The time of the shooting is crucial in proving or disproving that Oswald was the murderer of J.D. Tippit.
The housekeeper at Oswald’s rooming house, Mrs. Earlene Roberts, said that Oswald entered the rooming house “around 1 o’clock or maybe a little after” and was in his room “not over three or four minutes.” ( 6 H 440 )
In fact, TWICE she testified that Oswald was in his room for “three or four minutes”, the second time in her testimony at 6 H 438 .
So according to her, Oswald left the roominghouse AFTER 1:00 pm. Then he went out to the bus stop and waited for a bus.
Mrs. Roberts said she last saw Oswald waiting at the corner bus stop “on the same side of the street” as the rooming house. Since the rooming house was on the east side of North Beckley St., he would have been waiting for a northbound bus.
The Tippit murder was SOUTH of the rooming house.
Timing
The Commission claimed that its re-enactments showed that it was possible to reach the Tippit murder scene on foot in 14-15 minutes from where Oswald was last seen.
The Commission’s version of the murder of J. D. Tippit alleged that he was murdered at 1:15 pm near the intersection of Tenth and Patton Streets while confronting a man who was on foot that he had stopped. They based this on a radio transmission made by a citizen over Tippit’s radio at 1:16 pm.
It never occurred to the Commission that it may have taken several minutes for one of those witnesses, terrified and in shock, to be sure that the armed gunman was long gone and gain their wits about them and respond to help the stricken officer.
The Commission’s timing of a 1:15 shooting is not supported by any witness or official document.
Helen Markham’s presence puts the time of the murder before 1:15 pm
The Commission’s star witness, Helen Markham, had been walking along Patton on her way to “catch the 1:15 bus” to work at the corner of Patton and East Jefferson, one block from the shooting. She told the Commission that she had left her house a little “after 1:00”, walked one block to Tenth and Patton and placed the time of the shooting at 1:06 – 1:07 pm.
Mr. BALL. You think it was a little after 1?
Mrs. MARKHAM. I wouldn’t be afraid to bet it wasn’t 6 or 7 minutes after 1.
Mr. BALL. You know what time you usually get your bus, don’t you?
Mrs. MARKHAM. 1:15.
Mr. BALL. So it was before 1:15 ?
Mrs. MARKHAM. Yes, it was.
( 3 H 306 )
The time of the shooting HAD to have been before 1:15, otherwise Mrs. Markham would have been on her bus. She knew that.
Helen Markham had to walk two blocks to catch her bus. She had only walked one block when she witnessed the murder. The 1:15 time for the shooting is ridiculous for two reasons: it implies that either Mrs. Markham left her house too late to catch her bus, or that she would have taken over ten minutes to walk that one block.
Her sworn affidavit put the time of the murder at “approximately” 1:06 pm:
Markham’s bus schedule puts the time of the murder before 1:12
Markham’s estimation that the shooting occurred at 1:06 is completely consistent with her walk to the bus stop taking a total of 10-12 minutes. This is supported by the schedule of the bus Mrs. Markham was trying to catch, which indicates that the time the bus would get to Patton and Jefferson was 1:12 pm.
Witness T.F. Bowley puts the time of the murder before 1:10
In support of Markham’s estimated time of the murder, witness T. F. Bowley swore in his affidavit that he arrived at the scene of the Tippit shooting AFTER it had occurred and that he looked at his watch when he arrived and his watch said 1:10 PM:
If the crime occurred after 1:12 pm, Markham would have been on her bus and far away from the murder scene, not standing on the corner witnessing the murder.
Neighborhood witnesses put the time of the murder before 1:15
Corroborating evidence that Tippit’s murder was prior to 1:15 comes from other witnesses in the neighborhood.
Ted Callaway ” about 1 pm” ( 24 H 204 )
Sam Guinyard “about 1pm” ( 24 H 210 )
Barbara Davis “a few minutes after 1pm” ( CD 87, pg. 556 )
Domingo Benavides ” it was about 1 o’clock” ( 6 H 446 )
Francis Kinneth “approximately 1 pm” ( Oswald 201 file, Vol 25, part 2 of 2, pg. 119 )
Frank Cimino “around 1pm” ( Oswald 201 file, Vol. 8, pg. 239 )
Mrs. Higgins “heard the shots and ran out her front door to see Tippit lying in the street. She said it was 1:06. She knew that because she was watching TV and the announcer said it. So she automatically checked her clock when he said it and he was right.” ( Barry Ernest interview with Mrs. Higgins from his book, “The Girl on the Stairs”, 2010 )
Not one witness put the shooting later than 1:10 pm. Not one.
At this point, the evidence indicates that the time of the murder was between Helen Markham’s estimate of 1:06 and the 1:10 arrival of T.F. Bowley.
Ambulance driver: Tippit call took all of four minutes
In his interview with the House Select Committee on Assassinations, in September 1977, ambulance driver Jasper Clayton Butler said that from the time the ambulance company got the call to the time Tippit was pronounced dead was “approximately four minutes.”
Police report shows Tippit’s body arrived at the hospital and he was pronounced dead at 1:15
Dallas Police Officers Davenport and Bardin escorted the ambulance with Tippit’s body to Methodist Hospital. Their report indicates that Tippit was pronounced dead by a doctor at the hospital at 1:15 pm.
Autopsy permit shows Tippit arrived D.O.A. at Methodist Hospital at 1:15
Not only was Tippit pronounced dead, he was pronounced “dead on arrival “. The term D.O.A. means that the victim was “dead on arrival” or “dead on admission” to the hospital. In the case of a D.O.A., doctors at the hospital have no way of knowing when a victim actually lost his life, so the time of pronunciation of death is based on the time of arrival at the hospital, hence dead-on-ARRIVAL.
The report of the officers is corroborated by the “Permit for Autopsy” , which states that Tippit was indeed “dead on arrival” and that the time of his arrival was 1:15 pm.
Tippit couldn’t have been shot at or later than 1:15 as the Commission ( and its defenders ) contend if his body was arriving D.O.A. at the hospital at 1:15.
Working backwards from the 1:15 arrival time at the hospital, that puts the call from the Dallas Police to the ambulance company at 1:11, completely consistent with the murder being in the 1:06-1:10 timeframe and Bowley’s call for help being made at 1:10 pm.
Hanky-panky with the dictabelt
Commission Document 1420 is the transcript of the Dallas police dictabelt for 11/22/63. It shows that T.F. Bowley made the original call on the radio at 1:16 ( page 52 ).
BUT the ambulance WENT TO THE WRONG LOCATION before it arrived at the Tippit shooting scene. On page 54, The ambulance responding to the call ( 602 ) radioes that he’s arrived at the scene, ( Code 6 ) the time is noted as 1:19. Then he asks, “what’s that address on Jefferson ?” He’s redirected by the dispatch to a second wrong address, “501 East Tenth”.
On the next page, the ambulance once again indicates a Code 6 ( out at destination ).
On the following page, although the ambulance has already arrived, there is a second use of the police car radio by a civilian to report the shooting.
Why on earth would someone use the police radio to report the shooting a second time if the ambulance was already on the scene ? Is this evidence that the dictabelt has been tampered with ?
Evidence of FBI tampering with records
This memo dated 11/28/63 from FBI Inspector James Malley ( FBI liason with the Warren Commission ) to the SAC ( Special Agent in Charge ) in Dallas, notes the inconsistencies of the time of the murder. It reveals that the info from Dallas has the “time of death” for Tippit “as 1:13” while the taxi company says 1:25. Malley mentions Oswald getting to his roominghouse at 1:00 PM. Finally, he tells the Dallas FBI to, “make sure that our times jibe”.
The next day, FBI Dallas interviewed Dr. Richard Liquori, who pronounced Tippit dead. In their report, they claimed that Liquori stated that he pronounced Tippit dead at 1:25 pm.
But if you look closely at the time, the original time was handwritten over to read 1:25.
More FBI tampering
And this wasn’t the only document the FBI changed the time by hand to read “1:25”. They did the same thing in their report on the records of the Dudley Hughes Funeral Home, the ambulance company that transported Tippit.
I suggest to the reader that these documents originally said “1:15” and the second “1” was altered by hand to a “2 “. This would have made the time “jibe” with the time Scoggins called his dispatcher ( 1:25 ) for an ambulance.
Unlike Dr. Kemp Clark, who treated President Kennedy and pronounced him dead, Dr. Liquori was never called to testify. Why not ?
The “Oswald-did-it” timeline only worked if Tippit was shot at 1:15 and pronounced dead at 1:25. A week after the assassination, the FBI knew that. Records were changed to reflect those times.
The altering of these documents not only causes me to question their accuracy, more than one witness claimed to have seen Oswald minutes BEFORE Tippit was murdered, more than 3/4 of a mile from the murder scene.
Oswald’s Alibi: The Texas Theater Witnesses
Perhaps the most damaging evidence to an Oswald-killed-Tippit scenario comes from the man who ran the concession stand at the Texas Theater, Warren ( Butch ) Burroughs, who said he saw Oswald enter the Texas Theater between 1:00 and 1:07 pm.
Burroughs said that Oswald had purchased popcorn about 1:15 and then sat next to a pregnant woman who went to the bathroom and then disappeared.
A second witness who puts Oswald inside the Texas Theater at the time of the Tippit killing was Jack Davis.
Author Bill Simpich writes, “Burroughs’ story was corroborated by eighteen-year-old Jack Davis, never questioned by the Warren Commission, who remembered at 1:15 seeing Oswald squeeze in right next to him at the mostly deserted theater during the opening credits to the movie, then got up quickly and sat down next to someone else. Davis stated that Oswald sat next to him and then another patron before going out to the lobby.”
A final word
Documentation indicates that Tippit was pronounced dead on arrival at Methodist Hospital at 1:15. Given the four minute approximate that it took for the ambulance to respond to the call and transport the fallen officer, I believe that the timeline supports that Tippit was killed before 1:11.
I believe he was killed between 1:06 and 1:10. My reason for that is because the evidence is consistent. Markham’s estimate of 1:06 to 1:07 pm is consistent with her walking halfway to her bus stop. T.F. Bowley’s time of coming upon Tippit lying in the street at 1:10 is consistent with Markham’s estimation. Tippit being pronounced DOA at Methodist Hospital at 1:15 is consistent with the four-minute call testifed to by the ambulance driver and in the timeline stated by Markham and Bowley.
If Tippit was killed at or AFTER 1:15, Helen Markham and T. F. Bowley would not have been witnesses to the crime. Markham would have been on her bus and Bowley would have already picked up his daughter at school.
The timeline in the 1:06-1:10 range, makes it impossible for Oswald to have walked to the scene from his roominghouse, even if he left at 1:00 pm.
But the timing of the Tippit murder as proof for or aganist Oswald’s guilt becomes insignificant when you consider that Oswald had an alibi. Two witnesses ( Burroughs and Davis ) saw Oswald in the Texas Theater at or before 1:15 pm and their corroborating accounts make it impossible for him to have been Tippit’s killer.