29-11-2013, 04:07 PM
THE MURDER OF DALLAS POLICE OFFICER J.T. TIPPIT WAS PRE-ARRANGED AND INVOLVED HARVEY OSWALD, LEE OSWALD, AND AT LEAST ONE HIGH-RANKING DALLAS POLICE OFFICER. TIPPIT WAS SHOT AND KILLED BY LEE OSWALD AT 10TH & PATTON. A WALLET THAT CONTAINED IDENTIFICATION FOR LEE HARVEY OSWALD AND ALEK HIDELL SUDDENLY APPEARED AT THE SCENE OF THE MURDER, AND THEN DISAPPEARED 10 MINUTES LATER AND WAS NEVER SEEN AGAIN. BEFORE THE POLICE ARRIVED AT THE TEXAS THEATER THEY ALREADY KNEW THE NAME AND DUAL IDENTITY OF THE MAN THEY WERE GOING TO ARREST. NOW, LET'S FOLLOW THE WHEREABOUTS OF HARVEY AND LEE AND FILL IN THE DETAILS.
A few minutes after President Kennedy was shot HARVEY Oswald, wearing a long-sleeve brown shirt, left the TSBD. Three woman working in a building directly across the street said they saw Jack Ruby give Oswald a pistol. HARVEY Oswald walked east on Elm Street and saw a city bus stopped in traffic. Bus driver Cecil McWatters opened the door and HARVEY Oswald, and an unknown blond woman, boarded the bus. About 4 minutes later HARVEY Oswald got up from his seat, obtained a bus transfer, and left the bus via the front door while the blond woman left the bus thru the rear door. HARVEY Oswald walked three blocks south and got into the front seat of William Whaley's taxi. An unknown woman, possibly the blond woman from the bus who may have been following HARVEY Oswald, was standing nearby and asked Whaley to call her a cab. As Whaley was driving toward Oak Cliff, two unidentified police officers boarded McWatters bus with pistols drawn. There are no police reports of this incident.
As Whaley drove south on Zang Blvd. the cab passed by Officer J.D. Tippit, who was sitting in his patrol car at the GLOCO station watching traffic. Tippit may have been waiting for McWatters bus to stop across the street, and his assignment that day may have been to drive both HARVEY and LEE to the Texas Theater. But when HARVEY Oswald failed to get off the bus, Tippit was alarmed and began following the bus. A few minutes later, at 12:54 PM, Tippit reported his position as Lancaster and 8th. When the bus crossed Jefferson Blvd., with no Oswald in sight, Tippit turned right and drove two miles to the Top Ten Record Store.
About 1:00 pm, Tippit parked his patrol car, entered the store, and asked store clerk Louis Cortinas for permission to make a phone call. Tippit said nothing during the call, hung up the phone, hurried out to his car, and drove north across Jefferson Blvd. A few minutes later it was most likely Tippit's patrol car that drove slowly past HARVEY Oswald's rooming house. Tippit alerted Oswald by honking the horn, and then drove around the corner of Beckley and Zang. A minute later HARVEY Oswald, wearing a dark brown long-sleeve shirt, left the rooming house and was last seen by his landlady standing at the corner about 1:04 PM. HARVEY Oswald probably got into Tippit's car and two minutes later arrived in the alley directly behind the Texas Theater. He walked through a narrow passageway adjacent to the theater and emerged on Jefferson Blvd. HARVEY Oswald purchased a ticket from Julia Postal about 1:07 PM, entered the theater, and was seen by theater concessionaire Butch Burroughs around 1:10 PM, before Tippit was shot at 10th & Patton.
WE WILL NOW GO BACK TO DEALY PLAZA AND FOLLOW LEE OSWALD. After shots were fired at President Kennedy, LEE Oswald walked thru the office of the Book Depository and was seen by Mrs. Reid carrying a coke and wearing a white t-shirt. Ten minutes later, at 12:40 PM, LEE Oswald was seen by Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig, Marvin Robinson and Roy Cooper getting into a light colored Nash Rambler station wagon in Dealy Plaza. Helen Forrest saw the same man and said, "If it wasn't Oswald, it was his identical twin." The Nash Rambler quickly left and was last seen driving under the triple overpass. Twenty minutes later, while HARVEY was changing clothes at his rooming house, LEE Oswald was a mile and a half away walking past the 10th St. Barber Shop. Mr. Clark told the FBI "he had seen a man whom he would bet his life on was Oswald passing his barber shop in a great hurry and had commented on same to a customer in the chair." This barber shop was three blocks north of Jack Ruby's apartment, where LEE Oswald had been seen the night before by neighbor Helen McIntosh. LEE Oswald, now walking west on 10th St., was still wearing a white t-shirt, but was now wearing a light colored medium-size jacket and carrying a loaded pistol and shells.
Construction worker William Lawrence Smith was walking east toward the Town and Country Cafe, close to the barber shop, shortly after 1:00 PM. Smith told the FBI that he "felt sure that the man who walked by him going west on 10th St. was LEE Harvey Oswald". Jimmy Burt and his friend, William Arthur Smith, were across the street from the construction site and watched the same man as he continued walking west on 10th toward Patton.
While Jimmy Burt and Smith watched the man walk toward 10th & Patton and approach Tippit's squad car, HARVEY Oswald was in the Texas Theater. Around 1:08 PM Tippit began talking with LEE Oswald, the same man that Tippit sat next to at the Dobbs House Restaurant two days earlier at 10:00 AM. Tippit had already driven HARVEY Oswald to the Texas Theater, and his next assignment may have been to pick up LEE Oswald at or near Jack Ruby's apartment or at another location on 10th St., and drive him to the Texas Theater or perhaps to another location. Tippit and LEE Oswald may have discussed this during their brief, "friendly" conversation through the passenger side car window. But the events that followed suggest that LEE Oswald's pre-arranged assignment was to kill Tippit and lead police to the Texas Theater, which is exactly what he did. Tippit was one of the few people who knew and came in contact with both HARVEY and LEE on November 22, knew where they both lived, and had to be eliminated.
Jack Tatum drove past Tippit's squad car and recalled, "It looked as if Oswald and Tippit were talking to each other. There was conversation. It did seem peaceful." Tatum said, "he (Oswald) had on a light colored zipper jacket, dark trousers and what looked like a t-shirt on." Tatum later told HSCA investigator Moriarty that he did not see Oswald wearing a brown shirt, just a white T-shirt.
After talking briefly with LEE Oswald, Tippit got out of his patrol car. As he began walking toward the front of the patrol car, LEE Oswald pulled out a pistol and began shooting Tippit. After Tippit fell to the ground (LEE) Oswald walked toward him and deliberately shot him in the head (around 1:08-1:09 PM). Witness Helen Markham said the shooting occurred at 1:06 PM. T.F. Bowley was driving west on 10th Street and stopped at the scene a few minutes after the shooting. He used the police radio to report the shooting and looked at his watch--the time was 1:10 PM. An original DPD police transcript, found in the National Archives, listed the time of this transmission as 1:10 PM. At this time HARVEY Oswald was sitting next to Jack Davis at the Texas Theater, a half-mile away. Davis remembered that when HARVEY first walked into the lower level he took a seat next to a pregnant woman. Within a few minutes both HARVEY and the woman got up from their seats. HARVEY walked into the lobby and then walked back into the lower level and took a seat next to Davis in the near empty theater as the opening credits to the movie began (a few minutes before 1:20 PM). HARVEY soon got up and walked past empty seats to the small aisle on the right side of the theater and back into the concession area. Davis watched as HARVEY again re-entered the lower level and took a seat next to a man on the back row, directly across the aisle from Davis. Within a few minutes HARVEY got up and once again returned to the concession area. He returned a few minutes later and took a seat across the aisle from Mr. Davis, and then moved to another seat on the fourth row. It appeared to Davis as though HARVEY was looking for someone, perhaps a contact.
After shooting Tippit, LEE Oswald began walking south on Patton toward Jefferson Blvd while removing the empty shells from his gun and tossing them on the ground. Domingo Benavides, parked just in front of Tippit's car, saw LEE Oswald as he was running off and said, "the back of his (Oswald's) head seemed like his hairline sort of went square instead of tapering off. His hair didn't taper off, it kind of went down and squared off." HARVEY Oswald's hairline, as we know from numerous photographs taken at the police station, extended well down his neck and past his collar line --- it was not "squared off" as described by Benavides. LEE Oswald walked past taxi driver Scoggins, parked near the corner of 10th & Patton, who said he wore dark trousers and a light shirt. Ted Callaway saw LEE Oswald walking south on Patton and said he was wearing a light gray Eisenhower type jacket, dark trousers, and a white shirt". Warren Reynolds saw LEE Oswald and followed him as he walked past the Ballew Texaco Station, but hesitated to identify him as the man police arrested in the Texas Theater. Robert and Mary Brock saw the same man when he walked past their Texaco Station. As LEE Oswald walked through the parking area adjacent to the Texaco station, he removed his medium-size jacket and threw it under a car, which left him wearing a white t-shirt and carrying a loaded pistol. Nearly all of the witnesses at 10th & Patton said LEE Oswald was wearing a white t-shirt, but nobody said the man who shot Tippit was wearing a long-sleeved brown shirt. LEE Oswald's destination, almost certainly chosen by his handlers, was the Texas Theater.
Around 1:25-1:30 PM, LEE Oswald, wearing a white t-shirt, hurried into the Texas Theater without buying a ticket and ran up the stairs to the balcony. Shoe store manager Johnny Brewer followed him and told Julia Postal (Texas Theater cashier) to call the police. Butch Burroughs remembered when Brewer arrived and said that he appeared about 20 minutes after he first saw HARVEY Oswald in the theater. Brewer followed LEE Oswald into the theater, but there may be reasons to question his honesty.
Johnny Brewer said that he first heard about the shooting of Officer Tippit on the radio at 1:30 PM, and claimed that he soon saw Oswald, wearing a brown shirt, suspiciously lurking near his doorway. But Brewer could not possibly have seen "Oswald" wearing abrown shirt, because HARVEY Oswald, wearing a brown shirt, had been inside the Texas Theater for the past 20 minutes. Brewer then claimed that he pointed out HARVEY Oswald to the police in the theater. Again, this is probably not true. A very close friend of Jack Ruby's, Tommy Rowe, worked at Hardy's Shoe Store with Brewer. In 1964 Rowe told friends, relatives, and JFK researchers that it was he, NOT Brewer, who pointed out HARVEY Oswald to the police in the dark of the Texas Theater. Rowe was so close to Jack Ruby that he moved into Ruby's apartment when Ruby went to jail for killing HARVEY Oswald. Rowe was never interviewed by the police or the FBI. But if Jack Ruby gave HARVEY Oswald a pistol after he left the TSBD, and then telephoned Tommy Rowe with a description of HARVEY Oswald so that he could identify HARVEY Oswald to the police inside the theater, then Ruby was much more involved in the assassination than we ever imagined.
While LEE Oswald was hiding in the balcony, and HARVEY Oswald was sitting in the 4th row in the lower level of the Texas Theater, Dallas Police Captain Westbrook, along with Sargeant Calvin Owens and assistant DA Bill Alexander arrived at 10th & Patton. Tippit's body had already been removed and the scene was filled with police officers, witnesses, neighbors, and curious on-lookers.
A frame from WFAA newsreel footage.
Westbrook heard over the police radio that a suspicious person had been seen running into a nearby library, and was immediately driven to that location. After he returned to 10th & Patton a wallet suddenly appeared in Westbrook's hands........complete with identification to link Lee Harvey Oswald to Tippit's murder, and with identification for Alek Hidell to link him to the rifle found on the 6th floor of the TSBD. Not one witness, not one ambulance driver, not one neighbor, not one on-looker and not one trained police officer saw this wallet lying on the street or in Tippit's car. Yet it suddenly appeared in the hands of Captain Westbrook. Westbrook called out to FBI agent Bob Barrett who approached Westbrook and saw the wallet, along with Captain George Doughty, Sargeant Calvin Owens, Sgt. Kenneth Croy, and Accident Investigator Howell Summers. WFAA TV cameraman Ron Reiland was at the scene and filmed these police officers as they inspected the wallet. The Dallas Police officers at 10th & Patton now knew, thanks to Captain Westbrook, that "Lee Harvey Oswald" was the prime suspect in the Tippit murder. Their next stop was the Texas Theater.
Westbrook was the ranking officer at 10th & Patton and knew police procedure as well as anyone. If Westbrook was not the person who brought the wallet to 10th & Patton, then he should have insisted on police reports to establish a "chain of custody" for the wallet, written a detailed report about the wallet and it's contents, entered the wallet into evidence at DPD headquarters, and discussed the wallet with the Warren Commission. But not a single police report was written about the wallet and, according to FBI agent Bob Barrett, it was Westbrook who kept the wallet. The fact that Captain Westbrook totally ignored police procedure and did nothing to identify the source of the wallet is reason to believe that he was the person responsible for bringing the wallet to 10th & Patton in order to identify Oswald, and later made the wallet disappear. Capt. Westbrook, Sgt. Owens, and Sgt. Croy testified before the Warren Commission, but not one of these men was asked, nor did they volunteer, any information about finding a wallet that linked Oswald to both the Tippit shooting and to the assassination of the President. This wallet was the single most important piece of evidence ever found prior to Oswald's arrest, yet ten minutes after it appeared it disappeared and was never seen again.
This disappearing wallet is PROOF that Tippit's murder was pre-planned. If Westbrook, or anyone, had identification in their possession that would identify a suspect in a murder, PRIOR TO THE MURDER, then that person had prior knowledge of a pre-planned assassination. The real significance of this wallet is that it shows that Westbrook knew, IN ADVANCE, that HARVEY Oswald would be accused of Tippit's murder and that he would be linked to the assassination of President Kennedy. We must never forget that Captain Westbrook's assignment was to bring a wallet containing Oswald's identification to 10th & Patton. And we must never forget that after the assassination Captain Westbrook relocated to South Vietnam where he served as a CIA special advisor to the police.
At 1:45 PM the police dispatcher reported: "Have information a suspect just went in the Texas Theater on West Jefferson ... supposed to be hiding in balcony." With "Lee Harvey Oswald" as their prime suspect, Captain Westbrook and the police from 10th & Patton began to descend on the Texas Theater. They entered the main floor from the rear entrance as other officers began searching the balcony. Deputy Sheriff Bill Courson came face to face with a young man who was walking down the stairs to the lobby. Courson said "that he was reasonably satisfied in his own mind" that this man was LEE Oswald.
Inside the darkened theater Jack Ruby's friend, Tommy Rowe, directed the police to the man wearing the long sleeved dark shirt--HARVEY Oswald. As soon as the police soon arrested and handcuffed HARVEY Oswald, Capt. Westbrook told his officers "get him out of here as fast as you can and don't let anybody see him." DON'T LET ANYBODY SEE HIM!! This is a good indication that Westbrook knew that LEE Oswald was also in the theater. As HARVEY Oswald was taken out the front of the theater a police officer told Julia Postal, "we have our man on both counts" and identified him by calling his name --"Oswald". Wearing a long sleeved brown shirt, HARVEY Oswald was brought out the front entrance of the Texas Theater, placed in a police car and driven to jail. Paul Bentley removed HARVEY Oswald's wallet from his left rear pocket en route to the DPD headquarters and found identification for "Lee Harvey Oswald" and "A. J. Hidell"--nearly identical to the identification found in the wallet produced by Captain Westbrook. There were now two wallets and both contained identification for Lee Harvey Oswald and Alex Hidell. These two wallets could have created serious problems, and alerted the public to the possibility of two Lee Harvey Oswalds, if properly identified as evidence and reported. But the wallet that appeared and disappeared in the hands of Captain Westbrook was unexplainable and could never, ever be made public.
After HARVEY Oswald was arrested, three police officers were ordered to obtain the names and addresses of all theater patrons. This list soon disappeared, and the possibility of learning the identity of Oswald's contact at the theater, and the identity of the man confronted by Deputy Sheriff Courson, disappeared with it.
As HARVEY Oswald was en route to the police station Bernard Haire, owner of a hobby shop two doors from the theater, saw the police escort a young man out the rear of the theater. For the next 25 years Mr. Haire and other witnesses thought they had seen the arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald. But there is no police report, no record of arrest, nor any mention of a person taken out the rear of the theater. There are, however, many police reports that state Oswald was arrested in the balcony. The police homicide report of Tippit's murder read, "suspect was later arrested in the balcony of the Texas neater at 231 W. Jefferson." At least two other DPD documents reported the arrest occurred in the balcony. In his report to Captain Gannaway, Dallas Police Detective L.D. Stringfellow wrote: "On November 22, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested in the balcony of the Texas Theater, 231 West Jefferson Blvd and was charged with the murder of President John F. Kennedy and the murder of Officer JD Tippit." How could several experienced, career police officers make such a mistake?
The suspect in the balcony, identified by Deputy Sheriff Bill Courson as LEE Oswald, may or may not have been arrested. He was probably the man that Mr. Haire saw escorted out the rear of the theater and driven away in a police car. Who assisted LEE Oswald and escorted him out the back of the Texas Theater? Capt. Westbrook had Oswald's wallet at 10th & Patton. Westbrook told DPD officers at 10th & Patton their suspect was Lee Harvey Oswald. And as HARVEY Oswald was being lead out of the theater Westbrook told his officers, "don't let anybody see him." It is likely that Capt. Westbrook, the senior officer at the Texas Theater, knew about HARVEY and LEE. It is also likely that under Westbrook's direction, LEE Oswald was escorted out the rear of the Texas Theater.
LEE Oswald was soon observed driving a two-tone blue 1957 Plymouth back and forth on Davis St., six blocks north of the Texas Theater. Oswald drove his car behind a large billboard and appeared to be hiding from the police who were patrolling the streets. T.F. White, a career mechanic who worked across the street at Mack Pate's Auto Service, was curious and walked toward the car. The man, sitting in the car with the engine running, was wearing a white t-shirt and looked directly at Mr. White. As White walked toward the car the driver quickly sped away throwing gravel with his rear tires. White wrote the make and model of the car and the license plate number (PP4537) in his notebook.
Mr. White told FBI agent Charles Brown the man driving the car was LEE Oswald, but at that time HARVEY Oswald was already in jail. The authorities soon determined the license plates were registered to a two-tone blue 1957 Plymouth that was owned by Tippit's best friend, Carl Mather, an employee of Collins Radio, a very important CIA contractor. So, LEE Oswald murdered Tippit, was escorted out the rear of the Texas Theater, and an hour later was driving a car owned by Tippit's best friend, Carl Mather. Wes Wise, who was later the Mayor of Dallas, interviewed Carl and Barbara Mather over dinner in the presence of a CBS reporter. Barbara Mather was calm, but Carl Mather was so upset and agitated that he was unable to eat. Years later Carl Mather agreed to be interviewed by the HSCA, but not before insisting on a grant of immunity. Mather was never interviewed. Ken Porter, another employee of CIA-connected Collins Radio, quit his job after the assassination, divorced his wife, and married Oswald's widow--Marina. In their report of the LEE Oswald sighting in Mather's car, the FBI changed the two-tone blue 1957 Plymouth to a red Ford Falcon. This allowed Carl Mather's wife, Barbara, to tell the FBI that they had never owned a red car, and gave the FBI reason to end their investigation.
The fate of HARVEY Oswald, in Dallas Police custody until he was killed by Jack Ruby, is well-known. But little is known about LEE Oswald's whereabouts following the assassination. One intriguing account of his possible escape from the Dallas area comes from a decorated U.S. Air Force 20-year veteran named Robert Vinson. Vinson said that on the afternoon of November 22 he was a passenger on a nearly deserted C-54 cargo plane that departed from Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. Soon after the assassination the plane was diverted and landed on what appeared to be a road under construction near the Trinity River south of Dallas. There, Vinson said, a Jeep carrying two men and a driver pulled up to the plane and the two passengers came aboard. Vinson said the taller man might have been Cuban and, after he saw televised pictures of Lee HARVEY Oswald, he felt the shorter man "looked an awful lot like Oswald." The flight continued to an Air Force Base in Roswell, New Mexico, where all the passengers deplaned. Vinson said he was told the entire base was on lockdown.
A few minutes after President Kennedy was shot HARVEY Oswald, wearing a long-sleeve brown shirt, left the TSBD. Three woman working in a building directly across the street said they saw Jack Ruby give Oswald a pistol. HARVEY Oswald walked east on Elm Street and saw a city bus stopped in traffic. Bus driver Cecil McWatters opened the door and HARVEY Oswald, and an unknown blond woman, boarded the bus. About 4 minutes later HARVEY Oswald got up from his seat, obtained a bus transfer, and left the bus via the front door while the blond woman left the bus thru the rear door. HARVEY Oswald walked three blocks south and got into the front seat of William Whaley's taxi. An unknown woman, possibly the blond woman from the bus who may have been following HARVEY Oswald, was standing nearby and asked Whaley to call her a cab. As Whaley was driving toward Oak Cliff, two unidentified police officers boarded McWatters bus with pistols drawn. There are no police reports of this incident.
As Whaley drove south on Zang Blvd. the cab passed by Officer J.D. Tippit, who was sitting in his patrol car at the GLOCO station watching traffic. Tippit may have been waiting for McWatters bus to stop across the street, and his assignment that day may have been to drive both HARVEY and LEE to the Texas Theater. But when HARVEY Oswald failed to get off the bus, Tippit was alarmed and began following the bus. A few minutes later, at 12:54 PM, Tippit reported his position as Lancaster and 8th. When the bus crossed Jefferson Blvd., with no Oswald in sight, Tippit turned right and drove two miles to the Top Ten Record Store.
About 1:00 pm, Tippit parked his patrol car, entered the store, and asked store clerk Louis Cortinas for permission to make a phone call. Tippit said nothing during the call, hung up the phone, hurried out to his car, and drove north across Jefferson Blvd. A few minutes later it was most likely Tippit's patrol car that drove slowly past HARVEY Oswald's rooming house. Tippit alerted Oswald by honking the horn, and then drove around the corner of Beckley and Zang. A minute later HARVEY Oswald, wearing a dark brown long-sleeve shirt, left the rooming house and was last seen by his landlady standing at the corner about 1:04 PM. HARVEY Oswald probably got into Tippit's car and two minutes later arrived in the alley directly behind the Texas Theater. He walked through a narrow passageway adjacent to the theater and emerged on Jefferson Blvd. HARVEY Oswald purchased a ticket from Julia Postal about 1:07 PM, entered the theater, and was seen by theater concessionaire Butch Burroughs around 1:10 PM, before Tippit was shot at 10th & Patton.
WE WILL NOW GO BACK TO DEALY PLAZA AND FOLLOW LEE OSWALD. After shots were fired at President Kennedy, LEE Oswald walked thru the office of the Book Depository and was seen by Mrs. Reid carrying a coke and wearing a white t-shirt. Ten minutes later, at 12:40 PM, LEE Oswald was seen by Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig, Marvin Robinson and Roy Cooper getting into a light colored Nash Rambler station wagon in Dealy Plaza. Helen Forrest saw the same man and said, "If it wasn't Oswald, it was his identical twin." The Nash Rambler quickly left and was last seen driving under the triple overpass. Twenty minutes later, while HARVEY was changing clothes at his rooming house, LEE Oswald was a mile and a half away walking past the 10th St. Barber Shop. Mr. Clark told the FBI "he had seen a man whom he would bet his life on was Oswald passing his barber shop in a great hurry and had commented on same to a customer in the chair." This barber shop was three blocks north of Jack Ruby's apartment, where LEE Oswald had been seen the night before by neighbor Helen McIntosh. LEE Oswald, now walking west on 10th St., was still wearing a white t-shirt, but was now wearing a light colored medium-size jacket and carrying a loaded pistol and shells.
Construction worker William Lawrence Smith was walking east toward the Town and Country Cafe, close to the barber shop, shortly after 1:00 PM. Smith told the FBI that he "felt sure that the man who walked by him going west on 10th St. was LEE Harvey Oswald". Jimmy Burt and his friend, William Arthur Smith, were across the street from the construction site and watched the same man as he continued walking west on 10th toward Patton.
While Jimmy Burt and Smith watched the man walk toward 10th & Patton and approach Tippit's squad car, HARVEY Oswald was in the Texas Theater. Around 1:08 PM Tippit began talking with LEE Oswald, the same man that Tippit sat next to at the Dobbs House Restaurant two days earlier at 10:00 AM. Tippit had already driven HARVEY Oswald to the Texas Theater, and his next assignment may have been to pick up LEE Oswald at or near Jack Ruby's apartment or at another location on 10th St., and drive him to the Texas Theater or perhaps to another location. Tippit and LEE Oswald may have discussed this during their brief, "friendly" conversation through the passenger side car window. But the events that followed suggest that LEE Oswald's pre-arranged assignment was to kill Tippit and lead police to the Texas Theater, which is exactly what he did. Tippit was one of the few people who knew and came in contact with both HARVEY and LEE on November 22, knew where they both lived, and had to be eliminated.
Jack Tatum drove past Tippit's squad car and recalled, "It looked as if Oswald and Tippit were talking to each other. There was conversation. It did seem peaceful." Tatum said, "he (Oswald) had on a light colored zipper jacket, dark trousers and what looked like a t-shirt on." Tatum later told HSCA investigator Moriarty that he did not see Oswald wearing a brown shirt, just a white T-shirt.
After talking briefly with LEE Oswald, Tippit got out of his patrol car. As he began walking toward the front of the patrol car, LEE Oswald pulled out a pistol and began shooting Tippit. After Tippit fell to the ground (LEE) Oswald walked toward him and deliberately shot him in the head (around 1:08-1:09 PM). Witness Helen Markham said the shooting occurred at 1:06 PM. T.F. Bowley was driving west on 10th Street and stopped at the scene a few minutes after the shooting. He used the police radio to report the shooting and looked at his watch--the time was 1:10 PM. An original DPD police transcript, found in the National Archives, listed the time of this transmission as 1:10 PM. At this time HARVEY Oswald was sitting next to Jack Davis at the Texas Theater, a half-mile away. Davis remembered that when HARVEY first walked into the lower level he took a seat next to a pregnant woman. Within a few minutes both HARVEY and the woman got up from their seats. HARVEY walked into the lobby and then walked back into the lower level and took a seat next to Davis in the near empty theater as the opening credits to the movie began (a few minutes before 1:20 PM). HARVEY soon got up and walked past empty seats to the small aisle on the right side of the theater and back into the concession area. Davis watched as HARVEY again re-entered the lower level and took a seat next to a man on the back row, directly across the aisle from Davis. Within a few minutes HARVEY got up and once again returned to the concession area. He returned a few minutes later and took a seat across the aisle from Mr. Davis, and then moved to another seat on the fourth row. It appeared to Davis as though HARVEY was looking for someone, perhaps a contact.
After shooting Tippit, LEE Oswald began walking south on Patton toward Jefferson Blvd while removing the empty shells from his gun and tossing them on the ground. Domingo Benavides, parked just in front of Tippit's car, saw LEE Oswald as he was running off and said, "the back of his (Oswald's) head seemed like his hairline sort of went square instead of tapering off. His hair didn't taper off, it kind of went down and squared off." HARVEY Oswald's hairline, as we know from numerous photographs taken at the police station, extended well down his neck and past his collar line --- it was not "squared off" as described by Benavides. LEE Oswald walked past taxi driver Scoggins, parked near the corner of 10th & Patton, who said he wore dark trousers and a light shirt. Ted Callaway saw LEE Oswald walking south on Patton and said he was wearing a light gray Eisenhower type jacket, dark trousers, and a white shirt". Warren Reynolds saw LEE Oswald and followed him as he walked past the Ballew Texaco Station, but hesitated to identify him as the man police arrested in the Texas Theater. Robert and Mary Brock saw the same man when he walked past their Texaco Station. As LEE Oswald walked through the parking area adjacent to the Texaco station, he removed his medium-size jacket and threw it under a car, which left him wearing a white t-shirt and carrying a loaded pistol. Nearly all of the witnesses at 10th & Patton said LEE Oswald was wearing a white t-shirt, but nobody said the man who shot Tippit was wearing a long-sleeved brown shirt. LEE Oswald's destination, almost certainly chosen by his handlers, was the Texas Theater.
Around 1:25-1:30 PM, LEE Oswald, wearing a white t-shirt, hurried into the Texas Theater without buying a ticket and ran up the stairs to the balcony. Shoe store manager Johnny Brewer followed him and told Julia Postal (Texas Theater cashier) to call the police. Butch Burroughs remembered when Brewer arrived and said that he appeared about 20 minutes after he first saw HARVEY Oswald in the theater. Brewer followed LEE Oswald into the theater, but there may be reasons to question his honesty.
Johnny Brewer said that he first heard about the shooting of Officer Tippit on the radio at 1:30 PM, and claimed that he soon saw Oswald, wearing a brown shirt, suspiciously lurking near his doorway. But Brewer could not possibly have seen "Oswald" wearing abrown shirt, because HARVEY Oswald, wearing a brown shirt, had been inside the Texas Theater for the past 20 minutes. Brewer then claimed that he pointed out HARVEY Oswald to the police in the theater. Again, this is probably not true. A very close friend of Jack Ruby's, Tommy Rowe, worked at Hardy's Shoe Store with Brewer. In 1964 Rowe told friends, relatives, and JFK researchers that it was he, NOT Brewer, who pointed out HARVEY Oswald to the police in the dark of the Texas Theater. Rowe was so close to Jack Ruby that he moved into Ruby's apartment when Ruby went to jail for killing HARVEY Oswald. Rowe was never interviewed by the police or the FBI. But if Jack Ruby gave HARVEY Oswald a pistol after he left the TSBD, and then telephoned Tommy Rowe with a description of HARVEY Oswald so that he could identify HARVEY Oswald to the police inside the theater, then Ruby was much more involved in the assassination than we ever imagined.
While LEE Oswald was hiding in the balcony, and HARVEY Oswald was sitting in the 4th row in the lower level of the Texas Theater, Dallas Police Captain Westbrook, along with Sargeant Calvin Owens and assistant DA Bill Alexander arrived at 10th & Patton. Tippit's body had already been removed and the scene was filled with police officers, witnesses, neighbors, and curious on-lookers.
A frame from WFAA newsreel footage.
Westbrook heard over the police radio that a suspicious person had been seen running into a nearby library, and was immediately driven to that location. After he returned to 10th & Patton a wallet suddenly appeared in Westbrook's hands........complete with identification to link Lee Harvey Oswald to Tippit's murder, and with identification for Alek Hidell to link him to the rifle found on the 6th floor of the TSBD. Not one witness, not one ambulance driver, not one neighbor, not one on-looker and not one trained police officer saw this wallet lying on the street or in Tippit's car. Yet it suddenly appeared in the hands of Captain Westbrook. Westbrook called out to FBI agent Bob Barrett who approached Westbrook and saw the wallet, along with Captain George Doughty, Sargeant Calvin Owens, Sgt. Kenneth Croy, and Accident Investigator Howell Summers. WFAA TV cameraman Ron Reiland was at the scene and filmed these police officers as they inspected the wallet. The Dallas Police officers at 10th & Patton now knew, thanks to Captain Westbrook, that "Lee Harvey Oswald" was the prime suspect in the Tippit murder. Their next stop was the Texas Theater.
Westbrook was the ranking officer at 10th & Patton and knew police procedure as well as anyone. If Westbrook was not the person who brought the wallet to 10th & Patton, then he should have insisted on police reports to establish a "chain of custody" for the wallet, written a detailed report about the wallet and it's contents, entered the wallet into evidence at DPD headquarters, and discussed the wallet with the Warren Commission. But not a single police report was written about the wallet and, according to FBI agent Bob Barrett, it was Westbrook who kept the wallet. The fact that Captain Westbrook totally ignored police procedure and did nothing to identify the source of the wallet is reason to believe that he was the person responsible for bringing the wallet to 10th & Patton in order to identify Oswald, and later made the wallet disappear. Capt. Westbrook, Sgt. Owens, and Sgt. Croy testified before the Warren Commission, but not one of these men was asked, nor did they volunteer, any information about finding a wallet that linked Oswald to both the Tippit shooting and to the assassination of the President. This wallet was the single most important piece of evidence ever found prior to Oswald's arrest, yet ten minutes after it appeared it disappeared and was never seen again.
This disappearing wallet is PROOF that Tippit's murder was pre-planned. If Westbrook, or anyone, had identification in their possession that would identify a suspect in a murder, PRIOR TO THE MURDER, then that person had prior knowledge of a pre-planned assassination. The real significance of this wallet is that it shows that Westbrook knew, IN ADVANCE, that HARVEY Oswald would be accused of Tippit's murder and that he would be linked to the assassination of President Kennedy. We must never forget that Captain Westbrook's assignment was to bring a wallet containing Oswald's identification to 10th & Patton. And we must never forget that after the assassination Captain Westbrook relocated to South Vietnam where he served as a CIA special advisor to the police.
At 1:45 PM the police dispatcher reported: "Have information a suspect just went in the Texas Theater on West Jefferson ... supposed to be hiding in balcony." With "Lee Harvey Oswald" as their prime suspect, Captain Westbrook and the police from 10th & Patton began to descend on the Texas Theater. They entered the main floor from the rear entrance as other officers began searching the balcony. Deputy Sheriff Bill Courson came face to face with a young man who was walking down the stairs to the lobby. Courson said "that he was reasonably satisfied in his own mind" that this man was LEE Oswald.
Inside the darkened theater Jack Ruby's friend, Tommy Rowe, directed the police to the man wearing the long sleeved dark shirt--HARVEY Oswald. As soon as the police soon arrested and handcuffed HARVEY Oswald, Capt. Westbrook told his officers "get him out of here as fast as you can and don't let anybody see him." DON'T LET ANYBODY SEE HIM!! This is a good indication that Westbrook knew that LEE Oswald was also in the theater. As HARVEY Oswald was taken out the front of the theater a police officer told Julia Postal, "we have our man on both counts" and identified him by calling his name --"Oswald". Wearing a long sleeved brown shirt, HARVEY Oswald was brought out the front entrance of the Texas Theater, placed in a police car and driven to jail. Paul Bentley removed HARVEY Oswald's wallet from his left rear pocket en route to the DPD headquarters and found identification for "Lee Harvey Oswald" and "A. J. Hidell"--nearly identical to the identification found in the wallet produced by Captain Westbrook. There were now two wallets and both contained identification for Lee Harvey Oswald and Alex Hidell. These two wallets could have created serious problems, and alerted the public to the possibility of two Lee Harvey Oswalds, if properly identified as evidence and reported. But the wallet that appeared and disappeared in the hands of Captain Westbrook was unexplainable and could never, ever be made public.
After HARVEY Oswald was arrested, three police officers were ordered to obtain the names and addresses of all theater patrons. This list soon disappeared, and the possibility of learning the identity of Oswald's contact at the theater, and the identity of the man confronted by Deputy Sheriff Courson, disappeared with it.
As HARVEY Oswald was en route to the police station Bernard Haire, owner of a hobby shop two doors from the theater, saw the police escort a young man out the rear of the theater. For the next 25 years Mr. Haire and other witnesses thought they had seen the arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald. But there is no police report, no record of arrest, nor any mention of a person taken out the rear of the theater. There are, however, many police reports that state Oswald was arrested in the balcony. The police homicide report of Tippit's murder read, "suspect was later arrested in the balcony of the Texas neater at 231 W. Jefferson." At least two other DPD documents reported the arrest occurred in the balcony. In his report to Captain Gannaway, Dallas Police Detective L.D. Stringfellow wrote: "On November 22, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested in the balcony of the Texas Theater, 231 West Jefferson Blvd and was charged with the murder of President John F. Kennedy and the murder of Officer JD Tippit." How could several experienced, career police officers make such a mistake?
The suspect in the balcony, identified by Deputy Sheriff Bill Courson as LEE Oswald, may or may not have been arrested. He was probably the man that Mr. Haire saw escorted out the rear of the theater and driven away in a police car. Who assisted LEE Oswald and escorted him out the back of the Texas Theater? Capt. Westbrook had Oswald's wallet at 10th & Patton. Westbrook told DPD officers at 10th & Patton their suspect was Lee Harvey Oswald. And as HARVEY Oswald was being lead out of the theater Westbrook told his officers, "don't let anybody see him." It is likely that Capt. Westbrook, the senior officer at the Texas Theater, knew about HARVEY and LEE. It is also likely that under Westbrook's direction, LEE Oswald was escorted out the rear of the Texas Theater.
LEE Oswald was soon observed driving a two-tone blue 1957 Plymouth back and forth on Davis St., six blocks north of the Texas Theater. Oswald drove his car behind a large billboard and appeared to be hiding from the police who were patrolling the streets. T.F. White, a career mechanic who worked across the street at Mack Pate's Auto Service, was curious and walked toward the car. The man, sitting in the car with the engine running, was wearing a white t-shirt and looked directly at Mr. White. As White walked toward the car the driver quickly sped away throwing gravel with his rear tires. White wrote the make and model of the car and the license plate number (PP4537) in his notebook.
Mr. White told FBI agent Charles Brown the man driving the car was LEE Oswald, but at that time HARVEY Oswald was already in jail. The authorities soon determined the license plates were registered to a two-tone blue 1957 Plymouth that was owned by Tippit's best friend, Carl Mather, an employee of Collins Radio, a very important CIA contractor. So, LEE Oswald murdered Tippit, was escorted out the rear of the Texas Theater, and an hour later was driving a car owned by Tippit's best friend, Carl Mather. Wes Wise, who was later the Mayor of Dallas, interviewed Carl and Barbara Mather over dinner in the presence of a CBS reporter. Barbara Mather was calm, but Carl Mather was so upset and agitated that he was unable to eat. Years later Carl Mather agreed to be interviewed by the HSCA, but not before insisting on a grant of immunity. Mather was never interviewed. Ken Porter, another employee of CIA-connected Collins Radio, quit his job after the assassination, divorced his wife, and married Oswald's widow--Marina. In their report of the LEE Oswald sighting in Mather's car, the FBI changed the two-tone blue 1957 Plymouth to a red Ford Falcon. This allowed Carl Mather's wife, Barbara, to tell the FBI that they had never owned a red car, and gave the FBI reason to end their investigation.
The fate of HARVEY Oswald, in Dallas Police custody until he was killed by Jack Ruby, is well-known. But little is known about LEE Oswald's whereabouts following the assassination. One intriguing account of his possible escape from the Dallas area comes from a decorated U.S. Air Force 20-year veteran named Robert Vinson. Vinson said that on the afternoon of November 22 he was a passenger on a nearly deserted C-54 cargo plane that departed from Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. Soon after the assassination the plane was diverted and landed on what appeared to be a road under construction near the Trinity River south of Dallas. There, Vinson said, a Jeep carrying two men and a driver pulled up to the plane and the two passengers came aboard. Vinson said the taller man might have been Cuban and, after he saw televised pictures of Lee HARVEY Oswald, he felt the shorter man "looked an awful lot like Oswald." The flight continued to an Air Force Base in Roswell, New Mexico, where all the passengers deplaned. Vinson said he was told the entire base was on lockdown.
