Did Oswald shoot Officer Tippit?

[CK_John]

I don't think so, but I think he was some how envolved with Oswald.

[Ken Burch]

1. Oswald was never tried for anything, of course (having been conviently shot by Jack Ruby)

But he was actually apprehended under suspicion of the officer's murder. So, we can't say for sure.

[Missie56]

2. Officer Tippet

[Gabi Hayes]

3. here

Only two Commission witnesses were identified as actually having seen the shooting, Helen Markham and Domingo Benavides. Joseph Ball, senior counsel to the Commission, has referred to Markham's testimony as "full of mistakes," and characterized her as "utterly unreliable." 29
Markham made numerous false statements before the Commission, such as claiming to have been alone with Tippit's body for twenty minutes after the killing. 30

Benavides was not taken to a police lineup. He later testified that he had told police after the killing that he did not think he could identify the assailant, 31
but he did say that the killer resembled pictures he had seen of Oswald.

Additionally, certain witnesses who did not appear before the Commission identified an assailant who was not Oswald. Both Acquilla Clemons and Frank Wright witnessed the scene from their respective homes within one block of the murder. Clemons saw two men near Tippit’s car just before the shooting. After the shooting she ran outside and saw a man with a gun, whom she described as "kind of heavy". He waved to the second man, urging him to "go on". 32
Frank Wright also emerged from his home and observed the scene seconds after the shooting. He described a man standing by Tippit’s body who had on a long coat, and who immediately ran to a car and left the scene. 33

There is also evidence to indicate that the cartridge shells recovered from the scene may not have been those subsequently entered into evidence. Two of the shells recovered at the scene were given to police officer J.M. Poe. Poe testified to the Commission that he believed that he had marked the shells with his initials, although he couldn’t "swear to it". 34
However, no initials were found on the shells later produced by the police. 35
Poe later told researchers that he was absolutely certain that he had marked the shells. 36


29 Summers, Anthony, Not in Your Lifetime, Warner Books, 1998, ISBN 0751518409, p. 68.

30 Warren Commission Hearings Vol. XX, p.590

31 Warren Commission Hearings Vol. VI, p. 452

32 Summers, Anthony, Not in Your Lifetime, Warner Books, 1998, ISBN 0751518409, pp. 70–1. Two eyewitnesses to the aftermath, Sam Guinyard and Ted Callaway, ran to 10th and Patton and found Tippit lying in the street beside his car. Callaway picked up Tippit's gun, which lay beneath him outside of the holster. He and Scoggins attempted to chase down the gunman in Scoggin's taxicab. Warren Commission Report, p. 169.

33 Interview Nov. 12, 1964 by George and Patricia Nash for The New Leader, also, Anthony Summers. Wright claimed that the killer escaped the crime scene in a gray automobile; he later altered his story, claiming that it was another man who drove off in the gray coupe, while the killer ran alongside, yelling back and forth with the driver. Myers, pp. 76–78.

34 Warren Commission Hearings Vol. VII, p.69

35 Warren Commission Hearings Vol. XXIV, pp. 131–5.

36 Hurt, Henry, Reasonable Doubt, Henry Holt & Co., 1988. ISBN 0030040590 p.153

[Bolo Boffin]

4. Kind of inconvenient for Oswald to have been caught with the weapon that killed Tippit, no? n/t

[Gabi Hayes]

7. you again?

prove it

seems it's not as cut and dried as you always proclaim, while never citing any evidence

[Gabi Hayes]

12. anybody who buys the chain of custody, re: oswald's pistol, read this:

........Already, the chain of custody was lost. McDonald, despite his unchallenged attempt to say with certainty that he "gave" the pistol he'd take from Oswald to Bob Carroll, the fact is that McDonald stated that he put the gun "out there in the aisle" while he continued to struggle with Oswald and as he was surrounded by several other officers (including T.A. Hutson, C.T. Walker and Ray Hawkins by his own account, as well as Hill, Bentley and others by their accounts). As much as McDonald wanted to give the impression that he knew at that time whom he'd given the gun to, he did not ... and for his own part, the person who took it from him, Detective Carroll, could not - and would not - say whom he'd taken the gun from.

McDonald's "certainty" undoubtedly came from later reconstructions in conversation with other officers, but Carroll, despite probably similar knowledge, would not pretend the same certainty under oath. Had the WC hearings been conducted in an adversarial setting (that is, with a defense to cross-examine), even a green defense attorney would have made this point ("Mr. McDonald, did you actually see Detective Carroll take the gun from your hand? No? Do you know what he did with the gun afterward?" and "Detective Carroll, is it your testimony that you don't know from whom you took the gun? So I could tell you that Officer Ray Hawkins said he had the gun before you took it, and that Officer McDonald said the same thing, and you could not tell me which of the two it might have been, is that so?") and possibly been successful in getting the weapon excluded as evidence at this point. Even if not, it could certainly introduce a reasonable doubt in the minds of jurors (assuming a jury was empaneled as well), especially in light of what follows:

Third, after Oswald had been placed in the car, himself seated in the rear between C.T. Walker and Detective Paul Bentley, the only other officers who had an opportunity to even see the gun were the three in the front seat: Carroll (who drove the car), Hill and Carroll's partner, Officer K.E. Lyons. Lyons was not called to testify, so beyond his written report, there is no indication of what he saw. Of the remaining two, their accounts differ as to /a/ when Carroll removed the weapon from his belt (Hill said "as he started to get in the car ... as he started to sit down," while Carroll stated that he had started the car in motion and driven a short distance) and /b/ when Hill "broke out" the weapon and examined it and the shells (both agree that Hill opened the cylinder in the car, but Hill says he did not remove the bullets until they had gotten to HQ, while Carroll believed he had removed them in the car - but conceded that he might have been mistaken).

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=8739

Officer M.N. "Nick" McDonald was one of the cops at the Texas theater

read what this page has to say about the chain of evidence of Oswald's pistol, including testimony from participants at the above link

[tonysam]

5. Oh, please. There were NUMEROUS witnesses to it,

I wish people would stop with this nonsense, but of course if Oswald killed Tippit, then he killed JFK and wounded John Conolly. There's no way around it.

It just goes to show people WILL believe anything, even when the truth contradicts their beliefs.

[Gabi Hayes]

8. who? be specific

[dflprincess]

9. Eye witness testimony being so reliable

especially after an idea has been planed in the witness' head.

[aquart]

13. THEN he killed JFK????

Are we working from very different timelines?

[Iggo]

6. Oswald shot J.R.

[Junkdrawer]

16. I think there's a computer generated animation that proves that.

About as convincing as anything I've seen on TV lately.

[Iggo]

18. It's the magic bullet, see.

It hung in the air for like 15 years, and then *smack* right into J.R. Ewing.

Totally happened.

[mth44sc]

10. As as an X cop

I've never been a fan of conspiracy "theories". I like evidence. The best book on that has always been "Six seconds in Dallas" by Josiah Thompson

[pennylane100]

11. one thing I remember reading, not sure how true it was,

Tibbet was a frequent visitor to J ack Ruby's Bar, I think it was from a book by Mark Lane and I have not idea if it was true or what it means.

[aquart]

14. Nothing about the Tippet killing ever made sense to me. NOTHING.

In fact, my uneasiness over Tippet is why I've never been able to accept any of the official stories.

[struggle4progress]

15. Oswald was arrested at the Texas Theatre in Oak Cliff, less than an hour after the

Tippit shooting, following a tip from a shoe salesman who saw him enter the Theatre without paying. At the time, he was employed at the Texas School Book Depository, where he had been seen a bit more more han an hour before the Tippit shooting. When he was identified after arrest on suspicion of the Tippit shooting, his name came up as an employee missing from the Depository. His rooming house on Beckley was close enough to the Depository for him to have gotten there reasonably quickly, and it wasn't that far from the site of the Tippit shooting or the Texas Theatre

I don't know for a certainty that Oswald shot Tippit but he seems to have been unaccountably without a ticket in the Texas Theatre a few blocks away from the site of the Tippit murder at a time when he had been noticed as missing from his job at the Depository; he had apparently been acting strangely in the shoe store a few minutes earlier, which is why the clerk called the police. The story is consistent, and after nearly fifty years we probably won't get any more credible interpretation

[cbdo2007]

17. You're correct. Most people focus on little pieces of "questionable" information

that they think don't add up.

Instead, look at the mountains of information that DO ADD UP to Oswald killing Kennedy and Tippit. It's kind of like those people who think we never landed on the Moon. Well, it's true there are a few strange details you could argue, but instead look at the evidence that they did. It's overwhelming!

Now, maybe Oswald was involved with the CIA or what not, we'll never know...but he certainly did shoot Kennedy from the book depository and then killed Tippet when trying to get away.

[mojowork_n]

20. The moon landing comparison is bogus.

As is your premise about "little pieces of 'questionable' information" throwing people off the track.

It's actually the Big Picture that most people have trouble seeing.

Take those 3 big buildings that came down in NYC, in 2001. The Two Towers (and the little 47-story mini-tower, Building Seven), all collapsed exactly the same way that buildings pre-wired/pre-set for a controlled demolition would be expected to fall. But in order for any structure to collapse that way -- to fall straight down, without tipping towards one side or another -- extreme care has to be taken to make sure that the stresses on the building weight supports are all perfectly symmetrical, and evenly distributed all the way around.

It's very difficult to believe that happened, with all three of those buildings, since the planes that were flown in to them didn't strike the buildings dead center. The collapse of Building Seven was 'explained' by the presence of a fuel tank, but that was located in a far corner of an upper floor. If the fires in them did actually cause any of these three buildings to topple, it simply defies credibility to suppose that the sequence of failures, in all three events, was so wonderfully well-distributed, that not one of the three tipped over sideways.

That these are the only three multi-story, modern skyscrapers, in the history of the world, to have ever come down -- solely as a result of fire damage -- makes it all the more remarkable.

[Kaleva]

21. +1

[mojowork_n]

23. Buh-LOW-Ni

RE: "The story is consistent, and after nearly fifty years we probably won't get any more credible interpretation."

Sez who?

...What a lousy attitude. Where's your intellectual curiosity? Don't you even have a spark of a flicker of a hope, that just maybe, some day, the Truth will out?

Wasn't it just a little while ago that people thought we'd never solve the identity puzzle of that Watergate "Deep Throat" whistleblower?

Before Napoleon's soldiers turned over a big rock in Egypt, revealing the Rosetta Stone (a mere two centuries ago) no one could begin to conceive of a way that Egyptian Hieroglyphic writing could ever be translated.

How many days, weeks and months has it been since everyone started to believe "first black president" and "not in our lifetime" were words that always had to be included in the same sentence, like Chang and Eng, the original Siamese Twins, forever joined at the hip?

...I'm completely thrown by your linkage in that last paragraph, that because Oswald was "unaccountably without a ticket in the Texas Theater," ...

...

...

"Oswald shot Tippit."


Huh?


Can you run that by me again? What is the linkage between having -- or not having -- a ticket, and whether or not Oswald was or was not the shooter?

Pardon my sarcasm, but it turns my stomach to read a post that's so piously mainstream and middle-of-the-road, yet so soul-crushing, at the same time.

[oldlib]

19. Yes Oswald shot officer Tippet

The police were already searching for Oswald because he was missing from the Texas Book Depository. They had found the rifle in the upper window where he had shot JFK. The events happened quickly and sequentially. Oswald shot JFK, a short time later officer Tippet spotted Oswald and was shot, Oswald then walked to the theater where he was arrested a short time later.

[mojowork_n]

22. So Tippet knew Oswald from Ruby's Club, and "spotted" him?

Who was the "kind of heavy" man Ms. Clemons saw with Oswald? Why did Oswald walk to the theater if the other guy had a car?

...It's easier for most people to stop asking questions, and just believe their government.

That's fine, if that's what you want to do. But simply repeating what's in the Warren Commission report isn't going to go too far toward convincing anyone that that version of events is what really happened.

Which isn't to say, necessarily, that the Oliver Stone movie version of history had all the right ideas, or that anyone else really knows what went down. But to just type "events happened quickly and sequentially" and leave it at that, it's just not convincing.