t look at him. That is—I was just— he looked so bad in his face, and his face was so distorted. [p409]”.

Although Oswald under arrest an hour later had a black eye from his arrest, his appearance stood up remarkably well to press coverage and questioning at the police department in film and TV footage. His face is only ‘distorted’ at the point Jack Ruby shoots him. It follows that whoever Mary Bledsoe saw on the bus probably wasn’t Oswald . It may have been Crafard. Any facial distortion could be explained by the fact Crafard had no front teeth. 

Mary Bledsoe came forward as a witness as a result of knowing that Oswald had been arrested, rather than simply recognising him on the bus. 

(Photo of Crafard on left and Oswald on right)

Roy Milton Jones – eyewitness

Roy Milton Jones was also a passenger on the Marsalis bus. He was an 11^th grade student of 17 who regularly used the bus and knew driver Cecil McWatters. This is from his FBI statement (CE2641) of 20 March 1964. 

“JONES advised that before the bus was stopped the driver made his last passenger pickup six blocks before Houston Street, that one was a blonde-haired woman, and the other was a dark-haired man. He said the man sat in the seat directly behind him and the woman occupied the seat further to the rear of the bus.

“JONES said that after the driver mentioned this and from his recollection of OSWALD’s picture as it appeared on television and in the newspapers, he thought it was possible it could have been OSWALD. He emphasized, however, that he did not have a good view of this man at any time and could not positively identify him as being identical with LEE HARVEY OSWALD. He said he was inclined to think it might have been OSWALD only because the bus driver told him so.”

“He said the man was not carrying any packages and he certainly did not see a gun in his possession at any time. He said the man did not seem to appear nervous or excited and seemed to him to be an ordinary passenger.”  (Emphasis added)

That doesn’t merely indicate that the person might not have been Oswald, but it also indicates that what Mary Bledsoe saw as a “distorted face” wasn’t due to nervous pressure and distress of Oswald being on the run. 

Furthermore, a Commission memorandum, reference 100-10461 (p 26) (Click here for document) states that bus driver Cecil McWatters on 26 March 1964 (6 days after Milton Jones’ statement above) withdrew his identification of Oswald and said that the person he recognised was Roy Milton Jones.

Consistent with all of that, the first police description of the fugitive from the Tippit murder scene put out on police radio at 1:17pm (corrected time) was a man with black hair. Also, Domingo Benavides a witness at the Tippit murder scene who as well as being a mechanic was a mortuary barber, said the assailant wasn’t Oswald as the assailant had a square neckline and Oswald’s was tapered–a military-type cut. (Vol. VI, p. 444). 

The stop at which “Oswald” got on the bus at Field and Elm was the closest stop to Jack Ruby’s Carousel Club at Field and Commerce (the streets ran parallel, Elm, Main, Commerce). That is where Larry Crafard said he slept the night of 21/22 Nov 1963 – and slept in past the time of the assassination – but then left Dallas in a rush on 23 November 1963. 

The rest of this article explores evidence that may explain when, how and why did that person, assumed to be Crafard, then got off the bus when they did, and then do all of the things attributed to Oswald.

In normal traffic conditions the bus would have arrived at Gloco between 12:45 and 12:50pm. But the traffic was not normal. As covered later. 

A logical deduction, given the witnesses who saw Tippit arrive and then leave Gloco at speed heading in the direction of Lancaster Avenue, is that the person would get off the bus – by being removed – if Tippit was no longer waiting. 

If Tippit was no longer waiting, then he’d be a marked man if other confederates had by then committed capital crimes. Events after Kennedy was shot, point to elements of an intended plan falling apart, with the result that Tippit was shot and Oswald, the patsy, was not killed at the Texas Theater.

The Commission line was that only Oswald and a “blonde lady” got off the Marsalis bus at the same time in the vicinity of Lamar/Griffin and Elm. But once again, the evidence of Mary Bledsoe is interesting, and has been missed by the Commission’s assertions and most if not all subsequent researchers. In two separate statements in her testimony she lets something slip. Cecil McWatters the driver also let somethings slip. 

III

The Commission timeline for Oswald’s purported movements required 4 minutes for the bus to travel from Elm at Field  to Elm at Lamar. The sequence of parallel cross streets from east to west being Field, Murphy, Griffin, Poydras, Lamar. (Murphy and Poydras are now built over at Elm but still present elsewhere). 

Commission Report page 190 sets out that:

“In a reconstruction of this bus trip, agents of the Secret Service and the FBI walked the seven blocks from the front entrance of the Depository Building to Murphy and Elm three times, averaging 6.5 minutes for the three trips. A bus moving through heavy traffic on Elm from Murphy to Lamar was timed at 4 minutes.

“If Oswald left the Depository Building at 12:33 p.m., walked seven blocks directly to Murphy and Elm, and boarded a bus almost immediately, he would have boarded the bus at approximately 12:40 p.m. and left it at approximately 12:44 p.m. (See Commission Exhibit No.1119-A, p. 158.)” 

That timeline was tight as it needed to sit with Oswald then walking from Elm, over Main and Commerce along Lamar and getting a cab from Greyhound Bus Station at 12:48pm. 

However, a detailed read of testimonies shows that simulation doesn’t fit the facts. One obvious problem is that the 4-minute simulation for the Commission was a bus “moving through heavy traffic”. Those were not the conditions on 22^nd November 1963. The traffic was static because there was obstruction on Elm Street in Dealey Plaza – the road lanes Kennedy was shot in. Elm was three lanes one way, buses in the right-hand curb-side lane would stack back eastwards along Elm. 

Furthermore, Roy Milton Jones said in his statement to the FBI that the bus was held up for about an hour not merely because of traffic conditions but also because police got on and detained them. This is his FBI statement on 30 March 1964 (CE2641). 

“JONES advised that the bus proceeded in the direction of Houston Street and, approximately four blocks before Houston Street, was completely stopped by traffic which was backed up in this area.

“He recalled that at this time a policeman notified the driver the President had been shot and he told the driver no one was to leave the bus until police officers had talked to each passenger. JONES estimated that there were more than about fifteen people on the bus at this time and two police officers boarded the bus and checked each passenger to see if any were carrying firearms.”

“JONES estimated the bus was held up by the police officers for about one hour and, after they were permitted to resume, they crossed the Marsalis Bridge.”

None of that appears in the Commission Report as a matter of interest despite the questions it begs. 

Mary Bledsoe, said in her Commission examination that she got off the bus and got onto another bus that was behind with the “blonde woman” who’d got off when ‘Oswald‘ got off as the blonde woman was anxious that the holdup would make her miss her 1:00pm train from Union Station, which is on Houston Street. This is the exchange,

“Mr. BALL. Did she ask for a transfer?

Mrs. BLEDSOE. Yes; she had the man give her one, because she caught the bus before she got to the train station.

Mr. BALL. How do you know that?

Mrs. BLEDSOE. Well, I saw her.

Mr. BALL. You saw her catch another bus?

Mrs. BLEDSOE. She got on when we did. She rode a block.

Mr. BALL. Did anybody get off when the lady got off? Anybody that was going to the train station?

Mrs. BLEDSOE. No.” 

Mr. BALL. Was there traffic? Was the traffic heavy? Mrs. 

BLEDSOE. Oh, it was awful in the city, and then they had roped off that around where the President was killed, shot, and we were the first car that come around there, and then all of us were talking about the man, and we were looking up to see where he was shot and looking-and then they had one man and taking him, already got him in jail, and we got-“Well, I am glad they found him.” 

Mr. BALL. You were looking up at where? 

Mrs. BLEDSOE. At where the boy was shot. 

Mr. BALL. You mean the Texas Book Depository? 

Mrs. BLEDSOE. Yes, uh-huh.

(p410)

That blows apart the line that only Oswald and the blonde lady got off. But it is consistent with what is logical. Police boarding a bus would let the women off. Mary Bledsoe’s getting off the bus also throws into to the air the story of only two bus transfers, one for Oswald (and purportedly found on him) and one for the blonde lady. There would have been at least three given that Mary Bledsoe also got off the bus to get on another one.

Cecil McWatters – eyewitness

 

McWatters’ testimony (Vol II p 62) omits the police getting on the bus as well as omitting Mary Bledsoe getting off. But he does say someone got out of a car and spoke to him. He also says the bus was stalled. 

“Mr. BALL. Where were you when you first heard the President had been shot?

Mr. McWATTERS. Well, I was sitting in the bus, there was some gentleman in front of me in a car, and he came back and walked up to the bus and I opened the doorand he said, “I have heard over my radio in my car that the President has been —” I believe he used the word-“has been shot.” 

Mr. BALL. Is that when you were stalled in traffic?

Mr. McWATTERS. That is right. That is when I was stalled right there.

Mr. BALL. Was that before or after the man got off the bus that asked for the transfer?

Mr. McWATTERS. That was before. In other words, at that time no one had gotten off the bus.

Mr. BALL. What was your location then, near what street?

Mr. McWATTERS. Between Poydras and Lamar, in other words, because I stayed stopped there for, I guess oh, 3 or 4 minutes anyway before I made any progress at that one stop right there and that is where the gentleman got off the bus. fact, I was talking to the man, the man that come out of the car; in other words, he just stepped up in the door of the bus, and was telling me that what he had heard over his radio and that is when the lady who was standing there decided she would walk and when the other gentleman decided he would also get off at that point.”(p265)

“Mr. BALL. Do you remember what he said to you when he asked you for the transfer?

Mr. McWATTERS. Well, the reason I recall the incident, I had—there was a lady that when I stopped in this traffic, who had a suitcase and she said “I have to make a 1 o’clock train at Union Station” she said “I don’t believe – from the looks of this traffic you are going to be held up.” She said, “Would you give me a transfer and I am going to walk on down,” which is about from where I was at that time about 7 or 8 blocks to Union Station and she asked me if I would give her a transfer in case I did get through the traffic if I would pick her up on the way. So, I said, “I sure will.” So I gave her a transfer and opened the door and as she was going out the gentleman I had picked up about 2 blocks asked for transfer and got off at the same place in the middle of the block where the lady did.” (P264)

Mary Bledsoe’s affidavit of 23^rd November 1963 said

“The traffic was heavy and it took quite some time to travel two or three blocks. During that time someone made the statement that the President had been shotand while the bus was stopped due to the heavy traffic, Oswald got off the bus and I didn’t see him again.” 

IV

Therefore the testimonies of Bledsoe and Milton Jones, and the slipping out of things by McWatters don’t accord with the Commission account. The bus was not slow but static, there was an intervention by which people on the bus knew that the president had been shot, and the bus was held for up to an hour by police. ‘Oswald’ got off when a man got out of a car and asked for the bus door to be opened. Roy Milton Jones said that was a policeman. 

As to the delay, McWatters in the Dallas Morning News 28 November 1963 said 

“By the time we had gone to the middle block of Poydras and Elm, traffic was held up. We were stalled there in the traffic. A man about 55 and dressed in working clothes got out of his car in front of us and walked towards the bus, I knew I hadn’t done anything to offend him.”

McWatters’ testimony also says:

 “Mr. McWATTERS. Yes, sir. As I left Field Street, I pulled out into the, in other words, the first lane of traffic and traffic was beginning to back up then; in other words, it was blocked further down the street, and after I pulled out in it for a short distance there I come to a complete stop, and when I did, someone come up and beat on the door of the bus, and that is about even with Griffin Street. In other words, it is a street that dead ends into Elm Street which there is no bus stop at this street, because I stopped across Field Street in the middle of the intersection and it is just a short distance onto Griffin Street, and that is when someone, a man, came up and knocked on the door of the bus, and I opened the door of the bus and he got on.”

So, by all that, Oswald didn’t get off having been on the for bus 4 minutes from where he got on. The normal time to travel those two blocks would be 1-2 minutes. The 3–4-minute delay at that one stop added to the normal travel time would have used up the time allowed of 4 minutes, and the bus had already been stuck in traffic and delayed before that stop. 

The Commission time, of only two minutes more than the usual two minutes it would have normally taken, is not long enough for someone to become not only agitated about the delay but agitated enough so that others on the bus would know about it. 

But there is another issue. The bus transfer that was purported to have been found in Oswald chest pocket was cut for 1:00pm, and hence valid until 1:15pm. Transfers were cut rounding up to the next quarter hour and valid for the 15 minutes after that. Had any passenger – including Oswald – got off the bus at 12:44pm, then the transfer should have been cut for 12:45pm and hence valid until 1:00pm. So, the transfer rather than supporting the Commission line puts the time of disembarkation somewhere between 12:45 and 1:00pm

As we shall see later, there is relevance in where the bus halted based on this exchange. 

Mr. BALL. You were beyond Field and before you got to Griffin?

Mr. McWATTERS. That is right. It was along about even with Griffin Street before I was stopped in the traffic.

Mr. BALL. And that is about seven or, eight blocks from the Texas Book Depository Building, isn’t it?

Mr. McWATTERS. Yes, sir. It would be seven, I would say that is seven, it would be about seven blocks.

Mr. BALL. From there?

Mr. McWATTERS. From there, yes, sir.

This part of the testimony with questions from then Rep. Gerald Ford is also clear that the man in the car caused the door to open and ‘Oswald’ and the woman got off. 

“Representative FORD. You gave her a transfer?

Mr. McWATTERS. Yes, sir.

Representative FORD. What happened?

Mr. McWATTERS. She got off and by the time when she was talking to me that is when he got up, this gentleman here in the seat got up, at seat “M” got off. In other words, the door was never closed of the bus from the time the gentleman stepped up in the door of that there, in other words, when he said what he did, and got on back in his car, in other words, the lady got off, and the man got off, too, both at the same stop.”(P273)”

McWaters does slip out that his bus was singled out and treated differently traffic-wise. He gives that away as he said that other buses behind him were let through when the authorities ‘opened up a lane’. Wholly consistent with what Mary Bledsoe said. 

Mr. BALL. Was traffic still heavy along there?

Mr. McWATTERS. Yes, sir; the traffic was still tied up, but the police, they opened up a lane there, they had so many buses and everything that was tied up, they opened up, moved traffic around that they run quite a few of these buses through there. In other words, from two blocks on this side of where the incident happened they had, in other words, they was turning all the traffic to the right and to the left, in other words, north and south.

Mr. BALL. You went on down to Houston viaduct then?

He later says, 

Mr. McWATTERS. Yes, I turned after they finally let—they weren’t letting any cars through at that time but they just run a bunch of those buses through there.

Mr. BALL. This is west. You are going west on Elm.

Mr. McWATTERS. In other words, I am going-right here is where the police had all traffic, they weren’t allowing anything to go any further than Market Street here. In other words, all the traffic there they were moving was turning either to the right or left, on Market Street. But after they held us up there so long, of course, they run these buses in this right lane here and they did open up and let a bunch of these buses go right on down here to Houston, of course, a lot of them go straight on and a lot of them turn left to Houston Street, a lot of them go under the underpass here. (P266)

He can only have known “quite a few” if – as Milton Jones said – they were held up for a considerable time and saw several other buses overtaking his bus. You wouldn’t know a “bunch of buses” had got through if you’d already got through”.

McWatter’s statement to the FBI on 23 November 1964 put the delay of the bus as “fifteen to twenty minutes”. A question is was that the delay to that one stop, or the whole journey. Click here for document.

V

It is of note that, McWatters was reported in the Dallas Morning News of 28 November 1963, which puts him at Jefferson and Marsalis after 1:30pm.

“The cashier of the Texas Theater immediately called the police- —who had just sped en masse to a false alarm at the Dallas Library branch on Jefferson, further to the east. The police sirens wailed again. Oddly enough it was at the library that McWatters, the bus driver who, unknowingly, had Oswald as a passenger earlier, had his second brush with fate. His bus pulled up at the intersection as a swarm of 10 or 15 police cars zeroed in on the library, *I couldn’t imagine what was going on” said McWatters. “Little did I know!*

This incident at the library at Marsalis and Jefferson, appears on the police radio just after 1:30pm. Given the bus in ordinary conditions should have been there at 12:50pm (CE378), then the bus was more than 40 minutes late getting there. That is closer to Milton Jones’ estimate of a delay of up to an hour. Click here for document.

To summarise all that. The bus was more than 4 minutes late, past 12:45pm destroying the Commission timeline. A person, possibly a police officer in civilian clothes approached the bus and alerted people to the fact the President was shot. Mary Bledsoe and the blonde lady also got off at the place Oswald did. The men remaining on the bus were detained for about 40 minutes by other police officers. 

A rational deduction is that the man was a policeman in plain clothes and that ‘Oswald’ got off as a result of an intervention that was applied to that bus, not the others.

There was no  credible ID of Oswald by Milton Jones or McWatters, and the man Milton Jones saw did not appear distressed, so that is not consistent with Oswald’s face being distorted due to stress or exertion from of long walk at speed from Dealey Plaza. Oswald did not have dark hair, or a distorted face. 

Milton Jones also describes the man as wearing a light blue jacket. That is consistent with the Eisenhower jacket supposedly discarded by the assailant at Ballew Texaco Service Station near the Tippit murder scene that was found, despite the persons who saw him running there didn’t see him take it off.

Click here to read part 2.