Justification For Killing (68 page)

Future Kennedy
Assassination researcher’s scrutiny of the FBI report will show
this made no sense whatsoever. No record existed indicating a
police car was dispatched to Oswald’s address prior to 1:00 p.m.;
moreover, if the car had been watching the house the policemen
would have seen Oswald’s entry. Why not just get out and arrest
him? Why blow the horn two times and leave? Does the tooting of the
horn purport some type of signal to Oswald? However, this does not
answer the crucial mystery: the Dallas police department states
they have no police car Numbered 106!! Was Mrs. Rodgers lying,
mistaken or were the police engineering a cover-up?

Investigations by
assassination researchers have virtually established the only
police car that should have been in the vicinity of Beckley Avenue
was Officer J.D. Tippit’s cruiser. Another theory has also been
thrown out: the person who stops and signals with the car horn in
front of Oswald’s rooming house is actually Assistant D. A. Edward
Hill – who was known to have right-wing tendencies. A few minutes
after the murder of J. D. Tippit Hill along with Officer Buster
Alexander, who is riding with him, will be the second police car to
arrive at the Tippit murder scene. A few minutes later they show up
at the Texas Theater where Oswald is arrested; Officer Edward Hill
is also known as a right wing activist and more importantly – he
was a friend of Jack Ruby. The day of the assassination Hill was in
charge of the search at the TSBD when the rifle and spent
cartridges from the rifle were discovered.

At first the officers
examining the rifle, which had been hidden behind some boxes of
schoolbooks, determined it to be a German Army 7.92 millimeter
Mauser. Officer Hill was responsible for maintaining evidence
custody of this rifle along with the two spent shells found on the
floor and the one live shell still in the rifle. Interestingly,
five days after the assassination Captain Fritz of the Dallas
Police Department will turn in a third empty shell casing he said
he found on the sixth floor of TSBD. This seems downright
convenient that this third cartridge will now back up the
“official” story of three shots. Why did Captain Fritz pick up an
empty shell casing lying on the sixth floor, and if he actually
picked the shell up, why didn’t he turn it in immediately? Why
would he wait five days to “discover” it in his pocket? FBI
fingerprint analysis will later show only the fingerprint of
Captain Fritz, Oswald’s prints were not on the empty shell
casing.

It has also been suggested
J. D. Tippit and Detective Roscoe White could have been together in
the same police car. This theory goes that Detective White had told
Officer Tippit it was imperative they pick up a person of
importance and take him to the Bluebird Airport. Tippet’s patrol
car pulls up beside Oswald, Tippet gets out of his squad car and
draws his revolver; As Tippit begins to walk around the front of
his cruiser White fires his revolver three times and kills Tippit.
Before fleeing White walks up and shoots point blank into the rear
of Tippit’s head, he then flees in one direction, and the person
everyone says is Oswald heads toward the Texas Theater.
Interestingly, White is a short, fat, white guy with curly black
hair.

Lee Harvey Oswald has
changed shirts, leaves the rooming house zipping up his jacket.
Walking out the door he checked his watch: 12:59 p.m.

Doctor John York at
Parkland Hospital informed the First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, “I’m
sorry Madam your husband the President, has sustained a fatal
wound.” President Kennedy was officially pronounced dead by Doctor
Clark and Doctor York at 1:00 p.m.

At about the same time,
calls came in to the police station from neighbors close to the
private Redbird Airport reporting a twin-engine airplane was acting
suspiciously. It was said to be sitting on the grass at the end of
the runway revving up its engines. This has been going on for some
time. They want the police to put a stop to the noise they cannot
hear the Presidential news on their television sets.

Oswald was reportedly seen
walking west on 10th Street by Jimmy Burt and William Arthur Smith.
Mr. Burt says the time was exactly 1:01 p.m. The Report of the
Warren Commission will later state Oswald was walking east! This
puts him only a block and a half east of the Tippit shooting and
three blocks west of Jack Ruby’s apartment at 223 South Ewing
Avenue.

Mrs. Earlene Rodgers saw
Oswald at 1:04 p.m. standing on the street at the corner of Zang
and Beckley. This corner was directly in front of his rooming
house. The Texas Theater is over one mile away. Obviously, Mrs.
Rodgers time or the time stated by both Mr. Burt and Mr. Smith
cannot be correct. One of the sighting times was wrong, or both of
the times are wrong! Or possible could there have been two Lee
Harvey Oswalds?

An employee at the Texas
Theater heard someone come in and head upstairs to the balcony. The
clock in the lobby was 1:10 p.m.

At that exact time,
Officer J. D. Tippit, supposedly saw a man matching Oswald’s
description walking east along Tenth Street. Tippit stops his car
and calls for the man to come over to the police
cruiser.

T. J. Bowling was
driving his daughter west on Tenth
Street
at 1:10 p.m. He noticed a crowd gathering around a police vehicle,
he got out to see what was happening. If Earlene Rodgers saw Oswald
at the bus stop at 1:04, he cannot be the murderer; it takes a
minimum of twelve minutes to walk from the rooming house on North
Beckley to the corner of Tenth and Patton.

A Secret Service agent
informed Vice President Johnson, “President Kennedy is dead.”
Johnson turns to Lady Bird and says, “Make note of the time.” She
noted 1:10 p.m.

Officer J. D. Tippit was
gunned down at the corner of Tenth and Patton Street. It was 1:14
p.m. Tippit had stopped a man matching the police dispatcher’s
description walking on Tenth Street, called the man to come over to
the police car. The man leaned over to the window on the passenger
side and talked to Officer Tippit. Tippit steps out of his patrol
car and was shot four times and killed. One shot was point blank
into the back of his head. Thirteen persons witnessed the Tippit
murder, but only two could reconstruct the events. Of the two, only
one Helen Markson, under pressure at the Dallas Police station,
finally picked Oswald out of five different lineup attempts. The
second witness never picked Oswald out of a lineup. The Warren
Commission established the time of the Tippit murder as 1:16
p.m.

T. J. Bowling ran up to
Officer Tippit’s car, grabs the police radio’s microphone and
shouts, “There’s been a shooting here... it’s a police officer,
somebody shot him! Send help!!” This was the first indication
Officer J.D. Tippit had been murdered.

Witnesses will state the
gunman ran down South Patton, and turned right onto East Jefferson
Boulevard. Two used car salesmen gave chase and followed him behind
the Texaco service station on the corner of Jefferson and Crawford.
It appeared capture was imminent, but the police were diverted to a
false alarm sighting at a nearby library.

At 1:19 p.m. an ambulance
with no lettering on the doors arrived at the scene of the J. D.
Tippit murder and immediately whisked the body away, supposedly, to
the Methodist Hospital, but it never arrived. The next report of
Officer Tippit’s body was at the Gober Funeral Chapel.

Dallas Police Captain
Barney Westbrook was given a black billfold supposedly taken from
the ground beside the police car where Tippit had been killed. He
turned the wallet over to FBI Agent Barrett. The billfold contained
a driver’s license, for Lee Harvey Oswald. This was strange, Lee
Harvey Oswald does not know how to drive an automobile, and how
unbelievably dumb would he have to be to leave his billfold,
containing his identification at the scene of a murder. Employees
at the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) will state a week
after the Tippit murder a report of a driver’s license issued to
Lee Oswald will turn up in their records. They further say, the
Department of Public Safety file on Lee Oswald will be pulled, and
it is never seen again. This was witnessed by at least seven
employees of the DPS.

Police Chief Curry, with
an escort of guards, drove Vice President Johnson and wife to Love
Field.

Johnson arrived and
boarded Air Force One at Love Field where he was sworn in as the
36th President of the United States. One of the observers notes the
time: 1:35 p.m.

As the new President was
being sworn in police at the scene of the Tippit murder broadcast
the shooter was carrying a dark finish, automatic pistol. Another
policeman, a veteran with considerable weapon experience sent a
message back to police headquarters, “The shells recovered at the
scene indicate the suspect was armed with an .38 caliber automatic
rather than a pistol.”

At 1:43 p.m. Lee Harvey
Oswald left the Texas theater balcony, walked down the steps to the
concession stand and bought a bag of popcorn. From the concession
stand he entered the main floor of the theater and sat in a seat
next to a pregnant woman. There are only seven people in the nine
hundred-seat theater; he could have found a seat almost anywhere.
After enduring this un-invited guest for a moment or two, she got
up, and left, she was never seen again, and her testimony was never
taken. Oswald left his seat, walked around the theater, and stopped
to sit next to at least three other patrons. Was he looking for
someone?

Captain Westbrook and FBI
Agent Barrett arrive at the Texas Theater and enter through the
rear entrance minutes later. It must be assumed Westbrook and
Barrett could be looking for “Lee Harvey Oswald” - identified from
the driver’s license of the billfold discovered at the scene of the
J. D. Tippit murder.

Johnny Handy, manager of
the Handy Shoe Store, on Jefferson Avenue, became suspicious when a
man, he believed to be the person the police were seeking, slipped
into his shoe store and would duck every time a police siren
passed. Handy had followed this man into the Texas Theater. After a
cursory check of the theater, he asks the cashier, Julia Portal to
call the police, “I think he is still here,” he said.

At a quarter until
two o’clock Police Dispatch sends all cars to the Texas Theater
saying,
“Have information a suspect in the
Kennedy shooting just went into the Texas Theater. Suspect is said
to be hiding in the balcony”

George Applin, one of the
seven patrons in the theater, later stated to the Warren Commission
he was sitting in the center section, six rows from the back. He
testified he noticed another man sitting in the very back of the
theater seemingly unconcerned with the movie but this unknown man
was intently watching as Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested. Years
later he admitted to a local newspaper the man he saw that day was
Jack Ruby. Asked why he took so long to say anything, “I know what
happened to a lot of the other witnesses. I did not want the same
to happen to me.”

Lieutenant Dayly, of the
Dallas Police Crime Lab, left the TSBD, with the alleged murder
weapon used to assassinate President Kennedy. It was described as
an eight millimeter German Mauser when, if fact, later it became a
6.5 millimeter Italian Carcano. Persons astute in military weapons
and those policemen were all WWII and Korean War veterans, easily
would have recognized the differences in the two
weapons.

After a brief struggle,
Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested in the Texas Theater. One of the
officers notes the time was 1:51 p.m.

The arresting officers
along with Oswald drove to the basement of Police Headquarters on
Houston Street arriving at 2:00 p.m.

Dallas detectives begin
the first interrogation of Oswald. He also asked and was granted
permission to call Mrs. Ruth Paine concerning legal assistance. He
called Mrs. Paine at 4:20 p.m.

Fifteen minutes later
Oswald was taken for the first of several lineups he will be
subjected to.

Five minutes past five
o’clock Air Force One landed at Andrews Air Force base with now
President Lyndon Johnson and the body of the slain President John
Kennedy.

A black civilian hearse
arrived at the rear entrance of Bethesda Naval Hospital with an
unadorned metal casket. Six men in dark business suits were
guarding it. It was said they were Secret Service. Persons at the
Bethesda morgue are told it was the body of JFK. One attendant
remembered the time was 5:45 p.m. The metal casket was brought into
the Bethesda morgue where doctors are told it was President
Kennedy’s body wrapped in a black rubber body bag. There was no
brain inside the head.

Ten minutes later a gray
Navy ambulance with the bronze Dallas coffin accompanied by FBI men
arrived at the front door of Bethesda Naval Hospital, and Mrs.
Jacqueline Kennedy follows it into the hospital. The FBI agents
were not allowed to enter.

Why was the arrival of two
corpses at Bethesda, both identified as President John Kennedy,
never investigated? Officer Tippit was approximately the same size
as the President and bore a striking facial resemblance to him
also. Was Tippit in one casket and the President in the other? This
was never investigated.

Oswald was carried down
for another lineup; he also had a paraffin test conducted on his
hands. The paraffin test is to determine whether or not he had
recently fired a weapon. The results of the test were never
released.