Oswald, Beckley and the Tippit Wallet, Part 1
By John Washburn
Some researchers have suggested Lee Harvey Oswald did not live at 1026 N Beckley, the rooming house owned by Arthur and Gladys Johnson, with a live-in housekeeper, Earlene Roberts. Roberts is the sister of Bertha Cheek, a business associate of Jack Ruby.
I have enumerated a quantity of false testimony and falsified documents in my prior articles for this site. And with no presentation to the Warren Commission of the guest register for 1026, I find that not an unreasonable position. The only paper evidence presented of his residing there is this slip of paper presented as an Exhibit with the name “OH Lee” and the words “OUT” and “Room 0”. However, I set out here why I believe Oswald was living at 1026 N Beckley, but not in Room 0.
In doing that, I set out the necessity for a story being manufactured, whilst the components of that story do not match the facts. Something which recurs in the Kennedy and Tippit cases. All that is needed to establish that the official line was untrue is a careful read of Warren Commission testimonies and affidavits.
“Room 0”
Room 0 was a minuscule room off the TV room of 1026 N. Beckley. Designed to be a closet-library with sliding doors and no locks. It had a bed in it because the housekeeper used it for her grandchildren if they came to stay.
The normal rooms at 1026, numbered 1-17, were located in an annex over a garage, two on the first floor by the living quarters, and the rest in a basement. The place is now a registered monument.
The official line was that Oswald:
- was staying in “Room 0” from 14 October 1963 until 22 November because the place had been full when he was looking for a room.
- was using the name “OH Lee”
And the police said they:
- didn’t arrive at 1026 until 3:00 pm, 22 November, after Oswald was arrested and held at City Hall
- needed a picture of Oswald to appear on TV after 3:00 pm for the connection with “OH Lee” to be made, and thence Room 0
- didn’t search any rooms in 1026 other than Room 0
The search is the only part of the account that is true. Room 0 wasn’t searched until after 4:30, as a warrant was obtained, which was attended by a judge, the deputy DA Bill Alexander, and Detectives Turner and Moore.
The “OH Lee” paper slip – no register – and not full
There was a guest register for 1026, as owner Gladys Johnson said so in testifying on 1 April 1964. Volume X.
Mr. BALL. How many tenants did you have in October last year?
Mrs. JOHNSON. You know, I'm sorry I didn't bring my register. I couldn't tell you exactly; I imagine I had about 10 or 12.
Mr. BALL. Was it full?
Mrs. JOHNSON. No; I don't--I most always have vacancies.
Mr. BALL. You do?
Mrs. JOHNSON. I have had more even since this happened.
With that, she destroyed the line that Oswald had to take the room he took because all of the 17 normal rooms were taken.
This is the exchange from the point she handed over the slip with OH Lee on it.
Mr. Ball. We will make a picture of this and give it back to you.
Mrs. Johnson. May I have something to erase this November 13, 15—I got that wrong, anyway. I was looking at the calendar and this, I was thinking it was November 13 that he left—he left my place on a Wednesday before this assassination on Friday.
Mr. Ball. That was the last time you saw him?
Mrs. Johnson. Yeah; the last time I saw him was on a Wednesday but my housekeeper seen him on a Friday morning right after this assassination, he came by the house hurriedly.
Something else is amiss. She said, “he left – he left my place”, but Ball in his follow-up replaces the definite proposition that he’d checked out, with the possibility she merely didn’t see him.
Gladys had another document with her, which she first offered to erase, and she then referred to dates that don’t appear anywhere on the O H Lee slip. Or anywhere else in her testimony.
She appears to be backtracking, having let another cat out of the bag. She was referring to someone who checked out on Wednesday, 13 November 1963, not someone she last saw on Wednesday, 20 November. The only thing keeping her testimony on track is Ball helping it along.
On the Education Forum, Bill Simpich has adduced evidence that there was a guest, Mr Herbert Leon Lee. That is supported by the FBI tracing calls made from the payphone at the gas station opposite 1026 to the Lee household in Shreveport. He appears to have been a genuine person (b 1941, d 2009). The FBI records show calls were made before Oswald moved in.
Different room – searched too soon?
I propose that Oswald did live at 1026 N Beckley, and Herbert Lee was an unconnected person who moved out on November 13, 1963. However, I propose that neither Oswald, Herbert Lee, nor anyone else was using Room 0.
I conclude the story of Room 0 had to be made up because Oswald’s actual room had been searched by regular officers very soon after Officer Tippit was shot, but nothing was found in it. Because the evidence intended to be planted in Oswald’s room – communist literature and a gun holster - hadn’t been planted by then. If all guest rooms were already searched, there would only be one solution: to pretend he’d been in the only place not searched.
That may seem a bizarre thing to say 60 years on. But no more bizarre than proposing that an ex-Marine, in his early 20’s was living in a minuscule room (1/3 of the size of the ones for rent), with sliding doors and no locks, opening into communal areas, with a connecting door to the bedroom of the 58 year old housekeeper Earlene Roberts. Now hidden by a curtain.
As for Oswald: He was supposed to be of low intelligence on the one hand, whilst on the other had managed to learn fluent Russian from a Russian guide. It’s that account that is preposterous.
That story gets worse with the additional excuse that when normal rooms did become available, he decided to stay in it regardless.
In CE2830, Floyd DeGraffenreid – a resident at 1026 - said he only saw Oswald no more than 4-5 times and mainly in the TV room. But if Oswald was in that small room, he would be conspicuous every time he was in and out. The small room is little more than a closet of the TV room.
The time problem – masking the first searches
The official line was that the register was examined for the name Lee Harvey Oswald, but the room was not searched until after 4:30 pm. And only then because Oswald’s face had appeared on TV, because he was using the false name OH Lee. But OH Lee is merely the converse of LeeHO. It wouldn’t be difficult to make the connection with only 10 or so guests: Face on TV or no face on TV.
Any police turning up with 1) a description of the person of interest running from the Tippit murder scene, and 2) the name Lee Harvey Oswald, would have at least two rooms of immediate interest, Oswald’s as well as recent guest Herbert Lee. But it is clear from various testimonies that the first round of police arrived much earlier than 3:00 pm, closer to 1:45 pm. That was before Oswald was arrested at the Texas Theater at 1:50 pm, arriving at City Hall after 2:00 pm.
The earlier police came as a result of the shooting of Officer Tippit. This is from the testimony of Arthur Carl Johnson, Gladys Johnson’s husband, taken on 1 April 1964:
Mr. BELIN. Could you describe how you came to find out that this man had another name other than O. H. Lee?
Mr. JOHNSON. Well, it was when the officers came looking for him.
Mr. BELIN. When was this?
Mr. JOHNSON. Uh--after Tippit was shot, the police----
Mr. BELIN. This would have been on November 22, 1963.
Mr. JOHNSON. Yes.
Belin--with that interruption by stating the obvious--was changing the subject, stopping what else was going to come out.
But the time of day does emerge from what followed. Note the CBS radio announcement at approximately 1:25 pm of Kennedy’s death was earlier than the television announcement of approximately 1:35 pm (CST). The earlier radio time can be verified because BBC TV London was ahead of US television, getting the news out live at 7:27 pm GMT (1:27 pm CST) as it monitored live radio transmissions globally.
Mr. BELIN. He [a person Downtown] had heard over the radio that the President had been shot?
Mr. JOHNSON. Yes.
Mr. BELIN. And then, did you turn on your radio?
Mr. JOHNSON. Yes. We don't have one there in the place, so we went out in the car and sat there in the car and listened.
Mr. BELIN. All right. And was it while you were sitting in the car that you heard that the President had died?
Mr. JOHNSON. Yes; we didn't leave until we--it was announced that he was dead.
Mr. BELIN. How soon after that announcement did you leave?
Mr. JOHNSON. I'd say 5 minutes.
Mr. BELIN. All right. Then, how long did it take you to get to 1026 North Beckley?
Mr. JOHNSON. It takes us about 5 minutes.
Mr. BELIN. So that about 10 minutes after you heard on the radio that the President had been shot, you arrived with your wife at 1026 North Beckley?
And Gladys Johnson said:
“So I came from the restaurant, I guess 1 or 1:30, and these officers were there 1:30 or 2, something like that, anyway, it was after this assassination, and as I drove in, well, the officers were there and they told me that they was looking for this character and I told them I didn't think I had anyone by that name there but we went through the register carefully two or three times and there was no Oswald there and I had two new tenants, rather new tenants, so we had carried them around the house to show them and we was going to start in the new tenants' rooms and my husband was sitting in the living room and seen this picture flash on the television and he said, "Please go around that house and tell him it was this guy that lived in this room here" and it was O. H. Lee.
Earlene Roberts, in her 5 December 1963 affidavit for the FBI, said this:
“Oswald went out the front door. A moment later I looked out the window. I saw Lee Oswald standing on the curb at the bus stop just to the right, and on the same side of the street as our house. I just glanced out the window that once.
“I don't know how long Lee Oswald stood at the curb nor did I see which direction he went when he left there.
“About thirty minutes later three Dallas policemen came to the house looking for Lee Harvey Oswald. We didn't know who Lee Harvey Oswald was until sometime later his picture was flashed on television. I then let the Dallas policemen in the room occupied by Lee Oswald. While the Dallas police were searching the room two FBI agents came in.”
By that, the Dallas police arrived around 1:35 pm, and were asking for Lee Harvey Oswald, a person she refers to as “Lee Oswald”. She made no mention of OH Lee. The room was searched, and the FBI was there too. There is no mention of the judge or the DA with the warrant (which occurred around three hours later), and warrants are not needed in cases of hot pursuit.
There is then her Warren Commission testimony, Vol. VI.
Mr. BALL. Can you tell me what time it was approximately that Oswald came in?
Mrs. ROBERTS. Now, it must have been around 1 o'clock, or maybe a little after, because it was after President Kennedy had been shot-what time I wouldn't want to say because…
Mr. BALL. How long did he stay in the room?
Mr. ROBERTS. Oh, maybe not over 3 or 4 minutes-just long enough, I guess, to go in there and get a jacket and put it on and he went out zipping it.
Mr. BALL. You recall he went out zipping it-was he running or walking?
Mrs. ROBERTS. He was walking fast-he was making tracks pretty fast.
Mr. BALL. Did he say anything to you as he went out?
Mrs. ROBERTS. No, sir.
Mr. BALL. Did you say anything to him?
Mrs. ROBERTS. Probably wouldn't have gotten no answer.
Johnson again:
BELIN. Had this man, O. H. Lee, was he there when you got there?
Mr. JOHNSON. No; he had been there--just--uh--before we got home.
Mr. BELIN. Did Mrs. Roberts tell you that he had?
Mr. JOHNSON. She told us that he come in and got a--uh--little coat or something and just walked in his room and right back out the door.
All of that is a significant departure from the official line that the police arrived at 3:00 pm.
The disappearing wallet at the Tippit murder scene
The thing that needs to be factored in, which can explain these anomalies, is the discovery of a wallet that can be seen in WFAA footage of the Tippit murder scene. This footage, the “Reiland film”, shows the wallet being examined with Sgt. Croy and Captain Westbrook present.
The Reiland footage was shot between 1:30 pm and 1:45 pm at the latest. In my Death of Tippit article, I put the coverage of the wallet as shown in the film as around 1:35 pm. Since it was before Westbrook headed to the Texas Theatre for the arrest of Oswald, but after the TV crew had been filming searches on East Jefferson just before 1:30 pm.
The drive from the Tippit murder scene to 1026 would be around 3 minutes.
If that wallet contained the 1026 Beckley address, and the name “Lee Harvey Oswald”, then conscientious officers could and should have headed there in less than 5 minutes of it being ‘found’.
The police at the Tippit murder scene not only had the description of someone who looked like Oswald running from that scene, but a person similar to that had been seen by Earlene Roberts entering and leaving 1026 around 1:00 pm. Added to which, the person running from the Tippit murder scene ditched a jacket, and Roberts had seen the man she described as Lee Oswald putting one on.
It wouldn’t need a photograph on television at some point after 3:00 pm to hone in on possible people of interest at 1026. There were 17 rooms and only 10 or so guests.
The wallet disappeared from the police record and only reappeared publicly when people spotted it in the Reiland footage in the 1990s.
What went wrong
I believe the wallet is essential to understanding what really went on at 1026 in the afternoon of 22 November 1963.
If that wallet was planted prematurely – meaning it was planted in an improvised rush to set Oswald up for the impromptu killing of Tippit at 410 E. 10th - then the disastrous consequences of that would then require unpicking.
That disaster was a search of Oswald’s actual room, by regular police officers in hot pursuit from 410 E 10th, where nothing unusual was found. Likewise, other rooms.
By that scenario, conspirators and complicit elements of the Dallas Police would be so far down the road of setting up Oswald as a patsy that they had to have him living there with the incriminating evidence.
That would require a clean-up operation,
- covering up that regular officers had been there,
- the control of 1026 by ‘irregular’ officers so that items could appear in Room 0, the only room not searched,
- creating a fictional reason why Oswald was in Room 0,
- creating a reason why it took so long to identify Oswald being in Room 0 (the OH Lee false name invention),
- delaying the search of Room 0 until it could be searched with something to find,
- creating a story/pretext to coerce Earlene Roberts and the Johnsons into an alternative account.
False lead
Warren Commission Counsels Leon Hubert and Burt Griffin did not believe the Dallas Police sent by Captain Fritz (see incident reports of attending officers W.E. Potts and B. L. Senkel) could have arrived at 1026 at 3:00 pm, having been sent from City Hall at 2:40 pm, after Oswald’s arrest, without some form of prior knowledge.
That was because the official story was that the lead to 1026 N Beckley did not come from Oswald. It occurred after the Dallas City police and Dallas County Sheriff (jurisdiction over the County of Dallas as well as the City of Dallas) had arrived at the Oswalds’ lodgings at Ruth Paine’s house in Irving after 3:30 pm. Ruth Paine said she only had a telephone number for Oswald.
The police and sheriffs then used the telephone company to trace the address.
Ruth Paine also made the odd statement, “I was expecting you,” when the police and sheriffs arrived. When asked why she expected them, she said that Lee Oswald had worked at the scene of the shooting. (Testimony of Officer Guy Rose (8 April 1964).
But his name hadn’t been released, nor had a photograph. She had been watching TV. It is unlikely that Oswald’s face had appeared on her TV by then. What the Commission missed--and unfortunately, Hubert and Griffin did not interview Roberts and the Johnsons--is that the doubtful reason for Potts and Senkel arriving at 3:00 was not the only irregularity. And in fact, Gladys Johnson had told her daughter prior to 2:00 PM that the FBI and Dallas Police had already been at Beckley looking for Oswald. (Sara Peterson and K. W. Zachry, The Lone Star Speaks, p. 175)
Warrants
Oswald was still alive until Sunday, November 24th. From the perspective of the Johnsons and Roberts on late Friday, 22 November, he would face trial. And they all would believe Oswald did it.
I propose that complicit police officers could use a technical argument to get those people to go along with the fiction that Oswald was in Room 0. Because it was the only one that hadn’t been searched without a warrant.
Warrants are not required when police are in hot pursuit. Warrants are required for searches after a suspect is arrested. That distinction wouldn’t be known by many members of the public.
This – invented by me - phrase might work as simple pressure with a bit of guilt, too.
“We have a problem. Mrs Johnson and Mrs Roberts in giving access without a search warrant have prejudiced the evidence we did find in Mr.Oswald’s room. We therefore need to say we found it in the small room, which wasn’t searched, until after we had obtained a proper warrant. A minor technicality. We will also need to say we didn’t look in that room because he was using the name OH Lee. By the way we must not mention we searched any other rooms as we didn’t have a warrant.”
There was clearly something wrong with what the Johnsons and Roberts were saying. They weren’t very good at lying. Understandable if they were being fed a story to tell without all of the reasoning behind it.
Roberts was clearly getting pressure from all directions.
Mr. BALL. Why to your sorrows?
Mrs. ROBERTS. Well, he was registered as O. H. Lee and I come to find out he was Oswald and I wish I had never known it.
Mr. BALL. Why?
Mrs. ROBERTS. Well, they put me through the third degree.
Mr. BALL. Who did?
Mrs. ROBERTS. The FBI, Secret Service, Mr. Will Fritz' men [Dallas Homicide] and Bill Decker's [County Sheriff].
As well as pressure on her from at least four agencies, her answer seems to have a Freudian slip.
Wish she’d not known what? Everyone knew Kennedy and Tippit were killed. Worrying about what name Oswald used when he registered in the overall scheme of things is trivial.
Surely the sorrow and hassle were from him being there for six weeks, having supposedly murdered the President and a police officer.
Unless there wasn’t a false name, but she was pressured to go along with it as an invention.
But in her 5 December 1963 affidavit for the FBI, she didn’t show any anxiety about the name OH Lee, as she didn’t even refer to it. She indicated she knew him as Lee Oswald, but refers to the police looking for Lee Harvey Oswald. Not using one’s middle name is not using a false name.
Why was the guest register never presented as evidence? I suggest that it is obvious. Not only would it show that 1026 hadn’t been full. It would show Lee Oswald registered in his own name.
From examination of testimonies, there are so many areas of sensitivity, time inconsistency, over-embellishment, non-sequiturs and Freudian slips in the testimonies of Roberts, Arthur and Gladys Johnson, that everything about the official story falls over.
The “OH Lee” alias is now an established part of the Oswald as a lone shooter narrative. But the Dallas Morning News of 23, 24, and 25 November 1963 makes no mention of it.
That suggests that the story didn’t need to exist publicly until after the Katzenbach Memorandum of 25 November 1963, which gave the covert objective of the Warren Commission as,
“The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin; that he did not have confederates who are still at large; and that evidence was such that he would have been convicted at trial."
The rest of this article examines, in the light of the above, just how badly the official line plays out in testimonies taken by Counsel Belin and Ball.
A particular issue is whether rooms were opened or not with keys – relevant to the warrant matter. But alas, Room 0 doesn’t have a lock. The library it was designed to be didn’t need one.
(Part 2 coming soon)
