Tag: WARREN COMMISSION

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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.

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Set out here is new evidence drawn from an exercise comparing the Dallas Police Department radio transmissions on tapes extracted from Dictabelt recordings – held by the University of Virginia – to what was transcribed in three versions for the Warren Commission.

Background

Officer JD Tippit was out of his assigned District 78 in the far south of Dallas at the time he was shot with four bullets, one to the head. The time of the shooting is disputed but it appears to be shortly after 1:00pm in Oak Cliff, Dallas outside 410E 10^th Street.

His murder was attributed to Lee Harvey Oswald, allegedly on the run from shooting Kennedy on Elm Street, Dealey Plaza, Dallas, at 12:30 pm from the 6^th Floor of the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD). But there was no credible explanation as to why Tippit was at 10^th and Patton, nor what he was doing. There was also no credible explanation as to how Oswald left his lodgings at 1026 N Beckley at 1:03 pm-1:04 pm and then allegedly walked 0.9 miles to shoot Tippit.

Temple Bowley chanced on the post-event murder scene at 1:10pm and announced the crime on Tippit’s own car radio. (James DiEugenio, The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today, p. 127) An ambulance from two blocks away that had already been called by a neighbor arrived as Bowley was finishing that call. The ambulance then delivered Tippit’s body to Beckley Methodist Hospital, he was declared dead on arrival by a doctor at 1:15pm.

The assailant was seen walking from the east, whilst the route Oswald would have needed to have taken was from the north and west. There are plenty of other discrepancies of witness descriptions of the Tippit assailant that cast doubt on him being Oswald.

I

More than one person was reported to have been on the scene, and a neighbor in an apartment at 113 ½ S Patton, with a view across the rear of 410 E 10^th, Doris Holan, said she saw two police officers present when Tippit was murdered. She said a police car pulled up in the alley behind 404 and 410 East 10^th that could only be accessed from the alley behind the houses that ran from Denver to Patton.

More on that later. Just to say, her story has been misinformed by some on the basis she lived opposite of the murder scene and couldn’t see the back of 410 E 10^th. However, she had moved from 409 E 10^th to 113 S Patton in September 1963 and was living there on 22 November 1963. 113 ½ S Patton had a clear elevated view only 140 feet distance to the back of 410 E 10^th and rear driveway and rear alley that the driveway was accessed from.

There were also discrepancies regarding the discarded shells found at the scene, and an alert on police radio was that Tippit had been shot with an automatic. (Henry Hurt,Reasonable Doubt, p. 155) The handgun on Oswald purportedly had on his arrest at the Texas Theater cinema was a revolver and had a bent firing pin.

The Warren Commission account – to give Oswald time to walk from 1026 N Beckley – had to deal with the problem of Tippit arriving at the hospital before, on its timeline, he’d been shot. For the death certificate by Dr. Richard Liquori states the time of death at 1:15 PM. The Warren Report says that TIppit was shot at about 1:16. (WR p. 155)

Housekeeper Earlene Roberts saw the man she thought was Oswald standing opposite the rooming house address 1026 N Beckley at 1:03pm-1:04pm after police car 207 pulled up and honked.(Mark Lane,Rush to Judgment, p. 170) Car 207 had left Dallas Police HQ at (old) City Hall at 12:46 pm having taken Sergeant Gerald Hill to the Texas School Book Depository.

Unpublished WC papers in a dossier now in the Kennedy files show that Warren Commission staff had a suspicion that Laverne “Larry Crafard” was 1 of 4 persons who they suspected might be impersonating Oswald. (Memo from Burt Griffin to staff, March 13, 1964) Crafard was a casual employee of Jack Ruby – who shot and killed Oswald at the City Hall Police HQ basement on 24 November – for just over a month in October and November 1963. He reportedly lived in a back room at the Carousel Club. He left Dallas after the assassination and hitchhiked to Michigan with seven dollars in his pocket. (Michael Benson,Who’s Who in the JFK Assassination, pp. 89-90)

Ruby was a nightclub owning minor mobster. He’d been a regular visitor to DPD HQ for years before the Kennedy assassination. He was also in and out of the Dallas Police offices in the two days prior to his arrest for shooting Oswald. The Dallas Police Department was known for being corrupt and very right-wing with members of Ku Klux Klan serving in it, together with Klan linked Masonic lodges.

But things were already going on before then, involving other police officers, that cannot be explained as being a reaction to Kennedy being shot.

Oak Cliff – a likely getaway zone (per radio Dispatcher Murray Jackson). So why was it full of cops before the assassination?

Shortly after the assassination of Kennedy, Officer Tippit was seen by several witnesses at a Gloco service station, Oak Cliff, the other side of the Trinity River basin from Dealey Plaza at the southern end of the Houston Viaduct. But that only emerged after the Warren Commission’s conclusions were made public. The evidence of the employees at Gloco gas service station, from Tippit researcher GregLowrey – is that they were absolutely certain Tippit arrived shortly after the “shots were fired” in Dealey Plaza.

“Greg recalled his interviews with Gloco Station employees Emmett Hollingshead and J.B. “Shorty” Lewis. They were both certain that Tippit arrived at the Gloco Station “a few minutes” after the shots were fired in Dealey Plaza. Greg said “There was simply no doubt whatever about this in their minds, they were absolutely certain””.

They then said he stayed for about 10 minutes and headed off at speed in the direction of Lancaster Avenue.

Nothing in what the witnesses said indicate this was third-hand information, and look at where they were. Gloco was across the Trinity River basin from Dealey Plaza, 1.2 miles in a straight line (approximately where Greenbriar Streetcar station is now).

We know that Tippit’s colleague, Officer R. C. Nelson, could hear the shots across the river basin. Nelson told CBS in 2013 he was on the western end of the Commerce Viaduct, 0.85 miles in straight line from Dealey Plaza. He heard the shots and drove over to Dealey Plaza in time to see people still cowering on the ground.

Given Nelson – who was also not where he should have been at 12:30pm – could hear “shots fired”, then outdoor gas pump attendants at Gloco, should have been able to hear the shots too. That would explain their certainty by hearing the event, not being told it. They said Tippit stayed approximately 10 minutes then raced off at speed in the direction of Lancaster Avenue (by a road now covered over).

Tippit was also seen at Gloco by professional photographer Al Volkland . Volkland took a famous photo from the margin of the freeway (at what is now Highway 366) of the distressed JFK limousine heading to Parkland Hospital. That would have been 12:31pm. He and his wife drove from the freeway to Gloco, saw Tippit and waved, as they knew him. It’s a 5-minute ride from where the photograph was taken to Gloco by the current road system. The Volklands said it was 15-20 minutes after the assassination.

Those timings put Tippit at Gloco for approximately 10 minutes between shortly after 12:30 pm and perhaps until 12:45 or a bit after.Nelson placed himself in Dealey Plaza at 12:32 pm talking to witnesses. But by the DPD radio Nelson can then be heard calling “clear” at 12:40 pm (not transcribed for the Warren Commission).

The Warren Commission transcript, CE-705, also has a call at 12:47 pm as “101’s on south end of the Houston Street viaduct.” However, the words on the tape are “87 [Nelson)] “ON, south end Houston Street viaduct”.

There is then a faint and untranscribed call to Nelson seconds later. “87 call station 7”. That is an order to make a landline call. The south end of Houston Street viaduct is of course the position of Gloco Gas Service Station which presumably would have a payphone. The word “ON” is heavily emphasised, was he at Gloco having expected to see Tippit there but who had left? After all, Nelson told author Henry Hurt he did not want to talk unless there was a monetary reward. (Hurt, p. 162)

At 12:52pm Nelson makes a radio call “87, out down here”, being the parlance for Dealey Plaza from 12:49 pm, when a call placed Deputy DPD Chief Lumpkin in charge in Dealey Plaza in which he calls “out down here”. Therefore, Nelson before 12:30 pm (the time of the assassination) was out of his assigned district 16 miles to the south, yet went to the assassination scene on hearing the shots, but then left Dealey Plaza for at least 12 minutes and then came back and on the way back is asked to make a landline call. Was Nelson saying “clear” to signal he’d left Dealey Plaza to go somewhere and 7-8 minutes later he’s heading back from whatever he went to do? More on where he may have gone is covered later

But as well as – and contrary to all of that – thereis a dispatch call at 12:45pm “87 [Nelson], 78 [Tippit], move into central Oak Cliff area.” (Hurt, p. 161) With the replies.”I’m at Kiest and er Bonnie” (5 miles south of Gloco and “87’s going north on Marsalis at R.L. Thornton” (3 miles south of Dealey Plaza).

But Nelson can’t have been heading north on Marsalis at RL Thornton from his home district, as he’d been 15 miles north at Commerce Viaduct and Dealey Plaza since at least 12:30 pm. And if Nelson had been told to go to central Oak Cliff at 12:45 pm, why did he go to back to Dealey Plaza at 12:52 pm instead? If the 12:45 pm Nelson call was genuine then his CBS account was false and the other untranscribed and mistranscribed calls are fakes. But why go to the effort to fake calls but not transcribe? (As Jim Marrs notes in Crossfire, J. C. Bowles told Gary Mack that the original tapes were taken by federal agents a few days after the assassination; Joe McBride,Into the Nightmare, p. 425)

II

One would also expect the dispatcher working in real time would have wondered why, if he’d made the 12:45 pm call to go to Oak Cliff, Nelson disobeyed it and went to Dealey Plaza instead.

The provenance of the 12:45 pm call fits with it being added afterwards and being ersatz. Warren Commission staff had questioned why Tippit was so far out of his home district when shot, because the 12:45 pm call out and the responses from Nelson and Tippit didn’t exist in the first DPD transcript.

There were three official transcripts of the DPD tapes:

• Secret Service Copy CD-290. Logged by Warren Commission 8 January 1964, dated December 3 1963 (11 days after the assassination). Supplied by Deputy Chief Lumpkin of DPD.
• FBI Copy CE-705. Went through Inspector Herbert Sawyer DPD dated 6th March 1964,
• DoJ Copy CE-1974. – from the FBI for the DoJ dated August 11, 1964,

The reason given in the Warren Commission testimony of DPD Chief Curry for the appearance of a 12:45pm call was that not all transmissions were audible:

Mr. Rankin. Chief Curry, we were furnished a Commission Document No. 290, dated December 5, 1963, that purported. to be a radio log for your department, and it did not have any item in it in regard to instruction to Officer Tippit to go to the Central Oak Cliff area. Do you know why that would be true?

Mr. Curry. I don’t know why it wasn’t in that log except that these logs, after they are recorded, they are pretty difficult to try to take everything off.

However, the 12:45pm call on the tape is as clear as a bell.  One of the clearest things on the whole tape.

The likely explanation is that the 12:45 pm call was added afterwards as an attempt to explain Tippit’s movements and jibe with the Warren Commission’s published account. However, in faking Tippit’s position they also brought in a position for Nelson to embellish the story of “depletion of officers in Oak Cliff”, but those alterations missed that Nelson’s real movements were left on the tape.

Further, the voice of “Nelson” on the tape in the 12:45 pm call is different than his other calls on the same tape, in which he sounds like a pleasant, earnest young Texan. The voice at 12:45 pm is older and sounds almost drunk/slurred, a different accent. Also, the grammar, “87’s headed North on Marsalis at TL Thornton” is out. It’s in the third person. It should be “87. Headed North….etc”.

The voice of “Tippit” is also different than the other Tippit calls – he normally has a very laid-back rockabilly type twang. This one was not.

So, who controlled Tippit and Nelson (both of the SW District) that day? And as referenced above, what were the two doing that required DPD and/or the FBI which took the tapes to Oklahoma to process and then likely alter parts of them? (The intentions of FBI Director J Edgar Hoover are covered later.)

Per the Warren Commission testimony of Sergeant Calvin Owens, Owens was the acting SW District commander for that day as Lieutenant Fulgham was doing a traffic school. Owens stated that officers Tippit and Angell were under his command, but another Sergeant took over at lunchtime.An FBI memo of 20 May 1964, supplied to the Warren Commission on 5 June 1964 never published by the Commission states:

“According to Sergeant OWENS, Officer TIPPIT had gone home to eat lunch, which was a normal and approved procedure, at about noontime.”
“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.”

Then, what appears on the record of the Warren Commission is this testimony (Vol. 7, p. 78ff)

Mr. Ely. Were you on duty on November 22, 1983?
Mr. Owens. I was.
Mr. Ely. And what was the nature of your assignment on that date?
Mr. Owens. Acting lieutenant, Oak Cliff substation.
Mr. Ely. Because you were acting lieutenant in the Oak Cliff substation, would that mean that Officer Tippit would be under your supervision?
Mr. Owens. That’s true.”

Ely clearly cannot understand why Tippit was wandering around the area in three different districts, i.e. 78, 109 and 91. (See p. 81) Towards the end, this happens:

“Mr. Ely. Off the record. (Discussion off the record between Counsel Ely and the witness Owens.)
Mr. Owens. I don’t know what district Officer J. L. Angel [spelling should be Angell] was working, but it was my understanding that he also went to Elm and Houston.
Mr. Ely. Well, he was working somewhere in the Oak Cliff area, was he?
Mr. Owens. Yes; he was working in the Oak Cliff area under the same sergeant that Officer Tippit was working under.”

Owens is not asked who that Sergeant was nor why the command changed. He brought up Angell as answer without an on the record question that would require it. It appears as a non-sequitur after an off-record exchange with Warren Counsel Ely immediately prior to that answer.  His being “unable to furnish” is an indication that people superior to him would need to be asked that. By that, Angell wasn’t supposed to be in Oak Cliff either. Owens’ testimony vitiates the notion that Tippit was where the 12:45 pm call placed him. He was already working in Oak Cliff under the command of a Sergeant.

III

Per the tape at12:42 pm, and missing from the WC transcript, is Officer Angell (car 81) – saying “81. We’re still at Lansing and 8th”. That is Oak Cliff. At 12:45 pm Angell then says in a sing-song type voice “we’re going north on Industrial from Corinth” the WC Exhibit 705 did transcribe this, but wrongly, as “I’m going north on Industrial at Corinth”. That is the north end of the Corinth Viaduct over the Trinity River, consistent with having left Oak Cliff.

At 12:54 pm there is an exchange with the dispatcher and Tippit. ”78, “78” “you are in the Oak Cliff area are you not”. Tippit says “Lansin’ 8th” in his rockabilly type relaxed twang.

But all three WC transcripts had “Lancaster and 8^th”. So, Tippit had by 12:54 pm left Gloco and is where Angell was 12 minutes earlier, Lansing Street at 8^th. That is two streets to the west of Lancaster Avenue crossing where 8^th Street has a bend. Angell and Tippit are in the same place under the same command , two blocks down, one across, from where Tippit is later shot.

The dispatcher – having likely never made the 12:45 pm call – doesn’t ask why Tippit is out of his area. Just as he didn’t ask Nelson or Angell why they were doing the things they were. Instead, he wishes to know where Tippit is, and expected it to be Oak Cliff. Was Tippit expected to confirm something prior to that call, but hadn’t?

By deduction,the dispatcher probably was in on the alteration, to assist in making it; and to tell the story after the event that the call had occurred when it hadn’t. Nelson seems not to have co-operated or else his own voice could have been used to create his 12:45pm call. Presumably too, Nelson would have told them it was a bad idea given the obvious inconsistencies elsewhere on the tape.

Lansing at 8th is not a normal suburban road but a due north-south alley and it doglegs once it crosses over 10^th to the southwest and runs as the alley behind the crime scene on E 10th by passing through what is now waste ground over Denver then on to Patton and Beckley towards the Texas Theater. The continuous telegraph poles on Google maps show the alley and Lansing are the same original thoroughfare.  The Google street car drove the whole route even over the waste ground. The rear alley of what was 410 E 10^th, now renumbered 408, can still be seen with a gate in front of new 410 at the rear.

DPD Dispatcher Murray Jackson said he sent Nelson and Tippit to Oak Cliff at 12:45 pm, as it was depleted of officers, and Oak Cliff was where an assassin on the the run might go. Looking at the Dallas map and what routes spill from Dealey Plaza, then Oak Cliff – over the viaducts – does makes sense as a getaway zone; if downtown is to be avoided as well as the route north to Parkland Hospital where Kennedy was taken to.

But as set out above, Jackson did not need to send any officers to Oak Cliff in reacting to the assassination. Instead, as set out below, the number of officers already there was half a dozen. Any dispatcher with ears could hear that.

Off-duty Officer Harry Olsen was in Oak Cliff on 22 November 1963 supposedly guarding a house on 8^th, the estate of a lady who had died. Olsen’s girlfriend, later wife, Kay Coleman’s Warren Commission testimony–by counting blocks by reference to her apartment on N Ewing and the 7/11 store (still there at Lancaster and 8^th, it was the first 7/11 in the whole of the USA) –places Olsen on 22 November 1963 at 8th at the Lansing block. She gave him an alibi for 12:30 pm. When asked how Olsen knew Kennedy had been shot, the answer was that a friend of the dead woman had called to tell her. That block on 8^th is also where researcher Prof. Greg Pulte put Olsen, by property description and counting the blocks.

Warren Commission staff papers now on the web have an Olsen dossier. In July of 1964, J. Lee Rankin asked Hoover, “The Commission is interested in exploring the possibility that Harry Olsen…and Kay Coleman, a strip tease dancer for Jack Ruby, assisted Ruby in the killing of Lee Harvey Oswald.” Rankin then asked for phone calls of the pair for 11/23 and 11/24.

Olsen was reportedly asked later in life whether he was involved in the shooting of Tippit. According to Michael Brownlow he said, “a lot of people followed orders that day”. (See Jack Myers, “How Oswald was framed for the Murder of Tippit”, Pt. 3) That would indicate a rogue command structure from the top rather than junior officers like Tippit and Nelson, who may merely have operated as commanded.

Olsen lied to the FBI and Warren Commission. He said that the night after the assassination Kay and he chanced across Jack Ruby around midnight at a parking garage near the Carousel Club; they had a chat, and that they had gone there to meet a person called Johnny. However, it transpired that “Johnny” was the garage attendant Johnny Simpson and he said there was no meeting with him, but he did see the others there. By Kay Olsen’s testimony the meeting with Ruby lasted 2 ½ hours. Despite that testimony raising even more questions about a conspiracy to kill Oswald, Hoover closed the inquiry in a letter of 4 September 1964.

Some of the Olsen Warren Commission deposition was done off the record and is not known to this author. The counsel who gave Olsen an easy ride despite the problems with his testimony was Arlen Specter, who was also the creator of the Single Bullet Theory.

Coleman was British and divorced from her US husband. She and Olsen drove 125 miles to see Olsen’s father in Wichita Falls. They left Dallas at 2 pm Sunday 24 November 1963, arriving in Wichita at 6:30pm. They left there at 10:30 pm, to tell him they were getting married. The reason Olsen gave for being off work on 22 November 1963 was his having a bad leg. But his testimony about his movements that weekend indicates someone very much mobile.

IV

From the tape and transcripts and Warren Commission testimonies, there were other officers in Oak Cliff from 12:30 pm. Officer William Mentzel was at Luby’s Cafeteria on E. Jefferson Boulevard one block and 500 yards from opposite the Texas Theater on E Jefferson Boulevard. He claimed to the FBI in 1963/64 not to have known of the assassination until his lunch break ended at 1:00 pm, as he didn’t have radio contact and couldn’t get through to DPD HQ by the payphone at Luby’s as the line was always engaged.

But he did have radio contact. The tape has him calling “91 clear” at 12:33pm immediately after the 5-minute radio jam (that jamming is suspicious) across the assassination event ended. There are sirens going in the adjacent call. Mentzel’s story also changed for the HSCA when he said a waitress at Luby’s told him at about 12:45pm that Kennedy had been shot. (McBride, p. 428)He also claimed that after 1:00 pm, that he went to the scene of a motor accident. This is also dubious. From the tape he can be heard taking the call, and he interjects several times; but he hands the assignment to another officer, Patrolman Nolan. From the tape, Mentzel was anxious – and he labors the whole incident – to establish that the western part of West Davis was the venue of the accident, rather than the eastern part.

The potential relevance of that is that the low block numbers of West Davis form the junction with N Patton; 300 yards from where Tippit was shot five minutes after Mentzel’s interjections. Anyone responding to and going to the wrong end of West Davis could have been very close to where the Tippit murder was about to take place.

Officer Walker at 12:30 pm was at the old Oak Cliff fire station at 706 E 10^th (still there as Engine Co No 7), where 10^th meets Lancaster, where he said he popped in to watch assassination coverage on their TV. That’s two blocks and 500 yards from where Tippit is shot at 10^th and Patton.

Patrolman Lewis call sign 35 per the tape (not transcribed) says at 12:47pm “105 Corinth”. That’s the south end of Corinth Viaduct, Oak Cliff. He is 7 miles out of his district in northwest Dallas next to Love Field Airport.

Officer Parker, call sign 56, states at 12:42pm “56. E Jefferson”. East Jefferson becomes the Corinth Viaduct. He was 20 miles out of his northeast patrol district of Garland.

All of this again scotches the line that Tippit and Nelson were called to Oak Cliff as it was depleted of Officers. It was not, not at all. Tippit, Angell, Mentzel, Walker, Lewis, Parker; and the viaducts are a common position: Tippit, Nelson, Parker, Lewis and then Angell. Then there was Olsen.

The SW District Commander was William Fulgham, who was purportedly on other duties for the day. He was later promoted to Deputy Chief of Police, but then investigated for misconduct in October1972. Six of his 22 Second Platoon patrolmen had unexplained movements that day: Tippit, Nelson, Mentzel, Walker, Angell and Anglin.

It would take a remarkable lack of curiosity by Fulgham not to realize that something had been going on with his officers that day. He was never called to the Warren Commission, so Owens was left trying to explain things as best he could.

The presence of so many out of district officers in the getaway zone prior to the JFK murder and without any overt radio orders to go there because of the assassination speaks volumes. As does the failure to transcribe certain calls, misrepresenting others and faking at least one.

Recently released CIA papers state that its interception of USSR intelligence concluded that Kennedy was shot by right wing elements assisted by a rogue element of the DPD.

Presidential papers also show advice to President Lyndon Johnson in the immediate days after the assassination that a commission needed to be set up to conclude Oswald was the sole assassin to avoid nuclear war with the USSR. A reason for that being Oswald’s Russia connections. J. Edgar Hoover also worried about international complications. (NBC News report, 10/26/17, by Alex Johnson) Declassified tapes also set out that Oswald was being impersonated in Mexico City at the Cuban Consulate, Hoover told Johnson that the picture the CIA sent up to the FBI was not Oswald, and the tape of his voice sent to Dallas was not his. (James Douglass,JFK and the Unspeakable, p. 80) Johnson asked whether he himself was a target on 22 November.

Added to all that, papers in the Kennedy files and now on the web–not published at the time– contain a dossier setting out how Warren Commission staff suspected Oswald was being impersonated in Dallas. In a memo dated 3/13/64 they mapped out four persons they thought might he imposters. And they asked the FBI to investigate them. One of those suspected was Larry (Laverne) Crafard, Jack Ruby’s recently hired assistant.

Jack Ruby had picked up Crafard – a visiting fairground worker – at the Texas State Fair in October 1963. He stayed on a sofa at Ruby’s Carousel Club and the Warren Commission staff got the FBI to trace him to the wilds of Michigan, he’d gone there the weekend of 23-24 November, after the assassination. This was his exchange with Hubert, in Volume XIV of the Commission. Hubert was one of the more tenacious Warren Commission Counsels. He wants Crafard to describe the haste with which he left Dallas:

Mr. HUBERT. What about the salary that was owed to you? Weren’t you interested in that?
Mr. CRAFARD. I didn’t even think about it.
Mr. HUBERT. You didn’t say goodbye to anybody when you left Dallas?
Mr. CRAFARD. No.
Mr. HUBERT. You didn’t advise anyone that you were leaving Dallas?
Mr. CRAFARD. No; other than the fact that I give the key to the boy at the parking lot and told him to tell Jack goodbye for me.
Mr. HUBERT. You did send a message of goodbye to Jack through this man?
Mr. CRAFARD. Yes.
Mr. HUBERT. Did you leave word where you would be?
Mr. CRAFARD. No.

More on Crafard’s departure is covered later. It’s difficult to comprehend how a person relying on casual work wasn’t concerned about his final salary from Jack Ruby, begging the question whether he’d been paid off by other means.

The bus and the theater

Aligning with the suspicion that Crafard had a role in impersonating Oswald in Dallas, are the points of detail in the observations of the witnesses on the Marsalis bus Oswald was supposed to have boarded at 12:39 pm to then disembark at 12:43 pm. Both Warren Commission timings are relevant.

Mary Bledsoe had been Oswald’s landlady for a week in October 1963. She said Oswald’s face was horribly distorted when she saw him on the bus. But elsewhere in her testimony she’d described the Oswald who’d lodged with as a “good looking boy” who she wanted to help find a job.

Roy Milton Jones, also on the bus, said the man he saw on the bus who sat behind him had dark hair.  Photographs show Crafard has darker hair than Oswald and was less pleasant looking.

Domingo Benavides, a witness at the Tippit murder scene, was asked to identify Oswald in a police line-up. He said that Oswald had a tapered cut neckline, whilst the assailant he saw had a square cut neckline. Crafard had a square cut neckline in photographs. Benavides knew hair. As well as being a mechanic he worked as a barber at the Dudley Hughes Funeral Home that had supplied the ambulance to take Tippit to the hospital. Two blocks from where Benavides worked at, Tippit was shot. Benavides refused to identify Oswald as the assailant.

Benavides put the shooting of his similar looking brother down to his failure to cooperate. Witnesses to the assailant on the run e.g. Warren Reynolds, couldn’t identify the assailant as Oswald. Reynolds did then change his mind and testify after being shot in the head on 23^rd January 1964 but surviving. (Benson, pp.378-79) The person arrested for that shooting was given an alibi by a dancer, Nancy Mooney, who had purportedly worked for Jack Ruby. (Benson, pp. 296-97)

V

Back to maps, and downtown. Of note is that the bus stop at Field and Elm where Oswald was supposed to have boarded the westbound Marsalis bus, 7 blocks (0.4 miles eastwards) from the Texas School Book Depository, was the closest bus stop to the Carousel Club, 140 yards away at 1312 ½ Commerce Street, a 2-minute walk, and the place Crafard spent the night of 21/22 November.

Further evidence consistent with someone impersonating Oswald are statements by Texas Theater manager Butch Burroughs who said Oswald entered the theater at approximately 1:00 pm and bought popcorn from him at about 1:15 pm.  Another person said Oswald was acting strangely, moving seats as if to find someone. (Joe McBride, Into the Nightmare, p. 520)

Oswald was arrested on the ground floor of the Texas Theater at approximately 1:50 pm and photographed being taken out of the front – there is little to dispute about that. But witnesses at the theater said the suspect who entered the theater at around 1:40 pm had run up the separate stairs onto the balcony – the ground floor had separate doors after those stairs – and Officer Stringfellow’s arrest report put Oswald’s arrest as in the balcony. (McBride, p. 521) Bernard Haire, a neighbouring business owner, said he was shocked when years later he saw the photographs of Oswald coming out of the front of the Theatre as he’d seen the arrested person taken out the back.  (ibid)

Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig insisted until his early death that, minutes after the assassination of Kennedy, he had seen a person he identified as Oswald – having seen Oswald in person after his arrest at police HQ, City Hall – running down the grassy bank from the road by the School Book Depository getting into a Rambler station wagon. (McBride, pp. 443-44)

If Oswald was in the theater just after 1:00pm, then what is the probability he was on the Beckley bus, or the taxi he was supposed to have then gotten into to get to Beckley Avenue? How could he have entered 1026 N Beckley at 1:00pm to don a jacket and pick up a revolver and be standing waiting for a bus at 1:04 pm, and could he have shot Tippit shortly before Temple Bowley arrived on the scene at 1:10pm? Those are mutually exclusive events. Either Burroughs is wrong, or there was an Oswald double in place as Roger Craig’s, Bernard Haire’s, and the police report testimony seem to indicate.

Tape tampering

There are other anomalies with the tape and transcripts.

Prior to 12:30pm the dispatcher called time every minute for the record bar one. After all, police records need to be accurate for legal purposes. Occasionally, single minutes might be missing. But from 12:56pm to 1:04pm, 8 consecutive time calls are missing. There are then another six calls missing prior to 1:15 pm, seven from 1:15 pm to 1:30 pm and then 10 from 1:30 pm to 1:45 pm. They then approach normal regularity after Oswald is arrested at 1:51pm, a time that is independently verifiable by the sheer number of witnesses, including the press, hence sticking with tampered time wouldn’t work. There is therefore an hour where time goes awry.

The times that are on the tape put Bowley’s call after 1:15 pm, but the tape itself can be verified by taking calls prior to 12:50 pm, and then timing the elapse. It is quite clear that Bowley’s call by time elapsed is closer to 1:10 pm. We know that the tape was, in all probability, tampered with to add the 12:45 pm call. The tape also appears to be tampered with in order to change the time of death for Tippit.

A reason for the 8 missing time calls being removed would be to then selectively add some new times adjacent to Bowley’s call to make it appear later than it was. Similarly, the time that was stretched fast would need to be slowed again, to catch up with reality at 1:51 pm; hence the need for 10 time stamps to be missing from 1:30pm to 1:45pm.

Table: Time Stamps on DPD Recording

Legend: The times with a black background indicates the time stamp is missing. A grey background indicates the radio signal was jammed.

Note: there are two sequences, 12:56pm to 1:03pm and 1:35pm to 1:42pm, where eight consecutive time stamps are missing.

There are other clues to the tampering which are quite crude. A verbal time stamp for 1:16 pm appears twice after a long time has elapsed. The time of 1:11 pm also appears twice. There is also a long-crackled pause and then the tape sounds like a stuck needle on a vinyl record player for a minute until ‘normality’ is restored (that also stretches the time out). With tampering on that scale, it’s reasonable to conclude that, as well as changing times and adding a fake call at 12:45 pm, that some things might be missing; and they are.

A conversation listed in the first transcript – CD-290 – disappears in the next two versions CE-705 and CE-1974.

531” “205 was dispatched to notify Mrs Tippit”

CD-290 puts this sometime before 1:40pm. It’s missing from CE-705 and the earliest mention in CE-705 to that matter is a call between 1:40 pm and 1:43 pm and that transmission used the word ‘wife’ not ‘Mrs Tippit’.

Stacking up more. There was also this conversation in the CD-290 transcript. The time of the call was between 1:25 pm and 1:32 pm (tampered time) by reference to the 2 calls on either side.

“531”“Received information from Methodist the Officer involved in the shooting Officer JD Tippit was DOA”.

That call is missing in the next two transcripts.

But the tamperers didn’t address that there were two channels. Channel 2 for that day was allocated to logistics of the Presidential visit. But once Tippit was shot Channel 2 was also used for that event.

There was a call on Channel 2 asking Channel 1 to put a call out thus: –

“Disp” “Stand by. Notify 1 [i.e. notify Channel 1)] that Officer involved in this shooting, Officer J. D. TIPPIT, we believe, was pronounced DOA at Methodist (1:28 p.m).

In short, the tape-tamperers took out the call that was on Channel 1 for the CE-260 transcript, but they left on Channel 2 the call asking Channel 1 to put out that call which was erased between the first and second transcripts.

The official line was that Tippit had a lunch break at home with his wife from 11:30-11:50 am at 238 Glencairn, Dallas, 8 miles to the south from where he was shot.But the House Select Committee on Assassinations had this from Tippit’s colleague Bill Anglin and reported it.

The committee also contacted William Anglin. Anglin indicated that he socialized with J. D. Tippit. He said in the interview that “he and J. D. had coffee or tea at “The Old Drive-In’” about 11:30-11:45 on the morning of November 22. (McBride, p. 503)

Further doubts on Tippit having lunch at home with his wife need to reflect this entry on page 83 of the WC705 call transcript for police radio Channel 2 just before 2:00pm, which by now was being used for Tippit as well as Presidential activity.

Car 210: Has anyone made arrangements or picked up Tippit’s wife yet?
Dispatcher: I’m not sure 210.
210: If you give me his address, I will go there and pick her up. I do not have anybody to send right now.
210: I’ll call 505 for the address.
Dispatcher: 10:4, 1:51 pm.
…some other calls then….
210: I’m downtown. J.D. Tippit LIVES at 7500 South Beckley. I’m running Code 2 to his wife’s house.
Dispatcher: Yes, go ahead. 1:56 pm.

That South Beckley address for Tippit is 4 miles to the south of where he was shot and doesn’t appear as any present or former address of Tippit per his FBI file. But there were other issues around where he lived. There was another Tippit on the force so it could have been his in error.

VI

But the evidence from Virginia Davis trumps it all. She was an earwitness to the shooting of Tippit and an eyewitness to the assailant running from the scene. She was one house over from where Tippit was parked and shot. This is an extract from her interview for the Warren Commission (Vol. VI, p. 458)

Mr. BELIN. In other words, to your—to the best of your recollection, you heard the shots, you ran outside, you saw Mrs. Markham-did you see anything else when you saw Mrs. Markham?
Mrs. Davis. No, sir: we just saw a police car sitting on the side of the road.
Mr. BELIN. Where was the police car parked?
Mrs. Davis. It was parked between the hedge that marks the apartment house where he lives in and the house next door.
Mr. BELIN. Was it on your side of East 10th or the other side of the street?
Mrs. Davis. It was on our side, the same side that we lived on.
Mr. BELIN. Was it headed as you looked to the police car, towards your right or towards your left?
Mrs. Davis. Right.

That is another example of questions from some Warren Commission Counsel displaying a lack of curiosity when there are remarkable answers, then jumping to something else.

Something had currently been causing Tippit to go to 410 East 10th enough times for it to at least appear that was where he lived. (McBride, p. 290) That is also the house with the drive at the back described by Doris Holan.

That is not the kind of place for a chance encounter with the fugitive Oswald but a place for a rendezvous. Furthermore, the angle of Tippit’s squad car wasn’t consistent with someone driving parallel to the curb and then stopping nor pulling over with the front pointed to the curb. It was angled with the rear closest to the curb consistent with his being stopped mid-maneveur with the intent to reverse into the driveway between 404 and 410. That is not a position for anyone driving then stopping on a chance encounter.

It’s also consistent with Tippit either living there or going their regularly.

VII

After Ruby’s arrest for the murder of Oswald he was asked to supply the names and addresses of his staff at the Carousel Club. The list appears as the Hall (C. Ray) Exhibit. One is: –

“JOYCE LEE MCDONALD, a dancer whose stage name is JOY DALE, 410 ½ – 10th Street, Dallas, Texas;”

If that was the “apartment house” of 410 1/2 E10th, it is consistent with more links to Jack Ruby, perhaps even levers to blackmail Tippit. If Tippit was leaned on by any form of blackmail to do what he was asked to do then it’s fair to assume he would be susceptible to turning if he was also misled.

As to Anglin, he was assigned to District 79 even further south than Tippit and adjacent to Nelson’s home district next to the City of Lancaster. But at 12:45 pm he is at 1400 Corinth. That is near but past where Angell put himself. It is over the Corinth Viaduct. Had Anglin also been shot it would have been necessary to explain why he was 16 miles out of his district.

So, from putting all this together, we can construct a scenario consistent with a professional operation to assassinate Kennedy; to move Oswald to the Texas Theater by car; and to have Crafard, who resembled Oswald get a bus, and perhaps to go to 1026 N Beckley to be seen by housekeeper Earlene Roberts.

The purpose of an impersonation in the form of Crafard would be a decoy operation to establish the narrative that the person to be blamed for the assassination of Kennedy, namely Oswald, was a lone gunman who’d escaped without assistance. A duped Oswald would need to be shot, and blamed. Case closed.

Crafard’s movements would need to be protected as the last thing that should happen would be for him to be arrested by good faith police activity. That scenario would fit with, as USSR intelligence concluded, a sophisticated operation from right wing interests with assistance from rogue elements of the DPD. Creating a link to the USSR of an assassination plot, by virtue of Oswald having lived in Minsk would have created a safety net, a scenario too dangerous to contemplate publicly and to incentivise a systemic cover-up from non-conspirators. That is precisely what J Edgar Hoover did with Johnson’s cooperation in transcripts and papers now available of conversations where President Johnson was persuaded not to dig further. (Douglass, p. 335)

It is said that there were plans to assassinate Kennedy in Chicago and in Miami. If that meant there was a centrally planned intent with interchangeable cities using professional gunmen, then local factors would include the co-operation of corrupt elements of the local police, and other local elements for a decoy operation.

It therefore would follow that Jack Ruby’s role would not be as an assassin nor necessarily needing to be aware there would be a real assassination, but to provide and fix the key elements of merely the decoy operation. Ruby told Justice Warren himself in roundabout terms that the far-right John Birch Society was involved.

Those elements under Ruby could be accommodating Crafard. The sister of Earlene Roberts, the housekeeper at 1026 N Beckley, Bertha Cheek was an associate of Ruby, and finally Tommy Rowe in the shoe shop opposite the Texas Theater another associate of Jack Ruby (see later) who could have possibly seen Crafard run into the theatre later.

Running with that scenario then leaves some questions:

• why did Tippit go to Gloco and then leave at speed?
• why was Tippit shot?
• why was Oswald not shot at the Texas Theater?
• why did Jack Rubenstein “Ruby” need to shoot Oswald?
• why are accounts of timings of events confused?
• why are accounts of bullets and revolvers confused?