Who Really Killed Kennedy?: 50 Years Later: Stunning New Revelations About the JFK Assassination (20 page)

The Warren Commission knew the testimony of Helen Markham, the only eyewitness who had actually seen the Tippit shooting and identified Oswald as the shooter, was too shaky to build a case that could have been expected to stand up at trial. In this regard, consider the following Warren Commission statement: “Addressing itself solely to the probative value of Mrs. Markham’s contemporaneous description of the gunman and her positive identification of Oswald at a police lineup, the Commission considers her testimony reliable. However, even in the absence of Mrs. Markham’s testimony, there is ample evidence to identify Oswald as the killer of Tippit.”
²⁶³

While not abandoning Markham, the Commission clearly downplayed her testimony in favor of what the Commission considered hard evidence, namely, Oswald’s jacket that the Commission argues Oswald discarded after shooting Tippit, the shell casings found at the Tippit murder scene, and the revolver Oswald had on his person when he was apprehended later in the day at the Texas Theater.

Dallas Police found a light-gray Eisenhower-style zipper jacket evidently abandoned under a two-door Oldsmobile parked at Ballew’s Texaco service station at Crawford and Jefferson.
²⁶⁴
The Warren Commission concluded as follows regarding the discarded jacket: “There is no doubt, however, that Oswald was seen leaving his rooming house at about 1 p.m. wearing a zipper jacket, that the man who killed Tippit was wearing a light-colored jacket, that he was seen running along Jefferson Boulevard, that a jacket was found under a car in a lot adjoining Jefferson Boulevard, that the jacket belonged to Lee Harvey Oswald, and that when he was arrested at approximately 1:50 p.m., he was in shirt sleeves.”
²⁶⁵
The Commission felt these facts warranted the finding that Lee Harvey Oswald disposed of his jacket as he fled from the scene of the Tippit shooting. The assumption appeared to be that Oswald must have felt he would be less recognizable if he changed his appearance by discarding the jacket.

Even witnesses who testified Oswald was wearing a jacket when he left the rooming house disagree when describing the jacket. The Commission even admitted, “The eyewitnesses vary in their identification of the jacket.”
²⁶⁶
Mrs. Earlene Roberts, the housekeeper at Oswald’s rooming house, said the jacket Oswald wore as he ran out onto the street was darker than Commission Exhibit No. 162, the discarded jacket the Commission claimed belonged to Oswald. Others claimed the jacket they saw Oswald wear was more “tan” in color. One witness, William Arthur Smith, who was a block away when Tippit was shot and claimed to see Oswald running, even claimed the zipper jacket as seen in Commission Exhibit 162 was identical to the “sports coat” he believed Oswald was wearing when he shot Tippit. Here is the exact exchange:

Mr. Ball
: What kind of clothes did [the man who shot Tippit] have on when he shot the officer?

Mr. Smith
: He had on dark pants—just a minute. He had on dark pants and a sport coat of some kind. I can’t really remember very well.

Mr. Ball
: I will show you a coat—

Mr. Smith
: This looks like it.

Mr. Ball
: This is Commission’s Exhibit 162, a grey, zippered jacket. Have you ever seen this before?

Mr. Smith
: Yes, sir; that looks like what he had on. A jacket.

Mr. Ball
: That is the jacket he had on.

Mr. Smith
: Yes.
²⁶⁷

With a very few, short questions, Warren Commission Ball led the witness from “I can’t really remember very well” to a positive identification of a zipper jacket that looks nothing like a sports coat.
²⁶⁸

Moreover, a careful examination of the Warren Commission record reveals that while there is confusion about which Dallas Police officer actually found the jacket, the initials of the officers at the scene who could have found the jacket are missing from Commission Exhibit 162. The Warren Commission Report notes on
page 175
: “At 1:24 p.m., the police radio reported, ‘The suspect last seen running west on Jefferson from 400 East Jefferson.’ Police Capt. W. R. Westbrook, the senior Dallas Police officer on the scene of the Tippit shooting, and several other officers concentrated their search along Jefferson Boulevard. Westbrook walked through the parking lot behind the service station and found a light-colored jacket which he discovered underneath an automobile.”
²⁶⁹

Westbrook, in his testimony to the Warren Commission, actually denied finding the jacket:

Mr. Westbrook
: Actually, I didn’t find it [the jacket]—it was pointed out to me by either some officer that—that was while we were going over the scene in the close area where the shooting was concerned, someone pointed out a jacket to me that was laying under a car and I got the jacket and told the officer to take the license number.
²⁷⁰

A short time later, Westbrook testified that he could not be positive who found the jacket:

Mr. Westbrook
: Yes; behind the Texaco service station, and some officer, I feel sure it was an officer, I still can’t be positive—pointed this jacket out to me and it was laying slightly under the rear of one of the cars.

Mr. Ball
: What kind of car was it?

Mr. Westbrook
: That, I couldn’t tell you. I told the officer to take the make and license number.

Mr. Ball
: Did you take the number yourself?

Mr. Westbrook
: No.

Mr. Ball
: What was the name of the officer?

Mr. Westbrook
: I couldn’t tell you that, sir.
²⁷¹

Westbrook could not even remember the name of the officer that took custody of the jacket at the Texaco station where it was found:

Mr. Ball
: I show you Commission Exhibit 162, do you recognize that?

Mr. Westbrook
: That is exactly the jacket we found.

Mr. Ball
: That is the jacket you found?

Mr. Westbrook
: Yes, sir.

Mr. Ball
: And you turned it over to whom?

Mr. Westbrook
: Now, it was to this officer—that got the name.

Mr. Ball
: Does your report show the name of the officer?

Mr. Westbrook
: No, sir; it doesn’t. When things like this happen—it was happening so fast you don’t remember these things.
²⁷²

Westbrook’s testimony under oath would have been a gift to a competent defense lawyer representing Oswald at trial. What Westbrook established under friendly questioning from counsel was that the Dallas Police Department at the scene failed to establish a chain of custody for the jacket seen in Commission Exhibit 162. The initials on the jacket belong to Dallas Police Department Capt. George Doughty, the DPD crime lab’s senior officer; W. E. “Pete” Barnes, the Dallas Police Department crime
scene photographer; FBI hair and fiber expert, Paul M. Stombaugh; FBI spectrographic expert John K. Gallagher; a “K42” designation for FBI use; and the initials of FBI firearms experts Charles Killion and Cortland Cunningham. The problem is that Westbrook, the Dallas Police officer credited with finding the jacket, did not initial the jacket as required by Dallas Police Department policy to establish a chain of custody that could be utilized in court if necessary.
²⁷³

The result in any criminal trial would have been that Commission Exhibit 162 would be worthless as evidence against Oswald. Without Westbrook’s initials on the jacket, a prosecutor would have difficulty proving Commission Exhibit 162 was the jacket found on the scene. Even if CE162 was the jacket found at the scene of the Tippit killing, tying that jacket to Oswald would be difficult. Eyewitnesses may have agreed Oswald was wearing a jacket when he left his rooming house, but they disagreed over the description of the jacket.

Much as the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle found in the Texas School Book Depository, the weapon Oswald had in the Texas Theater when he was arrested was a .38 Special Smith & Wesson Victory Model snub-nose revolver, purchased by A. J. Hidell for $29.95 from a mail-order house in Los Angeles. In both cases, handwriting experts established that the signature and other writing on the mail order applications belonged to Oswald. This was evidently sufficient for the Warren Commission to dismiss the possibility an expert forger may have completed the mail-order application without Oswald’s knowledge.

The Warren Commission established that four bullets were removed from the body of Officer Tippit. Of the four recovered bullets, three were copper-coated lead bullets of Western-Winchester manufacture, and the fourth was a lead bullet of Remington-Peters manufacture. But of the four cartridge cases recovered at the scene of the Tippet shooting, two were Western-Winchester and two were Remington-Peters. Granted, the weapon, a .38 Special Smith & Wesson Victory Model snub-nose revolver could fire a wide range of ammunition, but the problem was the recovered bullets did not match the make of the cartridge cases recovered
at the crime scene. How was this possible, unless the killer fired five bullets—three Western-Winchester and two Remington-Peters—and one Remington-Peters bullet missed Tippit and one Western-Winchester cartridge case was simply not found?
²⁷⁴

The mix-and-match problems continued: of the six cartridges found in the revolver when Oswald was arrested, three were Western .38 Specials and three were Remington-Peters .38s. Oswald had in his pocked five live cartridges, all Western-Winchester .38s.
²⁷⁵

“Again we are presented with the paradox that Oswald must have exhausted his supply of both brands of ammunition except for eleven bullets of one brand and four of the other at the time of the Tippit killing,”
²⁷⁶
Silvia Meagher noted in her book,
Accessories After the Fact
, finding the ammunition raised more questions than were answered.

Perhaps most important, no bullets of either kind were found in Oswald’s rooming house in Oak Cliff or in the Paine home in Irving, Texas, where his wife and daughters were living. Meagher stressed that Oswald’s purchase of this ammunition was never established.

How could he have used up most of two boxes of ammunition? There is nothing whatsoever to suggest that he ever fired the .38 Smith & Wesson revolver at any time before November 22, 1963. If he did not purchase two boxes of ammunition, how did he acquire the eleven Western and the four Remington-Peters .38s? If he did purchase supplies of each brand, there is no evidence of the transaction, no evidence of use, and no left-over ammunition among his possessions.
²⁷⁷

Remarkably, at the scene of the Tippit shooting, Dallas Police Department patrolman Joe M. Poe accepted two expended cartridge cases placed in a used Winston cigarette package from witness Domingo Benavides, the same person who used the police radio in Tippit’s police car to call Dallas Police dispatch. Benavides explained he watched as the shooter emptied the spent shell cases and tossed them into some shrubs. Still, he did not pick up the cases until some twenty minutes after the shooting had taken place. Neighbors Barbara and Virginia Davis found two other spent shell casings outside their apartment. Poe, who gathered all four of the spent shell casings found at the scene of the Tippit shooting, neglected to place his initials on any of them. Finally, former Dallas Police crime lab lieutenant, J. C. Day, confirmed the Dallas Police in 1963 did not
consistently follow rules for the marking of evidence, with the result that no reliable chain of custody could be established for any of the expended shell cases found at the site of the Tippit murder, just as no reliable chain of custody could be established for the discarded jacket found by Dallas Police Capt. W. R. Westbrook.
²⁷⁸

Someone who murdered a police officer in daylight in a residential neighborhood that included businesses such as a used car lot runs the obvious risk of being observed. That the murderer would reload the weapon on the scene, throwing the spent shell cartridges in some bushes, strains credibility, unless the person wanted the shell cartridges to be found. Given that the weapon was just used to kill a policeman, the discarded spent cartridges would obviously provide a positive identification of the murder weapon. The strange mix of Western-Winchester and Remington-Peters bullets would reinforce this identification. There is no proof Oswald kept a .38 weapon in his rooming house or that he left the rooming house the afternoon of the assassination with a .38 weapon. When he was apprehended at the Texas Theater, Oswald was in possession of a .38 handgun loaded with that particular strange mix of bullets. The person who shot Tippit was observed leaving the scene, but no one reported observing where Tippit’s murderer was headed. Oswald was observed leaving the rooming house, but was not identified with certainty until he was apprehended at the Texas Theater. There is nothing in the record of the case to rule out that Tippit’s murderer might have been someone different who met up with Oswald and gave him the .38 pistol that was in his possession when he was apprehended at the Texas Theater.

As noted in the preface, during Oswald’s arrest in the Texas Theater, Oswald managed to pull the .38 revolver out from his belt and attempt a shot at Dallas Patrolman M. N. “Nick” McDonald. “I finally got my right hand on the butt of the pistol,” McDonald recalled. “I jerked the pistol and as it was clearing the suspect’s clothing and grip, I heard the snap of the hammer and the pistol crossed over my left cheek, causing a four-inch scratch. I put the pistol all the way out to the aisle, holding it by the butt. I gave it to Detective Bob Carroll at that point.”
²⁷⁹
FBI agent Robert M. Barrett confirmed with McDonald that one of the cartridges in the .38 when Oswald was captured displayed a primer indentation, confirming that Oswald had pulled the trigger in the theater, but the gun did not
fire.
²⁸⁰
Was the .38 revolver that misfired in the theater scuffle the same .38 revolver that successfully fired four rounds into Officer Tippit’s body? Again, the Warren Commission merely assumed that the two weapons were the same, ignoring the need to conduct ballistic tests to establish the fact, and ignoring the inconsistency that a revolver that fired to murder Tippit had misfired in the scuffle with McDonald. Nor is there any indication any of the officers arresting Oswald smelled the muzzle of the weapon to see if the weapon had been fired recently, the same mistake that appears to have been made when the sniper’s rifle was found on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository earlier that day.