03-01-2018, 04:28 PM (This post was last modified: 05-01-2018, 02:01 AM by Milo Reech.)
Sergeant Gerald Hill made two baffling radio transmissions --
1:26 I'm at Twelfth and Beckley now. Have a man in the car with me that can identify the suspect if anybody gets him.
1:34 The shells at the scene indicate that the suspect is armed with an automatic 38, rather than a pistol.
Indeed, the earlier transmission is rather puzzling. Who was this man? Myers in With Malice assigns Harold Russell to the role, but Russell's movements & observations were confined to Patton & 10th. Unknown DPD officers put him in a patrol car to "point out the area where he had last seen the man with the pistol," whom nobody placed near the sheriff's constable station at Twelfth & Beckley at any time.
Choices are limited. There is only one known migration by an eyewitness from the murder scene that may have reached Twelfth & Beckley. It has to be Scoggins accompanied by another, and this is where things get interesting. Callaway is usually identified as the driving force behind the wild ride but his credentials are weak, pointed out in several previous threads.
Unfortunately, my replacement proposal of Harry Olsen cannot be firmed up for lack of evidence that places him at the murder scene. With great regret I must let this phony go. However, another cop placed himself at the scene at the right time (just after the ambulance left). This person was Gerald Hill, who stated to WC he left the scene shortly thereafter in patrolman's Poe's car, whipping around the block, to meet "Owens in front of two large vacant houses on the north side of Jefferson that are used for the storage of secondhand furniture."
It's not what happened. Instead, Scoggins arrived at the murder scene after watching a fugitive rush down the alley next to the Gentlemen's Club, and Hill decided to isolate him from the scene. Acting quickly, Hill grabbed Tippit's gun and both left along a route Scoggins professed not to remember, eventually landing at Twelfth & Beckley.
For Scoggins it was the beginning of a long day. Croy described the departure & return to WC --
Mr. GRIFFIN. Did you talk with the taxi driver?
Mr. CROY. Yes; I did. I talked to the taxi driver.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Now, did you talk with him on the scene of the crime?
Mr. CROY. Yes.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Do you remember what his name was?
Mr. CROY. No; I didn't get his name. There was a private detective agency. There was a report that a cabdriver had picked up Tippit's gun and had left, presumably. They don't know whether he was the one that had shot Tippit, or whether the man, I think it was he, brought someone out there, something. Anyway, he saw it and he picked up Tippit's gun and attempted to give chase or something like that.
Mr. GRIFFIN. There was a detective who was an eyewitness?
Mr. CROY. No; he brought the taxi driver back to the scene.
Mr. GRIFFIN. But the taxicab driver was an eyewitness?
Mr. CROY. As far as I know.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Did you talk to the taxicab driver?
Mr. CROY. No; I took Tippit's gun and several other officers came up, and I turned him over to them and they questioned him.
Reserving the "private detective agency" for a future post, what's clear is Scoggins gave the gun to Croy followed by questioning at the scene, taken thence according to his WC testimony to police HQ downtown.
Not much to puzzle over the second transmission other than the surprisingly widespread resistance to its straightforward & unambiguous message. Many attempts have been made to explain it away, but efforts to overturn the obvious significance require more ingenuity than applied to date. It's a plain statement from which the conclusion follows that the weapon of choice used by Tippit's assassin was not the revolver attributed to Oswald.
08-01-2018, 04:36 PM (This post was last modified: 09-01-2018, 06:40 PM by Milo Reech.)
Milking fuzzy Croy's testimony for more than its worth, Myers creates an almighty muddle.
1. Per Croy the detective who was not an eyewitness brought the cabdriver back to the scene:
Mr. GRIFFIN. There was a detective who was an eyewitness?
Mr. CROY. No; he brought the taxi driver back to the scene.
2. Per With Malice the individual mistaken by Croy for the detective was Callaway:
In testimony to the Warren Commission, Officer Croy recalled Callaway, and mentioned his belief that the used car salesman was a "private detective."
3. Per With Malice security officers Holmes & Wheless brought both Scoggins & Callaway back to the scene:
Ted Callaway and William Scoggins arrived back at Tenth and Patton in the company of the two private security officers. Ken Holmes recognized Officer Kenneth Croy and turned Tippit's service revolver over to him.
4. Holmes Sr. may have recognized Croy but there was no reciprocation. Croy said nothing to WC about Holmes, Wheless, security officers or Callaway. Instead he confirmed that a "detective" brought back the "taxi driver," followed by this exchange:
Mr. GRIFFIN. Did you talk to the taxicab driver?
Mr. CROY. No; I took Tippit's gun and several other officers came up, and I turned him over to them and they questioned him.
XII p.202
Based on context Croy received the gun from the taxicab driver not the detective, but even if Croy meant detective nothing warrants subbing in security officer Holmes.
A lenient disposition might ascribe part of this predicament to an incomplete graft of the belated Holmes/Wheless mini-saga onto the WM fairy tale, but this does not expiate the cardinal sin of gross testimony mutilation.
WM also attributes this statement to Callaway, describing the cab's launch to commence the wild ride:
"I didn't think he'd ever get that damn cab turned around," Callaway remarked.
The official WC location of Scoggins' cab (illustrated in WM) was at the SE corner of Tenth & Patton facing north. Per WM the immediate course the cab took was west on Tenth to Crawford. This required a simple left turn. If Scoggins had turned the cab around it would have proceeded south on Patton toward Jefferson, quickly exiting the scene, passing out of sight from the fictive Holmes/Wheless chase vehicle.
In his first day statement this is exactly the route Callaway specifies:
I got the officer's gun and hollered at a cab driver to come on, We might catch the man. We got into his cab, number 213 and drove up Patton to Jefferson and looked all around, but did not see him.
DPD 11/22/63
Other early witness statements have Callaway approaching Bowley (DPD 12/2/63) & Russell (FBI 1/22/64) with the gun before Scoggins, asking each to join him in hot pursuit. Benavides was later subbed in for the former to protect WC from Bowley's Ruby ties & watch, but asking Russell to partner him in a chase was either a tactical mistake or indicative of a dubious plan to outsprint the fugitive. Russell did not have a car!
When constructing an alternate reality (AKA cock-and-bull story) to disguise what actually happened the original scriptwriters tended to go overboard with suborned collaboration. This is why, for example, so many eyewitnesses to the flight claimed they saw the fugitive shaking a gun, all the way from Tenth to Jefferson, as if ejecting more spent shells than there were shots.
One might think Myers would whip the competing accounts into some kind of consistency with his plot overlays, but it's no mean feat. Much easier to neutralize contradictions/confutations by consigning them to unresolved footnote acknowledgments, or speciously attributing them to observer error, or ignoring them altogether. Regarding the wild ride, it is impossible that Callaway got the route wrong the day it occurred if he had actually taken part in one.
Croy was already at the scene having arrived as "They were loading [Tippit] in the ambulance." The official sequence lists Callaway as a helper, then making an inexplicable call on Tippit's radio, finally grabbing Tippit's gun and joining Scoggins in pursuit of the fugitive.
According to With Malice Holmes & Wheless arrived at the scene shortly after Scoggins & Callaway left:
Holmes and Wheless were returning to Oak Cliff after a company meeting at Fair Park, when they heard Bowley's frantic call over the police radio. Wheless immediately recognized the address that Bowley gave - 404 E. Tenth - and realized they were just a few blocks away. When the two men pulled up a woman, in near hysterics ran up to the car and told them that "the man who shot the officer had got in a taxi and took off."
The two men could see the cab she was gesturing toward in the next block, turning south off Tenth onto Crawford. Holmes didn't hesitate. He floored the accelerator and tore after the taxi cab.
Meanwhile Croy talked to a witness while Callaway busied himself about the scene:
Mr. GRIFFIN. What did you do when you got there?
Mr. CROY. Got me a witness.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Who did you get ahold of?
Mr. CROY. It was a woman standing across the street from me. I don't recall her name. She gave me her name at that time.
Mr. GRIFFIN. What did she tell you?
Mr. CROY. She told me that she saw Tippit get out of the car, and I don't recall, I think she said he stepped back a couple of foot and shot him and then ran. She was pretty hysterical at that particular time.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Did she tell you where she first saw Oswald?
Mr. CROY. I don't recall whether she did or not. There was, as I recall, there was 2 people who saw it. No; 3. A man in a, taxicab driver. However, she was the main eyewitness, as far as I could make out. She saw the actual shooting.
This must be Mrs. Markham, but complications quickly set in. In a refreshing departure from vagueness & incoherence Croy gave direct answers to several plain questions in straightforward declarative English.
Mr. GRIFFIN. How long did you talk with her?
Mr. CROY. Oh, a good 5 or 10 minutes.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Were there any other officers there with you when you were talking with her?
Mr. CROY. Yes; and no. I talked to her, and then they talked to her, and then I talked to her, and just after I located a witness, the squad did get there.
Mr. GRIFFIN. This conversation all took place near the scene of the Tippit killing?
Mr. CROY. Leaning up against his car.
XII p.201
Croy probably leaned against the left rear fender, avoiding the blood-stained area at the left front, and there was no point served by going around the car to the right side with his "pretty hysterical" witness. Several conclusions leap out:
1. There must have been two simultaneously hysterical women at the scene.
2. Croy failed to observe anything Callaway did right under his nose. He missed the radio call, the gun grab and the outspoken effort to mount a pursuit force.
3. Croy also missed the actual departure of the cab, the "near hysterics" of the H & W woman and the departure of H & W.
So who was the mysterious eyewitness that misidentified either Scoggins or Callaway as "the man who shot the officer," whose existence was previously unknown & unsuspected? She even eluded the ratiocinative acumen of master sleuth Moriarty (unless Tatum wore a dress). And how did Croy fail to see a citizen run off with a dead cop's gun lifted from a car he was leaning against?
No clear answers here, and WM does not supply any, does not even address the difficulties except to blather over everything:
It's easy to see how it could have happened, considering that Officer Croy had driven to the scene in his own car and had immersed himself in the gathering crowd immediately upon his arrival.
No, he didn't. His WC testimony states precisely what he did, and mutilating "Got me a witness" into "immersed himself in the gathering crowd" is a pitiful distortion, but the problem is acute. The only hope to make the scenario work is by reordering the events sequentially, but this is anathema to WR.
Extensions to the original scenario are stuck with harsh constraints. They must maintain backward compatibility while being shoehorned into an impossibly tight time frame, constantly running up against continuity issues with inevitable violations.
As to what actually happened with Tippit's service revolver -- best bet is Sergeant Hill. It's hard to imagine toy Sergeant Croy not raising an objection to anyone but a real cop taking it. This does not necessarily eliminate Holmes & Wheless from the larger scene, although the two car chase scenario is ridiculous, ditto the mock shootout on a side street near Beckley described in WM. Possibly they met up at the sheriff's substation, "they" being Hill, Scoggins, Holmes & Wheless. Callaway was not on board.
I believe you will find as you read the work that there is a real problem with the chain of custody and evidence related to the pistol that supposedly killed Tippit
That's Hill below holding the shells he claimed were "auto"
I hope the essay helps illuminate a few things for you
DJ
Once in a while you get shown the light
in the strangest of places if you look at it right..... R. Hunter
Alan Ford Wrote:Well done, Mr. Josephs, appreciate the enlightening insights, thanks for sharing.
Have bookmarked your full article as well ( An excellent picture, confirming Roger Craig in Fritz's office btw)
My pleasure ...
Hope you get something from the article... as it appears to me within the evidence that both TL Baker and Barnes/Doughty are credited with having been given that pistol...
While all this is happening in WESTBROOK's office...
Mr. BALL. And tell me briefly who was present when you saw McDonald make the mark on the gun?
Mr. CARROLL. Well, let's see - there was myself, Mack, I think Ray Hawkins was there, and I believe Hutson
was there, and I believe Bentley and Lyons had already gone out to have their feet checked, and I don't
recall whether Captain Westbrook was in there at the time or not. There were so many people - I would
have to kind of explain that - I know it sounds vague, but there were so many people in and out of there
and there were about no less than anywhere from half a dozen to a dozen newspaper reporters in and out
and they were bringing in mikes and it was just a big mess of confusion. You couldn't just sit down and
detail this thing and say this man was at this particular spot at this time. It was so jumbled up there.
Mr. BALL. Whom did you give the gun to finally?
Mr. CARROLL. After I gave it to - Jerry Hill - that was the last time I had possession of it - possession of the
gun.
Mr. BALL. And did you know who took possession of the bullets?
Mr. CARROLL. I don't recall, sir. I don't recall even seeing the gun or the bullets turned over to anyone by Hill.
Mr. HILL. The gun remained in my possession until it, from the time it was given to me until the gun was
marked and all the shells were marked. They remained in my personal possession. After they were
marked, they were released by me to Detective T. L. Baker of the homicide bureau. He came to the personnel office and requested that they be given to him, and I marked them and turned them over to
him at this point.
Note: Capt WESTBROOK was Captain of PERSONNEL. Yet instead of calling the Tippit family he goes from crime scene to crime scene and NEVER bothers to call them.
The Tippit's learned of his death over the news.
So the above chain includes Bentley > Hill > TL Baker
Check out these two records: Davenport giving the pistol, shells, etc to both BARNES & Doughty.
Mr. BELIN. Did you have anything to do with identifying either the slugs that were eventually removed
from Officer Tippit's body, or the pistol?
Mr. W.E. BARNES. No.
Path 1. McDonald/Carroll > Hill > (initials from McD, Carroll, Hill, Bentley supposedly etched in handle by screw, yet no photo in evidence shows these initials) > Fritz > T.L. Baker > gone
Path 2. Fritz > Davenport & officers > Doughty/Barnes > SA Vincent Drain > FBI
Two distinct paths for the same pistol.... Somehow it appears Oswald's pistol from the theater is the on TL Baker makes disappear so that the pistol that was actually used could replace it...
The extent of the evidence is further explored in the essay.... but for those who don't think the devil/conspiracy is in the detail and within the evidence... check it out.
DJ
Once in a while you get shown the light
in the strangest of places if you look at it right..... R. Hunter
Quote:I hope the essay helps illuminate a few things for you
A few things, yes, but so far I'm seeing nothing on point relative to Tippit's pistol and Scoggins wild ride. Specifically, who grabbed it and who brought it back and handed it to Croy, before it came into Davenport's possession.
First, appreciate the keen insights in your well written piece, Mr. Josephs, two thumbs up oriented research by far.
When the smoke finally clears, suffice it to say those charged with securing a proper chain of custody handled the evidence like it was a hot potato. That said, as I continue to delve further in the reading myself later this evening, I hope the OP, Mr. Reech, may find some answers to his questions.
On another note, from the esteemed/late Mr. Garrison (Jim) ----> [FONT=&]
The Commission called as its witness FBI ballistics expert Cortlandt Cunningham, and he testified, after an examination of the bullets taken from Tippit's body, that it was impossible to determine whether or not these bullets had been fired from Oswald's gun.[/FONT] [FONT=&]Yet, on the basis of this expert testimony, the Warren Commission concluded with a straight face that the bullets were fired not only from Oswald's gun but "to the exclusion of all other weapons." They simply chose to ignore the fact that revolvers don't eject cartridges and that the cartridges left so conveniently on the street didn't match the bullets in Tippit's body.
Quote:I hope the OP, Mr. Reech, may find some answers to his questions.
Not really, this is all post-wild ride stuff, but a formidable piece of research that deserves a close look. If I'm following the argument, most of it (defining the two paths) pertains to 510210, the TT revolver, DPD's purported murder weapon.
The second revolver, 138278, is introduced explicitly on p.37, and this is Tippit's service revolver listed among his personal effects, of scant evidentiary significance.
If I'm getting this wrong, please straighten me out.
22-01-2018, 07:07 PM (This post was last modified: 22-01-2018, 08:15 PM by Alan Ford.)
Milo Reech Wrote:
Quote:I hope the OP, Mr. Reech, may find some answers to his questions.
Not really, this is all post-wild ride stuff, but a formidable piece of research that deserves a close look. If I'm following the argument, most of it (defining the two paths) pertains to 510210, the TT revolver, DPD's purported murder weapon.
The second revolver, 138278, is introduced explicitly on p.37, and this is Tippit's service revolver listed among his personal effects, of scant evidentiary significance.
If I'm getting this wrong, please straighten me out.
Good afternoon, Mr. Reech
Wish I had some definitive answers for you as you take this challenge on to sort things out. I respect you for your diligence in this matter, but when the Warren Commission failed to have Mr. & Mrs. Wright testify to their observations on Officer Tippitt's demise, I knew the fix was in, so decided to stay clear of the "evidence" that was being put forth.
Mr. Wright had no reason to lie about seeing two individuals at the scene, nor his recollection of a gray car speeding away from the same. Of course, his truth wasn't the Warren Omissions "truth".
I'm hopeful--given your diligence here--that something will stand out to you, and you'll be able to separate the wheat from the chaff. Best wishes.
