by Jim Marrs
If the slugs from Tippit’s body cannot be matched to Oswald’s revolver, perhaps it is because they did not come from that gun. Adding fuel to this speculation is the statement of Eddie Kinsley, the ambulance attendant who drove the mortally wounded Tippit to a hospital. In recent years, Kinsley told newsman Earl Golz of an extraneous bullet. According to Kinsley, as he unloaded Tippit from his ambulance, “I kicked one of the bullets out of my ambulance that went into his button . . . onto the parking lot of Methodist Hospital. It didn’t go in the body. . . . It fell off the ambulance still in this button.”
Since Tippit reportedly was struck by all four bullets fired at him and these slugs were placed in evidence with the Warren Commission, what is the explanation for Kinsley’s fifth slug? Kinsley told Golz he had never been questioned by the Warren Commission.
Recent work by Texas researchers indicates that the cases now residing in the National Archives and exhibited by the Warren Commission as the shells used in the Tippit slaying could not have been fired by Oswald’s pistol. Oswald’s pistol was originally a Military and Police Smith & Wesson 1905 Model .38-caliber revolver, the largest-selling quality revolver ever produced.
The pistol in question, serial number V510210, was converted to a .38 Special Model. This involved cutting off the barrel from its original five inches to two and a quarter inches. The Warren Commission said the pistol also was rechambered to accept .38 Special ammunition—slightly smaller in diameter but longer than. 38 Standard ammunition.
In the 1980s, Texas researcher and veteran hunter Larry Howard discovered after buying an exact duplicate of Oswald’s .38 revolver that the .38 Special cartridges, when fired in a rechambered weapon, bulge noticeably in the center. Howard told this author:
I have checked this with several expert gunsmiths. Since the rechambering cannot change the diameter of the cylinder, but only makes it longer to accept .38 Special ammo, the bullet bulges in the middle when fired. I’ve done it time after time. My wife can notice the bulge. The case looks like it’s pregnant. Studying the shells depicted in the Warren Commission volumes and also in a close-up clear photograph in the November 1983 commemorative issue of Life magazine, it appears to everyone that the shell cases in the National Archives [supposedly the casings found at the scene of Tippit’s death] do not show any bulging at all. This indicates to me and other experts that those cases could not have been fired from the .38 Special that was supposed to belong to Oswald.
Until further testing can be done on the cartridge cases in question, this is hardly solid proof of Oswald’s innocence in the Tippit shooting. But it is a further example of the wide gaps still open in the case against Oswald.
4
According to the Warren Commission, Oswald’s jacket was found along the path of flight taken by Tippit’s killer.
The Warren Commission wrote:
Oswald was seen leaving his rooming-house at about 1 p.m. wearing a zipper jacket. . . . The man who killed Tippit was wearing a light-colored jacket, that he was seen running along Jefferson Boulevard, that a jacket was found under a car in a lot adjoining Jefferson Boulevard. . . . When he was arrested at approximately 1:50 p.m., he was in shirtsleeves. These facts warrant the finding that Lee Harvey Oswald disposed of his jacket as he fled from the scene of the Tippit killing.
But did the facts warrant such a conclusion? Not really, since almost every aspect of the jacket story has since come under question. Oswald, it is known, had only two jackets—one blue and one a lightweight gray zipper jacket. The blue one was later found in the basement lunchroom of the Depository building. At least two witnesses at the scene of Tippit’s slaying reported his killer wore a white jacket.
One of these witnesses, Helen Markham, was shown Oswald’s gray jacket by a Warren Commission attorney who asked, “Did you ever see this before?” Despite having been shown the jacket by the FBI prior to her testimony, Markham replied, “No, I did not . . . that jacket is a darker jacket than that, I know it was.”
Witness Domingo Benavides was shown a jacket by Commission attorney David Belin, who said, “I am handing you a jacket which had been marked as ‘Commission’s Exhibit 163,’ and ask you to state whether this bears any similarity to the jacket you saw this man with the gun wearing?” The accommodating Benavides responded, “I would say this looks just like it.”
The problem here is that Commission Exhibit 163 is Oswald’s dark blue jacket. The gray jacket is Commission Exhibit 162. Here is yet another example of a witness obligingly providing the answers he felt were desired.
Another example is cabdriver William Whaley, who reportedly drove Oswald home from downtown Dallas. Whaley identified the gray jacket as the one Oswald was wearing in his cab. Yet the Warren Commission, based on testimony from Earlene Roberts, Oswald’s landlady, stated that Oswald put on the jacket after arriving at his lodgings.
Testifying to the Warren Commission, Roberts said:
[Oswald] went to his room and he was in his shirtsleeves . . . and he got a jacket and put it on—it was kind of a zipper jacket. [She then was shown Commission Exhibit 162, Oswald’s gray jacket, and asked if she had seen it before] . . . Well, maybe I have, but I don’t remember it. It seems like the one he put on was darker than that.
Barbara Davis, another witness at the Tippit slaying, stated the killer wore “a dark coat . . . it looked like it was maybe a wool fabric . . . more of a sporting jacket” and cabdriver William Scoggins also failed to identify Oswald’s jacket, saying, “I thought it was a little darker.”
Despite these problems of identification, the Commission went right on asserting that the jacket belonged to Oswald.
The Commission dissembled about the discovery of the jacket. The Warren Report stated, “Police Capt. W. R. Westbrook . . . walked through the parking lot behind the service station and found a light-colored jacket lying under the rear of one of the cars.” However, in his testimony, Westbrook was asked if he found some clothing. He replied, “Actually, I didn’t find it—it was pointed out to me by . . . some officer.” According to the Dallas police radio log, a “white jacket” was found by “279 (Unknown)” a full fifteen minutes before Westbrook arrived on the scene. The Commission made no effort to determine who really found the jacket, if a jacket was actually found, or if it was a white jacket that only later was transformed into Oswald’s gray jacket.
The owner of the Texaco station where the jacket reportedly was found told Texas researchers that no one—not the FBI, the Dallas police, or the Warren Commission—ever questioned him or his employees about this important piece of evidence.
In addition, the jacket identified by federal authorities as belonging to Oswald carried inside a laundry mark “30 030” and a dry-cleaning tag “B 9738.” A full-scale search by the FBI in both Dallas and New Orleans failed to identify any laundry or dry cleaner using those marks.
Oswald’s wife, Marina, testified she could not recall her husband ever sending his jackets to a cleaning establishment, but that she did recall washing them herself. Further investigation by the FBI turned up no laundry or dry-cleaning tags on any of Oswald’s other clothing.
With all this, plus a broken chain of evidence, the jacket cannot be considered evidence of Oswald’s guilt in the killing of Officer Tippit.
Then there is a matter of time and a strange incident at Oswald’s lodging. Earlene Roberts, Oswald’s landlady, told the Warren Commission she was watching television coverage of the assassination about 1 p.m. when Oswald—who had been registered at the rooming house as O. H. Lee—hurried in and went to his room.
She said soon after this, a Dallas police car pulled up in front of her house and honked. She explained, “I had worked for some policemen and sometimes they come by. . . . I just glanced out, saw the number [on the car]. . . . It wasn’t the police car I knew . . . and I ignored it.” She said the police car was directly in front of her home when the driver sounded the horn, like “tit-tit.” She said the car then “just eased on . . . and
they just went around the corner that way [indicating Zang Boulevard].”
According to Roberts, there were two uniformed policemen in the car, most unusual since daytime patrols in that area of the city were limited to one officer—such as Tippit. She could not recall the number of the car precisely, but said she did recall that the first two numbers of a possible three-digit combination were a 1 and a 0. Tippit was driving car number 10 that day and failed to respond to a dispatcher call at the approximate time of the police-car incident.
Immediately following the departure of the police car, Roberts said Oswald came out of his room and left hurriedly, zipping up a jacket. She said he left her house three or four minutes after 1 p.m.
Roberts said she looked out the window and last saw Oswald standing at a nearby bus stop at Zang Boulevard.
According to the Warren Commission, a man used Tippit’s police radio microphone at 1:16 p.m., saying, “Hello police operator . . . We’ve had a shooting here . . . it’s a police officer, somebody shot him.” This, of course, referred to Tippit, who lay dead next to his patrol car about a mile from Oswald’s North Beckley residence.
The Commission tried to establish that the Tippit shooting occurred moments after 1:15 p.m., hardly enough time to allow Oswald to run from his rooming house to the scene of the Tippit slaying at 10th and Patton. The Commission could not locate even one witness who saw Oswald walking or running between his rooming house and the scene of the Tippit slaying. None have been found to this day.
This time frame becomes stretched to the breaking point when one considers the Tippit witnesses’ testimony. Even Helen Markham, who was so confused about other matters, was certain of the time because she was on her way to catch her usual 1:12 p.m. bus for work. Asked by a Warren Commission attorney about the time she saw the Tippit shooting, Markham responded, “I wouldn’t be afraid to bet it wasn’t six or seven minutes after one.”
In this instance, Markham’s recollection must be correct since another Tippit shooting witness, Jack Ray Tatum, told researchers that Markham did not want to remain at the scene because she feared missing her bus for work.
T. F. Bowley, the man who called the police dispatcher, was never called to testify to the Warren Commission. The reason may be that Bowley heard shots, saw Tippit’s body lying next to his squad car, and looked at his watch. It was 1:10 p.m.
Other witnesses hid at the sound of the shots, afraid the gunman would turn on them. Only after the killer fled did they venture out. One of the first to reach Tippit was Domingo Benavides, who told the Warren Commission he was in a truck across the street from the shooting. After hearing only three shots, Benavides said:
I sat there for just a few minutes. . . . I thought maybe [the killer] had lived in there [the house where he last saw the gunman] and I didn’t want to get out and rush right up. He might start shooting again. . . . That is when I got out of the truck and walked over to the policeman. . . . The policeman, I believe, was dead when he hit the ground.
After checking on Tippit, Benavides said, he tried to call on the patrol car’s radio but got no answer. Another bystander, Bowley, then got in the car and was successful in raising the police dispatcher and reported the shooting.
Obviously several minutes went by between the time of the shooting and 1:16 p.m., when the police radio log recorded the citizen’s alert. This places the actual shooting closer to Bowley’s time of 1:10 p.m.—a time frame that rules out the possibility that Oswald could have traveled on foot from his rooming house to the scene of the shooting.
The conversations of police regarding time sequences, orders, discovery of evidence, and so on were recorded on Dallas police radio recording equipment. These recordings should have provided accurate times and movement orders—in fact, the Warren Commission and subsequent investigations relied on them greatly.
Today, there is evidence that there may have been tampering with the Dallas police radio recordings. Soon after the assassination, the tapes may have been taken by federal authorities, who certainly have access to the most sophisticated audio equipment. Any police broadcasts not consistent with the lone-assassin theory could have been simply edited out and an altered copy returned to Dallas police for conveyance to the Warren Commission.
Is there any evidence that this occurred? Yes. Dr. James Barger, chief acoustic scientist for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, studied the “original” police tapes and discovered a break in the sixty-cycle hum background tone. He found two separate tones on the tape, which could result only from copying.
Although ignored publicly, the Ramsey panel, appointed by the National Academy of Sciences to review the acoustical studies of the House committee, did suggest in an appendix of its report that “the original Dictabelt could be studied more extensively for possible evidence . . . of being a copy.”
Gary Mack reported that in recent years, former Dallas police sergeant J. C. Bowles, the radio-room supervisor who prepared transcripts for the Warren Commission, stated that a few days after the assassination, federal agents “borrowed” the original police Dictabelt and at the time he was under the impression that they took the tapes to a recording studio in Oklahoma.
Like the Zapruder film and so much of the Warren Commission’s prime evidence, the Dallas police radio recordings are now open to question.
The House Select Committee on Assassinations supported the Warren Commission’s conclusion that Oswald killed Tippit; however, it obliquely indicated that all is not known about the killing.
Committee investigators studied information developed by researcher Larry Harris that Tippit may have been killed as the result of personal problems. They also talked with yet another witness who had not been interviewed by the Warren Commission. Jack Ray Tatum told committee investigators that Tippit’s killer, after shooting the officer from the sidewalk, walked toward the patrol car and shot Tippit once in the head at point-blank range. Correctly, the committee noted, “This action, which is often encountered in gangland murders and is commonly described as a coup de grace, is more indicative of an execution than an act of defense intended to allow escape or prevent apprehension.”
There is a problem with Tatum’s story, however. Most of the witnesses stated that four shots were fired in succession—with no interval between the shots.
Some serious students of the Tippit incident now believe that his death may have had no connection with the Kennedy assassination. And of the researchers who still believe such a connection exists, few cling to the belief that Oswald was the killer.
But the key objection to the idea that Oswald killed Tippit is that he was encountered inside the Texas Theater both before and during the Tippit slaying.
Regardless of who actually killed Officer Tippit, that event was the catalyst that set off a flurry of police activity in Oak Cliff resulting in the arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald.
Prior to his arrest, there were at least two incidents in which police were obviously seeking a suspect. Sometime after 1 p.m., a number of policemen stormed the Oak Cliff branch of the Dallas Public Library. One was heard to say, “He’s not here!” Unable to locate who they were looking for, they quickly left. Oswald was a frequent visitor to that library. Then, shortly before being called to the Texas Theater, the scene of Oswald’s arrest, police surrounded a church near the scene of the Tippit slaying in the belief that Tippit’s killer had hidden there. However, before they could conduct a search of the building, they were called to the Texas Theater.
The Arrest of Oswald
The arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald appears straightforward enough in the official reports, but there are some strange aspects when viewed objectively.
By 1:45 p.m. on November 22, 1963, the president of the United States had been murdered just seventy-five minutes earlier, and only about thirty minutes before, Officer Tippit had been shot down on an Oak Cliff street. Dallas police were swarming like angry bees.
A report came in to police dispatchers. It seemed a man
had slipped into the Texas Theater without paying. Immediately carloads of officers, including one federal agent and an assistant district attorney, converged on the theater.
The report had been instigated by a shoe store manager named Johnny Brewer. Brewer was listening to the radio when he learned of the Tippit murder. Hearing police sirens, he looked out the window of his store and saw a man duck into his doorway as a police car went by. Believing this to be suspicious activity, Brewer watched the man continue up the street to the Texas Theater, where he lost sight of him. Moments later, when Brewer asked the theater’s ticket seller if she had sold a ticket to anyone, she replied she had not. Entering the theater, Brewer learned that the concession stand operator, W. H. “Butch” Burroughs, had heard the front doors open but had seen no one enter the theater lobby.
Between the theater’s front doors and a second set of doors were stairs leading to the balcony. Burroughs was convinced that whoever entered had gone up to the balcony since no one had passed his concession stand. Brewer asked the ticket seller to call police while he and Burroughs unsuccessfully looked for the suspicious man.
The authorities arrived quickly. Several policemen went to the theater’s rear exit and waited with drawn guns. Inside, police, including sergeant Gerald Hill, who had commanded the search of the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, turned up the house lights and moved to the front of the theater.
