Two eyewitnesses saw the shooting and seven eyewitnesses saw the gunman leave the scene with the revolver in hand. These nine witnesses positively identified Lee Harvey Oswald as the man they saw. ( Report, pg. 20 )
Seldom will you find a case where the witnesses’ accounts are as confusing or contradictory than in the murder of Dallas Police Officer J.D. Tippit.
First, let’s look at the two witnesses the Commission claimed saw the shooting : Helen Markham and William Scoggins.
The Witnesses: Helen Markham
The Commission’s star witness to the Tippit murder was Helen Louise Markham, a 47 year old mother of five who was on her way to catch the 1:15 bus to to her waitress job.
Her bus stop was a block away from the murder scene and she had stopped at the corner of Patton Ave. and 10th St. to allow traffic to pass before she crossed.
Mrs. Markham witnessed that the police cruiser had stopped alongside a young man who had been walking and that the man walked over to the passenger door of the cruiser and seemed to have a conversation with the officer.
According to her testimony, the man then backed away from the cruiser and the officer got out of the car slowly. When the officer got to about the front wheel of the cruiser, the man pulled a gun and shot him three times.
The fact that this occurred unexpectedly in front of her very eyes caused Mrs. Markham to go into a state of shock, by her own admission, she could not move or speak
In the hours after the murder, Mrs. Markham’s state of mind can only be described as “hysterical”. Was this because she saw a policeman murdered and the killer was someone she knew and threatened to kill her ?
Mrs. Markham was taken to police headquarters to view a lineup before she could fully regain her composure.
That lineup ( # 1 ) consisted of three police employees and Oswald
For her “positive identification” she chose Oswald even though she testified under oath that she hadn’t seen him before, including at the murder scene. ( 3 H 310 )
So why would Mrs. Markham identify Oswald if she had never seen him before ?
Because she was being pressured by the Dallas Police to choose one of the men in the lineup.
She testified that she was surrounded by policemen in the lineup room. ( 3 H 310 )
“..and they kept asking me, which one, which one.” ( 3 H 311 )
Her own admission that she wasn’t sure at first and the fact that police kept pressuring her to pick somebody indicates that her choice of Oswald came after a considerable amount of hesitation and was NOT a positive identification.
“If a witness hesitates to pick someone out of a lineup or photo array, then the identification is likely less reliable.” Epps Law Group
This is verified by Police Chief Jesse Curry, who testified that Markham did not identify Oswald right away.
Her hesitation in choosing Oswald was because she knew that the man she saw kill Tippit was NOT in the lineup.
In testimony she confirms that.
“No. I had never seen none of them, none of these men ” ( 3 H 310 )
Her further testimony that when she picked Oswald she “got weak” and “just kind of fell over” ( ibid. ) may have been from the fact that she knew she had just identified an innocent man.
In addition, Markham refusal to identify the jacket and shirt in evidence as the same jacket and shirt worn by the killer indicates that the killer was not Oswald. ( 3 H 312 )
Her sworn affidavit taken on November 22nd gave NO description of the killer to the Dallas Police other than twice mentioning that he was a “young white man”.
In her statement to the FBI on the same day, Mrs. Markham described Tippit’s killer as an “18 yo” with a red complexion and wearing dark trousers.
But in this video, she says the killer had a ruddy complexion and wore a light shirt, a brown jacket and light grey trousers. Oswald was wearing black trousers when arrested.
She told reporters that the killer was short, stocky and had bushy hair. Then denied she said that.
In a telephone interview, she told attorney Mark Lane that the killer was short, not too heavy and had bushy hair. ( 7 H 502 ) Then denied she ever talked to Lane.
Her credibility is further damaged by her own son William, who told Mark Lane that his mother “lied on many occasions even to members of her immediate family.”
Mrs. Markham’s description of the killer changed drastically from interview to interview.
She is a perfect example of how the more times an eyewitness is questioned, the more likely it is that their memories will become contaminated.
As the Warren Commission’s “star” witness to the Tippit murder, Mrs. Markham was anything but credible.
The Witnesses: William Scoggins
The second witness who the Commission said saw the shooting was William Scoggins, a cab driver who was parked on the corner of Patton Ave. and 10th St. taking his lunch break.
Scoggins’ cab was in the path of the killer as he fled.
But Scoggins neither saw the shooting nor the face of the killer. When he heard the shots and saw the smoke, he allegedly bailed out of his cab.
He testified that he did not see the killer’s face before the shooting and at the time of the shooting his view of the killer was obstructed by shubbery. ( 3 H 325 )
Scoggins testified that he heard three or four shots and they were fast.
I was excited when I heard them shots…so I started to get out…I must have seen him ( Tippit ) fall as I was getting out of my cab and in the process of getting out of my cab I seen this guy coming around so I got out of sight. ( ibid. )
But other witnesses said the killer walked around the back of the cruiser up to the front and shot Tippit point blank in the head.
So how could Scoggins see Tippit fall and the killer run by his cab in the short time it took for him to get out ?
He couldn’t. By the time the killer passed Scoggins’ cab, he would have been outside squatting alongside it.
I saw him kind of coming toward me around that cutoff , through there and he never did look at me. He looked over his left shoulder like that as he went by. It seemed like I could see his face, his features and everything, you see. ( 3 H 327 )
It SEEMED like he could see his face ?
Either he did or he didn’t.
Scoggins’ cab was to the right of the killer, so if the killer looked over his LEFT shoulder as he passed the cab, how could Scoggins’ have seen his face ?
Again, he couldn’t have.
For his “positive identification” Scoggins viewed lineup # 4 from which he picked Oswald out of a lineup that included two teenagers and a Mexican.
In addition, Scoggins identified Oswald after seeing his photo in the morning paper. ( 3 H 334 )
After viewing the live lineups, Scoggins was shown a photographic lineup of 4 or 5 men by the FBI. Commission Document 5, pg 77 is an FBI report that says that Scoggins was shown a photograph of Oswald and “could not be sure” that the man he saw in Oak Cliff was Oswald.
In fact, not only was he not sure the man was Oswald, he picked another photo as the man he saw.
“he gave me some pictures…I think I picked the wrong picture…after I got through looking at them and I says, I told them one of these two pictures is him…and the one who was actually him looked like an older man than he was to me……he told me the other one was Oswald.” ( 3 H 335 )
Scoggins testified that the photo he saw of Oswald looked too old to be the man he saw kill Tippit. ( ibid. )
Was Scoggins even there during the shooting ?
Scoggins testified that he picked up a fare at Love Field and dropped it at 321 North Ewing at 1:00 pm. He then drove to the Gentlemen’s Club located at 125 South Patton, to get a cold drink to have with his lunch. ( 3 H 323 )
An inquiry on Google Maps indicates that this trip would have taken 13 minutes.
Scoggins told the FBI that because he could not find a parking spot in front of the club, he parked on the corner of 10th and Patton and walked back to the club, where, he said, he “watch the President on TV for a minute” before walking back to his cab.
Documents indicate that Scoggins may not have returned to his cab from the Gentlemen’s Club until 1:25pm, far too late to have seen the killing.
On page 74 of Commission Document 5, the FBI reports that Scoggins, “returned to his cab and got his lunch out of the pocket. He estimated this to be about 1:25pm.”
During his testimony, Scoggins said that he asked his dispatcher what time he called in and the dispatcher told him it was 1:23 pm. ( 3 H 340 )
His supervisor, Edward S. Virgil, explained to the FBI that the discrepancy between the 1:23 call and it being logged in at 1:25 may have been due to the dispatcher notifying police before logging it in.
Another reason to doubt that Scoggins saw the shooting was that he testified that he never saw any pedestrians at the intersection ( 3 H 336–337 ), although witness Helen Markham was there allegedly screaming her lungs out.
He specifically testified that he had not seen Mrs. Markham. ( 3 H 337 )
These were the Commission’s two witnesses who saw the murder and “positively identified” Oswald.
One who admitted she had never before seen Oswald in her life ( 3 H 310 ) but chose him from a lineup that consisted of himself and three police employees and the other who chose Oswald from a lineup in which the “fillers” were two teenagers and a Mexican and after seeing Oswald’s picture in the morning paper. ( 3 H 334 )
These are the two witnesses who the Commission said saw the killing and positively identified Oswald as the killer of J.D. Tippit.
Those are some positive identifications.
The Witnesses: Ted Callaway and Sam Guinyard
Ted Callaway and Sam Guinyard both worked at a used car lot a block south of the Tippit murder. Callaway was the manager and Guinyard was a lot porter.
The way he told it, either Ted Callaway was the bravest man who ever lived or he was the biggest liar.
Knowing how many car salesmen I’ve known in my life, the fact that he was a car salesman makes my choice of the two easier.
After hearing gunshots, he confronted an armed man who approached him while himself being unarmed, a man who he testified came within 55 feet of him.
This is the kind of heroism that put Hollywood on the map.
But I doubt it happened this way. I don’t believe that either one of these witnesses were ever close enough to the gunman to be able to identify him.
As proof of that I cite their original affidavits given to the Dallas Police on the day of the assassination. Neither witness described the man he saw as being anything other than a “white man”.
No description of the man.
He provided no description of his clothing.
No description of his weapon.
Nothing.
During his Warren Commission testimony, Callaway nearly slipped and said that he never saw the CE 150 shirt Oswald was arrested in. He made the excuse that the shirt was so far open he couldn’t see it.
A defense attorney on cross-examination would probably like to know if Mr. Callaway never saw the shirt, how did he know it was opened ? For that matter, if he didn’t see the shirt, how did he even know Oswald was wearing a shirt between the jacket and the T-shirt ?
He went from saying “he didn’t have..” and catching himself to, “I couldn’t see this shirt”, to finally, “he had it open”.
In this scene from 1986’s, “On Trial: Lee Harvey Oswald”, old eagle-eyed witness Ted Callaway, cock-sure of his ability to identify Oswald, ( “I could have made that idenification if they were naked” ) says he recognizes “faintly/vaguely” a man standing in front of the TSBD, then misidentifies Billy Lovelady as Oswald.
And this was one of their star witnesses.
Callaway described the Oswald he saw at the police lineup: “he had the same trousers and shirt on, but he didn’t have the jacket. He ditched the jacket.” ( 3 H 355 )
How did Callaway know what happened to the jacket ?
Ted Callaway was a witness who was trying to please his masters. Stumbling and bumbling through his story and providing an account that belonged in a hollywood script.
Not only am I convinced that Ted Callaway never saw Tippit’s killer, I’m convinced that he ( like Helen Markham ) never saw Oswald. And he would have been destroyed by a competent defense lawyer at trial.
Sam Gunyard, on the other hand, saw the shirt. He identified it as the shirt the gunman was wearing. ( 7 H 400-401 ) How could the CE 150 shirt be so far open that Callaway couldn’t see it, but Guinyard could ? Did Guinyard have some kind of special visual power ?
Not only could these two witnesses not agree on whether or not the shirt was worn by the killer, there’s another reason to doubt that they got anything more than a passing glance at the gunman.
Although they were in the same location and witnessing the same thing, each of them had the gunman running on opposite sides of the street.
Then there’s the 1:35 Dallas Police broadcast that the gunman was armed with an automatic weapon, a description attributed to Callaway. Both witnesses described the gunman as holding the weapon with the barrel up. Callaway testified that the gunman got within 55 feet of him, Guinyard testified the gunman was 10 feet away. ( 7 H 398 )
How could anyone that close to the gun mistake an automatic for a revolver when they look nothing alike ?
Another reason why I don’t believe Callaway’s story is the testimony of Domingo Benavides, who testified that Callaway grabbed Tippit’s gun, jumped in a cab and asked him which way the gunman went. ( 6 H 452 )
Didn’t he know ?
The lineups
Then there are the lineups from which the witnesses chose Oswald. Callaway and Guinyard witnessed Lineup # 2, which included two police detectives and the police clerk Don Ables.
Jim Leavelle conducted lineup #’s 1,2 and 4 and spoke to the witnesses prior to lineup 2.
Leavelle indicated in testimony that he knew that two officers from the Vice Unit and a jail clerk had been used for the first lineup. ( 7 H 263-264 )
Leavelle testified that he had seen Oswald, ” the first day he was arrested and when they brought him in and out of the office taking him to and from the jail, and of course, I had saw him at the lineups, what-have-you “. ( 7 H 268 )
So Leavelle was more than aware that Oswald was the suspect. He knew it.
This is a no-no. See my essay on the police lineups.
Sam Guinyard lied under oath when he testified that no police officer spoke to him prior to his viewing the lineup.
Mr. Ball : Did the police officer say anyhting to you before you went in there ?
Mr. Guinyard : No Sir.
Mr. Ball: Did he say that he thought they had the man who killed the police officer ?
Mr. Guinyard: No sir, he didn’t tell me that. ( 7 H 400 )
I say that Guinyard lied because Detective Jim Leavelle DID speak to the witnesses before they viewed the lineup. Callaway quoted that Leavelle told himself, Guinyard and McWatters that Tippit’s killer was in the lineup before they viewed it:
Mr. CALLAWAY. We first went into the room. There was Jim Leavelle, the detective, Sam Guinyard, and then this busdriver and myself……and Jim told us, “When I show you these guys, be sure, take your time, see if you can make a positive identification………We want to be sure, we want to try to wrap him up real tight on killing this officer. We think he is the same one that shot the President. But if we can wrap him up tight on killing this officer, we have got him.”
( 3 H 355 )
In this video from 1986’s “On Trial: Lee Harvey Oswald”, Callaway confirms his WC testimony that he was told prior to viewing the lineup that Tippit’s killer was in it. In this version, he says that it was Capt. Fritz, not Sgt. Leavelle, who told him that. At the end of the clip, Callaway says that Oswald and the fillers were all dressed, “about the same”.
Regardless of who told them, police influenced their choice by telling the witnesses that the suspect in Tippit’s killing and the President’s assassination was in the lineup they were about to see.
That’s another no-no.
Guinyard also lied when he said that he was at the murder scene before Domingo Benevides and that Benevides didn’t drive up until they loaded Tippit into the ambulance. ( 7 H 398 )
Benevides was the closest witness to the murder and the fact that he went right to the spot and picked up the cartridge shells is proof that he was present AT THE TIME OF THE SHOOTING.
Guinyard testified that he could see the gunman rolling the cylinder with his right thumb. ( 7 H 397 )
This from almost a block away !!!!
Give me a break.
The natural reaction when one hears gunshots and sees a man with a gun heading your way is to duck and take cover. The natural instinct is for self-preservation.
Callaway’s version of challenging the gunman while himself being unarmed may make for great Hollywood script, but it’s unrealistic. He didn’t display any courage until he had Tippit’s gun in his hand.
I doubt that these witnesses ever got more than a glimpse of the gunman. The more likely scenario was they saw him coming down the street, took cover by ducking between the cars in the lot, then emerged after the man had passed.
These were two more of the witnesses who the Commission claimed “positively identified” Oswald as the man they saw.
Two witnesses who:
Originally could only identify the gunman as nothing more than a white man
Saw him fleeing on opposite sides of the street
Misidentified his weapon from a distance of 10-56 feet away
Lied under oath
Were coaxed by a Dallas Police detective in choosing Oswald from a lineup consisting of himself and three police employees.
And Callaway had to ask someone at the scene which way the killer fled.
Those are some credible witnesses.
And that’s some positive identification.
The Witnesses: The Davises
Barbara Jeanette and Virginia Davis were sisters-in-law married to brothers. They lived in separate apartments in the same building, on the southeast corner of 10th Street and Patton Ave. On November 22, 1963, both women were in the apartment of Barbara when J.D.Tippit was murdered.
Like many of these witnesses, their recollections of what they heard, what they saw and what they did are so different that a reasonable and prudent person has to question their credibility.
They agreed that they only heard two shots, they agreed that they saw a man with a gun cutting across their lawn and they agreed on the seating arrangement when they viewed the lineup.
That was about it.
They did not agree on the sequence of events, the description of the man they saw, or which one of them at the lineup identified Oswald first.
Barbara Jeanette Davis
On November 22nd, 1963 Barbara Davis swore out an affidavit to the Dallas Police Department that gave no description of the man she saw. She made no mention of opening the door, no mention of going out onto the porch and no mention that the gunman looked up and smiled at her, all details she would add in subsequent versions of the events.
As time went on, this witness’ version of events seemed to take on a life of its own. With each version came an addition producing more drama.
Ten days later, she gave an affidavit to the US Secret Service indicating that ” a few minutes after 1:00 pm” she heard two gunshots, ran to the front and “opened the front door and also the screen door” to see a man with a gun cutting across her lawn. ( CD 87, pg. 556 )
By the time she was deposed on March 25, 1964, her story had expanded. She repeated opening the front door and screen door in her testimony ( 3 H 343 ) and added that she was standing on the porch ( ibid., pg. 344 ).
That’s a pretty brave lady.
She said that she saw the man with the gun in his right hand shaking the shells out into his left hand. ( ibid. )
Then looked over and saw Mrs. Markham and heard her screaming that “he killed him ” and noticed the police car when Markham pointed at it. She claimed that the gunman looked first at Mrs. Markham, then at her and smiled. ( 3 H 344 )
Then she went inside to call police.
For the first time, she described the man she saw as 23-24 years old with dark hair, average height and weight, wearing a dark colored woolen sports coat with dark trousers and a light colored shirt. In fact, she called his coat a black coat. ( 3 H 347 )
Her description of the killer’s clothing eliminates Oswald as that killer. Oswald was wearing neither a dark colored woolen sports coat nor a light colored shirt when he was arrested.
In fact, when she was shown the jacket and shirt currently in evidence, she refused to identify either as the jacket and shirt the killer was wearing. ( ibid. )
So according to the official record, Barbara’s “positive identification” was that Oswald killed Tippit wearing a dark colored woolen sports jacket, dark pants and a light colored shirt.
Ridiculous.
What’s even more ridiculous was the confusing testimony of her sister-in-law, Virginia.
Charlie Virginia Davis
Virginia agreed that they heard two shots and ran to the door, but in her affidavit given to Dallas Police on the evening of November 22nd, ( which BTW lists her as a 16 year old white male ) she said that “we ran to the side door on Patton Street”. ( 19 H 429 )
Like her sister-in-law, she offered no description of the man she saw.
Ten days later she swore out another affidavit, this one to the Secret Service, that they heard two gunshots and “ran to the front door” and “went out on the porch.” ( CD 87, pg. 447 )
In this affidavit, she swears that the man she saw had the weapon in his left hand and was shaking the shells out into his right.
But in her deposition given on April 2, 1964, she reverses that, saying that the gunman had the weapon in his right hand and was emptying the shells into his left palm.
( 6 H 459-460 )
She testified that the gunman “didn’t look like he was over 20 ” and for the first time she describes him wearing a tan jacket and dark trousers. ( ibid., pg. 457 )
Her “description” comes almost 6 months after the assassination, well after Oswald and his clothing were known.
She testifies that when they ran to the front door, they never opened the door and never went out onto the porch, but instead looked out a screen door that remained closed. ( ibid., pg. 459 )
She’s asked if the gunman looked up at them and she replied no. ( ibid. pg. 466 )
Then there’s the sequence of when Barbara called the police. Was it before or after they saw the man with the gun ? First she claims it was before ( ibid., pg. 460 ) then after ( ibid, pg 466 ).
It’s at this point that her testimony becomes so confusing, the Commission’s counsel has to give her an unprecedented 3 minute break in order to get the sequence right. ( ibid., pg. 467 )
She finally settles on Barbara calling the police after they saw the man with the gun.
At the lineup
At the police lineup, each one of the Davises testified that she was the first one who identified Oswald. Barbara claimed that right ( 3 H 350 ) as did Virginia ( 6 H 462 ).
Virginia’s powers of observation were obviously lacking. She testified that there were five men in the lineup when there were only four. ( ibid. )
The Davises viewed lineup # 3. Detective Sims conducted lineup # 3 at 6:30 pm on Friday. As I’ve said before, the person conducting the lineup is not supposed to know which man is the suspect.
According to Capt. Fritz, Sims was present at the first interrogation session between 2:15 and 4:05 ( 4 H 209 ) and thus knew that Oswald was the suspect prior to his conducting the 6:30 lineup.
In addition, Sims testified that he KNEW ALL THREE OF THE POLICE FILLERS that were used in the lineup he conducted. ( 7 H 179 )
That’s another no-no.
As if having one blond in the first two lineups was not enough, the Dallas Police put TWO blonds in the lineup with Oswald and Ables for lineup # 3.
( ibid. )
In this lineup, the witnesses, Barbara and Virginia Davis described the man they saw running across their lawn as a white male, slender, light complexion, with either light brown or black hair ( 3 H 349 ) ( 6 H 457 ).
But both fillers Richard Walter Borchgardt and Ellis Carl Brazel had blond hair, and a ruddy complexion. ( 7 H 179 ) And Ables also had a ruddy complexion ( 7 H 242-243, 7 H 168 )
None of these men matched the description given by either of the witnesses, making Oswald the only choice.
According to their testimonies, this is how they were seated during the lineup:
Because they were allowed to view the lineup together rather than separately and the fact that the seating was so close together, it was impossible for any identification of one to not to be heard by the other.
Finally both women denied having seen Oswald in the newspaper before viewing the lineup. While Virginia’s excuse was that they didn’t get the paper until the following morning, ( 6 H 461 ) Barbara testified that they got an evening paper but she was too busy to read it. ( 3 H 348 )
While the world was glued to its TV sets and the front pages of newspapers around the globe flashed news of the President’s assassination, these women were too busy to notice.
These gals couldn’t agree on which door they ran to, whether or not that door was opened, which hand the gunman held the weapon, how old he was, what he was wearing, whether or not he looked up at them, when Barbara called police or which one identified Oswald first.
They couldn’t even agree on what part of the day they received the newspaper.
The Commission had no problem with these witnesses’ credibility as long as they “positively identified” Oswald as the man they saw.
But the witnesses’ identification was anything but positive, as they said Oswald only “looked like” the man they saw. “Looked like” is not a positive identifcation because it leaves room for doubt. A positive identification leaves no doubt.
Their contradictory and ever changing statements create for these witnesses a credibility issue. Their statements and testimony create more questions than they answer.
Which version is correct ? Who’s telling the truth and who’s mistaken ? What did they really see ?
So far we’ve seen six witnesses whose stories have consistently changed over the years, whose accounts of what they saw conflicted and whose “positive identification” of Oswald was a result of pressure and manipulation of the lineups by the Dallas Police.
Warren Reynolds
Warren Reynolds worked at his brother’s dealership, Reynolds Motor Company located at 500 E. Jefferson.
On November 22, 1963, Reynolds saw a man with a gun running south on Patton Ave. He then allegedly followed the man on the opposite side of the street as the man went west on West Jefferson Blvd. He said he lost the man behind a gas station on Crawford St.
On 23rd January, 1964, Reynolds was himself the victim of a violent attack. As he went into the basement of the dealership to shut off the lights for the night, he was shot in the head by someone with a .22 caliber rifle who was lying in wait for him.
No charges were ever brought against anyone in this attack. A suspect was picked up and questioned but he had an alibi and passed a polygraph exam so the police released him.
Reynolds survived the attack and made a full recovery.
In March, 1964, Reynolds had a meeting with General Edwin Walker who read his story in the paper and was interested in talking with him. The newspaper article claimed that Reynolds was shot because he “fingered Oswald”. But during this meeting, he admitted to Walker that contrary to the newspaper article “he did not finger Oswald.” ( CE 2587, pg. 2 )
Later that month, a man tried to get Reynolds’ 9 year old daughter Terri into his car by offering her money. She ran away and reported the incident to her parents. ( ibid., pg.3 )
Understandably, this made Reynolds “apprehensive” to stick to his original story.
That original story is found in Commission Exhibit 2523, a January 21, 1964 interview where Reynolds told the FBI that ” he would hesitate to definitely identify Oswald as the individual” he saw.
So for the immediate TWO MONTHS after the assassination, when the biggest crime of the century was still a hot news topic, he never saw Oswald’s picture in a newspaper, never saw him on television, even when he was murdered by Jack Ruby ?
That is so much BS.
If Oswald was the man he saw, why didn’t he go to the authorities and report it right away ? Why did he tell the FBI that he couldn’t identify Oswald just two months after the assassination ? Why did he wait nine months to identify Oswald in his testimony ?
Because the man was frightened for himself and his family.
If the attempted murder of him wasn’t enough, the attempted kidnpping of his daughter was the straw that broke the camel’s back. He changed his mind and “identified” Oswald as the man he had seen running from the scene of the crime, even though he knew it wasn’t true.
Why would he identify an innocent man ? That human instinct of survival.
Oswald was dead and identifying him wasn’t going to change anything for Oswald but not identifying him could have dangerous consequences for Reynolds and his family.
This was the message he got from all of this and this is what changed his mind.
So he identified Oswald “in his mind “.
B.T. “Pat” Patterson
The man who allegedly pursued the gunman with Reynolds was another employee of the car lot, B.T. “Pat” Patterson.
Like Reynolds, he never viewed a live lineup and he never reported seeing Oswald until the time he was interviewed by the FBI on August 26, 1964.
Even though Oswald was known around the world just hours after the assassination, it took Patterson ten months to identify him as the man he saw.
And his “positive identification” didn’t even involve a photographic lineup, where he should have been shown photographs of different men along with Oswald’s and asked to pick the man out.
He was shown just two photographs, both of Oswald: Oswald’s Dallas PD mugshot and one of the “backyard photographs” with him holding the rifle. ( 21 H 27-28 )
This is what the Commission accepted as a “positive identification”: a witness who never came forward and took ten months to identify Oswald and did so from photographs which included no one else and suggested Oswald was guilty.
Patterson told the FBI that “the individual stopped still, ejected the cartridges, reloaded the gun, and then placed the weapon inside his waistband.” ( 21 H 27 )
But there’s no evidence that the gunman “ejected the cartridges” after having passed the Davis’ apartment building.
Patterson was a block away from there. How could he see that ?
Mary Brock
Another witness who took months to interview was Mary Brock. She and her husband ran the Ballew Texaco Service Station on the 500 block of Jefferson. She was interviewed by the FBI on January 21, 1964 and told them that at approximately 1:30 pm on November 22nd, a white male wearing light clothing came past her at a fast pace.
Like Patterson, she identified Oswald after being shown a single photograph, again of his mugshot, this time from New Orleans. ( 19 H 181 )
What’s interesting about this interview is that she said that FIVE MINUTES later, two individuals from the Johnny Reynolds car lot came up and inquired about the man she saw. “They informed her that this individual had in all probability shot a Dallas Police officer.”
First of all, a five minute head start is a long time when you’re following someone. At a normal walking pace of 2.5 miles per hour ( 13,500 ft/hr ), that’s an 1,100 foot lead.
That’s nearly 4 football fields. How do you “follow” someone with a lead like that ? Even in a car, you’re going to lose them.
Or maybe there’s more to the story.
Reynolds and Patterson were supposed to have heard the shots, seen the gunman fleeing south on Patton, and then followed him as he went west on Jefferson and north on Crawford.
How could they know that a police officer had been the victim of the shooting if they hadn’t been to the scene of the murder ? Supposedly, all they heard was shots. The murder scene was out of their range of vision.
Because the evidence indicates that at least one of them had been.
Harold Russell
Page 87 of Commission Document 385 is the FBI interview of Harold Russell, another employee of the Johnny Reynolds car lot, conducted on January 21st. In it Russell says that both he AND Pat Patterson “proceeded to the area of Tenth and Patton Ave
He then implies that Patterson left to go with Warren Reynolds “to follow the individual as he headed west on Jefferson Street”.
I don’t believe that Reynolds followed the gunman right away for the same reason I don’t believe Callaway confronted an armed man while being unarmed. I believe that Reynolds watched the gunman and waited for Patterson to return before they both “followed” the path of the gunman as far as Reynolds could see.
And I believe that took all of five minutes and was the reason why that they were five minutes behind the gunman getting to the gas station.
And the reason why they lost him.
Look at Reynolds’ own statement of 1/21/64 to the FBI in which he said that “he last observed the individual to turn north by the Ballew Texaco station and at this point he did not observe the individual.” ( 25 H 731 )
And that he had to make an inquiry at the gas station ( ibid. ), something he would not have had to do if he had followed the gunman and kept him in his sight.
And that five minutes or ten minutes later, “an unknown source” told him that the man he had been tailing had shot and killed a uniformed officer of the Dallas Police. ( ibid. )
How could an unknown person know he was tailing the guy ? I believe that unknown source was Pat Patterson.
Getting back to Russell, he also described the man as wearing a light blue jacket and light slacks.
He then stated that although he was an eyewitness who could identify the killer of a fellow police officer, the Dallas Police simply let him walk away while they were searching for Tippit’s killer. He said, “he left the officers and then went in a nearby drug store and then went about his business and thought nothing more about it.”
Really.
These were the nine witnesses for the prosecution: Helen Markham, Scoggins, Callaway, Guinyard, Barbara Davis, Virginia Davis, Reynolds, Patterson and Mary Brock.
Domingo Benavides
Another witness, Domingo Benavides, was the closest witness to the murder. This is the way he described the man he saw kill Officer Tippit:
I remember the back of his head, his hairlaine seemed sort of—looked like his hairline sort of went square instead of tapered off, and he looked like he needed a haircut for about two weeks, but his hair didn’t taper off, it kind of went down and squared off and made his head look flat in back. ( 6 H 451 )
But this photo of Lee Harvey Oswald in police custody shows that his hairline WAS tapered and NOT squared off.
This means that Oswald was NOT the man Benavides saw.
Witnesses on the day of the murder, gave no description of the man they saw.
Nine witnesses who identified Oswald did so from invalid lineups or identified him from mugshots that implied his guilt.
To consider these as “positive identifications” is ridiculous.
These are the types of actions you take when you’re trying to influence a witness’ identification and frame an innocent man for a crime he did not commit.
But there were other witnesses who did not fall for these tactics, witnesses who described a man who clearly was NOT Oswald. Witnesses who refused to identify Oswald as the gunman. Witnesses whose accounts were never published nor were they called to give testimony to the Warren Commission.
Because they had nothing to contribute to the “Oswald-did-it” narrative, their accounts were simply ignored and it wasn’t until years later their accounts became publicized thanks to the efforts of researchers who tracked them down and made their accounts known.
I call these “the other witnesses.”
The Other Witnesses
This is a 1966 interview by attorney Mark Lane of witness Acquila Clemmons. Mrs. Clemmons heard the shots and ran out into the street and saw two men on opposite sides of the street.
She said the man she saw with the gun was “short and kind of chunky” and the other was tall, thin and had a white shirt on and light colored khakis. She said that the men seemed like they were not together and ran off in opposite directions.
She claimed that she never told anyone what she saw.
In spite of this, two days after the shooting, she was told by a plain clothes “man with a gun” to “keep quiet” or she might get hurt.
Were the authorities warning her that the killer lived in the neighborhood and was still at large ?
BTW, Mrs. Clemons was never called to testify nor was she ever interviewed by the FBI.
In fact, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover made it a point to order the Dallas FBI office to NOT interview Ms. Clemons or Tippit murder witnesses Frank and Mary Wright.
Frank Wright
Frank Wright lived in a ground floor apartment on 10th Street, about half a block east of the murder site. He was never interviewed by the FBI and not called to give testimony as a witness. He WAS interviewed by George and Patricia Nash in 1964 and his description of a man he saw fleeing the scene in a car was NOT Oswald.
“I was sitting watching television with my wife. I was sitting in a chair next to the door. I wasn’t but two steps from the door. I heard shots. I knew it wasn’t backfire. I knew it was shots. As soon as I heard them, I went out the door. I could see a police car in the next block. It was toward the end of the next block. I could see it clearly.
The police car was headed toward me. It was parked on the south side of the street. In other words, it was parked across the street from our apartment house. I saw a person right by the car. He had fallen down. It seems as if he had just fallen down. He was on the ground, and then he turned over face down. Part of him was under the left front fender of the car. It seems to me that I saw him just as he hit the ground. I saw him turn over and he didn’t move any more.
“I looked around to see what had happened. I knew there had been a shooting. I saw a man standing right in front of the car. He was looking toward the man on the ground. He stood there for a while and looked at the man. The man who was standing in front of him was about medium height. He had on a long coat. It ended just above his hands. I didn’t see any gun. He ran around on the passenger side of the police car.
He ran as fast as he could go and he got into his car. He car was a grey, little old coupe. It was about a 1950–1951, maybe a Plymouth. It was a grey car, parked on the same side of the street as the police car but beyond it from me. It was heading away from me. He got in that car and he drove away as quick as you could see. He drove down 10th Street, away from me. I don’t know how far he drove. After he got into the middle of the next block between Patton and Crawford, I didn’t look at him any more.
“I looked at the car where the man was. I looked to see what had happened there. About the same time as I came out, or maybe a little while after, a woman came down from her porch. She was at the house about three or four doors from the intersection of 10th and Patton. The house was on the same side of the street as the police car. Just as the man in the car pulled away she came toward the police car and then she stepped back. I heard her shout, ‘Oh, he’s been shot!’ throwing up her hands. Then she went back toward the house.
There was no one out there except me and that woman when I got there, except for the man I described earlier. I couldn’t figure out who did the shooting. I didn’t see a gun on the man who was standing in front of the car. There wasn’t anyone else but the man who drove away and the woman who came down from her porch. I was the first person out. I knew there wasn’t anyone else there at all. It wasn’t any time at all until the ambulance got there. By the time the ambulance got there, there were maybe 25 more people outside. Then after a while, the police came up.
I tried to tell two or three people what I saw. They didn’t pay any attention. I’ve seen what came out on television and in the papers but I know that’s not what happened. I know a man drove off in a grey car. Nothing in the world’s going to change my opinion. I saw that man drive off in a grey coupe just as clear as I was born. I know what I saw They can say all they want about a fellow running away, but I can’t accept this because I saw a fellow get in a car and drive away.”
We have no way of knowing how the investigation could have ignored Wright, whether his memory is accurate, or whether a plausible explanation for the mysterious man in the car might be a passerby unwilling to be a witness.
Why didn’t this account come to the Commission’s attention ?
The question becomes all the more relevant when it is realized that it was a call from Mrs. Wright which was responsible for the ambulance being dispatched, and the police had her address. The operator took Mrs. Wright’s address, 501 East 10th, and called the police. The police noted there was a shooting at 501 East 10th.
( CD 1420, pg. 55 )
Upon arriving at the scene, it’s basic police procedure to locate and interview the complainant or the caller to find out what happened.
So how could they NOT interview the caller ?
If this were a legitimate investigation, they would have.
But this was no investigation to find the truth, this was a collection of “evidence” to prove that Oswald was guilty.
They only way they could achieve that was to ignore evidence that pointed to his innocence.
FBI intimidation
Not only was the FBI ignoring witnesses, it used intimidation tactics against witnesses who said that the gunman was not Oswald. While questioning these witnesses, the FBI told them that by saying that the gunman was not Oswald, they were making a “statement” and if they were wrong and it turned out to be Oswald, they could be charged with making a false statement to a Federal Agent and faced a five year prison term.
The only way to avoid this charge, the witnesses were told, was to say that they “could not identify” the gunman. Of course, witnesses feared a prison term for just being wrong, so many of them changed what they said and went on the record as having been unable to identify the gunman.
This is why, I believe, the FBI was present at all, if not most of the witness interviews involving the assassination and the murder of Tippit.
They had no jurisdiction in either of those cases.
They were there to be able to intimidate the witnesses.
William Smith
The story of witness William Smith is a perfect example of this. William Smith was 20 yo male allegedly visiting a friend of his and was about a block away from the shooting. He told someone that he saw the gunman and it was not Oswald. Either the person he told or someone else who heard about it sent a letter to the FBI.
This is the FBI teletype describing the letter:
The receipt of this letter AFTER Oswald’s guilt had already been determined caused FBI to interview Smith on December 13, 1963. Not surprisingly, he told them that he was “too far away from the individual to positively identify him”. ( CD 205, pg. 243 )
But apparently he was close enough to be able to see that he was wearing a white shirt. ( ibid. )
By the time he gave his deposition on April 2, 1964, Smith was ready to identify Oswald.
Of course, the Commission’s counsel never asked him about the letter that was sent to the FBI stating that he saw the gunman and that it was NOT Oswald. Neither the Commission nor the FBI was able to determine who sent the letter or why.
Mr. Ball. What did you see? What did you tell the FBI agent about the appearance of the man in the picture?
Mr. Smith. I said it looked more like him than it did on television.
Mr. Ball. And did you think when he showed you the picture that it looked anything like the man you had seen running away?
Mr. Smith. What I saw of him ; yes.
Mr. Ball. First time you ever saw this man was after you heard these shots?
Mr. Smith. Yes, sir. ( 7 H 85 )
So Smith went from “not Oswald” to “too far away to identify him” to “yeah, it was him” all in the course of 6 months.
L.J. Lewis
Another witness who “could not identify” Oswald was L J Lewis. Lewis was at the Johnny Reynolds car lot with Harold Russell and Pat Patterson when they heard the shots and witnessed the gunman running south on Patton Ave.. He was interviewed by the FBI on January 21, 1964 at which time he was shown Oswald’s New Orleans mugshot.
In spite of this, he told the FBI that “he would hesitate to state whether the individual was identical with Oswald”.
Lewis was interviewed a second time, on August 25, 1964 at which time he twice described the man he saw as an “unknown individual”. ( 21 H 26 )
Not Oswald.
Lewis was never called to testify.
Warren “Butch” Burroughs
Butch Burroughs was a ticket-taker and concession stand operator at the Texas Theater. He testified that he never saw Oswald enter the theater. ( 7 H 15 )
But in this video Burroughs says that Oswald entered the theater between 1:00 and 1:07 pm, making it impossible for him to have been at the Tippit murder scene.
Robert Brock
Another witness who “could not positively identify” Oswald as the man he saw was Robert Brock. Brock and his wife ran the Ballew Texaco Service Station on Jefferson Ave. Brock told the FBI that a young white male passed him and his wife and proceeded north into the parking lot behind the station.
The FBI report doesn’t state which photograph was shown to Brock, but I assume it was the same mugshot from New Orleans that was shown to his wife on the same date.
These were witnesses who either described someone other than Oswald, “could not positively identify” Oswald, or flat out said it wasn’t Oswald.
Witnesses who changed their story and said they saw Oswald, like William Smith and Butch Burroughs, were called to give testimony. Witnesses who “could not identify Oswald” or identified someone who was NOT Oswald were never called.
Witness misidentification, wrongful convictions and the science of memory loss
Eyewitness testimony is historically among the most convincing forms of evidence in criminal trials. That iconic moment when a testifying witness points to the defendant as the perpetrator of the crime is iconic, and has been dramatized often on television and movies. It is easy to understand why it is so convincing. We trust our own perception and experience.
But being convincing isn’t the same as being accurate.
Eyewitness testimony is more fallible than many people assume. The advent of DNA analysis in the late 1980s revolutionized forensic science, providing an unprecedented level of accuracy about the identity of actual perpetrators versus innocent people falsely accused of crime. DNA testing led to the review of many settled cases.
Since 2006, The Innocence Project of Texas has exonerated or freed 25 innocent people from incarceration who collectively served 341 years behind bars.
https://innocencetexas.org/our-work
19 of those convictions came under the leadership of Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade, who served as DA at the time of the assassination.
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna25917791
Nationwide, as of January 2020, 367 people who were convicted have had those convictions overturned by DNA evidence. Of those, 21 people had been convicted and sentenced to death.
https://innocenceproject.org/research-resources/
Eyewitness misidentification played a major role in those original convictions.
Of those 367 people, 69 % had been convicted through eyewitness misidentification and had served an average of 14 years in prison before exoneration.
https://innocenceproject.org/how-eyewitness-misidentification-can-send-innocent-people-to-prison/
The authors of a 2018 study concluded that “eyewitnesses typically provide reliable evidence on an initial, uncontaminated memory test, and this is true even for most of the wrongful convictions that were later reversed by DNA evidence.
The researchers argued that eyewitnesses are usually correct immediately after a crime takes place, but that their memories become contaminated during the process of interviewing and questioning. Inaccuracies in eyewitnesses’ memories can, in turn, lead to wrongful convictions.
The more times an eyewitness is questioned, the more likely it is that their memories will become contaminated.
Being asked leading questions, hearing more information about a case from media or other witnesses, and even having to repeat their story many times can all affect a person’s memory.
https://www.verywellmind.com/can-you-trust-eyewitness-testimony-4579757
Memory also deteriorates while we store it. Research dating back to the 19th century shows that we rapidly forget what we have seen and heard, and that memory doesn’t improve over time, as this “forgetting curve” illustrates:
As the graph shows, the average memory declines quickly after witnessing an event, within an hour the retention rate is less than 50 %. After 31 days, it’s about 20 %.
Many of the Commission’s witnesses were interviewed and gave testimony between 2 and 10 months after the murder.
Which makes the account of Jack Ray Tatum, who claimed to have witnessed the Tippit murder and identified Oswald as the murderer that much more difficult to believe. Tatum didn’t enter the limelight until the House Select Committee investigation in 1977, some 14 YEARS after the murder. That Tatum could retain his memory for that long is not supported by the science or the research.
The fact that he never came forward before that time makes his “identification” all the more unreliable.
Memory is extremely malleable as we store and recall it.
Information we learn after witnessing an event from other witnesses, police investigators and the media as well as the ways in which we are asked questions about what we saw can profoundly alter our memories.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the witnesses’ accounts of the murder of J.D. Tippit. Over time, witnesses changed their stories, none of them were consistent with each other and some even contradicted in their testimony months later what they originally told police.
Others were influenced by what they saw on television and in the newspapers.
Domingo Benavides was the closest witness to the murder. He admitted under oath that his eventual identification of Oswald came from pictures he had seen in the newspaper:
Mr. BELIN. You used the name Oswald. How did you know this man was Oswald?
Mr. BENAVIDES. From the pictures I had seen. It looked like a guy, resembled the guy. That was the reason I figured it was Oswald.
BELIN. Were they newspaper pictures or television pictures, or both, or neither ?
Mr. BENAVIDES. Well, television pictures and newspaper pictures. The thing lasted about a month, I believe, it seemed like.
Mr. BELIN. Pardon.
Mr. BENAVIDES. I showed I believe they showed pictures of him every day for a long time there. ( 6 H 452 )
Cab driver William Scoggins also admitted that he had seen pictures of Oswald in the morning paper before he identified him. ( 3 H 334 )
Improved memory over time ? Not according to the research.
The average memory declines quickly after witnessing an event, within an hour the retention rate is less than 50 %. After 31 days, it’s about 20 %.
Many of these witnesses were interviewed between 2 and 10 months after the murder.
Since eyewitness accounts are more accurate right after the event, let’s take a look at the Commission’s witnesses and the descriptions they gave of the killer within the first 9 hours of the shooting.
The witnesses who made statements in the first nine hours were Mrs. Markham, the Davises, Ted Callaway and Sam Guinyard.
Mrs. Markham swore out an affidavit to the FBI saying the killer was an 18yo. She told Officer J.M. Poe that the killer was wearing a white jacket. Then she went to view a lineup and chose Oswald even though she testified that she had never seen him before.
The Davises told the Dallas Police that they saw a man on their lawn unloading his gun. Virginia verified Mrs. Markham’s description of the jacket as being white. ( 7 H 69 ) She later testified that the killer “didn’t look like he was over 20.” ( 6 H 457 ) They were allowed to view the lineup together and after a long delay chose Oswald from a group that included two blonds and a jail clerk.
Ted Callaway and Sam Guinyard gave questionable testimony. Callaway claimed to have confronted the gunman, but asked Domingo Benavides which way he went. Both of these men claimed to have seen the same thing at the same time, but had the gunman fleeing on opposite sides of the street. They were also told by police before they viewed the lineup that the suspect in the Tippit killing was there. I’ve proven Guinyard lied under oath. Like the Davises, they were allowed to view the lineups together. Finally, they chose Oswald from a group that included two police detectives and a jail clerk.
Memory is extremely malleable as we store and recall it.
Information we learn after witnessing an event from other witnesses, police investigators and the media as well as the ways in which we are asked questions about what we saw can profoundly alter our memories.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the witnesses’ accounts of the murder of J.D. Tippit. Over time, witnesses changed their stories, none of them were consistent with each other and some even contradicted in their testimony months later what they originally told police.
Others, like Benavides, were admittedly influenced by what they saw on television and in the newspapers.
The evidence indicates that the Commission’s witnesses were pressured by authorities into choosing Oswald from unfair lineups and were influenced by mugshots that implied his guilt and pictures of Oswald they saw on TV and in the newspapers.
In spite of this evidence, the Commission had no problem with these identifications.
Be that as it may, these “positive identifications” of Oswald as the man who murdered Tippit are anything but positive.
Perhaps the greatest injustice of all is the fact that history will always name Lee Harvey Oswald as the killer of Dallas Police Officer J.D.Tippit.
In spite of the evidence AGAINST Oswald as the killer being very strong.