Oak Cliff Branch Library

[Milo Reech]

The library incident involving the page, Adrian Hamby, seldom receives serious attention, often fobbed off as a diversion of DPD forces from the Abundant Life Temple area to nowheresville. This ignores the presence of a large gathering of Sheriff's Decker men, armed citizens & bogus secret service agents who preceded the DPD and were not diverted from anything.

William Weston's article, Missing Radio Transmissions, is an exception. It describes in detail an attempt to make sense out of what was going on, based on purported erasures of content from the DPD radio transmissions, and an extensive re-timing of Tippit's murder and subsequent events.
Missing Radio Transmissions William Weston
Fourth Decade volume 7 number 4 p.7
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html...5&tab=page

The result is much too complicated for a short analysis. The purpose of this thread is to present a simplified view of what happened, referring to DPD's &  Sheriff Decker's radio transcripts as they exist, thereby avoiding the pitfalls inherent in the postulation of arbitrary content.

McWatters' bus

After leaving TSBD, LHO boarded the Marsalis bus driven by Cecil McWatters, scheduled to arrive 12:46 at Zangs and 12:50 at East Jefferson (CE 378), locations respectively of the GLOCO station & the Oak Cliff Branch Library. A source of puzzlement has been the reason why LHO boarded this bus which took the wrong route to get to his room on Beckley. Perhaps the answer is simple. His original destination was along the Marsalis route.

This destination was the library, suggesting it was the first choice rendezvous for LHO & a contact. This explains why it was under siege by Sheriff Decker's constabulary & plainclothesmen before Patrolman Walker's report of a suspect running across the lawn of the library precipitated the redeployment of the DPD force from the Abundant Life Temple area.

But the bus got stuck in heavy traffic, causing LHO to jump ship, and did not reach East Jefferson until 1:35 or so when "another Battle of the Little Big Horn" was in progress, as described by Lt. Cunningham. Detective Buhk's report (12/3/63) says much the same, adding the bogus secret service agents who played a major role at the scene.

Tippit had been waiting & watching at GLOCO, running out of patience when the Marsalis bus did not appear at 12:46, and raced down Lancaster a few minutes later. This street parallels Marsalis & Ewing, putting Tippit between the library and Ruby's apartment, although it is unlikely he stopped at either en route to Top Ten.

The Texas Theater was LHO's alternate rendezvous location, where he found himself forsaken by his contact. The Brewer overlay of the theater event served the same purpose as the Walker overlay of the library event, easing the way for the WR authors to keep their narrative of historical fiction non-conspiratorial.

510 East Jefferson Street

A dispatcher's mysterious "Signal 19, police officer, 510 East Jefferson" appears on DPD radio transcripts immediately after Bowley reports the shooting and provides the correct location of 404 Tenth Street. This anomaly is discussed in the thread, "The Tippit Case in the New Millenium," without elucidation.
https://deeppoliticsforum.com/fora/threa...#pid124176

The 1961 city directory lists "Charlie R Phillips Mtrs used cars" at the address, and 1964's aerial view (CE 1968) shows a used car lot, possibly by then part of Johnnie Reynolds Used Cars. Between it and the library at 542 East Jefferson one building stands, occupied by a physician according to the 1961 directory.

The DPD transcript has nothing more to say about the address, but the sheriff's transcript takes up the location with enthusiasm, declaring "104-An officer shot here at 510 East Jefferson." This is a sparse document. Its communications describe little more than how deputies were sent to a used car lot, while failing to ascertain the actual Tippit murder site.

It's not much of a stretch from 510 to 542 East Jefferson.

The DPD transcript has Sergeant Hill stating at 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." Much effort has gone into speculation as to the identity of this man, but there was no one in his car. Hill's purpose was to rally the sheriff's constabulary to the library, which explains why they easily preceded the DPD to the location.

Tippit's role

Why was Tippit waiting for the Marsalis bus? What was his purpose? He may have been assigned the task of waylaying the patsy, a straightforward matter of pulling over the bus, removing LHO therefrom and taking him away.

Sources:

1. Tippit's activities
Car 10 Where Are You?
http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%...m%2001.pdf

2. Sheriff Decker's radio transcript
CE 705 (pp. 367-88)

3. DPD radio transcripts
CE 1974
Shearer
http://www.billdrenas.com/articles/dpd01-00.pdf

[Milo Reech]

Neither ambulance driver Butler nor his assistant Kinsley was interviewed by anyone in an official capacity following Tippit's murder. They were likewise ignored by WC, whose approach to witness interrogation wallowed in the sty of Croy's drivel & Callaway's nonsense. This is another example of overlaying an event with an alternative "take" that suppressed forbidden facts.

The main fact that had to be squelched was the crossing of Jefferson Blvd in front of the ambulance by an LHO lookalike. Years after the event Kinsley told Greg Lowrey, "He (Oswald when he runs in front of the ambulance) was heading for the library. Yes sir. He ran right in front of us."

Seconds later at 1:19 the ambulance declared itself code 6 (out at destination) to DPD's dispatcher. This is a minute or two before deputy 104 told his dispatcher, "An officer shot here at 510 East Jefferson."

Time stamps are sparse on both transcripts but the content helps to sync them. Among the plethora of DPD messages starting at 1:19 there is this statement by the dispatcher: "Suspect running west on Jefferson from the location." This is echoed by the sheriff's dispatcher: "109-All that we have is a suspect left on foot, running from that location, going West."

The latter message immediately precedes 104's statement that placed the shooting and his presence at 510 East Jefferson. Kinsley's LHO lookalike was on a collision course with 104, interception occurred, and he did not reach the library.

A few minutes later at 1:26 Gerald Hill desperately sought information, reporting his position at 12th & Beckley, the sheriff's substation. The DPD handlers had lost track of the patsy.

[Milo Reech]

Who picked up the Jefferson Blvd runner? The "secret service" agents noted by Detective Marvin Buhk are solid choices. They controlled the library scene, and a deputy or constable would have taken him to 12th & Beckley, or at least notified the substation. Hill's call at 1:26 implies that the LHO-lookalike & his interceptor went elsewhere independently of the sheriff's force.

He was taken to the vicinity of the Texas Theater and dropped off nearby after receiving instructions to make himself conspicuous before entering without purchasing a ticket. A few minutes later a pair of LHOs were arrested by DPD and removed from the theater separately via front & rear doors. This LHO was the one in the balcony.

[Milo Reech]

The preceding post may be speculative, but the crossing of Jefferson Blvd in front of the Dudley Hughes ambulance by an LHO lookalike is supported by statements made by driver Butler & passenger Kinsley. Both observed the man. Kinsley identified him as LHO. Butler could not identify him as anybody.

In his tendentious way Myers recently argued on his blog that this man was not LHO but Warren Reynolds, a startling proposition. For one thing, Reynolds belonged to that select group of male Dallasites who bore no resemblance whatsoever to LHO. For another, Myers plays fast & loose with the documented record.

The radio transcript has this item from Patrolman R. W. Walker:

"We have a description on this suspect over here on Jefferson. Last seen about 300 block of East Jefferson. He's a white male, about thirty, five eight, (Siren) black hair, slender, wearing white jacket, a white shirt and dark slacks. (Sirens)"
http://www.billdrenas.com/articles/dpd01-00.pdf 1:22

"Over here" means Walker was at the Jefferson location near the Texaco station where the Brocks worked, not "over there" at Patton & 10th.

Whoever Walker's informant was, this person saw something no one else reported seeing (certainly not Reynolds), spotting the fugitive in the "300 block of East Jefferson." Reynolds had lost sight of him behind the gas station, then left with everyone else when the library news broke.

Myers tries to overcome the facts two ways. One is to claim "the sirens in the background of the transmission prove that Walker was speaking with Reynolds at Tenth and Patton." The other is based on information purportedly provided by Walker in a private interview 20 years after the event.

The former is not worth considering until someone shows that sirens could not have been heard on Jefferson. The latter defies analysis since the source cannot be reviewed. It's from Myers' reserve of unpublished verbal subject matter, at times transmitted from the dead via intermediaries. The extent of this private stock is unknown, but it will come as no surprise if the next edition of "With Malice" is subtitled "Tales from the Crypt."
https://jfkfiles.blogspot.com/2020/11/wa...acket.html

[Milo Reech]

Myers' parting blow against Reynolds is a cheap shot from the unkind mouth of Dallas Police Homicide Captain J.W. Fritz to the Warren Commission.

Mr. FRITZ. …I asked him, how far, how close was the closest you were ever to [Oswald], how far were you from him? He said, Well from that car lot across the street there. Well, of course, if he had been at the car lot across the street it would be difficult to follow him on the sidewalk. It would be quite difficult, so I talked to him for just a short time and I didn’t bother with him anymore.
I already had some history on him because the other bureau, the forgery bureau had been handling him and they had already told me a lot about him. They discounted anything that he told.
https://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/..._0122a.htm [IV p.235]

DPD had a peculiar practice of assigning unsuccessful attempts to commit murder by shooting to the forgery bureau, which in this case it failed to solve possibly because the victim's survival did not qualify the crime for the standard frame up treatment Fritz required for successful homicides.

Fritz was not asked to elaborate on why the forgery bureau "discounted anything that he told." He also did not explain to WC why "it would be difficult to follow [LHO] on the sidewalk." Was he not capable of visualizing the two proceeding in parallel on opposite sides of Jefferson?

Result is not that Reynolds suffers the loss of credibility Myers seeks to establish, but proof that Fritz was an idiot operating in the guise of a mean bastard, or was it the other way around?

[Milo Reech]

The voice from the grave that triggered the blog's phantasmal skein of events belonged to Doretha ("Dodie") B. Dean, who worked at Dean’s Dairy Way next to the Texaco station.

Information regarding two significant events were attributed to her by family survivors:
1. She saw a man who resembled LHO pass east to west from the second hand furniture store toward the service station, crossing the front of the dairy and disappearing in the parking lot to the rear.
2. She "claimed that she was the one who recovered Oswald’s jacket" after "he had flung the jacket onto a tire rack of the Texaco station next door." She then "picked it up and came back into the store," and "when the police arrived, turned the jacket over to them telling them she had found it on the tire rack.”

The first is entirely possible, but how do we know she was not looking at Reynolds? According to Myers, he fooled Kinsley into thinking he was LHO. Why didn't the protean apparition of Reynolds produce the same effect on Mrs. Dean?

The second is rejected by Myers: "Despite the belated claim, it is difficult to believe that Mrs. Dean retrieved the jacket and turned it over to police given the considerable contemporary record to the contrary."

Myers goes to great length to defeat this claim, but fails to answer a simple question. If the jacket on the tire rack was a hallucination, what prevented the Dean family's collective memory from likewise hallucinating an LHO lookalike on the sidewalk in front of the store?

If belatedness is a problem for claim #2 it is likewise a problem for equally belated claim #1.

More on the throwdown jacket next post.

[Milo Reech]

We now turn from echoes reverberating out of the past to the FBI's version of the literary creature known as the unreliable narrator. The reference is to a special agent as author of reports, which consist of paraphrases, indirect quotations, mutilated information, unilateral interpolations & arbitrary content. What you will not find is a direct statement from the witness that is the subject of the report.

Therefore the Jaunuary 23, 1964 report that contains the words, "...made a turn in a northerly direction and proceeded behind Ballew’s Texaco Service Station where the individual discarded a jacket which was later recovered by the Dallas Police Department," is a red herring.

The last part -- "where the individual discarded a jacket which was later recovered by the Dallas Police Department" -- was interpolated as descriptive surplusage by SAs to serve  a purpose. It had the side effect of implying that Patterson witnessed this event, but there is no reason to believe this was the case. No such statement by Patterson appears in this report or anywhere else.

The FBI radiogram Myers refers to indeed contains an employee's note that "Patterson did identify Oswald and also saw him discard his zipper jacket,” but this was an internal communique. It smacks of some lower echelon SA scrambling to reassure a superior on both points. [attached]

It did not carry the weight of conviction, because the FBI's subsequent letter to WC does not mention anything relative to Patterson as a witness to the jacket dumping despite a whole page devoted to the subject of what he saw. [1459a p.2 attached]

Perhaps the facts were too negative to overcome, such as the jacket's size and dry cleaning number. It was too big for LHO, and he did not take his clothing to a dry cleaner, which couldn't be located anyway.

Despite Myers' assertion that "the Commission wanted to use Patterson statement in their report," the Warren Report does not name Patterson as a witness to the jacket's discard, or anyone else. [WR "Oswald's Jacket" pp.175-6]

A nice try to get Westbrook off the hook, but it doesn't work.