Professor Pulte

[Milo Reech]

Professor Bill Pulte's research into the Tippit murder neighborhood scene stretched over many decades, valuable but difficult to assess & credit. The main problem pre-YouTube was his practice of privately releasing juicy bits to other researchers, through whom they seeped into view for general consumption. This is peculiar conduct coming from a professional scholar, but if anyone can point to a more systematic presentation of his discoveries & disclosures I'd gladly apologize for my mistake.

For example, knowledge of the James Andrews incident that appears in Bill Drenas' "Car #10 Where Are You?" stemmed from Pulte as a conduit, passing information received from Greg Lowrey to Drenas.
Tippit 1.pdf (p. 26)

So what to make of Pulte's 1996 memo to Livingstone? --

5. Tippit cuts off a car driven by Asa Fletcher, who was heading west on 10th St. about eight blocks west of where Tippit would be killed.
Interpolation: Interviewed about 1990-1 by Lowrey
Marginalia: say Fletcher was Roscoe W's super at American National Life (before DPD) said Roscoe wasn't interested in selling ins.
Tippit 2.pdf (p. 31)

There may be a simple explanation for Fletcher morphing into Andrews, and it's my impression few place great reliance on the validity of this encounter. However, another incident also reported by Drenas via Pulte (the fight at Marsalis Avenue) has several devotees.

A thread that depends on it, Why Officer Tippit stopped his Killer, is truncated. Some issues deserve further discussion, buy many posts are missing. I've brought this to the attention of site administration and will hold fire for a bit, hoping for a restoration of the lost content.

Both pdf references above are to documents at Dealey Plaza UK.
http://dealeyplazauk.com/research/collec...documents/

[Milo Reech]

In the same document (Tippit 1.pdf pp. 12-13) there is a more interesting memo from Pulte to Livingstone & Drenas, dated 1/18/99. It contains information from Mrs. Slider, a telephone company employee who parked in the lot between Ballew Texaco and the Abundant Life Temple.

Excerpt --

Mrs. Slider had pulled into the lot from Crawford and parked facing north, i.e. facing the alley and the rear of the Abundant Life Temple. She was accustomed to leaving her car about 1:25, to get back to her place of work by 1:30. Seeing that she had gotten back earlier than usual, she began to read a book. A moment or so later, she was startled to see a man running down the alley westward toward Crawford; the man was running at top speed.

Recall that she had parked facing north toward the alley and the church complex just north of the alley. The man slowed down for a second to "shed his jacket" according to Mrs. Slider. After removing the jacket, which he dropped in the alley, she saw that the man was wearing a T-shirt, not the tan shirt Lee Oswald was wearing when arrested in the Texas Theater.

Racing past her, the man turned right (north) at Crawford and she lost sight of him. About two minutes later, she saw six or seven men running in the same direction; some were uniformed, some were not. Some had hand guns, some had "long guns." This group of men also turned right and were lost from sight.

Informant H2, who reported a fight at 12th and Marsalis a few moments before the murder of Tippit, also provided the following information: the assailant ran westward down the alley, turned right at Crawford, ducked into the "hospital area" of the Abundant Life annex, hid there for awhile and then made his way to second floor of the annex building. By this time his pursuers had passed. The assailant climbed out of the second floor window at SE corner of the building, jumped to the ground (the second floor is quite low), and continued acros[s] Crawford and down the alley westward.

It's not much of a stretch to synchronize this report with the radio tape --

111 (Ptm. J.G. Pollard)
They say he's running west in the alley between Jefferson and Tenth.

Dispatcher
West in the alley between Jefferson and Tenth.

...

95 (Ptm. M.N. McDonald and Ptm. T.R. Gregory)
Send squad over here to Tenth and Crawford to check out this church basement.

Dispatcher
Need a squad at Tenth and Crawford.

66 (Ptm. F.S. Williams)
66 en route.

Dispatcher
10-4.

66 (Ptm. F.S. Williams)
Crawford north of Jefferson?

Dispatcher
Tenth and Jefferson.

The times are off but not by much (the tape segment has a nominal time of 1:32-3). The dispatcher's "Tenth and Jefferson" looks a little weird at first, but between Tenth and Jefferson is probably implied.

As for H2's reference to an assailant (presumably the perp of the fight at 12th & Marsalis), did he actually follow him all the way to the ALT, hiding nearby in a coign of vantage from which he observed the second story plunge? If so, why did he then lose interest in the quarry, evidently not pursuing him  across Crawford westward into the alley on the other side?

H2's credibility will take a major hit in the 21st century when Brownlow moves the location of the fight from 12th to 10th & Marsalis, leaving little behind on which one can rely. More on this in a future post. Mrs. Slider, on the other hand, is one of the more convincing of the unofficial witnesses that were in the area but spurned by investigative authorities. It's a shame no one--say a sharp dick like Moriarty--put forth the effort to turn this stone over. Mrs. Slider could not have been hard to find.

[Milo Reech]

Sylvia Meagher complained about Tippit's nondescript nature long ago --

When we turn to J.D. Tippit, we find no biographical excesses but extreme reticence. Tippit, the policeman and the man, is a one-dimensional and insubstantial figure -- unknown and unknowable.
[Accessories After the Fact p. 253]

Judging by the material at Dealey Plaza UK, Pulte to his credit worked hard to take the measure of the man. Fascinating reading, for example this item particularly rich with implications if true --

4. In the WC volumes when one of Ruby's relatives or associates was asked what Jack had said about Tippit's death, Jack is said to have replied, "Sure, I heard about Officer Slick." (I asked a '70s DPD officer about the phrase "Officer Slick." He said that during that period "Slick" was frequently used to refer to someone who was skimming too much. Implication: that Tippit was working with Ruby and was holding out on him. In any case Ruby would not have said "Officer Slick" in reference to someone he didn't know. (Harry: can you do a text search on your CD-rom for the phrase "Officer Slick" to find the relevant testimony?)
[Tippit 1.pdf p. 8]

I don't know if Livingstone actually performed this text search.

[Milo Reech]

A digression on the subject of Tippit's unknowability.

One FBI report may provide a glimpse into the factual reality. It's a report of an interview with Travis Kirk conducted 11/29/63 on the streets of San Francisco. Formerly a Dallas assistant DA & defense attorney, Kirk described the nature of Ruby's relations with the DPD, including his close buddy Fritz.

It also contains this item about Tippit --

"Mr. KIRK said that he was also personally acquainted with the deceased Officer TIPPIT, and that at one time he had a lady asking his advice about a proceeding against TIPPIT, in that he had apparently raped her during one of his investigations. KIRK said that he did not believe TIPPIT was necessarily involved in this situation, but he did question the motive for shooting."

Kirk's information about Tippit might have raised an eyebrow or two among purblind WC staff, but they never saw it. The SF office submitted a sharply revised report dated 12/17/63, dropping the Tippit item altogether and attenuating the rest.

The statement that "it is entirely possible and probable that FRITZ had deliberately arranged to have OSWALD shot in order to close the case" of the first report was softened and relegated to page two. The first page (marked 102) of the revised report is included in published CE3006. Evidently the second (marked 103) didn't make the cut, content inappropriate for public viewing.

Both versions are attached. A comparison shows what happens when the FBI sanitizes for external consumption the information it receives. It also demonstrates the absurdity of arguing that an event did not occur or some truth was not divulged simply because there's no reference in an FBI report.

[Milo Reech]

Jumping ahead to 2015 and the Pulte/Brownlow YouTube videos, evidently unscripted and sorely in need of editing, the professor's role is passive while Brownlow extemporizes at will, committing errors aplenty, some trivial, others more germane to the matter at hand.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wV6O3j0Llrg

For example, Linda Darnell was born in 1923, not 1933. Another, more apropos, is the mistaken identity of the 10th Street bricklayer near the Denver intersection. He was Francis Kinneth, not Eddie Kinsley. The latter rode in the ambulance dispatched from Dudley Hughes. According to Brownlow it went from Jefferson to 10th via Denver, with the extraordinary consequence that the traversal of a two block distance occasioned three distinct alleged routes.

It gets worse. Eddy Benavidez was not killed the day after Warren Reynolds was shot in the head but a year later on 2/15/65 unless the death certificate is a forgery. Pulte knew this as long ago as 1996. His memo to Livingstone (page 26 of Tippit 2.pdf at Dealey Plaza UK) has the correct information ("Feb. 1965").

One waits for Pulte to set this straight, but he says nothing on point, just as he fails to comment on the relocation of the fight from Marsalis & 12th to Marsalis & 10th. H2's fuzzy intelligence that informed the Drenas article, subsequently either revised or superseded by info from a better source, cries out for clarification.

An explanation during Brownlow's vivid description of blood on Marsalis Street as to how it flowed all the way from 12th to 10th would have helped dispel the impression of incoherence & lack of lucidity as to what was going on.

[Milo Reech]

Brownlow enlarges on the relationship between the Marsalis stabbing & Tippit shooting events, connecting them spatially by bicycle. The cyclist is Jimmy Holan, Doris' son, who pedaled briskly to relate his tale of blood to Mom, standing by Tippit's corpse.

He also puts Croy & the ambulance at the scene, followed shortly by Olsen in a squad car arriving from the east. Croy & Olsen then listen to a Mexican woman, driving a yellow Volkswagen, who describes the same stabbing previously described by young Jimmy Holan. He had out-pedaled her Beatle.

If this is insufficiently startling, what happens next takes the cake. Reserve Sergeant Croy sends Patrolman Olsen to Marsalis to investigate the stabbing, and he does so! Well, after a fashion, that is, observing blood, listening to witnesses who state the assailants drove away heading north, and proceeding to leave the area driving south.

Finally, Professor Pulte breaks in, sensing the dramatic potential of the moment.

Pulte: "Well, I'm curious. Did Olsen indicate he thought it might be related to the Tippit murder?"

Brownlow: "O yes, and I asked him, 'Officer Olsen, did you pick up Lee Harvey Oswald at the rooming house?' and he hesitated. He said, 'A lot of people followed orders that day.'"

Neither Brownlow nor Pulte is troubled by the fact that Olsen was off-duty that day, and, even if he weren't, it was no more in the man's character to accept orders from a reserve sergeant than it was in Croy's to issue them.

Following his dismissal from DPD shortly after a 12/63 crack-up, Olsen moved to California and became evasive, both as to his whereabouts and testimony when interviewed/interrogated. Not a word as to how Brownlow overcame these obstacles to obtain sensational information.

The timing is fatal to an attempt to concatenate one event on the other, as the stabbing and shooting were nearly simultaneous. As described by Brownlow the maximum interval was less than a minute either way.

This defeats speculation that Tippit was dispatched to investigate the incident at Marsalis, getting ambushed along the way, unless one is willing to argue Jimmy Holan had a very rusty chain and the VW overheated. Another approach might be to dismiss the bulk of what Pulte & Brownlow say, but then a reason must be given to repose trust in the accuracy of a single iota when everything else is hogwash. The argument requires more than faith in a pet theory for support.