Michael T. Griffith
1997
@All Rights Reserved
One of the most unlikely, implausible aspects of the Warren Commission's lone-gunman scenario is the assumption that Officer J. D. Tippit stopped Lee Harvey Oswald on the basis of the description of the alleged assassin that had been broadcast by the Dallas Police Department. It is doubtful that Oswald could have even reached the crime scene in time to shoot Tippit. It is equally doubtful that he could have arrived in time to have been casually walking along the street just before Tippit supposedly approached him and stopped him. But leaving aside these problems, one is struck by the implausible nature of the Commission's story of why Tippit would have stopped "Oswald" in the first place. Henry Hurt explains:
One of the oddest assumptions of the Warren Commission was that Officer Tippit stopped Oswald because he was able to identify him as the man described in the police broadcasts that started about 12:45 P.M. According to an FBI statement to the commission, the source of the original description was "an unidentified citizen." The description provided by this citizen (later assumed to be Howard Brennan) was for a man "running from the Texas School Book Depository immediately after the assassination."
The description itself was of a "white male, approximately thirty, slender build, height five feet, ten inches, weight one hundred sixty-five pounds" and believed to be armed with a .30-caliber rifle. This description missed Oswald by six years and about fifteen pounds, yet the Warren Commission reasoning accepted as fact that based on this description Officer Tippit stopped Oswald. (Reasonable Doubt, New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1985, p. 163)
The more one thinks about it, the more one realizes how extremely
implausible and unlikely this scenario is. Why would Tippit have stopped
Oswald? The police description could have fit a good quarter to a third of the
male population of
Odder still is the fact that Tippit supposedly approached his assailant
(allegedly Oswald) from behind. He reportedly drove up slowly behind the
man, pulled up alongside him, and then asked him to come over to the driver's
window for what was described as having the appearance of a "friendly
chat"! Is this how policemen approach and try to apprehend a person whom
they suspect might have just killed the President of the
Consider some other oddities and irregularities about the Tippit slaying:
* Tippit was at least three miles from the patrol district to which he had
been assigned that day. By "sheer coincidence," he was assigned to
the Oak Cliff area, where Oswald "just happened to live." What
on earth was Tippit doing in quiet, suburban Oak Cliff when he should have been
in
* There is evidence that strongly suggests that the DPD dispatch transcript and tape were altered to reflect Tippit being ordered to his unusual location.
* The other officer who was also supposedly ordered, for
some strange reason, to patrol around quiet Oak Cliff at a time when the police
were allegedly trying to catch the president's killer(s) in
* The overwhelming weight of the evidence indicates that Tippit's assailant was walking west, or toward Tippit's car, not away from it, which makes it even more unlikely that the assailant was Oswald. For the killer to have even possibly been the pedestrian Oswald, he would have had to be walking east, not west (see Hurt, Reasonable Doubt, pp. 150-151).
* The offending firearm was initially--and firmly--identified as an
automatic pistol, based on a shell that was found at the scene. It is very easy
to distinguish between automatic casings and revolver casings (see, for
example, Larry Ragle, Crime Scene,
These are just some of the many problems with the case against Oswald in the Tippit slaying.
A few months ago I posted the above arguments to the JFK Debate section in CompuServe's Politics Forum. After reading them, one veteran WC supporter admitted he could not explain why Tippit would have stopped Oswald. Let us now consider Richard Popkin's equally cogent argument on this point:
It seems odd that Tippit would have stopped a suspect. He
was unimaginative, and had shown no real initiative in all his years on the
force, as evidenced by the his failure to get a
promotion in thirteen years. It is hard to believe that, on the basis of a
vague description which must have fitted at least several thousand males in
Why would Tippit have stopped Oswald?
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Michael
T. Griffith holds a Master’s degree in Theology from The Catholic Distance
University, a Graduate Certificate in Ancient and Classical History from
American Military University, a Bachelor’s degree in Liberal Arts from
Excelsior College, and two Associate in Applied Science degrees from the
Community College of the Air Force. He
also holds an Advanced Certificate of Civil War Studies and a Certificate of
Civil War Studies from