26

Oswald Could Not Have Murdered Officer Tippit

In the exact same way that Oswald could not have shot President Kennedy, it has also been shown that he could not have shot Officer J. D. Tippit. He did not possess motive, means, or the opportunity. And if you can prove to a jury that you were not even present when a crime was committed, then that jury would find you not guilty of that crime. About forty minutes after President Kennedy was assassinated in Dealey Plaza, Dallas Police Officer J. D. Tippit was shot and killed by an unknown suspect in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas, a few miles away from Dealey Plaza. The official government version states that it was Lee Harvey Oswald who committed that crime, after which he sought shelter from police in a nearby movie theater and was arrested by an army of Dallas police officers shortly thereafter. To which I say, Bullshit!

Let’s start with the official government version:

Dallas Police Officer J. D. Tippit saw a man who fit the description of the man wanted for President Kennedy’s murder and attempted to arrest him, but the man—Lee Harvey Oswald—drew a weapon and gunned down Officer Tippit. As I believe I may have already emphatically stated, Bullshit!

In the [Warren] commission’s account, J. D. Tippit, who was a “fine, dedicated officer,” was driving his patrol car when he saw a man who fit the general description of the suspect wanted in the murder of President Kennedy. This “fine, dedicated officer,” who had the chance to make the arrest of a lifetime, did not try to arrest this dangerous suspect, nor did he draw his gun [according to the wanted description broadcast over the police radio, the suspect was carrying a 30.06 rifle]. Instead, he called the man over to his car and began having a casual conversation.²⁷⁹

Would you like to know the actual police description that really went over the radio right before Tippit was killed? Here it is, verbatim:

Attention, all squads, the suspect is believed to be a white male, age 30, 5 feet 10 inches, slender build, 165 pounds, armed with what is thought to be a 30-30 rifle. No further description or information at this time.

Thus the broadcast description was for a suspect that was neither short nor tall, a man that was neither large nor small, and neither young nor old. It was a description for the average white guy, while Oswald, a slight young man at 24 years of age and only 131 pounds, was not a good fit for the description.²⁸⁰

So that didn’t really fit Oswald’s description even though it did fit the description of thousands of other men in Dallas; not to even mention the huge point that Oswald obviously was not carrying a rifle! So how the hell could that explain stopping Oswald?

Then there’s the bizarre fact of what actually happened when Tippit pulled this pedestrian, whoever he was, over by the sidewalk after the officer curbed his car. Tippit didn’t even get out of his police car, let alone draw his weapon or tell this guy to “assume the position.” He just talked to him through the passenger side of the police car. According to several eyewitnesses, they were conversing “amiably”; it was a friendly conversation. That’s why all the witnesses were surprised when Tippit got shot by the guy. Because it hadn’t seemed like anything sinister at all. But that proves that Tippit didn’t think that guy was the killer, or else he obviously would’ve acted very differently. Everybody thought Tippit even knew the guy. And maybe he did.

First of all, it’s a simple matter of timing. The official scenario is not logistically plausible. Oswald’s exact whereabouts are clearly established at an exact time.

Oswald’s whereabouts at 1:04 p.m. were pinpointed by his landlady, who looked out of the window and saw Oswald standing at the bus stop at that time.²⁸¹ At 1:06 p.m., only two minutes later, Officer Tippit, by some reports, had already been shot and lay dead on the ground. District Attorney Jim Garrison figured out that it wasn’t logistically possible. He put the time of the shooting at 1:06 p.m. Garrison knew that there wasn’t time for Oswald to have made it to that crime scene. Here’s the way that a District Attorney figured the math on that one:

First of all, given what was known about Oswald’s movements, it was highly improbable that he could have been physically present at the time of Tippit’s murder. According to several eyewitnesses at the scene, Tippit was shot anywhere from 1:06 p.m. to 1:10 p.m. Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig, who was at the Book Depository at the time, confirmed this. When he heard the report of Tippit’s death on the radio, he looked at his watch; it was 1:06 p.m.

And yet Oswald, it was generally acknowledged, had returned to his rooming house at around 1:00 p.m. He left quickly and Earline Roberts, the housekeeper, observed him standing by the northbound Beckley Avenue bus stop at 1:04. The area where Tippit was killed was in the opposite direction, a mile to the south. Using the broadest interpretation of the time element, even if Oswald had changed his mind about the bus and run southward, it was virtually impossible for him to have arrived at the scene before the shooting of the police officer.²⁸²

Case closed, to borrow the term. That’s a qualified District Attorney telling you that a suspect could not have even been at that crime scene!

So the Lone Nut Brigade was stuck and they apparently knew it. But try as they may:

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.²⁸³

So what did those wondrous protectors of justice known as the Warren Commission do about that point? I’ll tell you what they did: they moved the time. That’s right, Ladies and Gents, they just moved up the time of Tippit’s murder to make it late enough for Oswald to have made it there. I kid you not.

The Warren Commission officially placed the time of Tippit’s death at 1:16 p.m., solving the aforementioned timing problem that was apparent after it became known that Oswald was waiting at the bus stop at 1:04 p.m.²⁸⁴

Then there’s the problem with the eyewitnesses to the shooting. Big problem there, too. For openers, most of the eyewitnesses described the shooter as looking nothing at all like Lee Harvey Oswald.

Acquilla Clemons lived on the north side of Tenth Street in Dallas. On November 22, 1963, Clemons was sitting on the porch of her house when she saw Officer J. D. Tippit killed. Afterwards she claimed that there were two men involved in the attack on Tippit. She later testified that the gunman was a “short guy and kind of heavy” . . . The Dallas police warned her not to repeat this story to others or “she might get hurt.” Clemons was not called to give evidence to the Warren Commission.²⁸⁵

You’ll begin to notice a pattern in the witness testimony and in the way that testimony was “received” by law enforcement authorities in this case:

Domingo Benevides, a dark, slim auto mechanic, was a witness to the murder of Officer Tippit who testified that he “really got a good view” of the slayer. He was not asked to see the police lineup in which Oswald appeared. Although he later said the killer resembled newspaper pictures of Oswald, he described the man differently: “I remember the back of his head seemed like his hairline sort of went square instead of tapered off . . . it kind of went down and squared off and made his head look flat in back.” Domingo reports that he has been repeatedly threatened by police, and advised not to talk about what he saw.²⁸⁶

And here’s one more, just to make sure that you notice the pattern:

Warren Reynolds did not see the shooting but saw the gunman running from the scene of the crime. He claimed that the man was not Oswald. After he survived an attempt to kill him, he changed his mind and identified Oswald as the man he had seen.²⁸⁷

Well, doesn’t that speak highly of the legal system that was supposed to be investigating the assassination of the President and an officer of the Dallas Police Department? Instead of following the evidence, they manipulated it. And unfortunately, that’s a pattern we see throughout this case by the various “Powers that Be” who were involved.

Then there was also the problem with the guns. It was reported that Officer Tippit was shot with an automatic weapon, yet Oswald was carrying a revolver. That’s a huge difference.

Two witnesses at the scene of the shooting who were very familiar with firearms—a police Sergeant and a combat-experienced former Marine—said that the crime scene gun was an automatic.²⁸⁸

District Attorney Garrison was keenly aware of that important point as well:

As I continued my research, I discovered that beyond the eye-witnesses there was other evidence gathered and altered by the Dallas homicide unit showing that Lee Oswald had been framed in the Tippit murder. For instance, I read transcripts of the messages sent over the Dallas police radio shortly after the murder. These were recorded automatically on a log. Just minutes after a citizen first reported the murder on Tippit’s radio, Patrolman H. W. Summers in Dallas police unit number 221 [the designation for the squad car] reported that an “eyeball witness to the getaway man” had been located. The suspect was described as having black wavy hair, wearing an Eisenhower jacket of light color, with dark trousers and a white shirt. He was “apparently armed with a .32, dark finish, automatic pistol,” which he had in his right hand. Moments later, Sergeant G. Hill reported that “the shell at the scene indicates that the suspect is armed with an automatic .38 rather than a pistol.”²⁸⁹

It’s pretty clear that if the crime scene gun was an automatic, then Oswald could not have shot Tippit.

Garrison arrived at that same conclusion:

It seemed clear to me from this that the hand gun used to shoot Tippit was an automatic. But the gun allegedly taken from Lee Oswald when Dallas police later arrested him at the Texas Theatre was a revolver. Unless Oswald had stopped and changed guns, which no one had ever suggested, this fact alone put a severe hole in the government’s case.²⁹⁰

People said a lot of things about Oswald, but having had an automatic was never one of ’em.

Then, on top of all of that, as I already showed in #19, the whole movie theater scenario was utterly ridiculous. All Oswald was accused of at that particular time—by anyone on this planet—was going into a movie theater without having paid for the 60-cent ticket. That’s the only law he’d broken. No one accused him of anything else.

So, in summary, just a quick question here for you, dear reader. What would be the first thing you did after shooting the President of the United States? You’ve just shot the President . . . what now? You have a Coke and a smile, just like the TV ad, right? Wouldn’t your hands be trembling to the point that you couldn’t even get your hands in the frigging vending machine? You just killed the President and possibly the Governor, too! So you grab yourself a Coke and then—hey, why not, it’s still early—you head off to a matinee. Yeah, right—sure ya do. Oswald was not that type of cold-blooded assassin.

There are some things that still aren’t clear about the murder of Officer J. D. Tippit, but one of the things that is clear is that Oswald didn’t do it.

So, like I said, when it comes to the whole “Oswald shot a cop” business, one word sums it up real well, and now you know what that word is, so remember it when people tell you about Oswald and that cop: Bullshit!

²⁷⁹ Michael L. Kurtz, Crime of the Century: The Kennedy Assassination from a Historian’s Perspective (University of Tennessee Press: 1993).

²⁸⁰ Donald Byron Thomas, Hear No Evil: Social Constructivism and the Forensic Evidence in the Kennedy Assassination (Mary Ferrell Foundation Press: 2010) 493. maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=145592&relPageId=519

²⁸¹ Jim Garrison, On the Trail of the Assassins: My Investigation and Prosecution of the Murder of President Kennedy (Sheridan Square: 1988), cited at Lee Harvey Oswald’s “Murder” of Policeman JD Tippit: scribblguy.50megs.com/tippit.htm

²⁸² Ibid.

²⁸³ Marrs, Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy, cited at: spot.acorn.net/jfkplace/03/JDT/brundage.tippit

²⁸⁴ Belzer & Wayne, Hit List, 8.

²⁸⁵ John Simkin, “Acquilla Clemons: Biography,” Spartacus Educational, accessed 30 Sept 2012: spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKclemons.htm

²⁸⁶ David Welsh, “In the Shadow of Dallas: The Legacy of Penn Jones, Jr.,” Ramparts Magazine, November 1966, pp 39–50: unz.org/Pub/Ramparts-1966nov-00039

²⁸⁷ John Simkin, “Primary Sources: Murder of J. D. Tippit,” The Education Forum, accessed 3 May 2013: spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKStippet.htm

²⁸⁸ Michael T. Griffith, “Did Oswald Shoot Tippit?: A Review of Dale Myers’ Book With Malice: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Murder of Officer J.D. Tippit,” 2002: kenrahn.com/jfk/the_critics/griffith/With_Malice.html

²⁸⁹ Jim Garrison, On the Trail of the Assassins: My Investigation and Prosecution of the Murder of President Kennedy (Sheridan Square: 1988), cited at Lee Harvey Oswald’s “Murder” of Policeman JD Tippit: scribblguy.50megs.com/tippit.htm

²⁹⁰ Ibid.