Oswald in the doorway: the blog of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, by Ralph Cinque

I haven't been a big student of the Tippit shooting.  I've mostly stood back from it. But, even from a distant perspective, it's plain to see that Oswald didn't do it and couldn't have done it. 

The first thing to consider is that authorities never told us what Oswald said about how he went from his boarding room to the Texas theater.  He definitely went from Dealey Plaza to his boarding room on Beckley in Oak Cliff. His landlady Earline Roberts said he did, and he said he did.  He said he changed his pants there. Oswald was arrested in black pants, but he wore grey pants to work that morning. 

However, he did not change his shirt. He was arrested wearing the same shirt he wore to work; the same shirt he was wearing when he was photographed in the doorway. 

But, there is simply nothing in the record about what he said about how he got from his room to the theater. And he must have said something. If he explained how he got from his job to his room, which he did, why wouldn't he explain how he got from his room to the theater? So, I assume that he did explain it, but they didn't tell us because it was very exonerating. 

The great researcher John Armstrong has suggested that Oswald was driven to the theater, and that's why they didn't tell us what he said. And obviously, if he was driven to the theater BY ANYBODY, it destroys the lone gunman hypothesis. But, John thinks that the cop who tapped his car horn twice outside the boarding house, as reported by Earline Roberts, is the one who drove Oswald to the Texas Theater. And, John thinks that that cop may have been JD Tippit. I'm not going to lay out his case for that because, again, I'm discussing this from a distant perspective. But, here is the link to John's article about it, which is very good: https://harveyandlee.net/November/TippittMurder.html

But, I will state two points that John makes that I think are very telling. The first is that Oswald could not have walked to the theater. It was only slightly more than a mile from his room to the theater. So, it was very walkable, but he didn't do it. That's because he was spotted in the theater at 1:07 by Butch Burroughs, the popcorn man, and Oswald didn't leave his boarding room until after 1:00.  1:03 is the most commonly cited time, but we'll never know exactly what time it was. But, regardless, he couldn't have walked there by 1:07. He couldn't even have gotten there even by 1:15 because: you can't walk uninterrupted in the city. There is traffic, other pedestrians, bicycles, dogs, traffic lights and stop signs. You're crossing numerous streets.  

But, the other thing that John points out is that if Oswald had walked there in broad daylight, it's highly likely that someone would have seen him and come forward about it later. And no one did. 

Likewise, Oswald did not get to the theater by public transportation because, had it been a bus, someone would have remembered seeing him on the bus and come forward. And regarding a cab, it is highly unlikely that he could have flagged one down. Plus, the cab driver would have come forward afterwards, just as Whaley did. 

So, I think that John's hypothesis that it was a cop who drove Oswald to the theater is very sound. 

Tippit was killed at 10th and Patton, which is not on the route to the theater. Even if you reject the claim that Oswald was driven to the theater, there is no basis to place him at 10th and Patton. What could he have been doing there? Where could he have been going? Warren Commission Attorney David Belin was asked that very question, and his answer was "Mexico." I can't respond to that kind of stupidity without cursing, so I won't say anything. 

Now, what is the supposed evidence that Oswald shot Tippit? First, there were the witnesses who claimed that they saw Oswald, but that evidence is very weak. And John Armstrong maintains that the other LHO, whom he calls "Lee" in contrast to the LHO of fame whom he calls "Harvey" is the one who did it, and he looked a lot like the famed LHO.  But, even if that weren't the case, I will point out that eye witness testimonies just plain suck. You've heard about the Innocence Project, where they have used DNA evidence to vindicate convicted murderers who were either going to be put to death or who served decades in prison for crimes they didn't commit. Well, how did they get convicted in the first place? By eye witness testimonies.

And in this case, the eye witnesses who identified Oswald said he was wearing a grey Eisenhower-type zippered jacket over a white t-shirt and no brown shirt. Of course, the Oswald of fame wore a brown outer shirt. And there is no connecting a grey Eisenhower jacket to the LHO who worked at the TSBD. So, none of the Tippit witnesses correctly identified the famed Oswald's clothes. 

But, what was there in the way of tangible evidence? It's mainly the LHO wallet that Captain Westbrook found at the Tippit crime scene. However, LHO had a wallet on him when he was arrested in the theater. So, how likely is it that Oswald had two wallets on him and left one at the Tippit crime scene? I put the chance of that at zero. 

If you read that piece by John Armstrong, he makes the case that Captain Westbrook and Sergeant Croy were both dirty, that "Lee" shot and killed Tippit, and Westbrook and Croy covered it up. 

But, it's not just John Armstrong. One of the most powerful theses in James Douglass' masterpiece JFK AND THE UNSPEAKABLE is that Butch Burroughs singlehandedly exonerated Oswald from having shot Tippit. Tippit was shot at 1:16, and Butch insisted- to Jim Douglass directly- that he saw Oswald in the Texas Theater at 1:07 and sold him popcorn. 

Now, where did Oswald get the pistol that was on him in the theater? We don't know what he said about it. And I'll remind you that the ONLY things we can be sure that Oswald said are the things he said in public to reporters that we can hear with our own ears, and he never said anything about that. 

John Armstrong did the definitive work to prove that Oswald never ordered a rifle from Klein's Sporting Goods in Chicago. https://harveyandlee.net/Guns/Guns.html But, he did just as much damage to the claim that Oswald mail-ordered the pistol from Seaport Traders.  https://harveyandlee.net/Guns/Pistol.html

John thinks that the cop who drove Oswald to the theater may have been the one to give him the pistol. And since that was before Tippit got shot (and may have been Tippit himself) it could not have been the actual murder weapon that killed Tippit. 

The FBI tried to use ballistics to prove that the gun found on Oswald in the theater had to be the one that fired bullets into Tippit and were taken out of him, but only one ballistics expert went so far as to claim that it was certain: Joseph D. Nichol. Multiple other experts said it could not be ascertained.

However, let's consider that if this was an operation to frame Oswald for the Tippit shooting, then surely they got someone who looked like him to do it, AND WITHOUT A DOUBT, THEY HAD SOMEONE WHO LOOKED VERY MUCH LIKE HIM TO DO IT. 

Again, I don't proffer this as an exhaustive study of the Tippit shooting, but rather, as a distant one. But, when you realize that Oswald was standing in the doorway of the Book Depository during the shooting, AND THAT IS AS CERTAIN AS THAT IT WAS JESUS CHRIST ON THE CROSS, then you realize that there is no way to conjure up a motive for Oswald to have shot Tippit. But, the fact is that the framing of Oswald for the Tippit murder was even more elaborate and detailed and painstaking than the framing of Oswald for the JFK murder. 

But, go back to what I said at the beginning: What was Oswald's alibi for the Tippit murder? Surely, when he was accused of it, he denied it and gave his alibi. So, what did he say about his movements? Why haven't they told us, in 62 years, what he said about how he went from his room to the theater? It can only be that they didn't want us to hear it because it was extremely exonerating.