Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy (72 page)

All of this occurred in the context of Braden's visit to Dallas. The
House Select Committee on Assassinations tried to sort out the truth of
Braden's visit as well as his contacts, to little avail.

First Braden said he made the trip to Dallas from California and met
with a Dallas parole officer at the moment of the assassination. However,
the parole officer could not recall such a meeting. (If Braden had not
notified his parole office that he was leaving California, he would have
been in violation of parole and subject to arrest.) Braden told the Committee he walked as far as the Dal-Tex Building in an effort to find a
telephone so he could call his mother and tell her about the assassination.
He denied he ever was in Dealey Plaza.

However, due to statements made while in custody and the fact that
Braden has definitely been identified in Dealey Plaza photographs, it is now widely accepted that Braden was among the spectators gathered in
Dealey Plaza minutes after the shooting.

This fact alone-that a known felon with many ties to Mafia figures,
New Orleans, and Jack Ruby would be hanging around Dealey Plaza just
after Kennedy's death-creates deep suspicion about the immediate Dallas
investigation and, even more particularly, the subsequent federal investigation. This suspicion is heightened in light of the fact that in 1976, the
National Archives revealed that at least two documents relating to the
Braden arrest were missing.

One of the oddest arrests that day was only reported in a Dallas
newspaper.

The November 22, 1963 edition of the Dallas Times Herald reported
that a policeman arrested a man wearing horn-rimmed glasses, a plaid
coat, and a raincoat after Depository employees pointed to him from a
third-floor window. The news account said the man was taken under
protest to the Sheriff's Department, while members of the crowd shouted,
"I hope you die!" and "I hope you bum!"

Three weeks later, the same newspaper reported that "an early suspect
in the assassination of President Kennedy was still in jail-but no longer a
suspect in the killing." This account said the man was arrested minutes
after the assassination after police swarmed into the railroads yards where
"a man was reported seen in that area carrying a rifle." The story said the
still-unidentified man was being held on "city charges."

Who was this man and what, if anything, did he know about the
assassination?

Another odd arrest-that of Jack Lawrence-deserves serious study.
Lawrence was arrested late on the afternoon on November 22, 1963, after
his actions caused suspicions among his co-workers at Downtown LincolnMercury, located two blocks west of Dealey Plaza.

Lawrence had obtained a job as a car salesman at the dealership just one
month before the assassination with job references from New Orleans that
later were discovered to be phony. Lawrence never sold a car and on the
day before the assassination, he had borrowed one of the firm's cars, after
telling his boss he had a "heavy date."

On Friday, November 22, Lawrence failed to show up for work. However, about thirty minutes after the assassination, he came hustling through
the company's show room, pale and sweating with mud on his clothes. He
rushed into the men's room and threw up. He told co-workers he had been
ill that morning, and that he had tried to drive the car back to the
dealership but had to park it due to the heavy traffic. Later, employees
found the car parked behind the wooden picket fence on top of the Grassy
Knoll overlooking Dealey Plaza.

Lawrence's activities were so suspicious that employees called police,
who picked up Lawrence that evening. Lawrence, who reportedly was an expert marksman in the Air Force, left Dallas after being released the next
day. His current whereabouts are unknown.

Of course, the most prominent arrest of that day was when Dallas police
nabbed Lee Harvey Oswald less than an hour and a half after the assassination. But such rapid police action was precipitated by yet another tragic
incident-the slaying of Dallas policeman J. D. Tippit.

Of all the aspects of the Kennedy assassination, the shooting of Dallas
policeman Jefferson Davis Tippit has received less attention than most
others. Allegedly Tippit was shot down while attempting to arrest Lee
Harvey Oswald forty-five minutes after the assassination in Oak Cliff,
south of downtown Dallas. And it was the slaying of this policeman that
led to the arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald and, in many ways, became a
cornerstone of the case for Oswald's guilt-Warren Commission attorney
David Belin called the shooting the "Rosetta Stone to the JFK assassination." "After all," stated the conventional wisdom of 1963-64, "Oswald
killed that policeman. Why would he do that if he hadn't killed the
President?"

Yet today there is a growing body of evidence to suggest that Oswald
did not kill Tippit-which, if true, destroys the argument above.

Little is known about Tippit or his life and personal contacts. This
absence of information prompted researcher Sylvia Meagher to write:

Tippit, the policeman and the man, is a one-dimensional and insubstantial figure-unknown and unknowable. The [Warren] Commission was
not interested in Tippit's life, and apparently interested in his death only
to the extent that it could be ascribed to Oswald, despite massive defects
in the evidence against him.

With no real knowledge of Tippit's background or associations and with
a number of problems with several aspects of the evidence, the Warren
Commission nevertheless concluded that Oswald was his killer based on
four primary pieces of evidence.

• 1. Two witnesses who saw the shooting and seven who saw a man
fleeing "positively identified Lee Harvey Oswald as the man they saw fire
the shots or flee from the scene."

The chief witness for the Warren Commission was Helen Markham,
whose credibility, even at the time of the Commission, was strained to the
breaking point. Markham claimed to have talked for some time with the
dying Tippit, yet medical authorities said he was killed instantly. She said
she saw Tippit's killer talk with the policeman through his patrol car's right-hand window, although pictures taken at the scene show that window
was shut.

She was in hysterics at the time and even left her shoes on top of
Tippit's car. Later, in her testimony before the Warren Commission,
Markham stated six times she did not recognize anyone in the police lineup
that evening, before Commission attorney Joseph Ball prompted, "Was
there a number-two man in there?"

Markham responded: "Number two is the one I picked . . . When I saw
this man I wasn't sure, but I had cold chills just run all over me ... "

Furthermore, other witnesses at the scene-William Scoggins, Ted
Calloway, and Emory Austin-even today claim they never saw Mrs.
Markham in the minutes immediately following the shooting.

Cabdriver Scoggins also identified Oswald that day, although Scoggins
admitted he did not actually witness the shooting and his view of the
fleeing killer was obscured because he ducked down behind his cab as the
man came by. Scoggins and cabdriver William Whaley, who allegedly
drove Oswald home that day, both viewed a Dallas police lineup composed of five "young teenagers" and Oswald. Whaley told the Warren
Commission:

... you could have picked [Oswald] out without identifying him by just
listening to him because he was bawling out the policemen, telling them
it wasn't right to put him in line with these teenagers. . . . He showed
no respect for the policemen, he told them what he thought about them
... they were trying to railroad him and he wanted his lawyer .. .
Anybody who wasn't sure could have picked out the right one just for
that .. .

If his protestations weren't enough to guide the witnesses in their
identification of Oswald, the suspect had conspicuous bruises and a black
eye. Furthermore, Oswald stated he was asked and gave his correct name
and place of employment. By Friday evening, everyone in Dallas who
attended the police lineups had heard that shots were fired from the Texas
School Book Depository.

On Saturday, Scoggins again identified Oswald, although in his Warren
Commission testimony he admitted seeing Oswald's photograph in a morning paper prior to viewing the police lineup. His identification of Oswald
fell further into disrepute when he told the Commission that after the
lineup, an FBI or Secret Service agent showed him several pictures of
men, which Scoggins narrowed down to two. Scoggins recalled: ". . . I
told them one of these two pictures is him [Oswald] . . . and then he told
me the other one was Oswald. "

These were the two star government witnesses. Other witnesses, including Domingo Benavides-the person closest to the killing-were never
asked to view a lineup nor were they able to identify Oswald as the killer.

Several other witnesses, including Acquilla Clemons, who claimed
two men were involved in the Tippit shooting but said she was threatened
into silence by a man with a gun, were never questioned by federal
investigators. The Warren Commission denied Clemons's claim, stating:
"The only woman among the witnesses to the slaying of Tippit known to
the Commission is Helen Markham."

Markham reportedly initially said that Tippit's killer was short and stocky
with bushy hair. This is the same description given by Clemons, who in a
filmed interview said the killer was "kind of a short guy . . . kind of
heavy." Markham later denied giving this description.

Frank Wright lived near the scene of the Tippit shooting. He heard shots
and ran outside. In an interview with private researchers less than a year
later, Wright said he saw Tippit roll over once and lie still. He added:

I saw a man standing in front of the car. He was looking toward the man
on the ground. . . . He had on a long coat. It ended just above his
hands. I didn't see any gun. He ran around on the passenger side of the
police car. He ran as fast as he could go, and he got into his car. His car
was a little gray old coupe. It was about a 1950-51, maybe a Plymouth.
It was a gray car, parked on the same side of the street as the police car,
but beyond it from me. It was heading away from me. He got in that car
and he drove away as fast as you could see . . . After that a whole lot of
police came up. I tried to tell two or three people what I saw. They
didn't pay any attention. I've seen what came out on television and in
the newspaper, but I know that's not what happened.

Another witness was Warren Reynolds, who chased Tippit's killer. He,
too, failed to identify Oswald as Tippit's killer until after he was shot in
the head two months later. After recovering, Reynolds identified Oswald
to the Warren Commission. (A suspect was arrested in the Reynolds
shooting, but released when a former Jack Ruby stripper named Betty
Mooney MacDonald provided an alibi. One week after her word released
the suspect, MacDonald was arrested by Dallas police and a few hours
later was found hanged in her jail cell. Neither the FBI nor the Warren
Commission investigated this strange incident.)

• 2. The cartridge cases found near the Tippit slaying "were fired from
the revolver in the possession of Oswald at the time of his arrest, to the
exclusion of all other weapons," claimed the Warren Commission.

There are many problems with this evidence. First, Dallas police sergeant Gerald Hill, at the time of the Tippit shooting, radioed the police
dispatcher, saying: "The shells at the scene indicate that the suspect is
armed with an automatic .38 rather than a pistol." Oswald reportedly was
captured with a .38 Special revolver. There is a significant difference
between an automatic, which ejects spent shells onto the ground, and a revolver, which requires deliberate emptying of the weapon. These weapons also require different types of ammunition.

Other officers at the scene believed that an automatic weapon was used,
based on the distance from Tippit's body to where the shells were found
and what some perceived to be ejector scratches on the shells. If an
automatic was used, then Oswald's revolver cannot be blamed for Tippit's
death.

Then there's the problem of identification of the empty shells. Police
man J. M. Poe received two cartridge cases from witness Benavides at
the scene. In an FBI report, Poe firmly stated that he marked the cases with
his initials, "J.M.P." before turning them over to Dallas Crime Lab
personnel.

However, on June 12, 1964, the FBI showed Poe the four. 38 Special
cases used as evidence of Oswald's guilt by the Warren Commission. The
Bureau reported:

... [Poe] recalled marking these cases before giving them to [lab
personnel], but he stated after a thorough examination of the four
cartridges shown to him . . . he cannot locate his marks; therefore, he
cannot positively identify any of these cartridges as being the same ones
he received from Benavides.