How Did Oswald Get the Wrong Bus Transfer? – Part 2
Taking the transfer at face value, it is obvious it was punched for someone disembarking from Line 23, the Lakewood line and not Line 30, the Marsalis line. Which is what the Warren Report would have the reader believe. Officer Dhority gave this undated internal police written account of his activity on November 22, 1963.
“About 6:00pm, Lt. Wells gave C. W. Brown and myself information that Mr. C. J. McWatters was driving Piedmont Bus and was due at Commerce and Harwood at 6:15 PM. We met Mr. McWatters and carried him to the Detail Room. At 6:30 PM, Mr. McWatters made identification of Oswald as 12 man in four man line up.
Mr. Mc Watters gave me an affidavit in the Homicide Office and identified the transfer that he had given Oswald positively.
Brown said in a similar account.
“At approximately 6:00 pm Lt. T. P. Wells gave my partner, C. N. Dhority, and myself information that the bus driver that picked up Oswald near the scene of the President's murder was driving the Piedmont bus #50 and would be at the Intersection of Commerce and Harwood at 6:15 pm.”
The fact that McWatters switched lines and was approached at around 6:15 pm on November 22 by the Dallas police is relevant to unpacking the confusion. It can be deduced in several ways that the transfer DPD presented as evidence of Oswald getting off the Marsalis bus at 12:43 pm on Elm Street had instead been issued hours later when McWatters was driving the 23 Lakewood line.
Firstly, because that is what, at face value, the transfer states.
Secondly, McWatters’ schedule, set out in CE358, taken with the FBI route map, shows that when he was to finish his Marsalis 30 run, there is a coincident section of overlap where he would have been able to take on the Lakewood 23 run, which goes past City Hall, Downtown and back. With his Marsalis run being 40-50 minutes late, he would have finished that at approximately 3 pm, and he was then on the Piedmont Line 50 run at City Hall at 6:15 pm.
Third, when asked by Ball about the lineup when McWatters was taken to identify Oswald, he said that the transfer was for the Lakewood trip.
Mr. McWATTERS. They brought four men out. In other words, four men under the lights; in other words, they was all—
Mr. BALL. All the same age?
McWATTERS. No, sir; they were different ages, different sizes and different heights. And they asked me if I could identify any man in particular there, and I told them that I couldn't identify any man in particular, but there was one man there that was about the size of the man. Now, I was referring back, after they done showed me this transfer at that time and I knew which trip, that I went through town on at that time, in other words, on the Lakewood trip and just like I recalled, I only put out two transfers and I told them that there was one man in the lineup was about the size and the height and complexion of a man that got on my bus, but as far as positively identifying the man I could not do it.
Fourth, McWatters’ receipt transfer for the noontime start of his day is number 004451. As McWatters stated above, “I only put out two transfers”. Then he said it again.
“Mr. McWatters. I only gave two transfers going through town on that trip and that was at the one stop of where I gave the lady and the gentleman that got off the bus, I issued two transfers. But that was the only two transfers that were issued.”
And,
“So, I said, "I sure will." So I gave her a transfer and opened the door and as she was going out the gentleman I had picked up about 2 blocks asked for a transfer and got off at the same place in the middle of the block where the lady did.”
Roy Milton Jones said that when he got on the bus on Elm near the Capri Theater, he was the only passenger on the bus. Then, when the bus was stopped and held up by the police, about 15 people were on it.
Transfer 004459 is the eighth issue from that book of transfers. That is not one of only two transfers issued on the bus at the Lamar transfer point at 12:40 pm, for which one should have had number 004453 and the other 004452.
Fifth, and the most obvious of all. Someone getting off a bus stuck in traffic isn’t going to need a transfer if their objective is to get a cab.
I. DISCREPANCY ON TIME
A Globe transfer can't be altered to make it valid for longer. But a ticket can be tampered with to an earlier time by cutting off some of it. If – as the evidence suggests - DPD obtained a transfer cut for later in the afternoon from McWatters, by then driving a Line 23 bus, a 1:00 pm position could be achieved by cutting everything else off to leave a stub, just like 004459.
For the CE381--a transfer to fit with the Commission’s timeline--Oswald would have needed to get off the bus before 12:45 pm. And it should have been punched at 12:45 pm with a 15-minute validity from then. That anomaly caused Gerald Ford to ask this.
Representative Ford. It is 10:25 now. How would you cut it right now?
Mr. McWATTERS. At 10:25.
Representative Ford. Why don't you cut one?
Mr. McWATTERS. I have a regular cutter, you see; let's see if he can get something that would-in other words, 10:25, I will just cut it, in other words, cut across there, and cut it, in other words, at 10:30, in other words, it would show at 10:30.
That answer rules out cutting for 1:00 pm if someone had gotten off before 12:45 pm. Ball picked up on that, too.
Mr. Ball. … Now, I show you this document which is the bus schedule of Marsalis-Ramona-Elwood-Munger, and it shows you leave St. Paul at 12:36 and you arrive at Lamar 12:40. The bus transfers are punched you told me for 1 o'clock. We have a transfer here that you have seen or we will show you in a few minutes as soon as it gets here, which has a punch mark of 1 o'clock. You told Senator Cooper that you usually punched within 15 minutes of the time you reached the transfer points?
Mr. McWatters. Yes.
Mr. Ball. If that is the case, what——
Mr. McWatters. You mean why did I have it punched at 1 o'clock?
Mr. Ball. Yes.
Mr. McWatters. Because I punch it p.m. In other words, I have a punch, I am going to Lakewood, I mean I am going Marsalis and I am going back Lakewood, so I just take me two books of transfers. Instead of punching one of them a.m. and one p.m. I just punched them p.m.
Mr. Ball. Do you punch within 15 minutes of the time you reach the transfer points?
Mr. McWatters. That is the way that the transfers are supposed to be cut.
Further:
Representative Ford. This is the practice you have used for 2 years approximately?
Mr. McWatters. That is right, when I worked that run, in other words, when I am going one way at 1 o'clock, coming back from the other end of the line I set them at 2. I am back in there at, my next trip I am back in there at Lamar Street, I think it is 1:38 but I always just set them at 2 o'clock.
Once again, McWatters slipped out of Lakewood. But he still did not explain why a 12:40 pm arrival would be cut to 1:00 pm rather than 12:45 pm.
II. SORTING IT ALL OUT
From the evidence, Oswald was not identified by McWatters or Milton Jones on the Marsalis bus. And the transfer was not issued on that run, but after 2:30 pm, when McWatters was driving the Lakewood 23 run.
Planting a transfer on Oswald with a line 23 Lakewood transfer appears to have been a blunder, caused by McWatters changing lines. But from the time of his 22 November affidavit, McWatters’ transfer number 004459 set out in the affidavit - for the wrong line - was locked in as evidence.
The full text of that affidavit is.
“Today, November 22, 1963 about 12:40p.m. I was driving Marsalis Bus No. 1213. I picked up a man on the lower end of town on Elm around Houston. I went on out Marsalis and picked up a woman. I asked her if she knew the President had been shot and she thought I was kidding. I told her if she did not believe me to ask the man behind her that he had told me the President was shot in the temple. This man was grinning and never did say anything. The woman said that it was not a grinning matter. I don't remember where I let this man off. This man looks like the #2 man I saw in a line-up tonight. The transfer #004459 is a transfer from my bus with my punch mark.”
To summarize McWatters’ pressure points, he:
- retracted in front of the Commission itself his “positive” ID of Oswald.
- could not give a credible reason why someone on the Marsalis 30 Line would punch Lakewood 23.
- did not refer to the police getting on the bus on Elm Street.
- other than indirectly, via the Dallas Morning News, did not refer to the delay on Elm being 40-50 minutes.
- indirectly, slipped out in his testimony that other buses were being let through when he was held up on Elm.
- could not give a credible reason why a transfer would be cut for 1:00 pm.
- the transfer serial number is the eighth from the book, when one issued at the requisite time on Elm would have been first or second.
- was held at the police department until 1am.
People have long speculated why Oswald would board a Marsalis bus if he was heading to 1026 N Beckley, rather than a Beckley bus, one of which was right behind and stopped right outside 1026. And where he was last seen by his landlady after leaving his room, after the assassination.
If Oswald was being framed for being on a bus to return home, then a Beckley bus might seem the obvious choice for a frame. But Oswald used the Beckley bus to get to work for 5 weeks prior. There would be the risk that a regular driver would know the real Oswald and know that he was not on his bus, especially as there was a stop right outside 1026 N. Beckley.
My assumption, based on the evidence, is that prior to November 22, 1963, the script was that Oswald was to be framed as being on a bus on the Marsalis 30 line. By the afternoon of November 22, Fritz knew that, and that is why Roger Craig’s competing story was so inconvenient and needed to be rapidly rebutted.
My prior articles for this site have implicated Sgt Gerry Hill, Sgt Davis, and Reserve Sgt. Croy, in pre-planned assassination assistance, with Captain Westbrook in overall command. I cannot assume that should taint all other cops involved in the aftermath. However, the events after Oswald’s arrest demonstrate something very wrong with Fritz’s behavior. Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade stated this to the Commission, at Volume V, regarding Captain Fritz:
“But Fritz runs a kind of a one-man operation there where nobody else knows what he is doing. Even me, for instance, he is reluctant to tell me, either, but I don't mean that disparagingly. I will say Captain Fritz is about as good a man at solving a crime as I ever saw, to find out who did it but he is poorest in the getting evidence that I know, and I am more interested in getting evidence, and there is where our major conflict comes in.”
Fritz was the Detective in charge of the Venice Parker murder case. Tommy Lee Walker was an African American executed in 1956 for the murder. It was later found to be a miscarriage of justice involving a forced confession. Wade had been the prosecutor.
My prior articles also set out my assumption that Oswald was supposed to have been killed at the Texas Theater. Had Oswald been killed at the Texas Theatre, then Craig would not have had the opportunity to see him in Fritz’s office. A transfer was needed as the pressure was on to give some substance to the bus side of the storyline.
An evidence-planting cop – getting “evidence” for Fritz - knowing he was looking for McWatters, might assume he was still on the same bus route, and got a transfer. Hence, McWatters was traced via the bus company. But by 6:15 pm, McWatters had twice switched lines and a transfer from a Lakewood 23 bus - the eighth he’d issued that day - was punched for the wrong line for the purpose of framing Oswald. A confusion possibly enhanced by the fact that there is a similar-sounding Lake Cliff in Oak Cliff on the Marsalis route. With a frame-up happening and with so many moving parts, it is necessary to look at the whole picture.
If the Marsalis bus McWatters was driving was not relevant at all, then why was it important to find McWatters? Things point towards McWatters’ bus being relevant because there was something to hide regarding it being singled out and boarded by the police and held up for 40-50 minutes.
It was that bus I posited that Officer Tippit was waiting for at Gloco on the south end of the Houston Street viaduct to assist a decoy on that bus. (The Beckley bus used the Commerce St Viaduct). In my other articles, I set out a scenario of Tippit ruining the plans and the impromptu killing of him that ensued, which led to deviations from the plan that resulted in an improvised planting of defective evidence. Tippit’s death was the first of several ‘cleanup’ murders.
If the departure from the bus of a person impersonating Oswald was not scripted, then an outcome of that would be that McWatters would have to be pressured not to mention how the bus was stopped by police within minutes of Kennedy’s assassination. By the time he testified to the Commission, McWatters did refer to a man and woman getting off his bus when held up in traffic on Elm.
Mr. MCWATTERS. Well, I left there that day on time because coming into town that day, I guess everybody done went to, down to, see the parade, I didn’t have over four or five passengers coming into downtown. and that was at the one stop of where I gave the lady and the gentleman that got off the bus, I issued two transfers. But that was the only two transfers that were issued.
Mr. BALL. What did the man look like who knocked on your door and got on your bus?
Mr. MCWATTERS. Well, I didn't pay any particular attention to him. He was to me just dressed in what I would call work clothes, just some type of little old jacket on, and I didn't pay any particular attention to the man when he got on.
And, the FBI said this of Milton Jones.
JONES advised that the bus proceeded in the direction of Houston Street and, approximately four blocks before Houston Street, was completely stopped by traffic which was backed up in this area. He recalled that at this time a policeman notified the driver the President had been shot and he told the driver no one was to leave the bus until police officers had talked to each passenger. JONES estimated that there were about fifteen people on the bus at this time and two police officers boarded the bus and checked each passenger to see if any were carrying firearms.
JONES advised that before the bus was stopped the driver made his last passenger pickup approximately six blocks before Houston Street, that one was a blonde-haired woman and the other was a dark-haired man. He said the man sat in the seat directly behind him and the woman occupied the seat further to the rear of the bus. JONES advised that when the bus was stopped by traffic, and prior to the appearance of the police officers, the woman left the bus by the rear door and the man who was sitting behind him left the bus by the front door while it was held up in the middle of the block. JONES stated he did not observe this man closely since he sat behind him in the bus, but, on the following Monday when he caught the same bus going home from school with the same driver, the driver told him he thought the man might have been LEE HARVEY OSWALD.
JONES said that after the driver mentioned this, and from his recollection of OSWALD's picture as it appeared on television and in the newspapers, he thought it was possible it could have been OSWALD. He emphasized, however, that he did not have a good view of this man at any time and could not positively identify him as being identical with LEE HARVEY OSWALD. He said he was inclined to think it might have been OSWALD only because the bus driver told him so.
So, digesting all of that. On November 22 and 23 (Friday and Saturday), McWatters had not identified Oswald in the line-up as the person who got on and then off in Elm, but misidentified Milton Jones, who rode to near the end of the line.
But by March 1964, McWatters for the Commission and Milton Jones for the FBI did give an indistinct description of a dark-haired man who had gotten off the bus on Elm near Lamar.
A question arises whether Mary Bledsoe was on that same bus.
Both Bledsoe and McWatters referred to a man stopping the bus to tell the driver the President had been shot. Milton Jones said the man was a policeman. She also said the bus she was on was stuck, so she got onto the one behind. That fits with Milton Jones’ description of a delay and McWatters saying so, indirectly, as he said other buses were let through.
III. THE LINE-UPS
From my assumptions above, the bus transfer would have had to have been introduced as evidence sometime between approximately 3 pm and 6:30 pm. When and how?
The ‘fillers’ from one of the lineups
There were three line-ups (WC Vol XXIV, p. 247) that Oswald was in on November 22. The first at 4:35 pm for Helen Markham from the Tippit murder scene. The second, around 6:30 pm, which included McWatters, Guinyard and Callaway—the last two witnesses were from the Tippit scene. The third, at 7:50 pm, were with Barbara and Virginia Davis. Detective Simms was purported to have found the transfer just before the first line-up.
From what McWatters said. The line-ups weren’t set up to achieve a positive identification. But instead, who looked the most similar? The above photograph of fillers, with two wearing suits and ties, discredits that approach.
The transfer was supposedly found in Oswald’s shirt chest pocket. But FBI agent James Bookhout, on November 23, 1963, stated that Oswald had changed his shirt: "…that after arriving at his apartment, he changed his shirt and trousers, because they were dirty. He described his dirty clothes as being a reddish colored, long-sleeved shirt with a button-down collar and gray colored trousers".
If McWatters wasn’t found until 6:15 pm, then one possibility is that he punched 004459 after then, and it was not planted on Oswald until after 6:15 pm. However, by then, he was driving a Piedmont 50 bus, and by the testimonies of Dhority and McWatters, he wasn’t asked to look at the transfer until after he had “identified” Oswald in the 6:30 pm lineup.
That would explain how the McWatters situation could get out of hand if the transfer was planted before 4:35 pm, and the problem with it only emerged later. Suggesting that someone else had taken a transfer from McWatters before 4:35 pm, but after 3:00 pm, posing as a normal passenger on the Lakewood line.
The testimony of Detective Simms, who said he found the ticket on Oswald at 4:05 pm, needs to be read to get the flavor of it. The first part is clear and decisive, where he described being allocated duties at the Trade Mart for Kennedy’s luncheon speech; he then went to the Depository and then to City Hall as Oswald arrived for interrogation.
Oswald was kept in Fritz’s office rather than the neighboring interrogation room from 2:20 pm to 4:35 pm. Simms consistently pleaded a memory block of that interrogation. But Simms’ memory wasn’t lacking for the three line-ups and for the arrival of Judge Johnson for charging Oswald for the murder of Tippit.
Simms was evasive as to whether he looked at the transfer for dates and time. He just said he signed it. Ball asked Simms if he had taken contemporaneous notes, given that he had put specific details in the undated memorandum. But all he would say was that the memorandum was created in the week after Jack Ruby shot Oswald. It reads as if he either wasn’t there to observe anything or he was there but didn’t want to perjure himself by saying what he knew was untrue.
Conclusion
The Commission’s final report (Chapter 4) stated.
“When Oswald was apprehended, a bus transfer marked for the Lakewood-Marsalis route was found in his shirt pocket”
That is patently untrue. The transfer is marked for the Line 23 Lakewood (and back to Lakewood) route. To have been the Lakewood-Marsalis route, it would have had to have been marked 30 Marsalis.
If it is accepted that what Roger Craig saw was Oswald cooperating - unknowingly - in a move in which Oswald was being set up, then it is apparent there would have had to have been a decoy operation to give a counter account of Oswald’s movements.
Something Fritz was aware of by mid-afternoon of November 22, 1964.
