How about a dose of reality in this thread? I discuss the myriad of problems with the case against Oswald in the Tippit shooting in my article "Did Oswald Shoot Tippit?" (
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_j_022lJYli3B5Xyw8wLs-0nl6mDLo2t/view?usp=sharing). A few points:
-- The last time housekeeper Earlene Roberts saw Oswald shortly after he left the rooming house, he was
standing at the
northbound bus stop. He wasn't speed-walking southward to the Tippit scene but was
standing at a bus stop.
-- The fact that Oswald was standing at the
northbound bus stop is important because
the Tippit scene was in the opposite direction--it was southward from the bus stop.
-- The weight of the eyewitness evidence clearly has Tippit's killer walking
toward the police car, not away from it. This wreaks havoc with the WC's timeline for getting Oswald to the Tippit scene. From Rockefeller Foundation scholar Henry Hurt's widely acclaimed book
Reasonable Doubt:
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One of the most glaring discrepancies of all is seen in the accounts
of the direction in which Tippit's killer was walking just before Tippit
stopped. William Scoggins, a cab driver who was an eyewitness,
testified that the gunman was walking west toward Tippit's car prior
to the shooting. Another witness reported similarly. Reports from
the Dallas police as well as the first reports of the Secret Service
reflect the same impression. Despite the preponderance of evidence
that the killer and Tippit's car were moving toward each other, the
Warren Report concluded that the killer was walking in the opposite
direction. The commission version held that Tippit's car overtook
the pedestrian killer.43
This was necessary for the Warren Commission's tenuous version
to work at all. If he was Oswald, the killer had to be walking east,
in the same direction as the police car was moving when it overtook
the killer. Otherwise, Oswald, on his exceedingly tight time sched-
ule, would have had to move from the rooming house to a point
beyond the scene of the shooting and then to have turned and been
heading back to reach the location of the murder. Because of time
considerations, that was preposterous even by commission stan-
dards, so the commission ignored the testimony. (pp. 149-150)
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-- The weight of the evidence puts the time of the shooting at around 1:08-1:10, not 1:16. Henry Hurt:
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As in other aspects of its investigation, the Warren Commission
found itself using as key witnesses those whose accounts must have
been distressing in the formulation of the official version. For the
Tippit murder, Helen Markham emerged as the star of the com-
mission's presentation, even though she claimed she saw Tippit
being shot no later than 1:07 P.M.—significantly earlier than the
murder could have happened if it was committed by Oswald. (Mrs.
Markham, while highly inconsistent in other areas, seems credible
on the matter of the timing because she was on her way to catch a
bus at 1:15 to go to her regular job.)2
Other eyewitnesses also plagued the commission. The only person
who claimed he actually checked the time was T. F. Bowley, who
stated that his watch indicated that it was 1:10 P.M. And Bowley
came upon the murder scene after Tippit was shot, while he was
still lying in the street. Bowley's report gives credence to the 1:07
time Helen Markham gave for the actual shooting. Four other wit-
nesses put the time even earlier, stating that it occurred around one
o'clock. (p. 144)
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-- The "identifications" of Oswald as Tippit's killer are doubtful. Henry Hurt:
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Other eyewitness testimony concerning Oswald and the Tippit
murder also seemed shaky at best, calling into question the whole
lineup procedure used that afternoon and evening by the Dallas
Police Department. One witness taken to view the lineup told the
Warren Commission that one reason he was able to pick out the
prime suspect was that Oswald was complaining loudly that he
was being framed by the procedure. In fact, he was the only one in
the lineup with a bruised and swollen face, the results of the scuf-
fle at the time of his arrest. He certainly was the only one who,
when questioned so that the witness could hear his voice, stated
that he worked at the Texas School Book Depository—by then
heralded to the world as the almost certain site of the assassin's
Five of the witnesses who identified Oswald as the man fleeing
the scene picked him out of the lineup under the dubious conditions
described.
Others were asked two months later to look at a photograph of
Oswald and to say whether he was the man observed running
from the murder scene. (These witnesses were not asked to pick
the person they saw from among several photographs—only to say
whether Oswald was the man they had seen.) Several witnesses made
positive identifications in this fashion, while others did not.3 (pp. 146-147)
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-- The duration of Oswald's ride in Whaley's cab is problematic for the WC's case against Oswald, and his post-assassination actions are not indicative of someone who was in desperate flight. From Sylvia Meagher's book
Accessories After the Fact:
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According to the Warren Report, Oswald walked from the point where he had
left the bus to the Greyhound Bus Terminal. There he took a taxicab driven by
William Whaley, saying that he wished to go to 500 North Beckley. As the cab
was about to start, Oswald seemed about to yield his place to an elderly woman
who wanted a taxi too, but apparently she refused his offer.
The cab proceeded to North Beckley, where Oswald got out in the 700 block,
paying a meter charge of 95 cents. The Report (WR 163) states that the elapsed
time of the reconstructed run from the Greyhound Bus Station to Neely and Beckley Streets
was 5 minutes 30 seconds, in a retracing of the route performed during an inter-
view with Whaley in Dallas. The Commission suggests that if the cab ride lasted
approximately 6 minutes, Oswald could have walked the distance to his room-
ing house in time to arrive there by 1 p.m.
Comments on the treatment of the taxi ride by the Warren Commission can
be brief. It is immediately obvious that Oswald's actions were inconsistent with
those of an escaping assassin in two respects: he took a taxi to a local address
instead of taking advantage of the possibilities in the Greyhound Bus Station
for leaving Dallas or the State of Texas altogether; and he was ready to sur-
render the taxi to a lady who wanted it, as if he had no cause for anxiety or
urgency.5 These surprising actions are not discussed in the Report in the con-
text of Oswald's alleged guilt, although the mere fact of his departure from the
Book Depository is considered incriminating.
5 It is increasingly difficult to reconcile Oswald's demeanor with what the Commission
calls "escape." Whaley testified to the "slow way" Oswald had walked up to the taxi, saying:
"He didn't talk. He wasn't in any hurry. He wasn't nervous or anything." (2H 261)
The estimate of six minutes for the taxi trip merits a few remarks. Whaley
first testified before the Commission on March 12, 1964. At that time he esti-
mated the distance between the points where he had picked up and discharged
Oswald as two and a half miles. Asked for an estimate of the time it took to
cover that distance, Whaley said:
Whaley: I run it again with the policeman because the policeman was wor-
ried, he run the same trip and he couldn't come out the same time I did... .
I got the two minutes on him he never could make up. So I had to go back
with him to make that trip to show him I was right.
Ball: How much time, in that experiment, when you hit the lights right,
how long did it take you?
Whaley: Nine minutes. (2H 259)
The estimate of nine minutes for the taxi ride apparently created difficulties,
since Oswald's movements from the Book Depository to the Tippit scene, as
reconstructed by the Warren Commission, had him on a tight schedule without
a minute to spare. Whaley was re-interviewed in Dallas on April 8, 1964, after
again retracing the route on which he had transported Oswald, this time in a
Secret Service car. It was this re-enactment that served as the basis for the
Commission's estimate of six minutes (6H 434), with a slightly altered point of
termination of the ride (the 700 instead of the 500 block of North Beckley
Street), three blocks (instead of five) from the rooming house, to which Whaley
now agreed. He readily acknowledged that his original recollection—that Oswald
had left the cab in the 500 block—was wrong.
In allowing six minutes for the taxi ride,7 the Commission has made no
allowance for traffic conditions immediately after the assassination. Yet in the
case of testimony that Jack Ruby was seen at Parkland Hospital an hour after
the assassination, the Commission solemnly concluded that the witnesses were
mistaken, basing this decision in part on the assumption that Ruby could not
have made the drive in the available time, 10 to 15 minutes, because of traffic
conditions. Since the normal time for the drive was 9 to 10 minutes, the Com-
mission apparently considered that Ruby would have experienced a slowdown
of 50 per cent.
It is difficult to reconcile the Commission's reasoning in the case of Ruby
with its calculations in the case of Oswald. His trip was actually speeded up
by 33 1/3 per cent in relation to the driver's first attempts to retrace the route,
which took nine minutes. In the later experiment, the Commission failed to
check the six-minute ride against the taxi meter to see if it registered 95 cents
at the end of the ride, the amount that Oswald paid. (pp. 83-84)
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