Why Officer Tippit stopped his Killer

[Milo Reech]

This is his reply:

It is my contention that is was erased.

Disappointing, I had hoped for something approaching a factual basis. Filling in the radio transcript gaps with arbitrary content & desiderata doesn't cut the mustard.

Makes no difference if it's considered plausible. Plausibility by itself counts for very little.

[Milo Reech]

Letting the tape erasure issue slide, another problem pops up. Assuming Tippit responded to a radio announcement of a fight at 10th & Marsalis, how to guarantee he would proceed to the site via 10th? His location at Top Ten was unknown, and even if known, Jefferson to Marsalis was a sensible alternative. Was this left to chance?

Here's the Brownlow/Pulte/Steve YouTube discussion of the fight, mostly Brownlow who rambles through two long JFK videos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wV6O3j0Llrg
(part 2 -- stabbing at 17:55)

They do not consider the stabbing incident a staged event, describing blood on the street witnessed by many. Nevertheless, they set the 10th Street pedestrian in motion about the same time and likewise fail to explain how Tippit's route was predetermined. Listen to part 1 and you will hear it was Harry Olsen's job to make sure "that Oswald and Tippit stayed on schedule," but no one explains how he controlled Tippit's movements.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3NO8Ndetus
(part 1 -- Olsen's role starting at 23:28)

It's a big loose end.

[Milo Reech]

It's the title of a whirlwind folk history of Oak Cliff starting with Bonnie & Clyde and culminating with a "disturbance call" about the fight at 12th & Marsalis reported by Bill Pulte. [12th page]
https://www.thenewdisease.space/tippit

Greg Parker's the author. See the ROKC thread on the same topic as this thread for more info.
http://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/...his-killer.

Evidently Parker had failed to keep up with the relocation of the actual disturbance from 12th to 10th, but no matter. His attention was focused on the knotty problem of establishing a causal link between the fight scene and the murder scene, achieved on the 13th page by the simple expedient of moving the "disturbance call" to the 400 block of East 10th. The fight at Marsalis fades into the void, out of the picture entirely as if it had never happened, jettisoning any support Pulte may have provided for the proposed alternative.

The evidence for this is Murray Jackson's vague reference during a 1967 interview to a "disturbance in the street at the 400 block of East Tenth." The obvious explanation is this call was one of the many neighborhood calls about the murder, but the essay rejects this by splitting hairs. It continues...

Moreover, Murray goes on to say that he attempted to get ahold of Tippit after receiving that call-sheet but claims he got no response. He then got the call from a citizen using an unknown police radio and again tried to contact Tippit on the basis that he was the only cop in Oak Cliff (Nelson had been ordered there as well, but apparently ignored the order). [13th page]

Actually, Jackson said, "J. D. was the only one that should have been in Oak Cliff," but his memory was more than a little muzzy and he should have known better. Mentzel (the officer assigned to the district) had called in clear and traffic cop Summers had reported his location at 600 West Jefferson, both a few minutes before the citizen call.

Another essay at Kennedys and King, "Dale Myers, With Malice: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Murder of Officer J. D. Tippit" by Joseph McBride, finishes off the local disturbance/gangster angle altogether.
https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kenne...j-d-tippit

Edgar Lee Tippit's revelations in section II provide the correction, "that J. D. and another officer had been assigned by the police to hunt down Oswald in Oak Cliff." McBride proceeds to make a persuasive argument that the other officer was Mentzel. The identification is icing on the cake but even if wrong does not alter the reality described by Edgar Lee. His statements reduce the alternative solution's argument to a superfetation at best (i.e. by an accretion of a putative disturbance call onto a murder call, straining to get an imaginary second incident on a barren event), a fabrication at worst, and banish the local gangster ambush operation to the realm of fiction, whence it arose.

[Milo Reech]

Mr. Parker offered a defense and an iteration of facts at ROKC. When he links the facts to supporting documentation by footnoting them individually it will be time to take another look at his thesis. I'm not about to research the list of sources provided in the essay to speculate on what they actually support.

Let's keep it simple by restricting the facts for discussion to the actual events surrounding Tippit's murder (the existence of an Oak Cliff Fagin is all one to me) and omitting the ad hominem & straw man arguments.

[Milo Reech]

Tippit: An Alternative Solution
https://www.thenewdisease.space/tippit

The Reiland film wallet did not belong to Callaway.

Problem 1 -- Warren Reynolds is the witness being interrogated by police in the film, not Callaway. The voiced over narrative has no reference to Callaway.

Problem 2 -- The passenger with Tippit's gun in Scoggins' cab was not Callaway.

1. Scoggins did not identify Callaway as the passenger.
2. Scoggins said the passenger was a young man who looked like a police officer. Callaway was an old-looking 40.
3. The passenger was unknown to Harold Russell who observed the event. Russell worked across the street from Callaway and must have followed him on Patton to the murder site.
4. Callaway could not keep a straight story, over time altering the route, eventually putting himself behind the wheel.

[Milo Reech]

Tippit: An Alternative Solution
https://www.thenewdisease.space/tippit

If one is willing to accept Murray Jackson's statement that he received a disturbance call, there is no reason to attribute the call to either Davis woman. For many reasons they were dubious witnesses, discussed at length by Don Willis last century. Check the wayback machine for acorn.net archives.

L.J. Lewis made a call from 500 E. Jefferson that might have been classified as a disturbance. He reported gunshots in "the vicinity of Tenth and Patton Avenue." Note: gunshots, not a murder. This call could have been the source of the disturbance callout sheet.

FBI reports are stylistically curious, consisting of paraphrases, summations & indirect quotations, lending themselves readily to content distortion & subject matter mutilation, as follows.

Original interview (1/21/64) report:

L. J. LEWIS, 7616 Hums, Pleasant Grove, Texas, advised he is presently self-employed as a wholesale car dealer. LEWIS advised that on the afternoon of November 22, 1963, he was on the used car lot of Johnny Reynolds Used Cars together with HAROLD RUSSELL and PAT PATTERSON, during which time they heard approximately three or four gun shots coming from the vicinity of Tenth and Patton Avenue, Dallas, Texas. Approximately one minute later he observed a white male, approximately thirty years of age, running south on Patton Avenue, carrying either an automatic pistol or a revolver in his hands, and while running was either attempting to reload same or conceal the weapon in his belt line.

Upon reaching the intersection of Patton Avenue and Jefferson Street, Dallas, Texas, the individual then proceeded west on Jefferson, at which time LEWIS advised he went into the office of Johnny Reynolds Used Cars and called the Dallas Police Department to advise them of the fact that the shooting had just occurred just north of the intersection of Jefferson and Patton Avenue.

LEWIS advised PAT PATTERSON and WARREN REYNOLDS attempted to follow the individual, and to the best of his knowledge, HAROLD RUSSELL had gone in the direction of Tenth and Patton Avenue to determine what had happened. LEWIS advised he later was informed that a Dallas uniform police officer had been shot at the intersection of Patton and Tenth Street in Dallas, and that in all probability the individual they had seen running south on Patton Avenue with a gun in his possession was the individual responsible for same.

LEWIS was shown a photograph of LEE HARVEY OSWALD, New Orleans PD No. 112723, dated August 9, 1963, at which time Mr. LEWIS advised due to the distance from which he observed the individual he would hesitate to state whether the individual was identical with OSWALD.

Affidavit 8/26/64:

I have been shown the written report of the results of this interview of January 21, 1964, by Special Agents John T. Kesler and Vernon Mitchem of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. While this report is substantially correct, I wish at this time to make the following clarifications in regard to the last sentence in paragraph one and the entirety of paragraph two.

"Upon hearing the shots and recognizing them as gunshot sounds, I immediately called the Dallas Police Department to report a shooting. There was so much confusion at the Police Department end of the telephone conversation, they were having trouble making out what I was telling them. A few minutes later, I observed a white male, approximately thirty years of age, running south on Patton Avenue, carrying either an automatic pistol or a revolver in his hand, and while running was either attempting to reload same or attempting to conceal the weapon in his belt.

"Upon reaching the intersection of Patton Avenue and Jefferson Boulevard, the individual then proceeded west on Jefferson Boulevard."

I have read this written report and with the exception of the aforementioned clarifications, it reveals a correct report of what I saw on November 22, 1963.

Note the correction to the sequence of events. It also erases the silly description "that the shooting had just occurred just north of the intersection of Jefferson and Patton Avenue." Lewis actually reported that the shooting occurred in "the vicinity of Tenth and Patton Avenue," which is the intersection of the 400 block of 10th and Patton.

The record is replete with examples of materially altered testimony. Anyone who intends to take a stand based on what does or does not appear in an FBI report must sift the content very carefully or risk falling victim to a cruel hoax.

This will come up again.

[Milo Reech]

Tippit: An Alternative Solution
https://www.thenewdisease.space/tippit

Five witnesses saw Tippit at Gloco, and their presence is fatal to the alternative thesis. Undermining them is no easy task, and straining to make innocuous things look sinister requires the reader to let go of reality and countenance a nutty conversion of a busy gas station into a baleful rumor mill.

The Ramparts article says Turner was 'acting on a tip from "sleuth" David Lifton.' No idea why this is suspicious. If more information was desired Turner could have been reached before 12/26/15. Lifton is still alive, posts at EF and perhaps elsewhere. Drop him a line, using a surrogate if necessary.

The gas station was not in Tippit's assigned district, but Tippit spent so much time at 410 E. 10th Charlie Virginia Davis thought he lived there, telling WC Tippit's police car "was parked between the hedge that marks the apartment house where he lives in and the house next door." Scoggins "used to see him every day."

The idea that calling in a false location was risky in the days before GPS is hilarious, but it would hardly matter to Tippit one way or the other. Page one says "errors in judgment may be expected."

As for the FBI interviews of Mullins & Lewis, the absence of Tippit's name from the reports is meaningless. There is no reason to assume they were comprehensive. Maybe the witnesses mentioned Tippit in conversation, maybe they didn't, and that's all there is to that. See the preceding post for more on FBI reports.

[Milo Reech]

Tippit: An Alternative Solution
https://www.thenewdisease.space/tippit

Whatever reserve Sergeant Croy may have done that afternoon, making the Top Ten phone call was not one of them. His WC testimony says he never got closer to the Texas Theatre than Zangs. Top Ten was a block farther away. There is also nothing to suggest he stopped to phone his estranged wife on the way to the diner.

The following is more interesting, shedding some light on the kind of cop Croy was.

Mr. GRIFFIN. I see. Now, I am just referring to the street you found him on. When you got there, was Tippit's car there?
Mr. CROY. Yes.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Was Tippit there?
Mr. CROY. They were loading him in the ambulance.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Were other officers on the scene?
Mr. CROY. None that I saw.
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.
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.

Keep in mind according to the generally accepted sequence of events Callaway, after helping load Tippit's corpse into the ambulance, proceeded to use Tippit's car radio to report a murder to the police that had obviously already been reported, while a police sergeant in uniform leaned against the same car! It gets better, continuing with the standard narrative, Callaway next grabbed the dead officer's gun and boldly commandeered a cab, under the nose of Croy, still leaning against #10. Some police work!

This article at Kennedys and King has much to say about Charlie Virginia Davis, mentioned in yesterday's post.
https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kenne...ice-part-1

[Milo Reech]

Tippit: An Alternative Solution
https://www.thenewdisease.space/tippit

Full text relative to the "disturbance" call sheet:

BARKER: Well, now, is--you got down to the time when Officer Tippit met his death. What transpired right prior to that? Did you--were you aware of where he was all the time?

JACKSON: No, I asked him once again what his location was sometime after and to determine that he was in the Oak Cliff area, he said he was at Lancaster and Eighth, which is on the east side of Oak Cliff, on the--in the main business district. And I did ask him once again, a few minutes later what his--I called him to ask him his location so I could keep track of him, where he was, in my mind, but he didn't answer.

BARKER: When did you realize that he was dead?

JACKSON: We had received a call from a citizen. They called us on the telephone and the call sheet came--came to me and there was a disturbance in the street in the 400 block of East Tenth. And I had called. I said, "78," and he didn't answer. And almost immediately to this, a citizen came in on the police radio and said, "Send me some help there's been an officer shot out here." And knowing that J. D. was the only one that should have been in Oak Cliff, my reaction was to call 78, and, of course, J. D. didn't answer. So, we asked the citizen to look at the--the number on the side of the car. This was the equipment number that determined which car, which patrol car, was to be on each assigned district, and they said that it was number 10. And since I had worked with J. D. in this particular car, well, I determined to myself that with him not answering, and the equipment number, that this was Officer Tippit.
http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%...rt%203.pdf

Jackson's "78" transmissions were not answered for the simple reason that Tippit was already dead, and he wisely refrained from dispatching the corpse to handle a disturbance on Tenth Street.

This means the thesis is short one disturbance call, to be supplied by whom? Is it left to the reader to hallucinate a call for the purpose of maintaining the essay's flow of dream sequences? The disturbance at 12th & Marsalis won't work. It was too far away. The Pulte/Brownlow improved version moves it to 10th, but serious problems remain as discussed previously in this thread.

Another pressing question demands an answer. What was the motive? The essay is wishy-washy on this critical issue, vaguely implying that Tippit was killed because he ran afoul of local organized crime. This is not stated in plain words, but if the activities of the local gangs are irrelevant to the murder what is the point of the Bonnie & Clyde stuff?

Tippit ostensibly crossed the gangs on September 2, 1956 when he & his partner shot and killed Leonard Garland. Who in the cast of characters submitted as possible rubout men held a grudge against Tippit going back to 1956? The nominees are James Alford Markham, William Arthur Smith & Jimmy Earl Burt, all barely pubescent when Leonard was killed. Burt, who knew Tippit for three or four years, said they used to call him "Officer Friendly." Evidently the pain inflicted by death on their tender sensibilities had worn off by the mid-teens.

Upshot is the muddled thesis comes undone and falls apart. It does not hold water. Such is what happens when history is reconstructed by recourse to free association and delirium, as if composed in the similitude of a nightmare by Molly Bloom after an evening of bad sex with an out-of-whack Blazes Boylan. There's no way to get the parts to come together & mesh in working order.

[Jim DiEugenio]

Milo:

What do you make of Callaway overall?

Why on earth would he take the gun and go looking for the killer? Having to ask which way he ran off?

Wyy do you say the Davis sisters are not credible? Because they could not ID the shells?