16-03-2011, 03:18 AM
(This post was last modified: 16-03-2011, 07:42 PM by Bernice Moore.)
in looking for other information, i came across this article posted by Jack written by Larry Howard, Jack's comment preceeds the info, who researched the Tipitt slaying, extensively, so here you are...thanks jack..
The late Larry Ray Harris was THE expert researcher on Tippit. I choose to believe
Larry instead of Myers, Posner, or the Warrenatti.
Here is one of Larry's Tippit articles:
>>>>>>
November 22, 1963: The Other Murder - The Death of Officer Tippit Revisited by Larry Ray Harris
Thirty years later. a number of mis-conceptions about the John Kennedy assassination still linger in the public mind. One of the most enduring is that investigators compiled a virtual open-and-shut case against Lee Harvey Oswald in the slaying of a Dallas policeman named J.D. Tippit, who was abruptly gunned down on a residential street four miles from Dealey Plaza, less than an hour after JFK was shot.
The widespread public acceptance of Oswald's guilt is such that the Tippit murder has been virtually relegated to a historical footnote. This was borne out by the House Select Committee on Assassinations, whose 1979 final report devoted a scant three paragraphs to the policeman's death -- concurring with the 1964 Warren Report conclusion that Oswald was a cop-killer. More recently, attorney/author Gerald Posner's appalling new tome, Case Closed, glosses over the Tippit's murder case in just seven pages.
On the surface -- and certainly as depicted by Warren Report groupies such as Posner and Jim Moore - the case against Oswald appeared to be air-tight. But viewed objectively, thoughtfully and in its entirety, the record leaves little doubt that someone other than Lee Oswald was responsible for the death of a Dallas cop.
Let's take a look back at that other murder on Nov. 22, 1963.
WHERE WAS OSWALD?
The Warren Report said Oswald, afoot, left his rooming house in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas at 1:04 p.m. Police were notified of the shooting by a citizen using the radio in Tippit's squad car at 1:16 p.m. Therefore, Oswald had no more than 12 minutes to walk from his apartment to the intersection of Tenth & Patton - about one mile away.
BUT, Oswald's landlady told the Secret Service that she looked out the window "several minutes later" and observed Oswald standing motionless at the curb in front of the house. Therefore, "several minutes" after 1:04 p.m. Oswald was still lingering in the immediate vicinity of his rooming house. (Perhaps he was waiting on the mysterious police car which, according to the landlady's testimony, paused directly in front of 1026 N. Beckley while Oswald was in his room, honked its horn twice. and drove away.)
AND, contrary to the Warren Report's assertion that he "rushed' to Tippit's car and "promptly" notified police on Tippit's radio, eyewitness Domingo Benavides testified that when the shooting began, he crouched down in the seat of his pick-up truck and laid low for "a few minutes" because he was afraid the gunman would reappear and start shooting again. Thus, 'a few minutes' elapsed between the shooting and the time police were notified at 1:16 p.m. (Benavides first tried to aid the mortally wounded officer before climbing into Tippit's squad car and fumbling with the radio microphone, trying to figure out how it worked. Contrary to the Report, which wrongly credited Benavides, it was a bystander named F. Bowley who took the microphone from him and called the dispatcher. Bowley's Nov. 22 affidavit said he came upon the scene in his car, got out and intentionally looked at his watch to note the time: 1:10 p.m. - another indication that "a few minutes" - perhaps 5 or 6 - elapsed before Bowley called the radio dispatcher).
If Oswald was still in front of his apartment house "several minutes" after 1:04, and if the Tippit shooting occurred "a few minutes" prior to the 1:16 p.m. emergency transmission by Benavides, he could not possibly 'have been in a position to shoot the policeman. This was demonstrated by Commission staff attorney David Belin (the most passionate advocate of Oswald's sole guilt in both the JFK and Tippit murders), who retraced the accused assassin's 'presumed' route with a stopwatch. It took him 17 minutes and 45 seconds.
Moreover, the Warren Report said Oswald was walking east on Tenth Street when Tippit encountered him. But, contemporaneous written reports flied by the DPD, FBI and Secret Service stated that the pedestrian who shot Tippit was walking west on Tenth Street and continued west after the shooting. Oswald could not have been walking west on Tenth because he would have been coming back toward his rooming house from a point beyond the crime scene he could not possibly have reached in the established timeframe. (A resident in the next block named Jimmy Burt later told independent researchers including the author, that he noticed the man walking west on Tenth Street just moments before the shooting; Burt said he was certain it was not Lee Harvey Oswald.)
Finally, two witnesses (Butch Burroughs and Jack Davis) have said they observed Oswald inside the Texas Theatre as early as 1:15 p.m. - much earlier than the Warren Report timetable. (Burroughs, who was working the concession counter, remembered waiting on Oswald). If correct, their accounts provide additional corroboration that Oswald was nowhere near Tenth & Patton when Tippit's was slain.
WITNESSES: THE KEY THREE
Helen Markham was the sole basis for the Report's conclusion that Oswald was walking east on Tenth. She alone said Tippit's killer -- identified by her in a line-up as Oswald -- was walking east when the police car approached him from behind. Markham thus became a cornerstone of the case against Oswald. elevating her status to "star" witness for the DPD and the Commission. Hysterical and fainting, she is said to have picked Oswald from a police line-up -- even though she told the FBI the same day (Nov. 22) that Tippit's assailant was 18, red-complexted and had black wavy hair. (Oswald was 24, fair skinned and had receding brown hair. Descriptions of Tippit's killer broadcast over the DPD radio from the scene included references to black hair.)
Publicly, the Warren Report called Markham's bizarre testimony "reliable." But, behind the scenes, the panel knew their "star" witness was a walking, talking disaster. An unpublished Commission memo summarizing Markham's deposition warned, "This witness is very unsure of herself on most points." So unsure, in fact, that she earned the contempt of commission staff attorneys Joseph Ball - who complained that her account was "full of mistakes" and "utterly unreliable" - and Wesley Liebler. who dismissed her story as "contradictory" and "worthless." (Several years later Ball derided Markham publicly during a debate, calling her "an utter screwball.") Assistant counsel Norman Redlich's hear-no-evil response to his colleagues: "The Commission wants to believe Mrs. Markham and that's all there is to it."
William Scoggins purportedly picked Oswald out of a boisterous police line-up on Nov. 23, long after the suspect had been formally charged with the officer's murder. But a FBI report reveals that two days later, when FBI agents showed him a photograph of Oswald, Scoggins told them he couldn't be sure the person he observed on Nov. 22 was "actually identical with Oswald". Later, Scoggins sheepishly admitted to the Warren Commission that when the FBI showed him pictures of several different people (including the accused assassin), he picked out a man other than Oswald as the Tippit gunman!
Domingo Benavides was the closest person to the shooting -- he said he was in his truck a mere 15 feet away -- yet he was not taken to any of the line-ups to see if he could identify the man. His Warren Commission appearance elicited only a tentative identification: he could say only that a picture of Oswald he saw on TV resembled the man who shot Tippit.
THAT'S HIM: THE POLICE LINE-UPS
The Dallas Police line-ups -- all four of them -- were a travesty. In the first two, the disheveled and bruised Oswald was paraded before witnesses (including Markham) accompanied by two detectives and a jail clerk who were neatly attired in slacks and dress shirts. The fourth and final line-up the next day (attended by Scoggins) was even more outrageous: Oswald, two teenagers and an Hispanic man! Further, throughout at least three of the line-ups Oswald was loudly and angrily protesting the unfairness of the procedure and demanding legal representation. One witness (William Whaley, a taxi driver) made the observation that "...anybody who wasn't sure could have picked out the right one just for that."
Three individuals not known to the Warren Commission later offered wildly variant accounts of the shooting and its immediate aftermath:
- Acquilla Clemons, a housekeeper, said she heard gunshots, went out to see what was going on and saw two men running from the scene in opposite directions.
Frank Wright, who lived in the next block, said he heard gunshots, went out to see what was happening and saw a man standing near a police car. He insisted the man ran and jumped in a gray car parked beyond the cruiser, and sped away west on Tenth Street.
Jack Tatum told House Assassination Committee investigators that he was driving west on Tenth and had just passed a police car when the shooting broke out; Tatum paused and watched the gunman walk behind the squad car and take careful, deliberate aim before firing one more shot into Tippit. ("This action," the HSCA Report noted, "which is commonly described as a coup de grace, is more indicative of an execution than an act of defense intended to allow escape or prevent apprehension. Absent further evidence -- which the committee did not develop -- the meaning of this evidence must remain uncertain.")
These seemingly irreconcilable accounts only add to the mystery, and serve to reiterate that official investigators and independent researchers don't really know just what transpired at Tenth & Patton that day.
FOUR + FOUR = "A SLIGHT PROBLEM"
Four bullets were removed from Tippit's body, and four empty shell casings were reportedly found at the scene of his death. Investigators' should have had no problem matching them up to indisputably establish Oswald's guilt.
BUT, the bullets taken from Tippit's body could not be traced to Oswald's revolver. According to an FBI exert, the barrel of the pistol which fired the bullets -- allegedly Oswald's .38 Smith & Wesson revolver -- had been modified, causing the bullets to pass erratically through the barrel thereby leaving inconsistent individual characteristics which made positive identification impossible. Years later in the late 1970's, the House Assassinations Committee also was unable to positively connect any of the bullets to Oswald's pistol -- even with sophisticated techniques not available in 1964.
MOREOVER, three of the bullets were manufactured by Western-Winchester, and one by Remington-Peters. BUT two of the shell casings were made by Western-Winchester, and two were made by Remington-Peters. The Report was unable to adequately explain this curious discrepancy -- which staff attorney, Melvin Eisenberg delicately described as "a slight problem" when he broke the news to the Commission's executive members.
In the final analysis, the four shell casings are the only tangible evidence linking Oswald's pistol to the Tippit murder; without question, they were fired in his .38 Smith & Wesson. When they were fired is another matter altogether, for there is reason to wonder if the shells turned over to the Warren Commission were the same shells found at the scene on Nov. 22.
The second description of the suspect broadcast over police radio that day said the gunman was "apparently armed with a .32 caliber dark finish automatic pistol."
A few minutes later, Sgt. Jerry Hill notified the DPD radio dispatcher: "The shell at the scene indicates that the suspect is armed with a .38 caliber automatic, rather than a pistol." [Note: There are only two types of handgun, automatic and revolver; both are pistols, therefore, Hill meant to say "automatic, rather than revolver."]
Was Tippit slain with an automatic handgun, as these two radio transmissions indicate? If so, Oswald was not the killer - for he was allegedly carrying a revolver, which fires ammunition of a different size and shape than that made for an automatic (which 'automatically' ejects the shells as the bullets are fired; revolver shells must be ejected manually). Anyone with a passing familiarity with handguns could distinguish between automatic and revolver ammunition at a glance. Would a seasoned police sergeant like Jerry Hill, investigating the murder of a brother officer, make such a misidentification?
Uncertainty about the Tippit ballistics evidence grows with the revelation that Dallas policeman J.M. Poe, who took custody of two shell casings on Nov. 22, was later unable to identify them. Patrolman Poe was instructed by Sgt. Hill at the scene to 'mark' two shells found by Domingo Benavides; Poe scratched his initials on them to establish a chain of evidence: But seven months later, FBI agents asked Poe to examine the four shells turned over to the Warren Commission. The FBI report told the tale: Poe "stated he recalled marking these cases... but he stated after a thorough examination of the four cartridges shown to him on June 12, 1964, he cannot locate his marks; therefore, he cannot positively identify any of these cartridges as being the same ones he received from Benavides."
All of this suggests the possibility of police tampering with evidence to prop up a hastily-contrived, shoddy case against a hapless suspect. Coupled with the utter lack of any other credible evidence implicating Oswald, it raises the specter of a classic police frame-up ....
THE JACKET THAT DIDN'T FIT
Police found a white jacket on a parking lot behind a nearby gas station. The jacket eventually turned over by police to the FBI and Warren Commission was gray. The Warren Report flatly stated that this jacket, designated Commission Exhibit 162, belonged to Oswald and was discarded by him as he fled the scene of Tippit's death.
The few known references to the jacket that weekend, including the DPD radio transmission announcing its discovery, called it white. CE 162, the garment given the Warren Commission is officially a "gray zipper jacket." (I have held this jacket at the National Archives and it is gray; conceivably someone might call it 'light gray', but no one - least of all trained policemen - would call it white or even off-white.)
A commercial laundry tag stapled in the jacket was never traced to Oswald. Unpublished FBI reports disclose an investigation requested by the Warren Commission in which all dry cleaning firms in the Dallas/Fort Worth and New Orleans areas were contacted without identifying the one which laundered the garment. The Warren report didn't mention the laundry tag or the unsuccessful effort to trace it.
The same FBI investigation determined that Marina Oswald handwashed all of her husband's clothing (including two jackets) and that she never knew him to use a commercial cleaner. And, whereas CE 162 was size 'medium', all of Oswald's other clothing was size 'small'.
Dallas Police crowed all weekend about each new development - however circumstantial or tentative - in the case against Oswald. But they were strangely silent about the jacket. Nor is it mentioned anywhere in the dozens of police reports published in the Report's 26 volume appendix. A police captain was erroneously credited with finding the jacket - he explicitly testified he didn't find it - and there is no report from #279, the "unknown" officer who called the radio dispatcher to report his discovery. (In 1978 I identified and attempted to interview this officer, who responded angrily when I asked what color the jacket was. "That information might be something they don't want given out," he said tersely, terminating a brief conversation.)
According to a Secret Service report, Oswald "complained of a lineup wherein he had not been granted a request to put on a jacket similar to those worn by some of the other individuals in the lineup." Why would Oswald want to wear a jacket if he had discarded the one he was wearing when he shot Tippit? And why didn't police facilitate the identification process by making him wear the white jacket in the line-ups?
DPD, FBI and Secret Service reports detailing interrogations of Oswald do not mention a jacket; nothing in the official record indicates he was questioned about or confronted with the white jacket by his hosts (as he was confronted with the infamous 'backyard photos' of himself holding a rifle).
Only one of six witnesses shown the gray CE 162 stated positively it was the one worn by Tippit's killer; their descriptions of the gunman's jacket varied, and in several instances were significantly inconsistent with the Commission garment. Oswald's landlady could not identify CE 162 as the one he was wearing when he left his room at 1:04.
There was no credible evidence whatsoever that CE 162 belonged to Oswald and was abandoned by him near Tenth & Patton.
WHO SHOT J.D.?
After 30 years, that remains a valid question in the estimation of this writer. The information set forth above is the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Virtually every aspect of the official case against Oswald in the Tippit murder is tainted or flawed or outright undermined by the known facts, evidence and testimony. Other anomalies surrounding the policeman's death are too numerous to outline here. They include the circumstances which brought Tippit to the quiet residential street where he died, miles from his own patrol district; his activities in the hour preceding his murder; and an aspect of Tippit's personal life which -- had it been known to investigators in 1964 -- might have cast the officer's demise in a different light altogether.
Unfortunately, the truth about Tippit's death may never be known. Because of the unbelievably shoddy and dubious case concocted by the Dallas Police, and its endorsement by myopic government investigators, the record of J.D. Tippit's murder is inaccurate and incomplete. At least to those with open minds, the strange death of a policeman on Nov 22, 1963 seems destined to remain that date's other unsolved murder.
LARRY RAY' HARRIS of Dallas is co-founder of JFK Assassination Information Center. He is co-author with Gary Shaw of the book Cover-up. (1976)(1992) and was consultant to the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations. During his 17 years of active research on the JFK assassination Harris has been involved with numerous books, articles and films about the case.
a friend sent this photo below of j.d and his wife marie awhile ago..and a photo of the white jacket found by dpd shot by a newspaperman, i have been told..that was copied from a book...fwtiw.b
The late Larry Ray Harris was THE expert researcher on Tippit. I choose to believe
Larry instead of Myers, Posner, or the Warrenatti.
Here is one of Larry's Tippit articles:
>>>>>>
November 22, 1963: The Other Murder - The Death of Officer Tippit Revisited by Larry Ray Harris
Thirty years later. a number of mis-conceptions about the John Kennedy assassination still linger in the public mind. One of the most enduring is that investigators compiled a virtual open-and-shut case against Lee Harvey Oswald in the slaying of a Dallas policeman named J.D. Tippit, who was abruptly gunned down on a residential street four miles from Dealey Plaza, less than an hour after JFK was shot.
The widespread public acceptance of Oswald's guilt is such that the Tippit murder has been virtually relegated to a historical footnote. This was borne out by the House Select Committee on Assassinations, whose 1979 final report devoted a scant three paragraphs to the policeman's death -- concurring with the 1964 Warren Report conclusion that Oswald was a cop-killer. More recently, attorney/author Gerald Posner's appalling new tome, Case Closed, glosses over the Tippit's murder case in just seven pages.
On the surface -- and certainly as depicted by Warren Report groupies such as Posner and Jim Moore - the case against Oswald appeared to be air-tight. But viewed objectively, thoughtfully and in its entirety, the record leaves little doubt that someone other than Lee Oswald was responsible for the death of a Dallas cop.
Let's take a look back at that other murder on Nov. 22, 1963.
WHERE WAS OSWALD?
The Warren Report said Oswald, afoot, left his rooming house in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas at 1:04 p.m. Police were notified of the shooting by a citizen using the radio in Tippit's squad car at 1:16 p.m. Therefore, Oswald had no more than 12 minutes to walk from his apartment to the intersection of Tenth & Patton - about one mile away.
BUT, Oswald's landlady told the Secret Service that she looked out the window "several minutes later" and observed Oswald standing motionless at the curb in front of the house. Therefore, "several minutes" after 1:04 p.m. Oswald was still lingering in the immediate vicinity of his rooming house. (Perhaps he was waiting on the mysterious police car which, according to the landlady's testimony, paused directly in front of 1026 N. Beckley while Oswald was in his room, honked its horn twice. and drove away.)
AND, contrary to the Warren Report's assertion that he "rushed' to Tippit's car and "promptly" notified police on Tippit's radio, eyewitness Domingo Benavides testified that when the shooting began, he crouched down in the seat of his pick-up truck and laid low for "a few minutes" because he was afraid the gunman would reappear and start shooting again. Thus, 'a few minutes' elapsed between the shooting and the time police were notified at 1:16 p.m. (Benavides first tried to aid the mortally wounded officer before climbing into Tippit's squad car and fumbling with the radio microphone, trying to figure out how it worked. Contrary to the Report, which wrongly credited Benavides, it was a bystander named F. Bowley who took the microphone from him and called the dispatcher. Bowley's Nov. 22 affidavit said he came upon the scene in his car, got out and intentionally looked at his watch to note the time: 1:10 p.m. - another indication that "a few minutes" - perhaps 5 or 6 - elapsed before Bowley called the radio dispatcher).
If Oswald was still in front of his apartment house "several minutes" after 1:04, and if the Tippit shooting occurred "a few minutes" prior to the 1:16 p.m. emergency transmission by Benavides, he could not possibly 'have been in a position to shoot the policeman. This was demonstrated by Commission staff attorney David Belin (the most passionate advocate of Oswald's sole guilt in both the JFK and Tippit murders), who retraced the accused assassin's 'presumed' route with a stopwatch. It took him 17 minutes and 45 seconds.
Moreover, the Warren Report said Oswald was walking east on Tenth Street when Tippit encountered him. But, contemporaneous written reports flied by the DPD, FBI and Secret Service stated that the pedestrian who shot Tippit was walking west on Tenth Street and continued west after the shooting. Oswald could not have been walking west on Tenth because he would have been coming back toward his rooming house from a point beyond the crime scene he could not possibly have reached in the established timeframe. (A resident in the next block named Jimmy Burt later told independent researchers including the author, that he noticed the man walking west on Tenth Street just moments before the shooting; Burt said he was certain it was not Lee Harvey Oswald.)
Finally, two witnesses (Butch Burroughs and Jack Davis) have said they observed Oswald inside the Texas Theatre as early as 1:15 p.m. - much earlier than the Warren Report timetable. (Burroughs, who was working the concession counter, remembered waiting on Oswald). If correct, their accounts provide additional corroboration that Oswald was nowhere near Tenth & Patton when Tippit's was slain.
WITNESSES: THE KEY THREE
Helen Markham was the sole basis for the Report's conclusion that Oswald was walking east on Tenth. She alone said Tippit's killer -- identified by her in a line-up as Oswald -- was walking east when the police car approached him from behind. Markham thus became a cornerstone of the case against Oswald. elevating her status to "star" witness for the DPD and the Commission. Hysterical and fainting, she is said to have picked Oswald from a police line-up -- even though she told the FBI the same day (Nov. 22) that Tippit's assailant was 18, red-complexted and had black wavy hair. (Oswald was 24, fair skinned and had receding brown hair. Descriptions of Tippit's killer broadcast over the DPD radio from the scene included references to black hair.)
Publicly, the Warren Report called Markham's bizarre testimony "reliable." But, behind the scenes, the panel knew their "star" witness was a walking, talking disaster. An unpublished Commission memo summarizing Markham's deposition warned, "This witness is very unsure of herself on most points." So unsure, in fact, that she earned the contempt of commission staff attorneys Joseph Ball - who complained that her account was "full of mistakes" and "utterly unreliable" - and Wesley Liebler. who dismissed her story as "contradictory" and "worthless." (Several years later Ball derided Markham publicly during a debate, calling her "an utter screwball.") Assistant counsel Norman Redlich's hear-no-evil response to his colleagues: "The Commission wants to believe Mrs. Markham and that's all there is to it."
William Scoggins purportedly picked Oswald out of a boisterous police line-up on Nov. 23, long after the suspect had been formally charged with the officer's murder. But a FBI report reveals that two days later, when FBI agents showed him a photograph of Oswald, Scoggins told them he couldn't be sure the person he observed on Nov. 22 was "actually identical with Oswald". Later, Scoggins sheepishly admitted to the Warren Commission that when the FBI showed him pictures of several different people (including the accused assassin), he picked out a man other than Oswald as the Tippit gunman!
Domingo Benavides was the closest person to the shooting -- he said he was in his truck a mere 15 feet away -- yet he was not taken to any of the line-ups to see if he could identify the man. His Warren Commission appearance elicited only a tentative identification: he could say only that a picture of Oswald he saw on TV resembled the man who shot Tippit.
THAT'S HIM: THE POLICE LINE-UPS
The Dallas Police line-ups -- all four of them -- were a travesty. In the first two, the disheveled and bruised Oswald was paraded before witnesses (including Markham) accompanied by two detectives and a jail clerk who were neatly attired in slacks and dress shirts. The fourth and final line-up the next day (attended by Scoggins) was even more outrageous: Oswald, two teenagers and an Hispanic man! Further, throughout at least three of the line-ups Oswald was loudly and angrily protesting the unfairness of the procedure and demanding legal representation. One witness (William Whaley, a taxi driver) made the observation that "...anybody who wasn't sure could have picked out the right one just for that."
Three individuals not known to the Warren Commission later offered wildly variant accounts of the shooting and its immediate aftermath:
- Acquilla Clemons, a housekeeper, said she heard gunshots, went out to see what was going on and saw two men running from the scene in opposite directions.
Frank Wright, who lived in the next block, said he heard gunshots, went out to see what was happening and saw a man standing near a police car. He insisted the man ran and jumped in a gray car parked beyond the cruiser, and sped away west on Tenth Street.
Jack Tatum told House Assassination Committee investigators that he was driving west on Tenth and had just passed a police car when the shooting broke out; Tatum paused and watched the gunman walk behind the squad car and take careful, deliberate aim before firing one more shot into Tippit. ("This action," the HSCA Report noted, "which is commonly described as a coup de grace, is more indicative of an execution than an act of defense intended to allow escape or prevent apprehension. Absent further evidence -- which the committee did not develop -- the meaning of this evidence must remain uncertain.")
These seemingly irreconcilable accounts only add to the mystery, and serve to reiterate that official investigators and independent researchers don't really know just what transpired at Tenth & Patton that day.
FOUR + FOUR = "A SLIGHT PROBLEM"
Four bullets were removed from Tippit's body, and four empty shell casings were reportedly found at the scene of his death. Investigators' should have had no problem matching them up to indisputably establish Oswald's guilt.
BUT, the bullets taken from Tippit's body could not be traced to Oswald's revolver. According to an FBI exert, the barrel of the pistol which fired the bullets -- allegedly Oswald's .38 Smith & Wesson revolver -- had been modified, causing the bullets to pass erratically through the barrel thereby leaving inconsistent individual characteristics which made positive identification impossible. Years later in the late 1970's, the House Assassinations Committee also was unable to positively connect any of the bullets to Oswald's pistol -- even with sophisticated techniques not available in 1964.
MOREOVER, three of the bullets were manufactured by Western-Winchester, and one by Remington-Peters. BUT two of the shell casings were made by Western-Winchester, and two were made by Remington-Peters. The Report was unable to adequately explain this curious discrepancy -- which staff attorney, Melvin Eisenberg delicately described as "a slight problem" when he broke the news to the Commission's executive members.
In the final analysis, the four shell casings are the only tangible evidence linking Oswald's pistol to the Tippit murder; without question, they were fired in his .38 Smith & Wesson. When they were fired is another matter altogether, for there is reason to wonder if the shells turned over to the Warren Commission were the same shells found at the scene on Nov. 22.
The second description of the suspect broadcast over police radio that day said the gunman was "apparently armed with a .32 caliber dark finish automatic pistol."
A few minutes later, Sgt. Jerry Hill notified the DPD radio dispatcher: "The shell at the scene indicates that the suspect is armed with a .38 caliber automatic, rather than a pistol." [Note: There are only two types of handgun, automatic and revolver; both are pistols, therefore, Hill meant to say "automatic, rather than revolver."]
Was Tippit slain with an automatic handgun, as these two radio transmissions indicate? If so, Oswald was not the killer - for he was allegedly carrying a revolver, which fires ammunition of a different size and shape than that made for an automatic (which 'automatically' ejects the shells as the bullets are fired; revolver shells must be ejected manually). Anyone with a passing familiarity with handguns could distinguish between automatic and revolver ammunition at a glance. Would a seasoned police sergeant like Jerry Hill, investigating the murder of a brother officer, make such a misidentification?
Uncertainty about the Tippit ballistics evidence grows with the revelation that Dallas policeman J.M. Poe, who took custody of two shell casings on Nov. 22, was later unable to identify them. Patrolman Poe was instructed by Sgt. Hill at the scene to 'mark' two shells found by Domingo Benavides; Poe scratched his initials on them to establish a chain of evidence: But seven months later, FBI agents asked Poe to examine the four shells turned over to the Warren Commission. The FBI report told the tale: Poe "stated he recalled marking these cases... but he stated after a thorough examination of the four cartridges shown to him on June 12, 1964, he cannot locate his marks; therefore, he cannot positively identify any of these cartridges as being the same ones he received from Benavides."
All of this suggests the possibility of police tampering with evidence to prop up a hastily-contrived, shoddy case against a hapless suspect. Coupled with the utter lack of any other credible evidence implicating Oswald, it raises the specter of a classic police frame-up ....
THE JACKET THAT DIDN'T FIT
Police found a white jacket on a parking lot behind a nearby gas station. The jacket eventually turned over by police to the FBI and Warren Commission was gray. The Warren Report flatly stated that this jacket, designated Commission Exhibit 162, belonged to Oswald and was discarded by him as he fled the scene of Tippit's death.
The few known references to the jacket that weekend, including the DPD radio transmission announcing its discovery, called it white. CE 162, the garment given the Warren Commission is officially a "gray zipper jacket." (I have held this jacket at the National Archives and it is gray; conceivably someone might call it 'light gray', but no one - least of all trained policemen - would call it white or even off-white.)
A commercial laundry tag stapled in the jacket was never traced to Oswald. Unpublished FBI reports disclose an investigation requested by the Warren Commission in which all dry cleaning firms in the Dallas/Fort Worth and New Orleans areas were contacted without identifying the one which laundered the garment. The Warren report didn't mention the laundry tag or the unsuccessful effort to trace it.
The same FBI investigation determined that Marina Oswald handwashed all of her husband's clothing (including two jackets) and that she never knew him to use a commercial cleaner. And, whereas CE 162 was size 'medium', all of Oswald's other clothing was size 'small'.
Dallas Police crowed all weekend about each new development - however circumstantial or tentative - in the case against Oswald. But they were strangely silent about the jacket. Nor is it mentioned anywhere in the dozens of police reports published in the Report's 26 volume appendix. A police captain was erroneously credited with finding the jacket - he explicitly testified he didn't find it - and there is no report from #279, the "unknown" officer who called the radio dispatcher to report his discovery. (In 1978 I identified and attempted to interview this officer, who responded angrily when I asked what color the jacket was. "That information might be something they don't want given out," he said tersely, terminating a brief conversation.)
According to a Secret Service report, Oswald "complained of a lineup wherein he had not been granted a request to put on a jacket similar to those worn by some of the other individuals in the lineup." Why would Oswald want to wear a jacket if he had discarded the one he was wearing when he shot Tippit? And why didn't police facilitate the identification process by making him wear the white jacket in the line-ups?
DPD, FBI and Secret Service reports detailing interrogations of Oswald do not mention a jacket; nothing in the official record indicates he was questioned about or confronted with the white jacket by his hosts (as he was confronted with the infamous 'backyard photos' of himself holding a rifle).
Only one of six witnesses shown the gray CE 162 stated positively it was the one worn by Tippit's killer; their descriptions of the gunman's jacket varied, and in several instances were significantly inconsistent with the Commission garment. Oswald's landlady could not identify CE 162 as the one he was wearing when he left his room at 1:04.
There was no credible evidence whatsoever that CE 162 belonged to Oswald and was abandoned by him near Tenth & Patton.
WHO SHOT J.D.?
After 30 years, that remains a valid question in the estimation of this writer. The information set forth above is the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Virtually every aspect of the official case against Oswald in the Tippit murder is tainted or flawed or outright undermined by the known facts, evidence and testimony. Other anomalies surrounding the policeman's death are too numerous to outline here. They include the circumstances which brought Tippit to the quiet residential street where he died, miles from his own patrol district; his activities in the hour preceding his murder; and an aspect of Tippit's personal life which -- had it been known to investigators in 1964 -- might have cast the officer's demise in a different light altogether.
Unfortunately, the truth about Tippit's death may never be known. Because of the unbelievably shoddy and dubious case concocted by the Dallas Police, and its endorsement by myopic government investigators, the record of J.D. Tippit's murder is inaccurate and incomplete. At least to those with open minds, the strange death of a policeman on Nov 22, 1963 seems destined to remain that date's other unsolved murder.
LARRY RAY' HARRIS of Dallas is co-founder of JFK Assassination Information Center. He is co-author with Gary Shaw of the book Cover-up. (1976)(1992) and was consultant to the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations. During his 17 years of active research on the JFK assassination Harris has been involved with numerous books, articles and films about the case.
a friend sent this photo below of j.d and his wife marie awhile ago..and a photo of the white jacket found by dpd shot by a newspaperman, i have been told..that was copied from a book...fwtiw.b