Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy (74 page)

One of the first persons to reach Tippit was Benavides, who told the
Warren Commission he was in a truck across the street from the shooting.
After hearing only three shots, Benavides said:

I sat there for just a few minutes . .. I thought maybe [the killer]
had lived in there [the house where he last saw the gunman] and I didn't
want to get out and rush right up. He might start shooting again... .
That is when I got out of the truck and walked over to the policeman
... The policeman, I believe, was dead when he hit the ground .. .

After checking on Tippit, Benavides said he tried to call on the patrol car's
radio but got no answer. Another bystander, Bowley, then got in the car
and was successful in raising the police dispatcher and reported the shooting.

Obviously, several minutes went by between the time of the shooting
and 1:16 P.M. when the police radio log recorded the citizen's alert. This
places the actual shooting closer to Bowley's time of 1:10 P.M.-a time
frame that rules out the possibility that Oswald could have traveled on foot
from his rooming house to the scene of the shooting.

The conversations of police regarding time sequences, orders, discovery
of evidence, etc., were recorded on Dallas police radio recording equipment. These recordings should have provided accurate times and movement orders-in fact, they were relied on greatly by the Warren Commission
and subsequent investigations.

Today there is evidence that the Dallas police radio recordings may have
been edited. Soon after the assassination, the tapes may have been taken
by federal authorities, who certainly have access to the most sophisticated audio equipment. Any police broadcasts not consistent with the loneassassin theory could have been simply edited out and an edited copy
returned to Dallas police for conveyance to the Warren Commission.

Is there any evidence that this occurred? Yes. Dr. James Barger, chief
acoustic scientist for the House Select Committee on Assassinations,
studied the "original" police tapes and discovered a break in the sixtycycle hum background tone. He found two separate tones on the tape,
which could only result from copying.

Although ignored publicly, the Ramsey Panel, studying the recordings
for the National Academy of Science, did suggest in an appendix of its
report that The original Dictabelt could be studied more extensively for
possible evidence . . . of being a copy ... "

Researcher Gary Mack reported that in recent years, former Dallas
police sergeant J. C. Bowles, the radio-room supervisor who prepared
transcripts for the Warren Commission, stated that a few days after the
assassination, federal agents "borrowed" the original police Dictabelt and
at the time he was under the impression that they took them to a recording
studio in Oklahoma.

Like so much of the Warren Commission's evidence, now the Dallas
police radio recordings are open to question.

The House Select Committee on Assassinations supported the Warren
Commission's conclusion that Oswald killed Tippit; however, it obliquely
indicated that all is not known about the killing.

Committee investigators studied information developed by researcher
Larry Harris that Tippit may have been killed as the result of personal
problems.

They also talked with yet another witness who had not been interviewed
by the Warren Commission. Jack Ray Tatum told Committee investigators
that Tippit's killer, after shooting the officer from the sidewalk, walked
toward the patrol car and shot Tippit once in the head at point-blank range.
Correctly, the Committee wrote:

This action, which is often encountered in gangland murders and is
commonly described as a coup de grace, is more indicative of an
execution than an act of defense intended to allow escape or prevent
apprehension.

There is a problem with Tatum's story, however. Most of the witnesses
stated that four shots were fired in succession-with no interval between
the shots.

Several serious students of the Tippit incident now believe that his death
may have had no connection with the Kennedy assassination. And of the
researchers who still believe such a connection exists, few cling to the
belief that Oswald was the killer.

Regardless of who actually killed Officer Tippit, that event was the
catalyst that set off a flurry of police activity in Oak Cliff resulting in the
arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald.

Prior to his arrest, there were at least two incidents in which police were
obviously seeking a suspect. Sometime after 1 P.M., a number of policemen stormed the Oak Cliff branch of the Dallas Public Library. Unable to
locate who they were looking for, they quickly left. Oswald was a frequent
visitor to that library. Then, shortly before being called to the Texas
Theater, the scene of Oswald's arrest, police surrounded a church near the
scene of the Tippit slaying in the belief that Tippit's killer had hidden
there. However, before they could conduct a search of the building, they
were called to the theater.

The arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald appears straightforward enough in the
official reports, but there are some strange aspects when it is viewed
objectively.

By 1:45 P.M. on November 22, 1953, the President of the United States
had been murdered just seventy-five minutes earlier, and only about
thirty minutes before, Policeman Tippit had been shot down on an Oak
Cliff street. Dallas police were swarming about like angry bees.

A report came in to police dispatchers. It seemed a man had slipped into
the Texas Theater without paying. Immediately carloads of officers, including one federal agent and an assistant district attorney, converged on
the theater. The report had been instigated by a shoestore manager named
Johnny Brewer. Brewer was listening to the radio when he learned of the
Tippit murder. Hearing police sirens, he looked out the window of his
store and saw a man duck into his doorway as a police car went by.
Believing this to be suspicious activity, Brewer watched the man continue
up the street to the Texas Theater, where he lost sight of him. Moments
later, when Brewer asked the theater's ticket seller if she had sold a ticket
to anyone, she replied she had not. Entering the theater, Brewer learned
that the concession stand operator, W. H. "Butch" Burroughs, had heard
the front doors open, but had seen no one enter the theater lobby.

Between the theater's front doors and a second set of doors were stairs
leading to the balcony. Burroughs was convinced that whoever entered had
gone up to the balcony since no one had passed his concession stand.
Brewer asked the ticket seller to call police while he and another theater
employee unsuccessfully looked for the suspicious man.

The authorities arrived quickly. Several policemen went to the theater's
rear exit and waited with drawn guns. Inside, police, including Sergeant
Gerald Hill, who had commanded the search of the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, turned up the house lights and moved to the front
of the theater.

Officer M. N. McDonald had come in the rear door and was standing at
the side of the movie screen. In an article written the day after the
assassination for the Associated Press, McDonald recalled:

I noticed about 10 to 15 people sitting in the theater and they were
spread out good. A man sitting near the front, and I still don't know
who it was, tipped me the man I wanted was sitting in the third row
from the rear of the ground floor and not in the balcony [as reported to
the police dispatcher]. I went up the aisle and talked to two people
sitting about in the middle. I was crouching low and holding my gun in
case any trouble came. I wanted to be ready for it. I walked up the aisle
and turned in Oswald's row. We were no more than a foot from each
other when he suddenly stood up and raised both hands. "It's all over
now," he told me. Then he hit me a pretty good one in the face with his
fist. I saw him going for his gun and I grabbed him around the waist.
We struggled and fell around the seats for a few seconds and I got my
hand on the butt of his pistol. But he had his hand on the trigger. I was
pulling the gun toward me and I heard the hammer click. The primer
[which detonates the bullet] was dented and it didn't fire . .. I'm sure
glad that shell didn't fire.

McDonald's account of Oswald's gun misfiring was confirmed to the
Warren Commission by theater patron John Gibson.

In his testimony to the Warren Commission, Brewer never mentions
speaking to McDonald. In fact, he said he was standing by a rear exit
when he was grabbed by a couple of policemen and asked what he was
doing there. Brewer told them he was suspicious of a man in the theater.
Brewer continued:

And I and two or three other officers walked out on the stage and I
pointed him out, and there were officers coming in from the front of the
show . . . and officers going from the back. . . . I saw this policeman
approach Oswald and Oswald stood up and I heard some hollering, I
don't know exactly what he said, and this man hit Patrolman McDonald
I didn't know his name [McDonald], but I had seen him quite a few
times around Oak Cliff.

Was the sitting man who tipped off McDonald to Oswald's location
Johnny Brewer? Apparently not, since Brewer stated he was standing and
then on stage with several policemen. Brewer also never mentioned talking
to McDonald, whom he said he recognized from around Oak Cliff. Who
then was the man who tipped off McDonald to Oswald's location'?

Brewer also told the Commission that as Oswald struggled with police,
he heard one of the officers cry: "Kill the president, will you?"

If members of the police department somehow knew that Oswald was
an assassination suspect at this time, it is strong evidence that something
was going on behind the scenes. The Warren Commission, while not
contradicting Brewer's account, nevertheless felt compelled to add:

"It is unlikely that any of the police officers referred to Oswald as a
suspect in the assassination." George J. Applin, one of only two theater
patrons questioned by the Warren Commission, told the Warren Commission he was watching the movie when the lights came on and a policeman
with a rifle or shotgun began moving down his aisle. Applin said he was
sitting in the downstairs middle aisle about six rows from the back when
the commotion began. He moved down the aisle to ask what was going on,
when a policeman (apparently McDonald) passed him moving toward the
rear. Applin then witnessed Oswald's arrest.

At the close of his Warren Commission Testimony, Applin said:

But, there is one thing puzzling me . . . And I don't even know if it
has any bearing on the case, but there was one guy sitting in the back
row right where I was standing at, and I said to him, I said, "Buddy,
you'd better move. There is a gun." And he says just sat there. He
was back like this. Just like this. Just watching. . . . I don't think he
could have seen the show. Just sitting there like this, just looking at me.

Applin told Commission attorney Joseph Ball twice he didn't know the
man, but in 1979, he told a news reporter he recognized the man as Jack
Ruby two days later, following the Oswald slaying. Applin told the Dallas
Morning News:

At the time the Warren Commission had me down there at the Post
Office in Dallas to get my statement, I was afraid to give it. I gave
everything up to the point of what I gave the police there in town... .
I'm a pretty nervous guy anyway because I'll tell you what: After I saw
that magazine where all those people they said were connected with
some of this had come up dead, it just kind of made me keep a low
profile. . . . [Jack] Ruby was sitting down, just watching them. And,
when Oswald pulled the gun and snapped it at [McDonald's] head and
missed and the darn thing wouldn't fire, that's when I tapped him on the
shoulder and told him he had better move because those guns were
waving around. He just turned around and looked at me. Then he turned
around and started watching them.

Ruby's identity only became known to Applin after his picture was
broadcast following Oswald's death.

Yet more questions have been raised by recent statements of concession stand operator Burroughs. In a 1987 interview with this author, Burroughs,
who is now an assistant manager at the Texas Theater, reiterated his story
of someone slipping in the theater about 1:35 P.M. that day. However,
Burroughs claims that it could not have been Oswald because Oswald
entered the theater shortly after 1 P.M. Burroughs said Oswald entered only
minutes after the feature started, which was exactly at 1 P.M.

He said several minutes later, about 1:15 P.M., the man later arrested by
police and identified as Oswald came to his concession stand and bought
some popcorn.

Burroughs said he watched the man enter the ground floor of the theater
and sit down next to a pregnant woman. About twenty minutes after this,
the outside doors opened and Johnny Brewer arrived.