Post by Gil Jesus on Aug 30, 2021 8:22:07 GMT -5
THE BAD BOYS OF OAK CLIFF -- Part I
By Gil Jesus (2021)
Most major American cities have areas that are considered the "bad section of town". In such areas, the crime rate is higher and police endeavor to make their presence known in order to deter crime.
Having spent some time as a police officer myself, I understand how it all works. I find nothing suspicious or sinister about the Dallas Police dispatching J.D. Tippit to Oak Cliff. They just wanted coverage in a high crime area while the officer assigned to that area was at lunch.
One of the problems with such high crime areas is that the residents tend to not want to get involved as witnesses. Many of them fear retribution from perpetrators or their allies.
The Oak Cliff section of Dallas was not without its share of young criminals and troublemakers. Several of these come to the forefront as we examine the murder of Dallas Police Officer J.D. Tippit.
How bad of an area of the city was Oak Cliff? The two teenagers who were used as "fillers" in the 4th police lineup with Oswald were residents of Oak Cliff. (7 H 201)
Two other such Oak Cliff criminals just happened to be "witnesses" to the Tippit murder:
William Arthur Smith and Jimmy Earl Burt.
Although they were supposed to have been together, their stories differ greatly. And the evidence does not support either of their versions of what happened.
They were also two young men with troubled pasts, Smith was on probation for auto theft and Burt was AWOL from the Army.
Smith lived on the next street from murder witness Helen Markham and was a friend of her son James, who was out on parole from prison for a burglary at the time of the murder.
If any of these guys were caught by police with a firearm in their possession, it would have been a violation of their parole or probation and meant jail time. For Burt, it would have meant at least a year in the brig.
These guys ran together and were real "sh*t-bums".
Having been at the murder scene, they should have been treated as "persons of interest" instead of witnesses. Under normal circumstances, with their police records, they would have been.
As I researched this, I wondered if any of them could have been the real killer of J.D. Tippit. If these guys were as bad as the record shows, they had to be known to police.
Especially the Robbery and Homicide Division.
There had to be mugshots on these guys.
But were they known to Tippit?
Could the prospect of prison be the motive that cost Officer Tippit his life?
Could this have been the reason why Mrs. Markham's story had changed every time she told it ? Was she protecting someone she knew ? Was she fearful the killer was from the neighborhood and knew who she was and would kill her ? Was her contradictory descriptions of the killer a mixture of TWO men?
Many other witnesses came forward who saw a "man with a gun" after the shooting had occurred, but never saw the actual murder.
Only one witness saw the actual killer in the act: Helen Markham.
HELEN MARKHAM
The Commission's star witness to the Tippit murder was Helen Louise Markham, a 47 year old mother of five who was on her way to catch the 1:15 bus to to her waitress job.
Her bus stop was a block away from the murder scene and she had stopped at the corner of Patton Ave. and 10th St. to allow traffic to pass before she crossed.
Mrs. Markham witnessed that the police cruiser had stopped alongside a young man who had been walking and that the man walked over to the passenger door of the cruiser and seemed to have a conversation with the officer.
According to her testimony, the man then backed away from the cruiser and the officer got out of the car slowly. When the officer got to about the front wheel of the cruiser, the man pulled a gun and shot him three times.
The fact that this occurred unexpectedly in front of her very eyes caused Mrs. Markham to go into a state of shock, by her own admission, she could not move or speak.
In the hours after the murder, Mrs. Markham's state of mind can only be described as "hysterical". Was this because she saw a policeman murdered and the killer was someone she knew and threatened to kill her ?
Mrs. Markham was taken to police headquarters to view a lineup before she could fully regain her composure.
That lineup consisted of three police employees and Oswald.
She chose Oswald even though she testified under oath that she had never seen him before in her life. (3 H 310)
Mrs. Markham also failed to identify the jacket and shirt in evidence as the same jacket and shirt worn by the killer. (3 H 312)
In fact, her sworn affidavit taken on November 22nd gave NO description of the killer to the Dallas Police other than that he was a "young white man".
In her statement to the FBI on the same day, Mrs. Markham described Tippit's killer as an "18yo" with a red complexion and wearing dark trousers.
But in a video interview on my Youtube Channel, she says the killer had a ruddy complexion and wore a light shirt, a brown jacket and light grey trousers.
Mrs. Markham's description of the killer changed drastically from interview to interview. Granted, she saw something she didn't want to see, that is the murder of a policeman.
But you have to question, what exactly DID she see?
Perhaps her memory became clouded because the killer threatened to kill her. Officer Joe M. Poe's supplemental report dated 11-22-63 indicated just that.
If Mrs. Markham recognized the killer as someone from the neighborhood and the killer recognized her and threatened to kill her, her terror and subsequent hysteria can certainly be understood.
Likewise, her ever changing story.
WILLIAM SCOGGINS
One of the witnesses who didn't actually see the shooting but heard the shots and saw smoke was William Scoggins, a cab driver who was parked on the corner of Patton Ave. and 10th St. taking his lunch break.
Scoggins was parked around the corner from the murder scene and in the path of the killer as he fled.
In his testimony, Scoggins may have left a clue that Tippit's murderer was from the neighborhood. He said that he didn't pay much attention to the man, that he was "just used to see him every day" (3 H 325).
If the killer was Oswald, how could Oswald be in this neighborhood every day when after October 14th he was working everyday at the Texas School Book Depository and the housekeeper at his rooming house said he never went out ?
Of course, the Commission never asked Scoggins what he meant by this. They didn't want to know.
WARREN REYNOLDS
Further evidence that Tippit's killer was someone from the neighborhood and still at large comes from the attempted murder of witness Warren Reynolds.
Reynolds worked at his brother's dealership, Reynolds Motor Company located at 500 E. Jefferson.
On November 22, 1963, Reynolds saw a man with a gun running south on Patton Ave. He then allegedly followed the man on the opposite side of the street as the man went west on West Jefferson Blvd. He said he lost the man behind a gas station on Crawford St.
On 23rd January, 1964, Reynolds was himself the victim of a violent attack. As he went into the basement of the dealership to shut off the lights for the night, he was shot in the head by someone with a .22 caliber rifle who was lying in wait for him.
No charges were ever brought against anyone in this attack. A suspect was picked up but he had an alibi and passed a polygraph exam so the police released him.
Reynolds survived the attack and made a full recovery.
In March, 1964, Reynolds had a meeting with General Edwin Walker who read his story in the paper and was interested in talking with him. During this meeting, he admitted to Walker that contrary to the newspaper article "he did not finger Oswald." (CE 2587, pg. 2)
Later that month, a man tried to get Reynolds' 9 year old daughter Terri into his car by offering her money. She ran away and reported the incident to her parents. (ibid., pg.3)
Understandably, this made Reynolds "apprehensive" to stick to his original story.
If the attempted murder of him wasn't enough, the attempted kidnapping of his daughter was the straw that broke the camel's back.
He changed his mind and identified Oswald as the man he had seen running from the scene of the crime. He then testified such to the Warren Commission.
ACQUILLA CLEMONS
On my Youtube Channel, there is a 1966 interview by attorney Mark Lane of witness Acquilla Clemons. Mrs. Clemons heard the shots and ran out into the street and saw two men on opposite sides of the street.
She said the man she saw with the gun was "short and kind of chunky" and the other was tall, thin and had a white shirt on and light colored khakis.
She claimed that she never told anyone what she saw.
In spite of this, two days after the shooting, she was told by a plain clothes "man with a gun" to "keep quiet" or she might get hurt.
Were the authorities warning her that the killer lived in the neighborhood and was still at large?
Coming in Part II: ALIAS SMITH AND BURT