The Death of Tippit - Part 1 - Where was Westbrook?
By John Washburn
This article follows on from my prior articles. [https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/the-tippit-tapes-a-re-examination] and [https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/the-missing-calls-of-officer-mentzel-pt-1] These identified problems with the DPD tapes and transcripts, as well correcting misinformation regarding the timing of Officer J. D. Tippit being seen at Gloco gas station.
I have not regurgitated or revised anyone else’s prior analysis. I’ve used source data.
The Dallas Police Department in 1963 operated from City Hall, at Harwood and Commerce/ Main Streets. It was the parking basement of City Hall where Jack Ruby shot and killed Lee Oswald on 24 November 1963. The Presidential motorcade turned right at Main Street by City Hall, passing at 12:25pm.
This three-part series sets out the irregular movements of a handful of police officers in Downtown Dallas from City Hall; from around 12:45pm to the time police were alerted to the murder of Tippit and then proceeded to that scene at 410 E 10th, Oak Cliff.
The command structure of southwest Dallas for 22 November 1963 was changed with Lieutenant Fulgham being sent to traffic school at Northwestern University, Illinois. Sgt. Calvin Owens stood in for him. But overt control over Tippit was changed at some time before 12:30 pm to covert control by Sgt Hugh Davis.
Owens’ Warren Commission testimony has the advantage that it is wholly consistent with what is on the radio tapes and in CE 2645, the allocation of cars and the modified command structure on 22 November 2022. Indeed, Owens was the only person who revealed to the Warren Commission that Tippit’s command had changed over the lunch break.
Owens asked difficult questions on the radio after Tippit was shot: such as what was he doing in Oak Cliff? His evidence conflicts with that of superior officers who had testimonies that were self-contradictory. His questions also provide reinforcing evidence that the 12:45 pm radio call from dispatcher Murray Jackson calling Tippit to Oak Cliff was an after-the-event fake. Owens wouldn’t have needed to ask had he heard that call. Jackson would have been able to answer if in real time he had given such an instruction.
Owens also asked, on patrol radio in the hour after Tippit was shot, why no one had contacted Tippit’s wife and asked where was Sgt. Davis, the covert supervisor of Tippit. Davis never replied. Why? Where was Davis?
None of those irregularities that Owens was dropping out were followed up on by the Commission.
Officer Thomas Alexander Hutson displays similar consistency as Owens. He let several cats out of the bag, including that Officers Hawkins and Baggett made a landline call from the Mobil gas station at 10th and Beckley at approximately 1:30pm. That is the location my Mentzel article [https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/the-missing-calls-of-officer-mentzel-pt-1] placed Mentzel and Tippit at 1:07pm, two minutes prior to Tippit being shot.
Owens and Hutson are a litmus test of how officers ought to act and testify.
II
Contrast this to Captain William Westbrook, head of DPD Personnel. His testimony displays either deliberate lies, or the forgetfulness and cognitive dissonance of someone not suited for gainful employment in any police role. If infiltration of DPD needed a senior person with the power to co-opt, coerce and corrupt then Westbrook fits the requirements. His testimony lends itself to suspicion.
Westbrook’s testimony regarding 22 November 1963 included not being able to remember the name of police officers who drove him to the Tippit murder scene--and later to the Texas Theater (which is and was actually a cinema). This is despite a journalist being in the same car as Westbrook on both occasions, saying the driver was Westbrook himself. The evidence presented here helps explain why Westbrook would have done that. There are also problems with the accounts of how Westbrook, Reserve Sgt. Kenneth H Croy and Sgt. Jerry Hill got to the Tippit murder scene and what they were doing once there.
Hill was a patrol officer and former head of press relations with DPD. He said he had been seconded to Westbrook’s Personnel Department to ‘investigate complaints’ shortly before 22 November 1963 and to vet “prospective police officers”. Hill was an odd choice for any ethical role (as covered later). He was reported to the FBI by a news reporter in California for false statements made on radio news the evening of 22 November 1963.
Hill tried to attach alibis for himself as a shadow to Sgt. Owens – to account for how Hill got to the Tippit murder scene. Alibis that Owens did not reciprocate. As covered later, appropriating other people’s movements was a recurring trait of Hill.
Sergeant Owens said in his Warren Commission testimony that he drove his patrol car taking Westbrook and Assistant District Attorney Bill Alexander. Three in a car. (WC Vol. II, p. 78).
Hill’s Commission testimony said that he went with Owens driving, DA Bill Alexander and Jim Ewell (a Dallas Morning News reporter) over Commerce Viaduct, and then down Beckley. No mention of Westbrook, but four in a car (WC Vol. VII, p. 43).
Westbrook said in his Warren Commission testimony he went with Sergeant Henry Stringer (his deputy in the personnel office) and an unknown officer who drove. Three in a car. (WC Vol. VII, p. 109).
Jim Ewell said he went with Stringer and Westbrook and said Westbrook drove them over Houston Viaduct past his office at the newspaper. Three in a car and an entirely different route. [https://www.patspeer.com/chapter-4c-shining-a-light-on-day]
Adding to that are discrepancies as to how Westbrook got to the Texas Theater for the arrest of Oswald, and who he was with.
Ewell said Westbrook took him and Stringer in an unmarked car parked at the front of the theater. Westbrook said he arrived with Sgt. Stringer and FBI Agent Bob Barrett, an unknown squad car driver and parked in the alley at the back. Stringer, in his report of 3 December 1963, said he met an unknown officer in 100 block S Patton who drove him to the rear of the Texas Theater. [https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth340278/m1/1/]
This was an exchange between three Warren Commission staff as the final report was being drafted:
'How critical of the Dallas police should we be?". 'We can't be critical enough.': 'That's just the problem. If we write what we really think, nobody will believe anything else we say. They'll accuse us of attacking Dallas' image. The whole report will be discredited as controversial. We've just got to tone it way down.'(William Manchester, The Death of a President t, p. 426)
Despite any “toning down” the Warren Report begs question after question concerning some DPD officers. But the Warren Commission was a case of changing facts to fit a theory, and some DPD witnesses were allowed to make up facts by lying without effective challenge. DPD was protected from being investigated itself.
The ace syndicated journalist and razor-sharp star of What’s My Line Dorothy Kilgallen wrote on 29 November 1963:
“The case is closed, is it? Well, I’d like to know how in a big smart town like Dallas, a man like Jack Ruby - operator of a striptease honky tonk - could stroll in and out of police headquarters as if it were a health club at a time when a small army of law enforcers was keeping a "tight security guard" on Oswald. Security! What a word for it.”
Witness evidence is not circumstantial; but in any criminal case, a key question is which witnesses to believe. Hence credible police investigation should seek out lies. The DPD didn’t do that –and remarkably - liars included a small coterie of police officers. At the Sergeant level and above to Captain.
A reason for committing perjury is to avoid revealing worse offenses.
The approach taken here has been to:
1) identify the stated movements of all relevant police officers from 12:45 pm to the entry into the Texas Theater at 1:45 pm
2) identify statements and testimonies that are in direct conflict with each other, and
3) reconcile those with the timeline per the patrol radio tapes, with weight against those officers who provably lie, and weight in favour of those that do not
4) take statements by members of the public at face value, unless there are signs of coercion.
The purpose of that is to assess what were the underlying actions and movements that certain officers needed to obscure. Core assumptions carried from the evidence in my prior articles are as follows.
- Roger Craig and Butch Burroughs were correct. Oswald left Dealey Plaza by Rambler and was in the Texas Theater just after 1:00 pm and remained there until he was arrested.
- Earlene Roberts did see police car 207 outside 1026 N Beckley and it tooted just before the person left at approximately 1:04 pm.
- There was an imposter acting as a decoy on the Marsalis bus. That person got off the bus after 12:50 pm, several minutes later than the Warren Commission’s timeline. Because the bus was held up longer because of the backup of traffic on Elm Street. There was no person of relevance in William Whalley’s cab.
- Tippit left Gloco gas to go to the vicinity of Lansing Street and 8th Street where off-duty Officer Olsen was (that patrol district was depleted of its normal patrol officers). Mentzel rendezvoused with Tippit at 10th and Beckley at 1:07 pm (real-time). Tippit was shot at approximately 1:09 pm.
If there was premeditated involvement of some police officers in assisting the Kennedy assassination then Tippit’s murder was either similarly premeditated or it was spontaneous. For it to be spontaneous then Tippit, under the covert command of Sgt. Hugh Davis, must have done something whilst at or shortly after leaving Gloco to spark it, which both upset the role he was supposed to play and necessitated his murder.
I posit that Tippit’s role was to assist a decoy who was playing out Oswald as a supposed ‘lone nut’ fleeing by bus. But that Tippit backed out when he heard on patrol radio that Kennedy had been shot in the head. Tippit then became a major risk to the conspirators.
Bill Simpich says that events “went south” after the assassination of Kennedy. That is consistent with an assassination that went as planned but was followed by muddled events that weren’t planned.
If Tippit was murdered without police involvement then it is difficult to explain why there were so many irregularities in how certain officers arrived at the murder scene and what they did when they were there.
Let’s see how those assumptions play out.
OWENS AND POE
By the DPD radio only two police cars left the Depository in response to T. F. Bowley’s 1:11 pm call stating Tippit had been shot. Those were the cars of Officer JM Poe with Officer LB Jez (call sign 105) and Sgt. Owens (call sign 19) said he took Westbrook and Deputy DA Bill Alexander.
Owens said he left the Depository on hearing Bowley’s call and his time of arrival at the Tippit murder scene per the radio (see later) fits with his testimony. He arrived at 1:16 pm, seconds after Officer Poe (call sign 105) who also left from the depository in car 94. Owens’ testimony is wholly consistent with his calls on the tapes, and ambulance travel time.
Poe, like Owens, gave inconvenient testimony. Poe said he’d marked the bullet cartridges found at the Tippit murder scene, which were identified as from an automatic weapon. The cartridges, by the time of the Commission, had no such markings. Thus the story that they could have come from the nonautomatic pistol found on Oswald is now questionable.
Poe also submitted a report (covered later) with Owens on 22 November 1963 regarding murder scene witness Helen Markham. As first responders, she told them that the assailant threatened to kill her. No other subsequent statements or testimony raised that. She never raised that again. Why? If the assailant had been Oswald it would be relevant evidence. But if the assailant wasn’t the dead Oswald then was she intimidated in giving later evidence?
PART-TIME RESERVE SERGEANT KENNETH HUDSON CROY
Croy, owner of a Mobil gas station in Oak Cliff, and a rodeo performer, is an example of putting a DPD hat on someone with all the implied trust that carries. But his testimony takes any credibility relying on that status away.
Much of Croy’s testimony was made off the cuff because he was only supposed to testify regarding his role on 24 November for the shooting of Oswald. It was only because Croy let slip to the female Commission stenographer that he’d been at the Tippit murder scene that he was then asked about his movements on 22 November. He filed no report on his activities that day. He made no (surviving) announcements on patrol radio.
His role on 24 November is not fully covered here, other than to say that the level of questioning by Counsel Griffin indicates doubts as to his version of events. Griffin was one of the more curious questioners.
Croy was the officer who organized the roster on 24 November 1963 for those in City Hall regarding the transfer of Oswald to the County Jail. He can be seen on TV footage standing immediately behind Jack Ruby. Croy moves the press pack forward and then Ruby shoots Oswald. Croy forgot the names of officers present despite compiling the roster for who would be present.
Croy’s evidence of 10 am 26 March 1964 (WC Vol XII) warrants a large extract, as his obfuscation and self-contradiction cannot be paraphrased. What is relevant are his said locations and timings.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Well, now, tell me about the conversation that you had with our court stenographer here prior to coming in here, about Tippit?
Mr. CROY. Oh, it was at the scene over where Officer Tippit was killed, at the scene.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Were you at the scene when Tippit was there?
Mr. CROY. Yes.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Unassigned?
Mr. CROY. Yes.
Mr. GRIFFIN. I take it you are nodding your head?
Mr. CROY. Yes.
Mr. GRIFFIN. What time were you at the scene where Tippit was killed?
Mr. Croy. I watched them load him in the ambulance.
Mr. GRIFFIN. I see. Were you on reserve duty that day?
Mr. CROY. Yes. I was stationed Downtown in the, I believe it was the 1800 or 1900 block of Main Street.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Were you in a patrol car?
Mr. CROY. No; I was on foot.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Were you in uniform?
Mr. CROY. In uniform.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Where were you at the time President Kennedy was shot?
Mr. Croy. Sitting in my car at the city hall. I would guess, I don't know, because I didn't know he was shot until, I guess, several minutes after it was.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Is that where you were located when you heard he was shot?
Mr. CROY. No. I was on Main Street trying to go home.
Mr. GRIFFIN. You were driving your car down Main Street?
Mr. CROY. Yes.
Mr. GRIFFIN. About where were you on Main Street?
Mr. CROY. Griffin.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Griffin Street?
Mr. CROY. Yes.
Mr. GRIFFIN. What did you do when you heard that President Kennedy had been shot?
Mr. CROY. I didn't do anything. I was right in the middle of the street with my car hemmed in from both sides. I couldn't go anywhere.
Mr. GRIFFIN. As soon as you got unhemmed, what did you do?
Mr. CROY. I went by the courthouse there and there were several officers standing there, and I asked if they needed any help.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Did you drive your car to the courthouse?
Mr. CROY. Yes.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Which courthouse?
Mr. CROY. There was only one courthouse.
Mr. GRIFFIN. There is a county courthouse?
Mr. CROY. There is.
Mr. GRIFFIN. There is a Federal courthouse, also, but this is the one right there by the plaza and near the Texas School Book Depository?
Mr. CROY. The old red courthouse.
Mr. GRIFFIN. On Houston Street?
Mr. CROY. Yes.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Was that the corner of Houston and Main?
Mr. CROY. Houston and Main and Elm.
Mr. GRIFFIN. How long after you heard that President Kennedy was shot did you arrive there?
Mr. CROY. Oh, I guess it took me at least 20 minutes to drive those few blocks.
Mr. GRIFFIN. What time would you say it was when you arrived at the courthouse?
Mr. CROY. I don't know.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Who did you see when you arrived there?
Mr. CROY. Oh, there was some officers standing on the corner, I don't know.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Did you inquire of somebody there if you could be of assistance?
Mr. CROY. Yes.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Whom did you inquire of?
Mr. CROY. I don't know. They were just standing on the corner, and I asked if I could be of any assistance.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Then, what did you do?
Mr. CROY. I proceeded on home.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Which way did you drive home?
Mr. CROY. Out Thornton to Colorado, and Colorado to-I can't think of the street. It was Marsalis.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Was that-
Mr. CROY. Or Zangs
Mr. GRIFFIN. Thornton to Zangs?
The route Croy said he took to go home wasn’t his way home; which would have been due south from City Hall, not due west. And Inspector Sawyer’s testimony (Vol. VI, p. 315) contradicts Croy’s description of traffic conditions on Main Street.
Sawyer said he passed down Main from the same blocks after the motorcade passed City Hall. He arrived at the Depository at 12:42 pm. But he also put out a call on the radio stating that any officers on crowd duties on Main (which included Croy) should report to the Depository. He said the only traffic issues on Main were caused by dispersing pedestrians crossing the road.
Officer Hutson also did the same route for the same time period. He said (Vol. VII, p. 26) that he went down Main, on his three-wheeler motorcycle to collect road signs after the passing of the motorcade at Main and Harwood (City Hall). Like Sawyer, he said the issue was pedestrians, not traffic.
Jim Ewell said Officer Valentine had driven him and Hill from City Hall to the Depository in “probably less than two minutes” that too was approximately 12:45 pm (as per Ewell above link [https://www.patspeer.com/chapter-4c-shining-a-light-on-day]).
Croy said he was on Main Street hemmed in on both sides. That is demonstrably false. Main Street was not only not obstructed it was two-way, with two lanes in each direction. It was Elm Street which was three lanes one-way and became obstructed until traffic was released. Croy therefore seems to have indirectly revealed that he was actually on Elm Street, even further off his route home. Was he trying to conceal that?
III
Croy’s reference to Griffin Street is interesting. If Croy wasn’t at Griffin and Main Street, but was at Griffin and Elm, then he can be placed close to where the Marsalis bus was held up and the person --a policeman in civilian clothes, who can’t have been uniformed Croy himself--got out of the car to tell the driver of the bus that Kennedy had been shot.
Croy then said policemen in Dealey Plaza told him he wasn’t needed. But Inspector Sawyer had commanded on the radio that all officers on crowd duties were needed in Dealey Plaza.
Croy next said he was at Colorado and Zang where he heard the radio call and got to the Tippit murder scene as Tippit’s body was being loaded into the ambulance. But the ambulance was dispatched after a phone call from a neighbor before the patrol radio call of 1:11 pm from Temple Bowley. The ambulance only had to travel 300 yards from the Dudley Hughes Funeral Home in the 400 block of E Jefferson and it arrived at the end of Bowley’s announcement and stayed less than a minute. Dudley Hughes said that from taking the call to delivering Tippit to Methodist Hospital took under 5 minutes. The autopsy request was timed as 1:15 pm. So how could Croy have gotten there by reacting to that call?
Added to that, the immediate neighbor to 410 E10th, Virginia Davis telephoned the police as soon as the shooting had occurred. She then went outside. The police were already there and the ambulance arrived after that. (WC Vol VI p454). She said:
Mr. BELIN. All right, after this, did police come out there?
Mrs. Davis. Yes; they were already there.
Mr. BELIN. By the time you got out there?
Mrs. DavIs. Yes, sir.
Mr. BELIN. Then what did you do?
Mrs. Davis. Well, we just stood out there and watched. You know, tried to see how it all happened. But we saw part of it.
Mr. BELIN. Then what did you do?
Mrs. Davis. We stood out there until after the ambulance had come and picked him up.
With that in mind, did Croy arrive even earlier? That is before the Bowley radio call had been put out? Or was another police officer either in the vicinity or else very close by when the murder happened? The latter is consistent with Doris Holan seeing police officers in a car at the rear of 410 E10th at the time Tippit was shot. (Joe McBride, Into the Nightmare, pp. 494-95)
Croy may have been present for the impromptu shooting of Tippit. At best he arrived when he said he did but was covering for another officer (or officers) who were there earlier.
Croy then said he discharged himself from that scene to go home. He said he then happened to be driving by one block from the Texas Theater when the police first entered. He said he saw action at the front and back but Oswald was not by then arrested. He gave a more detailed description of the action and its progress than would be expected of someone driving on a major thoroughfare (Zang) looking sideways at something happening a block away.
Croy was asked how he knew that Oswald had not been arrested by then. That tripped him up. He changed his story mid-flow to say he’d been at the Tippit murder scene and had then headed to the Texas Theater because of what he heard on the radio. He was asked why he left that scene (his third self-discharge of the day). He said he wasn’t needed. How would he know if he didn’t stop?
Croy said he then went to Austin’s Barbecue --two miles further south from the Texas Theater. He wanted to meet his wife for lunch. He added that she would be cross if he was late.
When asked how he had arranged lunch he introduced another story. He said his wife’s car passed him by in Dealey Plaza and that he asked her if she wanted lunch, conversing with her through a car window.
Ponder this: Mrs. Croy had been in Dealey Plaza minutes after the President had been shot. And this was followed by the murder of a Dallas policeman. Would not Croy being late for lunch be a bit trivial?
O say the least, Croy’s behaviour from at least 12:30 pm to after 2:00 pm is rather unusual.
WESTBROOK’S OFFICE AND CAR 207
Deputy Chief of Police Charles Batchelor testified on 23 March 1963 and produced Batchelor Exhibit CE 5002. [https://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh19/pdf/WH19_Batchelor_Ex_5002.pdf] That is a pamphlet of DPD personnel for November 1963. It states that the Personnel Bureau comprised at officer level, Captain W.R. Westbrook (In Charge), Sgt H.H. Stringer (Deputy), WM McGee, Detective, Joe Fields, Detective and Patrolman JL Carver.
Hill claimed to have been working in Westbrook’s Bureau on the day of the assassination. But he does not appear in CE 5002 as being attached to it for November 1963. He is shown as a patrol Sergeant for the Downtown subdistrict, 8:00 am to 4:00 pm day shift.
Also, there is Earlene Roberts’ observation of car 207 outside Oswald’s boarding house tooting at 1:04 pm. This was in her FBI statement of 29 November 1963. It caused the need for CE 2645, an inventory of officers and cars as an attempt to rule them out of being in the vicinity of 1026 N Beckley around 1:00 pm. CE 2645 is useful evidence as it can be used to identify other discrepancies with cars and officer movements.
Some Warren Commission apologists have sought to say Earlene Roberts was confused in her Warren Commission testimony as to the car number. Well, she wasn’t confused on 29 November 1963, nor was Westbrook’s statement 5 days later. Westbrook said on 4 December 1963 car 207 was Officer Valentine’s car and it had been parked at the Depository. His statement doesn’t actually confirm that it stayed at the Depository after Valentine had arrived in it.[https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth340243/]
Hill was driven from City Hall to the Depository by Officer Valentine (call sign 104) in car 207 with reporter Jim Ewell. They arrived in about 2 minutes by a circuitous route to avoid the traffic. The arrival was also photographed. (Source: Ewell and CE 2645).
Hill (using code 550/2) announced they were en route on the radio, immediately before the 12:48 pm time stamp. “550/2 and 104 en route to Elm and Houston, code 3.” That time fits with departure being triggered by the 12:44 pm APB with an alleged Oswald-like description in it, and its mention of the Depository. Assistant Warren Commission Counsel Wesley Liebeler said of that alert in internal correspondence about a draft of the Commission’s report on September 6, 1963:
Following that quote it says that Brennan's description "most probably" led to the radio alert sent out to police in which the assassin was described. Can't this be more definite? One of the questions that has been raised is the speed with which the assassin was described, the implication being that Oswald had been picked out as a patsy before the event. The Dallas police must know what led to the radio alert and the description. If they do we should be able to find out. If they do not know, the circumstances of their not knowing should be discussed briefly.
Sgt Gerald Hill said in his testimony:
At this time I went back to the personnel office and told the captain that Inspector Sawyer requested assistance at Elm and Houston Streets. The captain said, “Go ahead and go.”
“And he turned to another man in the office named Joe Fields and told him to get on down there. “I got on the elevator on the third floor and went to the basement and saw a uniformed officer named Jim M. Valentine doing, as he said, “Nothing in particular.” And I said, “I need you to take’ me down to Elm Street.” “The President has been shot.”
We started out of the basement to get in his car, and a boy named Jim E. Well [sic Ewell], with Dallas Morning News, had parked his car in the basement and was walking up and asked what was going on, and we told him the President was shot.”
Of all the cars in all the DPD force, Earlene Roberts had come up with that one.
HILL – “THE BIG EXPANSION MOVE”
Hill said in 1993 for the Sixth Floor Museum that his transfer to [https://www.jfk.org/collections-archive/gerald-jerry-l-hill-oral-history/] Westbrook’s department was because the presidential visit was a ‘big expansion move for the police department’. An odd turn of phrase.
When then asked what his role in the presidential visit was, he said “absolutely nothing”. Does this not seem like a contradiction?
Hill in that interview confirms he went with Officer Valentine to the Depository, but he puts his movements earlier than is apparent from the radio. By the radio, he is en route after 12:45 pm at 12:47 pm. Per Ewell, the ride took 2 minutes [https://kenrahn.com/JFK/History/The_deed/Sneed/Ewell.html]
Hence Hill arrived at the Depository by approximately 12:50 pm. Hill was photographed leaning out of the window of the Sixth Floor of the Depository. Thus that could have been as early as 12:50 pm. Hill claimed to have found the snipper’s nest and three shells on the Sixth Floor after 1:00 pm with two deputy Sheriffs. Were that true then he’s ruled out of being in car 207 after 1:00 pm. But it wasn’t true.
Deputy Sheriff Like Mooney testified as being the first person to see the shells on the Sixth Floor. (Vol 3 p 19) And he testified Captain Fritz was then the first person to handle them. Mooney places the time as “approaching 1 pm” and testified that he then “hollered down” to get the crime lab on the scene. He made no mention of Hill and said he stayed there “not over 15 or 20 minutes”. Nor did Captain Fritz – head of Homicide mention Hill. Mooney’s time and story are corroborated by the radio call by Sgt. Harkness at 12:56 calling for Barnes (508 – Crime Lab section). Barnes 30 seconds later is signaled as en route.
Hill’s story fits a pattern of his appropriating other people’s events and playing with timings. If Hill is lying, and it sure seems like he is, then he doesn’t have an alibi after 1:00 pm. But created a false one.
HOW DID HILL ARRIVE IN OAK CLIFF?
Hill’s time and method of arrival at the Tippit murder scene - he said to the Warren Commission it was with Sgt. Owens, DA Alexander, and reporter Ewell - is also a tangled web. And this is so through his various accounts. Which are rendered dubious by the evidence of Owens, Ewell, and Poe. In fact, no one said they went with Hill.
One problem for Hill is that the testimony of Owens is consistent with the patrol radio. But Hill’s is not. Owens’ testimony was that the trigger for his departure was Bowley’s first call (which was at 1:11 pm).
Mr. OWENS. No. I told Inspector Sawyer that I was assigned to Oak Cliff and an officer was involved in the shooting, and I was taking off, so I proceeded. I got in my car, and Captain Westbrook and Bill Alexander, an assistant District attorney, also was in the car with me and we started out to-I think the call came out at 400 East 10th or 400 East Jefferson. There was confusion there where the situation was. It was corrected and we went to the scene of the shooting.
By the radio the clarification of the precise address whilst Owens was on his way was at 1:13 pm. Owens arrived at 1:16 pm. He was the second car responder at the scene, announcing his arrival seconds after Officer Poe, who was carrying Officer Jez. Both Owens and Poe left the Depository, and the most direct route would be over Commerce Street Viaduct, down N Beckley Avenue. Poe’s Commission account was:
Mr. BALL. And what did you find when you got there?
Mr. POE. We found-.
Mr. BALL. What did you see?
Mr. POE. Found the squad car parked toward the curb, and a pool of blood at the left-front wheel of the car. The ambulance had already picked him up and the officer had already left the scene when we arrived. We had – I don’t know how many people there were. Looked like 150 to 200 people around there; and Mrs. Markham, I talked to her first” and we got a description of the man that shot Tippit.
Poe doesn’t mention Owens’ car already being there, which is consistent with the radio calls placing Poe (car 105) arriving a few seconds before Owens (both 1:20 pm by the tape time).
But Hill testified on the basis he’d arrived with Owens.
“Tippit had already been removed. The first man that came up to me, he said, "The man that shot him was a white male about 5'10", weighing 160 to 170 pounds, had on a jacket and a pair of dark trousers, and brown bushy hair." At this point, the first squad rolled up, and that would have been Squad 105 which had been dispatched from Downtown. An officer named Joe Poe, and I believe his partner was a boy named Jez. I told him to stay at the scene and guard the car and talk to as many witnesses as they could find to the incident, and that we were going to start checking the area.”
Hill cannot have been speaking to witnesses before Poe turned up, as Owens, at the earliest, arrived simultaneously with Poe’s arrival. That is in line with Owens never putting Hill in his car anyhow. And there were no other cars announcing arrival at the scene - within a 5-minute window - before or after the arrival of Poe and Owens. This leaves open the possibility that Hill was there already, but is trying to disguise his presence.
HILL INVESTIGATED FOR LYING ON NEWS RADIO
Making matters worse for Hill is that his unpublished Commission file has an FBI note reporting that he had given a false story at 6:45 pm on 22 November 1963 to KCRC-Radio Sacramento. For KCRC he said he went to the murder scene with the ‘acting lieutenant’ (Owens). Hence missing out on Ewell and Alexander. This is the transcript of what he told KCRC:
That call came out - the Acting Lieutenant in Oak Cliff and I were together standing there talking to the Inspector and he ordered us - being that we had all the police in town pulled down there on Elm Street - he ordered us to leave this investigation of the President's shooting and go to Oak Cliff. We did. When we got out there the officer had already been picked up. We got a description of the suspect and started following his path as best we could.
We had information that he was in one of two houses that were vacant over on East Jefferson. We went in over there and called for some more help to cover the buildings and everything. We shook those down and he wasn't there, and then we got a report that he was in the library at (inaudible) and Jefferson”.
That event can be timed as 1:29 pm (DPD time, 1:33 pm) as Owens said.
DISP Do you have any information for us, 19?
19 None. We're shaking down these old houses out down here in the 400 block of East Jefferson right now.
But if Hill arrived with Owens that day he’d have had a similar timeline of events to that of Owens. One thing Hill missed out on is the discovery of the discarded jacket sometime before 1:21 pm. Hill did not offer to KCRC at 6:45 pm on 22 November 1963 any explanation of what he did in the intervening 13 minutes.
That KCRC transcript came to the attention of the Commission via Chet Casselman of KSFO on 10 June 1964. And that file has an FBI note of 8 June 1964 where Hill had to admit that some of what he said on the radio was so-called hearsay and false. He had said:
“The man [Oswald], I understand has resorted to violence before and possibly shot another policeman somewhere”.
Given that Oswald was young and spent a good deal of his adult life outside of the USA and in the Marines, the idea that he had previously shot a policeman could not be credible. Shooting a policeman in the US in 1963 was a rare occurrence. Overall, Hill’s radio interview shows more concern about pinning Oswald for the shooting of Tippit than Kennedy.
HILL AND THE JACKET IN THE WRONG PLACE
Hill’s story of arriving, and the first action being the search of the houses for KCRC was not the starting point of what he claimed to have done in his testimony to the Warren Commission. But his testimony flounders. Per the radio transcript witnesses said the man on the run had immediately run down Patton, west along E Jefferson, and then cut through Ballew Texaco Service Station and run into the alley behind. There was then a search of houses in E Jefferson, then there were false alarms regarding the entry to a church and then the library.
The first radio call in that sequence was from Officers Griffin and Mackie at 1:20 pm. It said: “We believe we've got this suspect on shooting this officer out here. Got his white jacket. Believe he dumped it on this parking lot behind this service station at 400 block East Jefferson across from Dudley Hughes and he had a white jacket on. We believe this is it.”
But Hill said to the Commission (and note he is shown the radio transcript):
Mr. HILL. All right, I took the key to Poe's car. Another person came up, and we also referred him to Poe, that told us the man had run over into the funeral home parking lot. That would be Dudley Hughes' parking lot in the 400 block of East Jefferson-and taken off his jacket.
Mr. BELIN. You turned this man over to Poe, too?
Mr. HILL. Yes, sir.
Mr. BELIN. I notice in the radio log transcript, which is marked Sawyer Deposition Exhibit A, that at 1:26 p.m., between 1:26 p.m., and 1:32 p.m., there was a call from No. 19 to 531. 531 is your home number, I believe? Your radio home station?
Mr. HILL. Yes.
Mr. BELIN. That says, "One of the men here at the service station that saw him seems to think he is in this block, 400 block East Jefferson, behind his service station. Give me some more squads over here." "Several squads check out." Was that you?
Mr. HILL. That was Owens.
Mr. BELIN. Were you calling in at all?
Mr. HILL. No. That is Bud Owens.
Mr. BELIN. You had left Owens' car at this time?
Mr. HILL. I left Owens' car and had 105 car at this time.
Mr. BELIN. Where did you go?
Mr. HILL. At this time, about the time this broadcast came out, I went around and met Owens. I whipped around the block. I went down to the first intersection east of the block where all this incident occurred, and made a right turn, and traveled one block, and came back up on Jefferson.
Mr. BELIN. All right.
Mr. HILL. And met Owens in front of two large vacant houses on the north side of Jefferson that are used for the storage of secondhand furniture. By then Owens had information also that some citizen had seen the man running towards these houses. At this time Sergeant Owens was there; I was there; Bill Alexander was there; it was probably about this time that C. T. Walker, an accident investigator got there; and with Sergeant Owens and Walker and a couple more officers standing outside, Bill Alexander and I entered the front door of the house that would have been to the west—it was the farthest to the west of the two shook out the lower floor, made sure nobody was there, and made sure that all the entrances from either inside or outside of the building to the second floor were securely locked. Then we went back over to the house next door, which would have been the first one east of this one, and made sure it was securely locked, both upstairs and downstairs. There was no particular sign of entry on this building at all. At this point we came back out to the street, and I asked had Owens received any information from the hospital on Tippit. And he said they had just told him on channel 2 that he was dead. I got back in 105's car, went back around to the original scene, gave him his car keys back, and left his car there, and at this point he came up to me with a Winston cigarette package.”
“The next place I went was, I walked up the street about half a block to a church. That would have been on the northeast corner of 10th Street in the 400 block west of the shooting, and was preparing to go in when there were two women who came out and said they were employees inside and had been there all the time. I asked them had they seen anybody enter the church, because we were still looking for possible places for the suspect to hide. And they said nobody passed them, nobody entered the church, but they invited us to check the rest of the doors and windows and go inside if we wanted to. An accident investigator named Bob Apple was at the location at that time, and we were standing there together near his car when the call came out that the suspect had been seen entering the Texas Theatre.”
A giveaway that Hill is not reliable here is that the jacket was not discarded in the parking lot of Dudley Hughes, it was found in the parking lot of Ballew Texaco Service Station which was across Jefferson Boulevard (opposite) from Dudley Hughes.
What Hill appears to have done is misread the transcript that was given to him at the testimony session and was trying to attach his movements to that misunderstanding. Hence, he turned the 1:20 pm call regarding the jacket at the Ballew Texaco Service Station parking lot opposite Dudley Hughes to the jacket being at Dudley Hughes parking lot, something that did not happen.
Someone who’d been in on the real action wouldn’t make such a mistake by misreading a transcript. It would be held in their head. Hill made the same mistake later in his testimony when he was questioned about Oswald after his arrest:
Mr. BELIN. Any jacket?
Mr. HILL. No, sir; he didn't have a jacket on at this time.
Mr. BELIN. All right, go ahead.
Mr. HILL. I understand a light-colored jacket was found in the parking lot of the funeral home, as a man had previously stated, but I don't recall actually seeing this jacket.
HILL AND THE FALSE AMBULANCE STORY
There is a further problem with Hill’s testimony. This was Owens (19) at approximately 1:21 pm (1:26 DPD time), having arrived at the scene.
DISPATCH: 19, where did the officer go?
19: I saw some squads going towards Methodist real fast. I imagine that's where he is.
That stacks up and Owens was driving. But Hill (using 550/2) had said a minute earlier per the transcript.
DISPATCH: Have you been to the scene?
550/2: The officer was already gone when I got there. He was driving car number 10.
DISPATCH: Do you know what ambulance took him? We had three going.
550/2: No. Dudley Hughes passed in front of me going to Beckley. He looked like he might have had him.
The need for two calls is odd if Hill and Owens had been in the same car. Also odd is the phrase “passed in front of me” as if he was driving, and “the officer was already gone when I got there”, if Hill had been with Owens. It would be “we.”
The only cars arriving from Downtown able to have seen the Dudley Hughes ambulance would have been Poe’s or Owens. But Owens made no reference to an ambulance, merely squad cars heading in the direction of the hospital. That indicates that by the time Owens was on Beckley the ambulance had already reached the hospital. That is consistent with Tippit having arrived at the hospital at approximately 1:14 pm and being declared dead on arrival by 1:15 pm.
But there is yet another problem. Hill said the ambulance ‘passed in front’ but an ambulance traveling north on Beckley to Methodist wouldn’t pass in front. Paths would cross.
By the time of his Warren Commission testimony, Hill had corrected the “passed in front” to “passed us”. But he claims to have used 19 (Owens’ number) when the number Hill had used was 550/2. His testimony was:
“In the process of getting the location straight, and I think it was at this point I was probably using 19 call number, because I was riding with him, we got the information correctly that the shooting had actually been on East 10th, and we were en route there.
We crossed the Commerce Street viaduct and turned, made a right turn to go under the viaduct on North Beckley to go up to 10th Street. As we passed, just before we got to Colorado on Beckley, an ambulance with a police car behind it passed us en route to Methodist Hospital.”
Belin clearly gave Hill an easy ride. Hill’s testimony was at odds on that point with the radio transcript, and once again Hill was appropriating something Owens had done. Hill observing Poe as the first squad car to roll up does make sense if Hill had already arrived in car 207 and parked in the rear driveway of 410 E 10th, accessed by Lansing Alley having dropped the decoy off at a point to the east of the murder scene. That is also consistent with what Virginia Davis said about seeing policemen immediately after she’d called the police, after Tippit was shot, before the ambulance arrived.
Remember, Croy and Hill lied about what they did before and after Tippit was shot. Croy in particular lied about being “hemmed in on both sides” on Main Street, whilst what he described in terms of lane configuration was Elm Street, and Griffin is near where the Marsalis bus was on Elm when “Oswald” (I posit the decoy) got off.
Hill lied on KCRC to make Oswald look like a serial cop killer. Hill’s biggest problem though was admitting he saw Poe’s car “roll-up”. That would not have happened if he’d arrived with Owens.
On the evidence outlined, Hill had arrived at the Tippit murder scene in car 207 shortly before Tippit was shot and rendezvoused with Westbrook who arrived with Owen, then Westbrook could have told Hill what he saw on his journey in Owens’ car. But Hill only got half the story and hence put an incorrect statement on the radio at 1:20 pm concerning the ambulance. Hill’s aim in doing that was likely to create an alibi to account for how he had got to the scene.
To test that assumption further, Westbrook is relevant, as is what Hill did next.
WESTBROOK THE FORGETTER
Westbrook said in his Commission testimony of 6 April 1963:
“Mr. WESTBROOK. I was in my office and Mrs. Kinney, one of the Dispatchers, came into the office and told us, and of course-it’s the same as everybody says- we didn’t believe it until a second look at her and I realized it was so, and so, there’s a little confusion right here because everybody became rather excited right quick, but somebody, and I don’t know who it was, came into my office and said they needed some more men at this Texas Depository Building. You know, I didn’t review my report before I came over here I didn’t have a chance. I just came off of vacation and they hit me with this this morning as soon as I got to the office. I can’t recall whether or not it was the Dispatcher’s office, but I think it was-somebody in the Dispatcher’s office had told us they needed some more men at the Texas Depository Building; so I sent the men that were in my office, which were then Sergeants Stringer and Carver, and possibly Joe Fields and McGee, if they were in there; it seems like McGee was, and I think- I sent them to the building, and then I walked on down the hall spreading the word and telling the other people that they needed some men down there, and practically everybody left immediately. I sat around a while-really not knowing what to do because of the-almost all of the commanding officers and supervisors were out of the city hall and I finally couldn’t stand it any longer, so I started to the Texas Depository Building, and believe it or not, I walked. There wasn’t a car available, and so I walked from the city hall to the Depository Building, and I would stop on the way down where there would be a group of people listening to somebody’s transistor radio and I would stop and catch a few false reports, you might say, at that time, until I reached the building. Do you want me to continue on?”
So, by that, Hill who was assigned to Westbrook, left his office at approximately 12:45 pm with Valentine then driving him.
Westbrook continued:
Mr. Westbrook. After we reached the building, or after I reached the building, I contacted my sergeant Sgt. R. D. Stringer [sic, it is HH Stringer per the Batchelor Exhibit, R D Stringer was a different officer and not a sergeant], and he was standing in front and so then I went into the building to help start the search and I was on the first floor and I had walked down an aisle and opened a door onto an outside loading dock, and when I came out on this dock, one of the men hollered and said there had been an officer killed in Oak Cliff.
Well, then, of course, I ran to my radio because I am the personnel officer, and that then became, of course, my greatest interest right at that time, and so, Sergeant Stringer and I and some patrolman—I don't recall his name-then drove to the immediate vicinity of where Officer Tippit had been shot and killed.
Of course, the body was already gone, the squad car was still there, and on one occasion as we were approaching this squad car, a call came over the radio that a suspicious person had been sighted running into the public library at Marsalis and Jefferson, so we immediately went to that location and it was a false-it was just one of the actually—-it was one of the employees of the library who had heard the news somewhere on the radio and he was running to tell the other group about Kennedy.
So, we returned to the scene and here I met Bob Barrett, the FBI agent, and Sergeant Stringer and Barrett and I were together, and then an eyewitness to the shooting of the officer from across the street, a lady, came to the car, and she was telling us how this happened.
Mr. BALL. Where was your car parked at that time?
Mr. Westbrook. It wasn't my car—we didn't have one. I don't know where this officer went after he let us out at the scene.
Mr. BALL. An officer drove you down to the scene?
Mr. Westbrook. An officer drove us to the scene.
Mr. BALL. Where were you when this lady came up who was an eyewitness?
Mr. Westbrook. We were at the squad car-Tippit's squad car-it had never been moved.
Mr. BALL. You were near 10th and Patton?
Mr. Westbrook. And she was telling us what had occurred.
Mr. BALL. Do you remember her name?
Mr. Westbrook. No; the other officers got it.
Westbrook trips himself up more than once. He said he “ran to his radio”, but he’d previously said he didn’t have a car as he’d walked. He refers to stopping on the way for the ““false reports as you might say””. How would he know they were false?
How could he “start the search” at the Depository? Searching was already underway before 1:00 pm and after a 20-minute plus walk, he couldn’t have started it. (As covered later, the three shells were found before 12:56 pm). His “believe it or not” is defensive.
Westbrook slipped out “we reached” and then corrected it to “I reached”. Also, if Stringer was already “out the front” then the “I contacted” him makes no sense. Another issue is that with so many officers sharing vehicles to get to the Depository the line that there were no cars available is not credible.
Researcher and Warren Commission advocate Dale Myers says that:
“Sgt. Henry H. Stringer told me in 1983 that Captain Westbrook rode with him from city hall to the depository along with two other officers – Frank M. Rose, Burglary and Theft Bureau (driving) and Joe Fields, a detective in the Personnel Bureau. They split up upon arrival and helped searched [sic] the TSBD (films support Stringer’s recollection), then got back together just before the call came over the radio about the Tippit shooting.
Of course, Stringer’s twenty-year-old recollection isn’t as strong as Westbrook’s sworn 1964 testimony, but who knows? More important, in the big scheme of things, what does it matter?” [http://jfkfiles.blogspot.com/2020/11/westbrook-croy-and-tippit-murder.html?m=1]
Myers downplays discrepancies that actually matter a lot. If Stringer was correct then he confirms that Westbrook’s forgetfulness extended beyond forgetting who he’d travelled with, to forgetting whether he walked for 20 minutes or not. And getting all that wrong under oath, plus forgetting people’s names, all this despite being head of personnel. In the “big scheme of things” the fact is that testimonies of certain senior police officers were unreliable.
There is also a non-sequitur in the Myers extract. The first paragraph (without references in support) claims that there was photographic evidence to back Stringer’s recollection. But by the paragraph immediately afterward things were shrugged off to a ‘but who knows’ about Stringer’s recollection.
Myers’ approach to vindicating the Warren Commission has the recurring naïve assumption that all police officers were clean and all their testimony was correct. The above demonstrates that this cannot be assumed. Either Stringer, Westbrook, or both were unreliable. In putting out information to support the Warren Commission theory, Myers actually throws up anomalies that serve to undermine it.
THE DPD AND THE STOPPED BUS
Dallas’ overturned prosecutions conducted under the now notorious District Attorney Henry Wade sit with a crime clear-up rate that is consistent with the routine practice of rigging of evidence against defendants. Wade, DA in 1963, had had a prosecution conviction rate of 100% until he lost Roe v Wade (1970). Wade had withheld evidence in cases where convictions were later overturned. (James DiEugenio, The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today, pp. 196-98)
Had Westbrook with his “sat around a while” and “couldn’t stand it any longer” left as early as 12:50 pm - on foot stopping to hear “false reports”-- then he would have arrived after at least 1:10 pm. Adding on “contacting Stringer” with some dwell time at the Depository, his timeline makes it difficult for him to have arrived by the time of Bowley’s call at 1:11 pm and immediately get into the car with the very fast responder Owens.
Assuming there is also some truth in what Stringer said, then Westbrook didn’t walk but arrived by car at the Depository earlier than his walking story implies, and sought to disguise that, and then departed with Owens.
Any credible independent police investigation with maps, blackboards/whiteboards, would have seen through the problems with the movements of certain police officers immediately, merely on the basis of the above. So should the Commission.
Owens actually gave a very strong alibi for Westbrook’s presence when Tippit was shot – which also rules out Westbrook being in car 207 just before Tippit was shot. But Westbrook did not take it up. That begs the question what was Westbrook doing before and after Tippit was shot that made him prevaricate? If all he was doing was covering for Hill, then his own misrepresentations wouldn’t need to be so elaborate before Tippit was shot.
Westbrook was working in civilian clothes that day. He had also just returned to work, saying he had been on vacation.
Mr. BALL. Do you wear a uniform?
Mr. WESTBROOK. Well, it is optional. I don’t wear one.
Mr. BALL. On November 22, 1963, were you assigned any special duty?
Mr. WESTBROOK. No, sir; other than just my own routine duties.
Mr. BALL. What were those duties that day?
Mr. WESTBROOK. 8 15 to 5 15.
Mr. BALL. And were you in uniform on that day?
Mr. WESTBROOK. No, sir.
It is peculiar for Ball to have brought up the uniform. But he asked that question after Cecil McWatters testified on 26 March 1964 and 6 days after Milton Jones’ FBI statement. Westbrook’s plain clothes could account for McWatters saying a man stopped the bus, whilst Milton Jones said it was a policeman. Did Ball suspect it might be Westbrook? Croy had given his remarkable testimony prior on 26 March 1963, ten days before Westbrook appeared.
McWatters had told the story of the man stopping the bus which appeared in the Dallas Morning News on 28 November 1963. He said that the man was in work clothes and about 55. Westbrook was an old-looking 46.
It is therefore posited that Hill and Westbrook likely knew who the intended suspect should be; and that the 12:44 pm APB was itself false evidence from within City Hall and the trigger for what was to follow next. Which was evidence planting at the Depository to frame not only Oswald, but set up the Depository as the origin of all the shots at the motorcade.
Tippit’s covert position at Gloco immediately after 12:30 pm and Angell, Parker, Lewis, and Nelson in covert positions on other viaduct exits indicate something was planned of the nature of assistance for getaways. To assist in a getaway at a low level merely needs to turn a blind eye.
If Tippit turned at or before 12:45 pm, and drove to the area of Lansing and 8th, for a rendezvous with his controllers less than two minutes from Gloco, then it would be imperative to get the decoy off the bus and get him to 1026 N Beckley by whatever means as quickly as possible. That being needed to keep alive the false narrative that Oswald had reached 1026 N Beckley of his own accord.
There has to be a reason why that particular Marsalis bus was singled out, boarded, and held up for over 40 minutes.