Warren Commission Version

In Chapter 4 of their report, the Warren Commission summarized their investigation with respect to the murder of J.D. Tippit, and Oswald's arrest at the Texas Theatre, eight blocks away.  In Oswald's Movements After Leaving Depository Building, the WC concluded that Oswald left the TSBD at 12:33pm, walked east seven blocks, and got on a bus which was heading toward his rooming house in the Oak Cliff neighborhood (see map above).  The bus was heading back toward Dealey Plaza and became bogged down in traffic, so after two blocks Oswald asked for a bus transfer and got off the bus and got into a cab.  In the interrogation reports, Oswald initially said he took a bus to Oak Cliff but then admitted that he also took a cab, saying it was the first time he had ever taken a cab.  The notoriously frugal Oswald asked for the cab to stop about five blocks away from his rooming house when the fare was 95 cents, and he gave the cabbie a dollar bill.

The Warren Commission discounted Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig's report of seeing a man identical to Oswald run down from the TSBD and enter a Nash Rambler station wagon at 12:40pm on the basis that other people had seen Oswald on a bus.

The housekeeper at Oswald's rooming house, Earlene Roberts said that Oswald came in around 1pm, walking quickly and went to his room for three or four minutes.  While he was in his room a Dallas Police car #207 with two uniformed policemen stopped in front of her house,  honked the horn and then drove slowly off.  Oswald came out of his room, zipping up a dark colored jacket, and left.  She last saw him standing out in front at the bus stop.  She also reported that within 30 minutes, three Dallas policemen and two FBI agents came, looking for Oswald.   In the interrogation reports of FBI Agent Brookhout and Secret Service Inspector Thomas Kelley, they both report that Oswald said he went home, changed his trousers and shirt and put the shirt in a drawer with his dirty clothes.  Oswald described the shirt as having a button down collar and of a reddish color.  The shirt below left fits that description, in a color photo from the National Archives, obtained by Pat Speer.  Mary Bledsoe, a former landlady of Oswald's  was a passenger on the bus that Oswald briefly got on and was essential to the Warren Commission's placement of him on that bus.  The Warren Report (p159) has her saying "His shirt was undone.  Was a hole in it, hole, and he was dirty, and I didn't look at him.  I didn't want to know I even seen him ....  Hole in his sleeve right here."  The Warren Report continues: As Mrs. Bledsoe said these words, she pointed to her right elbow.  When Oswald was arrested in the Texas Theatre, he was wearing a brown sport shirt with a hole in the right sleeve at the elbow.  However, if Oswald had changed, then he had been wearing a reddish shirt on the bus without a hole in the sleeve, and that would call into question Bledsoe's testimony.  It would also call into question the finding of some fibers on the Mannlicher Carcano rifle which was found in the TSBD.  These fibers matched the shirt Oswald was wearing when arrested, not the shirt he claimed he wore to work.  Pat Speer noticed that there were no holes in Oswald's arrest shirt over the assassination weekend although there is a hole in the shirt today which he thinks was made by the FBI to fit with Bledsoe's testimony.

Arrest at Texas Theatre

The trail went cold for about twenty minutes until Johnny Calvin Brewer, manager of Hardy's Shoestore noticed a man by the front entrance of his store.  "He just looked funny to me ...  His hair was sort of messed up and looked like he had been running, and he looked scared, and he looked funny."  As the man walked away down the street, Brewer left his store and followed him and saw him walk toward the Texas Theatre, a movie house about two blocks away.  Brewer went over to the ticket taker of the movie house, Mrs. Julia Postal who was standing on the sidewalk watching police cars on Jefferson Avenue.  He asked her "whether that fellow that had ducked in had bought a ticket" and she replied "No, by golly, he didn't."  Brewer told Postal to call the police about the suspicious man and went inside to search for him.  In a 1996 interview, Brewer acknowledged the incongruity of launching a search based upon seeing a funny looking man, "I still had no reason to have somebody call the police.  I'm not sure what I'm doing here to start with."   Author Leo Sauvage asked Dallas Assistant District Attorney Jim Bowie whether a telephone call had led to Oswald's arrest. Bowie told him there had been a call from the cashier, but also that there were "Half a dozen calls."

The Warren Report says, (p178) Patrol cars bearing at least 15 officers converged on the Texas Theatre.  Patrolman M. N. McDonald, with Patrolmen R. Hawkins, T. A. Hutson, and C. T. Walker, entered the theatre from the rear. Other policemen entered the front door and searched the balcony. Detective Paul L. Bentley rushed to the balcony and told the projectionist to turn up the house lights. Brewer met McDonald and the other policemen at the alley exit door, stepped out onto the stage with them  and pointed out the man who had come into the theatre without paying.  The man was Oswald. He was sitting alone in the rear of the main floor of the theatre near the right center aisle. About six or seven people were seated on the theatre's main floor and an equal number in the balcony.

McDonald first searched two men in the center of the main floor, about 10 rows from the front. He walked out of the row up the right center aisle. When he reached the row where the suspect was sitting, McDonald stopped abruptly and told the man to get on his feet.  Oswald rose from his seat, bringing up both hands. As McDonald started to search Oswald's waist for a gun, he heard him say, "Well, it's all over now."  Oswald then struck McDonald between the eyes with his left fist; with his right hand he drew a gun from his waist. McDonald struck back with his right hand and grabbed the gun with his left hand. They both fell into the seats. Three other officers, moving toward the scuffle, grabbed Oswald from the front, rear and side. As McDonald fell into the seat with his left hand on the gun, he felt something graze across his hand and heard what sounded like the snap of the hammer. McDonald felt the pistol scratch his cheek as he wrenched it away from Oswald. Detective Bob K. Carroll, who was standing beside McDonald, seized the gum from him.

The other officers who helped subdue Oswald corroborated McDonald in his testimony except that they did not hear Oswald say, "It's all over now." Deputy Sheriff Eddy R. Walthers recalled such a remark but he did not reach the scene of the struggle until Oswald had been knocked to the floor by McDonald and the others. Some of the officers saw Oswald strike McDonald with his fist. Most of them heard a click which they assumed to be a click of the hammer of the revolver. Testimony of a firearms expert before the Commission established that the hammer of the revolver never touched the shell in the chamber. Although the witnesses did not hear the sound of a misfire, they might have heard a snapping noise resulting from the police officer grabbing the cylinder of the revolver and pulling it away from Oswald while he was attempting to pull the trigger.

Detective Taylor noted in his report that he, Lt. Cunningham, and J.B. Toney remained at the theater following the arrest "and took the names and addresses of the occupants of the theater."  That witness list disappeared and was never published.

The Critics' Response

As you should expect by now, despite the strong case outlined above, the critics dispute almost all evidence of Oswald's guilt in the Tippit murder.  We'll look at evidence which suggests that someone else shot Tippit, the Dallas Police manipulated the ballistics to link Oswald's gun with the Tippit murder and perhaps some DPD officers were involved in a pre-assassination plot to frame Oswald for the Tippit murder.

Timing of Tippit's murder

The biggest problem with the story of Oswald shooting Tippit is getting Oswald from his rooming house a little after 1pm to the scene of Tippit's shooting.  As we saw above, the Warren Report fixed the time of Tippit's shooting at 1:15pm; the distance between 1024 North Beckley and 410 Tenth Ave is 9/10 of a mile.  It can be walked at a brisk pace in 10 minutes.  However, it is likely that Tippit was shot and killed around 1:06-1:09pm.  Here is some supporting evidence:

Tippit's death was recorded at 1:15pm.  The ambulance was summoned from 400 yards away and arrived within about a minute of being called, so a time of 5-6 minutes seems reasonable for the Police to be called, the ambulance summoned, pick up Tippit and transport him to Methodist Hospital where he was declared dead on arrival.

The prosecution's star witness, Helen Markham timed the shooting to 1:06pm.  She had left her house "a little after 1pm" and walked two minutes to the corner of E. 10th and Patton St, on her way to her regularly scheduled 1:15 bus.

T.F. Bowley was driving down 10th Street and came upon the scene a few minutes after Tippit had been shot.  He looked at his watch which said 1:10pm.  He tried to help the officer, then helped a man with the police radio in the car to notify authorities.  That call was officially recorded at 1:16pm on the Dallas Police Tapes.

The calls on the Dallas Police radio were transcribed several times:

• Secret Service Transcription of 12/4/1963 CD 290

• FBI Transcript 3/6/1964 CE 705

• Department of Justice Transcript CE 1974

Each transcription is different.  John Washburn listened to the tape recordings and found evidence that the timing on the tapes had been tapered with.  The dispatcher typically called out the time every minute, but in the 19 minute period from 12:56pm to 1:14pm, 14 of the time stamps are missing, and in some cases after 1:14 the same time stamp appears twice after a long period of time. Washburn concludes that the tapes were tampered with to place Bowley's call at 1:16pm, when it really happened five to ten minutes earlier.

Ballistics

Tippit's killer shot him three times in the chest as Tippit was walking to the front of his car, and then walked over and shot him once point blank in the head.  After that he walked toward Patton Ave, cutting through a yard on the corner lot.  Along the way he opened his gun and threw away four spent shells, one at a time.  William Scoggins, a taxi driver who was eating his lunch parked at the corner, heard the gunman mutter either "poor damn cop" or "poor dumb cop" as he walked past.  As witnesses rushed to the scene, they found four spent cartridge casings.  Domingo Benavides found two empty shells in the bushes and gave them to Patrolman J.M. Poe who arrived shortly after the shooting, and Barbara Jeanette Davis and her sister Virginia Davis each found one empty shell casing on the ground near their house.  Patrolman Poe marked two of the shells with his initials, but in his Warren Commission testimony he admitted he didn't see his marks; he either didn't mark them or they had been switched.

Another issue with the bullets is that four bullets were recovered from Tippit's body: three were copper coated manufactured by the Winchester Western company, and a fourth was lead made by Remington-Peters company.  But of the four empty cartridge shells recovered, two were Winchester Western and two were Remington Peters.  The cartridges were not entered into evidence lists and only one bullet was sent to the FBI lab.  The DPD informed the FBI that had been the only bullet recovered.  When the FBI read Tippit's autopsy report, they demanded the other bullets and empty cartridges be sent.  The bullets couldn't be matched to Oswald's pistol because of the caliber of the bullets, but the FBI was able to match the cartridges to the gun "to the exclusion of all other weapons."  Critics charge that the cartridges submitted to the FBI could have been fired from Oswald's gun after he was in custody, or the gun in custody could have been one that was not Oswald's but was used by the killer.

There are some problems with the story of Oswald's wallet found at the Tippit murder scene.  If Oswald's wallet had really been found at the Tippit murder scene, wouldn't the DPD have trumpeted that as proof that Oswald was the killer?  Also Dale Myer has shown that the WFAA footage shows a similar, but slightly different wallet from the Oswald wallet in the National Archives.  An alternative view is the wallet at the Tippit scene belonged to someone else entirely, perhaps a man who took Tippit's gun and commandeered a cab in a futile search to find the killer.  A third interpretation is that it was a wallet prepared by rogue elements in the DPD to implicate Oswald if he hadn't been caught in the Theatre, but it was decided not to use it after Oswald was successfully caught in the Texas Theatre and his real wallet was pulled out of his pocket on the way to the police station.

Did a group of officers have foreknowledge of Oswald?

Author Joseph McBride spoke to J.D. Tippit's father for his book.  Tippit’s father told McBride he had been informed by Marie Tippit, the officer’s widow, that J. D. and another officer had been assigned by the police to hunt down Oswald in Oak Cliff. According to Edgar Lee Tippit, “They called J. D. and another policeman and said he [Oswald] was headed in that direction. The other policeman told Marie.”

McBride, Joseph. Into the Nightmare: My Search for the Killers of President John F. Kennedy and Officer J. D. Tippit (p. 426). (Function). Kindle Edition. 

Washburn thinks the other officer was William Mentzel and offers a timeline of when they may have rendezvoued prior to Tippit's killing.

There was a report that Tippit had seen Oswald, or an Oswald look alike a few days prior at the Dobb's House restaurant.  Washburn says:

November 20, 1963 — The real Lee Oswald was known to be a regular “coffee customer” at the Dobbs House Restaurant just a short walk from his rooming house. Lee would read a book while drinking his coffee. However, at 10 a.m. on the Wednesday before the assassination, and while the real Lee was working at the book depository, a man came in and ordered eggs. He soon began cursing at the waitress, and complaining loudly that his eggs were runny. Officer J.D. Tippit was said to have been in the restaurant at this time. The owner and several employees identified the unruly individual as Lee Harvey Oswald.

Texas Theatre ticket taker, Julia Postal reported to the FBI that "the officers arresting OSWALD had identified him, OSWALD, to her by calling his name."  According to the official story, they removed Oswald's wallet and ID from him after the arrest, in a police car on the way to the police station.  The officers also remarked, "We have our man on both the counts."  She asked what he meant and he said "Officer Tippit as well."  Since Oswald wasn't a great match for either of the suspect descriptions, it seems quite a stretch at that point to accuse him of anything other than sneaking into a movie theater without paying.  But that didn't stop the DPD from saying on his arrest report at 1:40pm, 70 minutes after the assassination, "This man shot and killed President John F. Kennedy and Police Officer J.D. Tippit. He also shot and wounded Govenor John Connally"

According to the official story, authorities did not know the address of Oswald's rooming house on 1024 N. Beckley St, until after they visited with Oswald's wife, Marina and Ruth Paine in Irvine, TX after 3pm and did a reverse lookup on the phone number for N. Beckley St.  However, the housekeeper at the rooming house, Earlene Roberts and the owner, A.C. Johnson, claim the police and FBI showed up very quickly, by 1:30pm or 2pm, after they had found Oswald's Beckley address in Oswald's pocket.  That's not the official story, but maybe fits with the throw down wallet at the Tippit killing.

Another anomaly was that the bus that Oswald had briefly been on was boarded shortly after Oswald got off by DPD officers who asked each passenger if they were carrying a firearm.  This was the only bus known to have been searched following the assassination, and the incident suggests that Oswald was known to some members of the DPD who were actively looking for him immediately after the assassination.

Finally, Patrolman Potts was dispatched to search 1024 N. Beckley at 2:40pm by Captain Will Fritz.  Fritz testified "When I started to talk to this prisoner or maybe just before I started to talk to him, some officer told me outside of my office that he had a room on Beckley, I don't know who that officer was."  The hidden knowledge about Oswald is suspicious and similar to the fingering of Oswald for no good reason by his employer Roy Truly.

Former District Attorney Henry Wade was interviewed by author Joseph McBride: "During my interview with former District Attorney Henry Wade, I probed to find out when he and other officials actually learned of Oswald’s identity. Wade told me he didn’t hear Oswald’s name until about 3 p.m. that day, but he said cryptically, 'Somebody reported to me that the police already knew who he was, and they were looking for him.'"

McBride, Joseph. Into the Nightmare: My Search for the Killers of President John F. Kennedy and Officer J. D. Tippit (p. 437). (Function). Kindle Edition. 

Stranger than Fiction.  What Evidence Supports That?

There is evidence that there were two arrests in the Texas Theatre.  Jim Douglass, author of JFK and the Unspeakable, says:

Butch Burroughs, who witnessed Oswald’s arrest, startled me in his interview by saying he saw a second arrest occur in the Texas Theater only “three or four minutes later.”[444] He said the Dallas Police then arrested “an Oswald lookalike.” Burroughs said the second man “looked almost like Oswald, like he was his brother or something.”[445] When I questioned the comparison by asking, “Could you see the second man as well as you could see Oswald?” he said, “Yes, I could see both of them. They looked alike.”[446] After the officers half-carried and half-dragged Oswald to the police car in front of the theater, within a space of three or four minutes, Burroughs saw the second Oswald placed under arrest and handcuffed. The Oswald look-alike, however, was taken by police not out the front but out the back of the theater.[447]

What happened next we can learn from another neglected witness, Bernard Haire.[448]

Bernard J. Haire was the owner of Bernie’s Hobby House, just two doors east of the Texas Theater. Haire went outside his store when he saw police cars congregating in front of the theater.[449] When he couldn’t see what was happening because of the crowd, he went back through his store into the alley out back. It, too, was full of police cars, but there were fewer spectators. Haire walked up the alley. When he stopped opposite the rear door of the theater, he witnessed what he would think for decades was the arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald.

“Police brought a young white man out,” Haire told an interviewer. “The man was dressed in a pullover shirt and slacks. He seemed to be flushed, as if he’d been in a struggle. Police put the man in a police car and drove off.”[450]

When Haire was told in 1987 that Lee Harvey Oswald had been brought out the front of the theater by police, he was shocked.

“I don’t know who I saw arrested,” he said in bewilderment.

While Johnny Brewer took the credit for tracking Oswald into the Theatre, Tommy Rowe, who worked for Johnny Brewer reportedly told relatives that he was the one who fingered Oswald. And Rowe was reportedly close friends with Jack Ruby and moved into Ruby’s apartment after his arrest.