The Tippit Case in the New Millenium

[Milo Reech]

Seems to me that this slice of CROY's testimony suggests it was HOLAN and not MARKHAM who he speaks to yet he appears to combine these 2 into one person:

Mr. GRIFFIN. Do you know the name of the woman you talked to across the street?
Mr. CROY. I don't recall. I think she lived across the street. She was standing out in front watering her yard or doing something in her yard.
Mr. GRIFFIN. But you have the impression that she lived across the street, in a house across the street?
Mr. CROY. I believe she did. I am not sure either, or it was in the neighborhood and she was there in the yard. She was across the street when it happened.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Well, you stated that she was watering her yard?
Mr. CROY. Or something. She was standing in the yard doing something.
Mr. GRIFFIN. But the first thing you indicated was, she had been watering her yard? Apparently that was something that stuck with you from, of course, talking with her?
Mr. CROY. I don't remember what she said she was doing. She was doing something in the yard, and I presume that is where she lived was across the street.


"Mrs Holan went downstairs and across the street"

Croy actually claims they leaned up against Tippit's car to discuss the murder... nothing like directly tainting a crime scene...

Holan crossed the street before Croy showed up, and trying to make sense out of his testimony is a perilous undertaking. While Holan may well have watered flowers in the yard, Markham is the better candidate for leaning against Tippit's car with Croy. She even left her shoes on the hood.

Moving the murder back to when it actually occurred opens up an interlude of time during which Markham & Holan shared the stage, along with the police car in the alley and Frank Cimino, Holan's next door neighbor, ending with Bowley's arrival. Holan saw the police car & man in the driveway, but said nothing about either Markham or Cimino. Cimino saw Markham but said nothing about either Holan or the second police car. Markham saw none of the others.

Sorting this out is not straightforward. Cimino arrived before Bowley and left while "the officer was being removed by an ambulance." He probably should have seen the second police car and certainly Holan, but his statement is terse.

It's a knotty problem, a Rashomon enacted by purblind players, but at least it's not inherently imbecile like the WR script. No need for a middle-aged car salesman to dash to the scene like Usain Bolt, grab a murdered officer's service revolver under the eyes of a cop and boisterously try to muster a posse comitatus while forgetting the fugitive's route he had witnessed a few minutes previously.