The Death of Tippit - Part 2 - The Timeline and Tapes
By John Washburn
Both Hill and Westbrook’s testimonies confuse the sequences and timelines of particular events. The discovery of the jacket behind Ballew is a particularly relevant marker, as are the various false alarms. Hill even put the jacket discovery in the wrong place.
To help unpick the confusion, listed below are events from the 12:44 All Points Bulletin (APB) to the time officers announced they were outside the Texas Theater.
Times are taken from the DPD tapes, adjusted to real-time between 12:54 and 1:16 pm (where time was tampered slowly) and again after 1:16 where time was tampered fast.
12:44 APB with description of suspect
12:48 Hill “enroute” to TSBD, in car 207 arrives by 12:50 pm
12:53 Tippit says he’s at “Lansing 8th”
12:56 260 (Harkness) “Get us 508 (Barnes - Crime Lab) down to Texas School Book Depository”. Shells have been found.
12:56 508 (Barnes) is en route to deal with the shells found and ‘crime scene’.
1:00 Unanswered call to Tippit
1:04 “91 clear” Mentzel. (Per CE2645 at Luby’s) time 3 minutes difference)
1:04 “78” Tippit. Appears twice on CD 280 transcript but disappears in subsequent transcripts. (1:07 DPD time 3 minutes difference)
1:07 Mentzel is asked to do traffic call. Does not go to accident as offloads to Nolan. Is at Beckley and 10th per CE 2645, a Mobil gas station (1:11 DPD time 4 minutes difference)
1:09 Tippit was shot, driving eastwards from direction of Beckley and 10th, the Mobil gas station.
1:10 Bowley at the shooting scene arrived having left RL Thornton School Singing Hills at 12:55 pm with daughter (a 13–15-minute drive mainly on freeway). Waits for safety until making radio call (Warren Commission testimony)
1:10 Fugitive ran onto Jefferson (Lewis, Patterson, Russell, and Reynolds FBI interviews and Warren Commission testimony of Reynolds.)
1:11 Lewis called DPD. Russell arrived at murder scene. Said Police car arrived in 5 minutes
1:11/1:12 Bowley call. (1:18/1:19 DPD time 7-8 minutes difference)
1:14 “Suspect running west on Jefferson”. (Lewis has phoned and Dispatch put the call out) (19:30 DPD time 5:30 minutes difference)
1:14 “19 is en route” (DPD time 1:19-1:20)
1:15 “19 will be en route shortly”
1:16 “85 (RW Walker): “We have a description on this suspect over here on Jefferson, last seen about 300 block of East Jefferson. He’s a white male, about 30, 5’8”; black wavy hair, slender, wearing a white jacket, white shirt, and dark slacks”. (DPD 1:22).
1:16 Poe and then Owens arrive at 410 E10th. “105, we’ve arrived”. “19 is code 6”. (1: 22. DPD 6 minutes difference*). Westbrook and Alexander were with Owens.
1:20 279 says “got jacket in parking lot of garage across from Dudley Hughes.”. (DPD 1:25 5 minutes difference*). Westbrook had found the jacket under a car.
1:20 Hill says on patrol radio he’d already been at the scene and saw the ambulance pass in front when Hill was on his way.
1:21 Hill says at 12th Beckley with ‘a witness’. (DPD 1:26-1:27 5 minutes difference*)
1:21 Owens is at Ballew “One of the men here at the service station that saw him seems to think he's in this block, the 400 block of East Jefferson behind this service station. Would you give me some more squads over here?”
DPD (DPD 1:26 5 minutes difference*) told Warren Commission a jacket had been thrown down. Russell for second FBI interview said he went back to that scene with a policeman.
1:28 111 (Officer Pollard said suspect was seen running west in the alley between Jefferson and 10th) (DPD 1:32 4 minutes difference*)
1:29 Owens. “We’re shaking down these old houses here in 400 Block E Jefferson.” (DPD 1:33 4 minutes difference*). Per WC testimony Owens stayed outside covering. Per WFAA-TV Dallas footage (Reiland the reporter - see later), Hill instigated that search, and then the search moved to the Marsalis Library) *
1:29 Channel 2 221 (Patrolmen R. HAWKINS and E. R. BAGGETT) Can you give Captain WESTBROOK any information as to where he was shot?
1:29 McDonald “Send squad over here to Tenth and Crawford to check out this church basement” *.” (DPD 1:33 1:27 4 minutes difference*)
1:30 CT Walker. “223, he's in the library at Jefferson -- east 500 block Marsalis and Jefferson” * (DPD 1:34 4 minutes difference). That is the time Hutson, Hawkins, and Baggett (see later) were at the Mobil gas station, 10th and Beckley.
1:31 Owens. “We’re all at the library” (DPD 1:34 3 minutes difference)
1:35 Westbrook (550) made a call “What officer have you got commanding this area over here where this officer was shot?” Then Owens and others return to 410 E 10th. There is then more WFAA-TV (Reiland) footage which showed Westbrook, Poe, Owens, and Croy examining a wallet at the scene.
1:40 Westbrook put out a call “and work to North Jefferson. We've got a witness that seen him go north. *
1:41 Hill 550/2: The shells at the scene indicate that the suspect is armed with an automatic .38, rather than a pistol.
1:42 Hill (550/2) put out a call on Channel 2. “A witness reports that he was last seen in the Abundant Life Temple about the 400 block. We are fixing to go in and shake it down”*
1:42 Owens (19) asks where 80 (Davis is).
1:44 Hill (550/2) put out a call on Channel 2. “No that’s not the right one.” The Abundant Life Temple was a false alarm.
1:44 Stringer (551 put out a call on Channel 2. “The jacket the suspect was wearing over here on Jefferson bears a laundry tag with the letter B 9738. See if there is any way you can check this laundry tag.” Per Ewell that was at the curb of Crawford Street.
1:45 Radio call that suspect seen entering Texas Theater.
1:47 Hawkins (call sign 211) put out a call “there's about five squads back here [rear of the Texas Theater] with me now”.
The asterisked events at 1:29,1:30,1:40 and 1:42 were all false alarms (covered later).
II
As set out in my Tippit Tapes article [https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/the-tippit-tapes-a-re-examination] time was tampered with before the shooting of Tippit with the effect of placing Bowley’s call at 1:11 pm as 1:18-1:19 pm. After 12:55 pm most time stamps are missing, and a few erroneous time stamps appear. Time was slowed down. The reason for that is that anyone leaving 1026 N Beckley at 1:04 pm on foot couldn’t have arrived to kill Tippit at 1:09 pm.
Researcher Dale Myers says he timed the tape and a stopwatch and put Bowley’s call as at 1:17 pm 41 seconds. However, it’s difficult to reconcile that exercise with the Minnesota Library version of the patrol radio tapes on YouTube. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1-CXd9qdIQ&t=1551s]
That tape starts at 12:15 pm and runs for 1 hour 1 minute with a minute of a stuck repeat just before Bowley’s call which was 3 ½ minutes before the end of the tape. Hence by simple arithmetic, with only an hour of calls, there could be no events on the tape that occurred after 1:15 pm. Bowley’s is 56 ½ minutes from the start, making it 1:11 pm.
The tape has a 7-minute discrepancy by 1:11 pm which gradually accumulates after 12:54 pm when time stamps begin to disappear systematically. A real interval of 17 minutes was stretched to 24 minutes.
With time having been sped up, the opposite effect can be observed after Bowley’s call. The consequences of that are apparent in at least two places. By the speeded-up tampered time, Owens appears to have arrived only 3 minutes after the start of Bowley’s call. But in real time it took 4-5 minutes. Owens appears, by DPD time, to have arrived at the library false alarm only one minute after he was “shaking down the houses” in 400 E Jefferson, and simultaneously to CT Walker calling the false alarm. But in real time the interval is 2 minutes.
That can be explained as the tamperers needing to resynchronize with real-time at approximately 1:45 pm because of third-party verifiability of the time of events at the Texas Theater. Time speeds up, thus a real interval of 34 minutes is condensed to 27 minutes.
The 3 December 1963 statement of Hutson correctly put the time of the 1:45 pm call saying a suspect had entered the Texas Theater as 1:45 pm. This is where real-time and DPD time resynchronized in the first transcript, Secret Service Copy CD-290.
But on December 5, 1963, Hill said that the radio message that a suspect was in the theater was 1:55 pm. McDonald said on December 2, 1963, that 2:00 pm was the time of entering the Texas Theater. C.T. Walker said on 2 December 1963 the 1:45 pm radio call was 2:00 pm.
The date of those officers asserting these false timings is relevant. The first transcript appeared as Secret Service Copy CD-290 dated December 3, 1963. That version did have a 1:45 pm time stamp as the relevant time. But time stamps for 1:18, 1:40, and 1:45 present in CD 290 disappear in the 6 March and 11 August transcripts and from the tape. The 1:45 call sits midway between the 1:44 and 1:46 time stamps in these later versions.
By that evidence, the tampering strategy was still fluid in the first week of December 1963. Therefore some officers, who presumably knew they had to add 10 minutes to time to give a false account for Tippit’s time of death, carried on adding 10 minutes to the time of events at the Texas Theater not knowing that time would end up not tampered!
Only Hutson didn’t lie on time and as set out later Hutson was only in on Oswald’s arrest by chance. Was Hutson a reason why Oswald left the Texas Theater alive?
OWENS’ VS EWELL’S ACCOUNT VS WESTBROOK’S
Back to the discrepancies in how people arrived at the Tippit murder scene.
Ewell said:- “I left the location at the School Book Depository and jumped into a car driven by Captain Westbrook with Sergeant Stringer. I rode in the back seat as we sped across into Oak Cliff by taking the Houston Street Viaduct right beside the Dallas News.
When we arrived in Oak Cliff, I got a chance to go into a convenience store, McCandles’ Minute Market it was called in those days, just down from the Marsailles [sic] Public Library, and I did get to make a phone call to the city desk asking them to send me a photographer. They didn’t know what I was doing in Oak Cliff. This particular editor was too overpowered by what was going on downtown to pay any attention to what I was trying to tell him, and I know I came out saying, “You know I’ve got to have a photographer out here!”
As I stepped out of this convenience store, next door to it was a two-story boarding house, and there I saw Bill Alexander with an automatic pistol stalking across the balcony very carefully. Alexander always impressed me because, being an assistant district attorney, he was one of those guys from the prosecutor’s office that you saw with the cops. He was a squad car prosecutor. You very seldom saw the district attorney outside of his office.
From there we proceeded to a side street down from where they said J.D. Tippit had been shot not far from East Jefferson. There was another police car there as they were examining a jacket next to the curb which had apparently been located by one of the policemen after Oswald had thrown it down as he ran toward Jefferson. I had a jacket just like it. I remember it as being a light tan windbreaker. I was with Westbrook as we all went over to examine the jacket because it was the only tangible thing we had at the moment that belonged to the killer. In fact, I held the jacket in my hands. I remember that they were talking about a water mark on it that was obviously made by a dry cleaning shop.
They were discussing it when the report came in that the person they thought might be the police officer’s assailant had gone into the Texas Theatre. Now we were on East Jefferson, so I’m thinking that we were about five blocks from that location. Immediately, Captain Westbrook and Sergeant Stringer ran back to their car, which was across the street, and I ran to jump in the backseat. By that time, they were already turning out and accelerating. When I got in the backseat with the door still hanging open, I came out of the car hanging onto the door. They slowed down long enough for me to get back in, as I could have been flung out against the gravel into a curb if I hadn’t held on.
Anyway, when we arrived at the Texas Theatre, we parked right in front and everybody jumped out and went into the lobby. There were other police cars getting there, too. I was very familiar with the Texas Theatre, having lived close by back when we were a younger married couple. At that time, they had some kind of stairway up to the balcony, and I remember somebody kept shouting, “Turn on the house lights! Will somebody please turn on the house lights?”
At 1:44 pm there was this call on Channel 2, which corroborates what Ewell said, which is particularly relevant to time.
551 (Sergeant H.H. Stringer) “The jacket the suspect was wearing over here on Jefferson bears a laundry tag with the letter B 9738. See if there is any way you can check this laundry tag.”
The place Ewell describes his arrival, “McCandles Minute Market”, and where he made a phone call can be deduced. It was adjacent to the building Alexander was investigating, a “furniture store”. 409 E Jefferson was described in the 1961 Dallas Directory as “One Stop Drive in Grocery” (later to become Dean’s Dairy Way). Next to that, westwards, was 401 E Jefferson, the Texaco garage. Next to it eastwards 413 ½ an apartment building, and then 417 S&J Used Furniture Exchange.
Ewell’s account is consistent with patrol radio and also WFAA-TV reporter Ron Reiland. Reiland in the TV film described Sgt. Hill as instigating the search of what Reiland called “antique shops”. Reiland says:-.
“Another man, Officer Hill, and several others ran into the front of the building with drawn pistols. I ran around the back of the building with my camera in hopes that if they flushed this man that we were looking for, he would come out the back door right into the face of the camera.”
This is from the WFAA-TV broadcast, “A Year Ago Today”, November 22, 1964, at 36.20 minutes. [https://youtu.be/DBOvB5RKDOo?si=TYNIGZLvlzZb0DJa]
Ewell describes the examination of the jacket on the curb, which would be Crawford Street. Ewell was not describing the discovery of the jacket as that occurred in the parking lot near the alley before 1:21 pm.
Ewell’s description of events around the time of his arrival - which he said was with Westbrook driving - places it no earlier than the events around 1:30 pm (real-time). Whereas Owens said he arrived in Oak Cliff with Westbrook and that time was 1:16 pm.
Owens and Ewell could both have been telling the truth if Westbrook had done the journey twice in quick succession. The first journey was exactly as Owens said, and arriving at 1:16 pm in Owens’ car. The second journey was exactly as Jim Ewell said, and for that second journey, Westbrook had acquired the unmarked car that Ewell said Westbrook later drove to the front of the Texas Theatre.
A need, and the means, for Westbrook to go back to the Depository would be car 207. The car would have to be removed from Oak Cliff, or else it would stick out like a sore thumb. I therefore posit that Westbrook very shortly after arriving with Owens rendezvoused with car 207 (Hill) somewhere near the alley west of Crawford and took car 207 back to the Depository.
If Westbrook revealed how he’d arrived twice it would destroy the alibi for car 207. That explains why in his evidence he would conflate the two journeys into one. Thus turning Owens into an unknown officer, leaving out Ewell and Alexander, but adding Stringer.
By doing that, Westbrook would also have to lie about his method of arriving at the Texas Theater. He couldn’t admit – which was Ewell’s account – that he’d driven the unmarked car parked at the front. That would undermine everything, including his dubious story of walking from City Hall.
WESTBROOK – THE ALLEY AND THE JACKET
In the extract of his testimony above Westbrook omitted his activities during the 14 minutes after he had arrived with Owens (1:16 pm). Westbrook first tried to mention only the library debacle (1:30 pm). Counsel Ball was aware of that omission, so he asked a question he knew the answer to.
Mr. BALL. So, what did you do after that?
Mr. WESTBROOK. I went back to the city hall and resumed my desk.
Mr. BALL. Did you ever find some clothing?
Mr. WESTBROOK. That was before, Mr. Ball.
Mr. BALL. When was that?
Mr. WESTBROOK. Actually, I didn’t find it-it was pointed out to me by either some officer that-that was while we were going over the scene in the close area where the shooting was concerned. Someone pointed out a jacket to me that was laying under a car and I got the jacket and told the other to take the license number.
Mr. BALL. When did this happen? You gave me a sort of a resume of what you had done. But you omitted this incident.
Mr. WESTBROOK. I tell you what-this occurred shortly-let me think just a minute. We had been to the library and there is a little bit more conversation on the radio-I got on the radio and I asked the dispatcher about along this time, and I think this was after the library situation, if there had been a command post set up and who was in charge at the scene, and he, told me Sergeant Owens, and about that time we saw Sergeant Owens pass.
Mr. BALL. What do you mean by “command post”?
Westbrook was struggling. Why? Because the call announcing that the jacket of the fugitive was found in the parking lot of Ballew Texaco Service Station, 401 E Jefferson, was ten minutes earlier than the library incident - at approximately 1:20 pm. (Call sign 279 being Officer Mackie or Griffin.)
279 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.
DIS: 10-4. You do not have the suspect. Is that correct?
279: No, just the jacket, laying on the ground.
DIS: 10-4.
Having been caught out Westbrook then said:
Mr. BALL. Was that before you went to the scene of the Tippit shooting?
Mr. WESTBROOK. Yes, sir; that was before we went to that scene.
Mr. BALL. That was after you left the library?
Mr. WESTBROOK. After we left the library. I got out of the car and walked through the parking lot.
Mr. BALL. What parking lot?
Mr. WESTBROOK. I don’t know-it may have been a used-car lot.
Mr. BALL. On what street?
Mr. WESTBROOK. It was actually on Jefferson, but the place where this jacket was found would have been back closer to the alley, Mr. Ball.
Mr. BALL. The alley of what?
Mr. WESTBROOK. Between Jefferson and whatever the next street is over there.
Mr. BALL. Tenth Street is the street north.
Mr. WESTBROOK. What street?
Mr. BALL. You see, the street directly north of Jefferson is 10th Street.
Mr. WESTBROOK. It would be between Jefferson and 10th Street?
Mr. BALL. And where with reference to Patton?
Mr. WESTBROOK. Well, it would be toward town,
Westbrook was obfuscating and changing the subject and there is a sense of exasperation in the tone of Ball. Westbrook couldn’t have gone to the parking lot to find the jacket after the library incident, as the jacket had been found before. What occurred after the library incident was it being discussed on Crawford Street.
But making matters worse for him he: did find the jacket. An FBI report of 3 December 1963 states:
“Captain Doughty stated that this jacket was found by Captain Westbrook of the Dallas Police Department in an open parking lot west of Patton Street between 10th and Jefferson Streets, Dallas, Texas.”
The police record of the jacket was filed by Westbrook at 3 pm on the 22nd. Note it has Westbrook’s name at the top. [https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth339366/m1/1/]
But the same document submitted to the Warren Commission has Westbrook’s name obscured by a tilted strip attached over his name, in a way no other documents are. (Vol XXIV CE2003, p117.) [https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh24/pdf/WH24_CE_2003.pdf]
If one looks carefully, only the words at the top “SUBMITTED TOO”, survived for the Warren Commission. The words “DPD Personnel Office” have not survived, despite being darker ink strikes in the original DPD version of the document. Those words cannot have been obscured accidentally, merely by a strip placed over those words at that angle. Nor by a parallel strip, as the words “OFFICER” and “OF” would also have survived.
The words on the strip that say it was released from “our” - DPD - Crime Lab on 28 November 1963 are superfluous. Both versions lower down state that the evidence was released to Vince Drain of the FBI on 28 November 1963.
III
For the HSCA in 1978, Westbrook admitted to finding the jacket. He said: “[he] was behind this location [Ballew] with Stringer when they found the jacket under the parked car across the alley from the rear of the church. Doesn’t recall disposition of the jacket.”
So, by this, Westbrook found the jacket in the parking lot. Before the radio call at 1:20 pm, announcing it had been found. If Westbrook for the HSCA was correct, then how did Stringer arrive? Was he the other person in car 207 with Hill that tooted outside 1026 N Beckley?
When Westbrook was interviewed by author Larry Sneed in 1988 he’d again forgotten Stringer’s name. But he placed himself finding the jacket having been in the alley.
“…I started walking up the alley, and I can’t even remember who the officers were at the time, one officer, whether he was with me or whether he was coming the other way, I can’t recall; but he said, ‘Look! There’s a jacket under the car.’ I think it was an old Pontiac sitting there if I remember right. So, I walked over and reached under and picked up the jacket, and this eventually turned out to be Oswald’s jacket.”
To summarise. Westbrook, who had arrived at the scene with Owens, has a hole in his story, concerning his whereabouts from 12:45 pm to 1:11 pm and then again after 1:16 pm to at least 1:30 pm. He tried to not mention the jacket to Ball and is defensive when it is brought up. He oscillates between the finding of the jacket just before 1:21 pm, with the discussion of the jacket at 1:44 pm. That is consistent with his conflating his two arrivals.
All references on patrol radio Channel 1 describing the fugitive who ran down Patton and then E Jefferson including the finding of the jacket at 1:21 pm say it was white and that the fugitive had a white shirt. There was no mention of tan, gray, or any other color. But the jacket Westbrook submitted as evidence with the cleaning tag was gray. Jacket-less Oswald himself was wearing a brown shirt when arrested.
If Westbrook falsified the jacket submission in his submission of 3:00 pm on November 22, 1963, it would follow he may have falsified other evidence submitted at the same time. The question, therefore, arises whether Westbrook did find a jacket before 1:20 pm because he’d rendezvoused with car 207 and essentially planted it to then announce finding it. A corollary then arises: whether by the time he’d left Oak Cliff and then come back, he had a reason to switch the jacket. (A reason for there being two jackets is offered later.)
A map is useful to place the alley into perspective, as it’s the same alley where Doris Holan saw a police car shortly before Tippit was shot.
Reference the FBI photograph below. (Note: because the photograph was taken from the north looking south, normal east-west and north-south directions are reversed.)
That alley (shown in the diagram below as a yellow line, my addition) is the same alley that runs behind 410 E 10th, then crosses Patton, to run behind Ballew Texaco. The red dot in the diagram below (again my addition) is the apartment block from where Doris Holan saw a police car with two policemen in it around the time Tippit was killed. The dotted element of the yellow line represents the 50 yards from the rear of 410 E 10th to where the jacket was found.
The FBI produced the photograph and captions. The fugitive was last seen by people at Ballew Texaco running into the alley. The FBI drew the route for the fugitive (black dotted line) avoiding the alley and then running along Jefferson. But the jacket was found in the rear parking lot of Ballew Texaco Service Station, near the alley.
Officer Griffin said on the radio “They say he’s running west in the alley between Jefferson and Tenth”.
There is also a false assumption regarding the FBI’s black dotted line for Tippit’s route. Given that he left Top Ten Records via Bishop and Sunset, the route to arrive would be along E 10th from Beckley, not coming down from Crawford Street.
Given that per the Commission transcripts, Tippit’s last location was “Lancaster and 8th” at 12:54 pm and the (falsified) time of his shooting at 1:16 pm, there could be no basis to know what he was doing in the intervening 22 minutes to deduce a route to E10th via Crawford.
WESTBROOK AND THE WALLET
Westbrook omitted another incident from his testimony. At approximately 1:35 pm, WFAA-TV Dallas filmed police officers looking at a wallet Owens was holding. The news coverage referred to it as Oswald’s wallet.
FBI agent Bob Barrett asked him, 'Do you know who Lee Harvey Oswald is?' And, 'Do you know who Alek Hidell is?'
Barrett confirmed that in this video interview of 22 February 2011. [https://emuseum.jfk.org/objects/33007] At 34 minutes in, Barrett describes driving to the Tippit murder scene in his own car and seeing Westbrook with the wallet in his hand.
FBI Agent Hosty said: “Westbrook called Barrett over and showed him the wallet and [the] identifications...Westbrook took the wallet into his custody [and] Barrett told me [Hosty] that if I had been at the scene with Westbrook, I would have immediately known who Oswald was.”
There is no reference to any wallet on the radio tapes, the Warren Commission Report, papers, or police records. It does not feature in the evidence in CE 2003 that was filed by Westbrook at 3:00 pm on 22 November 1963.
The account that Westbrook found the wallet is consistent with the radio call from Westbrook at 1:35 pm asking where Owens is, Owens then returning to the murder scene from the library to deal with it, and then Westbrook - inconveniently - being filmed.
Westbrook discovering the wallet that no other bystander or officer had found in the previous 26 minutes after Tippit was shot is suggestive of more evidence planting. And in this case then losing it before 3:00 pm, as it does not appear in the report that recorded the finding of the jacket filed at 3:00 pm. The official account was that the link with Oswald and 1026 N Beckley as an address was not made until after 3:00 pm when police and sheriffs arrived at the Paine residence in Irving.
But Earlene Roberts said the police arrived looking for Oswald at 1026 N Beckley shortly after 1:30 pm. She had been joined by Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, who timed their arrival 10 minutes after hearing Kennedy was dead from the radio as they were sitting in their car. CBS Radio put its announcement out at 1:23 pm, faster than Walter Cronkite on US network TV at 1:38 pm.
Not only did the Johnsons put the police there just after 1:30 pm, but Mr Johnson said it was for the murder of Tippit.
Mr. BELIN, All right. In any case, this man, O. H. Lee, came to rent a room from you or from your wife?
Mr. Johnson. Yes.
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.
Mr. BELIN. And can you state what happened?
Mr. Johnson. Well, they just came down there looking for-uh-Oswald.
Mr BELIN. Did they say what his full name was?
Mr. Johnson. Yes I believe they did.
Mr Belin. Lee Harvey Oswald.
Mr Johnson. I believe they did.
The Warren Commission files have a note of 8 March from Norman Redlich which says
“it would appear that the lead to 1026 N. Beckley would have had to come from some source other than the Paines.”
Note how Counsel Belin doesn’t press on Redlich’s point. Instead, Belin changed the subject after Johnson’s reference to “after Tippit was shot the police ___” by the inane interruption as to whether this was 22 November. The effect of what Belin did was to change the question from the time to the irrelevant matter of the date.
Westbrook planting “Oswald’s” wallet at the Tippit murder scene after 1:30 pm could have caused detectives to go to 1026 N. Beckley shortly after that. But the wallet by 3 pm was ‘forgotten’. Oswald had a wallet on him on his arrest and two wallets point to a frame-up.
A CONJURING TRICK?
A plan to kill Oswald inside the Texas Theater may have failed for a simple reason. Too many decent officers moved into Oak Cliff as a result of their rational response to the murder of a colleague. Some of those reached the Texas Theater, including Officer Hutson (covered later). Hutson was in physical contact with Oswald for the arrest.
A reason for two jackets – and Oswald was not wearing a jacket on arrest – can be explained by linking with the ill thought through planting of the wallet at the Tippit murder scene. Oswald was not wearing a jacket on arrest. Whoever left 1026 N Beckley had put on a jacket. It would be a logical part of a frame-up to need to have a second jacket for Oswald. That jacket would merely need to be said to have been “found” under the seat; as if Oswald had taken it off in the cinema--with the wallet in it. A frame-up would be complete by taking a dead Oswald’s own wallet from his pants pockets.
If the function of a second jacket was to perpetrate that stunt, then that particular jacket wouldn’t need to be submitted as evidence, nor be identical, given the darkened cinema. The logical one to present as evidence would be the one that the decoy had been wearing in broad daylight. Once he was secure that jacket could have been switched. The wallet with ID in it would in any case be the immediate point of focus.
It would have helped the narrative if the decoy entering the theater had a jacket on because the evidence indicates that Oswald himself on entry didn’t. It would connect Oswald to what the decoy was wearing.
But the unplanned murder of Tippit caused an ill-thought-through mistake, The decoy wouldn’t be expected to ditch a jacket as the decoy wasn’t intended to participate in a tableau to frame Oswald for the murder of Tippit. That scenario can explain why Westbrook planted the wallet on his second return and later changed the jacket as well as that jacket. It is therefore posited that the muddle over wallets and jackets was a result of improvisation messing up the intended conjuring trick.
Given Westbrook first arrived by car with Owens, he couldn’t have carried the spare jacket – with the wallet inside --with him. It would be an obvious plant. But by approximately 1:30 pm Westbrook had acquired the spare jacket and the wallet.
HILL AT 12th AND BECKLEY
There is a further issue. At 1:21 pm under call sign 550/2 and attributed to Hill is:
I'm at Twelfth and Beckley now. Have a man in the car with me that can identify the suspect if anybody gets him.
Twelfth and Beckley is 0.6 miles away from the Tippit murder scene, and 0.4 miles from Ballew. There is no further reference on the radio to this witness.
Hill testified regarding his response to what Owens said on the radio at 1:21 pm:
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.
That is describing Hill moving around the sides of the blocks that contained Ballew. But if Hill was meeting Owens at Ballew at 1:21 pm, he couldn’t be at 12th and Beckley at the same time. 12th and Beckley is not close to where the witness and action was at Ballew Texaco, as it was a total of 6 blocks away.
If Hill had indeed found a witness to the fugitive on the run he would not have made the mistake of mixing up Dudley Hughes’s parking lot with that of Ballew. Hill avoided any mention of 12th and Beckley in his Warren Commission testimony. That leads to an indication that Hill, by, 1:21 pm, was at 12th and Beckley, and was lying to cover that up. 12th and Beckley is closer to where Mentzel put himself (see later).
A cop lying persistently in a way that was inconsistent with other honest officers must have been both comfortable being blatant and able to bat off any officer challenging him. Did Hill intimidate officers?
A researcher and Warren Commission advocate Dale Myers – rather than identifying Hill’s pattern of inconsistencies - has tried to explain that 12th and Beckley call as Hill carrying Harold Russell. [https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/26874-the-wallet-at-the-tippit-scene-a-simpler-solution/page/4/]
Russell worked at Warren Reynolds’ garage which was near the Tippit murder scene where Jefferson is crossed by Patton. Russell was a witness to the fugitive on the run. Russell did not refer to being in a police car in his first FBI statement of 21 January 1964. Myers instead relies on Russell’s FBI interview of 23 February 1964. Russell did then refer to being in a police car.
However, that doesn’t help the case to account for that call of Hill. Russell had run to the scene of the shooting of Tippit and said that he went in a police car from the Tippit murder scene to the location where Russell had last seen the assailant – which was Ballew at 401 E Jefferson – with officers, plural.
He stated the officers, whose names he did not know, put him in a patrol car and had him point to the area where he had last seen the man with the pistol. RUSSELL stated at this point he left the officers and then went in a nearby drug store and then went about his business and thought no more about it.
Per the 1961 Dallas City Directory, the nearest drugstore was Skillern’s and Sons, 325 E Jefferson at the junction with Crawford, 10 yards from Ballew. The person to take Russell was Owens. Owens in this call at 1:21 pm was at Ballew, within 5 minutes of arriving at the Tippit murder scene.
One of the men here at the service station that saw him seems to think he's in this block, the 400 block of East Jefferson behind this service station. Would you give me some more squads over here?
That is not evidence of Hill taking Russell to 12th and Beckley and being there at 1:21 pm. The said researcher also made a song and dance as to how witnesses at Ballew could have known a police officer had been shot by the fugitive, and also made a mystery of who had made the call to police regarding the fugitive. But the answer appears in the same FBI files that the researcher used to vindicate Hill.
Reynolds’ employee LJ Lewis made the call. [https://nara-media-001.s3.amazonaws.com/arcmedia/dc-metro/rg-272/605417-key-persons/russell_harold/russell_harold.pdf]
While Warren Reynolds ran to Ballew, Russell ran to the murder scene. Owens then took Russell to Ballew arriving by 1:21 pm. By which time a jacket was found. There’s no mystery in that. The mystery is why Hill was at 12th and Beckley at 1:21 pm and why Hill was dissembling.
Another red flag is that Lewis was asked to change his story by a letter from the Commission on 21 August 1964. [www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh21/pdf/WH21_PattersonBM_Ex_B.pdf]
The outcome of the revised affidavit is that Lewis was supposed to have made the call to the police before he saw the fugitive, i.e. merely in response to hearing the shots. But the revision actually makes matters worse. For Lewis to have seen the fugitive after making the labored call, due to the confusion at DPD HQ, the fugitive would have had to linger whilst Lewis made his call.
Of all the things the Warren Commission could have followed up on 21 August 1964 it is very odd it had to be this. And rather than dealing with a ‘discrepancy’ where none existed, it created one.
FOG AND WITNESS INTIMIDATION
Hagiographical accounts of a tainted police force tend to miss the bigger picture. Indeed, Warren Commission apologists go to great lengths to suggest that Earlene Roberts got the number of the police car ‘207’ wrong. But for her to choose three digits at random which not only matched a DPD police car in service that day but matched the car used by the prevaricator Hill--and given an alibi by the persistently dubious Westbrook--would be statistically improbable.
The question arises whether Hill and others ever influenced or intimidated witnesses and researchers who might have challenged the circumstances of the Tippit shooting. Someone intimidated, Acquilla Clemons, an important witness to the Tippit murder. And she said they were police.
What is also relevant is that all four witnesses at Reynolds Motors were intimidated. They were Reynolds, Lewis, Patterson, and Russell.
Warren Reynolds himself was shot in the head on 23 January 1963 and survived. He had told the FBI on 21 January 1964 that he could not identify Oswald as the fugitive. He told the FBI on 3 March 1963 that General Walker had asked to see him, He did not oblige then, but then did see Walker on 8 July 1963. He then appeared before the Warren Commission on 22 July 1963 and said he now did recognize Oswald.
Why would General Walker be involved in such matters? Unless of course, he had an interest in keeping the lid on things.
General Edwin Walker was the only US General to resign in the 20th century. He was a far-right segregationist whom Robert Kennedy had committed to a mental institution. Walker was arrested for promoting a race riot at Ole Miss. riots at University of Mississippi. This was after the admission of a black student into the all-white university. Walker claimed that every US President since 1933 had been a communist. Walker had failed to secure the Democratic nomination to be Governor of Texas to John Connally. Such was the then Southern Democratic Party.
Harold Russell’s FBI statement of 23 February 1964 also addresses intimidation directly. (Note. He wrongly assumed that being shot in the head meant being dead).
“RUSSELL stated about one month ago WARREN REYNOLDS, brother of the lot owner, was found shot to death at the car lot. RUSSELL stated after that he began to get worried about what he had seen, because WARREN REYNOLDS had also seen what he had seen the day of the President's' death and had gone in the direction where the man with the pistol had gone. When he had disappeared on Jefferson Street and had followed the man with the pistol down the street. RUSSELL stated last Monday JOHNNY REYNOLDS fired him and told him he was firing him because "he did not want to find him shot on the lot like WARREN REYNOLDS ". RUSSELL stated he did not question REYNOLDS and left the lot, but since then has worried that someone is out to shoot him like REYNOLDS because of what he saw. RUSSELL stated he had not received any threats of any kind and did not know if his life was in danger, but was worried about it because of what he saw.”
It is also interesting the reference by Reynolds to “what he saw” rather than merely a matter of identification, which would be “who he saw”. Did Reynolds in looking up the alley, or Russell, see a police car in the alley? There were other witnesses who failed to identify Oswald. Was there something else about what Reynolds saw, that Russell also knew?
What Reynolds, LJ Lewis, Pat Patterson, and Russell saw was clearly a problem. One was shot, one thought he would be too and moved out of Dallas, and the other two had to make late adjustments to their prior testimony. Patterson on 25thAugust had to say he recognised Oswald when he previously hadn’t. [www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh21/pdf/WH21_PattersonBM_Ex_B.pdf]
From August 1964 the Commission had ceased to be an investigation of the facts and was seeking to twist facts and plug gaps to make things fit the narrative of their conclusions. Something now known to have been written into its unpublished terms of reference.
There was other substantial witness intimidation besides at the car lot. As we have seen Aquila Clemons, who saw the shooting of Tippit, said two men were involved. They ran off in different directions and neither was Oswald. She was visited afterward by a policeman who told her to shut up. Domingo Benavides—another witness to the Tippit killing had a brother who was shot dead in a bar in Dallas in 1964. (Michael Benson, Who’s Who in the JFK Assassination, p. 37) Benavides put that down to mistaken identification of himself.
As John Kelin notes in his last essay ad Kennedys and King, Helen Markham was another witness who was intimidated. Markham said she put her hands over her eyes on witnessing Tippit being shot. By chance, she also worked at Eat Well Café right by the Carousel Club and Larry Crafard ate there every day.
Assistant Counsel Liebeler flagged the problem with Markham in this way:
I forgot to mention that some question might be raised when the public discovers that there was only one eyewitness to the Tippit killing, that is, one person who saw Oswald kill him. All the rest only saw subsequent events. Mrs.Markham is nicely buried there, but I predict not for long. [https://aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol11/pdf/HSCA_Vol11_WC_3E2_Liebeler.pdf]
But what Liebeler didn’t deal with is the fact that Helen Markham told Officers Poe and Jez on their arrival at the scene that “When she went to the aid of the officer the suspect had threatened to kill her.” Officers Poe and Jez filed a report on 22 November to that effect. [http://www.cultor.org/Documents/JFK-Dallas/Box%201/0090-001.gif]
LET US CONJECTURE
There has to be a reason why Westbrook and Croy prevaricated. The benefit to Westbrook of the improbable claim that he had walked may be that some officers had seen him on the street along a part of Elm, at a time later than his arrival at the Depository by car with Stringer. That later time thus connected to Westbrook and Croy getting the decoy off the Marsalis bus, with Westbrook then returning to the Depository and Croy headed to 1026 N Beckley.
Mary Bledsoe (who lived on Marsalis, hence would get a Marsalis bus) said because of the delay to her bus she caught a bus that was behind. On the basis that drivers were disciplined if their buses ran early, then the second Marsalis bus she caught couldn’t have been running early. By that, the McWatters bus was late enough to fall behind the schedule of the next bus.
With at least a 10-minute interval between buses, then the hold-up at the time and point “Oswald” got off was not less than 10 minutes. But the lady got to Union Station before 1:00 pm. That places disembarkation somewhere between 12:50 pm and 12:55 pm, later than the Warren Commission timeline. That gives a timescale that would fit with alternative arrangements for moving the decoy being triggered at approximately 12:46 pm.
It would be logical that if there was an impromptu operation to take the decoy off the bus, and car 207 was not used for that, then another car would have dropped the decoy off. Croy’s car.
All of that sits Westbrook arriving at the Depository by or before 12:57 pm having dealt with getting the decoy off the bus who was then taken away by Croy. That timeline would have given Westbrook from 12:57 pm to 1:11 pm time to consider his next steps whilst he was at the Depository.
By that Hill can have been given verbal command – presumably by Westbrook – at the Depository. Hill then left at 1:02 pm in car 207 and went to 1025 N Beckley.
The 12:44 pm APB description of Oswald would mean that any decoy looking similar couldn’t be waiting outside the rooming house for the indeterminate period it might take for his ride to arrive. Car 207 would need to toot to indicate it had arrived and it was safe to come out.
Rationally too would be Croy staking out the rooming house - to ensure that the decoy did not get cold feet and disappear.
If Hill was in position behind 410 E 10th at 1:07 pm, that would sit with Tippit at 10thand Beckley Mobil garage – where I suggested Mentzel was, being told to set off east along 10th at 1:07 pm.
By that assumption then it would be Hill and the other officer (Croy or Stringer) who were also seen by Doris Holan in the rear alley behind 410 E 10th. And one or both were also seen by Virginia Davis immediately after she’d called the police before the ambulance arrived.
Then when the news of Tippit’s murder was put out on the radio, Westbrook got into Owens’ car with Bill Alexander, arriving at 410 E10th at 1:16 pm. Then immediately after arrival, running in the direction of the alley to rendezvous with the occupants of car 207. Planting a jacket. Westbrook then returned car 207 to the Depository, returning to Oak Cliff at approximately 1:29 pm, this time with Ewell and Stringer in Westbrook’s unmarked car. The round trip would take 8-9 minutes.
Trying to move the decoy by car as quickly as possible in order to allow for the elimination of Tippit as soon as possible explains the difficulty the Warren Commission had in replicating those movements, on the assumption it was lone Oswald doing all that by foot, bus, foot, cab, foot and again on foot.
With the decoy no longer in car 207, the only car for him to have been transferred to was Mentzel’s car directly, or via Hill if he had borrowed Poe’s car.
As I showed in my article on Mentzel, Mentzel was at 10th and Beckley, the Mobil garage, from 1:07 pm. The alley behind E10th ends at Beckley at the piece of land that the garage sat on. Hill’s call makes sense if it was either to advertise to Mentzel where he was, or to advertise to confederates that the switch of cars had occurred.
HILL AND THE SHELLS
At approximately 1:41 pm and 3-4 minutes before it was announced that a suspect had entered the Texas Theater, Hill said on the radio.
The shells at the scene indicate that the suspect is armed with an automatic .38, rather than a pistol.
The phraseology Hill used is also unnecessary. If someone thinks someone has been shot with an automatic, then they are shot with an automatic. There’s no need to say, “rather than a pistol”, any more than say “rather than a rifle” or “rather than a shotgun”. Hill’s comment suggests he knew that Oswald would have a pistol and not an automatic, and that was a problem.
Apologists for Hill have also argued that he mistook the shells of a pistol for an automatic. But that isn’t consistent with his emphatic ruling out of a non-automatic weapon. Hill denied to the Commission that he had made that call which by the timing of the transcript was 1:40 pm.
Mr. BELIN. Now, also turning to Sawyer Deposition Exhibit A, I notice that there is another call on car No. 550-2. Was that you at that time, or not, at 1:40 p.m.? Would that have been someone else?
Mr. HILL. That probably is R. D. Stringer [note the manuscript has A.B Stringer, the relevant Stringer is HH Stringer, there was an RD Stringer in the force who does not feature that day: Author’s note ].
Mr. BELIN. That is not you, then, even though it has a number 550-2?
Mr. HILL. Yes; because Stringer quite probably would have been using the same call number, because it is more his than it was mine. Really, but I didn't have an assigned call number, so I was using a number I didn't think anybody would be using, which is call 550-2, instead of the Westbrook to Batchelor as it indicates here.
By that deception –which as we shall see was deliberate--he wriggled out of answering the question of automatic versus pistol.
How do we know it was deliberate? Because later in life Hill admitted, in his 1993 Sixth Floor Museum interview, that he did make that call. He said that it was because of the close proximity of the shells at the murder scene that he assumed they were from an automatic. (Shells from an automatic are self-ejected). But that fails too. Only two shells were found near each other and those were yards apart.
The expression that code “550/2” was “more his [Stringer] than mine” is very odd. None of the police transcripts put calls out as 500/2 as Stringer. The only call of Stringer was the one on Channel 2 using 551. Hill also testified:
I told Poe to maintain the chain of evidence as small as possible, for him to retain these at that time, and to be sure and mark them for evidence, and then turn them over to the crime lab when he got there, or to homicide.
Despite that command to maintain the chain of custody, it was Hill and Westbrook who broke the chain of custody of the pistol that was purportedly retrieved from Oswald but failed to go off as the firing pin was bent. Hill took the pistol from the Texas Theater and kept it until placing it on Field’s desk. But the personnel department—where Hill was working from at the time-- isn’t a crime lab or homicide department. (Michael Benson, Who ‘s Who in the JFK Assassination, p. 185)
The cartridges that Officer Poe had acquired at the Tippit murder scene and marked with his initials disappeared. There were no marks on the ones presented as evidence. This is made even more odd by the fact that Hill allegedly told the officer to mark them for evidence. (Benson, p. 364)
Hill’s confidence in his prevarications on KCRC Radio on 22 November 1963 about his time of arrival at the Tippit murder scene would have been based on his not knowing Earlene Roberts had seen car 207. And also not knowing there would be a Commission that would have patrol radio transcripts and decent officer testimonies which contradicted his account.
Hill said in his interview for the Sixth Floor Museum in 1993 that he was working in Westbrook’s office not only dealing with applications but “investigating complaints”. The personnel office would be an ideal place to lean on officers by holding things against them. He may have had the power to make any officers uncomfortable without their being a collaborator.
A question is why didn’t Hill and Westbrook synchronize their stories as to how they got from the Depository to the Tippit murder scene? There is an answer. Westbrook, by not naming the officer who drove, created wriggle room for forgetfulness as an excuse. Had he and Hill synchronized their false stories to a consistent one, then the uncovering of one as false would bring down the other, proving they were in league. Placed in an invidious position an imperfect option may be the least worst choice.
(Part 3 coming soon)