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Author Topic: Who Killed J.D. Tippit?  (Read 79844 times)

Offline Martin Weidmann

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Re: Who Killed J.D. Tippit?
« Reply #168 on: May 27, 2023, 09:36:35 PM »
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"I'll tell you one thing, there was no billfold at the scene.  If there was, there would have been too many people who would have seen it." -- Ted Callaway (interview with Dale Myers)

Callaway, Jez, Poe, Kinsley and Butler.... all tended to the body of Tippit and none of them saw a wallet.

Callaway's personal opinion notwithstanding; as we discussed in our head to head a while ago, things were happening at high speed after the ambulance arrived. They were concentrating on Tippit and could have easily missed a wallet on the other side of the police car or, for that matter, a citation book.

Callaway, Jez, Poe, Kinsley and Butler.... all tended to the body of Tippit and none of them saw a wallet.

And why would they if it was left by the killer at the other side of the police car?

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Re: Who Killed J.D. Tippit?
« Reply #168 on: May 27, 2023, 09:36:35 PM »


Offline Martin Weidmann

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Re: Who Killed J.D. Tippit?
« Reply #169 on: May 27, 2023, 09:59:30 PM »
My opinion is that Barrett (who went to the Texas Theater and then straight to headquarters after Oswald's arrest) saw Oswald's arrest wallet while inside Westbrook's office back at headquarters.  This is where the arrest wallet was for a while.  Barrett said he went there to assist with the arrest report.  I believe this is when Westbrook approached Barrett with the Oswald/Hidell names; back at headquarters.

I believe this for two reasons.

First, there are no reports filed by Westbrook or Barrett of any wallet being discussed at the scene at Tenth and Patton.  Barrett filed a report that weekend, but never mentioned any wallet.  My opinion is that if a wallet had been discussed at the scene with Oswald/Hidell identifications inside, it would have been mentioned in such a report.

Second, my opinion is that if a wallet was found near Tippit's body (or the patrol car), then the name(s) of the wallet's owner would have put out over the police radio to the dispatcher for the purposes of placing an APB on this person.  Just like no wallet mentioned in any of the reports of those "involved", no APB was ever put out over the police air waves.

My opinion is that Barrett (who went to the Texas Theater and then straight to headquarters after Oswald's arrest) saw Oswald's arrest wallet while inside Westbrook's office back at headquarters.

Wasn't Barrett in the same car as Westbrook? So, why would Westbrook not show the wallet to Barrett until they got back to HQ?

This is where the arrest wallet was for a while.

What evidence do you have for this? My information is that Gus Rose had a day off and was called back in to talk to Oswald. He arrived just prior to Oswald being brought in and at that time he was given a wallet, by an unidentified officer, who told him it was Oswald's. That leaves no time for a wallet to be anywhere "for a while".

Barrett said he went there to assist with the arrest report. 

When did Barrett say that? And since when would a FBI agent assist DPD officers in writing a arrest report?

I believe this is when Westbrook approached Barrett with the Oswald/Hidell names; back at headquarters.

Fair enough, but Barrett disagreed and said it happened at the Tippit scene. And how would Westbrook even know about a fake Hidell ID in the wallet Bentley took from Oswald?

First, there are no reports filed by Westbrook or Barrett of any wallet being discussed at the scene at Tenth and Patton.

True, but there is also no report about the wallet Bentley took from Oswald and there certainly isn't a report mentioning that the Bentley wallet contained the fake Hidell ID.

Barrett filed a report that weekend, but never mentioned any wallet. 

Barrett may well not even have considered that information significant. That would perhaps have been different if he had known about the wallet Bentley took from Oswald, but he probably didn't even know that at the time.

My opinion is that if a wallet had been discussed at the scene with Oswald/Hidell identifications inside, it would have been mentioned in such a report.

You would think so. But then, the same applies to the Bentley wallet. If that wallet had contained the fake Hidell ID it would have been mentioned in a report, right? But it wasn't.

Second, my opinion is that if a wallet was found near Tippit's body (or the patrol car), then the name(s) of the wallet's owner would have put out over the police radio to the dispatcher for the purposes of placing an APB on this person. 

And possibly color an innocent bystander as a cop killer by name? Let's think about that for a moment. Just imagine that you are a witness to a murder and in all the confusion you drop your wallet. Would you consider it reasonable that your name is broadcast on police radio as the potential suspect? How would Westbrook even know if the wallet belonged to the killer? Also, there were plenty of witnesses at the scene who could describe the killer, but even a description wasn't broadcast. In any case, a name or description of a suspect not being transmitted doesn't even begin to prove that there wasn't a wallet.

« Last Edit: May 28, 2023, 12:33:15 AM by Martin Weidmann »

Offline Bill Brown

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Re: Who Killed J.D. Tippit?
« Reply #170 on: May 27, 2023, 10:21:35 PM »
My opinion is that Barrett (who went to the Texas Theater and then straight to headquarters after Oswald's arrest) saw Oswald's arrest wallet while inside Westbrook's office back at headquarters.

Wasn't Barrett in the same car as Westbrook? So, why would Westbrook not show the wallet to Barrett until they got back to HQ?

Because there was no wallet in Westbrook's possession to show to Barrett or anyone else.  The wallet was in the Bentley/Hill/Carroll/Oswald car.  Westbrook didn't see any such wallet until they arrived at headquarters.

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Re: Who Killed J.D. Tippit?
« Reply #170 on: May 27, 2023, 10:21:35 PM »


Offline Martin Weidmann

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Re: Who Killed J.D. Tippit?
« Reply #171 on: May 27, 2023, 10:29:30 PM »
Because there was no wallet in Westbrook's possession to show to Barrett or anyone else.  The wallet was in the Bentley/Hill/Carroll/Oswald car.  Westbrook didn't see any such wallet until they arrived at headquarters.

Because there was no wallet in Westbrook's possession to show to Barrett or anyone else.

Barrett disagreed, but what is your evidence that this is true?

The wallet was in the Bentley/Hill/Carroll/Oswald car. 

But there is no mention of the fake Hidell ID in any report and Bentley did mention anything but a Oswald ID on television the next day.

Westbrook didn't see any such wallet until they arrived at headquarters.

How would Westbrook see a wallet Bentley brought in and passed to Gus Rose directly after Oswald was brought into the DPD HQ
« Last Edit: May 28, 2023, 01:06:09 PM by Martin Weidmann »

Offline Mitch Todd

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Re: Who Killed J.D. Tippit?
« Reply #172 on: May 28, 2023, 04:29:51 AM »
"Certainly seem to be involved"? Based on what? A cop, probably abusing his authority, stopping three black men in a car. Of course they must be up to something, right? How pathetic.

BS like that happened in the 60's and is still happening now on a daily basis.

There is a car that has attracted police attention for some reason

That's called a traffic stop

and the officer at the scene suspects that they might be involved with it

Involved with what? What would be the reasonable suspicion?
Unit 72 is an Officer TL Cox, who is a member of the Patrol Division, and not the Traffic Division, so a simple traffic stop is pretty unlikely. In the continuing exchange between 72 and the dispatcher, we learn that the vehicle in question is registered to none of the three men Cox is asking about. There appears to be more than just a simple speeding ticket going on here. Of course, you'll to BS around this, like playing the race card as a get out of jail free card.

You can also consider the case of Charles Givens. At 1:46, Inspector Sawyer picks up his mic and transmits the following:

We have a man we would like to have you pass this up on to the CID to see if we can pick this man up. Charles Douglas Givens, G-I-VE-N-S. He's a colored male, thirty-seven, six foot three, a hundred sixty-five pounds. He has an ID number in the Sheriff's Department, 37954. He's a porter that worked on this floor up here. He has a police record and he left.

Certainly seems like some suspicion is being thrown Givens' way, and Sawyer has no problem publicly naming Givens on the radio.

Then again, you've already admitted that the notion that cops would never broadcast the name of a suspect was nothing more than an invention of your own device, so there's no point in continuing argument over the ghosts in your head. 


Why wouldn't Westbrook do the same if he found identification in the mystery wallet?

Duh... Because he found it at a murder scene and could be linking an innocent white man to a serious crime.
This is simply another of your suppositions, again with some extra race card to attempt further obfuscation.


Bottom line is that you are trying to compare apples and oranges and it's lame.
No, the bottom line is that the departure point for this subthread was a baseless, unsupported, claim about the cops never broadcasting the name of a suspect.   


And sure, they will use the TV news in a search for serious offenders, but only after there is no more reasonable doubt that the suspect is actually involved in the crime. That's not the case here. Westbrook could not make the determination at the scene that the wallet for certain belonged to Tippit's killer.
The "reasonable doubt" part doesn't come into play until the Shine-Ola hits the courtroom fan. The cops will feed the name of a "person of interest" (not even a suspect) to the media if they think it might generate a needed lead, usually because they can't find the PoI.


An FBI agent present at the scene of a crime somehow isn't a witness? Are you for real?

Barrett wasn't a witness to the crime, which is what I meant by "witnesses" in "witnesses and gawkers." Most people would at least consider that particular usage as a possibilty. Not you.


I don't know who else Westbrook asked, but I do know that Bob Barrett said he did ask him. I could argue that off duty officer Croy, who was the first to arrive at the scene, confirmed the presence of the wallet, but I don't want to do that simply because the only way Croy apparently confirmed it was in a text written on a photograph which now, for unclear reasons, can not be produced. So, we're stuck with Barrett said and you, rather dishonestly, as per usuals, are asking about more than one person because you know full well that we don't know who else (if anybody) was asked. All you want to do is argue that just because an FBI agent is the only one who came forward with the information it is somehow not valid because he's the only one. It's utterly pathetic and exactly what is to be expected from a LN.

Supposedly, Rookstool has a copy of a frame of the Reiland film where Croy wrote something about being the guy who "found Oswald's wallet." But Rookstool never quotes Croy as saying that Croy found any Oswald or Hidell ID. Rookstool certainly would have done so had Croy said it himself. Dale Myers interviewed Croy several years before Rookstool, and Myers says that Croy never mentioned anything about finding Oswald or Hidell IDs. So, did Croy know on 11/22 that the wallet was Oswald's? Or did Rookstool present his matching-wallet-flap spiel to an aged Croy who simply went with what he was presented, just like John Stringer did with John Canal's presentation.

FWIW, Ron Reiland said on 11/22/63 that the wallet was Tippit's "billfold". However, he's wrong about a number of details about the crime, so I can't see this statement being definitive in and of itself. Then again Reiland was at the scene filming the Police going through the billfold/wallet/notebook/coffeemaker, and his statement was recorded contemporaneously with the events.

I bring up the question of, did Westbrook ask anyone else (including and especially the radio dispatcher) about Oswald/Hidell because it's hard to believe that Westbrook would have asked only Barrett, given the situation.  Further, if Westbrook didn't know whether the supposed "Oswald/Hidell" was a bystander, why would he not try to find out who this bystander might be? This of course would involve asking the bystanders at the scene if they were or knew Oswald or Hidell.


So many people? How many people were there? And who said that no one would have remembered? You seem to think that anybody who is present at a crime scene would automatically want to get involved by coming forward. Talk to some murder investigators for once and you'll find out quickly that's not the way it works in the real world.
In this photo, there are 28 people not including the uniformed officer:

https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth184761/m1/1/zoom/?resolution=2&lat=1504.5&lon=750

There are probably additional people out of frame, especially at the rear of Car #10, and likely others on the North side of the street. So not too bad of a crowd.

Soon after the killing a number of self-appointed researchers began literally going door-to-door in the area around the crime scene looking for additional witnesses. Marguerite Oswald was the first, followed by the likes of Mark Lane, Vince Salandria, Shirley Martin, and George and Patricia Nash. From these effors, not a single witness turned up who mentioned an Oswald/Hidell wallet. Nor did they find anyone who remembered the Police asking about an Oswald or a Hidell. 


You can "figure" all you want. Get back to me when you have something more solid than just your imagination. What you think the authorities should have done doesn't matter one iota.
That's a bit rich coming from a guy who arbitrarily invents police procedure and retroactively assigns it to the JFK case.

it would allow the DPD to quickly rule out the owner as a suspect.

How exactly do you rule out somebody as a suspect for a murder by doing a name/ID check?
You use the information gathered from the ID check to figure out where the person lives and works, then investigate from there. If the person of interest turns out to have a solid alibi, then you can rule them out. If the don't, then they stay in the suspect box. It's not that hard to figure out.

But I'll gladly tell you why both pieces of evidence (the wallet and the jacket) are tainted. There is no chain of custody for either. Both were apparently handled by officers that remained unidentified. Both pieces of evidence dissappeared out of sight for a while and then suddenly showed up at the police station. And for both items there is a problem with the description of it. A jacket first described several times as being white suddenly turned grey at the police station and it is marked by police officers who could not and did not hold it simply because they were not at the location where it was found. The wallet was initially described as containing a drivers' license and a credit card suddenly showed up at the police station without those two items in it but instead with a fake Hidell in it.
This is the Bentley/McDonald WFAA interview from November 23d:

Bentley: I asked for his name and he refused to give me his name. I removed his wallet from his back pocket and obtained his identification
and also asked him if he was still living at the Elsberry [Elspeth] address, and he says, "you find out for yourself."

Biffle: What kind of identification did he have?

Bentley: The card that I got this information from was a Dallas Public Library card. He had other identification such as a Driver's license, I believe, and, uh, hmm, credit cards and things like that.

"Such as," when followed by a list of things generally refers to hypothetical examples of a larger group. This is amplified by the use of "I believe" to disclaim certainty of a driver's license and having to stop and think ("Umm, uhh") before he continues onto the "credit cards" then finishing off with the vague generic "and things like that." The only item Bentley was definite about was the library card. The level of certainty goes downhill quickly after that. The "driver's license" could simply have been Oswald's DD1173, which did resemble a contemporary driver's license. Bentley's statement implies what he thought was important at the time: something that combined a name and an address. And it shows that he wasn't trying to generate a itemized, exact list of the contents of Oswald's wallet.

That being taken care of, Gus Rose's inability to remember exactly which DPD officer gave him the wallet does not "taint" or otherwise invalidate it as evidence.

 
As an LN apologist for the incompetent DPD you will no doubt refuse to accept that any of this is a problem because you have to to keep a flawed weak narrative alive.
Once again, Martin throws in his best adjectives as a substitute for presenting evidence or generating good arguments.

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Re: Who Killed J.D. Tippit?
« Reply #172 on: May 28, 2023, 04:29:51 AM »


Offline Mitch Todd

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Re: Who Killed J.D. Tippit?
« Reply #173 on: May 28, 2023, 05:19:39 AM »
Jack Tatum said nothing about a wallet and thus is hardly relevant to the discussion. But I have no problem with Tatum believing or even claiming that he saw Oswald on 11/22/63. You just argued that if anybody else was asked by Westbrook about knowing Oswald and Hidell would have remembered and come forward. Now you are arguing that a guy who claimed, many years later, to have been a witness is to be believed. You seem to want to have your cake and eat it too.
My point is that if Barrett should be believed because he said that something happened that nobody else explicitly denied, then Tatum should also be believed about his story that Oswald delivered a deliberate kill shot to Tippit's head. After all, nobody said, Oswald didn't deliver a last deliberate shot to Tippit's skull as Tippit lay in the street. Your attempt to talk around the problem is a back-handed admission that you see the problem with your own argument here.

Any way, eye-witness testimony is the weakest evidence there is. There are more witnesses who actually picked Oswald out of a (questionable) line up, but if Oswald physically couldn't have been at the scene when Tippit was shot, those "identifications" are pretty meaningless.
Since Barrett is an eyewitness, his story must then be counted among the weakest evidence there is, according to your own logic.

And there it is..... the classic LN claim that Bob Barrett probably misremembered, based on nothing more than wishful thinking. The problem is that you've got no reason to assume that Barrett misremembered. You are not treating Barrett's story carefully and with due suspicion. You are dismissing it outright simply because it doesn't fit the narrative you prefer.

On the other hand, you are presenting Tatum as a credible witness for whom doesn't apply what you claim applies to Connally, Audrey Bell, Paul O'Connor etc. 

If you believe Tatum (as you seem to do) then why don't you believe Barrett? And, btw, let's not forget that Barrett told Hosty, in a private conversation, about the wallet long before it became public information. It was never intended for publication.
Back here in reality, I don't give Tatum's story faith or credit. Too many red flags, beginning with the whole Johnny-come-lately witness thing. The notion that I ever presented Tatum as a credible witness is simply your own presumption.

And the fact that Barrett's story was privately told before being publicized has no bearing as to whether it's true or not.

Offline Martin Weidmann

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Re: Who Killed J.D. Tippit?
« Reply #174 on: May 28, 2023, 11:56:03 AM »
Another word salad typical for Mitch Todd and still nothing new added. It's just a repeat of the same arguments. I am not going to waste my time with a reply, except for this, which you conveniently ignored.

You claimed that Bentley still had the wallet when he went to the Homicide bureau and personnel division office to write reports before giving the wallet to TL Baker.

Gus Rose arrived at the police station shortly before Oswald was brought in. He was the first officer to talk to Oswald and he was given a wallet just before that.

There is no way that could have been the wallet that Bentley had!

This alone destroys most of your long winded arguments, which is, of course, exactly why you ignored it!


Offline Martin Weidmann

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Re: Who Killed J.D. Tippit?
« Reply #175 on: May 28, 2023, 01:25:38 PM »

Supposedly, Rookstool has a copy of a frame of the Reiland film where Croy wrote something about being the guy who "found Oswald's wallet." But Rookstool never quotes Croy as saying that Croy found any Oswald or Hidell ID. Rookstool certainly would have done so had Croy said it himself. Dale Myers interviewed Croy several years before Rookstool, and Myers says that Croy never mentioned anything about finding Oswald or Hidell IDs. So, did Croy know on 11/22 that the wallet was Oswald's? Or did Rookstool present his matching-wallet-flap spiel to an aged Croy who simply went with what he was presented, just like John Stringer did with John Canal's presentation.

FWIW, Ron Reiland said on 11/22/63 that the wallet was Tippit's "billfold". However, he's wrong about a number of details about the crime, so I can't see this statement being definitive in and of itself. Then again Reiland was at the scene filming the Police going through the billfold/wallet/notebook/coffeemaker, and his statement was recorded contemporaneously with the events.


You do understand that you've confirmed that Croy and Reiland agreed with Barrett's statement that their was a wallet found at the Tippit scene, right?

The fact that Croy did not mention the Oswald and Hidell ID's doesn't negate that. Reiland saying that it was Tippit's wallet (which we know from Marie Tippit) it wasn't also does not mean there was no wallet.

So, now we have three people who confirm the presence of a wallet at the Tippit scene.


I bring up the question of, did Westbrook ask anyone else (including and especially the radio dispatcher) about Oswald/Hidell because it's hard to believe that Westbrook would have asked only Barrett, given the situation.  Further, if Westbrook didn't know whether the supposed "Oswald/Hidell" was a bystander, why would he not try to find out who this bystander might be? This of course would involve asking the bystanders at the scene if they were or knew Oswald or Hidell.


Who says that Westbrook didn't ask the bystanders if somebody had lost a wallet? No need to name any names. In fact, it would be wise to withhold the names just in case somebody came forward. He could ask that person for his name and check with the content of the wallet.

As for informing the dispatcher, they didn't even bother to put a description of the killer on the radio, which would have been a lot more effective than broadcasting a name. So, that's a moot point.

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Re: Who Killed J.D. Tippit?
« Reply #175 on: May 28, 2023, 01:25:38 PM »