Forty-five minutes after the shooting in Dealey Plaza, out of the close to three-quarters of a million or so people in Dallas, Lee Harvey Oswald is the one who just happened to murder Dallas police officer J. D. Tippit on Tenth Street near Patton in the Oak Cliff area, only about nine-tenths of a mile from his rooming house. One witness, Helen Markham, identified Oswald in a lineup later in the day as the man she saw shoot Tippit. (Years later, the HSCA found another witness, Jack Tatum, who saw Oswald shoot and kill Tippit). Another witness, William Scoggins, identified Oswald as the man he saw approach Tippit’s car after it pulled up alongside Oswald, who was walking on the sidewalk. He lost sight of Oswald behind some shrubbery, but heard the shots that killed Tippit, saw Tippit fall, and then saw Oswald, with a pistol in his left hand, run away south on Patton Street in the direction of Jefferson Boulevard.64 Another witness, William Smith, heard some shots, looked up, and saw Oswald running west on Tenth Street out of his sight. Two other witnesses, Virginia and Barbara Davis, identified Oswald as the man they saw cutting across the front lawn of their apartment house right after they heard the sound of gunfire from the Tippit murder scene and a woman screaming. Oswald had a revolver in his hand and was unloading the shells from his gun on their lawn. They saw Oswald proceed down Patton toward Jefferson Boulevard. Four other witnesses (Ted Callaway, Sam Guinyard, B. M. Patterson, and Harold Russell), from their position on two used-car lots at the intersection of Patton and Jefferson, identified Oswald as being the man who, right after the Tippit shooting, ran past them on Patton toward Jefferson Boulevard (where the Texas Theater was located) holding a revolver in his hand. Two men who were on one of the lots, Warren Reynolds (the owner of the lot) and Patterson, followed Oswald until they lost him behind a Texaco gasoline station on Jefferson. Mrs. Mary Brock, the wife of a man who worked at the gas station, identified Oswald as the person she saw walk past her, at a fast pace, into the parking lot behind the station.
One of the canards of the conspiracy theorists that they’ve sold to millions is that there was only one eyewitness to Oswald killing Officer Tippit, Helen Markham, and she wasn’t a strong one. But in addition to Jack Tatum also being an eyewitness to the killing, for all intents and purposes there were eight other eyewitnesses. For instance, with the Davis women, can anyone make the argument that although someone else shot Tippit, it was Oswald who was seen running from the Tippit murder scene with a revolver in his hand unloading shells? And when Scoggins saw Oswald approach Tippit’s car and then lost sight of him for a moment, Tippit’s true killer appeared out of nowhere, shot and killed Tippit, then vanished into thin air, whereupon Scoggins then saw Oswald again, running away from Tippit’s car with a pistol in his hand?
So there were ten witnesses who identified Oswald as the murderer. And we know that the physical evidence was all corroborative of their testimony.
Granted, mistaken identity has resulted in many wrongful convictions. But here, and not counting Mrs. Brock, there were many eyewitnesses who identified Oswald. Show me any other case where ten eyewitnesses were wrong. I argued to the jury in London that “Oswald’s responsibility for President Kennedy’s assassination explains, explains why he was driven to murder Officer Tippit. The murder bore the signature of a man,” I argued, “in desperate flight from some awful deed. What other reason under the moon would he have had to kill Officer Tippit?” It should be noted that even if we assume just for the sake of argument that Oswald didn’t murder Officer Tippit, then who in the world did? The conspiracy community never says. And although we know why Oswald would have had a reason to kill Tippit, what possible reason would the phantom killer have had?
Reclaiming History Vincent Bugliosi
JohnM
