Mr. Belin. Did you ever letter go up and view the officer?
Mr. Scoggins. Yes, I went up there, but by the time I got up there the ambulance had already got there. You see I got my dispatcher and was telling him about it, just by that time the ambulance got there.
Mr. Belin. Do you remember whether or not your dispatcher recorded any time on his sheets as to the time you called in after the Tippit shooting?
Mr. Scoggins. When I was down there giving my statement to my supervisor, he asked me what time it was, and I said I don’t have any idea, so he picked up the phone and called the dispatcher, and he said it was 1:23.
Mr. Belin. That is the time that he recorded it?
Mr. Scoggins. Yes. He must have recorded it up there because he said it was 1:23 in the afternoon.
Mr. Belin. When you called in after the shooting?
Mr. Scoggins. Yes.
So, the ambulance arrived while Scoggins was talking to his dispatcher. And the dispatcher recorded the time as 1:23. Yet some people believe that the death certificate time of 1:15 is the time that the doctor pronounced Tippit dead? Do they believe that the doctor was at the murder scene in order to do so?
The time indicated on the DPD recordings and the time recorded independently by the cab dispatcher both indicate that Tippit was not yet at the hospital at 1:15. Yet some believe that a bystander’s wristwatch was correct and that the DPD and the cab company’s time records must be wrong.
The time indicated on the DPD recordings and the time recorded independently by the cab dispatcher both indicate that Tippit was not yet at the hospital at 1:15. Yet some believe that a bystander’s wristwatch was correct and that the DPD and the cab company’s time records must be wrong.When you need to misrepresent the evidence, your argument loses credibility. The real facts are that the times on the DPD recordings are disputed by J.C. Bowles, the supervisor in charge of the dispatchers, who, in his testimony before the HSCA, explained that the DPD radio times have no relation to the actual "real" time and nobody has claimed that "a bystander's wristwatch was correct". Even worse for your basic argument; the time Scoggins gave in his testimony does not match, in any way, shape or form, with the times called out on the DPD radio.
Mr. Belin. Do you remember whether or not your dispatcher recorded any time on his sheets as to the time you called in after the Tippit shooting?
Mr. Scoggins. When I was down there giving my statement to my supervisor, he asked me what time it was, and I said I don’t have any idea, so he picked up the phone and called the dispatcher, and he said it was 1:23.
Mr. Belin. That is the time that he recorded it?
Mr. Scoggins. Yes. He must have recorded it up there because he said it was 1:23 in the afternoon.
Mr. Belin. When you called in after the shooting?
Mr. Scoggins. Yes. So, Scoggins' supervisor heard from a dispatcher that the time was 1:23. WOW, that's some "ironclad evidence" you've got there.
Now let's see what we can do with this. The timeline I have developed is a sequence of events, with time estimates relative to eachother, based upon the testimony of the people involved which looks like this;
1:03 - 1.04 Markham leaves home at 9th street
1:06 - 1.07 Markham arrives at the corner of 10th street, after having walked one block. She has one more block to go, to
Jefferson, where she would arrive at around 1.09 or 1.10, well in time for the 1.12 bus.
1:06 - 1.09 Tippit is shot and killed.
1.10 Bowley arrives at the crime scene after having picked up his daughter from school at 12.55 and driving 7 miles
Upon arrival he looks at his watch which says 1.10
1.07 - 1.11 Callaway hears the shots and encounters a man with a revolver running towards him.
1.11 After the encounter, Callaway runs half a block and arrives at 10th street. He gets there after Bowley had already
finished operating the police radio
1.11 - 1.13 The ambulance, dispatched from a nearby funeral home on Jefferson, only a block away, arrives and Bowley and
Callaway help to put Tippit in the ambulance.
1.15 - 1.16 After a short 2 miles drive, the ambulance arrives at Methodist Hospital followed by Detective Davenport who saw
the ambulance and chased it to the hospital
1.16 - 1.17 Tippit - who was likely dead at the scene - is declared DOA @ 1.15
In this timeline, the ambulance arrived between 1.11 and 1.13. Now, if Scoggins is correct that time would become 1.23, so between 10 to 12 minutes later than what the timeline says. This would mean that all the times in the timeline would have to move to 10 to 12 minutes later as well.
So, the new timeline would have Markham witness Tippit's shooting somewhere between 1.16 and 1.18 (i.e. two to four minutes later than Myers estimated the time of the shooting at 1.14), instead of being on her regular bus to work which she estimated she took at 1.15. T.F. Bowley's watch must also have been off by 10 to 12 minutes, which in turn means that he must have picked up his daughter from school, not at 12.55 when school was out (like he said), but at 1.05 or even 1.07, and without noticing he was 10 to 12 minutes late.
It also means that Callaway would not arrive at the scene of the shooting until 1.21 or 1.23, which is at least strange because according to the DPD radio transcripts (if they are correct) he made his call to the dispatcher at 1.19. And finally, it would mean that Tippit was declared DOA between 1.29 and 1.30, which in turn means that Dr. Liguori and Detective Davenport both got the DOA time wrong by 10 to 12 minutes. It also does not match the DPD radio transcripts, which somewhere between 1.26 and 1.28 report that NBC News is reporting Tippit's DOA. That's really something magical, isn't it?. NBC reporting the DOA before it was actually declared by the doctors! I never knew news outlets in 1963 could work so fast....
And not only that, because it also means that the doctors at Methodist Hospital couldn't have taken a bullet out of Tippit's body (which they did about 15 minutes after DOA) at 1.30.
So, you see, the 1.23 time that Scoggins gave doesn't match the timecalls on the DPD recording and it makes a complete mess of the timeline.
Why the double standard? You take a bystander’s testimony that he looked at his wristwatch. But you don’t take an eyewitness’ testimony that his supervisor told him the time that his call was recorded?
FWIW, An FBI interview of cab dispatcher D.G. Graham on November 28, 1963 says Graham recorded the call coming in at 1:25 p.m. The two minute discrepancy is probably due to Graham’s desire to notify the DPD before recording the time of the call.
“With Malice” (reference note #399).
Why the double standard? You take a bystander’s testimony that he looked at his wristwatch. But you don’t take an eyewitness’ testimony that his supervisor told him the time that his call was recorded? What you are describing is
double hearsay. Scoggins is testifying that his supervisor
told him that the dispatcher said that the time was recorded on a time sheet at 1.23.
John has no double standard when he asks for the time sheet, for one simple reason; Scoggins claimed there was a time sheet, so why not produce it?
FWIW, An FBI interview of cab dispatcher D.G. Graham on November 28, 1963 says Graham recorded the call coming in at 1:25 p.m. The two minute discrepancy is probably due to Graham’s desire to notify the DPD before recording the time of the call.
“With Malice” (reference note #399).It is actually not worth a damned thing. FBI 302 reports contain all sorts of mistakes and conflicting information. For example, there is also a 302 report which claims that Dr. Liguori told an FBI agent that Tippit was DOA at 1.25. The conflict between these two 302 reports is obvious, but there is more;
First of all, how can the dispatcher tell Scoggins' supervisor that the time was recorded on his time sheet at 1.23, and then tell the FBI it was actually 1.25? Secondly, when the time given by Scoggins already doesn't match any of the known facts in the time line, the time Graham gave to the FBI surely doesn't match either. And thirdly, by 1.25 police officers were already on the scene and the DPD radio transcript shows (if they are correct) that the dispatcher has already received a report about a white jacket that was found on a parking lot.
It's a pretty good bet that the time Scoggins gave was wrong. If you disagree, feel free to tell me where I went wrong in my reasoning.