Tippit's Widow Today

January 27, 2004

By MICHAEL GRANBERRY / The Dallas Morning News
http://www.jfkassassinationforum.com/index.php?topic=642.15;wap2

For the widow of Dallas police Officer J.D. Tippit, the hardest weeks came just after the murder. Curtis, her youngest, would sit by the window night after night, wondering when Daddy was coming home.

It was small consolation to a 5-year-old boy that his father was killed doing a job he loved. Or that his death at the hands of Lee Harvey Oswald led to the capture of President John F. Kennedy's apparent assassin.

"We lived at the end of the street," says the widow, Marie Flinner, giving her first extensive interview about the twin tragedies of Nov. 22, 1963. "Curtis would sit by the window for hours and watch for his daddy. And that was really difficult."

The Warren Commission concluded that Oswald killed the president in Dealey Plaza and then, 45 minutes later, gunned down Officer Tippit at the corner of Tenth Street and Patton Avenue in Oak Cliff. It's an intersection she visits often, most recently about a month ago.

"It's such a sadness," she says. "A sadness to know that I wasn't there, and even if I had been, I couldn't have done anything for him anyway. It severed his main artery. Nobody ... could have done anything."

For Mrs. Flinner, now 75, the anguish of that moment has lingered 40 years. She says no amount of time can take away the pain she feels for a man she loved. And for anyone who thinks she's "over it," well, she says, they never really knew J.D. Tippit.

The goodness of others helped temper the grief, but conspiracy theories – the most outlandish of which suggest her husband was part of an assassination plot – have left her isolated, frustrated and angry.

She continues to feel touched by the 40,000 letters she received, including more than $600,000 in donations from around the globe. She even got a letter and an autographed picture from Jacqueline Kennedy, expressing sorrow for the bond they shared. The president's brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, called her and all but apologized for the trip to Texas.

She says he told her that if his brother had not come to Dallas, Officer Tippit would still be alive. "I said, 'But, you know, they were both doing their jobs. They got killed doing their jobs.' He was being the president, and J.D. was being the policeman he was supposed to be."

Key evidence

In being the policeman he was meant to be, Officer Tippit may have provided the strongest piece of evidence linking Oswald to the president's murder.

Witnesses described seeing the patrolman stop to question Oswald just before 1:15 p.m. They say he then fired four shots at the officer, the last striking him in the temple.

"Once the hypothesis is admitted that Oswald killed Patrolman J.D. Tippit," wrote David W. Belin, assistant counsel to the Warren Commission, "there can be no doubt that the overall evidence shows that Lee Harvey Oswald was the assassin of John F. Kennedy."

Assassination cynics call that "the official story." It's also the only story Marie Flinner believes.

"The conspiracy stuff was so untrue, so totally unfounded," she says. "That was really difficult for me. Everyone that knew J.D. knew better. That part really made me angry."

Her husband, she says, was a good man, a good father and a good police officer for whom certificates of merit were commonplace. He was also no stranger to putting his life on the line.

"If you're an average person, a good person, well, I guess that isn't newsworthy," she says. "There's got to be something wrong with somebody. They got to make something bad or wrong out of everything. And that really makes me angry. But we in the family know it's all total lies."

In recalling her late husband, Mrs. Flinner remembers a man so different from the sad-eyed, high-cheekboned officer whose public photographs seem so stark. "I have a picture of him laughing, and that's the way I remember him," she says. "When he came home, he was always playing with the kids and had everyone laughing."

And she smiles at the memory of a family laughing and playing together, before the word "Oswald" entered their lives.

'Madly in love'

Marie Gasway grew up in Red River County, near Clarksville. She and J.D. Tippit lived in the same rural area. When he returned home after serving in the 82nd Airborne Division as a paratrooper during World War II, Miss Gasway decided it was time to act. So she asked him to church.

"What did I not like about him!" she says with a girlish laugh. "He was considerate, always happy and smiling. He was always doing something for someone else. I just fell madly in love. So we got married and moved to Dallas."

The date was Dec. 26, 1946. She was 18; he was 22. For a while, they lived with Mr. Tippit's sister and her husband, "before we were able to find a place of our own," says Mrs. Flinner. "It was a very bonding time. J.D. had a loving, close-knit family."

He had two sisters and four brothers, with whom Mrs. Flinner remains close. "I'm still a member of the family and always will be," she says. "It's just wonderful to have married into that family." Officer Tippit's father is still alive, living in a nursing home, where he turned 101 in January.

The newly married J.D. Tippit worked for Sears, then Dearborn Stove Co. He even tried farming near Clarksville. A cotton crop gone bad and a cow drowning in a stock tank soured him to the point that he returned to Dallas to apply for a Police Department job.

"J.D. was always helping somebody else," she says. "His whole family is like that."

As an example of the way her husband was respected for his goodness, she remembers a black woman who came to the door of the church in the hours before his funeral. Because it was the Jim Crow era of 1963, police officers came to the widow's door to get permission for the woman to view the body.

"And I said, 'By all means, let her in.' I said, 'He has done something good for her and her family. She just wants to show her respects,' " says Mrs. Flinner.

Mr. Tippit joined the force in 1952, shrugging at the danger it promised.

"I tried to talk him out of it and did – once," she says. "That lasted about a month. But obviously, that's what he wanted to do. So I said, 'If that's what you want to do, I'm behind you 100 percent. I just want you to do what you're happy with.' "

Long before meeting Oswald, Officer Tippit stared death in the face. Once, a suspect's gun failed to fire. Another time, he was stabbed in the knee with a knife. His wife loved the therapy recommended by the doctor – dancing. So the couple made regular visits to a Dallas dance club, where they lovingly embraced while dancing to Bob Wills' "Faded Love."

They had three children – Charles Allan, born in 1950; Brenda, born in 1953; and Curtis, born in 1958.

Behind the couple's house was a creek where Officer Tippit and Allan played for hours, once stretching a cable from one tree to another, allowing them to swing over the water.

"He built a tree house with the kids and played football with them. He was so close to those kids, and Brenda became Daddy's little girl. I breast-fed her but couldn't put her to sleep. So I'd give her to him, and he'd put her to sleep," she says, chuckling at the memory. "He loved those kids so much."

Tragic day

On the morning of Nov. 22, 1963, Mrs. Tippit made breakfast for her husband, who routinely left the house no later than 6:15 a.m. She, too, had a hectic schedule. To make extra money, she was baby-sitting a boy during the day and other children during the evening.

Later that morning, she received a call from the nurse at Allan's school, telling her he was vomiting and needed to come home. So he was there when his dad came home for lunch one last time.

"I made J.D. a sandwich, and he had some fried potatoes with it," she says. Officer Tippit left to return to duty, while his wife and oldest son turned on the television in hopes of hearing details about the visit of the president, for whom both the Tippits had voted.

What they heard instead was the news of his death.

"When I heard about the president, it just blows your mind," she says. "You think, 'This cannot be happening.' "

Within an hour, the news got worse. Officer Tippit's sister, Christine Christopher, called to ask, "Have you heard from J.D.? Do you know if he's all right?"

"Why?" his wife asked, her startled tone followed by Ms. Christopher's admission that she had heard a news report about an Officer Tippit being shot in Oak Cliff, possibly by the same man who murdered the president.

"So I called the station," says Mrs. Flinner. "There was so much confusion going on. But they told me he was dead. I just freaked out. I couldn't believe this was happening. 'Here the president and now my husband! You've got to be wrong!' It was total devastation."

The night of the shooting, Mrs. Tippit's world was "complete chaos."

"The doctor came over and gave me a shot, but I never went to sleep," she says. "The days and weeks and months that followed were just terrible. You keep on going because you have to. You say your prayers and you feed your children and you read your Bible and you live one day at a time, so it gets to the point where you can live a single day without crying. ... I don't see anything wrong with people crying."

As recently as this week, Mrs. Flinner and her children, who have given her 11 grandchildren, found themselves discussing, once again, what may have prompted Officer Tippit to stop Oswald.

After a description of the suspect in the president's murder had been released on police radio, Officer Tippit was assigned to patrol central Oak Cliff. Most officers had been dispatched to the downtown area.

Arousing suspicion

Investigators say Oswald was wearing a zipped-up jacket, which concealed a handgun, and had to be sweating. It was 68 degrees.

"That's just the kind of thing that would have gotten J.D.'s attention," says Mrs. Flinner.

Within 3 minutes of the president's shooting, Oswald had left the Texas School Book Depository, where he was employed. About 18 minutes before Officer Tippit's slaying, Oswald returned to his Oak Cliff rooming house at 1026 North Beckley, where landlady Earlene Roberts said he walked in hurriedly and left about three minutes later without speaking.

A witness to the Tippit slaying, Helen Markham, "saw exactly what happened," says Mrs. Flinner. Ms. Markham and other witnesses later identified Oswald in a lineup.

"Ms. Markham told me that J.D. stopped him, and Oswald walked over and put his hands on the side of the car," says Mrs. Flinner. "He looked in the window and spoke with J.D., who got out of the car. When J.D. was even with the front wheel of his car is, she said, when Oswald shot him."

Dale K. Myers, author of With Malice: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Murder of Officer J.D. Tippit, has interviewed several witnesses to the shooting. Some saw Oswald walking east, others saw him walking west. Mr. Myers speculates that Oswald turned abruptly when he saw the patrol car, which would have attracted the officer's attention.

He also dismisses any suggestion that Officer Tippit was part of a conspiracy.

"It's totally ludicrous," he says. "I talked to a great many friends and family members, all of whom say it was totally foreign to J.D.'s personality to be involved in anything like that. In other words, his character would not have permitted such a thing. And B, he had no time to get involved in anything like that. In addition to being the married father of three children, he was working three jobs at the time he was killed."

And because he was, Mrs. Tippit's problem was both how to cope and how to function. Paying the bills became an immediate concern.

Soon, however, the money poured in. The largest single donation came from Abraham Zapruder, who contributed the initial payment of $25,000 he received from Life magazine for his 8mm movie of the assassination. A $330,000 police trust fund helped pay the college expenses of Officer Tippit's children.

But nothing could take away the hurt from Mrs. Tippit.

"I couldn't figure out how in the world I was going to manage to keep going. He was the other part of me," she says. "There was just no way. My mother, my daddy, kept saying, 'You've got the children. You've got us. We're all here to support you.' "

Without family support and faith – Mrs. Flinner is a lifelong Baptist, as was Officer Tippit – she would have been lost in a sea of grief, she says.

She says police told her that her husband was a hero, that Oswald might have escaped had he not had the instinct to stop him. "Because Oswald killed J.D., he was captured," she says. Thirty-six minutes after her husband's murder, Oswald was arrested in the Texas Theatre, where he came close to killing another officer.

Mrs. Flinner says she never felt bitterness for Oswald, just overwhelming sadness at having "to live every day without my husband. I had so many people tell me he was a very cautious officer. And yet he stopped Oswald. ... I'm sure there was some real suspicion on his part or he never would have stopped him."

She also feels no bitterness for Oswald's widow, Marina Porter, who, like Mrs. Flinner, has remained in the Dallas area. "I never met her," says Mrs. Flinner. "But you know, my heart kind of goes out to her. She's had a lot to live with all these years. And her kids, too. I'm sure they've had a rough time."

Mrs. Flinner says she never considered leaving the city, believing "you don't run away from heartache or sadness or problems. They always go with you." She still lives in Oak Cliff.

Tippit's children

Now 44, Curtis Tippit says he remembers "a little bit" of waiting by the window for his father but can't remember the details like his mother can. He does remember what a wonderful mom she was.

Curtis says the hardest part "was not being able to talk to a real father or ask advice or figure things out. I was so young, I don't have all the memories to be attached to, so it's the feeling of loss in that regard, not being able to have that kind of relationship with a father that everyone should have."

Today, he's the father of eight children. Like his mother, he despises "the false things written."

"People want sensationalism. Mom's been abused," he says, by conspiracy theories and tabloid publications, and as a result "wouldn't talk to anybody about it for years."

Too many people, he says, want to cling to a false history, "believing my father was in on something with Jack Ruby and went to meet him and all this stuff. Really, it's all kind of silly and funny. If anybody knew the facts, they'd see how false these theories are. Anybody in a conspiracy would not take care of the kids the night before and be in bed by 9:30. But a whole lot of people thrive on it."

Curtis sitting by the window was, Mrs. Flinner says, the worst of many awful moments. She would hold him and tell him his daddy loved him and that she missed him as much as he did. Brenda, now 50, suffered devastating stomachaches and "for the longest time, just couldn't handle it," her mother says.

The death may have hurt his oldest son more than anyone. "Allan had a terrible time coping," she says. "It affected him for years. He couldn't talk about it for a very long time."

He "was arrested and got involved with drugs, but he's gotten himself straightened out," says Mrs. Flinner, who believes her husband's death "was the major contributor. Allan was so torn up over that."After four years, the officer's widow decided it was time to re-marry. "My preacher and my doctor and all my friends were saying, 'You ought to get married again. Your kids need a daddy and a man in your life.' "

She said yes to Dallas Police Lt. Harry Thomas, her husband from 1967 to 1982, when he died of cancer. "I'm sure I was never the wife I could have been," she says sadly. "Because I just wasn't ready to get married again. Harry was a wonderful fellow. He was good to me, and he did the best he could as a stepfather." She eventually married a third time, to current husband Carl Flinner.

Normal life

All along, she says, she kept trying to return her children to some semblance of normalcy. Hoping to shield them from the public eye is the reason she gives for having spurned numerous book offers and hundreds of interview requests, until this week.

"I just wanted my children to have a chance to grow up as normal, average kids," she says. "And not to be judged by every little thing that came up."

She compares her approach to that of Jackie Kennedy, who she says "did her best to try that tactic with her kids – to protect them. It's important for kids to grow up and be themselves without being judged by events that happen. And being in the public eye was certainly not going to help them be normal kids."

More than anything, she says, she misses her first husband. And what does she miss the most? "Just him not being here!" she says, with a tear in her eye. "If he was just here, if he could just be here! I've never stopped wanting that."

And the lesson learned from her fallen hero? "To be loved," she says. "I was privileged to have been married to J.D. for 17 years. He was a good husband and a good father. And I knew I was loved. You know, that is the most important thing in your life. To be loved. And to be able to express that love to others. And that's what J.D. was for me."

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Christoph Messner:
Witness Frank Wright, who lived in a ground floor apartment on 10th Street, about half a block east of the murder site:

        “I was sitting watching television with my wife. I was sitting in a chair next to the door. I wasn’t but two steps from the door. I heard shots. I knew it wasn’t backfire. I knew it was shots. As soon as I heard them, I went out the door. I could see a police car in the next block. It was toward the end of the next block. I could see it clearly. The police car was headed toward me. It was parked on the south side of the street. In other words, it was parked across the street from our apartment house. I saw a person right by the car. He had fallen down. It seems as if he had just fallen down. He was on the ground, and then he turned over face down. Part of him was under the left front fender of the car. It seems to me that I saw him just as he hit the ground. I saw him turn over and he didn’t move any more.
        “I looked around to see what had happened. I knew there had been a shooting. I saw a man standing right in front of the car. He was looking toward the man on the ground. He stood there for a while and looked at the man. The man who was standing in front of him was about medium height. 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 grey, little old coupe. It was about a 1950–1951, maybe a Plymouth. It was a grey 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 quick as you could see. He drove down 10th Street, away from me. I don’t know how far he drove. After he got into the middle of the next block between Patton and Crawford, I didn’t look at him any more.
        “I looked at the car where the man was. I looked to see what had happened there. About the same time as I came out, or maybe a little while after, a woman came down from her porch. She was at the house about three or four doors from the intersection of 10th and Patton. The house was on the same side of the street as the police car. Just as the man in the car pulled away she came toward the police car and then she stepped back. I heard her shout, ‘Oh, he’s been shot!’ throwing up her hands. Then she went back toward the house. There was no one out there except me and that woman when I got there, except for the man I described earlier. I couldn’t figure out who did the shooting. I didn’t see a gun on the man who was standing in front of the car. There wasn’t anyone else but the man who drove away and the woman who came down from her porch. I was the first person out. I knew there wasn’t anyone else there at all. It wasn’t any time at all until the ambulance got there. By the time the ambulance got there, there were maybe 25 more people outside. Then after a while, the 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 papers but I know that’s not what happened. I know a man drove off in a grey car. Nothing in the world’s going to change my opinion. I saw that man drive off in a grey coupe just as clear as I was born. I know what I saw The can say all they want about a fellow running away, but I can’t accept this because I saw a fellow get in a car and drive away."
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Another quote from Wikipedia As a guest, you are not allowed to view links. Register or Login:

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] Further the appearance of cartridge shells at the crime scene raises question for some because, according to Officer Hill, who took possession of Oswald's revolver at his arrest, the gun's six chambers were fully loaded with unspent cartridges and that Oswald had no loose ammunition on his person.[37]
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Jim Garrison stated in his book 'On the trail of the Assassins' that 3 of the bullets came from a side ejector pistol (due to the markings left on the casings) proven markings as per any side ejector pistol; and one came from a revolver (no ejector markings).
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About Tippit's connection to the Chicago mafia policeman and most possible TSBD shooter Richard Cain I still have to study. So far I know that it is quite unlikely that these two men were unaquainted with one another. Tippit had been working security for Club 80, which was owned by Ruby maybe. In any case, if it wasn't ruby, it seems if Tippit worked one club, he'd certainly work another. Tippit did have some Chicago history. Let me find out which. 

Christoph Messner:
Pretty interesting this thread "Was J.D. Tippit part of the conspiracy?" on educationforum:
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I think post #7 from Dixie Dea is most interesting:

"According to the Dallas Underground, by several reserchers.......

Tippit was most likely involved in the conspiracy and knew both Ruby and Oswald. Tippit was what is referred to, as a redneck and also a corrupt cop. Although Tippit was also a womanizer, I will leave out the possible repercussions to Tippit in this regards.

An undercover narcotics officer working for Sheriff Bill Decker, was also working as a musician in various night clubs, including Jack Ruby's. He claims that Tippit was one of the Dallas Police Officers closest to Ruby and who performed tasks for him.

Mack Pate, owner of a garage, who knew a large number of the Dallas police heard from several of them who took their cars to him, that Tippit was a "dirty cop." A friend of Tippit's own mother also confirms this.

Mack Pate's mechanic, T. F. White, who was interviewed by the FBI, spotted a car parked at the El Chico restaurant, across from their garage, just after the shooting at Dealey Plaza. White insisted the man sitting in the car was Oswald.

Mack Pate and Wes Wise checked around Oak Cliff for some time and found quite a number of people who had seen Ruby and Oswald together on many occasions during the weeks preceding the assassination. (Wes Wise later became Mayor of Dallas.)

Earl Crater of the Pig and Whistle restaurant said that LHO, Ruby and Tippit had breakfast there on a number of occasions at 7:00 A.M. Crater said that LHO never had more then a cup of coffee.

It is believed that Tippit went home for lunch on the 22nd. Then, about 12:45, 15 minutes after JFK was shot, Tippit was parked at the south end of the Houston Street Viaduct, in North Oak Cliff, facing the cars coming off the viaduct....presumably watching for someone.

Several employees of the Good Luck Gas Station saw Tippit sitting there for several minutes. Then he was observed driving away from the gas station at a high rate of speed, at about 12:50 and headed south. Tippits radio call at 12:54 places him at E. 8th and Lancaster, a few blocks south of the service station

At no time that afternoon was Tippit in his assigned district and he was always in North Oak Cliff. That district was assigned to Officer William D. Mentzel.

Tippit made a call from Top Ten Records on Jefferson, a few blocks west of 12th and Marsalis, around 1:00 P.M. When he came out, he was agitated and drove off fast. Tippits movements and actions appeared to be as though frantically looking for someone.

Tippit then, cut off a car driven by an Insurance salesman, James Andrews, who was headed west on 10th Street about eight blocks west of where Tippit would be killed. Tippit, also driving west behind the salesman's car passed him, pulled to the right in front of him, blocking him in. Tippit then rushed to the drivers side of the car and looked at the floor between the seats. Tippit apparently did not see what he was looking for, jumped back in his patrol car and drove away quickly, reversing his direction and heading back east.

The salesman who experienced this incident, James Andrews, worked for American National LIfe Insurance, which had not long before also employed Roscoe White, until he began at the Police Dept. Roscoe White and Tippit knew each other.lived near each other and their families were connected. Mrs Tippit had been a bridesmaid at Whites wedding to Geneva.

According to DPD personnel records, starting in 1956, Tippit worked security at the Stevens Park Theater, which showed both English and Spanish speaking films. The owner, Manuel Avila, was allegedly involved in prostitution, in the hispanic community and ran a well-known Latin Club. Avila had ties to anti-Castro Cubans. Before coming to Dallas, Avila had been a CBS correspondent in Mexico and was the Dallas Spanish Language Voice of America correspendent.

Dallas researcher, Prof. Bill Pulte says:

"There can be little doubt that Avila knew Ruby, given the proximity of Avila's theater to downtown Dallas, where Ruby's clubs were located plus given the mutual interest in prostitution of Avila and Ruby. Tippit worked for Avila for several years. Ralph Paul owned the Miramar Restaurant, catty-corner to Avila's theater and Tippit got to know Paul.

A good friend of Paul's was Austin Cook owner of Auston's Barbeque. This may have been how Tippit took a second part-time moonlighting job, at Austins. In addition, Ralph Paul was Ruby's backer and silent partner. The Warren Commission also raised quesations about the possibility that Tippit was involved with drugs."

Little has been mentoned or known about Tippit working for Avila. The focus has been on his moonlighting as security at Austin's Barbeque.

Tippit had a close friend, Officer Billy Anglin, and both had adjoining patrol areas which included Harendale--the sreet in East Oak Cliff where a house full of violent Cuban conspirators involved in the anti-Castro movement (SNFE/Alpha 66) and arms smuggling was located.

Anglin last saw Tippit on the morning he was killed, having had coffee at "The Old Drive-In" about 11:30-11:45. The Warren Commission never called any relative, associate or police officer who worked with Tippit to testify. Even the HSCA wondered why not!

What was Tippit doing in the section of North Oak Cliff where Ruby and Oswald both lived--not his assigned district--when most other police were concerned with the assassination and in Dealey Plaza? Oak Cliff was Tippits district, although three miles away and primarily the downtown police officers were called to Dealey Plaza.

Dispatcher, Jim Bowles (later Sheriff) said that Tippit was in his assigned district. Although he didn't seem to be, he was apparently several miles from where he was supposed to be. He was ordered to move into "Central Oak Cliff" at 12:45 p.m.This order was not in the first transcript produce by the DPD and then suddenly appeared in a later transcript. This has caused many reserchers to speculate this order was later dubbed into the tape by the police friends of Tippit.

There was no reason for Tippit to be moved to that area, which was far from his assigned area. Yet it is believed he strayed over to that area many times. Many witnesses say they saw Tippit in that area quite often, and in fact some thought he even lived in that area....particularly around the area where he was killed.

It is quite possible that the Cubans were directed to rent a house in Tippit's or Anglin's district to provide them with protection and a blind eye to the arms going in and out. If perhaps as some believe, Oswald was an undercover agent reporting on illegal arms to law enforcement agents or perhaps to the Dodd Committee, then Oswald would be targeted by the Cubans, if perhaps they were on to him. There is some belief that Oswald had been to the house at 3126 Harlendale too.

A group of Mexican-Americans were involved with the Cubans and acted as translators, some provided by Manuel Avila, who most probbaly knew Jack Ruby, also involved in ilegal arms sales. Avila was a honcho in the Mexican-Americamn community, and he employed J D Tippit, in a part-time security job.

Working for Avila gave Tippit knowledge of the Latin underworld and the fringe of the Cuban undergound. The Mexican-American group moved into the 3200 block of Harlendale about the same time that the Cubans moved into 3126 Harlendale.
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Compiled from information in Harrison Livingstone's, The Radical Right and the Murder of John F. Kennedy....(2004)"

And post #12:

"A woman by the name of Mrs. Doris Holan, lived at 409 E Tenth Street, She lived upstairs directly across the street and her windows looked directly on Tippit's Patrol car and the murder scene.

Mrs Holan has been an unreported witness all these years. Yet she was dying of terminal cancer and talked to Dallas Researcher Michael Brownlow prior to her death in 2000. She met with Brownlow twice and once accompanied with reseracher Prof. BIll Pulte.

Mrs Holan had just returned home from her job that morning, a few minutes after 1:00, then she heard gun shots. She hurried to her window and saw Tippit's patrol car, across the street and parked in front of the driveway between 404 and 410 E. Tenth Sreet. Tippit was lying on the street, near the left front of the car. She saw a man leaving the scene, moving westward towards Patton.

Mrs Holan also noticed something else that had not previously, ever been reported. A second police car in the driveway, which went all the way back to the alley, moving forward slowly towards Tippit's car on Tenth. Near the police car she also saw a man in the driveway walking toward the street where Tippit was parked.

She went downstairs at once and over to Tippit. The man in the driveway continued to the street, walked in front of Tippit's patrol car, paused and looked down at Tippit's head, and retraced his path up the driveway. At the same time, the police car changed direction and backed up in the driveway to the alley running parallel to Tenth, behind the houses on 404 and 410.

In 1963, the driveway could be entered from the alley from the rear, as well as from Tenth. Because Tippit's car was parked in front of the Tenth Street entrance, the alley provided the only passage from the driveway for the driver of the police car.

Mrs. Holan's account of a second police car is supported by the comments of Sam Guinyard, who told Brownlow in 1970 that he saw a police car in the alley shortly after the police shooting. The man in the driveway was apparently also seen by others: a resident of the neighborhood, who wishes to remain anonymous, told Prof Pulte, in 1990, that he had heard about a man in the driveway who approached Tippit's car.

Another thought...Earlene Roberts saw a police car stop and honk in front of the boarding house on 1026 N Beckley, where LHO lived.... at around 1:03. Tippit was shot at around 1:10 to 1:15 at the latest. This could possibly have been the police car she saw."

Bill Brown:
Christoph said:  "According to the Dallas Underground, by several researchers......."

Key words there, "according to the Dallas Underground".   This is simply more hearsay, and nothing more.

Christoph Messner:
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Christoph said:  "According to the Dallas Underground, by several researchers......."
Where or when did I say that?
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Key words there, "according to the Dallas Underground".   This is simply more hearsay, and nothing more.

How do you know, that it is nothing more?

Mrs. Kilgallen's reporting brought her into contact with Mark Lane who had himself received an amazing story from the journalist Thayer Waldo. He had discovered that Jack Ruby, J. D. Tippet and Bernard Weismann had a meeting at the Carousel Club eight days before the assassination. Waldo, who worked for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, was too scared to publish the story. He had other information about the assassination. However, he believed that if he told Lane or Kilgallen he would be killed. Kilgallen's article on the Tippit, Ruby and Weissman meeting appeared on the front page of the Journal American. Later she was to reveal that the Warren Commission were also tipped off about this gathering. However, their informant added that there was a fourth man at the meeting, an important figure in the Texas oil industry. 

Mark Lane testified before that Warren Commission that Thayer Waldo, a journalist on the staff of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, had told him that Weissman was involved in a two-hour meeting with Jack Ruby and J. D. Tippit at the Carousel Club on 14th November, 1963. According to Joachim Joesten (How Kennedy Was Killed), "a rich oil man" was also at this meeting. Weissman denied he had ever been to the Carousel Club and had never met Ruby or Tippit.

George Senator told reporters that Jack Ruby had tried to contact Weissman after the assassination. According to Seth Kantor (Who Was Jack Ruby): "He (Ruby) couldn't get to Bernard Weissman. There was no such person in the Dallas phone book."