Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy (73 page)

Testifying to the Warren Commission, Poe vacillated, saying he couldn't
swear to marking the cases. However, asked to identify the cartridges, Poe
also stated: "I want to say these two are mine, but I couldn't swear to it."

Poe's failure to find his initials on the cases, coupled with the fact that
the cases were not turned over to the FBI until six days after other
inventoried evidence, leaves many researchers with the suspicion that shell
cases from Oswald's revolver was substituted for the ones marked by Poe.

To further confuse the issue, the Warren Commission discovered that
the shell cases allegedly recovered at the scene of the shooting do not
match up with the slugs that were recovered from Tippit's body. The four
cases are made up of two of Winchester-Western manufacture and two of
Remington-Peters, while of the bullets removed from Tippit, only one is
Remington-Peters and three are from Winchester-Western.

Weakly, the Warren Commission attempted to explain this anomaly by
surmising that perhaps a fifth shot had been fired but not recovered (most
of the witnesses recalled no more than four shots) or that perhaps Oswald
already had an expended Remington-Peters case in his pistol prior to
shooting Tippit. The Commission even suggested that perhaps ". . . to
save money . . . he might have loaded one make of bullet into another
make of cartridge case."

This, of course, would require Oswald to own or have access to
reloading equipment. It should be pointed out that when arrested, Oswald
reportedly was carrying five live Winchester-Western bullets in his pocket in addition to the fully loaded revolver, which apparently was never tested
to determine if it had been fired recently. With this exception, authorities
found no other ammunition or gun-cleaning materials in any of Oswald's
possessions.

• 3. The Warren Commission determined that the revolver in Oswald's
possession at the time of his arrest was purchased by and belonged to him.
While this segment of the evidence against Oswald may be true (some
researchers are not convinced that the weapons order signed by A. J.
Hidell can conclusively be traced to Oswald), it does not prove that the
gun was used to kill Tippit.

For instance, even the resources of the FBI failed to prove that the slugs
recovered from Tippit's body had been fired from Oswald's pistol. FBI
officials claimed that since the Oswald revolver had been rechambered to
accept .38 Special ammunition, the barrel was oversize for the bullet,
causing inconsistent ballistic markings. Thus, ". . . consecutive bullets
fired in the revolver by the FBI could not even be identified with each
other under the microscope," stated the Commission in an appendix to its
report. This statement is most odd, for several firearms experts have told
this author that similar .38 Specials do fit the rifling grooves and can be
checked ballistically.

If the slugs from Tippit's body cannot be matched to Oswald's revolver,
perhaps it is because they did not come from that gun. Adding fuel to this
speculation is the statement of Eddie Kinsley, the ambulance attendant
who drove the mortally wounded Tippit to a hospital. In recent years,
Kinsley told newsman Earl Golz of an extraneous bullet. According to
Kinsley, as he unloaded Tippit from his ambulance: "I kicked one of the
bullets out of my ambulance that went into his button . . . onto the parking
lot of Methodist Hospital. It didn't go in the body . . . It fell off the
ambulance still in this button."

Since Tippit reportedly was struck by all four bullets fired at him and
these slugs were placed in evidence with the Warren Commission, what is
the explanation for Kinsley's fifth slug? Kinsley told Golz he had never
been questioned by the Warren Commission.

Recent work by Texas researchers indicate that the cases now residing in
the National Archives and exhibited by the Warren Commission as the
shells used in the Tippit slaying, may not have been fired by Oswald's
pistol. Oswald's pistol was originally a Military and Police Smith &
Wesson 1905 Model .38-caliber revolver, the largest-selling quality revolver ever produced. Originally shipped to England during World War II,
more than eighty-eight thousand were shipped back to the United States in
the late 1950s and early 1960s.

The pistol in question, serial number V510210, ended up in California,
where it apparently was converted to a .38 Special Model. This involved
cutting off the barrel from its original five inches to two-and-a-quarter
inches. The Warren Commission said the pistol also was rechambered to accept .38 Special ammunition (slightly smaller in diameter but longer
than. 38 Standard ammunition), although Commission testimony fails to
establish this change.

Texas researcher and veteran hunter Larry Howard discovered after
buying an exact duplicate of Oswald's .38 revolver that .38 Special
cartridges, when fired in a rechambered weapon, bulge noticeably in the
center. Howard told this author:

I have checked this with several expert gunsmiths. Since the rechambering
cannot change the diameter of the cylinder, but only makes it longer to
accept .38 Special ammo, the bullet bulges in the middle when fired.
I've done it time after time. My wife can notice the bulge. The case
looks like it's pregnant. Studying the shells depicted in the Warren
Commission volumes and also in a close-up clear photograph in the
November 1983, commemorative issue of Life magazine, it appears to
everyone that the shell cases in the National Archives (supposedly the
casings found at the scene of Tippit's death) do not show any bulging at
all. This indicates to me and other experts that those cases could not
have been fired from the .38 Special that was supposed to belong to
Oswald.

Until further testing can be done on the cartridge cases in question, this
is hardly solid proof of Oswald's innocence in the Tippit shooting. But it is
further proof of the wide gaps still open in the case against Oswald.

• 4. According to the Warren Commission, Oswald's jacket was found
along the path of flight taken by Tippit's killer.

The Warren Commission wrote:

... Oswald was seen leaving his roominghouse at about 1 P.M. wearing
a zipper jacket ... the man who killed Tippit was wearing a lightcolored jacket, that he was seen running along Jefferson Boulevard,
that a jacket was found under a car in a lot adjoining Jefferson
Boulevard . .. when he was arrested at approximately 1:50 P.M., he
was in shirtsleeves. These facts warrant the finding that Lee Harvey
Oswald disposed of his jacket as he fled from the scene of the Tippit
killing.

But did the facts warrant such a conclusion? Not really, since almost
every aspect of the jacket story has since come under question. Oswald, it
is known, had only two jackets-one blue and one a lightweight gray
zipper jacket. At least two witnesses at the scene of Tippit's slaying
reported his killer wore a white jacket.

One of these witnesses, Helen Markham, was shown Oswald's gray
jacket by a Warren Commission attorney who asked, "Did you ever see
this before`?" Despite having been shown the jacket by the FBI prior to her testimony, Markham replied: "No; I did not . . . that jacket is a darker
jacket than that, I know it was."

Witness Domingo Benavides was shown a jacket by Commission attorney David Belin, who said, "I am handing you a jacket which had been
marked as `Commission's Exhibit 163,' and ask you to state whether this
bears any similarity to the jacket you saw this man with the gun wearing?"
The accommodating Benavides responded: "I would say this looks just
like it . . ."

The problem here is that Commission's Exhibit 163 is Oswald's dark
blue jacket. The gray jacket is Commission's Exhibit 162. Here is yet
another example of a witness obligingly providing the answers he felt were
wanted.

Another example is cabdriver William Whaley, who reportedly drove
Oswald home from downtown Dallas. Whaley identified the gray jacket as
the one Oswald was wearing in his cab. Yet the Warren Commission,
based on testimony from Oswald's landlady, stated that Oswald put on the
jacket after arriving at his lodgings.

Testifying to the Warren Commission, Roberts said:

(Oswald] went to his room and he was in his shirtsleeves . . . and he
got a jacket and put it on-it was kind of a zipper jacket. [She then was
shown Commission's Exhibit 162, Oswald's gray jacket, and asked if
she had seen it before] . . . Well, maybe I have, but I don't remember
it. It seems like the one he put on was darker than that .. .

Barbara Davis, another witness at the Tippit slaying, also could not
identify Oswald's gray jacket to the Warren Commission. In fact, she
stated the killer wore "a dark coat . . . it looked like it was maybe a wool
fabric . . . more of a sporting jacket. "

Cabdriver William Scoggins also failed to identify Oswald's jacket,
saying, "I thought it was a little darker."

Despite these problems of identification, the Commission went right on
asserting that the jacket belonged to Oswald.

More Commission deception occurred in its reporting of the discovery
of the jacket. The Warren Report stated: "Police Capt. W. R. Westbrook
. . . walked through the parking lot behind the service station and found a
light-colored jacket laying under the rear of one of the cars." However, in
his testimony, Westbrook was asked if he found some clothing. He
replied: "Actually, I didn't find it-it was pointed out to me by . . . some
officer ... " According to the Dallas police radio log, a "white jacket"
was found by "279 (Unknown)" a full fifteen minutes before Westbrook
arrived on the scene. The Commission made no effort to determine who
really found the jacket, if a jacket was actually found, or if it was a white
jacket that only later was transformed into Oswald's gray jacket.

Recently, the owner of the Texaco station where the jacket reportedly was found told Texas researchers that no one-neither the FBI, Dallas
police, nor the Warren Commission-ever questioned him or his employees about this important piece of evidence.

In addition, the jacket identified by federal authorities as belonging to
Oswald carried inside a laundry mark "30 030" and a dry-cleaning tag "B
9738." A full-scale search by the FBI in both Dallas and New Orleans
failed to identify any laundry or dry cleaners using those marks.

Oswald's wife, Marina, testified she could not recall her husband ever
sending his jackets to a cleaning establishment, but that she did recall
washing them herself. Further investigation by the FBI turned up no
laundry or dry-cleaning tags on any of Oswald's other clothing.

With all this, plus a broken chain of evidence, the jacket cannot be
considered evidence of Oswald's guilt in the killing of Officer Tippit.

Then there is a matter of time and a strange incident at Oswald's
lodging. Earlene Roberts, Oswald's landlady, told the Warren Commission
she was watching television coverage of the assassination about 1 P.M.
when Oswald-who had been registered at the rooming house as O. H.
Lee-hurried in and went to his room.

She said next a Dallas police car pulled up in front of her house and
honked. She explained: "I had worked for some policemen and sometimes
they come by . . . I just glanced out, saw the number [on the car] . . . It
wasn't the police car I knew . . . and I ignored it. . . ." She said the
police car was directly in front of her home when the driver sounded the
horn, like "tit-tit." She said the car then "... just eased on . . . and they
just went around the corner that way."

According to Roberts, there were two uniformed policemen in the car,
most unusual since daytime patrols in that area of the city were limited to
one officer-such as Tippit. She could not recall the number of the car
precisely, but said she did recall that the first two numbers of a possible
three-digit combination were a I and a 0. Tippit was driving car No. 10
that day and Tippit failed to respond to a dispatcher call at the approximate
time of the police-car incident.

Immediately following the police-car episode, Roberts said Oswald
came out of his room and left hurriedly, zipping up a jacket. She said he
left her house three or four minutes after 1 P.M.

Roberts said she looked out of the window and last saw Oswald standing
at a nearby bus stop.

According to the Warren Commission, a man keyed a microphone at
1:16 P.M., saying, "Hello police operator . . . We've had a shooting here
... it's a police officer, somebody shot him." This, of course, referred to
Tippit, who lay dead about a mile from Oswald's residence.

The Commission tried to establish that the Tippit shooting occurred
moments after 1:15 P.M., hardly enough time to allow Oswald to run from
his rooming house to the scene of the Tippit slaying at 10th and Patton.
The Commission could not locate even one witness who saw Oswald walking or running between his rooming house and the scene of the Tippit
slaying.

This time frame becomes stretched to the breaking point when one
considers the Tippit witnesses' testimony. Even Helen Markham, who was
so confused about other matters, was certain of the time because she was
on her way to catch her usual 1:12 P.M. bus for work. Asked by a Warren
Commission attorney about the time she saw the Tippit shooting, Markham responded: "I wouldn't be afraid to bet it wasn't six or seven minutes
after one."

In this instance, Mrs. Markham's recollection must be correct since
another Tippit shooting witness, Jack Ray Tatum, told researchers that
Mrs. Markham did not want to remain at the scene because she feared
missing her bus for work.

T. F. Bowley, the man who made the call to the police dispatcher, was
never called to testify to the Warren Commission. The reason may be that
Bowley heard shots, saw Tippit's body lying next to his squad car, and
looked at his watch. It was 1:10 P.M.

Other witnesses hid at the sound of the shots, afraid the gunman would
turn on them. Only after the killer fled did they venture out.