[[ posted on alt.conspiracy.jfk on Aug. 16, '96 by jxxl@netcom.com (John Locke ]] ========================================================================= ------------------------ On Tippit Murder and LHO ----------------------- by John Locke The Tippit murder is usually relegated to a sidebar to the Kennedy assassination, but it's an important issue, because if Oswald is guilty then he is 1) clearly in a desperate state of mind, and 2) clearly a killer. It would be hard to argue that he killed policeman Tippit other than out of fear of apprehension for the Kennedy assassination. These are the witnesses cited in the Warren Report (Chapter IV. The Assassin, Eyewitnesses): At least 12 persons saw the man with the revolver in the vicinity of the Tippit crime scene at or immediately after the shooting. By the evening of November 22, five of them had identified Lee Harvey Oswald in police lineups as the man they saw. [Callaway, B Davis, V Davis, Guinyard, Markham] A sixth did so the next day. [Scoggins] Three others subsequently identified Oswald from a photograph. [Patterson, Reynolds, Russell] Two witnesses testified that Oswald resembled the man they had seen. [Benavides, Smith] One witness felt he was too distant from the gunman to make a positive identification. [Lewis] [see witness list below] The number of witnesses and positive identifications of Oswald is a severe problem for anyone trying to prove Oswald innocent. For starters, there is no credible evidence that there was more than one person who attacked Tippit. Furthermore, some of the witnesses saw the gunman at the murder scene and some as he ran past a nearby car lot, but there is no credible evidence this was not the same person at both locations. In other words, all the witnesses saw the same person shoot Tippit or then flee with gun in hand. Therefore, in order to prove that the killer was not Oswald, the testimony of all the witnesses who positively identified him must be discredited. Merely discrediting some of the witnesses will not suffice. Consider the simplified case where three witnesses are passed by a man with a gun. Witnesses A and B positively identify the gunman later; witness C is too unsure to make a positive identification. Considering witness C's testimony alone--if that was all that was available--we can fairly say a positive identification has not been made. But considering all three witnesses together, we can fairly say that three witnesses saw the gunman identified by only two, since they all saw the same person. Two identifications are explicit, the third, implicit. The Tippit murder is more complicated with some witnesses having varied experiences and providing different degrees of identification, but the basic principle holds true. A number of the witnesses positively identified Oswald and any real or purported confusion in the testimony of the others does not disqualify their corroboration. Only the highly unusual case of *all* testimony being disqualified could nullify the identification. Conspiracy authors recognize the problem. Admitting that Oswald killed Tippit undermines the case for Oswald's innocence in the assassination. It also means agreeing with a conclusion of the Warren Commission, which undermines the assertion that the Commission's work was a complete fraud, an argument which must be stated in the strongest possible terms in order to scare the reader away from actually reading the Commission's Report and discovering the conspiracy author's deceptively selective presentation of the facts. To get around the problem, the conspiracy authors pare the witness list down to only those individuals who can be shown as having some real or purported deficiency in their testimony, thus making it appear that *all* witnesses are invalid, satisfying the requirement of the unusual case that nullifies the identification. The authors neglect to mention the other, "clean" witnesses, or they neglect to mention their positive identifications of Oswald. The weight of the eyewitness evidence against Oswald is neither confronted nor even acknowledged. The false impression left with the reader is that there were very few witnesses to the Tippit murder and that none of them testified to anything of value, thus leaving the identification of Tippit's killer open to conjecture as anyone but Oswald. Witness List Benavides - was driving a pickup toward shooting scene; heard three shots; saw Tippit fall from 25 feet away; saw gunman empty gun and throw shells into bushes; retrieved two empty shells from bushes; testified that photo of Oswald bore resemblance to man who shot Tippit Callaway - manager at used car lot; heard five shots; saw man with revolver held high pass across the street; about lineup said, "when he [Oswald] came out I knew him" Davises - lived on corner near shooting; heard gunfire and screaming; ran to door in time to see man with gun cut across corner lawn; saw gunman shake shells out of gun; found two empty shells on ground; about lineup, B Davis said, "I was positive that was the one [Oswald] I seen," and V Davis said, "I would say that was him [Oswald] for sure" Guinyard - porter at used car lot; heard three shots; saw man with gun pass within 10 feet; about lineup said, "I told them that was him [Oswald] right there. I pointed him out right there" Lewis - was on used car lot; saw man with gun in hand run by; was too far way to make identification Markham - saw entire shooting from opposite side of intersection; heard three shots; saw gunman trot away; started crying when Oswald walked into lineup room; positively identified Oswald as Tippit's killer Patterson - was on used car lot; saw man with gun in hand run by; followed him for a block with Reynolds; identified photo of Oswald as "unquestionably" the man he saw Reynolds - was on used car lot; saw man with gun in hand run by; followed him for a block with Patterson; identified Oswald as gunman from photos Russell - was on used car lot; saw man with gun in hand run by; identified Oswald as gunman from photograph Scoggins - cabbie; heard three or four shots; saw Tippit fall; hid behind cab as man with gun passed within 12 feet; identified Oswald in lineup as man with gun Smith - saw Tippit falling and gunman running from a block away; saw Oswald on television and thought that was man who shot Tippit ------------------------ end ----------------------------------