I disagree. Literally nothing and nobody corroborates the early radio broadcast of the police shooting, the man in front of the shoe shop looking “funny”, or anybody turning the corner into the recessed area of the theater. Maybe if the mysterious “IBM men” could be found…
There's some confusion here which is my bad as I should have phrased it differently.
When I wrote:
"That's all I've been getting at - that there is a general trustworthiness regarding Brewer's account as it is corroborated by multiple witness accounts."I
was not trying to claim that witnesses had corroborated Brewer's account of seeing the man ducking into his store or hearing the radio broadcast or watching the man turn into the recessed area of the Texas Theater.
It was a reference to my earlier post, Reply#263, which begins:
"Brewer's basic story of seeing a man acting suspiciously on the street who he saw go into the Texas Theater and who he followed, is confirmed by a number of eye-witnesses he told this story to before Oswald was arrested."In this post I list multiple witnesses who confirm that Brewer was telling his story of the suspicious looking man who ducked into his store and who he followed into the Texas Theater. And that he was telling this story before Oswald was arrested. So, Brewer was either telling the truth or he had fabricated this story before he interacted with Postal, which would put Brewer at the heart of a conspiracy to frame Oswald. A conspiracy that would have Brewer having foreknowledge of the Tippit murder and the general direction the shooter would leave the scene of the shooting.
I have no problem with that.
There is Brewer's account of pointing out Oswald to police officers, confirmed by the accounts of some of the officers involved.
There can be little doubt as to Brewer's fundamental role in the capture and arrest of Oswald.
This is not to say that the suspicious looking man Brewer followed was Oswald, it may have just been a staggering coincidence that the man Brewer pointed out was also the prime suspect in the assassination of JFK.
An assumption, nonetheless. By the way, like the Burroughs account being belated, the story about having sold Oswald shoes doesn’t appear in Brewer’s affidavit or testimony.
It is strange that you say Brewer's story about having sold shoes to Oswald doesn't appear in Brewer's testimony and then a few posts later you write:
Mr. BELIN - Why did you happen to watch this particular man?
Mr. BREWER - He just looked funny to me. Well, in the first place, I had seen him some place before. I think he had been in my store before. And when you wait on somebody, you recognize them, and he just seemed funny. His hair was sort of messed up and looked like he had been running, and he looked scared, and he looked funny.Brewer recognised Oswald as a past customer. In the inventory of Oswald's possessions there is listed a pair of shoes "John Hardy brand".
Brewer recognised the man who ducked into his store and recognised the man he pointed out to police in the cinema.
It was the same man and that man was Oswald.
Despite the fact that the description that Postal said she gave the dispatcher was nothing like the description of the guy at the Tippit scene that was broadcast. Go figure.
Postal didn’t mention any of this to the police dispatcher either.
I take it this is a tacit agreement of the point I was making - that the sole reason the police descended on the Texas Theater was Postal's call to the police. Without this call they would never have known where to find Oswald in order to frame him, if that's what happened. In her description of Oswald's suspicious behavior to the police she is obviously quoting Brewer's story about Oswald ducking into his store in order to avoid the police. This would place either Brewer or Postal or both at the heart of some convoluted conspiracy to capture Oswald. A conspiracy that would have Oswald conveniently placing himself in a location in the direction the shooter was seen fleeing the scene of the crime.
Perhaps and perhaps not. Either way, there was no probable cause to arrest Oswald for murder. The police overstepped. Not Brewer’s or Postal’s fault, but even Brewer admitted that he thought “what am I doing here?” as he approached the theater.
There can be very little doubt as to Brewer's involvement in Oswald's capture and arrest. It's not really open to question.
I do agree that there was no probable cause to arrest Oswald for murder and the police most certainly "overstepped".
There are two things that need to be addressed here.
Firstly, Oswald wasn't being arrested when McDonald went up to him, he was being checked out, just like the boy in the library was being checked out. Obviously, when he attacked the officer and pulled out a revolver (if he did), they were confident they had their man. In fact, it must be said that there seems to have been a very strange, immediate confidence among many in law enforcement that Oswald had not only killed Tippit but was also involved in the assassination.
Secondly, many people seem to find it suspicious that so many officers descended on the Texas Theater because someone had entered without buying a ticket. But it seems to me that as soon as Tippit's murder came over the radio a lot of officers dropped what they were doing and headed out to Oak Cliff. They weren't really waiting to be dispatched. When the call came in about a suspect at the library, many officers raced straight there without waiting for orders to do so.
I get the impression there was some kind of "posse" mentality going on and any report of suspicious activity was going to get the full treatment.
The people in the library were ordered out at the end of a shotgun and came out with their hands up. Where's the probable cause for that? When Brewer opened the back door he was grabbed at gunpoint and questioned. Where's the probable cause for that?
This was a posse, searching houses and alleyways, cruising the streets and responding to the slightest sign of suspicious behavior en masse.
