The Bus Stop Farce

[Bill Chapman]

Only Mystery Guest #2 gave Markham pause (to put it mildly) in the lineup
And no guarantee that watches where all synched to GMT

[Martin Weidmann]

Only Mystery Guest #2 gave Markham pause (to put it mildly) in the lineup
And no guarantee that watches where all synched to GMT

Only Mystery Guest #2 gave Markham pause (to put it mildly) in the lineup

Mr. BALL. Was there a number two man in there?
Mrs. MARKHAM. Number two is the one I picked.
Mr. BALL. Well, I thought you just told me that you hadn't--
Mrs. MARKHAM. I thought you wanted me to describe their clothing.
Mr. BALL. No. I wanted to know if that day when you were in there if you saw anyone in there--
Mrs. MARKHAM. Number two.
Mr. BALL. What did you say when you saw number two?
Mrs. MARKHAM. Well, let me tell you. I said the second man, and they kept asking me which one, which one. I said, number two. When I said number two, I just got weak.
Mr. BALL. What about number two, what did you mean when you said number two?
Mrs. MARKHAM. Number two was the man I saw shoot the policeman.
Mr. BALL. You recognized him from his appearance?
Mrs. MARKHAM. I asked--I looked at him. When I saw this man I wasn't sure, but I had cold chills just run all over me.

And no guarantee that watches where all synched to GMT

Nobody required any such guarantee. Give or take a minute, the timeline as presented still stands...

Care to make a meaningful contribution to the discussion?.....

[Jerry Freeman]

Only Mystery Guest #2 gave Markham pause (to put it mildly) in the lineup
And no guarantee that watches where all synched to GMT

All these guys with ...Were the watches or clocks accurate blah blah?
One can glean from the testimony of the witness' testimony that the Commissioners were not even interested in that. Ted Callaway was not asked what time he remembers...Joe Ball tells him what time he remembers...

Mr. BALL. Now, Mr. Callaway, around 1:15 or so of that day, where were you?
Mr. CALLAWAY. I was standing on the front porch of our office.
Mr. BALL. Did you attempt to stand in the same place you were at the time?
Mr. CALLAWAY. Yes, sir.
Mr. BALL. Where you were standing November 22d around 1 o'clock or so?
Mr. CALLAWAY. Yes, sir.

[Bill Brown]

Whether Roberts saw Oswald standing at the bus stop or not is of very little significance. Roberts tells us that when Oswald came in she was trying to get the television to work to watch the news at 1 o'clock and that he left again after about 3 minutes.
We also know from the Gary Mack time trial that the fastest route between Beckley and 10th street took 11 minutes to walk.

Combined this means that Oswald couldn't have gotten to 10th street until 1.12 pm at the earliest. Add on two minutes for a short conversation with Tippit and the events that followed and you've got a shooting at 1.14 pm.

The problem is there is convincing circumstantial evidence to justify the conclusion that the actual time of the shooting most likely was between 1.06 and 1.10. For instance, Markham said she took the same bus, on Jefferson, every day at approx 1.15 pm, which of course means that she would have been at the bus stop at the time of the shooting and thus couldn't have been at 10th street at 1.14 to witness it.

So, you see, the whole point of Oswald waiting at the bus stop or not is really a trivial matter.

Markham gets to the bus stop around 1:15 every day in time to catch the bus that stopped at Patton and Jefferson at 1:22.  If true on the afternoon of 11/22/63, this would have her arriving at Tenth and Patton around 1:13/1:14.

And.... I really doubt that the conversation between Oswald and Tippit lasted two minutes.

[Ray Mitcham]

Markham gets to the bus stop around 1:15 every day in time to catch the bus that stopped at Patton and Jefferson at 1:22.  If true on the afternoon of 11/22/63, his would have her arriving at Tenth and Patton around 1:13/1:14.

No she said she thought it was about this time "Mrs. MARKHAM. I wouldn't be afraid to bet it wasn't 6 or 7 minutes after 1." A little bit early for a bus due at 1.22 p.m.

[Bill Brown]

An interesting thread OP, w/some insightful reading contributions gentlemen. IMHO Mrs. Markham's testimony is indicative of what so many in the legal profession would ascribe as "leading the witness".  That said, inspite of Mr. Ball's shameful steering to a pre-determined outcome, she managed to slip this gem pass him, note her clothing description of the Tippit gunman ---->

Mr. BALL. What did he have on?
Mrs. MARKHAM. He had on this light shirt, dark trousers

Her description eliminates the wrongly accused. Upon being apprehended inside the Texas Theatre, he donned a dark reddish brown shirt w/light grey pants. Oops!

WC counsel Ball & commission members Ford & Dulles failed--in their haste to frame an innocent party-- to recognize this rather telling conflicting admission. Otherwise, they would have invented another phantom bus ride back to the rooming house once again for the wrongly accused to once again change his clothing to fit their "star" witness' account.

The wrongly accused did not shoot anybody. Anybody.

Oswald was indeed wearing a light shirt.

He had on a white T-shirt, then the outer shirt (the long-sleeved brown shirt) and then the light-colored jacket.  If the jacket is zipped only halfway up and the top half of the brown shirt is unbuttoned, then it seems the white T-shirt would be very noticeable.

[Bill Brown]

We've been through this already. I agree with you, in general, that people do not keep acurate account of the time, but there are exceptions. If, like in Markham's case, you need to catch a bus at a certain time, you need to be punctual in your timing, or you will miss the bus. If, like in Bowley's case, you need to pick up your daughter from school and then your wife from work, you also need to be aware of the exact time to avoid having them wait for you.

The thing with these two witnesses is that by themselves they would not provide sufficient information to confidently arrive at a likely time of the shooting, but combined it is another matter all together. Even more so when placed in a wider context of interactions with others at the scene of the crime. So, let's look at what we know and see if you can follow along.

The most obvious indicator that Tippit was not killed at 1.14 or 1.15 is that the authorization for autopsy shows that Tippit was declared DOA at the Methodist hospital at 1:15 pm. DPD officer Davenport, who followed the ambulance part of the way and was present at the hospital confirms that time in his report.

And then there is the combined timeline of Helen Markham and T.F. Bowley that does not compute with Tippit being killed after 1:10 pm at the latest. No LNr has even tried to come up with a plausible scenario for Markham still being at 10th/Patton at 1:14 or 1:15 when she testified she left home "a little after 1" and the one block walk from her home on 9th street to the corner of 10th street and Patton would have taken her only 2, perhaps 3 minutes. Markham estimated in her testimony that she took the 1.15 bus to work every day, but according to the FBI the bus was scheduled to stop there at 1.12 and at 1.22. It actually doesn't matter which bus Markham was talking about, because a walk of two blocks to the bus stop would have taken her no more than 6 minutes. So, if she left home "a little after 1" she would have easily been at the bus stop at around 1.15 and thus not at 10th/Patton. In other words, Tippit must have been shot earlier than 1.15, most likely around 1.06, because otherwise Markham could not have witnessed it.

The same thing goes for Bowley. He arrived shortly after Tippit was killed. In his affidavit he said he picked up his daughter at R.L. Thornton School in Singing Hills at "about 12:55". School bells, in my experience, have a tendency to ring at the correct time every day! Now, let's also not forget that, after picking up his daughter, Bowley was also going to pick up his wife from work, to go on a family holiday and thus had every reason to be on time and be aware of the time! The drive from the school to 10th/Patton is about 7 miles long and takes roughly 13 minutes, depending on the route, making it absolutely possible and plausible for him to arrive at 10th street at 1.10 pm, like he said he did in his affidavit. But even if we accept that Bowley didn't pick up his daughter on time (leaving her waiting for 5 minutes or longer) and did not leave the school until 1 PM, he still would have arrived at 10th/Patton at 1:13, which of course would have been prior to the shooting of Tippit at 1:14 or 1:15, as the WC narrative claims.

The interaction of Bowley with Callaway further confirms Bowley's arrival at the crime scene shortly after Tippit was killed. He testified that he was about half a block away from 10th Street when he saw a man coming down the street with a revolved. After that encounter Callaway ran half a block to 10th Street and when he got there Bowley was already there, using the DPD radio. Both Bowley and Callaway assisted in putting Tippit into the ambulance which arrived only shortly after Callaway got there. The ambulance brought Tippit to Methodist hospital which was about two miles away (if memory serves) and Tippit was declared D.O.A. at 1.15.

This timeline fits perfectly together if the shooting of Tippit happened between 1.06 (the time Markham would have gotten to 10th street after walking one block) and 1.10 (the time Bowley arrived after having picked up his daughter from school). If you move the time of the murder back to 1.14 or 1.15, as per WC narrative) none of the timeline fits.

Eliminate the impossible and what you end up with, however unlikely, is the truth.

From Dale Myers:  "The death certificate "discrepancy" - as I noted in "With Malice" - was explained during a 1983 interview I conducted with the late Dr. Paul Moellenhoff, who attended Tippit at Methodist. He told me that the clocks within the emergency area at Methodist showed different times - neither of them accurate as it turns out.

He used the 1:15 p.m. time shown on one of the clocks. The time reported to the FBI by Dr. Liquori (With Malice [WM], 2013 [edition], p.557) - 1:24 pm - is probably the accurate one based on the recorded timing of Bowley's call, the recorded departure of the ambulance from 10th and Patton, and the known drive time from 10th and Patton to Methodist Hospital.

DPD Officer Davenport noted that Moellenhoff removed one slug from Tippit's body at 1:30 pm (WM 2013 p.536). That same time (1:30 pm) made its way into Leavelle's homicide report (WM 2013 p.519) as the time Tippit was pronounced DOA (which couldn't possibly be true, right? You don't pull a slug from a body until after he's pronounced dead). This matches up with Moellenhoff's 1983 recollection that he removed a slug from the body within ten minutes of declaring Tippit DOA.

My caption under the death certificate (WM 2013 p.506) seeks to clarify the discrepancy between the Time of Injury (1:18 pm) and the time Death Occurred (1:15 pm). Again, it stems from my conversation with Dr. Moellenhoff. The 1:18 pm time, of course, probably refers to the time that Bowley's radio call was received - not the actual time Tippit was shot.

The 1:15 p.m. notation (although close in time to the actual moment of the shooting, as far as I can calculate) probably stems from Dr. Moellenhoff's use of an inaccurate Methodist emergency room clock.

Interesting, huh? All this fuss because no one at Methodist bothered to synchronize the clocks to actual time (some running fast, some running slow).

Can you imagine how many other death certificates were marked with times that were off by a few minutes? But what does it matter in those cases? Not one whit."

[Charles Collins]

From Dale Myers:  "The death certificate "discrepancy" - as I noted in "With Malice" - was explained during a 1983 interview I conducted with the late Dr. Paul Moellenhoff, who attended Tippit at Methodist. He told me that the clocks within the emergency area at Methodist showed different times - neither of them accurate as it turns out.

He used the 1:15 p.m. time shown on one of the clocks. The time reported to the FBI by Dr. Liquori (With Malice [WM], 2013 [edition], p.557) - 1:24 pm - is probably the accurate one based on the recorded timing of Bowley's call, the recorded departure of the ambulance from 10th and Patton, and the known drive time from 10th and Patton to Methodist Hospital.

DPD Officer Davenport noted that Moellenhoff removed one slug from Tippit's body at 1:30 pm (WM 2013 p.536). That same time (1:30 pm) made its way into Leavelle's homicide report (WM 2013 p.519) as the time Tippit was pronounced DOA (which couldn't possibly be true, right? You don't pull a slug from a body until after he's pronounced dead). This matches up with Moellenhoff's 1983 recollection that he removed a slug from the body within ten minutes of declaring Tippit DOA.

My caption under the death certificate (WM 2013 p.506) seeks to clarify the discrepancy between the Time of Injury (1:18 pm) and the time Death Occurred (1:15 pm). Again, it stems from my conversation with Dr. Moellenhoff. The 1:18 pm time, of course, probably refers to the time that Bowley's radio call was received - not the actual time Tippit was shot.

The 1:15 p.m. notation (although close in time to the actual moment of the shooting, as far as I can calculate) probably stems from Dr. Moellenhoff's use of an inaccurate Methodist emergency room clock.

Interesting, huh? All this fuss because no one at Methodist bothered to synchronize the clocks to actual time (some running fast, some running slow).

Can you imagine how many other death certificates were marked with times that were off by a few minutes? But what does it matter in those cases? Not one whit."

Great post! Thanks Bill.

So the doctor who was responsible for the discrepancy clarified things. This should end the speculation about it. But the naysayers won’t accept it (so that they can cling to their theories).