Article 116 of 180 in alt.conspiracy.jfk
Tippit Murder by Bill Simpich
curtjester1@hotmail.com
Wednesday 5:46 PM

Mar 4 (20 hours ago)















Taken from another forum.

Burgundy

QUOTE On

I'm really pleased so many people are taking on the wallet issue.  Joe
McBride's book Into the Nightmare is great on this subject.  I spent a lot
of time on it in my new e-book State Secret.  I have two different
sections on it, I'll post the second section separately.  I'm convinced
that the wallet was planted at the scene and that Westbrook and Bentley
did everything they could to frame Oswald.

You can see the original text and sources at http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/State_Secret_Chapter6

Oswald probably played no role in the Tippit shooting

After Sawyer called in with the five-ten/165 description, police
dispatcher Murray Jackson explained over the radio that Sawyer's call was
about a suspect in the President's shooting that had been sighted at the
Texas School Book Depository. Two officers immediately reported that they
were either at the location or en route. For no understandable reason,
Dispatcher Jackson then summoned patrolmen J. D. Tippit and R. C. Nelson
and mysteriously asked them to "move into Central Oak Cliff area". This is
the neighborhood where Oswald lived. By this time, Oswald was heading for
home.

Nine minutes later, Dispatcher Jackson informed Tippit at 12:54 that "you
will be at large for any emergency that comes in" nearby "Lancaster and
8th" in the Oak Cliff neighborhood - placing him less than a mile from
Oswald's address at 1026 North Beckley and far away from the manhunt in
downtown Dallas three miles away! Years later, Jackson made the improbable
claim to CBS News that he "realized that, as you said, that we were
draining the Oak Cliff area of available police officers, so if there was
an emergency, such as an armed robbery or a major accident, to come up, we
wouldn't have anybody there..."[ 9 ]

The Warren Commission asked three officers if they could explain Tippit's
movements on November 22. Not only could none of them offer a reasonable
explanation, but none of them even knew that the dispatcher ordered Tippit
to go to the Oak Cliff neighborhood. The Warren Commission also asked
police chief Jesse Curry about Jackson's strange order to Tippit at 12:45
pm, with special concern because it was mysteriously omitted from the
original transcription. As one wag put it, Curry suggested that Tippit had
moved out of his assigned district to search for his own murderer.

In a multiple hearsay story that is worthy of consideration, Tippit's
father told author Joseph McBride that he learned from Tippit's widow that
an officer told her that Tippit and another officer had been assigned by
the police to hunt down Oswald in Oak Cliff. The other officer was
involved in an accident and never made it to the scene, but "J.D. made
it".[ 10 ] Tippit's widow has never made a statement for the record. When
you have a witness that has offered limited interviews but no sworn
testimony, that's when a hearsay account may provide the reason why the
witness is reluctant to talk. Tippit's story is backed by none other than
Johnny Roselli's associate John Martino - both of these men admitted their
involvement in JFK's murder. Martino said that Oswald "was to meet his
contact at the Texas Theater" in his Oak Cliff neighborhood.[ 11 ]

What makes this all even more intriguing is that even by the time of
Tippit's death at about 1:09, Oswald has not yet been identified as an
assassination suspect because the shells were not found until 1:12. Even
after the rifle was found a little later, no one was able to tie the gun
or shells to Oswald until early the next morning after visiting Klein's
Sporting Goods in Chicago, where "Alex Hidell" had mail-ordered the
Mannlicher-Carcano found on the sixth floor. Nor was Oswald noticed as
missing from the Depository until well into the afternoon.

By around 1 pm, Oswald had reached his home in Oak Cliff, changed his
clothes, grabbed his revolver, and went back out the door. A police car
beeped outside Oswald's home shortly before he left. The distance from
Oswald's house to theater was about a mile - three minutes if he got a
ride, at least fifteen minutes if he was on foot. It was roughly the same
calculus if Oswald headed towards the Tippit crime scene.

I think it's more likely that Oswald went straight to the Texas Theater,
and was never at the Tippit crime scene. Butch Burroughs, a Texas Theater
concessions employee for decades, told author Jim Marrs in 1987 that he
sold Oswald popcorn right around 1:15 pm. Author Dale Myers challenged
Burroughs, saying that he "told the Warren Commission that he didn't see
Oswald slip into the theater. He also didn't mention selling popcorn to
Oswald." Myers missed the point. Ticket taker Julia Postal quoted
Burroughs as saying "Well, I saw him coming out.", presumably when Oswald
bought the popcorn. Burroughs was never asked by the Warren Commission if
he saw Oswald prior to the police hunt.

Burroughs didn't have much to offer the Warren Commission - it would be
good to find out how he was prepared before his questioning - although he
did hear from the shoe store owner down the street that someone had
slipped into the theater without paying. This "someone" may have done it
precisely to draw attention to Oswald. Burroughs didn't know who it was,
but believed that anyone who did that had gone straight up the stairs to
the balcony because otherwise he would have had the right angle to see who
it was. Oswald was arrested on the ground floor. He told the Warren
Commission, "I hope I helped you some", and the response was merely, "Yes,
I hope you did too."

Burroughs also told Marrs that Julia Postal knew that she sold Oswald a
ticket earlier that day, but didn't want to admit it. She moved away from
Dallas to escape questioning on the subject. When Ms. Postal was asked by
researcher Jones Harris if she realized upon seeing Oswald's face that she
might have sold him a ticket, she burst out in tears.

Burroughs also saw someone who looked a lot like Oswald arrested about
four minutes after he was. This Oswald look-alike was taken out through
the rear of the theater, rather than the front. Bernard Haire, who ran his
business Bernie's Hobby House two doors away from the theater, thought he
had seen Oswald taken away through the rear doors for more than
twenty-five years. When he learned that he had seen someone else, he was
absolutely stunned.

Burroughs' story was corroborated by eighteen-year-old Jack Davis, never
questioned by the Warren Commission, who remembered at 1:15 seeing Oswald
squeeze in right next to him at the mostly deserted theater during the
opening credits to the movie, then got up quickly and sat down next to
someone else. Researcher Dale Myers states that the opening credits for
the 1 pm movie ran at 1:20 pm.[ 12 ] The account from neighboring shoe
store owner Johnny Brewer was that someone furtively entered the theater
without paying at about 1:30 pm. That may have been when someone else
entered, or it may have been Oswald after going outside to look for his
contact. When Brewer saw the suspicious man enter the theater, he
contacted the ticket-taker, and she called the police.

Davis stated that Oswald sat next to him and then another patron before
going out to the lobby. According to author Lamar Waldron, Oswald was
armed with half a box top saying "Cox's, Fort Worth". If Waldron is
correct, Oswald was apparently trying to meet someone who had the other
box top half.[ 13] Manuel Artime did this kind of thing - his practice was
to meet AMWORLD officers with torn one dollar bills.

Tippit made an unsuccessful attempt to call the dispatcher at 1:08, right
before he stopped his car to question a young man on foot. Domingo
Benavides, a key witness, was driving his car when he saw Tippit step out
of his police car and reach for his gun as he walked towards the front of
the car. When the young man saw Tippit draw, he pulled out his gun from
his coat pocket and fired several shots at Tippit. The time of the
shooting is estimated at 1:09.[ 14 ]

Another witness, Jack Tatum, reported that the gunman then stepped forward
and administered a coup de grace to Tippit's head. The Tippit autopsy
report reflected a shot to the head from point-blank range. The HSCA
believed that a coup de grace indicated that "this action, which is often
encountered in gangland murders...is more indicative of an execution than
an act of defense intended to allow escape or prevent apprehension."
Oswald was hardly a professional hitman, and this evidence is
extraordinarily important.

One unknown man described Tippit's shooter as "5 foot 10, 160-170 pounds"

Another unknown man told Officer Gerald
Hill at the Tippit crime scene that the man
who shot the policeman was a white male
about 5 foot 10 inches, weighing 160
to 170 pounds.

As soon as Officer Gerald Hill came on the scene, he was approached by an
unknown witness. Hill said "the first man that came up to me, he said 'The
man who shot him was a white male about 5 foot 10 inches, weighing 160 to
170 pounds, had on a jacket and a pair of trousers, and brown bushy hair."
Hill never got the man's name, turned him over to another officer, and no
one knows his identity.

Patrolman Howell W. Summers called in a description from witness Ted
Callaway of a "white male, twenty-seven, five feet eleven, a hundred
sixty-five, black wavy hair, fair complected, wearing a light grey
Eisenhower-type jacket, dark trousers and a white shirt...(with) a 32
dark-finish automatic pistol." Oswald owned a 38 caliber revolver, not a
32 automatic.

Joseph McBride is the author of the new book Into the Nightmare, focusing
on the Tippit case. A key aspect of the case is Detective Jim Leavelle's
admission that cartridge shells supposedly found at the crime scene were
never actually marked on the scene by the Dallas police. McBride points
out that "given that the HSCA relied solely on the shells to make its case
that Oswald shot Tippit, Leavelle's admissions that the shells were not
marked at the scene help nullify that homicide case against Oswald."[ 15 ]

One aspect of the Tippit case has fascinated me since it was revealed by
FBI agent Jim Hosty in 1996. Hosty revealed that FBI agent Robert Barrett
said that a wallet containing identification for Oswald and his purported
alias Alek James Hidell was left at the scene of Tippit's shooting and
found by police captain W. R. Westbrook near a puddle of blood.

The rifle found on the sixth floor was ordered
by A. Hidell, with Oswald's post office box as
the return address. The Warren Commission
was told by postal inspector Harry Holmes
that anyone who had access to Oswald's PO
box could have picked up the rifle without
even showing identification.

The two sets of identification for Oswald and Hidell being found in one
wallet was particularly damaging to Oswald, as Oswald denied during the
afternoon of November 22 that he was the owner of the rifle. It was
worldwide news by 11/23/63 that the rifle that was left at the scene was
purchased by mail order with a postal money order used by "A. Hidell" and
listing Oswald's PO Box as the place for pick-up. It did not make the news
that this postal money order had no stamp indicating that it was ever used
or ever deposited. [ 16 ] Nor did it make the news that postal inspector
Harry Holmes admitted that anyone who had access to Oswald's PO box could
have picked up the rifle without even showing identification. Nor did it
make the news that post offices were required by law to retain "delivery
receipts for firearms" for four years, something not done in this case. A.
J. Hidell was all over Oswald's phony FPCC literature as the fictional
chairman of his fictional New Orleans branch. Oswald and Hidell were now
tied together by the rifle and the wallet.

A second unknown man said the suspect handed something to Tippit through
the open passenger window

FBI agent Barrett claims to this day that an unknown witness told him that
Tippit pulled over and the gunman handed something through the open
passenger window to Tippit inside the car. Barrett believes that Tippit
saw the two IDs for Oswald and Hidell, got out of the car to question
Oswald, and was shot. Barrett admits that he doesn't know who the witness
was, and can't verify it, but the wallet was "there".

Who would hand their entire wallet to a police officer when asked for
identification when not under arrest? Nor would any police officer make
such a request - no officer wants to be responsible for its contents
unless necessary. No one else recalls Barrett's version about the wallet.
Ted Callaway and other citizen witnesses responded to the scene and called
in the shooting by using Tippit's radio. None of the witnesses saw a
wallet on the ground. Ted Callaway said "There was no billfold on the
scene. If there was, there would have been too many people who would have
seen it." It looks like someone planted a wallet with Oswald's
identification on the ground at the scene, framing him with a throw-down
wallet much as others have been framed with a throw-down gun.

A third unknown man handed Oswald's wallet to the police at the crime
scene

An unknown man provided Oswald's
wallet to Officer Kenneth Croy at the
crime scene where Officer Tippit was shot.
The wallet contained ID for both Lee
Oswald and Alek J. Hidell. The finding of
this wallet was hidden until 1996.

I say that because since Hosty's revelation in 1996, we have learned quite
a bit more, thanks to researcher Jones Harris. When Sergeant Kenneth H.
Croy arrived as one of the first officers on the scene, an unknown man
handed him a wallet. Croy handed the wallet to Sergeant Calvin Owens.[ 17
] Owens apparently gave it to Westbrook, who displayed it to Barrett.
After the wallet was videotaped, it went back to Westbrook's custody, and
Hosty tells us that it was never seen again. Westbrook and Barrett were in
charge of the scene at the Texas Theater when Oswald was arrested. When
Oswald refused to provide his name, Westbrook ordered, "Get him out of
here."

The history of Oswald's wallets can only be described with three words:
Smoke and mirrors. Only after the release of the Warren Report did the FBI
evidence inventory show three wallets for Oswald: B-1 (the arrest wallet),
114 (brown billfold) and 382 (red billfold). No wallets were found at his
rooming house. No wallets are listed as recovered from the two searches of
11/22 and 11/23 at his wife's residence. Two wallets were supposedly
recovered at his wife's home, but they are not listed in the search
warrant affidavits and I can't find any explanation for how they entered
the official Dallas inventory.

The "arrest wallet" appeared on videotape at the Tippit crime scene; we
have discussed how no one knows how it appeared on the scene. This arrest
wallet of Oswald's was supposedly removed from his pocket by Officer Paul
Bentley following his arrest and while on the way to City Hall, Bentley
said that he reviewed the contents and saw the identification for Oswald
and Hidell. Since Bentley's recent death, FBI agent Robert Barrett now
says that Bentley was lying.

On November 2013, the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination, an ABC
news story discussed the discovery of retired FBI analyst Farris Rookstool
that the videotape footage of the wallet matched the Oswald wallet that
was entered into evidence. The videotape portrays circular snaps, metal
strips, and a zipper over the cash compartment, just like the wallet in
evidence. Barrett, who is still alive, attacks Bentley's identification
for the first time in this November 2013 news story, saying: "They said
they took the wallet out of his pocket in the car? That's so much hogwash.
That wallet was in (Captain) Westbrook's hand." Why did Barrett wait fifty
years to accuse Bentley of lying and obstruction of justice? Probably
because Bentley had been Dallas' chief polygraph examiner during 1963, and
it was dangerous for Barrett to challenge Bentley while he was still
alive.

Bentley is the same officer who claimed that Oswald pulled his revolver
out as they were trying to arrest him. Bentley also said that "I got ahold
of his right arm, we got a thumb or something in between the firing pins
that it mashed the firing, it just snapped slightly and kept it from going
off...(the bullet) had been hit with the firing pin but not enough to go
off." An FBI firearms expert later told the Warren Commission that "we
found nothing to indicate that this weapon's firing pin had struck the
primer of any of these cartridges." While several cops were subduing their
prisoner, Oswald continually shouted, "I am not resisting arrest! I am not
resisting arrest!" The shoe salesman Johnny Brewer heard a policeman
shout, "Kill the President, will you?" Oswald was lucky to survive that
day. But he did. His survival illustrates how the whole assassination
operation was in danger of falling apart. That was not part of the plan.

The ABC story concludes, "Rookstool says the testimony of Barrett and
Croy, Tippit's billfold, and the WFAA film prove that Oswald's wallet was
at the scene of the policeman's murder."

I agree. The best evidence indicates that an unknown citizen brought the
wallet to the murder scene, based on Officer Croy's interview with Jones
Harris.

JOHNNIE WITHERSPOON

 

 

 

 

 

 

OSWALD-TIPPIT ASSOCIATES
Staff Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations
U.S. House of Representatives
Ninety-fifth Congress Second Session
March 1979

CONTENTS

o Foreword .. 1

o I. Approach .. 2

o II. Marie Tippit Thomas ..7

o III. Murray James Jackson .. 8

o IV. William Anglin .. 9

o V. Morris Brumley .. 10

o VI. Basil Robinson .. 11

o VII. Calvin Owens .. 12

o VIII. Mrs. Johnnie Maxie Witherspoon .. 13

o IX. Mary Ada Dowling .. 14

o X. The Wise allegation .. 15

o XI. Austin's barbecue ..39

FOREWORD

1. Even though the warren Commission indicated that no credible evidence was found proving that Lee Harvey Oswald and Dallas Police Officer J.D. Tippit knew one another prior to the assassination, speculation has continued over the years about the circumstances of Tippit's murder on the afternoon of November 22, 1963. This speculation has grown because of the circumstances surrounding Tippit's death: Questions have persisted about why Oswald would have been in that neighborhood, including, had Tippit received enough information on the suspected assassin of President Kennedy to have been able to identify Oswald as the possible suspect, and was there anything suspicious about Tippit's location in that part of Dallas after the assassination, when other police officers had been ordered to the Dealey Plaza area or Parkland Hospital immediately after the assassination?

I. APPROACH

2. Because there was little direct evidence to answer any of these questions, the committee concluded that the most effective way to learn if Oswald and Tippit knew one another world be to investigate the associates of the two men. Over the years, rumors have persisted that Oswald and Tippit were seen together at various public places. No effective way to investigate or verify those claims exists because of the passage of time and the general unreliability of such identifications.

3. On the other hand, the committee concluded that if the two men had any associates in common, the fact of that association could be more easily discerned and might shed light on the nature of the relationship, if any,between the two.

4. The committee undertook to compile the names of the associates and relatives of Lee Harvey Oswald and J.D. Tippit. Each associate interviewed was asked for the names of other persons each man was known to have associated with closely. Special attention was paid to the possibility of "overlaps" on the two lists, that is, persons who appeared to be associates of both men. After the lists were compiled, the committee requested data on each associate from the following Government agencies: Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Secret Service and, where appropriate, Departments of Defense and State.

5. On the basis of the initial investigation of the associates of each man and the review of the Agency files, further investigation was conducted where warranted either to clarify a relationship or probe a possible association.

6. No relative or associate of J.D. Tippit had been called to testify before the Warren Commission about Tippit's associations or activities. Despite the fact that confusion existed even at the time of the Warren Commission about the transcriptions of the Dallas Police Department radio despatches that contained information about Tippit's location and activities on the afternoon of November 22, 1963, none of the police officers with whom Tippit worked were called to testify about the details of his assignment if Oak Cliff.(1) The committee interviewed nine persons who were reported to have had close personal and working relationships with Tippit.

II. MARIE TIPPIT THOMAS

7. Tippit's widow, Marie Tippit Thomas reported in an interview to the FBI in May 1964 that her husband's only associates were fellow police officers.(2) She stated that her social life with him involved the families and wives of many of those same officers.(3) Mrs. Thomas was interviewed by the committee on October 12, 1977.(4) At that time, she could provide no new information about Tippit's associates. She did mention that Tippit's closest friend had been Bill Anglin, another Dallas police officer who lived a few houses away on Glencairn Street in Dallas.(5) She further stated that his other close friends were Charlie Harrison, Bud Owens, and Richard Stovall. Mrs. Thomas also repeated her earlier information that Tippit had been employed at the time of the assassination part-time at Austin's Barbecue in Dallas.(6) Tippit worked as a security guard at the restaurant on Friday and Saturday nights from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m.(7)

III. MURRAY JAMES JACKSON

8. The committee interviewed members of the Dallas Police Force who were purported to have been personal associates of J.D. Tippit. The first of these was Murray James Jackson. Jackson was working the dispatch system on the Dallas police radio when Tippit was killed.(8) Jackson reported to the committee that he had worked with and come to know J.D. Tippit very well over a 20-year period.(9) He stated that they "socialized when off duty".(10) Officer Jackson is the officer who was responsible for having sent Tippit into the Oak Cliff area according to the transmissions from the dispatches.(11)

IV. WILLIAM ANGLIN

9. The committee also contacted William Anglin. Anglin indicated that he socialized with J.D. Tippit.(12) He said in the interview that "he and J.D. had coffee or tea at 'the Old Drive-In'" about 11:30-11:45 on the morning of November 22.(13)

V. MORRIS BRUMLEY

10. Another of Tippit's associates who was spoken to was Morris Brumley. Brumley had known Tippit since 1934 when they attended school in Fullbright, Tex.(14) Brumley indicated that he had no information concerning the outside interests, associates, or attitudes of J.D. Tippit.(15) Brumley described Tippit as a good family man and conscientious in his work but not very sharp.(16) Brumley stated that Basil Robinson, another Dallas police officer assigned to the Oak Cliff section was also a good friend of Tippit's.(17)

VI. BASIL ROBINSON

11. Basil Robinson was another member of the Dallas Police Department who had a rather long association with J.D. Tippit. Tippit's acquaintance with Robinson dated back to the Tippit stay at Bogata, Tex.(18) When interviewed by the FBI, Robinson indicated that he had been a "close personal friend" of Tippit and his family.(19) He said that Tippit had few outside interests because he was working all the time.(20)

VII. CALVIN OWENS

12. Sergeant Calvin Owens was Tippit's immediate supervisor at the Dallas Police Department.(21) When questioned by the FBI, Owens indicated that Tippit was strictly a family man. He also said that he knew of no associates of Tippit's except members of the police force.(22)

VIII. MRS. JOHNNIE MAXIE WITHERSPOON

13. Committee investigators also interviewed Mrs. Johnnie Maxie Witherspoon.(23) Mrs. Witherspoon stated that she became acquainted with Officer Tippit during his employment at Austin's Barbecue.(24) Mrs. Witherspoon informed the committee that she and Tippet engaged in a relationship and started dating for a couple of years.(25) She said that the relationship ended in the summer of 1963 when her husband returned home.(26) She also indicated that Bill Anglin was an associate of J.D. Tippit's.(27)

IX. MARY ADA DOWLING

14. One other person who was interviewed about Tippit was Mary Ada Dowling, a waitress for the Dobbs House Restaurant on North Beckley Street. She indicated to the FBI that Tippit had a habit of coming into the Dobbs House each morning.(28) She also indicated that on one occasion when Tippit was in the restaurant, Lee Harvey Oswald came in to be served.(29) She did not know if they knew each other.(30)

| View Article | Forward Article | Supersede Article | Cancel Article | Rot-13 |
| Display Options | NewsReader.com |