Post by John Duncan on Apr 2, 2021 20:24:44 GMT -5
Hello Police Operator
Herbert Blenner 3/2010
The transcripts of radio traffic on Channel-I and an audio file reportedly originating from the dictabelt show that the authorities altered the sequence of recorded events surrounding the murder of officer Tippit.
Part One - Activity on the Primary Police Channel-I
When police initially arrived at the scene of the Tippit shooting, the dictabelt had recorded six addresses for the location of the crime scene. This situation is particularly difficult to dismiss since a citizen reported the shooting to the police over the two-way radio of Tippit's patrol car.
They reported the location as Tenth Street, between Marsalis and Beckley at 404 Tenth Street.
On December 2, 1963, T. F. Bowley filed an affidavit that asserts he radioed the report of a shot officer to the police. However, he quoted himself as having said, "A police officer has been shot here." These words differed from the dictabelt that recorded the words, "We've had a shooting out here." So I decline to identify Bowley as the citizen who reported the first address of 404 Tenth Street.
Two dispatchers worked Channel-I. Murray James Jackson dispatched calls that come over the radio while C. E. Hulse handled calls that come through the police telephone lines. Each dispatcher had a speaker and heard all activity recorded by the Dictaphone excepting their own words. So a dispatcher could have missed a message broadcast.simultaneously with their own words. However, the other dispatcher would have heard the simultaneous broadcasts and could have used the conveyor belt to send a written message to their counterpart.
A dispatcher began speaking while the citizen said, "Hello police operator did you get that?" After the citizen stopped speaking, he heard "a police officer 510 East Jefferson."
The citizen waited for completion of the message then instead of repeating his request for confirmation, he replied "thank you" as if there were no communications gap. At this point the police had two addresses for the shooting.
Nevertheless A. R. Brock of unit 69 announced "Vince and I are going.out there." Shortly afterwards Ray Hawkins and E. R. Baggett of unit 211 informed.the dispatcher, "We're clear at Industrial and Stemmons. We'll go out there." Neither unit asked whether they were going to 404 Tenth Street or 510 East Jefferson.
The first mention of 501 East Tenth Street occurred when the dispatcher responded to a station that asked "What's that address on Jefferson?" The station had cause to ask because 510 East Jefferson was mentioned earlier in relation to a police officer. By contrast, the dispatcher who conversed with the citizen had no cause to send the ambulance to the address of Frank and Mary Wright.
Sergeant Calvin Bud Owens gave the dispatcher another opportunity to.acknowledge the address of 404 Tenth Street. Owens said, "Give me the correct address on the shooting." The dispatcher failed to acknowledge the earlier addresses of 404 Tenth Street or 510 East Jefferson and the dispatcher reaffirmed the third address of the shooting as 501 East Tenth Street.
A dispatcher introduced a fourth address by stating, "We have two locations 501 East Jefferson and 501 East Ten." This former address belonged to the Harris Motor Company that employed Ted Callaway and Sam Guinyard.
A second citizen used the police radio and reported that the shot officer was on the 500 block of Tenth Street. Spectators who gave the earlier citizen the number of the police car and the street address of the shooting did not correct this error. In fact background voices.were not heard during this report. The dispatcher accepted this fifth address and told the second citizen we have that information.
historymatters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh3/html/WC_Vol3_0181b.htm
In his Warren Commission testimony, Ted Callaway reported using the police radio and gave sufficient details to identify himself as the second citizen.
A question by Captain Cecil E. Talbert confirmed that at least one citizen radioed a report of the shooting. The dispatcher asked, "Did you receive the information on the police officer shot?" Talbert said, "But didn't that citizen say first he was on Jefferson, then on Tenth and then Chesepeak?" The spelling of the last named location is questionable. A locally prepared transcript of Sawyer Exhibit A spelled the last named location as Chesepeak. CE-705, prepared by the FBI, spelled the location as Chesapeak while the CE-1974 also prepared by the FBI spelled the name as Chesapeake.
A dispatcher announced the indirect report of the shooting by Barbara Jeanette Davis approximately three and a quarter minutes after receiving the address as 404 Tenth Street. He said " . . . have a signal 19 involving a police officer 400 East Ten."
Part Two - Activity on Channel-II
Although the primary police channel was clogged with six addresses pertaining to the shooting, the transcripts of Channel-II reported two addresses.
historymatters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh21/html/WH_Vol21_0212b.htm
Sawyer Exhibit B of December 5, 1963 described two messages pertaining to a shot officer. The first message informed all squads of an officer involved in a shooting in the 400 block of East Tenth. The second message requested informing Chief Curry of an officer involved in a shooting of unknown seriousness at Tenth and Patton.
historymatters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh17/html/WH_Vol17_0247b.htm
historymatters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh23/html/WH_Vol23_0477a.htm
CE 705 and CE 1974 included a disjointed message. The dispatcher, Gerald Dalton Henslee, told Sergeant Owens, "It's in the 400 or 500 block of E. 10th, I believe." Owens responded but neither transcript.reported him asking for the correct address on Channel-II. During the afternoon of November 22, 1963, Henslee played a dual role in the dispatcher's office. He supervised incoming radio calls on Channel-I and was the sole dispatcher for Channel-II. These duties exposed him to the radioed messages from the two citizens who reported the 400 block and the 500 block of East Tenth Street as the location of the shot officer. So the sources of the information that Henslee relayed to Owens were not necessarily the telephonic messages from 400 East Tenth or 501 East Tenth. The failure of Henslee to mention the 501 East Jefferson address of the Harris Motor Company or the 510 East Jefferson address of the Reynolds Motor Company suggest that the reports radioed by citizens were the sources of the information relayed to Owens.
Part Three - Knowledge of the Callers
The affidavit of Barbara Jeanette Davis dated November 22, 1963 states that she heard shots, went to the door, saw a man unloading a gun while walking across her yard and heard a woman screaming that "he shot him, he killed him." She ran into the house and reported this information to the telephone operator. Mrs. Charlie Virginia Davis corroborated this call to the authorities in her affidavit of November 22, 1963. These documents justify the dispatcher's broadcast, "signal 19 involving a police officer 400 East Ten."
According to the affidavits of Ted Callaway and Sam Guinyard dated November 22, 1963 neither witness called the police before going to the scene of the shooting. Although not mentioned in his affidavit, it appears that Callaway radioed the police. This radio report shows that police had not yet arrived at the crime scene. So an undocumented conversion with the police could not have been source of the dispatcher's knowledge of the 501 East Jefferson business address of Callaway. Although these circumstances allow an unidentified person of the Harris Motor Company to have telephoned the police, the expected contents of a call that reported gun shots and a running man carrying a weapon cannot justify the dispatcher placing as much weight upon the 501 East Jefferson address as the address of the shot officer reported from Tippit's patrol car.
Frank and Mary Wright of 501 East Tenth Street were among the ghost witnesses at the Tippit crime scene. The Dallas Municipal Archives that inherited the voluminous holdings of the Dallas Police Department contains no affidavits from these witnesses. A search of the FBI files uncovered no interviews of Wrights. Apparently the authorities found the knowledge of Frank or Mary Wright was unworthy of report.
The address of 510 East Jefferson belonged to the business office of the Reynolds Motor Company. From this location and the adjacent used car lot at 500 East Jefferson four troublesome witnesses raised a
timing problem that the authorities needed to conceal.
historymatters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh20/html/WH_Vol20_0277b.htm
In particular the FBI interview of L. J. Lewis on January 21, 1964, discloses that he learned of the shot officer after calling the police to report hearing gun shots and seeing a running man carrying an automatic pistol or a revolver.
historymatters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh21/html/WH_Vol21_0204a.htm
Harold Russell in his FBI interview of January 21, 1964 corroborated Lewis on this timing issue. This interview stated, Russell advised that he and Pat Patterson went to the vicinity of Tenth and Patton while L. J. Lewis went into the business office and called the police.
Upon arriving at the scene of the shooting, Russell observed an apparently dead police officer.
historymatters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh21/html/WH_Vol21_0025a.htm
The FBI interview of B. M. Patterson on January 22, 1964 states that he heard shots at approximately 1:30 PM. A minute or so later he observed a running man carrying a revolver. Being unaware that the observed man had shot a police officer, Warren Reynolds suggested that they follow the individual and later notify the police.
historymatters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh25/html/WC_Vol25_0381a.htm
Warren Reynolds in the FBI interview of January 21, 1964 stated that he heard shots during the afternoon then observed a running individual with a pistol or an automatic. He followed from a safe distance and last observed the man by the Ballew Texaco Service Station. Reynolds advised approximately five or ten minutes later someone told him that the man he had been "tailing" had shot and apparently killed an officer. Reynolds hesitated to definitely identify the person that he followed on the afternoon of November 22, 1963 as the same person in a photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald. Although the FBI interviews of January 1964 reported that B. M. Patterson and Harold Russell positively identified the running man carrying a gun as Lee Harvey Oswald the Dallas authorities produced no records of interviews or affidavits from these pivotal witnesses. The Warren Commission foregone corroborated testimonies that positively placed Lee Harvey Oswald fleeing the scene of the Tippit shooting in favor of affidavits that affirmed the FBI interviews of January 1964.
Warren Reynolds filed a belated affidavit on March 16, 1964. Reynolds stated that shortly after noon he heard one shot followed by four or five other shots. He looked out the window and saw a running man waving a pistol who he now knows as Lee Harvey Oswald. Reynolds followed Oswald until losing sight of him at the Texaco station.
On August 26, 1964, L. J. Lewis executed an affidavit that placed his call to the police after hearing the shots and a few minutes before seeing the running man. He stated that there was so much confusion at the Police Department that they having trouble making out what I was telling them.
The affidavit of B. M. Patterson on August 26, 1964 revised the FBI.report of his interview during January of the same year. Patterson doubted having been shown a photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald in January.
A transcript produced three months later and became CE 705 attributed.the evolving message to an unknown voice who said "a police officer, 510 E. Jefferson." During August of 1964 the third version attempted to reconcile the contradictory reports of the previous two transcripts. They attributed the statement, "a police officer, 510.East Jefferson" to the citizen that was repeated by the Dispatcher as
The Warren Commission published this transcript within CE 1974.
A second burst of noise followed the expected burst of the receiver. An innocent explanation of this reception required that a mobile station interrupted a report of shooting by keying in at end of the
citizen's cryptic reply, said nothing, keyed out and produced the second noise burst. Since these circumstances, not matter how improbable, are physically possible the double burst of noise is
The presence of a noise burst following the simultaneous recording of two messages proves that the citizen asked, "Police operator did you get that?" and the dispatcher said, "a police officer, 510 East
Jefferson." Without doubt, this noise burst discredits the attempts of CE 705 and CE 1974 to attribute this second address to an unknown person or the citizen.
About 0.5 second after the dispatcher said, "a police officer, 510 East Jefferson" a mobile station keyed in, broadcasted background voices for 0.7 second, keyed out and produced a noise burst. So the audio record of the citizen's report of the shooting of Tippit contained another highly improbable event. In this case a mobile station interrupted a report of a shot officer and said nothing.
A radio receiver responded to the absence of a signal by producing a quarter second noise burst. During this burst the operator's transmitter was off so the excessive deviation had no degrading effects upon the noise burst. However, my audio file recorded a noise burst distorted by a heterodyne. Since generation of the heterodyne required reception of two radio signals and production of the noise burst demanded absence of any radio signal, the distorted noise burst is proof of an unprofessional alteration of my audio record of the dictabelt.
Herbert Blenner 3/2010
The transcripts of radio traffic on Channel-I and an audio file reportedly originating from the dictabelt show that the authorities altered the sequence of recorded events surrounding the murder of officer Tippit.
Part One - Activity on the Primary Police Channel-I
When police initially arrived at the scene of the Tippit shooting, the dictabelt had recorded six addresses for the location of the crime scene. This situation is particularly difficult to dismiss since a citizen reported the shooting to the police over the two-way radio of Tippit's patrol car.
They reported the location as Tenth Street, between Marsalis and Beckley at 404 Tenth Street.
On December 2, 1963, T. F. Bowley filed an affidavit that asserts he radioed the report of a shot officer to the police. However, he quoted himself as having said, "A police officer has been shot here." These words differed from the dictabelt that recorded the words, "We've had a shooting out here." So I decline to identify Bowley as the citizen who reported the first address of 404 Tenth Street.
Two dispatchers worked Channel-I. Murray James Jackson dispatched calls that come over the radio while C. E. Hulse handled calls that come through the police telephone lines. Each dispatcher had a speaker and heard all activity recorded by the Dictaphone excepting their own words. So a dispatcher could have missed a message broadcast.simultaneously with their own words. However, the other dispatcher would have heard the simultaneous broadcasts and could have used the conveyor belt to send a written message to their counterpart.
A dispatcher began speaking while the citizen said, "Hello police operator did you get that?" After the citizen stopped speaking, he heard "a police officer 510 East Jefferson."
The citizen waited for completion of the message then instead of repeating his request for confirmation, he replied "thank you" as if there were no communications gap. At this point the police had two addresses for the shooting.
Nevertheless A. R. Brock of unit 69 announced "Vince and I are going.out there." Shortly afterwards Ray Hawkins and E. R. Baggett of unit 211 informed.the dispatcher, "We're clear at Industrial and Stemmons. We'll go out there." Neither unit asked whether they were going to 404 Tenth Street or 510 East Jefferson.
The first mention of 501 East Tenth Street occurred when the dispatcher responded to a station that asked "What's that address on Jefferson?" The station had cause to ask because 510 East Jefferson was mentioned earlier in relation to a police officer. By contrast, the dispatcher who conversed with the citizen had no cause to send the ambulance to the address of Frank and Mary Wright.
Sergeant Calvin Bud Owens gave the dispatcher another opportunity to.acknowledge the address of 404 Tenth Street. Owens said, "Give me the correct address on the shooting." The dispatcher failed to acknowledge the earlier addresses of 404 Tenth Street or 510 East Jefferson and the dispatcher reaffirmed the third address of the shooting as 501 East Tenth Street.
A dispatcher introduced a fourth address by stating, "We have two locations 501 East Jefferson and 501 East Ten." This former address belonged to the Harris Motor Company that employed Ted Callaway and Sam Guinyard.
A second citizen used the police radio and reported that the shot officer was on the 500 block of Tenth Street. Spectators who gave the earlier citizen the number of the police car and the street address of the shooting did not correct this error. In fact background voices.were not heard during this report. The dispatcher accepted this fifth address and told the second citizen we have that information.
historymatters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh3/html/WC_Vol3_0181b.htm
In his Warren Commission testimony, Ted Callaway reported using the police radio and gave sufficient details to identify himself as the second citizen.
A question by Captain Cecil E. Talbert confirmed that at least one citizen radioed a report of the shooting. The dispatcher asked, "Did you receive the information on the police officer shot?" Talbert said, "But didn't that citizen say first he was on Jefferson, then on Tenth and then Chesepeak?" The spelling of the last named location is questionable. A locally prepared transcript of Sawyer Exhibit A spelled the last named location as Chesepeak. CE-705, prepared by the FBI, spelled the location as Chesapeak while the CE-1974 also prepared by the FBI spelled the name as Chesapeake.
A dispatcher announced the indirect report of the shooting by Barbara Jeanette Davis approximately three and a quarter minutes after receiving the address as 404 Tenth Street. He said " . . . have a signal 19 involving a police officer 400 East Ten."
Part Two - Activity on Channel-II
Although the primary police channel was clogged with six addresses pertaining to the shooting, the transcripts of Channel-II reported two addresses.
historymatters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh21/html/WH_Vol21_0212b.htm
Sawyer Exhibit B of December 5, 1963 described two messages pertaining to a shot officer. The first message informed all squads of an officer involved in a shooting in the 400 block of East Tenth. The second message requested informing Chief Curry of an officer involved in a shooting of unknown seriousness at Tenth and Patton.
historymatters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh17/html/WH_Vol17_0247b.htm
historymatters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh23/html/WH_Vol23_0477a.htm
CE 705 and CE 1974 included a disjointed message. The dispatcher, Gerald Dalton Henslee, told Sergeant Owens, "It's in the 400 or 500 block of E. 10th, I believe." Owens responded but neither transcript.reported him asking for the correct address on Channel-II. During the afternoon of November 22, 1963, Henslee played a dual role in the dispatcher's office. He supervised incoming radio calls on Channel-I and was the sole dispatcher for Channel-II. These duties exposed him to the radioed messages from the two citizens who reported the 400 block and the 500 block of East Tenth Street as the location of the shot officer. So the sources of the information that Henslee relayed to Owens were not necessarily the telephonic messages from 400 East Tenth or 501 East Tenth. The failure of Henslee to mention the 501 East Jefferson address of the Harris Motor Company or the 510 East Jefferson address of the Reynolds Motor Company suggest that the reports radioed by citizens were the sources of the information relayed to Owens.
Part Three - Knowledge of the Callers
The affidavit of Barbara Jeanette Davis dated November 22, 1963 states that she heard shots, went to the door, saw a man unloading a gun while walking across her yard and heard a woman screaming that "he shot him, he killed him." She ran into the house and reported this information to the telephone operator. Mrs. Charlie Virginia Davis corroborated this call to the authorities in her affidavit of November 22, 1963. These documents justify the dispatcher's broadcast, "signal 19 involving a police officer 400 East Ten."
According to the affidavits of Ted Callaway and Sam Guinyard dated November 22, 1963 neither witness called the police before going to the scene of the shooting. Although not mentioned in his affidavit, it appears that Callaway radioed the police. This radio report shows that police had not yet arrived at the crime scene. So an undocumented conversion with the police could not have been source of the dispatcher's knowledge of the 501 East Jefferson business address of Callaway. Although these circumstances allow an unidentified person of the Harris Motor Company to have telephoned the police, the expected contents of a call that reported gun shots and a running man carrying a weapon cannot justify the dispatcher placing as much weight upon the 501 East Jefferson address as the address of the shot officer reported from Tippit's patrol car.
Frank and Mary Wright of 501 East Tenth Street were among the ghost witnesses at the Tippit crime scene. The Dallas Municipal Archives that inherited the voluminous holdings of the Dallas Police Department contains no affidavits from these witnesses. A search of the FBI files uncovered no interviews of Wrights. Apparently the authorities found the knowledge of Frank or Mary Wright was unworthy of report.
The address of 510 East Jefferson belonged to the business office of the Reynolds Motor Company. From this location and the adjacent used car lot at 500 East Jefferson four troublesome witnesses raised a
timing problem that the authorities needed to conceal.
historymatters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh20/html/WH_Vol20_0277b.htm
In particular the FBI interview of L. J. Lewis on January 21, 1964, discloses that he learned of the shot officer after calling the police to report hearing gun shots and seeing a running man carrying an automatic pistol or a revolver.
historymatters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh21/html/WH_Vol21_0204a.htm
Harold Russell in his FBI interview of January 21, 1964 corroborated Lewis on this timing issue. This interview stated, Russell advised that he and Pat Patterson went to the vicinity of Tenth and Patton while L. J. Lewis went into the business office and called the police.
Upon arriving at the scene of the shooting, Russell observed an apparently dead police officer.
historymatters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh21/html/WH_Vol21_0025a.htm
The FBI interview of B. M. Patterson on January 22, 1964 states that he heard shots at approximately 1:30 PM. A minute or so later he observed a running man carrying a revolver. Being unaware that the observed man had shot a police officer, Warren Reynolds suggested that they follow the individual and later notify the police.
historymatters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh25/html/WC_Vol25_0381a.htm
Warren Reynolds in the FBI interview of January 21, 1964 stated that he heard shots during the afternoon then observed a running individual with a pistol or an automatic. He followed from a safe distance and last observed the man by the Ballew Texaco Service Station. Reynolds advised approximately five or ten minutes later someone told him that the man he had been "tailing" had shot and apparently killed an officer. Reynolds hesitated to definitely identify the person that he followed on the afternoon of November 22, 1963 as the same person in a photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald. Although the FBI interviews of January 1964 reported that B. M. Patterson and Harold Russell positively identified the running man carrying a gun as Lee Harvey Oswald the Dallas authorities produced no records of interviews or affidavits from these pivotal witnesses. The Warren Commission foregone corroborated testimonies that positively placed Lee Harvey Oswald fleeing the scene of the Tippit shooting in favor of affidavits that affirmed the FBI interviews of January 1964.
During August the Warren Commission renewed their interest in the witnesses associated with the Reynolds Motor Company.
On August 10, 1964, an affidavit of Harold Russell affirmed the FBI report of his interview during the previous January.
By request of the Warren Commission, the FBI contacted L. J. Lewis and B. M. Patterson to determine the accuracy of their interviews of last January.
On September 7, 1964, B. M. Patterson executed an affidavit that.affirmed the written reports on his interviews of August 25 and 26, 1964 by Special Agent Richard J. Burnett of the FBI.
The testimonies and interviews of Patterson, Reynolds and Russell.corroborated Lewis on his claimed ignorance of a shot officer when he phoned the police from 510 East Jefferson.
Part Four Mutations of the Channel-I Radio Transcripts
The Warren Commission published three versions of the words that followed the citizen's question, "Did you get that?"
Sawyer Exhibit A of December 3, 1963, reported that the dispatcher who conversed with the citizen broadcast the words, "Signal 19 involving a police officer, 510 E. Jefferson."
"Signal 19, involving a police officer, 510 East Jefferson."
The citizen said seven words, "Hello police operator did you get that?" during the interval that CE 1974 claimed the dispatcher said the three words, "Signal 19, involving." However, both messages began
simultaneously so the claim of CE 1974 strongly suggests that they transcribed a mutated record of the dictabelt.Part Five - Signal Analyzes of the Radioed Reports of the Shooting
Each dispatcher had a telephone link that bypassed the main police radio receiver and feed directly into the main transmitter. These links impressed distinguishing characteristics upon all broadcasts by the dispatches. The main radio receiver added a noise burst at the end of a non simultaneous reception. Broadcasts from the each dispatcher lacked these bursts of noise.
Three radio events surrounding the report by the citizen merit special attention. The citizen made a brief broadcast and gave the location as tenth street.
citizen's cryptic reply, said nothing, keyed out and produced the second noise burst. Since these circumstances, not matter how improbable, are physically possible the double burst of noise is
evidence, not proof, of an altered tape of a dictabelt.
Jefferson." Without doubt, this noise burst discredits the attempts of CE 705 and CE 1974 to attribute this second address to an unknown person or the citizen.
Ted Callaway began his report by saying "Hello, hello, hello" and then paused to listen. The noise burst that followed Callaway's words shows that he was the only transmitting unit on the channel. Almost immediately an ambulance announced its 602 call number. An analysis of the signal revealed excessive frequency deviation of the transmitter and a heterodyne impaired intelligibility of the message.
Shortly after their last number, the operator released the transmit button.