The Tippit Case in the New Millenium

[Joseph McBride]

Who was with Hill?

We don't know for sure what man Hill was referring to as "the man in the car with me." I tried
to get to Hill for an interview but couldn't. Though it could have been Scoggins, he had a cab of his own.
More likely it was Ted Callaway. Assistant DA Bill Alexander, who drove from Dealey Plaza with Hill and Sergeant Calvin
Bud Owens (Tippit's immediate superior), told Henry Hurt, "We all knew the same man who
killed the President had killed Tippit. We had made up our minds by the time we got there."
Both Callaway and Hill reported that an automatic had been used (Callaway later said he was wrong about that). Callaway made some odd moves that day. According to a written
statement Callaway signed for the police, he took Tippit's gun, commandeering the (Scoggins) cab to go off in an
unsuccessful pursuit of a gunman, thus breaking the chain of official custody on Tippit's revolver. When
I interviewed T. F. Bowley -- who said he had never been interviewed before (other than by the police
and the HSCA) -- he expressed surprise when I showed him his police affidavit of his account of the
incident he had with Callaway. Bowley said it was he who put Tippit's gun on the hood of the car and then
moved it to the car seat. The police affidavit quotes Bowley as saying, "When the ambulance left, I took the gun and put
it inside the squad car. A man took the pistol out and said, 'Let's catch him.' He opened the cylinder,
and I saw that no rounds in it had been fired. This man then took the pistol with him and got into a cab and drove off."
After reading the affidavit, Bowley told me, "I don't remember that part about the pistol, I really don't." Bowley also told HSCA
investigators in 1977 that he had picked up the pistol from the ground under Tippit and put it on the
front seat of Tippit's car, but the interview with the HSCA does not mention Callaway or his taking off with
the gun, as Callaway said he did.